Fresh Air - Best Of: Learning From Silence / Comic Roy Wood Jr.

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

Writer Pico Iyer lost everything in a 1990 California wildfire. After being rendered homeless and sleeping on a friend's floor, he was told about a Benedictine monastery. His time spent in silence on retreat there changed him both as a person and as a writer. He spoke with Terry Gross about his new memoir about the experience, Aflame. Also, comic and former Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. talks with Tonya Mosley about his new comedy special, Lonely Flowers. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Okay, so does this sound like you? You love NPR's podcasts, you wish you could get more of all your favorite shows, and you want to support NPR's mission to create a more informed public. If all that sounds appealing, then it is time to sign up for the NPR Plus bundle. Learn more at plus.npr.org. From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Sam Brigger with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Pico Eyer talks about coming out the other side of the 1990 wildfire that burned down his Santa Barbara home and kept him trapped for three hours until he was rescued. After being rendered homeless, sleeping on a friend's floor, he was told about a Benedictine monastery where they accept a few guests at a time.

So it was the fact of being stripped down to nothing that made a Catholic monastery seductive to me. His new memoir is called A Flame. Also we hear from Roy Wood Jr. His new comedy special Lonely Flowers looks at why people are so disconnected. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This message comes from Wyse, the app for doing things in other currencies. Sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With Wyse, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate. Visit Wyse.com.

TNCs apply. Consider this is a daily news podcast and lately the news is about a big question. How much can one guy change? They want change. What will change look like for energy? Drill, baby drill. Schools? Take the Department of Education, close it. Healthcare? Better and less expensive. Follow coverage of a changing country. Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises. On Consider This, the afternoon news podcast from NPR. Matt Wilson spent years doing rounds at children's hospitals in New York City.

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have in common, they've all played behind NPR's Tiny Desk. And if you enter NPR's Tiny Desk contest between now and February 10th, you could be next. Unsigned musicians can find out more and see the official rules at npr.org slash tiny desk contest. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Terry has our first interview. I'll let her introduce it. When we first booked today's interview weeks ago, we had no idea how timely it would be, and for such a tragic reason. My guest Pico Iyer has written a new memoir about what he's experienced and learned in the more than 30 years that he's been going on retreats in a Benedictine monastery to practice silence and for contemplation. To get both out of himself and the world and deeper in.

But the book begins with fire. And fire is a theme throughout. The monastery is surrounded by 900 acres of trees and on one side the ocean. It's in California's Big Sur, one of the most beautiful places in the U.S. On the first page, a monk is describing to Iyer a wildfire that came close to burning down the monastery. It wasn't the first time and it wasn't the last time. At one point the road was blocked and there was no way out. A little later in the book

we learned that Iyer's family home in Santa Barbara, where they had lived for about a quarter century, where he was living at the time with his mother, that burned to the ground. At the time, that fire was part of the worst fire in California history. He was at home, alone with his mother's cat, when he was suddenly surrounded by flames five stories high and had no way out. After three hours of terror, he was rescued by a good Samaritan traveling around in a water truck with a hose. He and his mother lost everything, but he survived and the cat survived. His memoir is titled A Flame, Learning from Silence. A flame is about the flame of passion and commitment in the monastic life, even for visitors on a retreat like him,

and it's about the destructive deadly flames of fire. Iyer is best known for his travel writing and for reporting and reflecting on the cultures and religions of the world. His previous book, The Half-Known Life in Search of Paradise, found him travelling around the world to discover what different cultures and religions perceive as paradise. Iyer has known the Dalai Lama for decades and is the author of an earlier book about him. He spent a lot of time in monasteries but remains secular. His mother was a professor

of comparative religion. He was born and grew up in England where his parents moved from India to study. When his parents moved to the U.S, he remained in an English boarding school. He received degrees from Oxford and Harvard. We recorded our interview Monday. Pico Eyer, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you back on the show. This is a very moving book and a really fascinating book because of your experiences at the monastery. Where are you now? I'm in Santa Barbara where happily today it's quite calm, the winds are low, and we're feeling very lucky compared with our neighbors, two hours to the south. Are you in the house that your mother had rebuilt after it burned to the ground?

I have been staying there. The house lacked all electricity. There was no phone that was working. But that's where I've been staying the last four nights. They turn off the power as a precaution, because the winds have been very high. So although there's no fire around us, I've been living by the light of a tiny lantern these last four days.

