How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - David Sedaris - ‘My Father Said I Was A Bad Influence Because I Was Gay’

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

David Sedaris is one of America’s best-loved humorists, famous for turning the absurdities of everyday life into razor-sharp, deeply human essays. He joins Elizabeth Day on How to Fail to talk about the moments that have shaped him: from dropping out of university and ending up in his parents’ basement at 20, to being thrown out by his father and growing up with a parent who seemed to actively invest in his failure. He talks candidly about heartbreak after a breakup at 32, the fear of being alone, grief at losing the people we love and his past crystal meth addiction and sobriety. We also hear about the embarrassment of dropping out of Japanese school in Tokyo at 50…and the possibility of a cameo on The Archers. IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Intro 03:39 How His Writing Evolved 04:27 Train Music Confrontation 07:03 Failure One: Dropping Out 10:38 A Father Rooting Against Him 13:16 Money Promises and Betrayal 18:03 Thrown Out and Self Worth 20:31 Friendship and Grief 23:22 Failure Two: Breakup at 32 27:38 Writing Love And Routine 28:46 Sharon The Practical Mom 33:08 Heartbreak Versus Grief 35:54 Crystal Meth And Fear 38:59 Conceptual Art On Fire 40:24 Tokyo Japanese School Quit 46:08 The Archers Cameo 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: “I just took every bit of advice [my father] ever gave me and did the opposite, and it was a really good strategy.” “Fear kept me drinking. Fear kept me smoking. Fear kept me from leaving.” “You’re never going to get what you want if you don’t work for it.” “Every day is a new beginning.” 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: The Land and Its People by David Sedaris is widely available across both online retailers and physical bookstores in the US and the UK. Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com 📚 WANT MORE? Dawn French - on fertility, friendship and being an anti-perfectionist http://swap.fm/l/NJDrzxLKhyi6icOrxmHT Simon Cowell - on judgement, power and the uncomfortable responsibility of shaping someone’s future http://swap.fm/l/hSwuCNEuZNgnaG20v0yB 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Elizabeth and David answer listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://lnk.to/7i0moR Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: askhowtofail.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, anybody watching this at home, you are a loser. Okay, only losers watch podcasts. I was like 22 and I was addicted to meth. And my father gave us a ride at the airport and was just, you're no writer, you're never going to make. You're a failure. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast that reminds us that we all fail,

even if we don't fail in the same way, we all experience it. And it's about what we learn that really can. counts. Before we get into this episode, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation. Queen Carvania stood hallowed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. It was a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast! An offer you can feast on.

Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, ma'amify. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, You have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family

to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Many of us will have our favorite David Sedaris essay. Perhaps it's his tale of working as a 33-year-old elf at the Macy's department store and pondering why Santa is an anagram of Satan. Or maybe it's ashes, in which he recounts his mother's cancer diagnosis and death,

with a trademark combination of poignancy and sart. savage wit. Or it's his account of picking up litter in his adopted home of West Sussex and being baffled by the regularity with which he finds a neatly folded Chris packet screwed into an empty Coca-Cola bottle. Whichever one it might be, his accumulated work has earned him the reputation of being one of our foremost tumourists with over 16 million book sales to his name. Not bad for the young boy growing up in North Carolina, one of six siblings, whose dream was to co-present a TV show with a monkey. Instead, he graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but rapidly deciding performance art was not for him,

he instead took on a range of odd jobs. But he also started keeping a diary, and it was his daily observations of life's absurdities and discoveries that would form the basis for his first collection published in 1992. Now 69, Sederis still travels with a notebook. His new collection, the land and its people, recounts a safari to Kenya, in which he didn't take a single photograph because he was too busy writing it all down. Unlike many authors, he is as famed for his public recitations of his work as he is for the quality of his writing. I don't think it ever occurred to me when I was 12 that you could just read out loud and people would actually show up, he says. It's the perfect job. David Sedaris, welcome to How to Fame.

