Soul Boom - Roy Wood Jr. Solves Racism

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Comedian Roy Wood, Jr. (The Daily Show) joins Rainn to explore the fractures in American society, from racism and political division to technology, capitalism, and the myth of unity. Roy reflects on his upbringing in Birmingham, the lessons in resilience and hustle that shaped his path, and why he believes comedy is a spiritual tool for truth-telling. Can America find healing, or is division our destiny? THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! Grow Therapy 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://growtherapy.co/soulboom ZipRecruiter (Try it FREE!) 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ziprecruiter.com/soulboom reMarkable (FREE returns for 100 days!) 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://remarkable.com⁠⁠⁠ Fetzer 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fetzer.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Soul Boom Workbook (Available NOW!) 👉 https://bit.ly/soulboomworkbook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The biggest kind of question facing America is basically I want you to solve racism. Yeah. You have straddled this line between comedy and journalism, social commentary. Since the Civil War, our country hasn't been this divided. Anything that seemed sacred 50 years ago is just being demolished right now. People at each other's throats. From your perspective, what's our way out? I think that

And also solve racism We'll have to come back for racism Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast.

I think the mistake this administration is making, man, is that, oh, if we mute all of the voices in the media who speak mean about us, no one will, there will be no place. Okay. You say you're going to control the media, but then you also turn around and say that nobody believes fake news. So is it fake news? If it's fake news, why are you worried about it?

Why are you trying to legislate it? Why are you bullying it with lawsuits? That's because there's value to it. So I think what you eventually have is an administration that still continues to underestimate young journalists in the young minds. Because all of these outlets that you are trying to silence or, oh, you better not say nothing mean about me or I will enact a law that will affect your corporation. Okay. But the demo of most of those places, the people that are young and that are going to be in charge of this country. They don't watch those channels, not at the rate that you're going to effectively silence them.

So I think that you're just creating more places for there to be more voices to reach more people in dissension about the administration to in places where there actually are active voters. When I say young people, I'm talking under 35, under 30 even. But they're actually there and listening. I think that the more that this administration tries to attack mainstream media and curtail what they do and police what they say, you're just breaking up the cartel, bro. And when you break up a cartel, you get 10 factions now that are all fighting. And it's more chaotic than when you had one escobes. bar or whoever empower, right?

So it's like if you take Don Lemon, right? Don Lemon spoke out about Ramoswami. He fronted him on that morning show that they were doing. Ramoswami came on Vivek and was talking crazy, said some things that Don Lemon decided to check them on. The co-hosts was looking like, That's not what we discussed doing, Don. What are you doing?

And Don a little firing his ass. And that was not favorable to a network who at the time under Chris Lick was trying to turn the corner to be more centrist and less liberal. So Don attacking him is very super liberal. I'm sure that played a role in him getting let go. Okay. You let Don Lemon go. What does Don Lemon do? Don Lemon go and get a microphone.

Don Lemon take a little bit of his money. And now Don Lemon got a dominant-ass journalist or YouTube channel. Well over half a million. Probably at a million at this point. So did you silence him? Did you make him more powerful? Same goes for Colbert. Same goes for any of these other late-night hosts that you think are going to be in the crosshairs.

They're not going to just sit around and shut up. They're just going to find all the spots where the people are and have more time on their hands to fucking. talk to the people. You think Colbert is just going to, May 26th, that's it. We're never going to have from Colbert again. He's gone. Yeah, no way.

Come on, man. I guess I'm asking for a way out. Like, do you see a way out of this divide? I'm not just talking about Democrat and Republican. I'm just, I'm talking about, you know, these issues hanging over our head. It's climate change,

racism, income inequality, broken health care. It's I think I get worse. I think there's only togetherness when there's struggle. There's only unity and pain. So you start seeing more people deal with stuff, deal with real problems, and start realizing that,

oh, my problems aren't just exclusive to my side of the tracks. Then maybe you'll see people coming together a little bit more. So we've got a hit bottom. Yes. It has to get worse. And even then, I don't know if there's going to be true healing because there still isn't unity, even in the fact that people are suffering.

You got Trump supporters who are losing their health care right now and we're laughing at them. That's what you voted for. That's what you get. Oh, your daddy got deported? Well, you voted for the man. Congratulations.

Okay. That's fine. It feels good to be right. But in the long run, it's not going to be unified. You know, I think right now we get to you get to give nanny nanny booboo and anybody who's basically, you know,

votes for, you know, hens who voted for the Fox, essentially. But even that's got to die down would it be some degree, you know, of togetherness. But I don't know, man.

It's hard to think of America as a concept that has failed and that. I don't know. America's only a failure. It just depends on what were you sitting in the casino. You lost all your money on the slosh. Yeah, this country sucks. But if you're the house, you're doing all right.

You're doing all right. And so I think that what we have is that a lot of people trying to assimilate to be a part of the house. Not realizing that the house is never going to let you in. They dangle that promise of you being able to have power and be a part of all of this. I think about it. That's a scam. This country is a corporation, man. And if they can tear down, we'll find out, we'll find out how strong that Constitution is in 28.

That boy tried to run for a third term. We don't see who the patriots are. We don't see who really believe in that sheet of paper. We'll find out the truth then. But, you know, I don't think that. Well, it's already being attacked with birthright citizenship. Yes. So then at that point, we can just kick anybody out we want to kick out.

Well, the concept of America has never been realized. So there's no America to make great again. But I think e pluribus unum out of many, one is a great foundation to try and build a nation like ours out of. And that's the problem is I think there's a large percentage of America that doesn't believe in that concept out. of many one, out of diversity, finding unity, celebrating diversity, bringing them all together. It's more about eliminating that diversity. It's out of one, one, and everyone else out. Do you think the concept of America goes against the selfishness of human nature, in general? I think a little bit. It goes against tribalism. You know, again, we're talking theoretically.

We're not talking to the reality of America. The reality of America has been pretty dastardly. But, yeah, it goes against tribalism to have, hey, we're going to have all these tribes together, all these different colors, all these different beliefs, all these different religions, all these different creeds. And we're going to create unity out of that. You can't even get a homeowners association to agree on the color of mailboxes. My mom got a letter one day because it wasn't the wrong color of brown. It was brown. It wasn't the browns that they've approved and you must repaint your mailbox. So we will find you.

Yeah. You think we're going to get this country to agree on health care or education or feeding children. Of course they're going to starve school children. That's what corporations do. They punish the poor. So I don't know how you fix that without there being true care and concern for other people. people. And I, like, I always love when they compare other countries to America.

Well, I can't believe we can't get that. Over in Slovenia, they have that policy, no problem. Did you know the Netherlands already done? Yeah, because it ain't but a million motherfuckers. Tribalism. And they're more together. There's a larger sense of unity because it's smaller. I would argue

America would be better off breaking off into 48 individual countries. Same as the EU. You have some unified dollar or Brexit shit, whatever, and just fuck it. Every state's its own country

and you can deal with whatever all the wall. And how is that going to work in like Alabama? Well, then Alabama better start trading with fucking Florida if you need an orange. bitch, you got to, now you got to be nice. Now you got to play along.

Now you can really start because the idea of federal and you don't want the government in your business, you got it, big dog. Do it with yourself. That might then force residents of those particular states

to vote. Because we're all here in Alabama together. Same way they're all over in Slovenia together. That'll never happen. But they're going to need all of California's almonds. So just, yeah. There can be no almond milk.

I just think after a certain size, the country has to become corrupt. I just, like, I haven't done this, you know, I haven't done like a Rand McNally analysis of square mileage to corrupt level of corruptivity. But, you know, I mean, of course you have like dictatorships that are rooted in religion

in the Middle East, that's one thing. But I'm talking like, huge, like China, huge, like Russia. Like, once you're just that big, it's just somebody ain't going to do right. We've, uh, what state would you move to if they all became 48 countries? Who's staying California? You'd be in the country of California. I'd stay in California. We got the Central Valley.

We can, we can, California can feed California. Every state's got something they're not good at, though, that they're going to need. I don't know California's. California's good at everything. Okay. Except building trains. We still can't get a train built from Atlanta to San Francisco. You know the funniest Reddit thread I read one time was why can't California put sprinklers in the woods?

And it was like a thousand comments are just breaking down how fires move through the canopy. and sometimes through the floor, and you would need a sprinkler that goes to the highest tree. You know that one task you keep avoiding? For me, it was months after my house caught on fire. I had to sniff test every single shirt, every item of clothing, every flannel got the test, smells okay or ruined forever.

