JONATHAN COULTON: This is ASK ME ANOTHER, NPR's hour of puzzles, word games and trivia. I'm Jonathan Coulton. Now here's your host, Ophira Eisenberg.
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OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:
Thank you, Jonathan. It's time to welcome our special guest. You know him from "The State," "Wet Hot American Summer," "Stella." And his podcast is called "Obscure." Please welcome comedian Michael Ian Black.
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MICHAEL IAN BLACK: Hi.
EISENBERG: Hi. Thanks so much for coming back on our show.
BLACK: My pleasure. It's my favorite show on NPR.
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BLACK: I would have said that no matter what show...
EISENBERG: I know. I know.
BLACK: ...I was appearing on.
EISENBERG: You know, when you were on our show in 2013, we were talking about that you in 2009 kind of were responsible for starting the first Twitter war with LeVar Burton.
BLACK: That's right.
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EISENBERG: It was the first Twitter war period.
BLACK: I think so.
EISENBERG: And now here we are 2019, that's the backbone of Twitter and really our lives.
BLACK: Right. But at the time, when I - when LeVar Burton and I did that, it was all fun and games. It was all good-spirited and just a desperate ploy...
EISENBERG: Entertaining.
BLACK: ...To get followers, yes. It wasn't the personal vitriolic attacks that I engage in now on a daily basis.
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EISENBERG: That's right. Do you just love confrontation?
BLACK: No, no, I'm terrified of confrontation, which is why I do all of it virtually.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Do you ever just want to walk away from Twitter?
BLACK: Yes. And actually I have dialed it greatly back in recent months, and it has improved my life.
EISENBERG: Oh, yeah.
BLACK: Yeah. So instead now I just play online poker. And...
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Which you're very good at (laughter).
BLACK: Well, we lost the house.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Sorry to hear that.
BLACK: Yeah.
EISENBERG: You know, it happens. It happens. Now, your comedy group "The State"...
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EISENBERG: Yes.
BLACK: Thanks, guys.
EISENBERG: You formed 30 years ago - a matter of fact, October 1988.
BLACK: That sounds right.
EISENBERG: Yeah. Did you have a celebration...
BLACK: Well, not officially...
EISENBERG: ...High-five?
BLACK: But one of our members turned 50, and we went to Las Vegas. And you know what you do in Las Vegas when you're 50, you go to bed early.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: You hit the buffet at 7.
BLACK: We saw Penn and Teller. Their show was at 8. I think I was in bed asleep at 9:45.
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EISENBERG: That's the greatest.
BLACK: The best.
EISENBERG: The greatest.
BLACK: (Laughter).
EISENBERG: What a vacation. So over the last couple years, you have also shifted gears, and you have written and spoken to serious matters - gun control, the #MeToo movement, the state of masculinity. Not every male comedian is, I would say, stepping up and deciding to do this. So I am just wondering. From your point of view, did you feel like for whatever reason you had no choice?
BLACK: Well, none of it is deliberate. None of it's, like, I'm going to speak out on this particular topic. It's - I think what every comedian does is you just speak about the things that you care about.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
BLACK: So I care very much about gun violence. I care very much about the state of our nation. I care very much about issues surrounding gender because they're issues that I've dealt with my whole life and wasn't even fully aware of it until I started examining it and wasn't fully aware that I had been dealing with it in one form or another since I can remember.
EISENBERG: But I'm very - particularly interested in the stuff that you've been writing about the state of masculinity. And also you have a book coming out called "A Better Man: A Letter To My Son." That's coming out in the fall. And it is - in a way, it's letters to your son who's about to go to college about I guess being a better man.
BLACK: Well, yeah. I mean, it's as much to me as it is to him in the sense of trying to figure out how to be better, trying to figure out how to live a healthy, happy life as a man and not inflict awfulness on everybody else. And it's hard work for guys to understand the [expletive] that we're constantly depositing all over the landscape. And I'm specifically talking about white dudes here.
