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  • US-Iran Talks Delayed, Vance Peace Architect, Obama Presidential Center Opens

    Transcript:

    STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

    So we’re getting started…

    LEILA FADEL, HOST:

    Steve, so late.

    INSKEEP: …Late with the preproduction, and it is entirely my fault because I was talking to Leila…

    FADEL: No.

    INSKEEP: …In the studio.

    FADEL: No, no, no.

    INSKEEP: No?

    FADEL: This is not my fault. I was not involved in this fault.

    INSKEEP: I didn’t – no, I didn’t say it was your fault.

    FADEL: (Laughter).

    INSKEEP: I said it was my fault. I was talking to you. You talking to me?

    FADEL: We were chatting…

    INSKEEP: Yes.

    FADEL: …About the world.

    INSKEEP: Yes.

    FADEL: And world affairs.

    INSKEEP: Very important things to talk about.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    FADEL: Hundreds of journalists are in Switzerland, waiting for the U.S. and Iran to start the next phase of talks.

    INSKEEP: The plan was to make the peace deal permanent, but now the U.S. and Iran aren’t coming. What happened to the negotiation?

    FADEL: I’m Leila Fadel. That’s Steve Inskeep, and this is UP FIRST from NPR News.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    FADEL: Vice President Vance lashed out at Israel for criticizing the deal with Iran. He says Iran will be paid only if it performs.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

    JD VANCE: If they change their behavior, big things are going to happen for Iran and for the world. If they don’t, no skin off our backs. Either way, we win.

    FADEL: How did Vance become the face of this deal?

    INSKEEP: Also former President Obama opened his presidential center in Chicago. The museum begins the story, not with Obama’s election in 2008, but with the Declaration of Independence. Tamara Keith had a look. Stay with us. We’ve got the news you need to start your day.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    INSKEEP: Vice President Vance is delaying his trip to Switzerland to negotiate the terms of a peace agreement with Iran.

    FADEL: Vance and a delegation from Iran were scheduled to meet in Lucerne. The presidents of the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum this week. It sends benefits to Iran but is only a first step toward a comprehensive deal.

    INSKEEP: NPR’s Rob Schmitz made it to Lucerne, even though the vice president did not yet. Rob, hi there.

    ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Hey there, Steve.

    INSKEEP: It seemed like negotiators were on this accelerated schedule. They signed the preliminary deal early. They were going to dive right in and talk. Why are they now delaying?

    SCHMITZ: Yeah. We don’t know exactly why, but Israel’s continued bombardment of southern Lebanon is not helping. You know, the very first article of this agreement that was signed by President Trump and Iran’s president promises to ensure the territorial integrity of Lebanon. Obviously, that is not happening. Just this morning, Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 18 people had been killed in overnight strikes, while the Israeli military said four of its soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has made it clear that Israeli forces in southern Lebanon intend to stay there. Members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet have called this deal, quote, “bad for Israel,” and Vance said this in response yesterday.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

    VANCE: Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower. If I was in the Cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.

    INSKEEP: Really rare for an American official to publicly dress down Israel like that, which says things we could maybe discuss about politics in America, but also about the pressure on Vance.

    SCHMITZ: Yeah. And he’s obviously in a very difficult position here. And yesterday, he appeared defensive when he was pressed about the details of the agreement with Iran. Vance said, quote, “we don’t trust words.”

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

    VANCE: We trust action, and we trust conduct. And so we’re going to reward conduct, and we’re not going to reward any words, whether they’re written on a sheet of paper or not. There’s a lot of discussion. The MOU, the gentlemen’s agreement, the final deal. Words don’t matter, ladies and gentlemen. We’re about verification.

    SCHMITZ: And, Steve, you know, some might question here that if the Trump administration doesn’t trust words, why sign an agreement in the first place? When President Trump was asked at the G7 summit in France what he would do should Iran not adhere to the agreement, here’s what he said.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to bomb the hell out of them if they violate the agreement.

    INSKEEP: How did Iran respond to that, Rob?

    SCHMITZ: So Iran’s speaker of parliament shot back at Trump this morning in a post on X, saying that if there is a breach of the agreement, Iran will, quote, “have no hesitation in delivering a crushing response to the enemy.” And it should be noted here that the very first article of the agreement promises that both sides will cease all military operations.

    INSKEEP: They’re supposed to cease military operations. They are supposed to spend 60 days negotiating, but I guess here on Day 1 or 2 or 3, or whatever this is, they’re not going to be talking.

    SCHMITZ: Yeah, that’s right. And here we are in Switzerland, waiting for a peace deal. You know, across this beautiful Alpine lake from me here in Lucerne, the Swiss government has taken a range of security measures to host this event, and there are hundreds of journalists here to record it. But for now, Iran’s foreign ministry said the signing ceremony was off, and the White House said in a statement that the plans for the upcoming technical talks have not been finalized. Neither side is here. They’re threatening to strike each other, and this agreement appears to be on very shaky ground.

    INSKEEP: NPR’s Rob Schmitz is in lovely Lucerne, Switzerland. Thanks so much, Rob.

    SCHMITZ: Thank you.

    INSKEEP: Now, we heard Vice President Vance a moment ago criticizing Israel. He did not show up in Switzerland, but he is the face of these talks for the United States. And NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben has been following his role. Hi there, Danielle.

    DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Good morning.

    INSKEEP: What is the vice president’s role in the negotiations?

    KURTZLEBEN: Well, he confirmed at yesterday’s White House press briefing that he’ll be leading the negotiation team. There aren’t a lot of details yet on that, though. He had been supposed to go to Switzerland today for a ceremonial signing, but then Trump signed the deal a couple of days ago. So now the White House says negotiation plans aren’t finalized, and Vance and his team will just leave at the first opportunity.

    INSKEEP: Meaning will leave to go negotiate at the first opportunity?

    KURTZLEBEN: Correct.

    INSKEEP: OK. How much is riding on him?

    KURTZLEBEN: A lot. I mean, President Trump made a telling joke about this at a press conference this week. A reporter asked him essentially if Vance is the fall guy if things don’t work out, and Trump answered with this.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

    TRUMP: This way, if it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD. You better be careful, JD.

    KURTZLEBEN: Now, it got laughs, and Vance said yesterday that, yeah, it was a joke. But even so, there’s a reason it got a laugh. Trump does not like to lose, and Vance is the face of these negotiations. He’s been doing these many press appearances this week, talking up his new book. And in those, he also talked a lot about Iran. And he gave that press briefing yesterday, and he’s leading the team. So if the U.S. does not get what it wants, Vance may at least publicly have to own a lot of that. And we even saw a little taste of that this week as well when some on the right pinned their dissatisfaction with the deal on Vance.

    INSKEEP: He’s got a lot to accomplish in 60 days.

    KURTZLEBEN: Yeah, absolutely. Though there is the possibility of extensions beyond 60 days. But…

    INSKEEP: Sure.

    KURTZLEBEN: …Even so, the Obama nuclear deal took more than a year and a half to negotiate. So if it’s 60, even 120 days, that still could be a pretty short time frame. And then, like you said, there’s a lot Trump wants here. He has said Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. Officials have talked about changing the course of the Middle East region. Those are high bars. And I talked to Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about this.

    MONA YACOUBIAN: The president’s proclivities to exaggerate the terms for success, then set JD Vance or whoever is undertaking the negotiation going in at somewhat of a disadvantage.

    KURTZLEBEN: Now, in addition to all of that, she said, Iranians are notoriously tough negotiators, and Vance isn’t a seasoned diplomat. So really, it’s hard to overstate how big of a job this is going to be.

    INSKEEP: What does he bring to the table if he’s not a seasoned diplomat?

    KURTZLEBEN: Well, he’s been trying to laugh off that criticism, first of all, that he’s not experienced. Yesterday, he said he has dealt with hostile adversaries, saying that, well, he was on “The View” this week, which, you know, ha-ha.

    INSKEEP: OK.

    KURTZLEBEN: But in terms of his assets, it is possible that Vance’s anti-interventionist positions in the past give him some credibility here. In addition to that, he’s an aggressive messenger for the administration. So really, I think the thing to keep in mind, though, is that for all the White House is celebrating, this framework isn’t an end to the war. It’s a start to what might be a difficult process to end the war.

    INSKEEP: NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

    KURTZLEBEN: Thank you.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    INSKEEP: Today, the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago opens its doors to the public.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

    BARACK OBAMA: I hope this center will serve as an affirmation of just how special, how precious our democracy truly is.

    FADEL: That is former President Barack Obama speaking Thursday at a dedication ceremony that evoked a different era in American politics.

    INSKEEP: NPR senior political correspondent Tamara Keith covered the Obama presidency and is in Chicago, having had a look at the center. Tam, good morning.

    TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Good morning.

    INSKEEP: What was Obama trying to say?

    KEITH: He was saying a lot. But I think distilled, his message was about hope and change and the idea that the division and anger that dominates politics now doesn’t have to be irreversible. All of the living former presidents were there, but not the current president, Donald Trump. He wasn’t invited. And there’s this thing that happens when Obama and Clinton and Biden and Bush are all together in one place. When they talk about the American idea and democratic ideals, it reads as an implicit criticism of Trump and his approach to the presidency and his view of the country. Former first lady Michelle Obama also spoke, and she was not entirely subtle in her remarks. At this point, in the clip I’m going to play, she is both bragging on her husband and then delivering a left jab.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

    MICHELLE OBAMA: You were doing the people’s work – rescuing our economy, expanding healthcare, ending a war, ordering the Bin Laden raid, saving an auto industry, winning a Peace Prize.

    (LAUGHTER)

    KEITH: And that laughter slowly grew and drew this audible belly laugh from former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton.

    INSKEEP: Tam, I can’t help but notice another contrast. The United States is trying to pull together some July 4 celebrations. The Trump administration announced this concert, and a bunch of the acts seem to have withdrawn from it. But the Obamas seem not to have had any trouble getting people together for this library celebration.

    FADEL: Oh, indeed, they had no trouble at all. By the end of the event, when Stevie Wonder was up on stage with The Roots, Jennifer Hudson, Common, John Legend, Eddie Vedder, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, others I’m probably forgetting, all singing “Higher Ground,” it felt like being at the Grammys, more than being at some stuffy old presidential library dedication. About that museum. I got a chance to visit the center and walk through it earlier this month, and it really does, like that concert event, capture the vibes of the Obama years as if the past decade never happened. But Obama said he doesn’t see it as a time capsule.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

    B OBAMA: The exhibits in the center are not meant to evoke nostalgia for some gauzy bygone era, some unattainable past that we can dream about and say, oh, we miss you, Barack.

    KEITH: He said he wants to remind visitors of what’s possible.

    INSKEEP: Well, let’s talk about the museum itself and how the story is told. I mean, I do remember in 2008, when Obama was elected, even many people who opposed him said this is a momentous – is a very moving moment in American history. But I also remember America being deeply divided then, also over Obama. So how are they crafting this story as they tell it now?

    KEITH: The museum does not start with Obama’s birth in Hawaii. It starts with the Declaration of Independence. And the museum places the Obamas in that long arc of history that the former president often talks about. It includes triumphs and some failures and leaves open the idea that Obama’s legacy hasn’t fully been written yet but may well be determined by what comes next.

    INSKEEP: NPR’s Tamara Keith in Chicago. Thanks so much.

    KEITH: You’re welcome.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    INSKEEP: And that’s UP FIRST for this Friday, Juneteenth. I’m Steve Inskeep.

    FADEL: And I’m Leila Fadel. Happy Juneteenth. Today’s episode of UP FIRST was edited by Kate Bartlett, Dana Farrington, Megan Pratz, Mohamad ElBardicy and Lindsay Totty. It was produced by Ziad Buchh and Ava Pukatch. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Simon-Laslo Janssen. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange, and our executive producer is Jay Shaylor. Join us again on Monday.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

  • Remembering South African-born pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim

    Transcript:

    DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

    This is FRESH AIR. South Africa-born pianist, composer and band leader Abdullah Ibrahim died Monday at age 91. He began recording in South Africa in the 1950s, when he played with a pioneering band called The Jazz Epistles alongside trumpeter Hugh Masekela. Abdullah Ibrahim left South Africa in 1962 and spent most of his life away, though he did play at President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994. Abdullah Ibrahim, in his travels, recorded dozens of albums for dozens of labels around the world. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead has this appreciation.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM’S “CHERRY”)

    KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: “Cherry” by Abdullah Ibrahim, who wrote many hypnotic piano pieces that roll on and on. It’s named for Don Cherry, a fellow jazz globe-trotter. Abdullah Ibrahim was born in Cape Town in 1934 as Adolphus (ph) Brand. His early records were under the name Dollar Brand. Grandpa and mom played piano in the family church. Gospel music cadences and tin-whistle Cape Town street-music melodies left permanent marks on Abdullah’s composing. But the land of apartheid was no place for Black self-expression. In his late 20s, he moved to Switzerland, where Duke Ellington heard his trio in 1963 and recognized a kindred spirit. Luckily, a few days later, Duke was producing some recording sessions in Paris and made room for Abdullah’s South African trio. This is “Dollar’s Dance.”

    BIANCULLI: (SOUNDBITE OF THE DOLLAR BRAND TRIO’S “DOLLAR’S DANCE”)

    WHITEHEAD: His mature piano style’s not quite there yet. He’s still digesting influences like Duke and Monk, with their own percussive keyboard attacks. The resulting album banner “Duke Ellington Presents” brought him international attention, but Abdullah’s late ’60s and early ’70s solo records really made his reputation. Here’s another catchy one, “Tintinyana,” with a persistent, tumbling bass figure.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM’S “TINTINYANA”)

    WHITEHEAD: A couple of minutes later, the left hand stubbornly sticks to that bass part while his right hand goes wherever, although the hands check in with each other periodically. There’s a suggestion of all manner of African percussion ensembles with their layered, contrasting rhythms. You might think of it as Africanized boogie-woogie.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM’S “TINTINYANA”)

    WHITEHEAD: By the late 1970s, Abdullah Ibrahim was recording all over, from Toronto to Tokyo, in Europe and in New York, where he lived off and on, and even in South Africa. He recorded some traditional chants from back home alongside a fellow refugee, bassist Johnny Dyani. In that duo, Ibrahim also played a bit of flute, echoing those childhood tin-whistle tunes.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM’S “MSUNDUZA”)

    WHITEHEAD: By 1980, now based in New York, Abdullah Ibrahim put together some larger ensembles that eventually led to his working septet, Ekaya. Like Ellington, Ibrahim wasn’t just a dynamic pianist who wrote steamroller tunes. He composed beautiful ballads – none more so than “The Wedding,” a song you could play in church. Saxophonist Carlos Ward takes the lead, but don’t miss the horns murmuring in the background.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM’S “THE WEDDING”)

    WHITEHEAD: “The Wedding,” from Abdullah Ibrahim’s 1985 album “Water From An Ancient Well.” In later decades, he toured widely and kept making solo and small combo albums. He’d do guest appearances with European radio orchestras and big bands and played lots of jazz festivals. He slowed down some in his 80s, when he became an NEA Jazz Master, but he could still keep a band on its toes.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM & EKAYA’S “JABULA”)

    WHITEHEAD: “Jabula,” recorded by a late version of his band Ekaya in 2018. In the end, the pianist divided his time among the U.S., South Africa and Germany, where he passed away on June 15 at 91. Abdullah Ibrahim was a citizen of the world who always remembered where he came from.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM’S “MANNENBERG REVISITED”)

    BIANCULLI: Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead. That’s “Mannenberg Revisited.” Coming up, we listen back to our 1989 interview with Abdullah Ibrahim. This is FRESH AIR.