Why do you think your mother and the monastery keeps rebuilding when they know they're in the path of wildfires? In the case of my mother, it's a matter of insurance policy. So when our house burnt to the ground, we received a settlement which is enough to rebuild the house that you previously had, but probably not enough to buy a new property elsewhere. So almost logistically, you have to go back to the place that you just left, unless you want to radically leave your home, your friends, your doctor and dentist, and everything behind. In the case of the monks, they are making a commitment to living far from the world, at the grace of God, at the mercy of the heavens, not knowing what will come next. So there it's

more a conscious decision to live on the edge of the world and in the middle of the wilderness. I remember there's a great Zen monk who says a monk's duty is to live on the edge of the abyss, and that's what my Benedictine friends are doing in Big Sur. So you are trapped with flames five stories high. I don't even know how they would get that high since you weren't living in an apartment building or anything, but it seems like so terrifying. And I just wonder what went through your mind when you didn't think you had a way out? And did images, almost like biblical images

or images of Hindu funeral pyres because your parents were from India, they're Hindu. Did those kind of images flash before your eyes? I think it's one of those things that if you think about or remember or anticipate is terrifying, but when you're in the middle of it, you're just acting. So I climbed up the stairs, I saw that we were encircled by flames.

I literally didn't have time to pick up the stairs, I saw that we were encircled by flames, I literally didn't have time to pick up the passport that was two feet away, I just grabbed my mother's cat, raced into a car and drove down the driveway, not thinking that a car was probably the worst place to be. And I think actually having my mother's aging panting cat in my lap for three hours as we were encircled by flames was a great help because it allowed me to concentrate on keeping the cat alive and not just to think how vulnerable I was feeling. And I think also it was much easier for me to go through that whole experience because I'd been in the midst of the fire. My

poor mother at the end of that evening just received a phone call from me because she was away in Florida saying you've lost everything in the world. Your whole 60 years has been wiped out. And of course, she felt powerless in a way that I didn't because I felt so close to losing my life that at the end of that evening, losing all my possessions wasn't the end of the world. So you managed to get out of the house, but you were surrounded by flames in your car. Yes, and for 45 minutes we were actually right underneath the house so I could see the flames systematically making their way through our living room and then moving down to my bedroom where

all my childhood mementos and photos and toys were and then going on to my office and then really reducing my next eight years of writing, my next three books were all in handwritten notes to ash. And again, probably it was a good thing that I could witness that and to realize that it was inescapable. There's nothing I or anyone could have done to prevent the force of that fury. How were you changed after the fire? You'd lost all your possessions, you probably lost your manuscripts, your books, things that were really precious to you, probably photos, all kinds of things.

You cared for your mother, she was in great distress, but you probably had a new outlook on being alive. How were you changed? And is it the fire that led you to seek out monastic retreats? In a very practical way, it was a fire that moved me to seek out monastic retreats because I was sleeping on a friend's floor for many months as my mother and I slowly reconstructed our lives. And another friend came in and he saw me there and said, Pico, you can do better than this. And he told me about this Benedictine monastery three and a half hours up the coast.

And he said, well, if nothing else, you'll have a bed to sleep in there. You'll have a big desk. You'll have a beautiful walled private garden overlooking the Pacific Ocean, hot showers, food, all for $30 a night. And so it was a fact of being stripped down to nothing that made a Catholic monastery seductive to me, or the notion of any bed to sleep in appealing to me.

But in a deeper way, when I think back on it, I remember that as soon as a fire truck finally got to us and told me that it was safe to drive downtown, I went straight to a supermarket and I bought a toothbrush, and that toothbrush was literally the only downtown. I went straight to a supermarket and I bought a toothbrush and that toothbrush was literally the only thing I had in the world. And then I went to a friend's house to sleep on the floor. But before I went to sleep, I went to her computer because my job in those days was to be a columnist for Time magazine writing the back page essays. And I just had this eyewitness view on the worst fire in Californian history.

So I wrote an account then and there, the evening I lost everything. And to speak specifically to your question, when the insurance company offered to replace my possessions, I realized I could live without 90% of the books and clothes and furniture that I'd accumulated. In some ways, I could live much closer to the life I'd always lived, an uncluttered life. And having lost all my notes, I realized now I'm going to have to write for memory and emotion and imagination, which are really much deeper places.