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Okay, I'll admit it. I'm an entrepreneur, business owner, a titan of industry, some might say. So sometimes I face the dreaded task of hiring post-eastern. the job, sifting through a mountain of resumes. Let me tell you that gets old very quick, but not with ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter finds amazing candidates for you fast. And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Soul Boom. Here's what I like. The second you post about a job, ZipRecruiter's smart technology gets to work showing you qualified people who actually fit the role. And if you want to move even faster, you can send a personal invite to apply to top candidates.

ditch the other hiring sites and let ZipRecruiter find exactly what you're looking for, that needle in the haystack. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at this exclusive web address, ZipRecruiter.com slash soul boom. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash soul boom. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. I just walked by Canal Street and there was a thing that was like, a new revolution in AI customer service.

And it was a building on Canal. And I was like, that company right there is about to put like 200,000 people out of work. 200,000. Yeah. Think about it. All the customer service representatives on airlines and travel places and, you know, shoelace, you know, returns. Ice cream representative to no end.

You know the thing companies have done now, they hide things. their phone number on their website. It's like six, seven clicks to get to the number to even call. Oh, here's a helper sister. Oh, click the help desk. And then a window opens up and then there's some automated turd trying to talk to you. Yeah. Not a fan of it.

You know what invention? You know how you have to get the company's phone numbers? You have to ask AI to give you the company's phone number to try and get a human being on the phone. And then you call that number and they're closed at Four Eastern. You can't even talk to anybody. You know what I mentioned? I was watching Star Trek with my son. Which one?

J.J. Abrams era. Oh, the movies? Yeah, Chris Pines and all of that. Well, here's why. I don't do a lot of TV with my son because the storytelling isn't always as in depth. And the character development and television is over the course of multiple episodes. Yeah. Whereas a movie, you can give me a nice two-hour arc on,

Yeah. Like, even with the top guns, the Maverick needs to learn how to trust people. That's the lesson. You can't do everything along. You need your wing, man. And then part two is... Then why doesn't he change his name from Maverick to...

No longer Maverick. Yeah, because he's... Goose is for him. Yeah. And then part two is getting over grief and forgiving yourself after you've made a mistake. So I was watching the Star Trek with my son. And to me,

the one invention that I think will be more cataclysmic than AI is the teleporter. Would teleport. Because it takes kids to ask like a real question that will just shut some shit down. We're watching Star Trek and he goes, well, there's teleportation. Why is there still cars on Earth? And I'm like, you know, that's a very good question. Which means that teleportation is either militaristic or it's the elite way to travel. It's the fancy way to travel.

I just think if you had a teleport. I think if anybody invented the teleporter, you would be murdered. Yeah. Like, you would be murdered. Like, I don't, I'm sorry to open a conspiracy can, but I just think that there's certain innovations. Let's start a whole new conspiracy right now. That teleportation has been invented and it is being controlled and whoever invented it was murdered. Absolutely, I would believe that.

Like, the same way with the cars that run on water and there's like, there was like four patents for cars on water. Three of the people are dead. the fourth one still living, but in hiding and we'll never say it. Like, they got some money and a deaf threat, and they made the three deaths. I'm going to put this on Bill Burke,

because he's the one who mentioned this doc called the gas hole. It's like 10, 15. It's an old dot. It's not even of this new investigative era. But I really think if there's certain inventions that are laid out that could ruin other industries, oh, my friend, I have to kill you. I'm sorry.

So I think if you created the teleporter, you had a way to ruin construction and cars and hotels. Yeah. Airlines. Gone. Gone. Just instantaneous materialization. Well, I know from Star Trek the reason that they had the teleporter is they were like, as they were writing the original scripts, they were like, this takes too long to get everyone on the shuttle and then down to the planet. We have to film them because it was, you know, it's the 60s and 70s. you got to film them getting on the shuttle

and then going down to the planet and then getting off on the planet. Can we just like beam them down? So it was a production creative? It was out of, yeah, necessity is the mother of invention for three to beam down, Scotty. But I do think that the technology, I mean, that's impossible.

I mean, come on. You know what I messed up? I showed my son the JJ Abrams era, Star Trek with Chris Pond and him. And then I try to, to go back and show him the original wrath of Khan before we watch Benedict Cumberbatch's. Okay. Virgin.

And I just think the visual, just the look of it just... He couldn't do it. He's nine. It threw him off. That's where you got to start your kids on the original series. I know. I know. You've just got to go back to like 1969, you know.

I know. I don't know if I'll do the full TV series. The monsters and the rubber suits. I'll find some of that. I went back and tried to watch a pre-watch 2001 Space. Space Odyssey. I think it's a little too over his head. Oh, yeah. That's way too trippy. Yeah, but then it was like...

You got a way to like 15. Then it was like the Black Hole. I think that was the Disney one. Right. Back in the day, I was like, oh, maybe that. Maybe lost in space. But even that, the tech of that is still a little too long. It's like, I'm sorry, man. I've let you see too many,

too much present-day CGI. Right. To appreciate the creativity of what the 1960s and 70s world for sci-fi. Yeah, you got to start them old school. And then that way, when you bring them up to speed to like interstellar or something like that. Which we just watched. Okay.

Which I probably shouldn't have because, again, too good. It's too good. It's too good. You can't go back. Once you've had interstellar, you can't go back to 70s sci-fi, you know? Yeah, but no, I just think that AI is for sure going to shake up a lot of. of stuff, but I don't think, I do think that there's a part of this AI conversation where how much of this fear is being driven by the developers who profit from getting companies to

invest in it and invest in the software, even though it isn't quite where it needs to be yet. Like, what if AI just ends up being what 3D televisions were 15 years ago? Right. Remember when that was this shit? Everybody, you can watch football just like they write in front of you. put on these bulky glasses, motherfucker, and get a curve to... How many men do you think still have 3D televisions that just... But even recently, like two or three years ago, like the Metaverse, remember that?

Like, we're the Oculus and we're going to wear these goggles. And we're going to build... I don't want to pay... You're going to build a civilization online and buy real estate? I almost paid somebody to build me a comedy club in a better of during COVID, because just we're all home. Man, I'm telling you, man. They had architects who could, like, build...

shit for you. You give me $2,000 and I'll bill you a place in a Metaverse and people will come in and how do you monetize it? Well, you just make it lively and then people give you tips and you put up a little QR code. I'm saying, this feels it was like when

people, if you could not, no one could explain it to me in a simplified way and that's when I go, that's the scam or that's where this isn't going to completely. It's like the way nobody could completely explain NFTs to me. Right. And because of that, I can never quite, not kind of, they are gone. Totally gone.

Like, was, I don't know the stat. There's people who put millions of dollars in NFTs. I don't know the stat, but it's like most of them have lost like 90% of their value. Yeah. From four years or five years ago. I'm so glad I didn't put anything in there. I know they stepped to you. They had to come to you with some sort of office coin or some shit or some. Yeah, yeah. I was looking for a long time about doing like, could I do a Dwight coin or or I forget what it was or even a shrewd buck like as an NFT kind of thing. I was trying to think like, how can I cash in on this somehow? You know, but it never happened.

You just got to pull Isaiah Whitlock from the wire and just sell a she-d-dog. He has like a, like one of those, a bobblehead. He has a-oh, and you press it and it goes, shit. But he never says Clay Davis, because I guess legally, HBO would be like, what the fuck are you doing? Right. But it's the Whitlock doll. that says she is. So maybe you do that

and then you skirt around. Like it's got to be something tangible. I have to be very careful with that because Dwight, Shrut and all things related are owned by NBC Universal. And if I want to do any way, if I want to capitalize on that in any way, shape, or form,

like I was thinking about doing a sketch about climate change using the Recyclobs character that Dwight played in one of the episodes. But I know they own it. It's like, if I made it, Are they going to sue me? What are they going to do? Like if I made a climate change video?

They'll probably go, hey, hey, next time, don't. Don't do that. It's better to ask forgiveness than permission. Yeah, man, that's why you need to come off Comedy Central like me, but they don't give a shit. Daily show was like, man, do what you want, man. Take a character from this show and go do it on YouTube without tripping. Yeah, they were fine with that?

Yeah, they've never had issue. I had a character. when we would create fictional commercials to bolster like a bigger political statement we were trying to make. Like there was a story that Trevor did about the race of which police pull people over. And we have this character named Leo Debblin.

And Leo Deblan, we came up with a commercial for black people for an indestructible taillight. So the police can never pull black people over again. And so it's just classic local commercial guy who doesn't have the budget for effects. And I'm Leo Dublin. Get the never break tail. Like that character I've done on stage and like at no point have I gotten a call from Paramount going, hey, hey.

Hey. Hey. It's like, yeah. I found out something about you that I wouldn't have thought I had in common with you, but it made me feel normal. Like when you know you're sitting with a cat that's like, okay, this is my motherfuckers, normal. Yeah. I found out that you during your office days would read the British, not reviews,

but just general British fans of the product to see what they felt about the American product. I've done the same thing with Have I Got News for you? Right. Because our CNN show is a 30-year British-like staple. Right. Phenomenon, yeah. And I can't help it, man. Yeah. I can't help it.