    This is FRESH AIR. As a young man, Abdullah Ibrahim listened to jazz on Voice of America broadcasts in South Africa. Before he converted to Islam, he was known by the nickname Dollar, a name given to him by American soldiers stationed in Cape Town during World War II, who sold their latest jazz recordings to him. Ibrahim later recorded dozens of albums of his own for dozens of labels around the world. Pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim died Monday at the age of 91. His song, “Mannenberg,” became the theme of the 1976 Soweto uprising, and his composition “Mandela” was written for Nelson Mandela. Apartheid drove Ibrahim out of South Africa in 1962, and he lived in exile for many years in the U.S. and Europe. Terry Gross spoke with Abdullah Ibrahim in 1989. His parents wanted him to become a doctor, but Blacks were refused entry into medical school, another of the limits placed on his life under apartheid.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

    ABDULLAH IBRAHIM: In terms of the music, it was probably for me the only means of escape because at least we could play in our own environment. So I grew up in – playing dance bands, behind vocal groups, playing variety concerts. But the main halls or arena of activity on a social, economic and political – from those aspects were completely denied to us.

    TERRY GROSS: What was it that finally made you decide to leave South Africa? Was there a last straw or a breaking point?

    IBRAHIM: There are vivid images and memories of confrontation with apartheid and being subjected to its brutality. The – so one has decision to make. Either you stay there and toe the line, or you leave and try to carry on or play the music, or you stop. We just stopped giving – like, it’s happened to so many of our talented people.

    GROSS: After you left South Africa, you returned again in the mid-’70s and recorded some sessions there. And one of the pieces that has recently been reissued is your piece “Cape Town Fringe.” And I know that this is very popular in South Africa at the time of the Soweto uprising. Can you tell me about writing and recording this piece?

    IBRAHIM: Yes. It was after deep contemplation, being out all those years that we decided to go back, but it was at a time when I took shahada, when I became Muslim. And that was on the way to making Hajj, going to Mecca for pilgrimage. And I needed to do it from home. And it was at that time that I got together this group of young musicians, and we recorded a lot of music. The song “Cape Town Fringe” was recorded in Cape Town. The original title is called “Mannenberg.” Mannenberg is a township on the outskirts of Cape Town, the counterpart of Soweto, perhaps.

    When the album was released in this country, the marketing people decided to call it “Cape Town Fringe,” which I think was agreeable because township, or just the word Mannenberg, was completely, I think, foreign to people here. Like always, as always in any struggle, and especially in Southern Africa, the music has played a very important role. We recorded this. We were in a studio in Cape Town, and this piece of music came. In the studio, we were busy recording some other pieces. And we recorded it just once – one take and left it, but we all felt so elated because we felt that we had captured the mood of the people at that time.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM’S “MANNENBERG”)

    GROSS: On the original recording of “Mannenberg,” recorded in the mid-’70s, you’re playing electric piano, which I don’t think you play anymore (laughter).

    IBRAHIM: No.

    GROSS: How does that sound to you listening back to it – the electric piano?

    IBRAHIM: Sounds good. But the reason for doing the reason for doing that was because we needed to take the music out to the people, I mean, live. And sometimes it was problematic to have an acoustic piano, let alone a grand piano. So we utilized the electric piano. That was really the only reason for…

    GROSS: That’s interesting. When you left South Africa, you met Duke Ellington, and he was very helpful for you. In fact, I think he was responsible for your first recording outside of South Africa.

    IBRAHIM: That’s right.

    GROSS: I think your music still sounds very influenced by Ellington. Do you feel that way?

    IBRAHIM: How can we escape Ellington?

    GROSS: (Laughter) Who would want to?

    IBRAHIM: Exactly. Exactly. Even if people want to deny it, there’s no way – and not – I’m not – we do not just mean jazz musicians, but contemporary 20th century music anyway and anywhere that it is played, how can you escape Ellington?

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM AND EKAYA’S “SONG FOR SATHIMA”)

    GROSS: When you are holding a rehearsal with your musicians, and you’re teaching them or giving them a new piece of yours, how do they learn it? Do you give them music? I mean, do you write it down for them? Do you sing it to them, play it for them? What do you do?

    IBRAHIM: Well, the musicians have a saying when you say, we’re going to have rehearsals and they say, where’s the paper? Because I asked them to notate the basic skeleton of the piece first. So what I would do is when there is a new piece, I – the piano is, like, command post.

    GROSS: (Laughter).

    IBRAHIM: And I just come into the studio and start playing, even while they are busy setting up and talking about fried chicken they had or where they visited the night before. And whoever hears it first will pick it up. And so the song is built around that person, the first one who picks it up and finds an interest.

    GROSS: Oh, really?

    IBRAHIM: Yes.

    GROSS: So what do you mean it’s built around them? Like the – they’ll get the first solo? Or…

    IBRAHIM: No, not the first solo, but perhaps the lead.

    GROSS: Oh, I see.

    IBRAHIM: Yeah.

    GROSS: What a really nice interaction. I guess, also, it makes – it’s kind of something of an incentive to make sure people pick up on it really quickly (laughter) ’cause then they’ll be more prominent.

    IBRAHIM: Yeah, because the idea is really not to write notes and give it to people to play. It’s the other way around. And that’s why the so-called jazz music is so precious. It is so precious. It’s perhaps the last bastion of human creativity.

    GROSS: Abdullah Ibrahim, I thank you so much for speaking with us.

    IBRAHIM: You’re welcome. Thank you very much.

    BIANCULLI: Abdullah Ibrahim, speaking with Terry Gross in 1989. The South African pianist and composer died Monday at age 91. On Monday’s show, Laverne Cox. For a decade, she’s been one of the most visible trans women in America, but she spent most of her life keeping herself hidden. We talk about her new memoir, her childhood in Mobile, Alabama, and the current political backlash against transgender people. Hope you can join us.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM AND WDR BIG BAND COLOGNE’S “MANDELA”)

    BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR’s executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez.

    For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I’m David Bianculli.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ABDULLAH IBRAHIM AND WDR BIG BAND COLOGNE’S “MANDELA”)

  • How the 1874 Freedman’s Bank collapse connects to economic disparities we see today

    In Savings and Trust, historian Justene Hill Edwards tells the story of the Freedman’s Bank, which was created for formerly enslaved people following the Civil War. Originally broadcast Nov. 7, 2024.

    Transcript:

    DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: This is FRESH AIR. I’m David Bianculli. Today is Juneteenth, named for the day in 1865 when enslaved people of African descent in Galveston, Texas, finally learned of their freedom from the system of slavery, effectively ending slavery in this country. We’re going to listen to Tonya Mosley’s 2024 interview with Justene Hill Edwards about the story of a bank established in 1865 for formerly enslaved people. Here’s Tonya.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

    TONYA MOSLEY: In July of 1874, waves of Black Americans rushed to their local bank branches to find out if the news they were hearing was true. The Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, a bank for newly emancipated Black Americans, was abruptly shutting down. And patrons at bank branches throughout the country were met with locked doors and cashiers who had to break the news. Most of their savings were gone. The rise and fall of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company is the subject of a new book by my guest, historian Justene Hill Edwards.

    In the years after the Civil War, tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people deposited millions into the Freedman’s bank with high hopes that as free people, they too could create a piece of the American dream for themselves. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass even encouraged Black Americans to trust the banking system. But even his leadership as the president before its collapse could not save it. Hill Edwards’ book documents how the bank’s white trustees drove the bank to the ground by lending out millions in loans to white financiers and businessmen.

    Justene Hill Edwards is a historian and associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. Her research explores the intersection of African American history, the history of slavery and the history of American capitalism. Her book is called “Savings And Trust.” Justene Hill Edwards, welcome to FRESH AIR.

    JUSTENE HILL EDWARDS: Thank you so much for having me, Tonya.

    MOSLEY: The Freedman’s Bank – let’s get into how it was established. So white abolitionists established it in 1865. Take us back to that time period. Who were these abolitionists and why was a bank for newly freed Black people a priority?

    HILL EDWARDS: So the Freedman’s Bank was established by – well, it was really the brainchild of a white abolitionist minister named John Alvord. He was from Connecticut, and he lived in New Jersey during the Civil War. And in 1864, he was traveling with the Union army in the South, especially in the summer and fall of that year, following Union General William Sherman on his famed March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah. And he took the opportunity to talk to recently freed African Americans. And what he found, what he gleaned from his conversations with them is that they wanted a few things during this new and ripe period of freedom.

    They wanted their families because a lot of them had been torn away from their families during slavery. But they also wanted the opportunity to live independently, and importantly, they wanted the opportunity to buy land. And so he figured that he could really contribute to their experience. He could help them in this, again, new period of freedom by establishing a bank for them. And so he gathers in New York in January of 1865 with a group of about 50 white, prominent abolitionists, philanthropists, bankers and politicians. And they came up with the idea for the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company.

    MOSLEY: John Alvord, he actually wrote letters talking about his fears around the future of freed people in the nation. But one of the things that you say is that he didn’t understand that while Black people had little experience with investments and the like, they did know about money. They earned it and they saved it through their experiences as enslaved people. In what ways did they know that?

    HILL EDWARDS: Absolutely. I think even though most enslaved people didn’t have access to banking accounts, for example, or savings accounts – most Americans didn’t in the 19th century – the enslaved understood what money meant. They understood the value of their bodies, because capital was held in their bodies, right? They were legally property.

    They understood what their work could garner, what they could be paid. They often worked for money, if possible. They – it was not uncommon for the enslaved to bargain with poor whites, with other enslaved people, even with their enslavers. And so this idea that the enslaved and the newly free kind of entered the period of freedom without knowledge of money or savings or thrift, as they called it, was not true and really incompatible with the ideas that the white founders of the Freedman’s Bank held at this time.

    MOSLEY: What standards were created at the start to ensure people’s money was secure? How were they telling them that they would be able to do that?

    HILL EDWARDS: Well, this was one of the supposed benefits of creating a savings bank. And so the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, what we call the Freedman’s Bank, was established as a simple savings bank. The bank was supposed to operate with the least amount of risk as possible. Bank administrators were supposed to invest depositors’ money in government-backed securities and bonds, which, again, were seen to be the lowest-risk possible financial product.

    And depositors, if they kept their money in for a specific period of time, about six months, then they would get a small amount of interest back on their money. At this time, it was between 4% and 6%. And so it was seen to be very low-risk, very low-cost and the best way to help African Americans in their transition to freedom.

    MOSLEY: What was the average sum that people were depositing at the opening?

    HILL EDWARDS: Small amounts of money, a few dollars. So we’re not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’re talking about thousands of African Americans depositing money. And I think it is worth saying, too, that one of the kind of seed funds for the Freedman’s Bank came from the military savings banks established in 1864 for Black soldiers. And so even though most of the first depositors were depositing small amounts of money, a few of the bank branches – especially the ones in Norfolk, which was the first branch – Beaufort, South Carolina, and New Orleans kind of got their seed funding from the military banks established for Black soldiers in 1864.

    MOSLEY: You can’t really tell this story without talking about the specter of white supremacy and violence at that time, too, because Black people were free. But what were some of the ways some white Americans struggled to cope with this new landscape of Black freedom, which also included earning, having money and saving money?

    HILL EDWARDS: Yes, absolutely. The reality is that Reconstruction, although a period filled with the ideas of freedom, the expansion of the franchise to Black men, citizenship rights, the end of legal slavery, there was also white pushback. White violence against African Americans was rampant, especially in states such as Louisiana and Mississippi. And so the reality was that African Americans with money, African Americans exercising their own independence, especially financially, was a real threat, especially in the former Confederate South, where the Civil War was fought over the future of slavery in the nation.

    And white Americans in the South had a hard time letting go of the idea of Black Americans as not being slaves but being free, as having the autonomy to live and choose to work where they want, the ability for, especially Black women, to decide not to work and to take care of their families. And so this resulted in, often, violent struggle between white Americans who had not fully accepted that slavery was over and Black Americans who were excited to exercise their newfound autonomy and freedom.

    MOSLEY: You tell the story of a Houston branch of the bank from 1866. Someone documented all of the murders and brutal beatings that were happening and basically how freed people were afraid of retribution for any number of things from white perpetrators. It’s always remarkable when we see documentation like this because, you know, it was pre-everything. We’re just talking about things being written down. Where was this document? Who was this person writing to from the Freedman’s Bank?

    HILL EDWARDS: Sure. There is a great kind of digest of sources. It’s called the records of murders and outrages. And when we talk about the violence of Reconstruction, you can go to these records and read about the sheer scale and the sheer severity of violence against African Americans. I think it’s apt to call it white terrorism. And so there is this compendium of records composed by Freedman’s Bank and Freedmen’s Bureau officials. And it details the fact that, in some places like Houston, for example, one of the reasons why the Houston branch was closed within a year was that white Americans began to harass and vandalize the bank branch and white Americans began to harass the Black depositors who were using the bank for perhaps economic uplift purposes.

    And so, again, one of the reasons why I use the term economic violence here is because economic violence is part and parcel with physical violence. And, again, I think it’s important to underscore the fact that, again, Reconstruction was a period of extreme hope politically, economically and legally. But African Americans were – especially in the former Confederate South – were under constant fears of white retaliation for their willingness to exercise their newfound rights.

    MOSLEY: So, Justene, this was a bank for Black people. But the people in charge, like the trustees – were any of them Black?

    HILL EDWARDS: At first, no. When the bank was established in March of 1865 and opened its first branch in April of 1865, all of the bank’s trustees and the first cashier were white. They were a who’s who of abolitionists and politicians and bankers and philanthropists, mostly from New York. And it didn’t take long, but it did take a couple years. It took two years for the first Black trustees to accept appointments to the bank’s board of trustees.

    BIANCULLI: Justene Hill Edwards talking with Tonya Mosley in 2024 about her book “Savings And Trust: The Rise And Betrayal Of The Freedman’s Bank.” We’ll learn more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

    This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to Tonya Mosley’s 2024 interview with Justene Hill Edwards. Her book looks at the years immediately after the Civil War, when tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman’s Bank only to experience that bank’s collapse nine years later.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

    MOSLEY: All right, now let’s get into the mismanagement and ultimate demise of the bank. Take us to March of 1870. Freedman’s total deposits at the time, according to your book, equaled out to about $12 million. That’s about $292 million in today’s money. How did the idea come about to loan out the money to white businessmen and investors?

    HILL EDWARDS: Well, the bank was incredibly successful in its first few years. African Americans were depositing hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars into their bank accounts. But in 1867, John Alvord, who at that time was working with the bank as one of the administrators – he had convinced other trustees that it would be a great idea to move the bank’s main office from New York City to Washington, D.C.

    And at the same time, while he was encouraging the trustees to embrace this idea, he invited a group of bankers onto the board that would dramatically shape its history, led by banker Henry Cooke, the brother of Jay Cooke, who founded Jay Cooke & Company, the nation’s first investment bank. He was invited onto the board and accepted a board appointment and more. He accepted the chairmanship of the bank’s financial committee, the committee who decided what to do with the bank’s deposits in terms of investment. He brought with him two of his colleagues who worked at the Washington, D.C., branch of Jay Cooke & Company, First National Bank.

    And these three men decided to kind of shift the bank’s investment strategy. And so in 1869, Cooke embarks on a lobbying campaign to members of Congress, many of whom were his friends. And he convinced them to support a bill, an amendment to change the bank’s charter to allow the bank to transition from being just a simple savings bank to essentially a commercial bank, which meant that the bank could then make loans and specifically make business loans.

    And so the members of Congress, who were kind of on the bank’s side or on Cooke’s side, decided to approve the amendment. And so in 1870, the bank started to legally make loans, and that would dramatically change the ways that the bank’s investment portfolio would kind of shake out. But it also shifted the bank’s major foundational goal, which was to support the economic aspirations of newly freed African Americans.

    MOSLEY: Right. And a lot of it – a lot of the loans – went to real estate ventures, which is ironic because owning land and property was a major goal for many of the formerly enslaved and many people who had invested their money in this bank.

    HILL EDWARDS: Absolutely. The bank started to make hundreds of thousands and then millions of dollars in loans to businessmen, even to politicians in and around D.C., to buy land, to buy property and to make those types of real estate investments. And a miniscule volume of loans went to African Americans. And this dramatically reshaped, again, the bank’s fundamental mission.

    MOSLEY: What made getting a loan from Freedman’s Bank enticing to these white guys? – because I would assume that they could get loans from other banks, too, right? Was it the ease of them being able to get the money, the percentage on, like, the interest? What was it?