So as the months unfolded, for all the sorrow and shock of that loss, I realized that maybe it was opening certain doors as well. Did you ask for everything to be replaced? No, I replaced very, very little. My mother and I were living in a temporary apartment for three and a half years, so in any case there wasn't much room. But I realized actually how little one needs to survive and that luxury is not really a

matter of how much you have but how much you don't need and Suddenly I awoke to the sense I didn't need a huge amount. I Wonder if things are really different for people who were parents. You weren't a parent at the time Yes, and also I should say that my mother was 59 at the time and I was 33 And so the notion of starting again was not something she could entertain. It was as if her whole past had been wiped to the ground and there was very little to look forward to. And in my case, my past had been wiped to the ground

and my future as I'd anticipated it had been eliminated. But at 33, of course, it's much easier to start afresh. And so I was fortunate in my circumstances. And as you say, so many people are not and my heart goes out to them. We're listening to Terry's interview with Pico Eyer. His new memoir is called A Flame, Learning from Silence. We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break. I'm Sam Brigger and this is Fresh Air Weekend. On the embedded podcast from NPR, what is it like to live under years of state surveillance?

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We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. So at the Benedictine monastery where you took refuge after the fire, they practiced silence there, and you practiced silence with intervals of talk as well. What did you find appealing about silence? Is that something you'd ever sought out before? It is something I'd sought out, and I probably have a kind of temperamental inclination towards monasteries. Even as a little boy, if I stepped into a convent or monastery, I felt a sudden longing the way other people may feel when they see a strawberry cheesecake or whatever. It spoke to something inside me. But I think the particular beauty of this silence is that it's not an absence of noise

It's almost a presence as if years of prayer and meditation not just in this monastery But in every convent and monastery have created these transparent walls where suddenly the world comes to you with greater immediacy and so the curious thing was as I drove up to the monastery, as usual, I was conducting arguments in my head and fretting about deadlines and worried about my tax return and concerned about my aging mother. And I stepped into the silence and all of that fell away. It was as if little Pico and his tiny thoughts were left down on the highway. And instead I was in the midst of this beautiful

scene above a radiant coastline and I was in some ways released from myself I felt and released from my endless chatter. It's funny speaking for myself sometimes when I'm really alone for an extended period of time my mind is quieter but other times the chatter gets louder because there's nothing to drown it out. You know, there's no outside world or outside, you know, outside of maybe like the TV or books or whatever, but there's nothing to drown out the chatter or to distract. Did you experience that too at any point? Well, as a writer, of course, I spend much of my day alone, and when I'm at my desk, the chatter is sometimes deafening. But what I experienced with the silence in the monastery

was something very different. I was just thinking as I was walking down to talk to you, that it's as if suddenly in the monastery I realized I wasn't the center of the world. And the sort of me part disappeared, and the world part became very strong. And the sort of me part disappeared and the world part became very strong. Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk who lived with silence for 27 years, wrote, when your mind is completely silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real.

And I think that's what I found. So although sometimes I've been there during storms and at very scary and uncertain times, my mind at least is quiet in a way that it isn't when I'm by myself elsewhere. Can you physically describe the monastery? Well Big Sur already is the place where the calendar falls away and the outside world feels very distant and you're on this 60-mile stretch of coastline in central California where humans feel very tiny because you're just in the presence of tall redwoods, the huge expanse of the uninterrupted ocean, the cliffs and the sky. And then right perched at the top of

a hill there is this 900 acres of dry golden hills, pampas grass, and a cluster of little huts where the monks stay and where their 15 or so visitors stay. So it's already one of the most beautiful sites on Earth. In 1996, because I travel a lot, National Geographic magazine very kindly came to me and they said, we'll send you anywhere in the world on our dime to write a piece About a special place and I'm sure they were thinking I would write about Tibet or Ethiopia or Antarctica

And I said the only place I can think of is Big Sur And so I just drove three and a half hours up the coast again because that is as unworldly a location as I know It is such a beautiful place. I don't mean the monastery itself, but Big Sur. And so I'm kind of wondering if going on a retreat there is like being in a privileged bubble or if it's like getting in touch with something so elemental, so essential about nature, about the world.