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BLACK: And so a lot of the book is exploring that and figuring out how we can be better.
EISENBERG: What is a piece of advice that you give to your son on how to be a better man?
BLACK: The main message I'm trying to get across to him and to guys in general isn't so much that you need to be different than who you are. It's that you need to be the fullest expression of who you are, which means that so much of masculinity is defined in very narrow slices which erases so much of who we are as people. Even though men have these rich internal lives that are filled with every human emotion...
EISENBERG: Yeah.
BLACK: ...The way we express that and the way we are forced to live that comes out through such a narrow opening that we don't know just how to live as fully human beings. And when we acknowledge our sort of full humanity, then it becomes easier to acknowledge everybody else's full humanity. And that's the message I'm trying to get - not that we need to change masculinity but that we need to redefine it, expand it so that we understand that we're all just people.
EISENBERG: Right.
BLACK: There is something really comforting and easy about saying, well, you're a boy, so you're going to be this way. And if you happen to fit into that box, things are very easy.
EISENBERG: Sure.
BLACK: A lot of us don't fit into that box. And when - so what kids are growing up with now is questioning the box and looking at it from all sides and examining that. What I hope we're going through now culturally and what I hope will spread through this country and globally is a conversation that will take place that will make it much easier for my kids' kids to grow up and feel freer to be who they are, how they are and to also be able to change as they age if they so desire.
EISENBERG: Right. And see that change as actually a positive thing.
BLACK: Sure.
EISENBERG: Yeah, OK. Very good.
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EISENBERG: You have a new podcast as well. I love the premise of this podcast. I really enjoyed listening to it. You're reading the Thomas Hardy novel "Jude The Obscure" in its entirety.
BLACK: That's right.
EISENBERG: Why Thomas Hardy's "Jude The Obscure"?
BLACK: Well, so the inspiration was twofold - one unemployment.
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BLACK: And we had this book that my wife had as a college student called "Jude The Obscure," which has been sitting on our bookshelf probably for 20 years - unloved, unread. And at times when I have been reorganizing bookshelves, as I do during periods of unemployment, I've said to my wife, can we throw this out?
EISENBERG: Sure.
BLACK: And she will say, no, it's a classic.
EISENBERG: Yes.
BLACK: So I thought it would be funny to read the book out loud and comment on it as I go as a podcast. And I also thought as I was thinking that, oh, that's a terrible idea.
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EISENBERG: Which I'm sure made you more excited.
BLACK: It made me more excited to do it. That's right.
EISENBERG: From the listener's point of view, what is the ultimate takeaway of this project?
BLACK: Apparently there's some dude doing all of James Joyce in a similar manner, which sounds interminable.
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BLACK: So I guess the takeaway is at least it's not that.
EISENBERG: Right.
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EISENBERG: It's a good takeaway. It's a good takeaway. All right. Michael, are you ready for an ASK ME ANOTHER challenge?
BLACK: Of course.
EISENBERG: All right, fantastic. That's right. So, Michael, your game is called "Jude The Obscure" Words.
BLACK: OK.
EISENBERG: So two of our producers and one intern skimmed through the text of "Jude The Obscure," looking for the obscure words. So I'm going to give you a word from the book...
BLACK: OK.
EISENBERG: ...And three possible definitions. And you're going to tell me which one is correct.
BLACK: Now, it's fair that - a lot of times when I'm reading, and I don't know a word, I'll just read it and skip right over it and not acknowledge that I don't know the meaning of the word...
EISENBERG: Right.
BLACK: ...Because I don't want to look foolish.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
BLACK: Sometimes I will acknowledge that I don't know the word and look it up.
EISENBERG: That's right.
BLACK: So some of these words, I may know. Most of them, I probably will not.
EISENBERG: Oh, yeah. And it's good-natured multiple choice. If you do well enough, listener Mitchell Schaub (ph) from West Bend, Wis., will win an ASK ME ANOTHER Rubik's Cube.
