W. Kamau Bell
speaker
1,269 appearances
5 recordings
5 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 14 Oct
W. Kamau Bell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 1.
Appearances
So, yeah, so I was aware that, like, even, like, I'm, but then sometimes you're just in a group of people or you find some people and conversations emerge. I remember one of my favorite stories of that, I was at an airport, listened to my yellow sports Sony Walkman. I travel a lot because I go to see my dad. And a black dude comes and sits next to me.
And he has that look like, I'm not in airports a lot, so I'm happy to see a black dude. And so he's like, hey, man. And I fly all the time. I'm like, hey, he's like, what are you listening to? And I remember being like, Pearl Jam.
And he was like, and I could see the look on his face like, I don't know if he even knew what it was, but it was not what he needed to be, and I don't think we could continue to talk. I have lots of moments like that.
Like a weed. Yeah. But the thing is, but at some point you hit a point of, like, but what does this look like as I get older? Like, I used to have a lot of fear about, like, am I just going to be alone the rest of my life? Not lonely, but alone. Like, you know those people who are like, that guy never dates anybody. Yeah. He goes, he buys, every day he goes to the grocery store, he buys one meal.
He goes home, he makes that meal. Yes. He watches the evening news. Uh-huh. You know, and he's nice. Single serving everything. Single serving everything. He's nice, very nice guy. Yeah. Just never seen with anybody. So I had friends, my best friends.
Yeah, and nothing I did made me feel like I liked what I liked. Like, I was a big fan of stand-up comedy. This stand-up comedy was not cool at the time. It wasn't like now. We're like, I'm a comedy nerd.
No, no, no.
No, people didn't know. So you couldn't be like, what are you into? Stand-up comedy. It was not a thing. So nothing I would say to somebody... let's say I'm in high school, like a lady, is gonna get me any cool points. Comic books were not cool, they're cool now. I know everything there is to know about Bruce Lee, that's not getting me anything. I take Kung Fu lessons after school.
Not the answer we were looking for. Weirdly, I'm learning how to fight. So I just was like, I don't know where the other, so specifically talking about women, I don't know where the other half of this person is who would be like, yay. So maybe I'm just going to be alone forever.
No, but I think that by the time I met her, I was like, first of all, I'm a little bit older than her, so I'm seven years older than her. Show business, of course you are. Yeah, of course, yeah. But luckily, like a good seven, yeah, she was 23 when I met her. It could have been worse. But so I was already on the other side of like, this is who I am. Yeah.
So I'm not like, and also, as far as you could tell, this guy's a working comedian. So I want to be in the arts, and he's pursuing his career. And he's sort of like, as an example. So I had points there that I did not have before. But like, by that point, I'd abandoned thoughts of being cool. Like, I'd abandoned any sort of thoughts of like, But then I've also been with women.
It's not like I was like, this is the first person I've built. But I sort of like, I am who I am at this point. Or I'm happy to figure it out and not be in the place that people think I'm supposed to be.
How do you raise your children?
No, I think – I mean it's different because three kids and one kid – the only child thing is a big part of it because you get to have – You have the time to explore in a way that like when you're in a family of three, you just don't have that much individual time. So like my middle kid, Juno, like I feel like we're opposites of each other because she was like she's a middle kid.
So she's always feeling squeezed. And as an only child, I always felt free. And so I can connect with her because I'm like, I can I can tell that position sucks. Like I can tell that like you sort of always have to be shuttled with the other kid because nobody knows what to do with you. So you're always sort of like in the backseat going to soccer practice.
But I definitely know like the, I know the value of being alone. And Melissa, my wife, is one of four. And I don't think she recognizes that in the same way I do. The value of like everybody, I'm just going to go upstairs and close the door, you know. And so we are raising our kids to sort of like pursue their own thing.
So I think they are being raised like weeds, but there's just more people around. So it's not as, you know.
getting easier? If I was a single person with no, who was not married with no kids, it would probably be getting easier. It would probably be, I feel less. Oh, because your wife is white and your kids are mixed. Well, just because I have a lot of responsibility and my mom's 87 and I got to figure out how to like, every decision I make impacts those people.
But I mean, just like, you know, like when I did the Cosby thing, I had to sort of go to my wife and be like, it's about to get ugly.
Yeah, you may want to make your internet profile private. I can't do that. My mom heard from people who were like, I can't believe you're a son, da, da, da, da, da, da.
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