They're scathing, though. Those Brits, they do not like stuff being copied. Even when they compliment it, they go, I expected it to be rubbish, but it's acceptable. Which is a stand in ovation. It's tolerable. Yeah. No, the British vilified the American office. And it just didn't make any sense to me that, like, oh, we did 13 episodes of this amazing show that was a British creation.

Now Americans are going to try and make it. Like, those 13 episodes aren't going anywhere. you can watch them over and over and over again. What does it matter if like the Brazilians make it and the Bangladeshis make it and the Mongolians make it and everyone can just take a great idea and run with it. And guess what? You don't have to watch any of them. You can go back and watch those 13 British episodes over and over again.

The problem is that when someone remakes a show that you love, it's like watching somebody bang your girl. It's like, damn, they're not doing it right. No, she likes it. Why are you putting your tongue? We have a lot in common as I've been reading your book. What's it called again? The man of many fathers.

Man of many fathers. Yeah, we slang in that end of October. And I'm really enjoying your book. I'm about halfway through. The stories are incredible. You have lived a hell of a life, my friend. It's been weird. But I want to have a little bit of a contest that I know you're going to win.

Okay. Here we go. You ready to do this? Okay, I'm ready. We're going to go through a list from the beginning to end. to when we were working in showbiz, a list of our shitty jobs. Oh, man.

Because you listed off so many crap shit jobs that you suffered through. What's your early? Because you started raking leaves, mowing lawns, and sweeping parking lots when you were 14.

Yeah. I walked around the neighborhood. We didn't have a lawnmower. Our yard was so shaked. we only have to cut the grass like four times a year because the grass didn't grow. So I will walk around the neighborhood with a rake and would just straight up just knock on doors. And that's how I made my, and all I wanted was Nintendo tapes. Like I didn't want like jewelry or sneakers or like everybody had a herring bone chain in the 90s.

This is like 92, 91. Okay. And I don't want any of that, man. I just wanted Super Mario. I wanted bases loaded. I wanted RC Pro-Am. I wanted Tecmo Super Bowl. And I get to, I get to, I think, 15.

My first job would have paced up was Baskin-Robbins. Okay. At the mall in Western Hills Mall in Fairfield, Birmingham Suburb. Yeah, you talked about your manager of that Baskin-Robbins. Yeah, Anthony. I can say his full name. Anthony Crum. That was a good dude.

Okay. That was a good dude. I like to run it through my mass media law slams. Lander libo filter before the name comes up. Yeah, Ant was good, man. And he was like one of those people who was like, I don't know if you've ever been like a teenager and you've had a manager in hindsight.

Oh, yo, you were way too young to be the manager of this store. Yeah, they're like 20. Yeah. And they're your manager. But you're like 15 and you're like, wow, they're so old. He's a God. He's got a car. All the girls from all the mall girls are,

coming over and flirting with me, hey, Anthony, he's giving them extra scoops of ice cream and shit. Like, that was who you aspired to be. So I don't know, probably the closest thing I had to. I have other siblings who I grew up with, but like the idea of like a big brother who's like talking to you about how to flirt with a girl. Man, that girl was flirting with you, man. And you missed it, man. I'm like, I don't know. She ordered a hot for her Sunday.

But it's the way she leaned, man. She put your tities on the sneeze guard. Yeah. You got to know, when a girl put the titty's on the sneeze guard, she flirt me. Is that a thing? Titties on the sneeze guard? I worked, man. It's just, for me, it was, I don't know, a lot of my employment was, like, you could say it was a necessity. What I discovered in writing a book is that a lot of it was rooted in not wanting to be a burden to my mom. Yeah.

And, like, realizing over the years that, you know, you're never a burden to your parents. but the thought is, I know you stress about money. I've seen you down here doing math in the checkbook at 1 o'clock in the morning. So if I don't have to ask you for this thing or whatever, this field trip and spending money, I'm not going to ask you. So I'm going to do all my homework on a school bus. So when I get home, I'm going to watch the Cubs until 5 o'clock. And when the Cubs game goes off, I'm going to go and rake leaves all over the neighborhood.

I'm going to lie and tell you that I'm shooting basketball. basketball at the park. And I'm going to come home with like, you know, 30, 40 bucks, give or take. And you do that twice a week at 13 or 14 years old. You're rich. You say at one point in your book, like, you never even sweated money because you feel like, hey, give me enough time and I'm going to figure out how to make money out of any situation. Because you were such a budding little capitalist out of Birmingham.

I still feel like that. Yeah. Like even to this day, like I still feel like that. like even in the face of AI or even leaving a daily show, I didn't really have a plan after. It was just like,

you'll figure it out. But I'll figure it out. I mean, man, I got sent to summer school in the ninth grade. And that was a fucking church's chicken right across from West End High School. And I got sent.

So like in Birmingham in those days, you didn't go to your, I didn't go to my zone high school. I was sent to an alternative high school across town. But if you get sent to summer school, you go to the high school in your neighborhood. Sure. So I didn't know anybody at this high school.

So I had no friends. You failed math? Yeah, algebra one. Sure. Still hate math to the stay. I'm sitting in class. I'm not talking to anybody. And I'm sitting by the window because it's a breeze.

And I can smell this goddamn chicken from Church's chicken for six hours a day, just coming and just waft it into it. And I look across the parking lot and there's a dude sweeping the parking lot. And I just go, I bet you he doesn't want to be doing that. He comes out every day after the lunch rush. Every day after the lunch rush. And the heat of the summer. And everybody's eating and they leave chicken bones and cups and just trash all over the place.

I go across the street and I go, hey, man, you give me a three piece and a honey biscuit. I'll sweep this whole parking lot. He goes, you got a deal. I sweep the whole parking lot. And then I go up the street to the gas station. I go, hey, man. A guy at church's chicken gives me $10 to sweep the parking lot, but I tell you what, you give me $10 worth of candy,

righting off a shoplift, and I'll sweep your parking lot too. Because you got to do. I take that $10 worth of candy. I take it back to school the next day. Flip it. Now I got $20. Right. And now I have friends because now I'm the candy guy in summer school.

Oh, nice. Do you resell the candy for a even greater profit? Yeah, I'm not eating this. The assumption is that, I mean, it's no overhead other than me sweeping. So the assumptions that I pay 50 cent and you sell it for a dollar. That was the general flip for candy at that time in Birmingham. It cost me 30 minutes of my time to sweep and clean this parking lot.

And now I have essentially $20 worth of candy. And I can just take it. All I do is sell it. And so that was, those were the things that I just always figured out a way to do. man we some of it was by force you know I had we did y'all have the fundraisers where you grew up where you'd sell like the shitty candy logs yep and candles and various things he had door to door yeah sign me up get a check fill out the little form font size too I did it for my Cub Scout troop and for band marching band and so like I did it for J ROTC in high school and we like sold all these different candies and Katie did it and chocolate turtles and and all of that. And you're supposed to collect the money from the people you sell

and then three months later, the candy comes in and you deliver it to the people who have already paid you in advance. I'd spent so much of the money that people had already paid me for this fucking candy. And I'm sneaking and I'm working day labor in high school at night.

To make the money back. To make the money back. To pay back the school so I can get the chocolate turtles. And get the chocolates and deliver them to my mom's friends. Yeah. So I had like my regular job at Subway or, you know, Baskin Robbins. I worked at a rehab hospital for a little while.

But then there would be nights where I would work for a cleaning service at a. 8 a.m., 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Like, no one, here's the thing about child labor laws. And this is how I know the government is going to easily have 13-year-olds working in factories. Sure. And no one's going to care. Because no one cares. No employer cares.

Like, oh, the government's, can you believe the government's making 13? Somebody's hiring them. Yeah. Somebody's saying, here's your name tag. There's a whole thing going on. People don't even know about it. There's a thing about people trying to repeal child labor laws to allow children to work more. Yeah.

And there are children working in the fields. Right now, this is not some conspiracy thing. There's like 13-year-olds harvesting wheat and shit out there, you know. And some of the parents aren't necessarily going to care because, they do feel like the kid, well, you should be contributing to the household. And I was your age on the prairie. Everybody milked the cow. A child should be allowed to be a child.

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Here's some of my shitty jobs. I made a list. I started as a child laborer as a raspberry picker. I spent three summers picking raspberries in Seattle area. And the way they would get around paying you, like being on the books, is they paid you by the flat. So $1.25 to pick an entire flat of raspberries. How long do you take to pick a flat? About half an hour.

So I was making about $2.50 an hour. But in the hot sun, like cutting up your fingers on your feet all day, they would bust you out on these school buses. But you know what? At the end of the summer, I had a boom box. I had a Columbia Records and Tapes club. Did you do Columbia Records and Tapes? Damn what I did. I did.

