- Amherst has graduated many wonderful writers and artists over the years, but not very many comedians. And when you narrow the group to comedians who are also actors and also writers of books and also hosts of podcasts and a true plethora of things that Aparna has done, Aparna Nancherla, class of 2005, might be in a class of her own. In fact as I've told some of you, one of my interns upon hearing that Aparna was coming back to campus, said, "She's the only cool alum we've ever had." So, apologies to our president and the rest of us who have graduated from Amherst and done decidedly uncool things with our lives. So now, at last, we finally have somebody cool to help us out. But comparisons aside, my intern was definitely not wrong about Aparna's many cool accomplishments. Voice and live action roles on hit TV shows like "Corporate" and "BoJack Horseman." Half-hour standup specials on Netflix and Comedy Central. She's the host of a limited podcast series called "The Introvert's Survival Guide." And now she's also the author of a funny and probing memoir in essays called "Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Imposter Syndrome." So as an interviewer, unreliable and imposter are two words you generally don't like to see lined up next to each other for your guest. But spending time with Aparna's diverse creative work has convinced me that she is obviously neither. She's a first-rate writer and performer and I can't wait for our conversation, so please welcome Aparna Nancherla.
- Thank you, that was so nice.
- Welcome back to Amherst.
- Thank you. I have to admit, I was terrified to come back.
- Yeah?
- Yeah, I mean I'm anxious by nature, but I feel like even today, I've only been back today and I was too afraid to really go on campus. I was sort of stalking the perimeter like it was "Jurassic Park."
- Did you spot anything interesting?
- I mean a lot of stuff is the same, which is a little bizarre. I don't know. I don't know, maybe nothing has happened in the last 20 years.
- Um.
- I can't think of anything.
- That's right, really, really nothing, actually. Really nothing. Well so when speaking of your time at Amherst, you have written a book about imposter syndrome, and so I wonder if you could tell us, did you learn about imposter syndrome in your Amherst psychology major?
- Hm? Yeah, that's probably where I first learned about it. I never put that together, thank you.
- See what I've done? I've just credited Amherst with your whole book.
- I know. Here I was trying to discredit it. No, yeah, I think that's where I, honestly, I think I wanted to be an English major but I didn't feel seen by the department, so I went with psychology 'cause I feel like it's the only major that sort of condones navel-gazing 'cause everything is kind of directly applicable to your life. It's like a online personality quiz. You're like and that, that's this person I know and that's me and, yeah, this is how I trick people.
- Nice.
- Yeah.
- And so can you tell us a little bit about imposter syndrome, the role that it's played in your personal and professional life and the impetus for the book?
- Yeah I think, I think it's fair to say like self-doubt and I have a long history together. I think from a young age, you know just being kind of a more shy kid, being an introverted kid, being a first-generation immigrant, there were various things that kind of made me feel like a fish out of water and they all kind of compounded each other. So I think I perpetually kind of approached life as sort of an observer on the sidelines, kind of taking everyone else in and seeing what they were doing and then trying to cobble together my own impression of what was normal. So I think frequently imposter syndrome shows up in those ways, in that when I was given an opportunity or neared a goal that I wanted, I was kind of like do I really deserve this? Am I like everyone else here? Why was I given this? I guess some people they get opportunities and their first thing is like, "Finally, you guys took long enough." And I feel like for me it was always like I got something and I'd be like, why? It was like the Groucho Marx, you know why would you invite me in this club?
- Right.
- Yeah.
- [Jennifer] Have you found, I mean did it take you a while to sort of identify that it was imposter syndrome or was that a journey?
- Yeah, I'm trying to think. I think I knew early on that I had this persistent feeling that I didn't fit in, but I think once I learned the term, I think as anyone with imposter syndrome would say, you're like, okay, even if someone else says they have it, you're like, okay, well, you're delusional. You're clearly qualified. I actually am a fraud.
- Right, right.
- [Aparna] So you don't know what you're talking about. It's hard to really embrace it, 'cause you so deeply believe that that's not the case.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- [Jennifer] Yeah, I was gonna ask you if it was a way of bonding with other performers. I imagine, like you said, you're not the only one who thinks this about themselves. But you write, the nature of the syndrome itself is to sort of question other people's right to it, is that?
- Yeah, it's almost like you think you're better at being bad than they are. You're like you're actually really good and it's embarrassing that you think you're bad, but I'm actually bad and I know that in my core, yeah.
- Very good. So you write in your book that you thought that writing about imposter syndrome might might cure you of it, but what did happen along the way as you were writing this story?