It's both. I'm very conscious, I'm very lucky that I can summon up the time and resources to go on retreats there every season, sometimes for as long as two weeks and three weeks, and one of the things that so disarms me is that the monks ask for so little, but still there is a voluntary donation involved. So I am keenly aware that many people in the world don't have that opportunity, but I do concentrate on silence

because that is available to anybody and somebody who can't go on retreat can still go on a walk, can still turn off the lights and listen to music, can still try to free herself from the clamor of the world. And in order to, just as you say, bring yourself back to a sort of deeper reality

that too often we forget. I think T.S. Eliot once wrote about the life we have lost in living. And I think many of us are crying out to find that life, but we're in such a rush, and the world is so distracted these days, we don't know how to put our hands on it. And I loved what you said in your introduction

about how this isn't about getting away from the world, but actually getting deeper into it. And in what ways do you feel like you get deeper into it when you're there? Because it's uncluttered and undistracted, and it's like having the most intimate conversation with the natural world. Again, as I'm talking to you here in Santa Barbara, my mind is too likely filled with the natural world. Again, as I'm talking to you here in Santa

Barbara, my mind is too likely filled with the email I just answered, the latest CNN update, the latest notification from United Airlines. As soon as I go there, where there is no cell phone connection, no internet, no television, I'm freed of all that clutter. And suddenly, as if I've come awake to the beauty of the ocean, I'm freed of all that clutter and suddenly it's as if I've come awake to the beauty of the ocean. I'm suddenly fascinated by the rabbit that's standing on the splintered fence in my garden. I'm suddenly watching the moon rise, which I could be doing at home, but as soon as I am tempted to do it at home I hear the phone ring or I think of the hundred emails I have to answer. I take walks along the road under this great overturned salt shaker of stars and suddenly I'm noticing everything around

me which sadly I don't do enough in the rest of my life. How do you spend your day at the monastery? Well that's the beauty because again that the monks have no rules and they really they don't ask you to attend services though there is five services a day You can seek out counsel from them which some people do but really they're just freeing you to do nothing at all Which is really the hardest thing in the world and it took me a while to realize it was only by doing nothing at all I could begin to do anything So the beauty of being there is that unlike every other day of my life, I have no plans.

I couldn't tell you what I'm going to do the next day I'm there. I wake up and I follow instinct. Maybe I'll take a walk. Maybe I'll read a book. Maybe I'll just sit out in my chair in my garden and look out at the sea. And I never allow myself that kind of latitude in my day-to-day life. And so every day really lasts a thousand hours. And one of the curiosities of it

is that I feel I'm on the ultimate holiday, or holy day. I feel as if I'm really doing nothing at all. And then when I return after three days, I open my suitcase and I find my heavens. I've written 40 pages and I've read six books while as far as I was concerned, I was just doing nothing.

Thank you so much. What a real delight, Terry. Thank you for the show. Thank you for inviting me to be on it and I really enjoyed talking to you. Pico Eyer spoke with Terry Gross. His new memoir is called A Flame, Learning from Silence. Our co-host Tanya Mosley has our next interview. Here's Tanya.

My guest today, comedian Roy Wood Jr., takes the serious, sometimes absurd stuff we deal with in everyday life and makes us laugh about it. Even news events that on the face of it are kind of scary, like white men in America gravitating to militia groups. You had to know the militias was coming. You knew it was coming. It's America. What are we doing in America gravitating to militia groups. You had to know the militias was coming. You knew it was coming. It's America.

What we do in America? You have progress, then you have backlash. That's the cycle of this country. Progress, then backlash. You knew the militias was coming. Just look at the last four, five years. You can't have the first black woman vice president, the first black woman Supreme Court justice,

and the first black woman mermaid. It was too much. And they couldn't handle it. That mermaid, that's the one that broke them, that damn mermaid. When they did that little mermaid remake, they was like, oh no, brothers. Meet me at the bakery tomorrow, brothers.

We're losing the White House. We're losing the courthouse. There's a n***a fish in the water, brothers. That's Roy Wood Jr. in his latest comedy special, Lonely Flowers, on Hulu. It's Wood's take on how isolation has sent society spiraling into a culture of guns, protests, rude employees, self-checkout lanes, sex parties, and he also talks about why some of us would rather be alone than connected.

Wood is known for his razor sharp wit. He spent years on the standup comedy circuit, dissecting pop culture and current events, and for nearly eight years, he was a correspondent for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Wood currently hosts the CNN News Quiz show Have I Got News for You, which was adapted from a long-running British series under the same name.

Roy Wood Jr., thank you for being here and welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me back. It is a pleasure. You know, at the end of that clip, I just played, you heard the beep. That was the N-word. It was part of the punchline that clip, I just played, you heard the beep, that was the N-word. It was part of the punchline that you use in the joke.