I did you ever pay them back? No, fake name, Ray Wilson. You don't, you get 20 CDs for a penny or whatever. Come on, man. I was two goody two shoes. You sent it to the crack house, two doors down. I paid back every penny to Columbia. I filled out the form and got the, you know, cassettes for 1495 or whatever.

But I did newspaper delivery. you and I spent a lot of time working in restaurants a lot. I mean, years. I love restaurants because we share that. Right. It was free meal. Staff meals. And then you would steal, you stole.

Of course. You'd bring a meal home. Of course. I would bring a pillowcase full of dinner rolls home. I probably stole over the course of a year and a half, 90 feet worth of subway sandwiches. Wow. When I worked there. Can you eat a subway to this day?

No. Right? You can't go back in the... Golden Corral I still eat. Golden Corral? I still eat. Is Golden Corral a buffet? Yeah, it's a buffet restaurant.

South and the Midwest. We used to go to one called the Royal Fork in Seattle. I don't think it exists anymore. It's all the same milk. It's the same thing. It's all the same milk. Did you have the carrot salad with the mayonnaise and the raisins in it? That is way too white.

No? For even a white southerner. What the fuck is that? Yeah. I don't know. It was a thing that was only at the Royal Fork. I loved it. What are the ingredients in this again?

Okay, shredded carrot, mayonnaise, raisins, and there had to have been some, just like dumped some sugar in there. Carrot, raisin, mayonnaise. I'm trying to think of anything close to that in the South. I just throw up in my throat a little bit. Mayo ridden. And I like mayo.

There's salads with little marshmallows in it that they would call it a salad. Yeah, there was raisins in coleslaw. Yeah. And like sunflower seeds. It's just like that. And coldslaw is. cabbage and there's carrot shredded in there.

Here's the worst one I ever had. I had a job as a traffic counter. So for a research study at the University of Washington, I sat on a freeway overpass counting the number of cars that went down a lane during rush hour

for weeks with a clicker and a clipboard and an umbrella. I thought they had to like the strip they run on the road that the car runs over the to strip, the clicker. They didn't have that technology in 1985, apparently. They didn't have that technology. Yeah.

So they had a kid they were paying $4 an hour to sit on the freeway bridge. Like, it was, and it would be pouring rain, and I'd be under my umbrella, clicking and notating. And I should have just, like, made it up. Like, who's going to know? But I was very conscientious. I paid back Columbia records and tapes. Because you never, you're always paranoid of who's watching you do the job.

Like, I was always paranoid that they had somebody because, like, when I worked food, service and you know this, they would have secret shoppers come in, and then a month later, you would get a report of, yeah, three weeks ago, you didn't offer a hot fudge cake to the two-top who came in at 4 p.m. and they ordered the chicken fried store. They were explicitly told, like, do you want dessert? And you didn't offer it. Yeah. And like, after a while, you learn who the secret shoppers are. It's like talking to undercover cops. You know, yes, what are your specials? And then they're waiting for you by memory, her shone at the time I was a showperer. You had to know all of the specials.

You have to know every side item. You have to use descriptive. It's savory and it is in a remolade that will just melt in your end. You have to say all that goofy shit. Is that the hardest you ever work? The raspberries, you think? Raspberrys, traffic counter. My wife and I had a dog walking service for a while.

That was hell, man. I'll never do that again. That was brutal. All the dogs like you? Like, what made that bad? Is it the dogs trying to bite you? coordinating with the owners and what the needs of each dog is. And then you're walking multiple dogs and they get tangled and some of them fight with each other.

And then they're pulling you. They're shitting everywhere. It's a lot harder than that looks. Like you see like a jolly guy like in a teetop walking down with like eight dogs and like, oh, that looks so much fun. I love dogs. It's the worst. I think pet owners are worse than parents when it comes to the finiquiness of how they want you to treat their baby. So I couldn't imagine.

My wife is the worst. Like what the dogs eat, when they eat, how they eat it. She has lists for like the dog sitters. Yeah, I don't rock with animals like that. I don't hate animals, but I've just never been a pet owner. Like to be a dog walker, you need to love dogs. Yeah. You cannot be indifferent.

Yeah. No. Like babysitting, you can, I don't really give up my kids, but I'll keep you a lot. In the 70s, it's a scoop of Purina in the morning, scoop of Purina at night. That's it. That's it. the dogs have supplements and cancer meds because they're eating just like us. And there's no wonder they get in the same ailments.

Hip dysplasia. I think the hardest I had was here in New York City for about, I'm not kidding you, eight years I was a man with a van. I took my wedding money from my wife. We bought a cargo van and I moved people. But it was a great job. It was hard as hell, but it was a great job. It was cash off the books, moving futons up fourth floor walk.

boxes of books, lamps. It was a good way to pay the bills while you're a starving actor in New York. The only job I really did not enjoy, I mean, in terms of boredom versus actual, like, there's hard physical labor.

Okay, I've worked outdoors in Southern Heat doing construction jobs when I was on the road as a comedian. Like, if I'm in the city more than two days, I would get a day job. Okay. Just go work.

Like, just daily work, daily paid, places like labor ready and labor finders. Where you go in at 6 in the morning, sign a name on the list, and you just wait, like you're at the DMV. But you can like stuff envelopes, so have you like set up the state fair or no... It's usually outside humping.

It's usually some steel-toed boot situation. Okay. But yes, there are air-conditioned jobs. If you have the cable, if you can type X amount of words per minute, or you're proficient in word and all of that. But I walk in 6-2 husky-ass-black guys. Hey man, you go into the Quick Creek factory

and you're stacking pallets of QuickCrete for a forklift for nine hours in an aluminum shed, no fan. $4.25 an hour. Good luck. Like there was that. But then on the flip side, I was a telemarketer for, there was a competitor to ADT called Protect America.

It got bought, I think, by Wells Fargo, Home Security later on. But I did telemarketing for about a month for ADT. And then I also did telemarketing for the Alabama State Troopers Benevolent Fund, which was probably by far.

That's got to be the most corrupt organization. I mean, I don't know. My issue was that when you protect America, there was literally a sheep that was just every phone number in Jefferson County.

And everyone took a piece of the printout and you just started calling numbers. Hey, you want a home security system? Free home security system. And a consultation. The Alabama State Troopers shit was so cold, it auto dial. So the moment you put the headset on, the computer knows you're at the terminal. And it's just calling bitches for you.

How you doing? My name is Roy. And every year, the widows of the troopers don't have no money. And we're collecting the money. And you want the money. Donate. Get the, you get your, basically the speech was, donate money for the benevolent fund of troopers who are injured or

in the line of duty and based on the amount you donate will give you a little special little thing you can stick on the car so everyone knows you support the police. Right. Which code is, yeah, the police won't fuck with you. They won't pull you over.

And you can get that little thing. You put that on your wish, and there's nobody going to fuck with you. How much do you want to pay to not get fuck with by the police? And it was the most boring, because you're getting hung up on. Everybody's hanging up on you.

Right. This is way before defund the police like, Like, people love the cops, but they weren't donating to 9 Alabama out from my terminal. And also, you're starving because you can't steal food. Well, I love these stories because a lot of people, you know, getting into show business, they don't understand, like, how low some of us have had to go to get the money to pay the rent, to eat, even to start our careers.

And, you know, the thing about you that is, I just loved and got to know in reading your memoir, was like no one's been higher than you and no one's been lower than you. I mean, you have been... Oh, there's been lowers. Oh, well, you were in prison, you were in jail in Tallahassee for credit card fraud.

Yeah. And you've been hosting the White House press dinner and been a star on Comedy Central that is an art. Selling out comedy shows and specials and those lows to those. highs. Like, when you look back on it now, how does that feel being like in a shed, lifting

bags of concrete while you're on a comedy tour? And then to the White House Correspondence dinner, like, what's your perspective looking back on that? There wasn't anything that I did career-wise that didn't feel, yeah, it was hard, but it never felt ridiculous. I just felt like this is the right thing to do. I have enough discipline. What getting arrested gave me was no safety net. That's the first thing. Because now...

What do you mean by that? Because this idea that I get arrested, I get depressed because I think I'm going to go to prison before I get this. So I have a six-month gap from arrest to sentencing. During that six-month gap, I have a lawyer who said, you're going to prison.

destroy credit cards. Sorry. There's no way around that. Yeah. I'm a court. It's a court appoint. I'm beating him to court every day. So this is just a guy who knows how these charges generally adjudicate at this.

So you'll get 18 months. Good behavior. Maybe 12 months. Just get your affairs in order. All right, young man. That was it. That's what you told me. And you have to wait six months to get that sentence.

So I'm going to do my fucking comedy during this six months. Because also I'm suspended from school during this time because I violated student code of conduct in Florida A&M. So I got a financial aid check. I got arrested Thanksgiving, the week of Thanksgiving. I get suspended top of January. My sentencing is in June. A week after my suspension from school, I get a financial aid check for $7,000. For classes I no longer need to pay for because I'm suspended from school.

