Fresh Air - Best Of: Laverne Cox /Comic Ali Siddiq

Episode Date: June 27, 2026

For over a decade, Laverne Cox has been one of the most visible trans women in America. In her new memoir, ‘Transcendent,’ she writes about growing up in Mobile, Ala., and the bullying and harassment she faced. She says she survived it by going somewhere else in her mind, often through music and dance.Also, we hear from comic Ali Siddiq. He served six years in a Texas prison and turned his life into some of the most-watched storytelling in comedy.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From W. H.Y.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, Laverne Cox. For over a decade, she's been one of the most visible trans women in America. And her new memoir, Transcendant, she writes about growing up in Mobile, Alabama. And the bullying and harassment she faced as a feminine child who could not conform to what was expected of her. She writes about how she got through it, by, in a way, leaving her body and going somewhere else in her mom. A lot of the time, that place was music and dance. I just love pushing the grocery cart and then dancing with the grocery cart as if it was like a partner. Did you have headphones on, a walkman?

No, darling, the music was in my head and the groove is in the heart. Also, we hear from comedian Ali Sadiq. He served six years in a Texas prison and turned his life into some of the most watched storytelling and comedy. This is Fresh Air Weekend. Mosley, and my guest today is Laverne Cox. Chances are, you met her the way most of the world did, as a transgender woman in prison, doing hair and fighting for her right to gender-affirming care in the Netflix series, Orange is the New Black. Listen, Doc, I need my dosage. I've given five years $80,000 in my freedom for this.

I'm finally who I'm supposed to be. Do you understand? I can't go back. Look, I'd like to help you. Unfortunately, you have elevated levels of AST and ALT, which could mean liver damage. That's bull-h-that can mean anything. We're going to take you off your hormones entirely. Until we can schedule an ultrasound, get a clean read. But that could take months. I can offer you an antidepressant.

That's Laverne Cox, is Sophia Berset in 2014. The role made her the first openly transgender person nominated for a primetime Emmy in an acting category and put her on the cover of Time magazine next to the words, the transgender tipping point. For a decade now, she's been one of the most visible trans women in America. But the woman on that magazine cover was carrying things she'd never told anyone, not even her therapist. She's written a new memoir titled Transcendant, and it arrives at a moment when her right to simply exist. is being debated in state houses across the country. But the book makes clear that for Cox,

none of this is new. Long before she had the words for it, she was bullied for who she was. Her very existence, as she writes, was an affront to the order of things. And she's been fighting for the right to simply be her entire life. Leverne Cox, welcome to fresh air.

It's such an honor to have you. Thank you so much for having me. I have not heard. It's rare that I just hear the clip from Orange, and it's been so long. And I, gosh, it brings back memories. And it's really, what's interesting is even for actors out there, often when I watch a scene that I've done, it's hard for me to have distance. I immediately am in the character again, and I'm in the emotion of the scene.

And so I'm immediately, like, feeling what I was feeling when we shot this. This is 2012 that we shot it. It was funny. I was just like... Yeah, it made you laugh. Why did it make you laugh? No, at the end, I mean, the writing is so fantastic. Maybe I can offer you an antidepressant.

It's hilarious. Well, Orange is the New Black was revolutionary for the time. And your character, I was very surprised to learn from the book that you weren't a regular reoccurring character. You were a guest star. Yes. And, I mean, that's really a contractual thing. So I was in, I think, I remember how many episodes I was in the first season, But I remember it was a day-to-day thing.

I didn't have like a contract the first season. I was literally a day player, guest star, day player. But I was kind of making day player rates. I wasn't making like guest star rates. The second season, my salary was like a guest star rate. And I had like, I think a seven-episode guarantee. And it ended up using me for nine episodes. So I was there a lot.

And they wrote generously for me. I think because that my backstory episode came, it was the third episode of the show that people thought. It felt like you were a cast member. Yes. Yeah. I think people think because so much of the work that you have done feel so true to life that so much of that show might be your life.