Thank you. I would like to begin by registering my protest. I hate it that podcasts are filmed. I'm so sorry. And every single podcast I've done, I get there and they're like, oh, yeah, no, it's filmed. Okay, anybody watching this at home, you are a loser, okay? Only losers watch podcasts. You should be, you listen to podcasts while you do other things. Well, it makes total sense given that you started out your career on NPR that you revere the audio medium. What is it that you like about being audio only? Well, I just like that it frees you. You know, I mean at the time that I started on the radio, it kind of had to be listening to the radio where you missed it. And I like that, too. I like that things didn't live forever. Because your opinions change over time and, you know,

everyone has like good days and bad days so on a bad one it just liked the idea that it would disappear and no it just doesn't do you think your writing has changed over time yeah

in what ways so it used to be when I rewrote things on the typewriter if I was rewriting I wouldn't make it any longer than it was already because I didn't want to have to retype the whole page so I would white out and then my reason

rewrite would have to be the same number of words because I didn't want to have to retype the whole page. And then that word probably, you know, a computer made it so much easier to rewrite. So that was part of it. And then part of it was going on tour and reading things out loud and go back to the room and rewrite it and read it and rewrite it. So the early books, you know, those things were read on stage maybe once or twice as opposed to like 40 times. There's a beautiful essay in the land and its people, which I hugely enjoyed as a collection, as I enjoy all of your collections, where you are on a train carriage and there is a youth listening to music without earphones on his phone. And you go up and confront him. And I think it's a wonderful exercise in you as the writer assessing your own judgment, your own initial judgment. Can you tell us that story for anyone who hasn't read it?

Oh, it was this kid and he was listening to music on his phone without any headphones on. And so it just drove me crazy. And so I went and I said, use headphones and he said, I don't have any. And I said, turn it off. No, I don't confront people, you know, but there I, and he turned it off. And then the second I turned my back, like, then he started threatening me, you know. And I looked around and I realized, that I was alone.

You know, all the people on my side of the car, they were not going to be any help whatsoever. And anyway, the kid, it turned out, the kid had just gotten out of rehab, and there was a drinks trolley on the train. And I knew he just gotten out of rehab because I overheard him on the telephone, saying that to somebody.

And then he bought a drink when he was on the train. And I just got so caught up in that because, you know, I haven't had a drink in like, I don't know, 27 years. And so it just kills me, you know, when somebody, like, falls back to their addiction. And then I saw him get off the train later, and he was just tiny, like, he probably came up to my shoulder, you know. And he was just carrying this ridiculous boombox. And I don't know, he was just, you can just see his whole future, you know, and it was just rotten. I was still glad I told him to turn it off.

I just thought, well, maybe there would have been a better way to do it. And I wouldn't have written that essay, except a few weeks later, I was on the train. And a woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, excuse me, but everyone can hear the music. You're blasting on your laptop. I thought it was connected by Bluetooth to my speakers. So that's what made me right about it. that it was so funny because here I got so angry and stuff and then I turned around and then it was me doing it. Well, thank you. Let's get on to your failures. Your first failure is dropping out of university

and ending up living in your parents' basement at the age of 20. Tell us about the university and what you were studying. When it came time to go to university, I said, I'm going to take a year off. And a gap year wasn't really a thing when I was in 1975. That wasn't the same. that word for it. And my father said, you're not doing that. You said, if you do that, you're just going to sit at home in the basement, which was exactly what I would have done, you know. So I went off to college and I really hated it. It was this college anyone could get into, a university, anyone can get into, in the mountains of North Carolina. But I met my best friend there. And then I worked hard so I could improve my grade, so I transferred the next year to Kent State in Ohio.

And I thought it was a good school just because people had been killed there. But it wasn't. It was like a bad school. People had been killed that. It's totally refutation. If people hadn't been killed there, I never would heard of it, you know. So, and then I was like anti-drug. Oh, my goodness, when I was young, anti-drug.

Like, people got high or took acid. I didn't want anything to do with them. And then, you know, when you're at university, I mean, at that time, I mean, you know, people would just hold you down and, you know, give you shotguns. And then that's all it took. Then I was like all drug all the time. So my second year, I dropped out of university. But the good thing is, you know, I had some friends and we, you know, I wound up hitchhiking across the country and living in San Francisco. and picking fruit, you know, picking apples and pears and living in migrant camps.

It was real adventure, you know. But then I wound up at 20 back home in my parents' basement. And I just felt like such a loser. And I probably had been home for a few months when my father said, you have half an hour to get your shed. and threw me out of the house. He was like, it's not my problem where you go. You're just not going to be here anymore.

