The Gray Area with Sean Illing11 Heinä 2017

Eddie Izzard on World War I, cake or death, and marathoning

Now that I've gotten Eddie Izzard to re-derive his famed "cake or death?" routine in real time, I'm ending this podcast. Always good to go out on top. Okay, maybe I won't actually end it. But this episode was a thrill to do. Eddie Izzard has long been one of my favorite comics. I've watched his specials more times than I can count. And this conversation was a real pleasure. Izzard — whose new memoir, Believe Me, is now on shelves — thinks fast, and not always linearly, so we covered a lot of ground. Among our topics: - How he ran 27 marathons in 27 days, and why he did it - His process for writing jokes - Why he wants to run for parliament, and how he's taken inspiration from Al Franken's career - His techniques for borrowing confidence from his future self - What he learned as a street performer - Why so many of his routines are based on history and anthropology - His off-the-cuff and hilarious explanation of World War I - The thought process that led to his famous "cake or death?" routine - His gender identity, and how he integrated it into his act early on - How he managed being the first transgender person many Americans ever saw - Who excites him in comedy now - His thoughts on the recent British election And much more. Enjoy this conversation. I certainly did. Books! Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Lessons from Vox’s first 5 years

This is a special episode for me. Vox turns 5 this week! So I sat down with my co-founders, Melissa Bell and Matt Yglesias, to discuss what went right, what went wrong, what changed in the media envir...

25 Huhti 20191h 33min

Work as identity, burnout as lifestyle

In the past few months, two essays on America’s changing relationship to work caught my eye. The first was Anne Helen Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed piece defining, and describing, “millennial burnout.” Th...

22 Huhti 20191h 22min

How social democrats won Europe — then lost it

Democratic socialism is on the rise in the United States, but it’s been a dominant force for far longer in Europe. Ask Bernie Sanders to define his ideology and he doesn’t start naming political theor...

18 Huhti 20191h 7min

In defense of white-backlash politics

“The big question of our time is less, ‘What does it mean to be American?’ than, ‘What does it mean to be white American in an age of ethnic change?’” writes Eric Kaufmann in his new book Whiteshift: ...

15 Huhti 20191h 39min

Identity, nationalism, and fatherhood

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review and the author of My Father Left Me Ireland, a moving, lyrical memoir about fatherhood and identity. It’s also a stirring defense of nat...

11 Huhti 20191h 46min

An ex-libertarian’s quest to rebuild the center right

Nothing would do more to repair American politics than for the center right to regain power in the Republican coalition. But before that can happen, the center right needs to exist — it needs a theory...

8 Huhti 20191h 23min

How whiteness distorts our democracy, with Eddie Glaude Jr.

“Race isn’t about black people, necessarily,” says Eddie Glaude Jr. “It’s about the way whiteness works to disfigure and distort our democracy, and the ideals that animate our democracy.” Glaude is th...

4 Huhti 20191h 29min

Pete Buttigieg’s theory of political change

First off. Hello! I’m back from paternity leave. And this is a helluva podcast to restart with. Pete Buttigieg is a Rhodes scholar, a Navy veteran, and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He’s a married...

1 Huhti 201959min