    HILL EDWARDS: Yes, exactly. It was the ease with which they could get loans, the fact that the majority of the loans went to colleagues and business partners of members of the board of trustees. And so the loans had variable interest rates. Oftentimes very low or no interest would accrue on the bank loans. The borrower could write a letter or physically ask a member of the board of trustees if they could have an extension, and those extensions would be granted.

    The amendment approved by Congress required that borrowers have collateral worth at least two times the loan amount, and oftentimes, those who borrowed money wouldn’t have to give collateral. And so the kind of foundations of these loans – the creditworthiness of the – of those who wanted to borrow money was not fully evaluated or vetted by members of the finance committee. And so millions of dollars were just flooding out of the bank to these businessmen at the expense of the formerly enslaved who were putting their money in the bank.

    MOSLEY: How did people find out that their bank branch was going under?

    HILL EDWARDS: Well, I think this is where the famed Frederick Douglass comes in. He is – he’s asked in 1874 – after John Alvord steps down at the beginning of that year, he’s asked in March to become the bank’s president. And he is – he has a bit of trepidation, but he also understands the importance of the institution. He and his family – he and his sons were depositors. And so once he gets into the role of the presidency, he accepts.

    And in April of 1874, he sits down for his first trustee meeting, and he learns that the bank’s finances were in horrible shape. He learns that the bank is overleveraged. There are millions of dollars unpaid in loans, that the loan terms had been extended, that interest was not being collected, that Black depositors were not having access to their money, which was a problem for him. And news reports are starting to come out that the bank is underwater, that they cannot fulfill their obligations to depositors.

    And so while Frederick Douglass is figuring this out, depositors are starting to realize that, hey, I can’t go to my bank branch and withdraw my money. I have to wait 60 or 90 days to withdraw the few dollars that I have in my account. And so this terrifies not only Douglass, but the tens of thousands of bank depositors across the country. And as he writes in his autobiography that he publishes in 1881, it was one of the worst decisions of his life. And I think that is saying a lot given what he had been through in his life fighting for his freedom as an enslaved young man.

    MOSLEY: Right. He actually writes, (reading) despite my efforts to uphold the Freedman’s Savings and Trust, it has fallen. It has been the Black man’s cow but the white man’s milk. Bad loans and bad management have been the death of it. I was ignorant of its real condition to elect it as its president.

    BIANCULLI: Justene Hill Edwards speaking to Tonya Mosley in 2024. More of their conversation after a break. And jazz historian Kevin Whitehead has an appreciation of South African jazz pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim, who died Monday at the age of 91. We’ll listen to an archived interview with him, as well. I’m David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I’m David Bianculli. Let’s get back to Tonya Mosley’s 2024 interview with historian Justene Hill Edwards about Freedman’s Bank, created in 1865 for newly emancipated Black Americans. Tens of thousands of them deposited millions of dollars into the bank, only to experience its collapse nine years later. Frederick Douglass, the most famous African American at that time, was brought in to save the bank.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

    MOSLEY: What did he do to try to save the bank, though? – because really, even after finding out all of that information, initially, he wasn’t telling people to, hey, pull out your money. And he did not even pull out his money initially, right?

    HILL EDWARDS: No. When he gets to that first board of trustees meeting, he is flanked by John Alvord, who was the outgoing president, and the bank’s actuary, George Stickney. And he is basically shown the books and kind of looks in horror at the state of the bank’s finances. And Alvord kind of jumps on him and says, well, there is a run on one of our branches, and so we need you to deposit $10,000 of your own money in this bank account.

    And when I first read that, I was stunned. I was shocked because I’m thinking about Douglass getting to this very beautiful building. The building that they built in Washington, D.C., was one of the most expensive buildings at that time. It was one of the most stunning buildings in the city. And he’s sitting there with the trustees. At that time, there are two other Black trustees. And he is looking around, I imagine, at the white faces and saying, of all of these men, none of whom have my background – minus the African American trustees – but the white men in this room could all gather money to loan. And they’re asking me, the former slave, to do it. I just think about that, and it’s kind of mind-blowing.

    MOSLEY: Did he feel overall that he had been used?

    HILL EDWARDS: I think so. I think he comes to that point fairly quickly and essentially tries to right the ship. And what he does is he writes to try to assure depositors that their money is still safe and essentially not to pull their money out from the bank. And he ends up depositing $10,000 of his own money in the bank as a show of his confidence.

    MOSLEY: This went before Congress, I should say, and you got ahold of some of the testimony. Douglass really showed a lot of anger towards John Alvord, who was responsible for actually founding the bank.

    HILL EDWARDS: Unfortunately, no one was brought on charges. And the bank’s depositors, when the bank failed, were left to deal with federal authorities to hopefully – they hoped – get their money that they still had in the bank when it failed in July of 1874.

    MOSLEY: Did they ever get money back from those that they loaned to?

    HILL EDWARDS: Well, there were five disbursements. The first disbursement was about 10%, and then it went up to, like, 10%, 10%, 15% and then 5%. And so there was a very complicated process, though, for depositors to get money. Congress appointed three commissioners to figure out how to liquidate the bank’s assets and to figure out how to repay the depositors. They had a hard time selling off the bank’s assets, the buildings that they had purchased for bank branches across the country. The commissioners themselves were getting paid. And so all of this kind of chipped away at the money that African Americans could claim. So at the end, by 1900, Black depositors had claimed about 48, 49% of what they had in their accounts, and so nowhere near the full amount of money that they had when the bank collapsed.

    MOSLEY: Have you charted just how much wealth many of these people might have had if they hadn’t lost their money?

    HILL EDWARDS: It’s in perhaps a trillion dollars. I mean, it’s really hard to say. When the bank failed, their depositors had about $2.9 million in their accounts. At its height, though, the bank had taken in about $57 million, and now that’s about $1.5 billion. And the math on this is not exact, but if we think about how that money could have accrued – how interest could have accrued on that, we are talking about billions, if not trillions of dollars in wealth that African Americans could have now if not for the failure of the bank.

    MOSLEY: Are you making the case for reparations?

    HILL EDWARDS: That is a good question. I think so. I think there needs to be a reckoning. I think one of the major aspects of not just this work, but longer, broader conversations about the continued influence of slavery is that African Americans have been stripped of wealth. And that was strategic. It wasn’t just with the failure and plunder of the Freedman’s Bank. We’re talking about discriminatory housing practices, lack of access to credit, being credit-invisible, not trusting financial institutions, and so taking yourself out of the traditional financial marketplace.

    And research shows that having and maintaining a relationship with a financial institution and trusting that your money will be safe with that financial institution is a vehicle to build wealth. And so if African Americans historically have both been left out of and, on the other side, don’t trust these institutions, we’re talking about one of the origins and roots of the racial wealth gap in America.

    MOSLEY: Justene Hill Edwards, thank you so much for this book and this conversation and your research.

    HILL EDWARDS: Thank you so much. This was wonderful.

    BIANCULLI: Justene Hill Edwards talking with Tonya Mosley in 2024 about her book “Savings And Trust: The Rise And Betrayal Of The Freedman’s Bank.” Coming up, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead has an appreciation of South African jazz pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim, who died Monday at the age of 91. This is FRESH AIR.

  • Her dad began the Juneteenth celebrations in their town. She’s carrying on his legacy

    Transcript:

    STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

    It’s time now for StoryCorps on this Juneteenth. The federal holiday marks the date in 1865 that Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and told some of the last enslaved Americans that they were free. Makeda Peterson remembers celebrating Juneteenth as a kid.

    MAKEDA PETERSON: I remember things like pony rides and face painters and the smells of barbecue, and the feeling in your stomach where just everything’s exciting and you don’t have a worry. There was the sense of community.

    INSKEEP: Wow. Her father, Horace Peterson III, started the Juneteenth celebrations in Kansas City, Missouri, in the 1980s. He also founded one of the country’s first Black history archives. Now, Horace died in 1992, when Makeda was just 6. At StoryCorps, she sat down with her father’s best friend, Tillman Stewart, to learn more about her dad.

    TILLMAN STEWART: The first Juneteenth, Horace said we needed a donkey in the parade, OK?

    PETERSON: Leading the parade, right?

    STEWART: Yeah.

    (LAUGHTER)

    STEWART: He was into animals, man.

    PETERSON: (Laughter).

    STEWART: The donkey is reminiscent of 40 acres and a mule. So if you couldn’t picture 40 acres, you dang sure could see the donkey, OK?

    PETERSON: What was my dad like when he was a young man?

    STEWART: Yeah. Well, look, I like to go back to when we were just out of school. We worked right across the street from each other. And we’d walk down to this little thrift shop, and we’d be exploring in there, and we’d go back to work after our lunch hour. We’d be all dirty. And the director would say, damn, where you all been? But Horace knew that there were a lot of things that Black folk didn’t know existed that were invaluable artifacts and pieces, but he didn’t have any place to put these things. So he started out the trunk of his car until he had space to exhibit them to the public.

    PETERSON: I just remember being in the archives on the weekends. And…

    STEWART: Yeah.

    PETERSON: …I didn’t realize what I was playing with every day was history.

    STEWART: When Horace passed, it’s one of the saddest freaking memories that I’ve ever encountered. What was it like to lose a father who was such a beacon in the community?

    PETERSON: I was more so probably confused. And I remember that I started kind of collecting some things I could find, like his pens, things from his stuff.

    STEWART: And then you picked up the Juneteenth thing.

    PETERSON: It just takes me back, I think, to that moment of my life where everything was – you know, it was what it was supposed to be. Do you think he would be proud of me?

    STEWART: (Laughter) Yeah, of course he’d be proud of you. (Laughter) I can hear him say, man, let’s go get a cigar.

    PETERSON: (Laughter).

    STEWART: We’re going to go over here and watch Makeda. You’re standing on the shoulders of a giant. He was fantastic. But, hey, I think you embody a lot of your dad. You are the heir apparent and you have to take the throne.

    PETERSON: Thank you.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    INSKEEP: Oh, that laughter. Makeda Peterson with Tillman Stewart recalling her dad, Horace Peterson III. This year is Makeda’s 15th year leading the Juneteenth celebration that her father started. Her conversation was recorded as part of StoryCorps’ Brightness in Black project, and it’s archived at the Library of Congress.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    INSKEEP: Now, you may recall this, that MORNING EDITION and StoryCorps are marking America’s 250th with a time capsule of American stories featuring you. You get matched up with a stranger from a different part of the country, some other MORNING EDITION listener, and you talk about your lives. Sign up at connect250.org. America, get ready to meet America.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

  • When is joy actually resistance?

    When is joy actually resistance?

  • Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to give Americans more control over AI. But how?

    Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to give Americans more control over AI. But how?

    Transcript:

    JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

    It’s CONSIDER THIS, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, a public stake in the country’s largest AI companies. The U.S. economy’s future is being shaped right now by AI, and a handful of people are reaping the benefits with little oversight.

    BERNIE SANDERS: The average American understands that AI is going to have a profound impact on his or her life, and yet as of today, there has not been one significant piece of legislation passed to regulate AI.

    SUMMERS: That is independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, and he wants to change that. His solution? A sovereign wealth fund financed by the AI industry – the top AI companies would be subject to a one-time 50% tax on their stocks. And that could send every American a $1,000 check, and…

    SANDERS: The public would have 50% representation on every major AI company, and that means that these billionaires who now control the industry want to do something that will be harmful to the American people – the people representing the public will say, sorry, you can’t do that.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    SUMMERS: CONSIDER THIS – only a handful of people are benefiting from the AI boom. Could a sovereign wealth fund level the playing field?

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    SUMMERS: From NPR, I’m Juana Summers.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    SUMMERS: It’s CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. A small number of people have made billions from AI and control the future of this groundbreaking technology. While a large number of people have growing unease about AI’s impact on the American workforce, they have little say in that matter. Senator Bernie Sanders wants to change that. His proposed legislation would create what he is calling an AI sovereign wealth fund. Bernie Sanders, independent senator from Vermont, joins us now.

    SANDERS: Thanks very much for having me.

    SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. OK. I just want to start by asking you, what types of scenarios do you foresee that led you to write this legislation?

    SANDERS: I’ll tell you why. I got involved in this whole issue of AI because it is clear to me that AI is going to be the most transformational technology in the history of humanity. It will dwarf what the Industrial Revolution did. It’s going to move very, very quickly. It will impact our economy and perhaps lead to the loss of tens of millions of jobs over the next decade. It’s going to have a huge impact in devastating privacy rights – your healthcare records, your banking records, etc., etc. It is going to have a deleterious impact on the mental health of our kids. It’s going to impact our democracy. Right now, you’re already seeing deepfakes. And by the way, there’s the existential threat that as AI becomes smarter than humans, become independent and lead to catastrophic impacts.

    SUMMERS: Yeah. That’s a long list there. Now, your office has calculated that a 50% tax on the top AI companies’ stock means at today’s rates, a fund could send a $1,000 check to every American each year. Now, $1,000 is not anything to sneeze at, but if AI does permanently change our economy, how much would that help?

    SANDERS: Well, the more important point is that the public would have 50% representation on every major AI company. That’s the more important point, actually. And that means that when Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and these billionaires who now control the industry want to do something that will be harmful to the American people, the people representing the public will say, sorry, you can’t do that. And we have got to work to make sure that AI and robotics work for all of us, not just to enrich people who are already incredibly wealthy and powerful.

    SUMMERS: That kind of proposal sounds like something that might be a pretty hard sell for some of the leaders of the leading AI companies. What have you heard from them?

    SANDERS: Well, I’m not talking to the leaders of the AI companies. We’re talking to the American people. And here is a very important aspect of this whole discussion, and that is – the foundations of AI is based on human knowledge and human labor. This discussion that we’re having will become part of AI. Every book that somebody has written, every work in mathematics, every poet becomes part of AI. And the people themselves who have built AI – if you like – through their knowledge and work, they deserve the benefits of that. So it’s not what the billionaire CEOs want. It’s what the American people want.

    SUMMERS: I do want to ask you about one of those CEOs because according to The Associated Press, you did meet with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, for about an hour in private at your Senate office earlier this month. Did you talk to him about this idea, and what did he think of it?

    SANDERS: He was not enthusiastic about this idea, to tell you the truth, but – not surprisingly, nor are any of the major CEO executives. They have enormous wealth now. They have enormous power, and they want more. And the idea that the American people will be able to say no to some of their harmful projects is not something they are sympathetic to. On the contrary, though, the American people, I think, think it’s a very good idea.

    SUMMERS: Now, President Trump has talked about how he wants to start a sovereign wealth fund for the U.S., like ones in Saudi Arabia, China and Norway. Is President Trump a potential ally for you on this legislation?

    SANDERS: I doubt it very much. I mean, Trump is actually a good politician. I mean, he’s a terrible president, but he’s a good politician. He knows where people are at. And I think what he’s seeing is what a lot of people are seeing. The American people are angry. They’re tired of getting ripped off. They don’t want to see all this wealth go to a handful of billionaires. And Trump is saying, hey, maybe we can get some of that. But what we are talking about is something very different. We are talking about giving the American people the ability to help control the future of AI so that it works for the public good, not just to benefit the very, very wealthy.

    SUMMERS: Have you spoken to the president about this issue?

    SANDERS: No. I have not.

    SUMMERS: I know that there are a number of pieces of draft legislation floating around the Hill that seek to regulate AI. For example, there’s a bipartisan bill called the Great American AI Act. There are some tax ideas from Senator Elizabeth Warren as well as others. What makes your bill – what makes this bill the right approach?

    SANDERS: Well, I think it’s more comprehensive than other bills. But I would say this – and here is really a remarkable reality – the average American understands that AI is going to have a profound impact on his or her life and the lives of kids. And yet as of today, there has not been one significant piece of legislation passed to regulate AI. And why is that? It speaks to the corrupt campaign finance system that we have and the fact that AI can spend as much money as they want. We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars they’re going to spend right now in this coming election to make sure that we do not have members of Congress who are going to protect the American people regarding this industry. And that’s a sad state of affairs. So that’s a whole other issue in terms of reforming a corrupt campaign finance system that we’ve got to work on.