And it almost is like an exclamation point. And I know that you have weighed whether to use it. I think you talked about in another special how your uncle was like trying to not use it himself. Yeah, trying to quit it. He's on the patch. He's on the N-word patch. Right, right. He's on the N-word patch. How do you decide when to use it in your comedy?

I try to use it in scenarios where I feel like if I'm impersonating a person who would have said it or if it is a feeling of exasperation. It's like... if there is an emotion, then there is a word for it. And not everybody agrees with particular words, but I feel like once you've had the conscious thought,

then as they say, God knows your heart, well, then you said it. So I'm not going to say fricking or gosh darn, that just for me does not work. I have resigned myself to the truth though that certain words are going to nail to chalkboard certain people because they just don't like those words. And if that's the case, then I'm not sure if everything that I do is going to be for you. And that's fine.

And when done properly, a comedy booker told me ages ago, this was late 90s, she said profanity should be the seasoning, never the main ingredient. And so I curse way more when I am first starting a joke. And a lot of that is just nervousness and curse words become um words. Like if you saw me in a comedy club working new material

versus when it's polished, it's night and day. And so you have all of these curse words and they're scaffolding and then you slowly start taking the support beams away to see whether or not the joke is really funny. I did notice though, I mean, I noticed when you were on Conan O'Brien, his podcast, you used it and he didn't laugh, you know, because he kind of, it also can make people uncomfortable, right?

It can make people, they don't know if they can laugh at it. Can I laugh at this? Yeah. And that's the thing that for me, I'm just going to be my natural self. I'm not doing it deliberately to make you uncomfortable. But if you choose not to laugh, that's fine. I'm not the type of person that would trip at you laughing at it.

But you don't know that about me. You don't know what type of black person I am. So I'm not, I'm still being myself for the people who rock with what I do. And if they get it, they get it. And if you choose not to laugh at that line, but you laugh at the next joke, cool. We're perfectly fine.

But I just, I've lost the desire to change how I am in the presence of everyone to make them feel comfortable because then when am I ever myself? Okay, I want to play another clip from Lonely Flowers. In this clip, you're talking about grocery shopping and how it seems like most store clerks have been replaced by self-checkout. Let's listen. We need that cashier was the connection

for crazy people to feel seen. There's a lot of people that's alone in a basement just loading a rifle, and once a week, they need a snack. And that cashier was the connection. That's the job of the cashier, to make lonely people feel like they have a connection. Grocery store cashier didn't care who you were. She making chit chat.

The whole while your coming down the belt. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I like this flavor too. Blah, blah, blah, blah. That brother go home and feel good about himself. She asking him about his dog and his... House Mr. Gibbles. If you live alone and a cashier asks you about your dog,

you'll ride that high for two months. You go home and look at that rifle. Man, I'm tripping. Let me put this rifle up. I got a friend at the grocery store. I can't be out here murdering. That was my guest today, comedian Roy Wood Jr. in his new comedy special on Hulu called Lonely Flowers. Roy, I love that joke because, I mean, of course you went to the most extreme example,

but all of us, we do get a little dopamine when we have nice interactions like that, and we are getting less and less of them, you know? When a stranger would just say, oh, I like your sweater. Yes. It's like, that's gone. You know, writer Wesley Lorry said about you a few years ago, he wrote that you occupy this space between 1990s Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle in the early 2000s. Do you agree with that? I take that as a high compliment. Wow.

Considering I grew up studying both of them along with Carlin and Sinbad, I don't know how to agree with that. You know, I feel like Chappelle, Chappelle takes on far bigger dragons than I do. And I feel like Chris Rock's observations are far more astute and sharp and simple. I use way more words than Chris Rock ever would to make the same points or to say the same things. And I think that's the brilliance of Chris Rock is the brevity.

You know, love them or hate them. You don't have to agree with everything, but there are no wasted words. I go back and watch my old specials. I'd be like, man, that whole joke could have gone. Should put that joke on YouTube. And bringing up Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, I also thought about is like, what does it mean for you to keep yourself grounded so that your humor feels connected to the larger sentiment? As you become more and more successful,

is that something that you think about? Yeah, you have to know what regular people are going through. You can't do that by just living in uber blacks your entire life. I consider comedy to be a form of journalism, living anthropology in its highest form. You know, you're doing anthropology

on things that are still alive, things that are still evolving. So you have to be immersed in that. You have to bathe yourself in that a little bit. So yeah, take the train, talk to regular people. But it's the thing I miss the most about morning radio, more than anything, it's just talking to strangers. And then that becomes the things that I can take

and put on stage because now you're helping to embody. You have an opportunity in a way to be voice of connection. How much time do you take to study your peers, other comedians? Like some comedians have the ideology, I don't want to know what any comedian is saying because I don't want it to pollute my thinking where I'm the opposite. I want to know every single piece of known data that has been performed. What does that do for you? It tells me where not to go. So when I did BET's Comic View in 2004, I'd gotten turned down three years in a row.