Okay. So this may as well have been Brewster's millions for me. I'm 19 with $7,000 in my fucking pocket. And all I do is work 20 hours a week at Chonys. And I play Madden. That's, I have no friends anymore. I don't have any classes to go to. So I may as well try comedy.

It was always on the list of things to do, but I never had given it a shot. Why was it on the list of things to do? And why that point in time did you start it? Because rejection didn't matter anymore because I don't. It was kind of like a fuck it. It doesn't matter. I got some money. I'm going to go to jail anyway.

Here goes. Whereas if you'd have taken it a year before, well, if I do comedy and somebody find out and I'm not funny and I get booed and what if my mama found out and she want me to get a degree and I can't do. Man, I should just, let me just focus on journalism. And then when I graduate, man, I really do want to. Don't, no, no, no.

Journalism, remember, you're going to be the next do with Scott. So you finally go to prison. It's like, oh, well, all bets are off. None of this shit matters. I'm going to prison. I'm going to die. So let's start checking shit off the list, shall we? And so I don't have a car at that time.

I'm riding the bus. I'm sleeping in the bus station and then taking public transit to the comedy clubs all over the south. Because in those days, open mic was generally once a month in most cities with the exception of Atlanta and Tampa. Everywhere else, you're only getting on stage once a month as a new Jack. So if you wanted to get on stage every week in the South, you had to bounce around. You were going Greyhound. Yeah, I was going Greyhound for the first year.

Leave the comedy to us. I saw a lot of shit on the Greyhound. People, like, that's why I really learned, like, on some men are perverts type shit. Like, just wake up to just some dude three rows back. jacking off. No porn, no nothing, no magazine. You don't need it. Straight off memory bank.

Yeah. Just you and the bus, the open road. I'm like, yeah, man. This shit is wild. Yeah. So. I have a friend who wrote a greyhound across Tennessee dressed like a giant bunny. He thought it would be really funny, but he said it was one of the worst mistakes of his life.

But it's like none of that seemed terrible. It was just, oh, this is what I got to do. Oh, at that time, also I wore suits because that's what most successful black comics wore on stage for suits. Also, I was 19. I loved 16. I needed to look of stature to the adults in the room so that they would maybe consider laughing at me. Do you remember any of your earliest jokes? It was all buyback material.

Something, something from that first year. I had roommates who would eat my food. this is true. Like, you know, you label your food, your roommate. Don't y'all hate when your roommate? This is me to room like 40-year-old divorce-ays who've never had. Ain't a roommate. Yeah, yeah.

Don't y'all hate when your roommate eat your food? My room, I got a roommate that eats some of the food, but not all of it. If you're going to eat my shit, just eat all of it. Don't nibble on it. I had a seven-up. This motherfucker drank six of them. Hey, man, that shit worked in 98. It was good.

No, it did. Come on. No, I would have laughed. I would have laughed. But it's in the delivery. It's a good delivery. I'm writing a Greyhound eight hours to say shit like that. Yeah.

Old book buyback. Talking about they don't want to buy back my math book because a new edition came out. Some new math came out. One plus one is still too, bitch. What new math? It's proper rants. I got stuff that. And you didn't get paid for these open mics.

No, hell no. But I had seven Gs. I need the money. I don't need your money. I need the opportunity. I bought an iron and I would iron my suit in the bus station on the diaper changer because I didn't have a hotel room. But it just made sense. This is what you do. This is just what needs to be done to get over there, to get to the goal. And I just look at every step of my journey. It's just, oh, that's what I had to do. Okay, I can't afford my rent or, oh, shit, this gig canceled.

on the, gigs would cancel on, you'd be on the freeway driving to the gig. And they call and cancel the gig. You don't have, that gig was the gas money home. Yeah. So what you're gonna do? Call somebody else for another Western Union? No.

You get out your Rand McNally Atlas book, find the next nearest city that you have the gas to get to. You find the day labor place and you fucking go in and you ask for a job and you work that day. And then you take your check to the check cash in place that everybody else goes to. And you pay your 5% fee or whatever that just fucking bend you over.

Cash your check. Yeah. You get gas and go home. And if you're sleepy, go pass out at the Flying J. Sleep passenger side. That was a luxury, man. My mom found out I was doing comedy

after that first year. And my grade, I got back in school. I was back dean. My grades got immaculate once I had focus. So my mom put down on a car. I had to keep the payments on it. but she didn't want me sleeping at the bus station. One of her students, that's how my mom found out.

One of her students saw me sleeping in Birmingham to the bus station. So this idea of having a car now, oh, bitch, you just opened up the whole Eastern Seaboard. You know how much further I can get in my car? Sure. And I would sleep in the car because I still didn't want to pay for a hotel. I don't want to pay for motels, man. And that was a luxury to just sleep in the, like,

just sleep passenger side in my focus, or I drop the back seat and lay out and I angle with my feet into the trunk. Now, it's good living, man. What are you grateful for about those experiences? I'm most grateful for, I believe, and I feel like you could agree with this, the opportunity is part of it.

But I believe that 85% of making it in anything is emotional perseverance. and the idea of powering through, I call it the cry in a car moment. I think anybody that's chasing something that's not traditional, the traditional path or art to get to it, you're going to have moments

where you're going to second guess and question whether or not this is what you should actually be doing. And I think getting through those moments is important. And those moments never stop. That's the crazy thing. Is that the only thing that happens is that you're resolving and your tenacity to be aware when you're,

within one of those moments and how to pivot out of it, get stronger. But I think the challenges always remain in our career. And then I think the other 15% is talent and luck and opportunity and all of that. Being able to get through closed doors and dark moments within yourself, I learned that that was the most important skill that I possess. and then staying away from Vices. I got lucky, man, because I open for every type...

Like on the road, you're opening for every type of comedian. It's the life cycle of comedian, right? You're young and booming, you're like a... Eddie Murphy, Kevin Hart, Dane Cook. Sure. That rival.

Anybody you want to pick that goes from here to here really fast, And then you have people that have a nice slow burn throughout their career where they're well known and they've done a lot. And there's still people like that's like a John Witherspooner, Tommy Davidson, a David Allen Greer. You know, those types where always on the scene, always work and always quality performances. And then there's people on this side of it where there's alcoholism in there. There's a vice in there. There's a shitty attitude somewhere in there.

And I'm just the new 20-year-old freshman the bus station. and I'm opening for everybody under that arc. That sunrise to sunset of your career. Yeah, you see it all. So I've seen a lot of sunsets and open for those people. So you start knowing where the vices are and where the potholes are. So you can learn a little bit of how to avoid them a little bit more. I think that's one advantage road comics have,

if they're in it long enough, over a city comic, because I think city comics don't discover that until much later in their career. because most of your freshman year or whatever, you're just with the same people. You're just doing open mic with all the same people at the same level issue and y'all are all chasing stage, time and rising together. Whereas I'm sharing a condo with a motherfucker going through a divorce,

and he's in the living room crying at one in the afternoon. We got to do a show tonight. Yeah. It's like, oh, okay, notes itself. Choose the right woman. Like, don't. And then he's drinking the contents of the mini bar. Oh, bro, I've taken, there was a guitar act.

Nobody famous, because I don't want, because I've learned you don't name names. My fuck is guests in the comments. Okay. There was a guitar act I opened for in Tallahassee one time. And he left his guitar on stage. And it's one of those gigs where you're staying in the hotel where you're performing. I go up to his room, knock on the door to give him his guitar back,

open the door. naked. There's three women behind them, but naked, and there's every drug you can name on the table. And he invited me in the room. And I'm like, I don't think I either do that. That's where being on probation really saved me

too, man. You're on probation for five years. Yeah, yeah. But they cut me after three. The sentence was five, because I never got jail time for anything of what happened with the credit card stuff. But those first three years of being on probation and having to actively every month check in with a person and have a conversation about my progress because if it's lacking, you're going back to jail. So the grades need to be straight. You need to be gainfully employed. This comedy shit is cute, but that's not gainful employment

in the eyes of the state of Florida because I wouldn't make any money off of it. So you're also drug tested on a regular basis. So I couldn't smoke weed. I couldn't drink an active fool. I'm definitely not storing cocaine. So by the time I got off of probation, I had so many holistic habits. Like, I'd just go home. Like, to this day, I'd go home. Like, unless it's somebody I'm really cool with and tight with, I'll go drink with some friends. Yeah.

But I'm not. Thank you. Taking the butt-naked guitar invitation. So thank you to the state of Florida, Florida prison corrections institution. If you want to get your life together, get on probation in the state of Florida. Yeah. Leon County. I know what it's saying, Apple Yard Drive.