    SUMMERS: Just thinking about the legislative road here, do you see a path that legislation like this can actually become law, can actually make its way through both chambers of Congress?

    SANDERS: Yes, I do. But it will have to start at the grassroots level, and I think there are candidates all over this country who are in agreement with me. A number of months ago, as you may recall, we introduced a legislation calling for a moratorium on data centers. Initially, did not have much support. Now you’re seeing two states’ legislatures passing it, hundreds of communities moving forward. It’s not going to be done by members of Congress who are owned by the AI industry. It will be done when the American people start electing people who are going to stand up and represent the average person and not just the CEOs of large corporations.

    SUMMERS: Senator, we began our conversation by talking about a number of the ills and anxieties and concerns that you and others have about AI. I want to ask you this – do you ever wish that AI had never been created?

    SANDERS: I am very worried about it. I think AI has real benefits in terms of healthcare and other areas. It’s a very, very powerful tool. But I worry. I do worry very, very much. So the bottom line is not whether AI is going to exist or not exist, or it’s – whether it’s going to go forward or not. The question is how we can make sure that it works in a positive way. If we can lower the work week and increase people’s salaries, if we can improve people’s health, if we can figure out a way to use AI to address the crisis of climate change – that’s positive stuff. But that’s what we’ve got to do. We got to make sure that AI works for everybody and the common good, not just to make the richest people in the world even richer and more powerful.

    SUMMERS: Senator Bernie Sanders, independent from Vermont. Thanks so much for your time.

    SANDERS: Thank you very much. Take care.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    SUMMERS: This episode was produced by Christopher Harland-Dunaway and Tyler Bartlam. It was edited by Sarah Handel and Tinbete Ermyas. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    SUMMERS: It’s CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I’m Juana Summers.

  • Why ending the war won’t heal the economy

    Why ending the war won’t heal the economy

  • In Good Health: The Matter Of Male Fertility

    In Good Health: The Matter Of Male Fertility

  • Comic Ali Siddiq makes peace with the past in ‘My Father’

    Comic Ali Siddiq makes peace with the past in ‘My Father’

    As a kid in Houston, comic Ali Siddiq’s father was largely absent. But there’s one parenting moment that Siddiq tells onstage with great detail. Ten-year-old Siddiq had a sore tooth, and his dad pulled a Cool Whip tub from the fridge — where he stashed his cocaine — and applied some to his son’s tooth.

    “My dad was insane,” Siddiq laughs. When he first told the story onstage, his father was in the audience. “[After] he was like, ‘I can’t believe you remember that!’”

    He wasn’t a perfect father — and yet Siddiq always admired him. He pays homage to his dad, who died in 2018, in his new special, My Father.

    It’s the latest in more than a dozen specials Siddiq has released on YouTube. He remembers that his dad would watch all of his shows on a computer in the library: “And [he] would call and tell me, … ‘I watched about 10, 15 times.’ So I’m always missing those 10 or 15 views that I know that I would get from him,” Siddiq says.

    For Siddiq, who served six years in a Texas prison for selling drugs before turning his life around, comedy and storytelling have always been a source of healing.

    “I think that’s the biggest part of it, that I take the stories and me reliving them in front of people or revisiting them in front of people is a lot healing,” he says.

    Interview highlights

    On the regret he feels about selling drugs

    I remember I was in San Francisco, the homeless population is so crazy. … And I just stopped in the streets and I just started sobbing. And I remembered saying, “How much of this is my fault?” Because I have been so destructive and reckless in my behavior. Obviously this is not the first generation. This is the generation that was affected by the first generation of what I did. Like, you can’t conceive the magnitude of destruction that you do when you sell drugs in a community. It’s people doing things that they would probably never do in order [to get drugs]. [It’s] ruining relationships. What child didn’t get fed because their mom or their father decided to do this? What uncle or aunt stole something … like, what did I do?

    On the fact that he still remembers his inmate number, or “spin” number as he calls it

    I think that these psychological wounds are different than my physical wounds. My physical wounds start to fade. Why haven’t these wounds faded yet?

    Ali Siddiq

    You do not get out of this situation unscathed. You may have survived it, but you still have wounds. I’ve been out 29 years at this point. Even if I’m at home by myself, I’ma lock the bedroom door [and] I still know this number. … You may survive, but you don’t get out unscathed. You gonna lose some skin in this game. And I think that these psychological wounds are different than my physical wounds. My physical wounds start to fade. Why haven’t these wounds faded yet?

    On how his imprisonment impacted his family 

    My mom, even though she wasn’t physically there, she’s there in mind. Like, when you’re inside, your sister is concerned, your mother is concerned. Your dad is concerned your grandmother is concerned. It is all of these people that’s concerned about you because you’re in a position of danger. You’re in a dangerous place and there’s no guarantee that you will make it out of this place.

    On getting his start in standup

    When I started doing standup, I actually didn’t even know how to even start. … I literally started from a place of zero. Like I had zero information on how to become a comic, zero information of where to go. … I was at scratch. … I remember when I first got my first payment, it was $35 and it was in like fives and ones. And I thought it was a lot of money. I was like, boy, I came up.

    On raising his own son differently than he was raised

    I love the way that he lives. I applaud him and I just hope that he comes out on the other side and loves being a kid and then gives his children the opportunity to be a kid, and always have a softness for me. I need somebody to roll me around when I get old. So hopefully, hopefully he’s there taking me to go eat oysters and asking me, Do I want to go to a Boney James concert? or something. I just love him. I just love the softness of his life.

    Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Luis Clemens adapted it for the web.

    Transcript:

    TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

    This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley. And my guest today is Ali Siddiq. He’s a comedian, but that word undersells it. What he really does is tell stories – true ones – from his own life. And he’s told so many of them that while watching his specials, I realized Siddiq is giving us a memoir, delivered one set at a time. For instance, a few years back, he went viral with the story about surviving a prison riot. Siddiq served six years for cocaine trafficking, arrested four days after his 19th birthday. He started doing stand-up after he got out, and nearly 30 years later, he’s got more than a dozen specials, most of them independent on YouTube with millions of views. In his 2022 series, “Domino Effect,” he traces his life growing up in Houston, starting at 10 – the year he went to live with his father and first got into trouble – all the way through the choices that landed him in prison. This month, he has a new special called “My Father.” It’s about everything that passed between Siddiq and his dad before his father died in 2018. It premieres on YouTube June 21. Here’s a clip.

    (SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, “MY FATHER”)

    ALI SIDDIQ: My dad had a thing about how he dressed. My dad always wore tailor-made suits. This is when he was on his note (ph), ’cause he was a – there’s not a lot of men can say how they felt about their pops. I really wanted to look like this man. He was tall, dark, jet Black, had a lot of charisma about himself. But he just wasn’t an ideal…

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: …Father. My dad asked me one time. I’m sitting at his house, and my daddy said, man, why you don’t never say nothing bad about your mama on stage?

    (LAUGHTER)

    MOSLEY: Ali Siddiq, welcome to FRESH AIR.

    SIDDIQ: (Laughter) Thank you. Thank you for having me.

    MOSLEY: Man, your timing is great. And I was thinking when I was watching this that there is really nothing like remembering something funny about somebody after they’re gone. It’s, like, the truest way, the most purest way to grieve them. But I was just wondering watching this, if your dad felt some kind of way about being in your act, what do you think he’d say about you doing this entire special about him?

    SIDDIQ: He never actually felt any type of way about being in my act. He just wanted to know when I was going to say something negative about somebody else and not just him. So…

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: You know, I get a lot of views, but it’s definitely 10 views, 15 views that I miss ’cause my dad would go to the library, and he would look me up on the computer and watch all of my stuff. And he would call and tell me, I just seen something else. I watched it about 15 – 10, 15 times. So I’m always missing those 10 or 15 views that I know I – that I would get from him.

    MOSLEY: You say straight up, I’m a responsible man because of my mother, but I’m a good man…

    SIDDIQ: Yes.

    MOSLEY: …Because of my daddy. Explain that.

    SIDDIQ: My mom, she would think that it was her, but it’s really him because for some time, I felt a certain type of way about him not being there or the things that I would see from other people’s, you know, fathers or what I view from TV. I was judging him based upon that and what I thought. And I had certain feelings towards him. And I didn’t want my kids to ever feel like that about me. I didn’t – I don’t want my kids to think that anything else was more important than them – not being in the streets, not women, not gambling, not hustling, not anything. I didn’t want them to ever think that anything that I was doing was more important than them. And my father made me at times feel unimportant to him.

    You know, I played sports. He went to one game. Out of all the sports that I played, he went to one game. You know, he came to one basketball game. You know, I don’t remember ever doing anything father and son with my dad. So that’s another thing. I just knew becoming a father, I would never be like that. Like, my kids are going to see me actively at their games or at their recitals or at their – whatever they may be doing, I’m going to actively be there. If – you know, if you need something, I want you to be able to call me. So I’ve always made myself available for that type of effort that I was making. I always made myself available for them, so they would never feel a type of way towards me, like I felt for my father for a couple of years – well, more than a couple of years.

    MOSLEY: Your daddy, he left when you were 3, but you’d see him every blue moon. But then around 10, he comes back into your life. You went to live with him.

    SIDDIQ: Yes.

    MOSLEY: And it seems like he was very much do as I say, not as I do. When did you first understand that contradiction?

    SIDDIQ: Oh, man. Probably the first year I lived with him (laughter). Like, yo, my dad was – like I say, I don’t think he was ready. I don’t think he was ready to have his son with him. I think that he was…

    MOSLEY: But yet he asked for you to live with him, right?

    SIDDIQ: He asked, but I don’t think he was ready. You know, people ask for a lot of things they’re not ready for. So…

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: And then, like – not a human, though. I didn’t think a human was a part of that, but he definitely wasn’t ready yet, you know, ’cause he couldn’t have been. Like, when I look back at it, I’m like, yo, bruh, you – there’s no way that you was ready for me to come live with you ’cause you hadn’t calmed down yet, you know? Just the story of him waking me up, saying that he was getting ready to go to San Antonio, and I’m 10. I got to go to school tomorrow. I’m like, yo, bruh, like…

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: I was like, what’d you think – what am I supposed to do that you finna go to San Antonio? He said, just do what you been doing. Get yourself up. Get ready to go to school.

    MOSLEY: (Laughter).

    SIDDIQ: You know how to – hey, bruh, that’s not how this go, man. I’ve never been in a house by myself before (laughter). Like, what’s wrong with you?

    MOSLEY: Ali, I mean, is it true that – OK. You tell this story about him putting cocaine on a sore wisdom tooth. And I was wondering, is this true, or is this just for laughter?

    SIDDIQ: No, 100% true – 100% true. That’s why I described it so vividly. See, that’s the thing about when I tell a story – I want people to understand. I describe all the even little things so people understand it. This is a true story ’cause you can’t – it’s hard to make up little things. You know, you can make up big things, but little intricate details about something, like, you know who was there – James (ph) and Ivory (ph). And James was the one that saw me sitting on the step. And he was like, what’s up? ‘Cause my dad’s name is Limbird (ph), and he called me little bird. Little bird, what’s going on? And I said – I told him about my tooth. And then my daddy called me over and said, let me see, and put that cocaine on my tooth. I said, this man.

    MOSLEY: (Laughter).

    SIDDIQ: I didn’t even know that’s what it was or – I just know it was the stuff that was in the Cool Whip tub that was in the refrigerator.

    MOSLEY: Wait. He kept the cocaine in a Cool Whip tub in the refrigerator.

    SIDDIQ: In – yeah, the big Cool Whip thing. You know how Cool Whips come in that little container – that big container?

    MOSLEY: Oh, yeah.

    SIDDIQ: He kept it.

    MOSLEY: And you reuse them.

    SIDDIQ: Yeah. And he put it in – that’s where the cocaine was at – inside the refrigerator. And then as I thought about that earlier, like, I told the story, and I never even realized how super irresponsible he was. I am 10. You don’t think I like Cool Whip?

    (LAUGHTER)

    MOSLEY: The things that could’ve happened, you know? Like…

    SIDDIQ: The things that could’ve happened. If I would’ve dipped the – ’cause he always had strawberries. My dad loves strawberries, right? So he always had strawberries in the house. And I was like, yo – what I thought about, if I would’ve just took one of those strawberries and put it in that Cool Whip bowl thinking it was Cool Whip, because I still would’ve ate it even though I would’ve thought the Cool Whip was bad. I’m like, oh, the Cool – it’s fizzing out. And then I’m like, that’s what it would’ve looked like to me. I said, he was so, so irresponsible. It’s crazy.

    MOSLEY: OK, he dips a little cocaine on that sore wisdom tooth. What happened to you?

    SIDDIQ: Never had a problem with that wisdom tooth again (laughter).

    MOSLEY: Never even needed to have it taken out?

    SIDDIQ: Never. I probably still got that tooth in my mouth right now.

    MOSLEY: (Laughter).

    SIDDIQ: I never had a problem. I don’t even remember getting my wisdom teeth taken out ever. Luckily, I never – I don’t have an addictive personality. I can just stop doing stuff. Like, hopefully, that was it because my dad was insane. And I had told that story before, before I ever – before it ever aired on anything. And I remember he was at the show when I did it. And he was like, I can’t believe you remember that.

    MOSLEY: Do you feel like you’re working out that relationship onstage? I mean, I think the obvious is yes. But, like, how are you working it out? What is it doing for you, aside from just making us laugh?

    SIDDIQ: I think that with the relationship with him or the relationship with my little sister or my things that I had problems with as a young person, I don’t hold onto things. I release them. The ups and downs of me and my dad are really molding of me. And it’s also healing for me to be able to say these stories. So I think that’s the biggest part of it, that I take the stories and me reliving them in front of people, or revisit them in front of people is a – I can’t even say a bit healing. It’s a lot healing. It’s a lot of healing that goes on with me with that.

    MOSLEY: I want to ask you about something that you do onstage that is – feels like maybe like a centering. You know, most comics, when they go onstage, like, everybody does it different. But most of them, like, kind of come out swinging. They, like, run or walk in or they, like, take in the applause. You sit in a chair, you wait for the crowd to die down, and then you always start with, hey. Tell me what you’re doing with that.

    SIDDIQ: I’m paying homage to the first time I was ever onstage. First time. So I went to this comedy club. Just Joking Comedy Cafe is where I started at in 1997, December 4. It was the first time I was ever onstage. I walked onstage, and I said, hey, and the whole entire crowd booed me. I didn’t even say nothing but hey, no jokes, no nothing. And this is because I started at Apollo night. And they were instructed to boo the next person that was coming onstage.

    MOSLEY: Yeah.

    SIDDIQ: So I happened to be the next person. So I waited two weeks. I came back to Just Joking Comedy Cafe after two weeks. Brought me up. I did well. They brought me – I came – and then I started coming every week. And then by February – I started in December. By February, I was the cohost of that Apollo night. And I always start with hey.

    MOSLEY: Why do you think you need to be reminded of that particular night 30 years later?

    SIDDIQ: Yeah, to understand that I had – I made the right decision when I first went up. I wasn’t in the wrong for saying, hey. It’s a lot of things that keep me grounded in this business. I’m never too up, and I’m never too down. I’m always even keel. And the attention that I didn’t get the first time I said hey is what people wait on now. When I say hey, the whole entire audience say hey back.

    MOSLEY: If you’re just joining us, my guest today is comedian Ali Siddiq. His new comedy special is called “My Father.” We’ll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

    (SOUNDBITE OF THE ROOTS SONG, “PROCEED IV (A.J. SHINE MIX)”)

    MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today, we’re talking with comedian Ali Siddiq. He’s released more than a dozen specials independently on YouTube, where they’ve drawn tens of millions of views. His new one, “My Father,” is about the man he spent his life trying to understand and everything between them before his father died in 2018.

    Let’s go back to young Ali Siddiq, before the comedy. You are 14 years old. You start selling drugs. You like to joke onstage, you say, I was a pharmaceutical sales rep.

    SIDDIQ: (Laughter).

