Hi there, Steven. Hi, Becca. This is the Late Show Pod Show. This is Steven Goldberg. This is Becca. Yes, and we're here to introduce some wonderful podcasts for the break while the Late Show is off on vacation. Great, and are we...is this a guest that we're getting tonight or a comedy bit? This is a guest. This is a guest. Can I guess who this guest is? Please. Give me a hint. This is really cool. I don't know if you would call this person a celebrity. This is not a celebrity. This is an artist who you had a lovely conversation with. Ocean Vuong? Yes. Ocean Vuong. Yeah, sure. The Emperor of Gladness. Yeah, really cool. Beautiful. Really cool interview. We're doing the extended on here. Oh, good. And since this is a wordsmith, do you have anything you want to say about Ocean Vuong? Because you had a lovely thing at taping after you guys wrapped your interview just about how nice it is to have, you know, an author on. Right. I mean, you know, the people who listen to this probably know that the show is going off the air in May. And there's lots of things that I regret about the show going off the air in May. But one of the things is that I just love that we have on people like Ocean Vuong. And I know that Seth already had on Ocean Vuong. I know I got Ocean Scooped by Seth here. But, you know, just another show going off the air that would have on Ocean Vuong in a comedy context. Like, we're a Late Show comedy show. That's one of the things I like most about our show is that the different, all the different kinds of guests who fit it. Yeah, definitely. But this is a beautiful interview with Ocean Vuong. Please enjoy. But before we get to that, I have a game I want to play. Oh, gosh. This is a new game we've never played before. I call it Late Show Vocab. Since we have a wordsmith on the podcast tonight, an artist of words and poems and novels. I have a list of words that the staff has submitted to me that are words that we believe originated at the Late Show or possibly the Coveyre rapport that are said with frequency at work. And we want you to explain what they mean. Okay, wow. Okay. I'm very curious. Here comes the first one. Brapin' on the Poof. Oh, Brapin' on the Poof is because that's what we call the end of any of the cold opens to the show. Is that when you get to the final joke, you go, okay, now we're brrapin' on the Poof because Joe, a sailor or a drummer, Jazz Cowboy, Jazz Cowboy goes brrap. That's how he starts the song every time. Originally, when John Batiste wrote that song, which is called Humanism, when he wrote that song, it didn't have the brrap. It had been in the brrap in the sample that he gave me. And that might have been like a holdover, you know, like from a other thing that we're taping or something. But I said, where's that brrap? And he goes, oh, that's not brrap. I said, could you do that? Because that's a great way to start the show. Is that brrap on that? And then I think one of the early times that we're doing a cold open, I think it might have, I might have been in the cold open. And then it ended with a smoke bomb or something like that, like a Poof. Like, and I disappeared in the cold open. Back when I used to do them with Liz Levin. She was trying to get a meeting with me every cold open. Yeah. And so I said, yeah, that's the out. It just ends right there. Like when the smoke bomb goes Poof like that, we're brapping on the Poof right there. And so I think it was brap it on the Poof originally. And so on the back wall, in our rewrite room, we've got all of these sort of things that have been said at the show over the last 10 years. And one of the first ones just says, brap it on the Poof with an exclamation mark. So we always call it brapping on the Poof. Yeah. And I just want to say, I've worked here for six years now. That phrase is said every single day. This is the first time I've learned what it means. Brapping on the Poof. Brapping on the Poof. Next one, dollar sign. Dollar sign means we drop a dollar sign into any script where we think we need a better joke in this spot. And it's dollar sign A because you don't generally put another dollar sign. We don't use dollar signs that much when we're writing jokes. And so all you have to do is search for dollar sign and you can find it in the script. Okay. So it's just a symbol that was easy to put in there. Yeah. So let's dollar sign that. Or we'll say TK. And the TK stands for joke. The TK is to come. And why is it K? A joke to come. I don't know. It's like why is, I don't think we came up with that. I think it's like something to come here. I think it has to do with like early filmmakers that were German. The same reason why in a script it will say MOS means without sound. Because it's mid-out sound. Oh, interesting. It's MIT. Maybe it might be because TC could be time code. And so maybe they just did another letter there. Hey, maybe that's why. Yeah. If anyone knows. Yes. Call in last night. And also dollar signs because funny is money. Oh, that's kind of like the line. That's what, in my mind, it's always been because funny is money. Because funny is money. Exactly. That's cool. You know, silence is violence. Yeah, but funny is money. Okay. Next one. Sack, sack, sack, sack, sack. Oh, on the last show of the week, which is now Thursday. Last show of the week. So the week we have, we've been doing this for a long time since the old show. I mean, 20 years maybe we've been doing this is that on Thursdays, we have, there's a sack on my desk. We even took the sack from the old show to the new show. We had to replace it because it had been torn apart. It just got worn out. Well, everybody goes around the building, like intern goes around the