So, of course, at the time, I was, you know, not happy about it, but in retrospect, and I hate giving my father any credit for anything, but he was right about that because I just needed to start my life again. And I wasn't just getting high in the basement and listening to Johnny Mitchell albums and hating myself every second. It's funny, like my brother and his wife have made it very clear to our niece that she's free to live at home for the rest of her life, you know. I'm sure that's a comfort to her.

And I know that now young people live at home, you know, in the United States anyway, like well into their 20s. But it wasn't that common when I was young. Yes. You know, you would, and my parents said to my sister Amy, you don't have to go to college, but when you're 18, you have to move out of the house. So they did that to all of us. In retrospect, and I understand too, it was a different world. You know, I could have found a job working at a restaurant and I was able to live by myself.

You know, I don't know how many people, young people are able to do that now, you know. You have written about your family a lot. And one of the things that you wrote about your father was that it felt as though he were investing in your failure, specifically. Tell us about that and how you drew that conclusion. Well, I just always remember, I mean, ever since childhood, you know, that, you know, my father didn't like me. He just didn't like me, you know.

So it wasn't like having, it was different than having an enemy in the house. It was just having someone in the house who everything you said or did was irritating to them. And they would never, and you would try, oh, I'll try being this person or I'll try being this person, but none of it worked. And then you thought, oh, nothing's ever going to work, right? So, I mean, my mother was, my mother was wonderful, you know, so it would be awful. when I think about what it would be like to grow up and not have either parent, you know, that's got to be really terrible. But, you know, at least I had her.

But, yeah, no, he was like a negative cheerleader. And he did really, oh, gosh. I mean, I remember when my boyfriend Hugh first met my dad, my dad, he and I had flown down for, Hugh and I had flown to North Carolina for my older sister's wedding. and I'd been living in New York just for a few months and my father gave us a ride at the airport and was just, you're no, right, or you're never going to make,

you're a failure, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd heard it all my life. It didn't, I didn't even pay attention, but Hugh was like, he'd never heard anyone talk to their child that way. But again, it was, it was, you know, I mean, it was just something that I, grew up with. But then sometimes, you know, it can help to motivate you, you know, but you think, well, I'll show you. But the thing is you never show them, you know, because they never really

understand what it is you do, you know, just like I never understood what it was he did. I mean, he was an engineer and I was in high school before I realized he didn't drive a train, you know. asked him anything about himself. He would do things that to me seem so cruel and detailed in their strategy, like saying that he was putting money aside for you. Is it an IRA account that you call it? Yeah, which is a retirement account. Is that what it is?

Yeah, when I graduated from college, my father's whole thing was, you know, you're going to go to college, college, college, college, college, college, college, everyone's going to college, but he was really cheap. So for a lot of us, there were six of us, when the time came, he'd say, you know, you're just not college material. And then they paid for me to go to college, you know, the in-state university, my first year, and then I dropped out in the second year. And then when I dropped back in, the night before I left, he said, I'm not paying for you. So I wound up getting loans and grants, and so I put myself through college, which was good because then I wasn't born. holding to him. I didn't have to hear about how he wasted all his money so that I could get,

you know, a degree, a fine art degree. But when I graduated, he said, I'm getting you off for graduation president, IRA, you know, when I'm going to put money into it and that money's going to grow. And when you retire, you're going to be so glad. And I said, can't I just have the cash? You know, like I'm broke and I'm really in debt now. for going to college. No, you cannot. So anyway, he talked about it for years. Anyway, when he died, I realized he'd never set it up. But that's exactly the kind of thing that he did.

I mean, he gave everybody in the family money for Christmas. After my mom died, he started doing that. And it wasn't little money. You know, I mean, it was like started off as $5,000 and it went to $17,000. You know, it was it was the, it was the amount. maximum you could give without having to declare it on your taxes, right? And he said he put the money in my account, right? And so does how dumb I am.

I don't know how to bank online. I never look at my statements. I just throw it all away. And a couple years before he died, I said to the person who handles my money, I said, oh, I'm going to buy a ticket to Tokyo with the money dad gave me. And she said, what money he gave you? She said, he's never put a dime into your account.

So he gave it to everyone else in the family, but never to me. But every year I write him a thank you letter, you know? And he never, and so when I confronted him, I said, why didn't you even, like, I could have saved money on stamps. Like, you know, like no one else in the family was writing him a thank you letter. So I messed up. Yeah. But that's exactly who he was.