- My theory was not salient. Yeah, I mean I think in writing anything personal, you realize you're gonna probably face feelings or come into contact with memories that you're not fully resolved on. And I think I just, it was almost like Pandora's box where if it was like a chest of drawers, I was like, let me just open every door at once and what could go wrong? And, you know, it was a lot of struggling with on a base level, just who am I to write a book about imposter syndrome. Like the most meta, sort of really the book should just be blank and I should turn that in and that would be most authentic. But yeah, so I think it was a lot of sort of coming to terms with, I'm also kind of a lifelong perfectionist and a lot of it was kind of being at peace with the fact that a lot of the essays I wrote didn't have neat tidy endings. Or I started at one point and then I ended another one, but you weren't necessarily getting a sense of closure with all of them. Like there was a journey, but yeah I think the point of the book was also just how we are kind of messy as humans and there isn't always a tidy resolution on things like body image or our relationship to productivity or the Internet. I kind of wanted to really get into those gray areas, which is harder with something like standup where it's like a setup punchline. You're in, you're out, yeah.
- Um-hm, right. Well, one of the things that your book introduced me to is something called a Failure Resume, which I was not familiar with before. Could you say what it is and what it's good for?
- Yeah, I mean I thought I was so brilliant when I thought of it and then I looked it up on the Internet. Of course, it already exists and it was an academic who actually did the first one that I could find where they were like why don't I make a resume of everything I was rejected from or didn't get and then people can see that that's usually a heftier document than the fancy one that everyone sees. So I thought I would do my own for being in entertainment. And really, I mean, you get rejected so often in entertainment that it's like I had to kind of make a joke of it and kind of pull from other life experiences 'cause otherwise it just becomes a little sad . 'Cause I think my editor was even like, I wanna cut this.
- [Jennifer] Oh, really?
- Yeah, she was like, this one makes me-
- [Jennifer] Too depressing?
- But she was like, "This one makes me sad." And I was like that's the point.
- [Jennifer] You're like it's failure.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Nobody gets excited about that.
- I know, I'm like that's the point. People don't want to hear about it. But yeah, I don't know. I'm so much more motivated when I hear about when someone didn't get something, 'cause I just feel like as a society we're so addicted to the tragedy to triumph narrative. I feel like life is not always like that tidy. A lot of times you don't get something and then there's no reward for that. You just have to make sense of why you didn't get the thing. Yeah.
- Right, right. One of the stories that you tell in your book is a little bit about how you got your start in comedy, which is through this speech competition. Could you tell us the story about the speech competition or the speech classes that you took and then the competition that followed?
- Yeah, so I was a really shy kid and I think as an immigrant kid too, my mom was very worried I wouldn't be able to hack it in the world. You know she kept giving me these sort of confidence-building exercises. One of them was that I had to, every Sunday night we would have pizza as a family and my exercise was to order the pizza over the phone and I would be so scared and I would have to psych myself up and be like, you got this. Veggie lovers, you know bell pepper and onion, like you're in the zone. And I would be so nervous and so I think she was just always trying to find ways to push me out of my comfort zone. And one of those things was public speaking classes when I was like 11, I think. It was a little unhinged, I would say. It was me and my sibling and a bunch of adults in this very depressing conference center. And then every week we'd be given a topic and it'd be like here are my thoughts on fruit or something. But then you know I kind of learned how to speak in front of a group and some of it felt a little mechanical. I'd be like I'll raise my arm at minute one or, yeah, I'll look across the room you know. But one of the things it led me to was this speech competition that was like a local community thing, I think. And I think the topic was what is one topic affecting the South Asian community today? It was through our local temple and I remember all the other kids kind of went in a more serious direction. They were like racism and being excluded and discrimination and feeling othered. And I decided to go in a humorous direction. I did sort of just like a take down of Bollywood movies, purely out of my resentment of having to watch them, which my parents forced me to do and it was before subtitles, they were all pirated. And so I never knew what was happening and there was a lot of built up anger, apparently. And so I wrote this speech and it was just like a full on roast and people loved it and I won the competition. I think it sort of gave me that inkling of like, oh, humor kind of has this power that is maybe can kind of enrapture people in a way that you don't always know how to get in normal life. At least, I don't. I feel like talking in front of a group of people kind of led me to that in a way that I couldn't do with strangers one-on-one, yeah.
- What did your mom think of the speech?
- I think she was like, I have notes, but fine.
- So like a mom.
