Bay Area Legends: W. Kamau Bell Asks ‘Who’s With Me?

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A reporter receives a shocking tip about something that happened inside a woman's prison.

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Sasha Coka (0:33)

Transgender and non-binary kids are often talked about in the news, but we rarely hear what these young people have to say for themselves.

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Thanks for letting me be who I am.

Sasha Coka (0:44)

Hey, it's Sasha Coka, and on the California Report magazine, we featured the voices of trans kids and the people in their lives who love and support them in an award-winning series called Love You For You. You can find those episodes by looking for the California Report magazine wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Internet can be strange, absurd, terrifying, even surprisingly human. Each week on Close All Tabs from KQED, we cover how the digital world is reshaping how we live and who we are.

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The agents seem to be having discussions that could be seen as quite concerning to the humans.

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How comfortable are we with this type of mass surveillance?

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If the Internet went down for a while, we'd be out of luck.

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Listen to Close All Tabs wherever you get your podcast.

Alexis Madrigal (1:32)

Welcome Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. W. Kamau Bell is, I guess, in the field of entertainment. When you're a stand-up comic and have made TV shows and all these things, that shouldn't feel odd calming off the tongue, but it does a little bit.

That's because we just do not have an entertainment industry here in the Bay Area. We've got writers and artists and dancers and musicians and filmmakers, but entertainment, like not really, at least not relative to Southern California. So Bell has had to carve a path for himself through that strange Hollywood world while also making a life in the East Bay. And he joins us to talk about both here in the studio. Welcome.

W. Kamau Bell (2:09)

Thank you.

I love that I'm hard to sort of introduce. Come on.

Alexis Madrigal (2:14)

He's a comedian. He's an activist. You're also a podcaster now.

SPEAKER_2 (2:20)

Yep, back into podcasting.

Alexis Madrigal (2:22)

And in one of your podcasts was an interview with Open Mike Eagle. You talked about the concept of living sort of over there.

W. Kamau Bell (2:29)

Yeah.

Alexis Madrigal (2:29)

Can you explain that for people?

W. Kamau Bell (2:31)

Yeah, so I think for me, it comes from, starts with being an only child. So I was by myself a lot, single parent, home with my mom. And so I was always off in my own thoughts and devices and I was my own best company. And then I would go outside my house and be around other kids and be like, I don't feel like I fit in with any of these kids. This is obviously 100,000 years before the internet. I couldn't even search for, are there other kids like me?

And so I think I at some point felt isolated. And then when you get older, you feel like, oh, I think this is my superpower. And talking to Open Mic Eagle about that, we were not exactly the same, but he had a similar, like the way he approaches his craft as a rapper puts him sort of over there. He's not in main, he's a highly acclaimed, highly successful rapper, but not in a mainstream way. Yeah, so I think it's the idea that like, you know, the classic is my mom, I'm a very early age, you know, dance to the beat of your own drum, that quote was, my mom said about me all the time, it was a way to make me feel better about being over there.

Alexis Madrigal (3:28)

Man, I just thought it was about living in the East Bay.

W. Kamau Bell (3:30)

Yeah. Well, at this point, I think I was living in either Boston or Chicago, so I was way over there. Yeah.

Alexis Madrigal (3:35)

You did move to the Bay, right?

24? Young, like in the 90s.

W. Kamau Bell (3:39)

Yeah, 24 Yeah.

Alexis Madrigal (3:41)

Did you immediately feel like, oh, this is home, this is my place, or were you kind of like, oh? No.

W. Kamau Bell (3:45)

I mean, I thought I would, I started doing Comedy Chicago, did it for three years. At the third year, I was like, I'm not getting better here. Moved to the Bay, because San Francisco comedy scene was legendary, and thought I'll be here three years and I'll move to LA. Like I'll get, I'll go to San Francisco, I'll take over the scene, I'll move to LA, and I'll have my big break somewhere along the way.