W. Kamau Bell on the lessons of parenthood, Twitter, and fame

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2016

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

W. Kamau Bell is a comedian and a writer. But you probably know him from one of his podcasts(Denzel Washington Is The Greatest Actor Of All Time Period and Politically Re-Active) or his CNN show The United Shades of America.In this conversation, Bell and I go wide. We begin with an inquiry into the nature of health food, transition into a discussion of how future historians will view our present (and, particularly, a discussion of which stories we're ignoring that they'll see as central), move into the lessons Bell has learned from parenthood and fame, dig into his decision to move to Northern California from New York, examine his path to comedy, talk through the opportunities presented by podcasting, and more. There's also a damn good Eddie Murphy story in here.Here's how good this conversation is: I spoke with Bell just a few days after getting my wisdom teeth out, and I still had a great time. You will too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains explicit language.
0:09.2	Hello and welcome to another episode of The Asher Glendale.
0:12.2	This is a very fun episode. I had comedian W. Kamal Bell.
0:16.7	He is the host of United Shades of America on CNN. He's also got a bunch of podcasts,
0:22.2	including politically reactive. And a wonderfully headline podcast, Denzel Washington,
0:27.2	is the greatest actor of all time period. Kamal's super smart and very, very funny.
0:32.8	We talk about a lot of things that I didn't quite expect that we would get into.
0:37.8	Like, what will we think of this period looking back from 2050?
0:42.1	How did Eddie Murphy deal with being famous? Why he moved from New York to Berkeley? What are the
0:48.4	kinds of opportunities you should not take in life? What he's learned from parenting?
0:54.0	It's kind of all of the map we've along. I think pretty good discussion of Trump towards the end.
0:58.0	If you're into that kind of thing, talk a lot about the news is negativity bias and the ways in which
1:03.1	we can potentially back off from that. Talk a bit about the ways in which people form political
1:08.0	arguments and how it's often rationality protecting feelings as opposed to feelings emerging out of
1:14.2	rationality. I've mentioned a book in there that the title which I forgot when I was talking to him,
1:18.3	but it is Jonathan Heitz, the righteous mind. I definitely recommend it if you want to look it up.
1:23.8	So it's a fun podcast. As always, please share the podcast with your friends.
1:27.9	Listen to my other podcast, the weeds if you are interested in policy topics and continue to email
1:33.5	me at azurkineshowatvox.com. So that further ado, here is W. Kamal Bell.
1:40.2	Hello, how's it going? Good. How are you doing? I was eating one of those kind bars that you think
1:46.4	are healthy because they say kind on them, but are just chocolate and sugar, but you feel like
1:50.3	you're doing something good for your body because they say kind on them. We should do some kind of
	...

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