And I think it's part of what makes this book really eye-opening because we're learning things about you that we didn't know. I want to start with the beginning of your book. Okay. Because you're eight years old. You decide to start at a moment when you're eight years old. You are at a park near you. your family's apartment in Mobile, Alabama, you're doing your kid thing and just playing out.

And there are these boys that come up to you, the caraway boys. And they begin teasing you, and then it gets violent. Can I have you pick up the story from there? During one of these teasing sessions, while you talk like that, one of the caraway boys shoved me. I don't even remember which one. They were interchangeably menacing figures. This time, I couldn't keep my balance and found myself falling, hitting the gravel of the playground. I scowled, annoyed at first. But then, looking up at them, I saw the switch flip in their eyes. I saw that flicker of threat.

The way their stances shifted into those of aggression that made the hairs on my arm stand on end. They were disgusted by me. I was no longer a friend, up here, someone to play with. I was an easy target. I was prey. Their fist landed in unison on my face, my chest. Hmm. You see this f***? Look at this sissy, like a girl.

One of them sneered, half laughing in glee as they punched me. their voices blended into one as they pelted me, hurling every name they could think of, and my instinct, from as far back as the days of daycare bullying took over, rolling me onto my side and into a ball. The words rang in my ears, those from the past intermingling with those of the caraway boys. I had heard these words before.

At first, I had not known what they meant, but now, after years of it, I recognized them, words that meant I was different from the other kids, a girl when I should have acted like a boy. Laverne, thank you for reading that passage. You go on to say that you curl up in a ball and it doesn't stop. They get energized.

And finally, you're able to make it home. And you get into your apartment and your mom sees you. And she doesn't say what happened to you. She immediately says, you let them beat you up like this. What did you do to make them do this to you? Why did you want to start the book off with that particular story? I don't know. That was my life.

I mean, I think that was like just the physical violence of the other children that was persistent throughout my childhood. And then my mother finding out, and instead of having an impulse to protect me or care for me or ask if I was okay, she made it my fault. And it just, in a way, it sort of epitomizes that kind of feeling of not feeling protected, not feeling safe. It sort of encapsulates a lot of the childhood. I'm, you know, reading that again, I have to say, it's still difficult to read. It's still difficult to, yeah. You grew up inside of people's reactions to you. Yeah.

an effeminate child, a gender non-conforming teenager, a trans woman, and everything that you received, it was like race, gender, and class converging into one person. What really struck me from that very first story throughout the entire book is the shame and hatred that people carried, they took it out on you. and it even happened in your home. Mm-hmm. Yes. I'm just trying to gather my resilience.

And, like, well, I guess I'm, like, having, there's, like, reading that I'm just, like, I'm emotional, I'm angry. It's, like, it's hard to read that. Obviously, I lived it, but it's hard to read about it again. I guess and understand as an adult, like, a... I'm angry at the boys. I'm angry at my mother. I want to protect that little child. I'm just so, I'm so angry. And I think like, yeah, I don't know if I can be able to read excerpts from this book again. We'll see. I'm just, I'm so pissed. I'm so angry and I'm so hurt and I'm so. What are the words, the anger comes from you having to experience it? And it's, it's, there's also like the anger of all the kids that I've met who are trans or queer who are still experiencing this. And the anger of knowing that in states that have passed anti-trans laws that the bullying percentage,

of bullying is like skyrocketed in those states. You hear a lot of stories. A lot of stories, but that's actually, those are statistics. Like, those are the anecdotes, but those are the stats from the Trevor Project. Because to manufacture the consent to pass anti-trans laws that would ban gender affirming care for kids and, and the menace of trans girls in sports, all like two of them, there's the rhetorical piece that happens in the media that is dehumanizing and stigmatizing trans people and it creates a permission structure if like your, you know, governor and your state