- Yeah. Yeah. Even now my mom, she doesn't fully understand my sense of humor, but she'll come to one of my standup shows and she'll be like, "Everyone around me was having a great time." And I'm like I love that. I love that you're an audience monitor. Thank you.
- Sorry, I'm gonna need to take a breath. So you're a self-described introvert and you hosted this podcast series called "The Introvert's Survival Guide". But so could you tell us a little bit about being an introvert and choosing the stage as a performance mode or as a means of expression.
- Yeah. I think I'm someone who generally, in front of other people sometimes, like one-on-one as I was saying, I cannot collect my thoughts. I think I'm so anxious at how I'm presenting or being perceived that it's really hard for me to sometimes feel like I'm present when I'm communicating with people, yeah, in sort of smaller conversations if I don't know them well. So I think what comedy and performing gives me is sort of a medium in which I can come to the stage kind of prepared with what I wanna say and what I wanna communicate. And it feels a lot more of a controlled environment where it's like I have this message I'm gonna tell you guys. I know where you're gonna laugh or where I'm gonna pause. It's just so much more structured and I think that feels weirdly more manageable than yeah, than the sort of like, I'm gonna tell a funny story at a dinner party kind of thing, yeah.
- Is it, it gives you more control?
- Um-hm. Yeah, I love control.
- Classic introvert.
- Yeah.
- Tell us a little bit more about the "Introvert's Survival Guide". What is that project?
- Yeah, it's an Audible series and they sort of came to me, the idea was already fleshed out and formed and it was basically like if you're an introvert, here's a bunch of cheats and life hacks for kind of making it in these different environments, like at work and relationships. Just 'cause it is a more extrovert driven world. So the idea of the podcast was to kind of talk to other introverts and get tips on managing. Which was, yeah as I was telling you before, I was just like why would you, I told you I'm an introvert, why would you ask me to interview a bunch of strangers? But that was their big idea.
- Did you learn anything? Like any tips that were useful for your own life?
- Yeah, I mean I think some of them were just about self-acceptance. Kind of being like it's okay as an introvert that sometimes I only have so much capacity for face time with other people and it's okay to recharge. 'Cause I think growing up there was a lot of shame in not being outward-facing enough. And even being in a career that is so public-facing, I think sometimes there's pressure to always be on. And I think, yeah, just talking to other introverts helped me be like, okay, it's okay to have that side of you, but then another side of you that needs that alone time and need, yeah, kind of to withdraw a bit, yeah.
- So tell me a little bit more about the different kinds of writing that you do and the different processes. So how is it different writing for standup versus writing the memoir?
- Yeah, so standup feels a lot more, I don't know, a little more structured to me. It's kind of like you have your in, which is like the premise or the idea or the setup and then you need to find like sort of a resolution or a punchline or a way out of it or just a sort of navigation through your thoughts on a certain topic. And I think with the book, I kind of wanted to not have a neat resolution with everything and kind of maybe be more in the weeds and be a little messier. And sometimes that was really hard for me 'cause I think I'm used to having that little out or like button at the end and I was very uncomfortable being in those gray areas. But I think in that sense it was sort of a thing to challenge myself and write more long form and a little bit more, yeah, like ambiguously.
- Um-hm and so I think, I mean I don't know that much about this, but when you write for comedy you're writing for a certain length of time.
- Mm.
- Right, like you're writing a five minute set or a 10 minute-
- Yeah, I mean usually as a standup you're writing bits, which are like a bunch of jokes on a topic and usually you'll just kind of write the bits more organically. And then as you see what the different lengths are, you'll kind of put them together into different length sets. But usually, you know if you're headlining you'll try to put together a 45 to an hour set in total. So you're kind of always working towards that longer form.
- I see.
- Yeah.
- [Jennifer] So does that mean you're trying to write a lot of things on the same topic or keep them-
- I think it depends. I think when you start, you're just like can I write a joke period? Like let me just see what works and then I'll just keep doing those until someone tells me to stop or I am sick of telling them. And then once you sort of are more comfortable with yourself on stage and your voice, I think then you kind of are more interested in building longer shows that are maybe exploring some sort of journey or topic or looking at an idea that you're kind of unpacking and maybe you're taking people on a little bit more of an arc. But yeah, I think that comes with a little experience.
- Um-hm, and when you're writing towards it for those longer sets, do you think, oh, this could be an essay too or it's just completely different?