    MOSLEY: By the time, though, that the feds got you, you were 19. You were in college at Texas Southern University. And this is the ironic part. You were actually planning to stop selling drugs when you were caught. How close were you to quitting?

    SIDDIQ: I had stopped, actually. I was done. I was wrapped up. And I got a phone call to come help, assist, you know? And I went out of me feeling obligated to – OK, you know, I’ll hold your bag. But I was done. It had become like, man, what am I doing? You know?

    MOSLEY: ‘Cause you started in the first place because you wanted money. You wanted to – you wanted your own money.

    SIDDIQ: Yeah. And I think I fight so hard now to explain that it was a character flaw. It was, like, no manhood or responsibility in that because I could’ve just worked for money. You know, I could’ve just did something else. I could’ve – it’s so many things that I could have done versus being so destructive to a community. And I remember being asked, Ali, when do you think that you’re going to blow up? And my honest answer was, when I pay back the – I got to – I owe this world something.

    MOSLEY: Because you sold drugs, like, you owe…

    SIDDIQ: Yeah.

    MOSLEY: You owe back because of that harm you did. That’s interesting.

    SIDDIQ: When I pay back society for the destruction. And I think that when you are a person that has really done things, and you have really changed your life and you think back on these things, you can’t help but to have a heavy heart.

    I remember I was in San Francisco. The homeless population is so crazy. And I’m at this Comedy Central festival. It’s a comedy festival, and I’m walking from my hotel to the festival. And I’m there for days, and I keep trying to find different ways to get there not to run into homeless people. And I then walked five blocks down, 10 blocks down, 10 blocks this way. I walked every which way and couldn’t. And I remember it was in the morning, and I was on my way to prayer. And I just stopped in the streets, and I just started sobbing. And I remember saying, how much of this is my fault because I have been so destructive and reckless in my behavior? I just don’t understand.

    Like, obviously, this is not the first generation. This is the generation that was affected by the first generation of what I did. Like, you can’t conceive the magnitude of destruction that you do when you sell drugs in a community. You know, there’s people doing things that they would probably never do in order – that’s ruined their relationships. That’s – what child didn’t get fed because they mom or they father decided to do this? And what uncle or aunt stole something? Like, what did I do?

    MOSLEY: Did you and your dad ever talk about this, that – ’cause, you know, I mean, he sold drugs, and then you went on to sell drugs.

    SIDDIQ: We never talked about it because my dad ended up using drugs. That was the lick that society took back. I remember a story that I told about some young guys. I come on the block, and they had told me they robbed these old guys. And I looked at the stuff that they had, and I made them put it in a bag because I recognized the stuff. And then I went and took my dad and his friend his stuff back. And I said, man, what were you doing over there? And my dad blamed it on his friend, told me, I’m over there with him. He got me robbed.

    And my mom – I told my mom about it later, and my mom said he was probably using drugs. And I said, no, he told me he wasn’t using no drugs. And that’s when she told me, why they put your daddy in rehab twice since we’ve been apart (laughter)? And so I went back and told him. I said, hey, I thought you said you weren’t using drugs. And my – and he said, who told you that? Your mama? Man, your mama – (laughter) your mama violating my HIPAA rights. I’m just – this man is nuts. Like, he’s so – even when he’s doing something crazy, he’s still funny. He’s so crazy.

    So the – unfortunately, the rumor around where my dad has gone is an overdose. And I don’t believe that. I think that that’s what people wanted to say. But I don’t not believe it either.

    MOSLEY: The rumor that he died because of an overdose?

    SIDDIQ: Yeah. Yeah, ’cause he had a heart attack. And I know he hadn’t been.

    MOSLEY: Using?

    SIDDIQ: So if you hadn’t been doing something, and then you decide, I’m going to do it one time, you know, you don’t know what your heart can take on that. So my dad just had a heart attack out of nowhere.

    MOSLEY: Our guest today is comedian Ali Siddiq. We’ll be right back after a short break. I’m Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.

    (SOUNDBITE OF ADRIAN YOUNGE AND ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD’S “BETTER ENDEAVOR”)

    MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley, and my guest today is comedian Ali Siddiq. His new stand-up special, “My Father,” explores his relationship with his dad, who died in 2018. Siddiq has released more than a dozen specials on YouTube, including two filmed inside of jails. He himself was arrested at 19 for selling cocaine and served six years of a 15-year sentence. Part of his work includes talking with prisoners about accountability and the realities of recidivism. This past spring, he released “Ali Siddiq: From Inside,” shot in a county jail in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he talks to inmates for almost two hours straight about the experiences of being locked up and its lasting psychological effects. Here he recalls his inmate number, which he calls a spin number.

    (SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, “ALI SIDDIQ: FROM INSIDE (A CONVERSATION WITH INMATES)”)

    SIDDIQ: Ask the old heads. They’ve been there before. Ask them, do they remember they original spin number? This the [expletive] that haunts me. I’ve been out for 25 years, almost 26 years – 67-93-46. I can’t forget this number. It’s ingrained in my head like my Social Security number.

    UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: S***, that’s your name.

    SIDDIQ: It’s my slavery number – 67-93-46.

    MOSLEY: That’s my guest, Ali Siddiq, in his YouTube special “From Inside (A Conversation With Inmates).” And what goes on to happen after you rattle off your number? The guys start blurting out their numbers, too. What does it signify that you can remember your spin number 30 years after you’re out of prison?

    SIDDIQ: That you did not get out of this situation unscathed. You may have survived it, but you still have wounds. I’ve been out 29 years at this point. Even if I’m at home by myself, I’ma lock the bedroom door. I still know this number. So it’s still things that you may survive, but you don’t get out unscathed. You’re going to lose some skin in this game. And I think that these psychological wounds are different than my physical wounds. My physical wounds start to fade. Why haven’t these wounds faded yet?

    MOSLEY: There was this powerful thing you said during that talk with those inmates that also is kind of sticking with me. You were saying, when you get locked up, your people get locked up, too. And I wanted you to explain what you meant by that.

    SIDDIQ: My mom, even though she wasn’t physically there, she’s there in mind. Like, it was in those days that my mother didn’t think about me. When you’re inside, your sister is concerned. Your mother is concerned. Your dad is concerned. Your grandmother’s concerned. It is all of these people that’s concerned about you because you’re in a position of danger. You’re in a dangerous place, and there’s no guarantee that you will make it out of this place. There’s no – you can get a year. Doesn’t mean that you’re coming home. You can get two years. Does not mean that you’re coming home. Nothing about this place says, I’m going to survive.

    MOSLEY: I want to know about – I think you call it your sarcastic nature ’cause it’s not like you started doing comedy in prison, but you did find that your humor could serve you well there. And I wonder what ways you used your sarcastic nature in comments when you were locked up.

    SIDDIQ: Because I was such a violent person from the beginning – the first two years, I was insane. Like, I was literally a madman.

    MOSLEY: Why? ‘Cause were you like that out of prison, before you got there?

    SIDDIQ: Yeah. I’m in the streets.

    MOSLEY: Yeah.

    SIDDIQ: It’s what happens in the streets, you know? And I’m still hurt from my sister. I’m a very heartless person. It just…

    MOSLEY: Hurt from her passing.

    SIDDIQ: Yeah, and things that I never revealed to people that – four months later, that my first son passed as well. So I never – I’m dealing with a lot of pain at this time. And so my whole thing was to administer pain towards people who just was in my way. You just in my way, you know. And I’m inviting this type of behavior. Like, it’s like, hey, bruh, this – all this is going to be bad for you, you know.

    So then, you know, I got told – and it’s always an older wise person that comes to you and say – that really care about you, you know, just letting you know how life goes or see something in you. Hey, man, you keep doing your time like this, somebody going to kill you. And they’re going to kill you because they scared of you. They don’t know what you’re going to do, so they’re going to kill you. They’re going to set you up. Whether it’s a group or whether it’s one person, they’re going to kill you. So you might want to do your time a little different. And plus, you’re better than this. Like, you can really be a different type of person, and you can get out of here. You know, you’re not here forever. You know, but I’m doing my 15 years. Like, I’m doing 15 years. Like, I’m not thinking about parole or nothing.

    MOSLEY: Getting out early.

    SIDDIQ: I’m doing the whole 15 years.

    MOSLEY: Yeah.

    SIDDIQ: Yeah. So then I became this jovially sarcastic person about everything. Like, anything that the person was going to do that was going to get them in trouble, I was going to say something about. (Laughter) And I remember this dude was about to do something, and I said, I thought you said that you didn’t steal that stuff, like, that you was innocent, ’cause you’re doing really guilty behavior. I’ll be so sarcastic. And I remember – this is one of my classic sayings – that I was like, I guess I’m the only one in here guilty ’cause it seem like everybody else innocent.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: Like, they’re like, this is a part of – no accountability. Man, y’all don’t have no accountability for nothing. And so – and if people was about to fight, I would just – I would always say something like, oh, y’all about to fight? Wow. That’s interesting. You do know somebody going to lose this fight twice? And they’re like, what you talking about? I said, well, one of y’all going to win, and then the CO’s going to come in here and beat both of y’all.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: Like, somebody got to be willing to lose this fight twice. Like, y’all got to make a decision. And I would say so much sarcastically jovial things that they were like, man, he always got something to say. Like, yes, I do.

    MOSLEY: I read that, you know, as you’re doing your time, that’s when you started to think, when I get out of here, I could probably have my hand in comedy. And I was wondering, were there people that you were also, like, watching or studying or thinking about as you were thinking about what type of comic you wanted to be?

    SIDDIQ: Not at all. When I started doing stand-up, I actually didn’t even know how to even start. It’s like, when I think about this journey, I literally started from a place of zero. Like, I had zero information on how to become a comic, zero information on where to go. Zero, like, I was at scratch. And so when I think about – like, I don’t ever not feel successful because I’m like, yo, I did what I said I was going to do when I got out. I was going to become a comic, not knowing how to do it.

    MOSLEY: When you get out of prison, though, how do you make that leap to, like, truly making this a profession? What was your first stop?

    SIDDIQ: Whew, Just Joking Comedy Cafe. You know, just – I learned a lot there. And I remember when I first got my first payment, it was $35. And it was in, like, fives and ones. And I thought it was a lot of money. I was like, boy, I came up. And…

    MOSLEY: (Laughter) And the comedy cafe is in Houston. It’s a place in Houston.

    SIDDIQ: It was. It was on Richmond. And then I went through this dilemma of people now saying that you’re not a real comic because you don’t do it for a living. And I remember asking Bruce Bruce about it. I said, man…

    MOSLEY: Who is that?

    SIDDIQ: Bruce Bruce, he’s a comedian, another comic. I asked Bruce Bruce, I said, hey, man, are you – this is when he was the host of ComicView. And I asked him, hey, people say that you’re not a real comic unless you doing it for full-time, for a living. And he said, man, let me give you some advice, brother. I worked for Frito-Lay – you know what I’m saying? – until my comedy started making more money for me consistently than my job. And once that happened, then I quit my job. He said, don’t quit your job until your career start making more money consistently than your job. And I remember…

    MOSLEY: And what were you doing? Like, what was your job?

    SIDDIQ: I was selling clothing. I was working in a men’s apparel store, you know, in the mall. And I worked at Sunglass Hut. You know, I used to be a street pharmaceutical rep. Then I went to being a sales rep. Ain’t that something?

    (LAUGHTER)

    MOSLEY: Did it take the same amount of skill, like, the selling drugs to selling…

    SIDDIQ: The same amount of skill. The same thing – hey, I need to find somebody who addicted to suits and shades.

    MOSLEY: (Laughter).

    SIDDIQ: You know what I’m saying? So (laughter) to make my commission.

    MOSLEY: If you’re just joining us, my guest is comedian and storyteller Ali Siddiq. His new stand-up special is called “My Father,” and it’s about his relationship with his dad. It premieres on YouTube June 21. We’ll be right back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

    (SOUNDBITE OF CLARK TERRY AND RED MITCHELL’S “SWINGIN’ THE BLUES”)

    MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR, and today we’re talking with comedian Ali Siddiq. He’s released more than a dozen specials independently on YouTube, where they’ve drawn tens of millions of views. His new one, “My Father,” is about the man he spent his life trying to understand and everything between them before his father died in 2018.

    I want to talk to you briefly about parenthood, about you being a father. You were telling me earlier that you just want to not make the same mistakes that your dad made with your children. And, I mean, you joke about this a lot. But your kids are getting a very different father than you got, which I actually want to play a clip from your latest special where you talk about taking your son, Hassan, to a concert, to the elements, Earth, Wind & Fire, when he’s 11. Let’s listen.

    (SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, “MY FATHER”)

    SIDDIQ: I know that I am a better father than my father was – and I’m supposed to be, I’m supposed to be – just by my son’s first concert and my first concert with my father.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: My son, Hassan, he’s 11. His first concert was Earth, Wind & Fire. And he asked to go. He asked to go. My son came in to me and said, father…

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: …Because he’s very upper crust. He said, I would like to attend a concert. I said, Hassan, what concert would you like to attend? He said, I would like to go see the Elements.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: And I teared up. I teared up.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: My son want to go see the Elements. And I said, wait, who are the Elements, Hassan? Is it some little, white internet group that you been listening to?

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: Hassan said, no, father. They’re formerly known as Earth, Wind & Fire. I immediately ran and got them tickets.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: I wanted to get them tickets for me and my son. Me and my son going to see Earth, Wind & Fire. He is 11. He’s 11 years old when we went to his first concert. Me and him, we’re going. We get to the concert. Hassan is the youngest person in this whole entire concert.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: And I know that for facts because I am the second youngest person.

    (LAUGHTER)

    MOSLEY: That was my guest today in his latest special, “My Father.” And, Ali, that whole special, you marveling at your bougie kid, you know, you have built a soft life for him on purpose. But I wonder this, because, I mean, as a parent who also grew up a certain way, do you ever look at your son and worry that the thing that made you, some of the positive things, you know, not all that challenging stuff you went through, but, like, the positive stuff might also be the thing, like, you’re keeping from him, too.

    SIDDIQ: I – no, I don’t. I think that the softness of his life now, I hope that he continues to desire that. And, you know, he goes through his own certain struggles, you know, ’cause there’s a certain struggle that happens in softness as well. But, you know, whether he want oysters or crab, you know, it’s a dilemma for him. So he…

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: He got the – you know, choices, choices. But yeah, he – I love how he’s living. I love the way that he lives. I applaud him, and I just hope that, you know, he comes out on the other side and always is like this and loves being a kid and then gives his children the opportunity to be a kid and always have a softness for me. I need somebody to roll me around when I get old. So hopefully, he’s there, you know, taking me to go eat oysters and, you know, asking me, do I want to go to a Boney James concert or something. I, you know, just…

    MOSLEY: (Laughter).

    SIDDIQ: I just love him. I just love the softness of his life.

    MOSLEY: All right. You are a Houston boy, born and bred. Do you feel like you might have ever missed out or lost out or it taken you longer than maybe it would have if you hadn’t moved to a place like LA and New York? And, you know, you could’ve taken your kids with you.

    SIDDIQ: I don’t think that that’s a thing. I think that there’s no opportunity that has been lost. You know, it’s only all gain. And there’s a certain protection of being in your home spaces. You know, my mom’s from – I have – what? – maybe 40 relatives in California. But who’s to say I was going to go to California and make something of myself? ‘Cause multiple comics have done that as well and never, you know, arrived, in their perspective. You know, same in New York. Same in Atlanta. You know, I think that what makes me unique is being home.

    MOSLEY: Oh, this has been such a pleasure, Ali. And thank you so much, and best wishes as you continue on your tour. Are there particular cities that you love the most? You know, you’re a Houston boy. So are there other places throughout the country where it’s like, oh, yeah, they get me – it feels like a homecoming?

