Roy Wood Jr. on The Man of Many Fathers

Roy Wood Jr. is a comedian, actor, and former correspondent for The Daily Show. In this episode, he talks to Matthew about his new book, "The Man of Many Fathers: Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir," which is structured as an extended letter to his young son. Early drafts, Wood recalls, were composed by voice note, while walking to the set of The Daily Show – a process that helped give the book its emotional power and irreverent humor. 

"I don't believe you type the way you talk because you're constantly thinking about grammar and sentence fragments. Whereas I'm just walking down the street, and I'm like, 'This dude, he snorted cocaine, he stank, he looked like a gorilla, his shirt was sweaty, had brown teeth. He had one tooth that was more yellow than the other. How you get extra tartar on one tooth?' These are abstract, weird thoughts and if I'm in a flow of talking aloud, they're gonna come out. And I can take those, transcribe them, and then at night, really look at this story and go, 'Okay, this part should go here. This is disjointed, let's move this around.'

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