André De Shields

speaker

298 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 21 Jul

André De Shields’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · Broadway legend André De Shields doesn't walk, he floats · 21 Jul 2026 podcast

So the mystery was already in the air.

How can someone die from a cold?

There's something going on that nobody understands.

So when my lymph nodes blew up in 1980 in Los Angeles on the tour of Ain't Misbehavin', I clocked it immediately.

Whatever that mystery is, I'm beginning to decode it.

I'm beginning to understand it.

Yes.

And when I finally got the clinical diagnosis, I had 16 T cells.

So I was near death, but I knew I wasn't going to die.

I did exactly that.

And I also, there's an African proverb, right?

which is based on a bird, and the bird is called a Sankofa.

It's a flightless bird, and it is known to walk deliberately forward, but every once in a while it looks over its shoulder.

The lesson there is, if you do not know where you're coming from, where you've been,

You can't possibly know where you're headed, where you're going.

And when I was asked to embody the role of Hermes, not only did that proverb come to mind, but all of the close calls that I had experienced in my life came to mind.

And I felt prepared to take on this role.

Hermes is the creature that accompanies humans when they have to cross the river Styx to visit in Hades.

You can't get there if Hermes does not accompany you.

You're absolutely correct about what we think about the human body and the human spirit.

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