    SIDDIQ: Oh, so many places – Chicago, D.C., Baltimore, Detroit, New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Appalachias (ph). There’s too many places to even name. I’m so connected to the Earth that when I’m – when I come somewhere, all of it feel like home. That’s who’s coming, and that’s who I have a connection with. Now, what’s crazy is I don’t think that Corpus Christi gets me.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SIDDIQ: And it’s right down the street. Corpus Christi, Texas. It’s crazy. It’s right down the street. I don’t think Corpus really fool with me. They’re a fishing town. They’re like, is he talking about bass? Like…

    (LAUGHTER)

    MOSLEY: Ali Siddiq, it has been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for this special and your time.

    SIDDIQ: Pleasure is all mine. I thank you very, very much.

    MOSLEY: Ali Siddiq’s new special is called “My Father.” It premieres on YouTube June 21. He’s also currently on his international Custom Fit stand-up tour. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews “Toy Story 5,” opening in theaters this week. This is FRESH AIR.

    (SOUNDBITE OF RAY CHARLES’ “DOODLIN’”)

  • David Sedaris doesn’t mind being humiliated

    Wild Card: David Sedaris ( (NPR))

    A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I don’t know where I was when I first heard David Sedaris reading his essays on the radio, but I remember feeling like I was witnessing something revolutionary.

    He was snarky, hilarious but also big hearted. His essay “Santaland Diaries” was about the indignities of working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s. He read that essay on NPR in 1992 and it jumpstarted his career as one of this country’s greatest observational humorists. To me, his books have always felt like love letters to the messiest parts of being human.

    His newest collection of essays is called “The Land and Its People.”

    Transcript:

    DAVID SEDARIS: Oh, I’m preoccupied with the past. I mean, I thought when I was young, that when you got to be 69, you would give anything to be young again. And now I realize that when you’re 69, you say, thank God, I’ll be dead in 20 years because I don’t know how much more of this I can take, you know?

    RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

    I’m Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card, the show where cards control the conversation.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    MARTIN: Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They’re allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is David Sedaris.

    SEDARIS: And I just had my whole life ahead of me, and I didn’t know – you know, I knew what I hoped it would be. I just wanted people to know my name. I wanted that so bad.

    MARTIN: I don’t know where I was when I first heard David Sedaris reading his essays on the radio, but I remember feeling like I was witnessing something revolutionary. He was snarky, hilarious but also big-hearted. His essay, called “SantaLand Diaries,” was about the indignities of working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s. He read that essay on NPR in 1992, and it jump-started his career as one of this country’s greatest observational humorists. To me, his books have always felt like a big old love letter to the messiest parts of being human. His newest collection of essays is called “The Land And Its People,” and I am so very glad to welcome David Sedaris to WILD CARD. Hi.

    SEDARIS: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I’m objecting to the word snarky.

    MARTIN: You are?

    SEDARIS: Yeah. I want you to pull that from your vocabulary and never use it again.

    MARTIN: That’s a true statement. I stand by it.

    SEDARIS: Really?

    MARTIN: There’s some snark, David.

    SEDARIS: No. I object.

    MARTIN: No.

    SEDARIS: I object to the word snark.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: I object to it.

    MARTIN: OK.

    SEDARIS: Sometimes during…

    MARTIN: Let’s see how this goes.

    SEDARIS: …Q&A, when I’m doing a show.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Someone will say, I have a question about journaling, and I say, I want you to write down – I say – I give them the date, and I say, I want you to remember this. It’s the last time you’re going to use the word journal as a noun. I mean, as a verb.

    MARTIN: As a verb.

    SEDARIS: OK? Yeah. And this is – I don’t know, I just want you to…

    MARTIN: Snark.

    SEDARIS: …Reconsider. snarky…

    MARTIN: To use snark.

    SEDARIS: …Because, yeah, it’s not a word.

    MARTIN: It is a word.

    SEDARIS: Yeah, but it’s not a good one. It doesn’t apply to me.

    MARTIN: OK, so the first round is about memories.

    SEDARIS: OK.

    MARTIN: OK? First three cards. One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: Two.

    MARTIN: Two. How similar are you to your siblings?

    SEDARIS: How similar am I to my siblings? Very.

    MARTIN: Are you?

    SEDARIS: All of us find the same things funny and all of us just, you know, tend to dislike the same thing. You know, like, none of us…

    MARTIN: You’re very lucky that way.

    SEDARIS: …Use a word that…

    MARTIN: Ever use the word snark, for example.

    SEDARIS: …Would ever say, that’s awesome. You know, like, none of us would ever – and if one of us said it, the others would be like, oh, what happened to you?

    MARTIN: Oh, you can’t say awesome? Can’t say snark or awesome?

    SEDARIS: There’s a long list of things you can’t say.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: A physical list, you know? And things go on the list all the time. Sometimes something new pops up, and it’s on the list by – in no time, you know, just a brand new word or phrase that popped up.

    MARTIN: There is a little bit in your book about the word perfect.

    SEDARIS: Oh, my goodness.

    MARTIN: You don’t like the word perfect. Your siblings also don’t like the word perfect.

    SEDARIS: No, no.

    MARTIN: What’s wrong with it?

    SEDARIS: I said to a hotel clerk – and I didn’t mean to be a jerk about it, but I said, you’ve said perfect seven times. They do it without thinking.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: But they’re told in a hotel that if they say OK, that’s not positive enough.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: So they have to say perfect. And it’s the corporatization of it that I object to.

    MARTIN: Like an example, like, you would say, I’m going to check out early. They’ll be like…

    SEDARIS: Perfect.

    MARTIN: …Perfect. Perfect. It’s perfect.

    SEDARIS: Perfect.

    MARTIN: Yeah, perfect.

    SEDARIS: It’s like at Starbucks, right? They now – they have to write a message on your cup. And if someone felt like writing a message on your cup, that could be interesting, right?

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: But they have to do it. And so I said to someone a while ago. I said, you don’t have to write on my cup. And she said, yes, I do.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: And I said, then write, die already. And she said, I can’t do that. I said, I have terminal cancer. I said it would be a blessing. She still wouldn’t do it. But it – you know what I mean? Once it’s, like, a corporate idea…

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: …It just takes all the fun out of it, and it’s just dead to me.

    MARTIN: There’s also a bit in your book, was it your brother who put – what was it? – like a sign on your back when you were walking through the airport?

    SEDARIS: Ask me about being gay.

    MARTIN: Yes.

    SEDARIS: He hugged me goodbye. My brother is such a practical joker. He hugged me goodbye, and I walked through the – well, I was getting into a car, oh, in front of six of my neighbors in New York a couple of weeks back, and my sister, Amy, yelled, hey, David, good luck with the operation. You’re going to love having breasts. And then, all during the ride, I thought – I wasn’t, like, ashamed that the driver thought – I wasn’t embarrassed that the driver thought that I was transitioning.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: But I thought, what kind of breast would I get? Like, because I don’t – never occurred to me.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: Would I want large ones or would I…

    MARTIN: There’s so many choices.

    SEDARIS: …Would I say, you know what I’ve got? Let’s just shave the ones I have now.

    MARTIN: (Laughter) I mean, your family gatherings must be such a good time. And you are very lucky to share a sense of humor. I mean, you are. Like, a lot of families…

    SEDARIS: Terribly lucky.

    MARTIN: …Are not…

    SEDARIS: I’m very aware of it, too.

    MARTIN: Is that – I mean, you had a very contentious relationship with your dad. You love your mom. Was she funny? I mean, did it all stem from her? Did she cultivate that?

    SEDARIS: I don’t know where humor comes from, but I mean, my mother was very funny, but when there were six kids, you know, at the end of the school day, you’re trying to get a little attention, right?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: And so you learn pretty quickly that if you tell a long, boring story, then someone’s going to interrupt you or cut you off. So you just learn to edit and get a laugh.

    MARTIN: Yes. Yes. Oh, my God, there’s not enough editing in general. OK, next three. One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: One.

    MARTIN: One. Where would you go when you wanted to feel safe as a kid?

    SEDARIS: I’ll turn that on you.

    MARTIN: Oh, look at you. Well, two places. I mean, I don’t know if I went on a regular basis, but I have memories of feeling safe in these places. Are you taking notes?

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: (Laughter) One, I lived in a very religious household. And I – there was a real pressure to, like, accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. And when I did this, I was in the pantry, sitting on the flour – plastic thing that held the flour. And I remember doing this religious tradition in that pantry. And then the – it just kind of felt like a safe place after that. So after I ordained myself a Christian, I would just go in the pantry all the time and shut the door. And it felt, you know, with the canned tomatoes, whatever, I – it felt like a special reprieve from chaos.

    And the other place I went when I was older, I had got my own room in the basement. And there was a heater, like, attached to the wall. I’m sure it was an electrical hazard – that you could really crank up really hot. And I would have one of those pillows that has arms. You know, it has a back and it has a couple arms. And I would put that little pillow down in this corner and situate it right in front of that heater. And I would just crank that heat up, and I would just sit there and sort of hide from my siblings and write notes to boys that I would never give them and kind of dream. And I also remember feeling quite safe in that little corner of my room. And you? What you got?

    SEDARIS: I was in Canada a few weeks ago, doing a show in a theater, and there was a man with a rainbow-striped pin on that said, you are safe with me. So he was, like, a roving safe space, right? And I’m like, how unsafe is a gay person at my show, right? In Canada, right?

    (LAUGHTER)

    SEDARIS: But he was a roving…

    MARTIN: Also – I don’t know – if someone’s advertising it, I almost – I recoil a little bit.

    SEDARIS: I did too.

    MARTIN: The skeptic in me is like, are you?

    SEDARIS: I did, too.

    MARTIN: Are you, though?

    SEDARIS: It just felt like everything that was wrong with the world, a roving safe space. But you have the best ’cause you felt safe in Christ’s bosom, is what…

    MARTIN: (Laughter) I did. I did.

    SEDARIS: …I was hearing there.

    MARTIN: I did as a child. I did feel safe…

    SEDARIS: That’s nice, though.

    MARTIN: …in Christ’s bosom.

    SEDARIS: I felt safe at home.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: I mean, I just had – I mean, I was a mess, right? I was – I would this with my eyes and this with my head. And so, I just – I’ve…

    MARTIN: Wait, you had a tic?

    SEDARIS: Oh, my God. I had, like, a – half a dozen of them. I was a mess. And – but at home, I mean, my father would be like, cut it out, you know. Stop it. And – but my mother and the others, I don’t know why they didn’t – anyway, so I felt safe with them because they wouldn’t give me any grief about it, you know? Or I could just be in my room and just do it to my – you know, to my…

    MARTIN: Wait. Can I ask, did you have Tourette’s?

    SEDARIS: It’s – I don’t know. There were six kids. You don’t get taken to a doctor for anything. You don’t – do you know what I mean? Which, actually, I think is kind of a good way…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …To do it…

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: …You know? Because otherwise, well, I can’t really speak to it because I would have been on medication, and…

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: …This and that, but – and maybe that would have done me loads of good. But I don’t really know what’s – nobody just – just stop it…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …You know?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: And it went away. And then later, I wrote something about it, and I was obviously contacted by someone who said, like, it was a form of juvenile Tourette’s, you know, that you kind of grow out of.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: I noticed when I started smoking that a lot of that went away. And then this doctor said, yeah, that makes sense, too. But…

    MARTIN: I mean, cigarettes. Great medicine.

    SEDARIS: I don’t know, though, about – I don’t – a woman came to me at a book signing last week. She went to a book signing with her 15 – I mean, she went to the – her 15-year-old son to the DMV to get his driver’s license, right?

    MARTIN: OK.

    SEDARIS: And the woman at the desk said, no, ma’am, you are not coming in here with those protruding nipples. And she said, what? And she said, I had a – she had a bra on, but the woman at the DMV said, your nipples are protruding. You can’t come in.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: So she went, and she bought a T-shirt at a strip mall – and her son was so embarrassed. She said, I wanted to call Eyewitness News ’cause everyone should know that this is happening, right?

    MARTIN: Right. Anti-nipple DMV.

    SEDARIS: But she didn’t want to embarrass her son further. Anyway…

    MARTIN: Please tell me how this happened (ph) (laughter).

    SEDARIS: …I said to her, if I were you, I would have said to the woman, that’s – I understand completely. Do you have a pair of scissors I could borrow? And I would just cut my nipples off, right? And then say, now, can I come in? But – and then I said that on stage, and then someone came and said, you know, your nipples are the only part of your body that regenerate. It’s like a lizard’s tail.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: And so I told the audience that the next night, and a doctor came and said, no, they don’t. I was so naive to believe (laughter) what somebody said to me. It’s not true at all. I would have gone through the rest of my life believing…

    MARTIN: Thinking that nipples regenerate.

    SEDARIS: …That nipples regenerate. Yeah.

    MARTIN: I don’t know how that ties into the safe space you went to when you were a child, but it’s a damn good story, so we’re just going to leave it there.

    SEDARIS: Jesus’s bosom.

    MARTIN: Oh, Jesus…

    (LAUGHTER)

    MARTIN: That’s why you’re good. Last one in this round (ph).

    (LAUGHTER)

    MARTIN: OK. Last one in this round. One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: Three.

    MARTIN: Three. What was your most intimidating move?

    SEDARIS: Move – physical move?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Moving to New York City.

    MARTIN: When? What – how – where are you? How old are you?

    SEDARIS: I went to the – New York City with – I went to this Greek American summer camp one year. And so we flew to New York, and then I went to Greece from there. But I had a godfather who lived outside of New York, and he took my sister – my older sister and me to – into Manhattan – right? – to show us what a hellhole it was. And I was like, I need to live in this hellhole.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: And then I got posters of the skyline, and then it was just about New York and when I move to New York. But the thing is, you know, I’d known people who moved to New York too soon, and then they just couldn’t make it, you know? And then they had to go home with their tail between their legs.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: So the window opens, and you got to be ready and jump through the window when it opens. So I moved to Chicago first because I thought, well, that’s a good halfway point. And that’s a good place to…

    MARTIN: Good starter city. Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …Build up. And in Chicago, you know, my sister, Amy, she followed me there, and then she started at Second City, and, you know, you could get a theater for next to nothing and put on a show, and my friends and I put on these silly shows, and I started reading out loud. And then the window opened and I dove through it. And I had a job teaching at the Art Institute.

    MARTIN: That was the window – someone offered you a teaching job?

    SEDARIS: No. I had the teaching job…

    MARTIN: Oh, in Chicago. You had the teaching job.

    SEDARIS: …And I didn’t deserve it, you know. I never went to graduate school. I – but they offered me a job teaching creative writing. Anyway, so I felt kind of fraudulent, but I was – it was – and it was a real job. And I left it, knowing I’d never get another one and – but the window opened, so…

    MARTIN: What was the window? Like, what was the pull to New York?

    SEDARIS: There was a fellow who I knew in Chicago who had a two-bedroom apartment in the West Village and he had been subletting it, and he was going to move back there…

    MARTIN: Like real estate. That’s the – yeah.

    SEDARIS: …And he asked if I wanted to be his roommate…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …And my half of the rent would be $350. And I just felt like professionally, you know, I’d been doing – I started reading out loud in Chicago and I felt like I’d hit the ceiling there and it was time. And so all the signs were there. And I just went and I was, you know, if I’d had the wherewithal, I would have maybe had more money, you know, saved up, or I would have had some kind of a job lined up, but the window was open and it might have closed if I didn’t act right now.

    MARTIN: Yeah. Right.

    SEDARIS: So I acted right now.

    MARTIN: And getting an apartment is, like, 90%…

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: …Of success in living…

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: …In New York.

    SEDARIS: And – but – and in – part of it, too, was my father. You are – they are going to eat you alive. You idiot. This is the only decent job you’re ever going to have in your life and you’re leaving it behind. You are going to regret this. Like…

    MARTIN: Didn’t that make you want to do it even more?

    SEDARIS: It did.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: But it was just that chorus in the back of your, you know.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You’ve already got your doubts and stuff, but the last thing you need is that added to it. But I’ve – I’m – and after that, I could move anywhere.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: You know.

    MARTIN: So when you got there, how long did it take you to actually – like, were there points where you were, like, oh, I don’t know if I am going to cut it? Or did you…

    SEDARIS: Oh.

    MARTIN: …Find work and a foothold…

    SEDARIS: Yeah. I…

    MARTIN: …Pretty early?