You know, he really was a perfect preparation for Trump presidency. You know, the same way that Trump is renowned for not paying people who do work for him. You know, before I moved to New York, he said he had a, my father had some rental property. He had a house he wanted painted. And he said, you could come down and paint it before you moved to New York. earned that money, moved New York with. So I came and I painted the house and then, gee, I think he was going to pay me like, oh, I don't know, $2,000 from painting a house or something. I think I got $300. That's what he wound up giving me, you know. Do you think he was jealous of you? Yeah. It really bothered him that

it really bothered him that his predictions didn't come true, you know. And I think he was, you know, and I I think maybe two, oh, I don't know, I think maybe part of it might be generational, you know, to be, you know, I mean, my father loved music and loved jazz and, you know, he never could have played piano or done anything like that because he was an only child and then he had a family and, you know, I think to see somebody, be themselves, be completely themselves, and succeed at it really bothered him. Yeah. You know? I just, I, every, all, I just took every bit of advice he ever gave me and did the opposite. And it was a really good strategy. You mentioned as part of this failure being thrown out of home effectively at age 20.

Was that also to do with being gay? Yeah. He said I was a bad influence. And, well, because, you know, when you've got a lot of younger brothers and sisters, you know, sometimes they look up to you. And, I mean, I thought I was a pretty good influence. I mean, you know, because I had had some adventures, you know, I had, you know, traveled. I had met all kinds of interesting people that I would not normally, you wouldn't meet. A middle class person wouldn't meet, you know, and all of a sudden you're sleeping on the ground with a bunch of fruit pickers. Or you're riding a box car or you're, you know, gee, going through a dumpster in Utah. You know, if you have a middle class upbringing and if you know that you have parents at home

and then you could call and you could say, I mean, if my mother got on the phone, I could say, oh, I'm really in a bind, could I have some money? So you're just kind of, there's an element of play acting to it, you know. But still I was out there and I got out there and I, it was, to me, those are, to me, those are good things. You mentioned that he just didn't like you. Do you like you? No. I like me.

Yeah. I mean, I always enjoyed my company. I haven't really, I mean, the times that I don't like myself, I see that as a good sign, you know, because I'll think, oh, you're just an asshole, you know. That's really bad. You need to apologize to a bunch of people and beg their forgiveness. And then, you know, you can feel okay about yourself, but I don't, no, I don't. I don't buy my own press either, you know. You mentioned that the first college you went to, you met your best friend.

Is that Dawn? No, it's Ronnie Radrick. And then my second college, I met Dawn. Okay. And so, yeah, Ronnie's my best friend and Dawn's my second best friend. Got it. And Dawn is in the land and its people, which is why I mentioned her. You also write about friendship so well in this collection,

Not just Dawn, but also a childhood best friend, Dan, who you lost, who died. And I think it's one of those things that it doesn't get written about very much, the grief that you feel when you lose a friend as opposed to a family member. I think it's really hard to write about friendship. It is. And I don't know why it should be so hard. I think maybe because we're all conditioned to, with romantic love, you know, so many songs are about it and so many movies are about it.

But a friendship, I don't know if we take them more for granted or, but I mean a rich, rich friendship, you know, a long rich friendship is a difficult thing to write about. And I think, too, because sometimes, like my friend Ronnie, right, is a great person. but not a great character, like on the page, right? Dawn's a better character. It's not that Dawn is more interesting than Ronnie. It doesn't have anything to do with that. She's just, Dawn is like, let's get moving.

Let's get going. What can we do? What can we fix? What can we, you know, she don't want to sit down for any amount of time at all. She just wants to do things. And that's another thing that makes her a good character. She's energetic. I could do with reading a whole collection of just Yvind Dawn, a sort of travelogue.

Well, I think the essay that I wrote about her, I think it might be the best thing I ever wrote. Oh, I'm so, gosh, I'm so glad you said that because it really stuck with me. Can you tell us the truck thing? Because that reveals so much about Dawn. Well, Dawn and I, Dawn got me started on it. fit-bet. So we were in Colorado in this dusty, hot town. And we went up to this restaurant for lunch, and we were walking back to our dismal hotel. And we saw a truck, and it was filled with tires. It was parked, and the doors were open. And so I just asked her, I said, if you had a year,

do you think you could eat one of those tires? And she said, yeah. I mean, Dawn would be, She's just very methodical and she would, you know, eat a little bit of the tire every day and you can just imagine her I mean, I would do the same thing but she would really cut the tire into pill-sized capsules

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Start your free trial at Shopify.com.uk slash fail. So something I've been thinking about a lot lately is how our skin tells the story of everything we've lived through. The joy, the stress, the late nights, the lessons. And recently, I've been trying something new that feels genuinely exciting to me. It's from Medicaid, and it's their latest innovation called ExoPDRN Prismatic Plus. And yes, it really is inspired by those in-clinic exosome treatments you might have heard about. It boosts skin's natural rejuvenation by over 50%. powered by prismatic pDRN and a triple exosome complex to support skin's natural processes for full spectrum rejuvenation.