Let's go back to this crying in the car moments. I want to hear about some of yours. and also about, you know, I asked our mutual friend, Hassan Minaj, about what to talk to you about. And he brought up some really dark stuff. He talked about the road comics and the amount of folks taking their own lives. I did a documentary, short documentary

for my old company, Soul Pancake, called Laughing Matters, which was about that line between making comedy and mental health and how there needs to be a certain measure of brokenness in a person, that they're going to devote hours of their days to generating comedy, making jokes, trying to make people laugh, going through what you went through,

Greyhound buses, sleeping in bus stations to get into open mics, that there's got to be something essentially broken there. So what do you think about that link between making comedy, mental health, crying in the car moments, and the really sad state of the mental health of the road comic. I mean, you're trying to fill a gap. I mean, if you see a performer on stage,

they're trying to fill a gap. Every time? Some story. All of them? Every single one? The good ones. Yeah. I hate to say it.

Yeah. The worst, the trauma, the better the comic. Whoa. Because you got a much deeper reservoir. You know, to pull from it. from. There's something more powerful. There's something more riveting. If there's grief for a sense of sadness because you're watching somebody try to make sense of something that ultimately is an emotion we all reckon with to some degree, you know, or another,

I think that, you know, for me, I know that my relationship, which was the whole point of the book, you know, my pops died when I was 16. So I had a child and I wonder, well, where did I get my values from? It couldn't have all been from him, and it wasn't. And I started making a list of men that I've met along the way. Some, you know, I still keep in touch with some. I only met for a day. And it was like, oh, damn, that was a really point. And I just started making a list of times.

And that list became a series of stories. And, you know, you look at it. And then you just realized that, oh, well, so many comics were going, through things. I mean, there's two comics that are in the book who are dead now. One of them killed themselves. Or what is it? Death

by suicide? There's a proper way to say it that I haven't perfected yet. I'm sorry. I'm working on my wokeness. But for whatever reason it took their own life.

We'll just, we'll use that for right now. And then I started making a list of just the comedians I knew personally have worked with, have their phone number who are no longer on this earth. Yeah. And the number is about at 30, of which about 20, of that 30, I'd say, a solid third killed themselves. and another third drugs, narcotic alcohol,

accidental overdoses. Okay. Which is also used medicating because whatever you were getting from the stage wasn't enough. I'm thankful,

but I'm also not naive to the fact that, you know, like Dexter says, you know, there's a dark passenger, you know, and like the idea

of that being a prevalent thought in so many people's minds and this occupation. I know the military is high. I know law enforcement. The suicide rate is real high, but those occupations as well. And I'm not here to go into grief Olympic to match job for job. I know I think dentists surprisingly. High suicide, right? Yeah. The hard thing, man, is when a comedian dies, especially by, you know, suicide is when you are around. as a veteran now, who's been doing it since 98,

when you're around younger comics and you can tell it's their first, it's their first, this is the first friend you've lost. And having to, I was talking with Hassan about that too. I don't want to say fake mourn, but it doesn't hit me the same.

game. It's like in the war movies where the private saw someone get shot right in front of them. And then the grizzled vet is like, come on, we got to get back to work. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of what I am. And I, you know, in a young comic a couple years ago, he wasn't a nasty DM, but he sent me a very, it's exactly the type of message. a 22-year-old would send a 46-year-old and that you're cold and callous and don't I can't believe you're this is how you think about this person now that they're like no it's not that is if I'm not expousing enough emotion and sadness and regret over this thing it's because my reservoirs dry so you haven't been doing it long enough to

realize that if you do this job long enough, you're going to lose people that you loved and that you spent time with and that you hung with. And that doesn't count just the regular traffic crash and suicide traffic crash and a heart attack. I'm not talking about suicide. Just regular comedian. Oh, he's a big dude and ate too much fucking pork chops. They had a heart attack. it was a tough conversation to have with this comment because I'm trying to get him to explain that I'm not like this because I don't care it's because I know that this is going to happen again

and I have to protect myself because I still have a job to do because I still have a child to feed. And if I sat in a devastated state for whatever length of time you think is acceptable for me to show sadness I would be, that would be a month and a half of my year. Yeah.

Yeah. If we're, if I'm at 30 now and I've been doing comedy 28, that's one or two a year. Like that's, do you think part of the problem with comics is they feel like if they get mental health care, if they take care of their wellness, they get therapy, if they seek to live in some balance and some harmony in their lives, that they're, they're afraid. They're going to lose what makes them funny. And isn't their bread and butter if it comes from their brokenness?

Do you think part of the issue is not seeking help? Because you don't want to lose that damaged part of yourself. It's like Leonard Cohn says. It's the crack that it's the crack in you that lets the light shine through. They don't want to heal that crack. They don't want to seal it over. Well, the question becomes, who am I if I'm not that anymore? If your trauma is what you wore on your shirt

or the brokenness that the trauma left you in and that was your fastball, you choose to not evolve. I could believe that. You know, I could believe that. I think that I wish more comedians will realize that you can evolve and still be the same version of yourself

and still be funny. Bill Burr is not who he was 20 years ago. Yeah. Jim Gaffigan is not. I admire Sarah Silverman who kind of used her kind of neuroses and brokenness early on in her comedy. And now she's reflective in a way and insightful.

And she can still spin a dirty joke like nobody, but we've watched her kind of grow up over the last 20 years. You know, she's seen it all and done it all. You know, I just wish more comedians would realize that healed from the trauma doesn't mean that you're devoid of opinion. and human. And I don't think you're ever healed from any of this shit.

I just think you figure out a way to harness it in a way that makes sense. And if anything, at least you know the whys of how you are and why you are the way you are. And that gives you another whole path.

Like, I'm not, I don't think I'd get to this place of, I don't know, peace isn't the right word, but like, okay, you had a, You had a father that was well respected and did a lot of things to be respected by black America. America as a whole as a journalist.

Okay, cool. Also, it came up short a little bit in the dad department. Yeah. Okay, cool. I would say a lot bit. A lot bit in the dad department. A lot bit. Now, I'm supposed to just not be a dad.

I got a kid to raise. All right. I can't look at what he did as a full checklist of how to carry my mind. myself as a man. Who else can I look at? Oh, look at all these other people that I got blessed with in my life. How about that? Let me just glean, let me just nibble from all of them.

Boom. Whole fatherhood, pass it on to the boy. That's the goal for me. So, you know, I just wish more comics would understand that evolution is not, it's not death of self. You know, I would even argue Chris Rock on tambourine was probably a transition into something a little more introspective, especially the back half of this.

But like you can see a clear delineation at the 30 minute mark. We starts talking about his divorce and porn and addiction and all of that stuff. I'm like, oh, he's tired of yelling about politics and the president and all of that. He's found something more interesting. And you just have to continue to follow that. There was a lot of trauma in your childhood, your mom having to work full-time and going to putting herself through school.

What, did she go to law school? Grad school and law school. Grad school, law school and chasing a master. Incredible. You kind of had to raise yourself. I want to get to your dad in a minute, but how did your particular trauma of having to grow up way too young and go through what you went through, take care of yourself, parent yourself? How did that inform your comedy, especially in those first. years. See, that's the thing is that people say that that's like trauma, right? And I'm like,

okay, I was a latchkey kid. My mom will come home at five, make sure food was there, and then she bounced to law school. And you know to be showered and be your ass in the bed by 8.30, you know, no later than 8.30. I sometimes sneak up a little late, watch Nickelodeon, watch a little danger mouse. But I never saw it as trauma because it was just, oh, this is what my family does. Okay. Nobody's home. All right, I'm going to go out and play a little bit, and I know to stay on this street. I know the rules. For the most part, I

followed the rules because the cost of breaking the rules was loss of freedom. And I always wanted to be free. So, I had decent grades or whatever. We moved to Birmingham. My parents reconcile fourth grade. We moved to Birmingham from Memphis. My mother and I were in Memphis

at the time. We moved to Birmingham and the idea of oh my dad doesn't come home every night because he has another family well I just spent K through three with no dad at all so you'll take a part-time dad which is okay this seems yeah I knew from visiting other friends homes that our home wasn't the same as their home where the daddy was there

but the idea of lack of presence and everything in the moment it's not the same trauma Which is why I wasn't physically abused. I was never sexually abused. I was never really verbally abused. There were definitely spats between my parents where I felt like collateral damage and how I was treated by my dad.

But the idea that in the moment, this is affecting me, it didn't feel like that. Now, in hindsight, I had no fucking business, working 30 hours a week in high school. At age 15. Yeah.

There's no fucking way I should be doing that. But if you're the mom and you know that this degree and this master's degree and this doctorate is a way to get out of this situation, to get the money you need, what's you're going to do? Now go to night school so you can watch me and make sure I'm at home instead of at Golden Corral or Shoney's or at the rehab hospital. You can't watch me. You can't. All you can do is hope that I'm making good decisions. and give me good morals and give me good guidance,

which is what my mom did. So the way you fix that is that I have a child and then I try to make it so he doesn't have to work, but then the counter becomes how do you give him values? How do you give him tenacity?

