Bowen Yang thinks being present is overrated

Wild Card with Rachel Martin

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 991 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bowen Yang has had some iconic Saturday Night Live roles — the iceberg that sank the Titanic, the Chinese spy balloon, the Tiny Desk intern. And he's also had big successes outside SNL — in movies like Fire Island and Bros, and on his hit podcast, Las Culturistas. He talks to Rachel about living too much in the present, hard truths from Tina Fey and why the afterlife should have a rollercoaster.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation,
0:05.1	working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems.
0:11.9	More information is at waltonfamilyfoundation.org.
0:15.9	How do you get in your own way?
0:17.0	Hmm.
0:19.0	I get in my own way by like overprivileging the presence. Hmm. I get in my own way by like over-privileging the present.
0:25.3	That's so interesting because everyone wants to be in the present.
0:28.5	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:29.3	I feel like that's overrated.
0:30.6	I feel like being present is overrated.
0:33.3	I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard.
0:36.1	The game where cards control the conversation.
0:41.0	Each week, my guest chooses questions at random from a deck of cards.
0:45.8	Pick a card one through three.
0:47.6	Questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped them.
0:51.3	Not that I'm like permanently camped out at the present, but I do forget
0:57.4	about the past. I forget that I have like been through tough things before. So I got to tell you,
1:04.0	I take research very seriously. My team and I spend hours digging through articles and profiles of
1:09.4	our guests trying to understand them,
1:11.4	right? This is serious work. And of course, this is what I did to prepare for my conversation
1:16.0	with Bowen-Yang. I knew a lot about him already, though, like the fact that he's the first
1:20.5	Chinese-American cast member on Saturday Night Live. I know the inside jokes from his podcast,
	...

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