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I highly relate to this. I went through a divorce in my mid-30s and ended up back in my parents' flat. Oh, wow. And there is something about being back in the place where you remember. remember being a child in a tiny single bed that brings you so face to face like a dog being confronted with its own vomit, really, of your own failure. So tell us what was happening here. I moved, I never had a boyfriend until I moved to Chicago and I met him a couple days after I moved there in a bar. And I just turned 27 and we were together for six years. And we broke

up, you know, I just felt like such a failure, you know, like that I couldn't even make this work. But when I look back on it, you know, for a relationship to work, you have to have, you have to have the same idea about fidelity, you know. I mean, I know so many gay couples and they, you know, they just have an open relationship and it works, you know, if this person wants to go and sleep with other people, the other person doesn't mind. You know, they both do it. It works for them, you know. But if one person is for that and the other person absolutely is not, it's never going to work, you know.

So, but I just still, I just felt like it was my fault. I mean, I was a faithful person. I should have, if I were better, do you know what I mean? He wouldn't want to be with other people. If I had more money, I didn't have any money at all. If I were, you know, at the same time, I went to art school, and I just knew a lot of people who just talked about doing stuff. They didn't do it.

And you have to do it. You have to do the work. And that means you're not going to parties. That means you're going home to write or to paint or to paint. whatever and it means you're getting you're doing it on Christmas Day and it means you're doing it on your vacation and it means you're putting the hours in and and so that was it too I just I knew I wasn't going to get what I wanted if I didn't work for it I'm not I by that time in my life I'd met some people who were really talented. And I could see that they were more talented than I was. And I thought,

okay, they were born with something I wasn't born with, right? How do I make up for that? Right. And I thought, well, I have to, you know, I have to work harder. And then there's a young man and Sometimes when I'm on tour, I invite a young person to come and read for, you know, to open for me, right? So a lot of times it's someone who I meet at a book signing. And, you know, sometimes, gee, one time it was a kid, he was 12 years old. And he wrote me a letter and then he sent me his poetry. And I said, well, I'm going to be in Atlanta. Why don't you open for me?

You know, we had to get a box for him. But he was really earnest, you know, and really worked on it hard. And then I'm still in touch with him. He's a father himself now, and he still opens for me sometimes. And then sometimes, anyway, there's this young man who I met in the United States, and he showed up and come to Gerson, and he read a very animated reader. You know, you can't take your eyes off of him when he reads. And he said, well, I know my writing's not where it needs to be,

so I make up for it by being well-dressed and my delivery. And I thought, exactly. So that's what I did. You know, that's what I did when I was his age too. I just thought, okay, how do I make up from my shortcomings? But I could see how, you know, with my first boyfriend, it would be hard if, like, nothing would pull me away from my schedule. Nothing. You know, he tried all kinds of things.

Nothing would get me to leave my desk. And Hugh, my boyfriend now, Hugh's dad was a writer. So to Hugh, to have someone in the next room and the sound of a typewriter was so comforting to him. He didn't see it as him being rejected. It just was what home felt like to him. So he was delighted. Hugh is technically your husband, but you hate that word. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm kind of with you. I love that you call him your boyfriend. So we've dealt with that. you've spoken about it enough. But this particular breakup, is it the one, there's one that you briefly mentioned in the book where your mother came to help. Is it this one? Yeah. So we've spoken about your father. I would love to talk about Sharon, your mother. Was she someone that you could call an extremist and you would know that she would turn up?

Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, it was interesting. I was just writing about something similar. I was writing about a someone I know and I heard her say to her daughter once, that's a beach where your father and I fought for the first time. And I would be like, oh my, even as an outsider, I was like, oh my God, do they really need to know that? So my relationship, my mother wasn't my friend. No. She was my mother.