legislators are doing. If you're, you know, your teachers and, I mean, you know, pundits on TV are doing it, then, like, of course, kids are emboldened to do it. And that makes me so angry. And, you know, it's like the sadness is like, you know, it's just the loneliness and I couldn't process it fully as a child, and I don't know. It just really sucked. This was so, it was torture to write this. And the reason I wrote it is to tell the truth. I'm like, I just don't think it's, it makes any sense to write a book

and like to clean stuff up and to like not be honest and not be raw. Our guest today is Laverne Cox. Her new memoir is called Transcendent. More of our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. I want to go back to your home and your mom and your decision to write all of this down because the majority of the book takes place in your childhood. Tell me about Mobile, Alabama and that home that you grew up in.

How would you describe it? Mobile, it's interesting. I go back now, and I find it quaint and way too hot in the summer. But like the azaleas, there was lots of beautiful. things about it, and there are all these antebellum homes that still exist on like government street. And there's something quaint about parts of it. And there's just a lot of trauma, though, literally on the streets, particularly in the old neighborhood where my mom still lives. Like there's trauma on those streets for me.

Is that a part of town? What part of town is that? We would call it down the bay. Down the bay. And it's where most of the black people in Mobile live. And yeah, and it's downtown. It's downtown Mobile. which I think is fantastic, but because the Ample Square and like the Mardi Gras parades, Madagra started a Mobile in this country, not in New Orleans, as some people might think. And so the Madagra parades happen downtown. And I love it.

And you grew up with your mother and your twin brother. And my twin brother, yes. Yeah, Mobile, though, when I was growing up there, I was just, I just desperate. I needed to get out. It was awful. It felt repressive. And I just knew I needed to be. The second I discovered there was in New York, I knew I had to be there.

And so most of my childhood, I was in Mobile, but I was in my imagination. I was in New York, or I was on a TV screen, or I was on a movie screen, or I was on a Broadway stage. Yeah, it's interesting. The book is called Transcendant. And in a way, it sounds like disassociating was your way to transcend as a child. What were some of the ways that you would try to transcend? end? I always had, there was always music in my head, which is such a wonderful gift. And so I just, from the second I was walking, I was dancing. And I was dancing, I danced everywhere. And it just

kind of like, it just took me away. It took me away from like, so, because for me, when I dance, there was some music, but then there was like a character. There was a person that I could play. So I was like in a character. And then I was, it would be a new setting. And so like, all the time we would be at the supermarket in the grocery store. I just love pushing the grocery cart and then dancing with the grocery cart as if it was like a partner. Did you have headphones on, a Walkman? No, darling. The music groove is in the heart. A Walkman. This is like, I mean, I'm, you know, I was five years old. It would have been in 77. Did Walkmans even exist? We couldn't afford one if they did. The music was in my head and the groove is in the heart. And

And actually, in the supermarket, they would play music. And I remember loving TV show themes. I would learn the worst as TV show themes and sing along and dance to them. So there was always like a song and a rhythm and then a character and movement. And it was so amazing that I got to do, that I had that, that I could go there. And then when I discovered that you could study dance, I was like, I want to take dance classes. I want to take dance classes at five years old. And I won't give away that moment from the book.

It's a little humorous moment about that. But finally in third grade, I got to start studying dance. And that really, that was the best thing ever for me. This disassociation, this going to all of these different places. I mean, this would happen to you everywhere, at home, at school. And there's a particular moment in school where you've got your little fan and you're in your classroom. And something happens that kind of stays with you for the rest of your life. Yeah, that was certainly a moment.