    SEDARIS: …I was there for about a month and I, you know, had a budget of $7 a day. And I found a job at Macy’s as an elf, you know, but it didn’t start until the day after Thanksgiving.

    MARTIN: (Laughter) That’s right, your origin story.

    SEDARIS: And in retrospect – yeah. In retrospect, it was the best job I ever had, right? But at the time, it was pretty tough because here you’d moved to New York and people are, like, he’s an elf. He’s a – he moved to New York and he’s an elf. Like, it just (laughter) was so humiliating, right? But it – did you watch “The Comeback”?

    MARTIN: Was that…

    SEDARIS: It was Lisa Kudrow’s show.

    MARTIN: Oh, no.

    SEDARIS: It’s one of the best things ever on TV.

    MARTIN: Is it?

    SEDARIS: And there was three seasons of it. And in one of the episodes, somebody said, I’ve just watched you being humiliated over and over. And she said, oh, no. It takes two people to be humiliated.

    MARTIN: Great.

    SEDARIS: I never signed up for it.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: So I sort of felt that way.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Like, if you write and something humiliating happens or something degrading happens, it’s just like somebody handing you money, right?

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: I mean, I know people and if their – someone insults them, you know, it ruins their day, their week, their month. But to me, I feel grateful for it because it’s – I can write about it.

    MARTIN: Yeah. So true.

    SEDARIS: And I can get a laugh out of it.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: And it’s like someone handed me money.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    MARTIN: Let’s pull out of the game for a few minutes and talk about your new book. Congratulations. So in this book, readers get a sense of you, I would say, most acutely in relationship with other people. Like, there’s a lot of you in relationship with your very close friends, from present, from past, your sisters, especially Amy and Gretchen, and Hugh, who we shall call your person? Nope. You’re probably going to hate that one, too.

    SEDARIS: (Laughter) Yeah. I hate that one, too.

    MARTIN: Hate that one, too. OK. So Hugh’s your…

    SEDARIS: He’s the person I married.

    MARTIN: He’s the person you married.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: Yeah. So we should just dispense with this. Hugh is legally your husband.

    SEDARIS: I don’t know that word.

    MARTIN: OK.

    SEDARIS: I don’t…

    MARTIN: It’s not part of your…

    SEDARIS: …I don’t know that word.

    MARTIN: …Your lexicon.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: You’ve been with this human for a long time, though.

    SEDARIS: I think 36 years.

    MARTIN: That – God. That’s a long time. And in the book, you write about getting married. You can say that.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: You can say married.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: But you did it in secret. Why?

    SEDARIS: It was a shotgun wedding. It was just arranged by our banker to save money on inheritance stuff.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: So that’s the only reason we did it. And I didn’t tell anybody about it because I don’t – you know, I didn’t want people saying, (imitating Southern accent) is that your husband? But then people just started assuming it. So people started saying it anyway, everybody, right? So I thought, well, I might as well make some money off of it. So I wrote about it.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: I wrote about it. And Hugh’s mother, when the story came out in the New Yorker, sent us a dozen roses and I thought, what are those for? And then I – oh, oh, right.

    MARTIN: Right. Oh, right.

    SEDARIS: We’re married. And then people started saying, congratulations. And I said, for what? And I was, oh, right, we’re married.

    MARTIN: OK. So what’s your issue? What’s your issue with the word husband? What’s your – I mean, I understand…

    SEDARIS: I don’t mind it.

    MARTIN: …People don’t really care about marriage. But…

    SEDARIS: Like, if you said to me, my husband loves driving…

    MARTIN: Not going to take offense.

    SEDARIS: …Drunk, you know?

    MARTIN: Oh (laughter).

    SEDARIS: Then it would be – I’d be like, wow, tell me more, right? But if you were…

    MARTIN: Right that one down.

    SEDARIS: …A man, and you said, my husband likes to drive drunk, I would think, well, I hope he gets in an accident, and that’s one less husband in the world. I don’t – I wanted gay people to fight for the right to marry and then not a single one of us to do it. I thought that would have been remarkable, right? To say, I spit on your marriage, you know?

    MARTIN: Right. I want the right, the availability…

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: …To do it.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: And I also don’t need it.

    SEDARIS: Yeah. And…

    MARTIN: So it feels like you’re giving in.

    SEDARIS: …So I just don’t like, you know, like, (imitating Southern accent) my husband. Well, I was on the phone with my husband this morning. And for some reason, my voice…

    MARTIN: Wait, why are you falling into a Southern accent?

    SEDARIS: I know. My voice always goes to that, you know, (imitating Southern accent) my husband. Well, all I know is my husband loves me. Like, I just – that’s the voice in my head when I hear the word husband.

    MARTIN: OK. And Hugh – your person that you married’s name is Hugh.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: Is he agnostic – he doesn’t care either way? Does he introduce you…

    SEDARIS: No.

    MARTIN: …As his husband?

    SEDARIS: No. God, he would never.

    MARTIN: No. No.

    SEDARIS: No.

    MARTIN: That’d be a silly thing to do.

    SEDARIS: That’s one of the reasons we’re together.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: You know? I mean, we agree about things like that.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: He didn’t tell anybody, either. But the difference is that Hugh – I’ve never met anything like it – anyone like him, and that Hugh is incapable of lying. And so if someone said to Hugh, are you two married? He would say, is it going to snow? Is it going to – he could change…

    MARTIN: He’ll redirect.

    SEDARIS: …The subject, but he could not say, oh, no, we’re not married. We just live together. And it – easiest thing in the world for me to say that. But it was a real struggle for him. So he doesn’t have to lie. You know, he doesn’t have to evade anymore.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: He’s just…

    MARTIN: So you’ve been traveling for so much of your life. I mean, every time you write a book, you go on a tour. It seems like you – I mean, you don’t have to do this. I know it helps to sell books, but it does seem like you’re out in the world in front of audiences, reading and reading and reading and engaging with people for decades.

    SEDARIS: I don’t like to be home for more than a few days.

    MARTIN: Really?

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: How come? Just feels…

    SEDARIS: I get tired of my office…

    MARTIN: Boring?

    SEDARIS: …Or everything just seems the same to me. You know, I just feel like, Oh, I’m in a rut. And he will say, you’ve been home five days.

    MARTIN: Ah.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: And so he’ll know that. He’ll be like, it’s time for you to go? You got to get out.

    SEDARIS: He…

    MARTIN: Or is he resentful when he says that?

    SEDARIS: Well, he’s just the opposite. He doesn’t like…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …Being uprooted and being moved somewhere else. He doesn’t – I mean, he doesn’t go on tour with me, but he – you know, his mom is in poor health, so he goes to Kentucky a lot, and then…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …He has to go – then there’ll be something going on in England. He’s got to go there or something going on in France, and he’s got to go there. And so he bounces around a lot, too. He just doesn’t do it as cheerfully as I do.

    MARTIN: Yeah. But it still fills your cup, sounds like.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    MARTIN: Round two. This round is called insights.

    SEDARIS: OK.

    MARTIN: One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: Two.

    MARTIN: Two. What do you enjoy complaining about?

    SEDARIS: Oh, my goodness.

    MARTIN: What a silly question for you.

    SEDARIS: Wow. I love complaining. And I realized a while ago that – you know, I thought, gosh, why do older people complain? And it’s because we can remember an alternative to whatever you put in front of us, right?

    MARTIN: Oh.

    SEDARIS: So I remember a time when people didn’t have cellphones. So therefore, they weren’t watching TV on their phone without headphones on. Right? Whereas a younger person grew up with that. So they don’t remember anything – they don’t remember it being any different.

    MARTIN: But, like, one of your opening chapters is you complaining about the fact that Hugh has to have some kind of surgery and can’t cook for you.

    SEDARIS: Yeah. Well, that was a real complaint. I mean, he…

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: Well, like, physical. And when you – also when you get to be a certain age, you know, the organ recital, you know, when you get together with people, and it’s like, my back hurts, my kidneys hurt, my – you know, you don’t want to…

    MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …Get into that either.

    MARTIN: No.

    SEDARIS: That’s no fun.

    MARTIN: So you avoid that.

    SEDARIS: Especially…

    MARTIN: You avoid the health stuff.

    SEDARIS: And a lot of times, when I start complaining, I think, oh, I just sound old.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: So I try not to complain about those things.

    MARTIN: Right. Make your complaints make you seem young.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: That’s, I think, a good (inaudible).

    SEDARIS: But I don’t ever – you know, I – whenever I complain about something, I think, OK, I’m going to go down to my hotel, and I’m going to tell them, excuse me, you told me that my room was recently remodeled. I’d like to say, I’m so grateful that the lights are just on a switch. It’s not a master switch where all the lights come on, right? Or they have predetermined moods. I’m gay. I can create my own mood. Thank you very much, right? I know what lights to turn on and what ones to leave off. So I thought – so I try to do that.

    MARTIN: You try to affirm the positive…

    SEDARIS: Yeah. I try…

    MARTIN: …When you find yourself wanting to complain.

    SEDARIS: If I’m in a situation…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …And I say – yesterday, my flight attendant. I said, can I – she – can I get you something to drink? And I said, I’ll have some coffee. And she – do you have any made? She said, no, but I’ll cook you some. And I thought, that is so nice. I’ll cook you some coffee.

    MARTIN: (Laughter) Wait, what are you writing down right now?

    SEDARIS: I forgot to write it in my notebook yesterday. I’ll cook you some. That’s how she said it. And when I got off, I said, you cook coffee good.

    (LAUGHTER)

    MARTIN: OK. Next three. One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: One.

    MARTIN: One. What’s an irrational fear you can’t shake? How much fear do you have in your life? Do you have an irrational one?

    SEDARIS: An irrational fear that I can’t shake. Irrational. I think all of my fears are pretty…

    MARTIN: You can skip it.

    SEDARIS: …Rational. I’ll skip it.

    MARTIN: Yeah. I love that your fears are rational, though. OK. OK, I’ll just let you pick from these two. One, two?

    SEDARIS: Two.

    MARTIN: Two. What’s a sound that instantly puts you at ease?

    SEDARIS: A leaf blower. I’m kidding.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SEDARIS: What’s a sound that puts me at ease?

    MARTIN: It’s an earnest question.

    SEDARIS: “The Archers.” “The Archers”…

    MARTIN: What does that mean?

    SEDARIS: …Is a soap opera that’s been playing on the BBC for – what is it? – 70 years now. And it takes place in a small farming community. And Hugh listens to “The Archers.” And the sound of Hugh…

    MARTIN: He doesn’t even really watch it?

    SEDARIS: Oh, it’s on the radio.

    MARTIN: Oh, it’s on the…

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: …Radio. Oh, my gosh. You guys are so…

    SEDARIS: And every episode is – what?…

    MARTIN: …Old timey.

    SEDARIS: …Fifteen minutes long.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: And it takes place in this little farming community. And the sound of Hugh in the kitchen listening to “The Archers” is – makes me feel lucky whenever I hear it. Because there’s no cursing on “The Archers.” Nobody ever – there aren’t murders on “The Archers.” It’s all pretty…

    MARTIN: It sounds lovely.

    SEDARIS: …Gentle stuff, right?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Like, somebody will decide not to get their dog spayed, you know? And that’s, like, oh, my goodness.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: You know, it’s a big scandal.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: And it’s right up – and – it’s right up Hugh’s alley, you know? Like, he doesn’t want to, like, watch a movie that’s violent. He – I do. To me, a gun makes a movie, right?

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: Throw a gun in there. Let’s liven things up.

    MARTIN: (Laughter) Oh, my God.

    SEDARIS: But it’s very suited to his nature. And it just makes me feel lucky that that’s a good time for him…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …Is sitting – you know, standing in the kitchen. And he’ll happily spend three hours making dinner. He doesn’t care, you know? And so he’s in there. And if we’re in England, we have a fireplace in the kitchen and you got a fire going in there and it’s – it just feels really – it’s just exactly my idea of a home, you know?

    MARTIN: Yeah. What a lovely thing.

    SEDARIS: We eat dinner with candles on the table and we eat at the table. Like, we’ve never – the only time we’re allowed to eat in front of the TV is when the Academy Awards are on.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: And we’ve never eaten over the sink, and we’ve never – I don’t know. It’s always an event.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: It always feels like an event. He’s not a snob cook. Like, he doesn’t put foam on things or…

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: …But he’s the best cook most people I know know.

    MARTIN: Wow.

    SEDARIS: And…

    MARTIN: Lucky you.

    SEDARIS: Yeah, I’m – no, I’m very lucky that way. And him listening to “The Archers” means that he’s making dinner and, again, means that I’m lucky, means that I have a home that he keeps. I don’t mean that he’s a homemaker, but he is.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know, he’s…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: He – like at Christmas, you know, we always have big stacks of gifts. He makes cookies every year. You know, he decorates the tree. He…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …At Thanksgiving. It’s all of those things he does. I mean, he puts his back into it and he – I know it’s so easy for people and they say, well, no, you get a Christmas tree and then you got to take it down…

    MARTIN: Oh, my God, no.

    SEDARIS: …You know, and all that stuff.

    MARTIN: It is not easy, as a person who does that in my family. It’s not.

    SEDARIS: No. It…

    MARTIN: Takes a lot of effort…

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: …To make things meaningful.

    SEDARIS: And he puts a lot of effort…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …Into us having a home.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Or seven homes, you know?

    (LAUGHTER)

    MARTIN: OK. Last one in this round. One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: Two.

    MARTIN: Two. When do you feel most like an outsider?

    SEDARIS: When do I feel most like an outsider? I feel most like an outsider in – well, in England…

    MARTIN: Ah. Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …You know, which – where we live half the year.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: Because I am an outsider. But I grew up in North Carolina, but my family moved from western New York State when I was in second grade. And so back then, all the newscasters had accents and everyone on the radio had an accent. And if you didn’t have an accent, you were a Yankee, right? That’s what you were called – the Yankee. And, you know, when you win the war, you don’t ever – you don’t think about it again.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: You know, it’s only when you lose that you dwell on it. So we moved to a place where people were still sore about the Civil War, you know…

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: …And you could get beaten up and called a Yankee. So I grew up in that environment, so it felt normal to me.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: So when I moved – you know, we moved to France and then we moved to England, and then in France, everyone just thought you were on vacation.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: You know, like, I remember I went to the hardware store and the guy said, are you on vacation? And I was like, I’ve been coming here for four years.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SEDARIS: Like, that would be a really long vacation. In England, it’s not that you’re on vacation so much, and so you really – but you’re an outsider.

    MARTIN: There’s not a language barrier. But…

    SEDARIS: No, but there’s a thought barrier. The thinking in the U.K. – the way they think is so fundamentally different from the way that we think. And…

    MARTIN: Say more. You got to put another sentence on that.

    SEDARIS: I really think that there are – it’s a culture of envy that we didn’t – we’re – I’m seeing here post-pandemic, but I didn’t really notice it before the pandemic. I didn’t notice how – I mean, I’ve said this a trillion times, that – and I heard someone else say it, and I don’t remember who – but in America, if your next-door neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want one too.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: And in England, if your next-door neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want him to die in a fiery accident.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: And so…

    MARTIN: That seems harsh.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: But it’s a really fundamentally different way of thinking, right? And it suggests that you can’t better yourself. Whereas actually…

    MARTIN: Ah.

    SEDARIS: …Your chances of improving your social situation are better in England than they are in America. But British people don’t believe it and Americans do believe it.

    MARTIN: Delusionally do.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: But – delusionally do, but not – I feel like the pandemic changed a lot of that, and then you started seeing more just sort of people feeling stuck and people feeling like it’s not fair, you know?

    MARTIN: Ah.

    SEDARIS: ‘Cause it used to be, oh, if you work, you can have what…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …That person has.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: But now, I feel people thinking, like, well, no, I am working and I’m not getting that. It’s something – it’s more than that, you know?

    MARTIN: It’s the system.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: There’s something structural.

    SEDARIS: And so I feel that changing in America – and it really had a lot to do with America being a beautiful place – was optimism.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: And, you know, Europeans will make fun of American optimism, but I always thought, like, well, make fun all you want. It’s a really nice quality. It’s a nice quality to believe in the future and it’s a nice quality…

    MARTIN: Sure.