Because all of that hustle, all of that, wow, man, you're slept in your car and you fucking did day labor at a quick creek factory and you never said no and you always figured out a way that came from the same childhood because pops wasn't always paying the bills

and I didn't want the gas cut off this month so yeah I'm going to go up to the church's chicken and sweep that parking lot and make a couple dollars and I'm going to flip this candy from the Circle K and if I do that enough over the course of the month the next time my parents have an argument and my pop say he ain't going to pay the bill. bills that's smart to prove a point.

I can go to my mom and go. There you go. Yeah. And now she doesn't have to stress. But you hit it in terms of your son. What's your son's name? Yeah, son, Henry. So I don't want Henry ever worry about me.

I won't ever have to worry about his mama. You know what I'm saying? So the moment you know your parents are straight, then you have the freedom to be a child. Right. I'm a boy. It's natural to care about my mom. I worry about this with my kid.

Like, we both had to, hustle in different ways. You had a much rougher row to hoe, but we both had to struggle, work a ton of jobs and live kind of month to month, paycheck to paycheck. And it gave us a certain tenacity, I think, do you worry about Henry lacking that same fortitude and tenacity born out of the necessity of? Yeah, my homeboy Tommy Johnigan. He said something... That's not a real name. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Tommy Johnigan, great comedy. Yeah, Tommy Johnigan. Oh, Google. He's great. He's great. That sounds like an animated character. No, man. We toured.

We was on last comic standing together. Okay. Both fit in the top five. You used to know a man on an 80 city tour bus ride. And he said something one day on the tour bus. He said, we'll never be able to teach our kids poverty. And he's right about that. We didn't have kids at the time, but I'm older.

I think back to that conversation 15 years ago, and he's right. And so I believe there's still ways to teach that hard work and that value, but sometimes I wonder, you know, am I better off because I work? Because it gave me the hustle and the lock-in mode that I needed to get to where I am today. But would I have been better off just being able to just go to another UAB baseball camp? go to Camp Birmingham and play a little bit. Go to the boys club and goof off a little bit. I was always locked in on work, man.

Since I was 13. And I remember when I got the Baskin-Robbins job, the first day my mom took and dropped me off, my mom said, are you sure you want to do this job? Because from this day on, you will never stop working. She said, today is your last day of freedom. She said, today's your last day of freedom. them from something that will never leave your consciousness.

Of course, you're 15. Let me out the car, bitch. I'm going in and scoop to ice cream. Free ice cream. They're putting titties on the sneeze guard, Joyce. And then you look up at 46 years old and you're like, shit. I never stopped. Never stopped.

So, you know, I feel like for as long as your children have something that they're locked in on and focused on, I don't think that there's any mountain that's too large for them to attempt to climb. And I just trust that with my son. Nice. Because for me, comedy was, it always felt worth it.

So none of the mountains felt like mountains. And, you know, I can take you back, man. Shit, man, 86, 87. HBO free preview weekend when the whole country would have HBO for free. for three days. Yeah. 300 million Americans all had HBO.

And they would show comic relief or Carlin or whatever Sinbad was doing at that time. Eddie Murphy Raw maybe? Oh, every now and then. Yeah. Every now and then. But you got, they would show you one blockbuster movie that you, we never saw because we never afforded movie tickets. And you would get one solid comedy special. That might be Billy Crystal sometime or whatever.

But I remember warning. stand up then for myself or feeling like I had this creativity. I lived in my head. I had what we would know now today as scripted podcast. I was doing that in 88 on my pop's tape recorder. Just making fictional adventures of a captain and his bird, a pirate and his bird. And just doing voices for what? To play back to who?

Don't know. Just by yourself with a Panasonic tape recorder? I grew up an only child. I'm the ninth of 11, but I grew up an only child in that house. So I stayed talking to all on my toys and G.I. Joe. Bro, I had like in

10 Marvel phase five level storylines of G.I. Joe's versus transformers. There were hostages. People got lost in the barbecue. I would burn up people. Like, characters died. My story.

We're killing off roadblock. Which, Marvel is doing these days. Yeah. Give me a tour of Black America in the 80s. I mean, there was, I mean, kids played outside a lot more number one. They're not all on screens and tablets and just being indoors.

God bless you if you're a kidnapper now. I don't know. You're going to get in the house. It's rough for kidnappers right now. Terrible screen time. It gutted the industry. You're talking about AI. There was so many people.

So my grandmother, my mom is from Clarksdale, Mississippi, and my grandmother's street, if you, I mean, anybody could city view it. But my grandmother lived on the street in Clarksdale called Andrew Street. And Andrews Street, there are no intersecting streets. It is one long street about 20 houses long, proper large yards, too. So it's just one long, like, triple football field, just a street. And there's a church at one end and there's a water tower at the other end and like a corner store. So anywhere you want to go on that street, there was an eye on you. Somebody was in the yard.

Somebody was in the front door. And even if you went in the backyards on either side of those houses, there was somebody there. Just watching. Not to just be a nag, but just go, hey, what y'all doing over there? Or if there was something weird happening, like if somebody, like, be some kids from across town come over trying to, to fight somebody from our street. They, adults would be out in a matter of 20 seconds.

There was no go get a phone. You could just literally shout and somebody would come outside. I remember my father used to take me to the barbershop, man. We used to go to Pete Stone Style Shop in the heart of the Civil Rights District in Birmingham.

And that barbershop was very communal for black men like over 50 or 60. And that's where they, like all the powerful people. I saw the movie barbershop. Come on. A little more steam. I know all about it. Oh, yes.

You're up on it. Yeah, we had the one white guy with the black faith. So that became a central place for almost mentorship in a way. Because you're sitting there as a kid, you're waiting two hours to get a haircut. And you're just listening to a grown man talk about life and relationships and civics. And who would have voted if it was an election year. They'd be in there getting heated about mayoral elections. and city council and state reps.

So you knew everything that was going on, you know, in the neighborhood. There was a level of care and concern and give a damn. One of my first memories, when we first moved to Birmingham, there was a house two doors up. And the lady made me and my friends ice cream, homemade ice cream. Just, we don't know this lady. And she's just making, we're just sitting, okay, you make his ice cream. And you trust her because she's in the hood.

She's in the hood. And that part of it, you know, I think church also played a big part in there being a sense of trust. Because you knew so many people, actions were rooted in spirituality. I don't know how much. I mean, hell, man, I haven't been to church regularly in 15 years. I pop in from time to time and from home. But I think the loss of religion to a degree also created a lack of sense of community. and a degradation of this sense of community within black neighborhoods

because the idea of even thinking and considering other people isn't at the forefront of your mind if you're not going to church as much. It's not there to be constantly acted upon and reminded and be a good neighbor. That's a good point. That's a good point. That's kind of the point of the sermon is every week, hopefully, theoretically, kind of like, don't just think about yourself. Think about your neighbor.

Think about those in need. Think about God. surrender to something greater than yourself. I sometimes wonder, you know, how much poverty played a role in there being more of a communal sense within the black community in that there were more of us going through the same shared experience. So the tendency to lean on one another

was a little bit more prevalent, a little bit more prominent, you know, you add drug use and you add, you know, the assimilation of a lot of, blacks out of that into the middle class and the upper middle class, then maybe there, that's part of where some of the fracturing happened. You know, I haven't really done a super deep dive and analysis on it, but, you know, my grandmother's street is not what it once was. Like there were days where we would be out, man. I mean, you could, of course, you could grab a kid if they're by themselves, but I don't think I was ever outside and it was less than ten.

of us. Seven or eight. Yeah. If it's Easter, because so-and-so's church didn't let out yet. So it's packs of kids. Bro, it's always packs.

15D. We're playing 9-09 baseball in the 80s, just outside, just up and down the street, skateboarding, I don't know if I should say this with reverence,

playing in flood water, just country shit. Yeah. The Mississippi Delta would flood every now and then. And you'd be outside, Waste deep. Tackle football.

Flood water. Why not? But you wouldn't see a grown-up till like 2.30 or 3.30 where you could hear so-and-so's mom 10 doors down. Kwame! Kwame, your mama just called you,

Kwame. Didn't even have to turn around. You knew who it was. You knew which house. Yeah. So it was, that was a very beautiful time. You know, And it was very familiar.

You know, people joke about it now. You know, a lot of black comics joke about it now, but it's true. But, you know, you'll come up to some young and says, you know, late teens, early 20s. And your first instinct isn't to, hey, young blood, that's a nice shirt. Make sure you treat women with respect and be a good. Yeah. The first thought might be, are they about to rob me? Because they're young and wow.