So we had gone to Six Flags on a church trip and I had some spending money and bought a handheld fan at the gift shop at Six Flags. And as the women in church would fan themselves and as Scarlet O'Hara would fan herself, I had seen Galem at the Wind on television. It seemed like it was always on in Alabama. Go figure. And I was having a Scarlet O'Hara moment fanning myself in the beginning of the day in third grade. And my third grade teacher, Miss Ridgeway, says, you there, come here and bring that thing with you, and she marches me down the hall to the fourth grade teacher and tells me to show her what I was doing with my fan. And so I proceed to fan myself the way I had in class.

in class and she tells me to stop and I wait and she had conferences with that teacher and then she marches me down the hall of the fifth grade teacher and tells me to do it again and I was like well maybe I didn't do it you know maybe I didn't fully commit so I committed more and really really dropped into Scarlet and then later that day my mother comes in and it and Rick tells me she had gotten a call from the school from Miss Ridgeway and Miss Ridgeway said that that I would end up in New Orleans wearing a dress if we didn't get me into therapy right away. I understand now is what some people refer to as conversion therapy.

I guess there's different kinds. But at the time, after three sessions with a therapist, the solutioner, the thing that they suggested, what we do was to inject me with testosterone and that the idea was that that was supposed to make me more masculine. and I would not, that there was a hormone issue. This would have been 1980, yeah, 1980, 81. And you were how old?

I was eight, nine years old. Hadn't even started going through puberty. So they were suggesting, injecting an eight, nine-year-old with testosterone, which sounds insane to me. My mother, thank God, said no to that. And so it was, I just felt relief that that didn't happen to me. It's so fascinating to read about your early days in New York. and sounds like you were pretty discerning

about what scenes you were part of because you didn't see yourself fitting into the drag queen world. You understood and appreciated what they did and you understood with these other groups like there were all these other groups and you were part of a club kid group. I was so there was a very,

like in the early 90s there was kind of there was the downtown kids there were the uptown kids like I was a downtown girl I was East Village, really East Village because the gender non-conforming thing the androgynous thing that I was doing when I moved to New York in 1993 fit better in the East Village.

By the time I made it to New York, I was wearing dresses. Lots of vintage things. I had a black LeMay vintage dress that I would wear. And then I would incorporate dancewear so I could go out and dance and really do my thing. So a good chunky heel,

platform heel, and my head was shaved. And I shaved my brows and drew them on. And a lot of people, and I thought Grace Jones because his look was very androgynous. The drag scene I wasn't in but I also like I had

I had internalized transphobia and like for me there was because by this time by the time I made it to New York I'd also read Bell Hooks and so I had and I'd read other feminist writers who were very skeptical of drag

and this performance of womanhood that was sort of seen as mockery by some feminist and so I was sort of contending with that in trying to like navigate my newfound feminist politics with like my gender and not wanting to sort of like feed into some sort of retrograde idea of womanhood.

So there was also that was introduced in college, but underneath all of that was like a deep, deep transphobia that I'd internalized. That read as discernment, but really it was. It was a lot of, it was like I was terrified of ending up in New Orleans wearing a dress. Because I think in my mind, too, if I embraced the womanhood, the girlhood that I knew I was.

And in my mind, I thought that, like, on top of, like, you know, all the stigma, that you are a degenerate or something that I think I didn't internalize about trans people. It's also that I didn't think I could be smart, even though I loved smart women. I think there was just something about, I was never presented with images of drag performers or trans women on television. I even saw trans women on television at the time that were articulate and intellectual. And even as I entered the club scene, there were so many really, really smart drag performers who were just brilliant artist.

But I needed time to let all that stuff go. And I just needed time. Laverne Cox, it's been such a pleasure to meet you and thank you for this conversation. Thank you. This has really been wonderful. Laverne Cox's new memoir is called transcendent. My next guest is Ali Sadiq. 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 realize Sadiq 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. Sadiq 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 Sadiq and his dad before his father died in 2018. It premieres on YouTube June 21st. Here's a clip. My dad had a thing about how he dress. My dad always wore a tailor-made suits. This is when he was on his note, when he was on his note. Because he was a, it's not a lot of men can say how they, 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 itself. But he just wasn't an ideal father. My dad asked me one time, I'm sitting at his house, and my daddy said, man, why are you? you don't never say nothing bad about your mom on stage. Ali, Sadiq, welcome to fresh air.