And I'd gotten so angry with them. The year before I got Comic View, I watched every episode and I cataloged every topic that was breached by a comedian for the entire season. Here's how many jokes about, you know, ugly. Here's sex jokes. Here's race jokes. Here's president. Famous people. Michael Jackson joke, like, Kobe Bryant joke, like... Cataloged it all.

And then just told myself that entire year, I won't make a joke about any of these things. So now, now, at minimum, I'm original. We're listening to comedian Roy Wood Jr.'s conversation with our co-host Tanya Mosley. His new stand-up special is called Lonely Flowers. We'll hear more after a break. I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

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More at Kresge.org. I've been thinking a lot about the journalism industry with the decline of trust and the fractured attention spans. And as you said earlier, you feel like comedy is a form of journalism. But through your role on The Daily Show as a correspondent in this news quiz show, I want to know from you, that hasn't always been the case where you actually studied journalism and then you decided to be a comedian. But when did it become clear to you that, wait a minute, this thing that I'm doing as

a comedian is actually a form of journalism. When I started researching all the stuff I wanted to talk about, and it was just like researching a dang story from college. Yeah. Documentary research. And then once I approached it as that, then it became, oh, you can find interesting.

Like, if you can sneak in something that people didn't know or didn't consider into your bits. Oh, cool. You know, the Daily Show changed a lot for me creatively. Daily Show taught me over analysis and how to find the angle on a topic that no one has touched yet. You know, we know what they're saying, what are they not saying? And how can we say that?

And then Trevor Noah taught me through observation, as a black man, when to use your anger and when to keep it in your back pocket performatively. But performing in a state of aggression as I was for the most part coming into The Daily Show doesn't help your point to land with everyone. At what point in How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade?

How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? How old were you when you were in the fifth grade? It was a deflector, a smoke screen. I got picked off. What were you trying to deflect? Yeah.

Just trying to keep from getting bullied and get your sneakers stolen. It's the 80s crack era. So, you know, some cats is dangerous and if they're not dangerous, they got an older brother who is. He always wanted to be cool. I kept my head low.

I was a little class clowny in middle school, but like the idea of explicit thinking and premeditation of humor. I remember in JROTC, we would have drill every morning in high school. And so there was three tennis courts in a row, side by side by side. And we ran the perimeter of that that like a makeshift track.

And so you would have to run, I don't know, three or four laps around the tennis courts. And I would deliberately just jog and be well behind everybody, like two, three turns behind. And then on the last lap, I would call my comeback like a Kentucky Derby announcer. And everybody else, we're all exhausted. And I'm trying to talk and run.

It's wood on the outside. Wood is coming up strong. Oh my goodness, what a comeback as they get into the back stretch. What was your ROTC coach like or teacher instructor saying to you? Sergeant Posey was not feeling this behavior at all. But what can you say? I'm running. You said run, so I'm running. And we would collapse across the finish line and just be howling with laughter. We would collapse across the finish line and just be howling with laughter.

And it worked every time. And it just made me laugh. And there was no purpose to it, but it was just funny. But you went to college for broadcast journalism. You got into some trouble, though, with the law that changed your directory. Yeah. I mean, that whole thing though,

is part of what got me into stand up. Because when I was 19, yeah, we stole some credit card. Well, I stole the credit card. They was with me when we bought the stuff. And so like we were- They being your friends. Yeah. And so co-defendant is the code in a court of law.

So 98, I get arrested for stealing some credit cards and buying stuff and selling Clothing on campus or whatever and so in that time I get suspended from school. So this is Thanksgiving of 98 and I get suspended at the top of the year in January for essentially that whole year, except I got back in school in like September, October or something. So during that time, I start doing stand-up because I think I'm gonna go to prison. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go to prison.