building and gets a dollar from everybody. Yeah. And then just probably the feds are going to come down on us for saying this and you write your name on the dollar and you put it in there and then I pull out who the winning dollar is. And I started, I always say, I have to happen the same way every time because I'm a creature. Because I'm neurotic. I have to say sack, sack, sack, sack, sack. And that means it's sack time. And everybody should pay attention. And they pay attention. Like maybe more than they do in rehearsal because they don't know if they're going to win the sack. So sack, sack, sack, sack, sack, sack. And then a sound, whoever's who's running the sound goes, they roll a tape of a drum roll. And then I had the first thing I say is tonight's loser is because I used to say it's tonight's winner. But then it would be over. And I'd love the tension. I love the sack. And so I said, listen, how do we stretch this out? So now I pull out $2. And the first dollar is tonight's loser is. That means if we did it the normal way, this person would have won. But we don't do it the normal way. We pull out $2. And the second one is the winner. And so it's just another way to make people feel bad, I guess. And so then the loser. And then while I say, and the loser is, Mark McKenna, our stage manager always goes, I hate this part. He has to say that every time. And then I pull out whoever it is. And then I go, and tonight's winner is. And there's a drum roll again. And then I ask people in the audience, I say, I will cheat for you. Tell me, describe your dollar. Is it just loose? Is it in a tube? Is it folded? Is it a star shape? Is it a paper foot? What is it? People get creative with the folds. They do. Like the ring. Like at one point I had to make loops illegal. Because it would slip right onto my finger. Because I would just rub my hand around there and the loops would flip on my fingers. No loops. No loops. I don't go, if I feel a loop, I tell it, no loops. So and then I try to cheat. Like if you say it's a triangle and you're the first person that I really gave me a good answer because people are yelling out their shapes. And then I try to cheat every time. And I think in 20 years, I think the cheating has worked twice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever won? I have won. Well, I'm going to say that it is sort of like playing reverse crane like in an arcade where you try to create an object that you, the crane, you, Stephen Cooper, the physical crane get caught on. Oh, sure. Yeah. That's exactly. Or that feels like it feels like a nice thing to grab and take out of a hat. So that's sex, sex, sex, sex. That's sex. I've won. It's a wonderful, it's so exciting when you win. It's so exciting. We all like each other. So it's exciting when anyone wins. And the rule is there has to be $100 in the bag. Yeah, no, it's. Or I won't pull anything out. It's a healthy sum, for sure. And if there isn't 100, me and Tom and Lewis. Yeah. Well, and maybe whoever is sitting next to Tom for the rewrite, for the rehearsal, we throw in some cash to get it over 100. Yes. Very generous bucks being thrown in. But it's a lovely thing. And the staff always treats themselves to nice dinners with each other outside of the work hours. It's a lovely tradition. Anything else? I got more, but I think let's hold off for more next week. Great, let's do more. This is fun. Let's do more next week. This is fun. And we're going to listen to Ocean Vuong on The Late Show right now. Enjoy. Please enjoy. Welcome back, everybody. Folks, my next guest tonight is a New York Times bestselling author who has been nominated for the National Book Award and won the MacArthur Genius Grant. His new novel is The Emperor of Gladness. Please welcome to The Late Show, Ocean Vuong. Hi. Nice to meet you. Hi. Good to meet you. Nice to be here. Thank you so much. It's an honor. In May, you released your highly anticipated second novel, The Emperor of Gladness. It was an instant New York Times bestseller, and it was selected for Oprah's Book Club. For those who haven't read it yet, what is it about? Well, it starts with a young man who's standing on the edge of a bridge contemplating jumping. And he's stopped by an 82-year-old woman with dementia, and they end up living together in the course of a year. And I think suicide is a very deeply personal subject for me. I lost my uncle when he was just 28 years old. I was 24. He was like a brother to me. And I think at the core of it, suicide is still an act of hope. One does it with the hope of ending tremendous suffering. I would go on to say it's a hopelessly hopeful act. And what was really interesting to me was what happens for someone who chooses to step away from the ledge right back into a corner? How do you choose life without the tools for living? And it was a question I never got to ask my uncle. And I think fiction at its core gives us a technology to ask questions we never get to ask in life, or it's too costly, or the chances are fleeting. And I thought usually stepping away from the bridge happens at the end of a book. Everyone's relieved and it's cathartic. But what a wonderfully tense and capacious way to start a book, to ask what does day two look like for someone who chooses to live God willing, despite not having the ability to do so. What does day 20 look like? I thought I wanted to ask the question I never got to ask the loved one I lost. And fiction is a wonderful way to do it. You speak in here of, you've spoken of the idea of kindness without hope. What does that mean? Well, the character goes on to work in a fast food restaurant. And I think many Americans have experiences, myself included. I worked