BLACK: How well is well enough - just that I'm playing?
EISENBERG: You're gonna do well enough.
BLACK: OK, good.
EISENBERG: Great.
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EISENBERG: OK. Is raillery, A, jewelry for banisters, B, good-humored teasing or, C, impersonating a member of the nobility?
BLACK: It's good-natured teasing.
EISENBERG: It sure is, yeah.
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BLACK: I just figured I would say it with confidence. And that way, if I was right, I would look really smart and...
EISENBERG: Maybe, yeah. Do you remember this? (Reading) Is it? Do I strike you as being learned, she asked, with a touch of raillery?
BLACK: I don't remember that at all.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: No, OK. What is a doobett (ph) - A, a pre-breakfast breakfast, B, part of a rainbow or, C, a one-woman play performed in a damp meadow?
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BLACK: I want it to be a one-woman show performed in a damp meadow.
EISENBERG: I know. That's where most of us start.
BLACK: But I'm gonna go with B.
EISENBERG: A part of a rainbow?
BLACK: Yeah.
EISENBERG: It's actually even better than all that. It's a pre-breakfast breakfast.
BLACK: I had no idea. How could it be a breakfast before breakfast? The definition of breakfast is that you're breaking the fast.
EISENBERG: I totally feel like I'm on the podcast.
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BLACK: What is a mullion? Is it, A, a savory seasoning for stew, B, part of a window, C, a haircut that's business in the front and onion in the back?
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BLACK: This is the only one that I have actually known.
EISENBERG: Oh.
BLACK: It is part of a window.
EISENBERG: It is part of a window, yes.
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BLACK: That's a word still in usage - a mullion.
EISENBERG: In this case, Jude is trying new jobs, and one of them involves windows.
BLACK: Yeah. I don't know.
EISENBERG: OK.
BLACK: I just know it because we built a mansion in Connecticut, and we had to decide on mullions.
EISENBERG: Like millions of mullions.
BLACK: Millions of mullions.
EISENBERG: Yeah. And then we got it wrong, so we had a mulligan on the mullions.
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EISENBERG: OK. This is one of my favorite (ph). What is larruping hobbledehoy?
BLACK: Oh, hobbledehoy.
EISENBERG: Yes. Is it, A, a slouching teenager, B, a bird enthusiast with a shady past or, C, a friendly greeting shouted while riding the back of a mule?
BLACK: I think it's a slouching teenager.
EISENBERG: Yeah. You think right once again.
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BLACK: I'm really good at this, you guys.
EISENBERG: You're very good at this. This is your last clue. What is a somnambulist.
BLACK: It's a sleepwalker.
EISENBERG: A...
BLACK: Oh.
EISENBERG: ...One who is naturally gifted at gymnastics, B, a sleepwalker or, C, a sommelier for alarm clocks?
BLACK: Do you think somnambulist - I'm going to tie it back to an earlier portion of the show.
EISENBERG: Please.
BLACK: Do you think Aldous Huxley created Soma, the drug from...
EISENBERG: Absolutely.
BLACK: ...Because it had the same - it's the same thing?
EISENBERG: Absolutely.
BLACK: Great callback, Michael. Thanks.
EISENBERG: That was really amazing.
BLACK: If you like callbacks like that, you're going to love "Obscure."
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: That's right - and right because you knew that word from life, or you knew that word from the book?
BLACK: From life, from life.
EISENBERG: From life.
BLACK: I take a lot of Ambien.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Well, guess what? You did well enough. You did well enough.
BLACK: Thank God.
EISENBERG: Congratulations, Michael. You and Mitchell Schaub (ph) won ASK ME ANOTHER Rubik's Cubes.
BLACK: Oh, great.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: Michael's podcast is called "Obscure." Give it up for Michael Ian Black.
(APPLAUSE)
BLACK: Thanks.
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