Thank you for having me. 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? 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. You know, I get a lot of views, but it's definitely 10 views, 15 views that I missed because 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 about 15, 10, 15 times. So I'm always missing those 10 or 15 views that I know that I would get from him. Your daddy, he left when you were three, but you'd see him every blue moon. But then around 10 he comes back into your life. You went to live with him. And it seems like he was very much,

do as I say, not as I do. When did you first understand that contradiction? Oh, man. Probably the first year I lived with him. Like, yo, my dad was, 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. But yet he asked for you to live with him. He asked, but I don't think he was ready.

You know, people ask for a lot of things they're not ready for. And I'm like not a human though I didn't think I didn't think a human was a part of that But he definitely He definitely wasn't ready yet You know because he couldn't have been Like when I look back at it I'm like yo Bro you, it's no way

That you was ready for me to come live with you Because 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, bro, like, what do you think?

What am I supposed to do that you're going to go to San Antonio? He's like, just do what you've been doing. Get yourself up, getting ready to go to school. You know how to, hey, bro, that's not how to go, man. I've never been in a house by myself before. Like, what's wrong with you? Ali, Abhi, is it true that, okay, you tell this story about him putting cocaine on a sore wisdom, too?

And I was wondering, is this true or is this just for laughs? 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 that this is a true story because 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 and Ivory. And James was the one that saw me sitting on the step. And he was like, what's up? Because my dad's name is Lindbergh. And he called me La Bird. La Bird, what's going on? And I said, I told him about my two.

And then my daddy called me over and said, let me see. And put that cocaine on my two. I said, this man. I didn't even know that's what it was. I just know it was the stuff that was in the cool whip tub that was in the refrigerator. Wait, he kept the cocaine in a cool-wit tub in the refrigerator. And yeah, the big cool-wip thing, you know how cool-whip is coming in that little container, that big container. Oh, yeah, and you reuse them.

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-wip. But things that could have happened, you know? The things that could have happened. If I were to dip, because he always had strawberries. My dad loves strawberries, right?

So he always had strawberries in the house. And I was like, y'all, when I thought about it, if I would have just took one of the strawberries and put it in that cool whip, both thinking it was cool whip, because I still would have ate it even though I would have thought the cool wheel was bad. I'm like, oh, the cool, it's fizzing out. And then I'm like, that's what it would look like to me. I said, he was so, so irresponsible.

It's crazy. Okay, he dips a little cocaine on that sore wisdom tooth. What happened to you? Never had a problem that wisdom tooth can. Never even needed to have it taken out, huh? Never. I probably still got that tooth in my mouth right now. It never had a problem.

I don't even remember getting my wisdom tooth taken out, ever. Luckily, I don't have an addictive personality. I can just stop doing stuff. Hopefully that was it, because my husband. 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.

We're listening to my conversation with comedian Ali Sadiq. We'll hear more after a short break. This is Fresh Air Weekend. let's go back to young Ali Sadiq. Before the comedy, you are 14 years old. You start selling drugs. You like to joke on stage. You say I was a pharmaceutical sales rep.

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? 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, okay, I hold you back. But I was done. It had become like, man, what am I? doing. You know. Because you started in the first place because you, you wanted money. You wanted to,

you wanted your own money. 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 have just worked for money. You know, I could have just did something else. 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 that I owe I owe this world something. Because you sold drugs. Like you owe back because of that harm you did. That's interesting. 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, you think back on these things,

you can't help but to have a heavy heart. I remember I was in San Francisco, So the homeless population is so crazy. And I'm at this Comedy Central festival. It's a comedy festival. And I'm walking from a 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 didn't walk 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 mind. 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 as people doing things that they would