at a place called Lawson Market. And the elephant in the room, in a place like that, I think, is, you're not supposed to ask, where do you go after this? You know, if you go to nursing school, if you go to medical school, there's a kind of, even HVAC, there's a kind of ascendancy that there's an after-place. But when you work in fast food, working minimum wage, the idea that you're actually trapped is incredibly palpable for everybody involved. And I think what you notice then is that everyone is so generous with a kind of kindness because they know that there is nothing else beyond it. But they are deeply invested in their own dreams. And I think what I learned working in fast food, and most of my life as an American, is that I'm not interested so much in the American dream, as we know it, so much as Americans who dream. And in every fast food restaurant you see, it's full of people with dreams, despite not being able to execute them, they still hold on to them and they strive towards it. And I wanted to amplify that using what I knew best, which is language. Do you think that the dream itself, the dreams that they have of something else, constitutes a form of hope, even if it's not a conscious hope? 100 percent. I think hope is a beautiful thing because it's kind of always the North Star. And as long as you have that beacon, you move towards, you know, and I do this with my students, the greatest thing you can do as a teacher is to push the horizon back even further. Because even if your students don't reach their goals, they still exceed the limits of where they started from the get-go. And I think this is true with any vocation, whether it's in a fast food restaurant or a riding or an entertainment or what have you. Hope is still the greatest engine and it begins with language. It's not empty. And the classroom, to me, is the most hopeful place, even before a single person steps into it. A teacher or students, the condition of the classroom is aspirational. It's a laboratory of possibility and wonder. And the teacher's only job is to preserve that so that it does not get demolished by cynicism. I think often cynicism can be misread as intelligence in our culture. And hope is often the most courageous thing because it means you're all in. You know, you got all into it. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. 100%. And I think it takes a lot of courage to say, I believe in this and I'm going to go forward even if you judge me. Even if you say this is silly or foolish. Some of the worst things, you know, to be in our culture is a fool. But I think everything worth doing risks being foolish. Do you know, do you know, E-comings, holy to be a fool while spring is in the world, my blood approves. 100%. And kisses are a better faith than wisdom. We share a birthday, October 14th, my fellow Libra. E-comings. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, listen, speaking of hopeful things happening, here you are. You were chosen for Oprah's book club. And I'm just curious. That's a great way for more people to see the art that you do. Was, I mean, growing up, was Oprah a big thing in your house? Oh, my gosh. It was a big thing in my mom's nail salon because we were there every day. And I had the best English, so I ran the phones. And, you know, I was so honored to get that call. Anytime I get an important call, I stand in front of my mother's altar. And my publisher tricked me. They said, we're going to have a publicity meeting. And I said, oh, gosh, I'm going to get in trouble. So I stood in front of my mother's altar and said, Ma, help me out here. And then they said, ah, actually, we're having some trouble with the line. We're going to call you with an unknown number. Just pick it up. And then I heard the voice. And I knew that voice. I heard it every day at 4 p.m. with my mother. And I think what was so beautiful is that my mother, you know, she was illiterate her whole life. She doesn't know what the New Yorker is. She never saw what a literary prize is. But the only time she saw a book for the first time was in Oprah's show. And I think what was so beautiful about that show and even your show, talk shows in general, is that you bring culture to working people. Because a book, even if you get it free at the library, it still takes eight, ten hours to read. And people like my mother worked eight o'clock in the morning to eight at night. If a customer walks in at 7.55, she has to take them. And that's another hour. She won't be home till nine. And to bring cultural work to the center of people and say, you have permission to access this discourse. And I watched the women in the nail salon look at that show with the books and say, oh, it's about divorce. It's about doubt. It's about migration. It's about trying their best to have kindness as a human being, which is an incredibly hard thing to do. I know that. I don't need to go to school and have a degree to know that. I've lived that. And I think what was so beautiful for me was that it brought the idea of culture and widened it into a town square. And that town square happened to be in the middle of a nail salon in Hartford County. What luck. Ocean, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your stories. The Emperor of Gladness is available now. Ocean Huang, everybody. When beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. Sahamasai. Absolutely. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is Blood is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel. I would don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Binge the full series, Blood is Thicker, the Ferris Wheel on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