So I think even that hesitation in even trying to be kind, it just contributes to the degradation. Because I think a lot of people don't show love because they were never shown love. So as best you can, if you can be love or move in love, you should do that. Yeah. I try to.

I mean, my thing with young kids, especially young black kids, and I don't do this just for a fake-ass icebreaker, but I legitimately want to know what music they're listening to. I'm so out of touch with. But even that's hard because in a lot of cities, a lot of kids are listening to drill rap, which is super regional.

It's not as commercial as a lot of more mainstream rap music. And so much drill rap, it's just about, like, true shit about who they killed or who they're going to kill. So it all, it makes me sadder in a way. considering that I came up, you know, under a few party records and, you know, some good times. You know, good ditty music before we found out who he was. And you talk a lot about outcast. Yeah, dude.

That was, in terms of southern identity, outcast, I don't think people can ever truly overstate how much outcasts. to the South. I know they're Atlanta's. Yeah. But to just be pride, to have pride. And why is that? Because they were, because they also were, they were imaginative and fanciful and crazy and sometimes

they could hit hard and... They were the first rap group, in my opinion, that the New York high hats and gatekeepers could not truly label as regional. You can frame the ghetto boys as that. You could frame Luther Campbell,

as that you can frame eight ball and MJG and suave house is that you know they were kings of the South but it's the South so it's always seen it like the South was Jersey to New York's

New York in terms of how hip hop was seen even to a degree to the West Coast so I feel like the West Coast artists had more integration with Southern artists at that time like I'm talking early 90s and then Outcast comes on the scene

and nationally just, and you can't ignore them. You can't ignore this. This is, I mean, Andre 3000 said it best that the Sorcero was. The South got something to say. You can't ignore us now. And so that was like,

that's the music of my childhood. Like, that's, you know, the way the kids was bumping Springsteen in the music back in the day. That was my theme, man. And I just, I really have always resonated with their music and their sound and their desire to be different and innovative while also never forgetting and always honoring where they came from and who they represent,

which is the South and which is Black America. And so I've tried to do that as best I can with my stand-up. You know, it's CNN and CNN. I mean, that's political jokes. But like in terms of if I'm on stage, talking about comedy, like just talking, we're talking stand-up comedy.

I want to talk a little bit about what I feel and what I feel was affected by where I came up. You know, I grew up, you know, you talk about community. You know, I was very, very fortunate, man. You know, I grew up in a city that's 70, 75% black. All I know is predominantly black. So I never not saw good examples of men or quality people.

Like that Baskin-Robbins where I worked is five minutes from where Bo Jackson is from, three minutes from where Willie Mays is from. So this idea of you can be from here and not do great things elsewhere, that was never in my mind. It was just a matter of which thing do I want to try and do. You know, I give my pops credit, man. My pops took me a lot of places and he spoke. And he met a lot of powerful people because he covered a lot of powerful people. And they were black. That part of it, coming up in a black church, going to a black boys club, Birmingham City,

even for the fact that I wasn't going to my zone high school, that shit was still 60% black. So this idea of. of there's always being somebody around that's watching just a little bit more to give you a word of encouragement or just a way to let you know that stay on this path.

It's a mentorship. Even if it's micro. It can just be a single moment. It doesn't have to be repetitive. Titties on the sneeze guard. Yeah. They flirt. They flirtin. You got to title this episode, please.

Titties on the, please. Talk to our producer. He's shaking his head. Titty's on the sneeze card. Come on. Everyone's going to click on it. I don't think that's going to get approved on YouTube. They'll demonetize you.

He knows. He knows. A couple things I want to ask you about. My dad passed away five years ago. We had a very complicated relationship. People listening know. You know, my birth mother kind of took off when I was about two. I stayed with my dad.

He got remarried. They were not in a good. or happy marriage. So my dad was the central figure in my life. I spent most of my 20s and 30s angry at my dad for his failings and what he didn't do. And, you know, I regret that a little bit, but part of it is natural. That's kind of what you do in your youth. And it was always hard for decades.

It took me in a lot of therapy to kind of figure out how to rectify his failings, how he was not there for me with his strengths and ways that he was there for me. There were ways that he was incredibly present in my life. And I wouldn't be who I am without him. He always wanted me to go in the arts. He encouraged me. He never said like, you need to get a real job. He really like, he wanted me to go to New York. If you want to be an actor, do it, you know, give your whole life to it. That's pretty special, you know. And there's a lot of ways emotionally he couldn't be there for me because of his own childhood trauma, which was really severe. He was not capable. He did not have the wiring to hug his son and to mentor his son and to intuitively, you know, have deep compassion

for what his son was going through. He was never given the tools he needed to pasture you. He didn't, he didn't have those tools. And, you know, unfortunately, he didn't develop those tools. There weren't many ways to develop those tools in the years without therapy or self-help books or, you know, the kind of information and resources that we have today. But it's been a long battle of like, there's so much I love about him and there's so much still that I have pain and kind of unrectified inside of myself. And your dad, your history with your dad, your story with your dad is incredibly complicated. He's a complicated human being, man. He is incredible. incredibly successful journalist,

radio personality and journalists. Selfless in that career. Yeah, and did so much for the black community and social justice, and yet he had two families. And a lot of families. I mean, just two near the end. And this was like really the first,

this was the second shoe that dropped. So first shoe is my son is born. My dad was time when I was 16. All right. My daddy was old. He had prostate cancer. it would have been nice if he was home a little bit more, but I fared okay.

Me and my mom fared okay. I made money. We didn't miss any bills. They argued a little bit, but once I figured out that money solves most of those problems and I focused on that, oh, okay, cool. Then you get, you have a child, and you start thinking about everything you want to do with your child,

and you start thinking about, well, when did I do that with my dad? And then it's like, yeah, oh, fuck, bro, you missed a lot of. that shit. Damn. You start like really recounting all of that. You become angry. So, you know, you're going to be angry.

What's you going to do about it? He's been dead 20 years. What are you going to do? You're going to go to the grave and cuss him out? Well, you can grieve it. What does that do? I think it helps heal it. I think if you give some time and some attention,

some compassion for yourself or what you went through, what you didn't have, you know, I'm not saying dwell on it. but take the time to, you know, appreciate what you went through. You know, give yourself some love and compassion, and maybe that increases the love and compassion you can share with your son. I've always looked at to some degree. Am I? No, no.

I'm just speaking to someone who's gone to therapy for some years. I haven't, I stopped going about a year and a half ago. I didn't go by junior until my dad died. And it was, it was the only thing I knew that I could do that. I would just kind of get back out of a little bit. Just a little thump behind it. Every year in high school, that yearbook picture,

it just said Roy Wood. Why did they put the junior on your name? Motherfucker, you are, junior. Oh, I got you. I'm like, I don't want people to know the affiliate, even though everybody, the whole city knew who's son I was. Yeah. And then he died my senior year of high school.

I'm like two months later, it was time for the yearbook. Finalize your quote for the yearbook and all that. Print your name as you wanted to appear in the yearbook. Right. And I added junior. Oh, that's good. That's nice. It's just, it's frustrating because, you know, our parents, man.

You get old, you get in your 30s and 40s, and you think you know everything there is to know about life. So you second guess them. And then you take everything that you've learned from them and dissect it down to the millimeter and decide what pieces of them to give to the child and think that you can discard everything bad about them without calculating you're their child too.

and some of the bad of them might be with you. So it's not just about how you choose to raise your child. It's also how you choose to treat yourself and carry yourself. That is important. Because if it's about like, if we're talking relationships and love, okay, if my pops never treated women with respect because he wasn't around a man that showed him that that's how women should be treated.

but that's probably I probably should get in a relationship because sooner a lady's going to need to see that co-parenting is good and it's a great co-parenting dynamic right the same not the same yeah because otherwise I'm just telling

but I'm not showing right and that's what work I might be enough might be enough but just in case probably Because that's also about showing the worth of accepting and allowing another person into your space and trying to pour into each other.

Like, I think that's all good things. I don't think any of that's a bad thing. But, you know, if I don't, okay, I don't have 11 kids like my dad. It doesn't mean that I can't necessarily. Well, yeah. You're busy. Please don't jinx me. Don't do that.

Don't. Let your seed fly. I'm not Nick Cannon. If I had while and out syndication, if I had wilding out syndication money, I'd be fucking like Nick Cannon too, but I don't. I'm on CNN,

and they only gave us 10 episodes. It's a terrific book. It's an amazing story. Really, your journey is something else. I never thought about that. I'm just sleeping in a bus station to the White House correspondent. Cracking on Joe Biden to his face. Yeah, that would be bad.

That took a dark turn at the end. It really did. I'm sorry. Thanks for coming on Soul Boom. I appreciate it. And thank you for like giving a shit and preparing, like even reading the book and like asking questions. It's the golden rule. I like it when people read my book and prepare.

So I do the same thing. Respect. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.