And we were very close, but we weren't. friends. So I did not share everything with my mother and thank God my mother didn't share everything with me, right? But like when I broke up with that boyfriend she came and you know just kind of swooped in and I had and helped me like paint this new apartment that I was going to be you know living in and you know just I just I did. I didn't. I just I didn't tell her everything. Like I didn't, you know, it's your mom. But I felt like such a failure, you know, also felt like a failure because, you know, you're crying in front of your mother and you're in your 30s and you just feel like, you know, I mean, I'd taken a big long break

between crying bouts in front of my mother. You know, like I did it when I was 10 and then I didn't do it again until, you know, I was 32. But she, when I moved to New York, I got an opportunity to put a play on, right? So I wrote this play and it was just an off, off, Broadway theater, but it was my, and then my mother, like, sent me a thousand dollars. I didn't ask for it. She just knew I desperately needed it for the play. And she never would have made me ask.

You know, she never, I mean, who doesn't want $1,000? So it wasn't like she sent me $1,000 every day. But she just knew that I needed it for this play. And so she was very considerate and very tuned in that way, a considerate person. And that's something that I was just writing about too, that often I'm asked, you know, what's the best advice you ever got, right? Do people ask you that all the time? Yes.

Yeah. And my mother's advice was to always carry singles on an airplane. Dollar bills, you mean, yeah. Because if you needed a drink, you know, let's say a drink back then with $3. But I don't drink anymore, but I would notice when I was flying, all these businessmen would have $20 bills and the flight attendant would have to go up and down the plane looking for change.

And then a lot of times she would charge the guy for his drink. So he would know, always have a, you know, pay for a 20. But it's not like he'd pay for a 20 and she'd say, okay, you get a free drink. She's up and down the plane. You know, she's wasting her time that she could be used to serve other people or do any of her duties because your stupid ass was too inconsiderate

to break a $20 bill before you got on the plane. So, I mean, of course, now you pay with your phone or you whatever, but the advice was to be considerate. I don't know about you, but I really hate that heavy caked-on look that some makeup can give you. I mean, I'm all for full coverage, but I definitely don't want to look like that's the case. I've tried a lot of different products in my time, and that's why I can tell you for definite that Jones Road beauty is where it's at.

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when they use code fail at checkout. Just head to jonesroadbeautcom and use code fail at checkout. After your purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. I'm struck by the fact that you have chosen this as a failure because you now have been with you, your boyfriend, for over 30 years. Is that right, I think? 36. 36. Yeah. By any metric, that's a successful relationship. But I think this is evidence that heartbreak just stays with you.

The experience of it is so visceral. And you have also experienced the loss of very. close family members, your sister Tiffany by suicide, your beloved mother, Sharon. How similar or not do you think heartbreak is to grief? I don't know. Grief to me seems more, I don't know if it just seemed more pure or if it, like when my sister Tiffany killed herself, everyone always assumes you must feel so guilty, right? That's an automatic assumption. Like you, you, could have prevented it, right? But if someone is mentally ill and they don't take their medication, it's just a slow-moving

train wreck. There's nothing you could do or say nothing would have changed the outcome of that. I didn't, I didn't, I don't feel like I had anything to regret with my mother. I don't feel that I, well, one time my mother wanted to take it. everybody did Disneyland, right? I was like 22. And I was addicted to meth. And so I didn't, I just didn't want to go to Disneyland.

So I didn't go. And everybody else went. And it was a situation where the whole family was together except for me. And I was just being a meth baby, you know. So this is not the end of the world. But I mean, if I could go back in time, I would have not been a meth addict. I would have gone to, but I don't remember, like, treating my mother poorly. or even when I was a teenager, I was never the kind of person who didn't want to be seen with her.

I was happy to be seen with my mother. So it might be different if I had all these regrets with her, but I don't. Yeah, heartbreak is different than grief, I think. With heartbreak, you just, I feel like you keep thinking like, where did I go wrong? Or if I done this instead of this, then that person might still love me. And also, I feel like with heartbreak, for me anyway, I was positive I was just going to be alone the rest of my life because I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 27. I thought, well, I'd be another 27 years before I'll get somebody else.