Let me try everything I want. What was that thing Sinbad used to do? Oh yeah, stand up, okay. Well, where does stand up happen? Oh, okay, open mics. Oh, okay, well I'll go up to Birmingham. And I took a Greyhound up to Birmingham and performed and went back to the bus station, slept there, because I didn't want my mom

to know I was in town. I didn't want her to know. Because, you know, it's a black mom. She didn't know. She didn't know. She didn't know about your arrest? No, she knew about the arrest. That's why she didn't want me doing comedy. You need to be somewhere with a job looking

gainfully employed so they don't send you to prison. To which I said, thanks, Joyce. I think I'm going to sleep in bus stations. And go do comedy. Yeah. This activity makes me happy. And I just want to be happy right now. And I ended up getting probation.

Yeah. Why were you doing that? Why was the credit card ring the way to make money? Because I assume it was about making money. No, it wasn't. I mean, money is part of it, but at its core, what that started as, and it took going to therapy to really connect these dots.

I didn't want my mother to worry about me. You know, I had a good father, he was a bad husband. And so, you know, money was tight a lot of the time because Pops was trippin'. And we moved to Birmingham because my parents reconciled in the third grade. I was in the third grade, maybe fourth. So, I remember nights laying in my bed, first grade, second grade, and I could hear my mother

asking friends for money. Like the late night calls, asking, you know, the borrowed money calls, right? And then I remember, I remember when my dad died when I was 16. And you know, my dad was wanting them hyper black, you know, I'm not paying no taxes, the black man ain't got no rights,

the right to vote expires, voting right, whatever. So my father never paid federal taxes. So when he died, they came for everything. They came for everything. And I remember that very well. I remember working 30 hours a week in high school to help with the bills because I didn't want my mom picking up another job. And I'm still trying to just be a child. I'm still trying to just play baseball, but I'm also working closing shifts. I violated every labor law you could name. And you had all types of jobs too, didn't you?

Yeah, just for my mom to be able to keep the house through my senior year of high school. And so when I got to college, I just wanted to be no damn burden, man. I'm tired of asking you for stuff and hearing this deep sigh, and I know what you gotta go through to try and make this pair of sneakers happen for me. So I'm just, I don't wanna bother you. I just didn't wanna be a burden to my mom.

And I think that it wasn't about thrill-seeking, it wasn't about stacking a bunch of cash and saving up to get a car and a gold chain. Everything started from a place of, I just want some clothes for myself, so I don't have to call my mom and ask for clothes. Yeah. And then, hey man, I bought a couple extra pairs of jeans. Would you like some jeans? And then that guy going,

hey, man, I told my friend about those extra jeans you got me. Can you get him some jeans? And then the next thing you know, you're kind of running an operation. And then the police come and go, hey, this is illegal. So, we're going to put you on probation for a little while. Go find a career during that time, and then when probation concludes, you can continue that career. And that's what happened. I was blessed to have a probation officer that gave a damn and allowed me to travel while I was on probation.

That is not the norm. Not the norm. You know, and I'm very, very lucky. And that life that I was given back, you know, that's a life I've tried my best to not fumble since then. Your dad, you mentioned Roy Wood Sr. He did not pay taxes, as you said, but he was a pioneering radio reporter in Birmingham. I mean, he covered the civil rights movement.

He co-founded the first black radio network. Yeah, Chicago, yeah. Yeah, did you get to be around his work much when you were growing up? Yeah, I mean, I was there. I mean, he was a great father. He'd come with me to the radio station. I would sit at his feet while he read AP Wire stories

in the 80s. And I spent every summer with my father before my parents got back together. So I was around this man holding court in bar 80s. I spent every summer with my father before my parents got back together. So I was around this man holding court in barbershops, talking to people about issues, talking to the mayor, talking to everyone about stuff. And I really feel like that was the early days of, how can I put it, the foundation of my ideologies. You know, my father knew all the black leaders, you know, my father was, you know, I don't want to say the man around town, but he kind of was.

He also was like, I mean, he was the news guy. You describe him as the voice that we would hear on the car radio in the morning, giving the news on the way to school, on the way to work. It just got me thinking about how much radio, that kind of media, it leaves an imprint on us, but it's also ephemeral, you know? Do you have any tapes or recordings of his work still? Yeah, but they're all reel to reels. I haven't straightened that out yet. That's something I definitely need to get to. Because so much of what my father talked about in his commentary work was

about a lot of issues with the black race that are still happening today. As much as I spent you know, I spent, you know, like any child, you go through a rebellion period against your parents while you wanna be nothing like them. And then I look up and I look at the type of comedy that I talk about and I am him. I'm just a little funnier. Right, did he have a sense of humor?