    SEDARIS: …To feel – to see your place in it, you know?

    MARTIN: Yeah. And you feel that…

    SEDARIS: And I hate seeing that…

    MARTIN: …Diminishing?

    SEDARIS: …Dim.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Downer.

    MARTIN: Downer.

    SEDARIS: (Laughter).

    MARTIN: But they still like you in England. I’m sure you still do book readings and sell books.

    SEDARIS: You know, I’ve been very fortunate to have a show on the radio on the BBC for, I don’t know, 10 years or so.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: So…

    MARTIN: So they’ve let you in, sort of. They’ve let you into their club.

    SEDARIS: Well, you know, that was the thing. Living in France, there wasn’t a place for me. And then I started going to the U.K. and I started going to England, and they said, we’ll just scoot down and make a place for you. You know, like, oh, you want to write for the newspapers? Sure. We’ll just scoot down. You want to be on the radio? Sure, we’ll just scoot down a little bit. And it really made me feel welcome and appreciated. And it feels – nothing feels so good as making your way in another country.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know, because they’ve got their own people to read. And, you know, funny? I mean, come on. You know…

    MARTIN: (Laughter) They’re pretty funny.

    SEDARIS: I mean, they’re just born that way, you know?

    MARTIN: Right. I know.

    SEDARIS: And they don’t need me at all. And so I just so appreciate them.

    MARTIN: Although, every time you succeed there, there’s somebody who wants

    SEDARIS: But see, the thing is, though, when you’re – I feel like when you’re an American and you come back to America and you go to customs, there’s a cape, a wool cape soaked in water. And they say, welcome home. And they put it on your back. And that is race relations in America. And you forgot what it was like not to wear it. But now it’s on your back again. And you’re back in the United States, right? And, like, the class stuff in England I can walk down the center of. It’s not my game.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: And so I’m excluded from it in a lot of ways as well. So it’s really nice. It’d be like, in France, I didn’t have any beef. You know, like, there’s tension between, you know, French people and Arabs, but wasn’t my thing.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: You know, and when I would go into, like, an Algerian market or whatever, once I heard my accent, they were like, great.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: Welcome in, you know? And so again

    MARTIN: Sure. Sure, you got to own it.

    SEDARIS: It wasn’t my thing. Yeah.

    MARTIN: OK. On that note…

    SEDARIS: I said welcome in. I hate welcome in.

    MARTIN: Did you just say it?

    SEDARIS: I said welcome in. And that was…

    MARTIN: It’s a whole thing in your book, how you hate…

    SEDARIS: I know.

    MARTIN: …When people say welcome in.

    SEDARIS: I know it. I said – and they wouldn’t say it either.

    MARTIN: I’m so glad you called yourself on that.

    SEDARIS: They wouldn’t say it either, welcome in, you know?

    MARTIN: It just was in your head.

    SEDARIS: Yeah, I guess it was in my head. Oof. I got to clean my head out.

    MARTIN: You really do.

    SEDARIS: (Laughter).

    MARTIN: Snarky, snarky head. OK.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    MARTIN: Beliefs. One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: One.

    MARTIN: One. Are you preoccupied with the past or the future?

    SEDARIS: Oh, I’m preoccupied with the past.

    MARTIN: The past?

    SEDARIS: Yes. I don’t know if it’s an age thing or – oh, it must be, because most of my life’s over.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know? So…

    MARTIN: There’s more to think about in the past.

    SEDARIS: When I think about the future, this all gets worse, you know?

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: I mean, everything gets worse when you think about the future, right? I mean, I thought when I was young that when you got to be 69, you would give anything to be young again. And now I realize that when you’re 69, you say, thank God I’ll be dead in 20 years…

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: …Because I don’t know how much more of this I can take, you know? Because if you went back to being 20, it’d be – then you’d feel like, oh, I’m not going to have any career. And I’m not going to be able to afford to have ever buy my house, and I’m not going to ever have children, and I’m not going to be able to ever do any of these things. And…

    MARTIN: Because that was your psychology then? Or you just think the world has changed to the point where if you were 20 now…

    SEDARIS: Yeah. If I were 20 now…

    MARTIN: …That would be your reality? Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …That’s what I would be. Maybe not. I mean, it’s a beautiful thing about being young, or it used to be a beautiful thing about being young, is that your future was wide open.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: And you didn’t feel – you know, you were an optimistic person. And so maybe that – you know what? I’m putting an old head in a young body is what I’m doing.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: I think.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: But also, I can’t write about the future, you know? I mean, I can write about…

    MARTIN: People do. But…

    SEDARIS: Right.

    MARTIN: It’s not a thing that’s interesting to you.

    SEDARIS: It’s not my thing.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: So I’m just writing something My brother – I saw my brother last month. And he’s like, you know, just a slob like you wouldn’t believe, you know?

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: But his house was clean. And he said, man, I spent a month cleaning. He said, and, you know, you got to – I did that mad clean. You know, you got to be mad to really clean. And my sister Amy and I were like, oh, we thought we were the only ones who did that. But, you know, when you start cleaning…

    MARTIN: Oh, yeah.

    SEDARIS: …You just get furious.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Not at who left the mess but, like, I have things that I go back to. And I was cleaning. And then I was like, oh, the priest’s wife in 1968, you know? And I’m…

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: …Cleaning my bathroom, thinking, oh, I wish I’d said this to her when she told me that. So I can really hold onto things.

    MARTIN: It’s an effective motivator. Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: It’s like you get your aggression out.

    SEDARIS: Well, it’s like a steam engine. You know, you’re shoveling coal into the…

    MARTIN: Yeah. Right, right.

    SEDARIS: …Steam engine. But yeah, the past is – and it could even be yesterday, you know?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: I mean, but that’s where my material is.

    MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    SEDARIS: My material is not ahead of me. It’s all behind me.

    MARTIN: Yeah. OK.

    SEDARIS: This is a really good way to do an interview.

    MARTIN: Well, thanks. Yeah, it’s kind of fun. One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: Three.

    MARTIN: Are there any reoccurring symbols that show up in your life?

    SEDARIS: Turtles.

    MARTIN: (Laughter) Turtles? Really?

    SEDARIS: Yeah, it just – it all comes back to turtles.

    MARTIN: I mean, doesn’t it, though?

    SEDARIS: Yeah.

    MARTIN: I mean, I have no idea. But just tell me why.

    SEDARIS: I don’t know. I just wind up writing about turtles a lot. They just show up. There’s no escaping them. They’re just everywhere. I mean, they don’t live in England. There are no turtles living in England, so I don’t even have them there. But then I’ll come back to the United States, and it’s like, turtles again? I just…

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: …See them everywhere. You know, we – you’ll be driving, and there’ll be, like, a snapping turtle trying to cross the highway, or…

    MARTIN: No, that doesn’t happen.

    SEDARIS: It doesn’t?

    MARTIN: No (laughter).

    SEDARIS: Oh. But, gosh, there’s a spot – a place in North Carolina where all these turtles get run over ’cause they’re trying to mate. And so…

    MARTIN: Oh, maybe it does happen.

    SEDARIS: And it’s like, not the highway. Not the highway. And then they just get run over, and it’s just the saddest thing.

    MARTIN: Oh, my gosh.

    SEDARIS: And you wish that they could…

    MARTIN: Have you ever hit a turtle?

    SEDARIS: I’ve never driven.

    MARTIN: What?

    SEDARIS: I’ve never driven a car. I don’t want to hit turtles.

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: That’s what I decided when I was young, you know? What if I was driving at night and not paying attention and I hit a turtle? How could I live with myself?

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: No, I never learned to drive a car.

    MARTIN: I mean, that is wild because you didn’t always live in cities. But…

    SEDARIS: No, but you know what? If I didn’t learn to drive a car, I wouldn’t be sitting here. You know, because other people my age were out going wherever they wanted to in a car. And I was, like, at home, and I thought, well, how do I entertain myself at home? So…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …I started off doing artwork, and then I started writing. But if I had the world at my fingers, you know, like…

    MARTIN: Like, when you were 16, you just had no desire? Or whenever you could get your license…

    SEDARIS: I took driver’s ed, but then I hit a mailbox.

    MARTIN: Ah.

    SEDARIS: And I thought, what if that had been a turtle?

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: How would I live with myself? And I never drove again.

    MARTIN: That’s not true.

    SEDARIS: Well, Hugh – OK. Maybe 10 years ago, Hugh and I were in New Zealand. And Hugh said, you drive. And I…

    MARTIN: But you don’t have your license (laughter).

    SEDARIS: No.

    MARTIN: That seems unsafe.

    SEDARIS: But we were just on the driveway of our hotel. And I drove the car over to a stone wall, (imitating scraping sound) scraped the whole side of the car…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …On the stone wall.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: I couldn’t go straight. I freaked out, and I got – I don’t know how people stay in the middle of the road.

    MARTIN: Well, first of all, we don’t do this.

    SEDARIS: You don’t?

    (LAUGHTER)

    MARTIN: We try to get – 10 and two, David.

    SEDARIS: Oh.

    MARTIN: You keep your hands at 10 and two. Yeah. OK. Last one. One, two or three?

    SEDARIS: One.

    MARTIN: One. What’s something you want younger generations to understand?

    SEDARIS: What’s something I want younger generations…

    MARTIN: What is your wisdom to bestow to the youngs…

    SEDARIS: …To understand?

    MARTIN: …Or share with them?

    SEDARIS: One thing you can’t – you don’t have when you’re young that you get when you’re old is that I can look at somebody now, and I can see what they looked like when they were young. And I can recognize that they had a youth, and I can see somebody. Like, this woman had defecated in her pants on the plane, and she’s coming up the aisle, you know, and they’re taking her off the plane. And I saw her when she was 20, and she was so beautiful. And I could give her that courtesy. Do you know what I mean?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: Because…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: But I couldn’t have if I were younger. I would just say – you know, like, you don’t imagine an older person having a life, really…

    MARTIN: Right. That’s true.

    SEDARIS: …You know, when you’re younger.

    MARTIN: Yeah. Right.

    SEDARIS: And I think it’s just something that comes with age. And I don’t know that you even could do that when you’re young, and maybe that’s what – part of what – it’s part of the – I don’t want to say self-centeredness. It’s something you can’t know when you’re young.

    MARTIN: Right.

    SEDARIS: You know?

    MARTIN: But there – well, but there is – I hear you saying it is worth the time to think of the sum total of a person and not just this one experience or this one judgment of them, but to imagine them as a fully developed, 360-degree human who was a child, who was an adolescent, who has made other mistakes, who has done wonderful things and maybe you’re catching them at a bad moment…

    SEDARIS: Well, but then, too, I just say this now…

    MARTIN: …Pooping their pants.

    SEDARIS: …When it behooves me, you know? So when I’m the one who defecates in my pants, you know, people are going to be like, he was hot when he was 19, you know.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SEDARIS: Like that’s going to really going to do me any good, you know?

    MARTIN: (Laughter).

    SEDARIS: But I don’t know. I still feel that if you work hard, you can get stuff, you know? I don’t feel like it’s hopeless. I don’t feel that it’s rigged. You know, I don’t feel that because I – that’s one thing. And I don’t – I mean, I don’t know that I work harder than anybody else. But I’m pretty sure that I do, you know.

    (LAUGHTER)

    SEDARIS: And so I just say that from experience, you know? And nobody had more – I don’t know. Like, I kind of got a late start in what I do. It never occurred to me that I could be on the radio with this voice. You know, I grew up at a time when, you know, radio – people on the radio had really beautiful voices. And it would be like thinking that I could be a hand model if I had, like, you know, rheumatoid arthritis. Like, that would’ve never occurred to me that I could have – you know, so things change and doors open. And – but, you know, unless you do the work, it’s not going to…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know, it’s not going to happen for you. And I guess the – just the value of that and the way that – the pleasure it can bring you…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …I think, is profound. And – I don’t know – it’s brought me a lot of pleasure in my life. And, you know, finding your way like that and kind of creating a career for yourself and making a – you know, carving a path in the world.

    MARTIN: Sounds like you’re still a rather optimistic person.

    SEDARIS: I think I am. And that’s a good quality. I…

    MARTIN: I mean, snarky, let’s be clear, but also optimistic.

    SEDARIS: (Laughter) Yeah. I am. I keep hoping that they’ll open a Four Seasons in Kansas City.

    (LAUGHTER)

    MARTIN: You were so (laughter)…

    SEDARIS: (Laughter).

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    MARTIN: David Sedaris, we end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. In the time machine, you revisit one moment from your past. It is not a moment you want to change anything about, but it is a moment you’d like to linger in a little longer. What moment do you choose?

    SEDARIS: I am a senior in high school. It is an October afternoon, and it’s perfect fall weather. And I brought the stereo. My sister, Gretchen, had a stereo that was in a cabinet, and I brought it outside into the backyard and plugged it in. And I’m listening to Phoebe Snow’s first album, and I’m raking leaves. And I – it is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. And I wish I could go back and linger there. I remember – just because growing up in North Carolina, it could be October, and then all of a sudden, it’s, like, 90…

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: …And high humidity. And this was a perfect fall day – perfect. And I had my little perfect fall clothes on. And I had an activity, you know, to rake the leaves in the backyard.

    MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah.

    SEDARIS: And I didn’t – and I think, you know, I don’t know what’s in store for me, but I think on my deathbed, I’ll think, well, let me go back then. And there weren’t even other people around. I – but I remember, I was going to be seeing people that night, so I had that to look forward to.

    MARTIN: Yeah, anticipation.

    SEDARIS: But – and it was so simple.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know what I mean? I think people – I was invited to the Academy Awards this year and just based on something that I wrote. It wasn’t a movie. I wrote something about a movie, and they liked what I’d written, so they invited me. And so I was in the audience, and I was thinking, people winning the award, you have to worry that what if this is it? What if this is the best moment of your life? And I always thought I wanted the best moment in my life to just be – in retrospect, I would see, like, oh, it was that, and it was so simple.

    And it didn’t take – it’s never taken much to make me happy, you know, really, when you – and, you know, good weather can just be, you know, just a beautiful fall day. And I like the autumn and being in a nice place. And, you know, where we live in England, in the countryside, it’s so beautiful. It doesn’t – I don’t – I can’t get used to it. It’s so beautiful. And I think there’s something about thinking you deserve to live in beauty, you know?

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: ‘Cause you resist that, and you think, I don’t deserve this. Something’s – they’re going to take this away from me. I shouldn’t have this. But then when you add the right music, and then if you add the right weather, that’s really all it takes. And – but I was so – and I just had my whole life ahead of me, and I didn’t know. You know, I knew what I hoped, you know, it would be. I just wanted people to know my name. I wanted that so bad. And I don’t know why. You know, didn’t matter anything to other people, but – and it was really important to me that that happened. And, you know, when you’re – it’s not like you’re 30, and you’re like, it hasn’t happened yet and you’re – you have a feeling like, oh, you could be a failure. You’re 17.

    MARTIN: Yeah.

    SEDARIS: You know?

    MARTIN: It’s all before you.

    SEDARIS: And it’s a great day, and you have a rake in your hands, you know? What could be better?

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    MARTIN: David Sedaris. His newest book is called “The Land And Its People.” It has been such a pleasure. Thanks for doing this.

    SEDARIS: Oh, it’s been a real pleasure for me, too.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    MARTIN: So if you’re a David Sedaris fan, or if you heard him for the first time in this episode and you dug what you heard, I would recommend checking out my conversation with comedian Tig Notaro. Tig and David Sedaris have this style where they are just having the time of their lives, observing all the weird stuff humans do. And they’d be doing it anyway if no one was listening, but we are. It’s like we, the audience, are being invited into their hilarious inner dialogue. My conversation with Tig was one of my favorites.

    This episode was produced by Alicia Zheng and Summer Thomad. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Andie Huether. WILD CARD’s executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni, and our theme music is by Ramtin Arablouei. You can reach out to us at wildcard@npr.org. We’re going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)