And, you know, when you're young, 54, oh my God, you're like, who would want you when you're 54? So that was part of it too. And that's part of what kept me in my relationship for so long was my fear that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life. life. But usually that's fear that keeps you in everything. You know, fear kept me, you know, drinking, fear kept me smoking. Fear kept me from leaving North Carolina when it was time for me to leave North Carolina. You know, I stayed. I didn't leave till, you know, till I was 27. I mean, I went back when I was 20. That's, and maybe I needed three of those years, you know, there. But on my deathbed, I'm going to wish that I had those four years and had done something with them.

And my friends all left. You know how that is when your friends all leave and then they come back and then you act like you're too busy to see them, but you're just jealous and hurt that they left you. What's crystal meth like? Oh, it just gives you, you know, you're brilliant when you take crystal meth. You know, you're just brilliant and you have a lot to say. And you feel amazing until it wears off and then you, all you care about is getting more.

And then when you crash, it's like awful. You know, it's just the lowest you've just ever been. So you just got to keep it up so you don't ever feel that way. And you, you know, in my case, you know, you wake up a year and a half later. And, I mean, I just lucked out. My dealer moved town and there was no one to take her place. So I was like Billy Holiday and Lady Sings a Blues. I know that's such an old reference.

I was just, you know, rolling on the floor and, you know, for days. And then I just thought, I don't ever want to go through that again. And she moved back to town and she hung her shingle back up, but I was like, nope, not doing that anymore. And later I had friends who would have meth and stuff or I'd be to parties and there'd be math. And I never did it again just because I knew I'd be right back there. And if I was going to die in a few months, I wouldn't do it. It's ugly. It's really ugly, the hold that it has on you.

And it makes you really moody in a way, and I'm not a moody person, you know. And I didn't like being unreliable that way. You know, being the person who you never know for minute to minute, what his mood's going to be like. I don't like being that way. But I got a lot done, but it was, you know, like painting 1,500 envelopes this big so I could hang them on fishing wire. you know, exactly this far from my ceiling.

You know, things like that. Was that part of your degree or you just did that? I was out of school at that point. Okay. I mean, I did have some art, you know, success. I mean, I had something in the North Carolina Museum when I was like 20 or 21 years old and, you know, had my own show, but it was just math art, you know, it was just math.

What's the thing that you had in the North Carolina? Carolina Museum? Is it still there? No. They had a biennial exhibit. I don't have any skill for drawing or painting or anything. And then I discovered Joseph Boyce and conceptual art and I realized, oh, you just have

to have an idea. So I just found these crates and I stuffed them with things that I owned and they got into into the museum. But I mean, I was on fire. You know, I mean, I was reading a lot and I was just curious.

As an artist, I don't know that you can, it's part of it being on fire. It's just, it's not anything you ever turn off. It's impossible to turn it off. You're just always. Burning. Yeah, you just have furnace. You know, and you're just constantly, and it doesn't, I don't know, it's never worn off. Yes.

Your final failure, talking of burning, there's no seamless link, is that you dropped out of Japanese school in Tokyo, aged 50. Now, I know you're a duolingo obsessive and presumably you wanted to learn Japanese. So tell us this story. I went to Japan just for a couple days. when I was 49. And, you know, like when you find your place and you think, oh, my God, this is, why haven't I been here all my life? So I felt that way about Tokyo.

So then I immediately started learning Japanese. And then I decided I was going to quit smoking in Japan, right, because you can't smoke on the street there. And I was going to rent an apartment, Hugh and I. And so I'd be in a new environment. because I thought I was a heavy smoker. I thought if I tried to quit at home, it would just be kind of ridiculous, but you're going to wake up one day, but you're not going to smoke?

I didn't see that happening. But if I was in another country and the language was new and the food was new and the apartment was new, I could be new too. So I went to Japan. We went to Tokyo. We ran an apartment. And then I went to Japanese school. And here's the thing.

like when I went to kindergarten I didn't know how to read I didn't know the ABCs nobody did you learned them in Gingarten there was no point why would you learn it why would you learn to count when you're just going to learn it in school

so we all started off at the same place right now I know all these parents and their kids you know they teach the kid and the kid goes to kids go to kindergarten now and everybody can already read right but but I was so everyone in my class knew the out there are three alphabets in Japanese and one of them has 10,000 characters and everything it looks like a tennis racket um so that forget it but everybody knew the other two and then

like a week in the class we're reading out loud and I'm like wait a minute I don't I don't know the alphabet like And it was really, and I felt everybody in the class like, oh, don't call on David's son. It's like, oh, David's son, we have to listen to this. And I just, and I was so embarrassed. And I was so embarrassed. And so I dropped out of school.