probably never do in order that there's ruining relationships that's that's what child didn't get fed because they they they mom and their father decided to do this and what uncle or aunt stole something like what did I do did you and your dad ever talk about this that because you know I mean he sold drugs and then you went on to to sell drugs we never talked about it because my dad ended up using drugs that was the the lick that society

he took back. I remember a story that I told about some young guys. I come on the block and they told me they had robbed these old guys. And I looked at the stuff that they had 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 and stuff back. And I said, man, what a, man, what were you? doing over there? And my dad blamed on his friend, told him, man, 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, boy, I didn't put your dad in rehab twice since we've been apart. And so I went back and told him, I said, hey, I thought you said, you weren't using drugs. And my mom, and he said, and he said, said, who told you that your mama? Man, your mama, um, your mama violated my hip rights.

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, um, unfortunately, the rumor around where my dad, um, is gone.

It's, 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. The rumor that he died because of an overdose? Yeah. Yeah. He had a heart attack.

And I know he hadn't been. You see? 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. You said it's a rumor.

Do you believe that it might be true? I leave it to not want to know if it is or it's not. I don't. It doesn't change the fact that he's gone. So how he went gives me no closure on that. the wound is still there so I'd rather live in the

hour last days of we played chess about six hours against each other we played chess so long that I stayed overnight another day and then went right back over his house and we started playing chess again

and my dad was a great chess player and I've never I beat him twice since I've learned. You know, six years old. You're talking about six. I beat him twice ever. So I'd rather stay in that lane of me and him play chess for hours on end versus if he overdosed or not. Ali, thank you for sharing this and that.

And that guilt you feel. about selling drugs that you carry that, because I feel like I, I, I kind of feel like I feel it when I watch you, especially in this, this documentary, really, that you did called Ali Sadiq from inside. It's this real conversation filmed inside of a Texas County jail. And I actually want to play a clip of it because it is not a comment special. It's you in a room with inmates and you are standing in front of them, talking to them,

telling them stories for almost two hours straight about your experience being locked up. And in this clip, you're talking about the psychological effects of being locked up, which included you remembering your inmate number, which you call a spin number. Let's listen. Ask the old heads that been here before Ask them do they remember they were original Spin number This is the shit that haunts me I've been out for 25 years

Almost 26 years 679346 I can't forget this number It's ingrained in my head Like my Social Security number It's my name It's my slavery number. 67.9346.

That's my guest Ali Sadiq and 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 are out of prison?

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'm gonna 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 gonna lose some skin in this game. 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? 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. 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 of 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. I want to talk to you briefly about parenthood, about you being a father. You're 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've 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, and fire when he's 11. Let's listen. 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. My son Hassan, he's 11. His first concert was Earth, Win and Fire.

And he asked to go. He asked to go. My son came in to me and said, Father, because he's very up across. 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. And I teared up. I teared up. My son wanted to go see the elements. And I said, wait, who are the elements, Hassan? Is it some little white internet group that you've been listening to?

Hassan said, no, father. They're formally known as Earthwind and fire. I immediately ran and got them tickets. I wanted to get them tickets for me and my son, me and my son going to see Earth, wind and fire. He is 11. He's 11 years old. We went to this first concert. Me and him, we go on. We get to the concert. Hassan is the youngest person in his whole entire concert. And I know that for facts, because I am the second youngest person. That was my guest today in his latest special, My Father. And, Ali, that whole special, you marveling at your boozy 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. 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 to his own certain struggles, you know, because it's a certain struggle that happens in softness as well. But, you know, whether he won't oysters or crab, you know, There's dilemma for him.

So 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. 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 Bonny James concert or something? I just I just love him. I just love the softness of his life. Ali Sadiek, it has been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for this special and your time. Pleasure is all mine. I thank you very. very much. Ali Sadiq's new special is called My Father. Fresh Year weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.

Fresh Year's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorak, Anne-Marie Baldenato, Lauren Crenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challoner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Balman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CB Nesper. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.