What emotion do you understand better than all the others?

Feelings of vindictiveness and recrimination are important as fuel in an artistic life.

I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card.

The show where cards control the conversation.

Each week, my guest answers questions about their life.

Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me.

My guest this week is Tim Blake Nelson. I wake up every day in search of creative truth and creative moments.

There are certain actors. I'm just going to watch no matter what. Tim Blake Nelson is one of them.

Whether it's O Brother Where Art thou, or Watchmen, or smaller appearances like his episode in the show Poker Face,

if Tim Blake Nelson is in it,

I am watching. I think it's his face. His face seems like it's holding a lifetime of stories

and all the joy and pain that goes with them. He puts all his storytelling experience to work

in his latest novel. It's called superhero. And I am so very, very glad to welcome Tim Blake

Nelson to Wildcard. Hi, Tim. Hi. You're not as glad as I am to be here. It's great to meet you. Oh, you're very, very kind. I'm such an admirer of your work. I have long wanted to have you on the show. And I'm so glad that we could make it happen. So round one, memories. I hold up three random cards. and you pick, even more randomly, one, two, or three.

Two.

What's something you took away from your first job?

Well, my first job was working at the Tulsa Beef Company, which was a meatpacking company.

And this was in high school, in part, to pay off legal debts from having been arrested for public intoxication.

This is already the best answer to this question of all time.

And spending my prom night in jail.

Whoa. And so, jail. Whoa.

And so, yeah, I woke up at 5.30 in the morning, every morning, the summer before I went to college.

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