And I told them, oh, I had to return to France, an emergency, and I had to return to France. And so I lied about it. But, and I felt like a failure, because it was the time to just work twice as hard as everybody else. You know, that's what the situation called for. And I can't really say, I can't blame smoking, right? I can't say, well, you know, I just quit smoking, so I was feeling tender.

I can't really blame that because it wasn't that hard to quit smoking. I don't know why. It wasn't that hard for me. Well, you'd quit crystal meth, so I feel like. And drinking. Yeah. And the smoking. But anyway, I just felt like, and I think about it all the time, like, and wish that I had stuck with it.

I could have hired a tutor. You know, there's all kinds of things I could have done instead of quitting. What is it about Japan that you feel fits so well with you? Well, shopping. It's the best shopping in the world. And people there love to shop. You know, you go into, in America. America, like in New York, I live a few blocks from Bloomingdale's, right?

And I guarantee you, Bloomingdale's is empty right now. You know, I don't know what time it is in the United States, but whether it's 10 a.m., whether it's 2 in the afternoon, whether it's 7 at night, Bloomingdale's is empty. And every department store in Tokyo is jumping right now. Every, and those are just department stores. Every store is jumping. Every, everything is a shop. Like you take the subway and the subway stop is in a 15-story building

and every one of those 15 floors is lined with shops, you know, on the inside. And they're jumping to me. And I always, it didn't matter whether I had money or not. I always loved shopping. I mean, it kind of changed, you know, now I shop in kind of different places. But I just always liked, I always thought it was, I don't know, I like seeing the world that way. There's another great anecdote

in your latest collection about you buying priests' robes in the company of Julia Louis Dreyfus. Are you getting any use sight of those robes? Have you worn them? I just bought a casick,

which is what a Catholic priest wears. It goes to the floor. 33 buttons. I never knew that. One for every year of Jesus' life. And you're supposed to unbutton it and button it. every time you put it on, you're pulling it over your head the second time.

That's just too many buttons. And you're wishing he was crucified at 12, you know. It's just too much work. Gee, the last time I wore it, I wore it to the Federal Express store in my neighborhood in New York. And my doorman walked in and saw me and said, Father David. I was so impressed by him that he was able to just, you know, he didn't. didn't say, what do you wear on that for? It's fun just to wear. And I don't wear it with the collar, and I think that changes it a

little. I mean, my fear was always that somebody would say, oh, there's somebody dying, you know, you know, upstairs, will you come and give him last rights? And I'd be like, oh, it's just have it on because I like it. But it's, it's just a beautiful garment. My final question, as an adoptive Brit, you have got into the archers, is that right? I know Hugh listens to it. The archers. Yeah. Do you not listen to it? I'll come into the kitchen and hear it in passing and I'll ask them questions.

But no, the arches is huge thing. Do you have a favorite character from the archers from what you know about it? I would just say Jazzer because I hate the name Jazzer. And I think that's the only person who's named. mine now from the archers, yeah. But they just invited me. I met some archers people at this BBC award ceremony and they asked me if I'd like to be on the archers. Tell me you said yes. Oh yeah, of course I said yes. That's incredible. When's that happening? I don't know. Oh, I'm so excited for you. But I have to play myself. Brilliant. It's the ultimate accolade in this country. You have truly made it.

After, my radio shows on after the archers, which is always such a nice spot, you know, but I think about, I think about Hugh, you know, who listens to the archers. And then, so I think, you know, when Hugh hears me on the radio, he would have heard me anyway. It's not like he makes a special, that he has to change his schedule. He would be listening to the radio at that time anyway. And will you take Hugh with you when you appear on the album? archers. I'd love to. Oh, yeah. Good. Good. I mean, they came, two of these women who I met who work on the archers, I gave them free tickets to a show I recently did, and they

brought me a swag bag, an archer's swag bag, and it has somebody's flapjack recipe, like one of the characters, and Hugh pulled it out and said, Jill probably. Jill's slack, you know, Jill's flapjack recipe he was so excited well David Sedaris it has been an absolute pleasure thank you for putting up with the cameras

and thank you so much for how you write and how you express yourself and this wonderful conversation thank you so much oh gosh thanks so much for having me please do follow how to fail to get new episodes as they land

on Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts, please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-safety, research. Together we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca.ca.