No, he, now you wanna talk about somebody who'd use nothing but anger to drive what they was talking about. It was clear he was bad. Now he could be smooth with how he delivered the knife into your rib cage, but you was gonna get the knife messing around with my dad. He wasn't jokey. He was not silly, but he did help create one of Black America's great contributions. Soul Train. Yes. Yeah.

Please. You please tell us the story. Yeah. So my dad was the first Black announcer at pretty much most stations he worked at in the 1950s and 60s, doing news for the most part. And so he got with some people up in Chicago and decided to create the National Black Network. And the National Black Network was a series of syndicated news stories and articles and programs that would be sent out to black radio stations across the country.

And it was simply black. It was the first of its kind news for black people on black stations. So my father was the co-founder of this joint up in Chicago at WVON, and they're looking for reporters. And my dad gets pulled over by a cop, and the cop has a really deep voice. And the cop goes, hey, man, and my dad goes to the cop. He's getting a ticket.

He's in the middle of getting a ticket. And my dad goes, yeah, man, you have a nice voice. You should quit the police force and come work for me. The cop was like, what the hell are you talking about? He's like, yeah, you have a nice voice. You should quit the police force and come work for me." Cop was like, what the hell are you talking about? He's like, yeah, you have a nice voice. You have a voice for radio. You should be on the radio. You shouldn't be out here doing this.

And my dad gave the cop his card and the cop he gave the card to was Don Cornelius. Officer Don Cornelius of the Chicago Police Department. He had only been on the Chicago Police Department. He had only been on the force a year. He quit, started working at WVON as a reporter, got an itch for media, eventually came up with a brainchild for a show like Dick Clark's American Bandstand. And he goes to my father and goes, hey man, I'm taking up money,

if you want to be an investor in this show. My pops gave Don Cornelia some of the money to shoot the pilot for Soul Train. Now, where the story takes a turn is that it took Don Cornelia's too long to sell the show. And we're talking about like, my dad gave me, maybe like, let's just say $1,000, which is a gajillion billion dollars in 19- In today's dollars.

Yes. And my dad goes, hey Don, I need that money, man. And Don goes, instead of giving you your money back, why don't I just keep you on as a producer? You can be an executive producer the rest of your life. Which my dad said, nobody wants to watch black people dance. Give me my money. Don paid him back. My father took the money, signed away his rights to any claims of the Soul Train empire. Did he ever talk about that with you?

No. And did you ever talk to it? I could not watch Soul Train. You never watched it growing up. I was not around him. Better watch Solid Gold. MTV's LAUGH MTV's The Grind, but you not watching Soul Train in this house. That's a story that was told to me by my older brothers. My dad never spoke of it, never brought it up.

And I met Don Cornelius years later, and just, I couldn't bring it in me to bring it up. I wanted to so bad, but it just, it didn't feel like the right time and place. But I'm very thankful to Don Cornelius' children for including that part of my father's contribution within the BET show that they had about Don's life. Oh wow, wow.

So yeah, my dad was, you know, there was an actor that cast him. That whole get pulled over scene is in the show. That's your dad. Yeah, that's in the show. That's your dad. Yeah, that's in the show. It was very kind of them. It was very kind of them. You mentioned your son, and I'm just wondering as your son gets older, are there any parts

of fatherhood that you're like, now I understand, looking back at your dad? Mm. Yeah, it's more of a in reverse. How could you miss all of this? I know this is the wrong can of beans to open up this late in our conversation, but I think the moments I have with my son, a lot of them are moments that my father missed with me. So it's like, damn, man, how'd you miss this? You missed this?

You didn't show up to the Boy Scout joint, you didn't show up to the chess tournament, David. Where was you at? What were you doing? Like that would be the bigger question is, hey man, I need you to account for your absences. So it would probably be like a terrible accountability evaluation conversation.

Like if my dad was alive today, it'd be me yelling at an 80-year-old man. It's probably not fair. Roy Wood Jr., this was such a pleasure. I could talk to you forever, but thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you. Thank you for this in-depth conversation. Thank you for caring, researching and stuff. I can tell you went deep. You didn't just go through the first two pages of Google results

on me. You went deep. About 70 pages in, some of these questions. Roy Wood Jr. spoke with our co-host Tanya Mosley. His new comedy special is called Lonely Flowers. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Baldinado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesbier. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Sam Bruegger. It's a new year, and according to Pew,

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