- Hmm, that's a good question. I think, actually, a lot of times I'll be like is this an essay? And then I'll be like, oh, it's one line, it's a joke and I'm like that's all. That's all there is to say about this and, yeah, I need to make peace with that. 'Cause a lot of times when I'm writing an essay, it's just a lot more incoherent at first. And I feel with jokes it feels a little bit more like I immediately know what I'm trying to say or accomplish, yeah.
- And how do you know if your jokes are funny?
- I mean that's the thing with standup it is very trial by fire. You know you have to put stuff on your feet. There are jokes that I have told in front of people that work maybe 30% of the time and I just love them dearly in my heart and believe in them and just keep telling them as an act of rebellion, I guess. But yeah, then there are the jokes that you're like, okay, this works really well and I know I can pull it out in a pinch, yeah.
- And how has the material of your comedy changed over time? Is it like, you know you write your first novel, it's very autobiographical and then you know you wanna change it up and you do something different. Is that true for comedians as well? Or how has your work changed, do you think?
- Yeah, I think it's almost the maybe reverse of novelists maybe. Because I think when you're first writing it you are, or when you're first exploring your voice, you're maybe leaning in to what the audience is responding to a little more. Where you're kind of trying to find that medium between what you think is funny and what they think is funny. And then as you kind of gain confidence in your voice, I think you then are like, okay, this is a topic I'm really interested in, let me dive into it. Let me write some jokes around it. 'Cause then you already have that experience of I know how to write a joke and then you can kind of allow yourself to get more personal or explore topics that might not seem as funny right away. Yeah.
- Do you think that your comedy was then less personal in the beginning of your career?
- Yeah, I think so. I'm trying to think of what my early sets were about. I mean there was like... I remember like the first joke I wrote, I think it was about public restrooms. So I don't know, some people could think of that as personal. It's a very personal experience for us all.
- I can see that, yes. Yeah, I know some people for whom that is a personal topic.
- It can be a real journey. But yeah, I think it was only like a few years in when I started talking more about mental health and yeah, my own struggles with it and kind of delving more into maybe areas in my life that were a little darker or, yeah. I didn't always know where I was gonna come out at the end of the joke, yeah.
- I wanna ask you more about that, but I also want to remind the audience that you have the opportunity to ask questions through the question cards that are on your seats in the pew backs. So please begin to write down your questions and then in a couple of minutes someone will come around and collect them. Do you remember some of the first times that you began talking about mental health in your comedy acts and both what that felt like and what you wanted to talk about?
- Yeah, I think I mainly struggle with anxiety and depression and I think I first started writing about them because I was struggling pretty acutely with anxiety and also with some depression at the time. And I think I was having trouble really writing about anything else. So I was like might as well, you know you guys do some work for me. Let me like, yeah, try to figure out how to exploit you. So I think that's when I started writing about it. But I had also looked up to comedians who have been openly talking about mental health forever, like Maria Bamford and like Gary Gulman, Marc Maron. So I think I wasn't like, oh, this has never been broached on stage before, but I guess I never thought of myself as someone who like really had something transportive to contribute to the conversation. But then when I started talking about it on stage, I think I noticed a sort of connection with the audience that I wasn't expecting and just a recognition from people that I was very surprised by and I think made me wanna kind of keep exploring that area. And it was like, I think in one of my, I did a half hour special for Comedy Central and I remember I did a joke about anxiety and it was kind of on the heels of like right before the 2016 election. So it was you know before anxiety really broke out, so.
- [Jennifer] Had its moment.
- Had its moment. So I think, yeah, the timing of it was probably grotesque to say, but a little fortuitous, yeah.
- Interesting.
- Yeah.
- And so what kinds of responses did you get from the audience? I mean were they, was it something that you just noticed in the moment while you were performing or people were writing to you or?
- I would say both. Some of it was also just, like I think a lot of, I was very active on Twitter at the time and I think I would also write just like tweets about it and notice they got a lot of circulation or response. So I think, yeah, I was noticing there was sort of a recognition of those experiences. And yeah, I think I mean I talk about this in the book though, where it's sort of at first I felt people were like, "Oh my gosh, you're so brave. You talk about mental health." And it almost felt like it came back around the other way where I started to be am I kind of commodifying this part of myself for attention rather than because I'm actually, oh, I have something deep to say about this. It became a little snake eating its own tail. And I think I did want to use an opportunity of writing the book to explore that.
- Mm.
- Yeah.
- [Jennifer] So yeah, I was gonna ask you how you wrestled with that feeling like, well I'm doing this thing that's getting some nice attention, but feeling a little conflicted about it.
- Yeah, I mean I think that's the interesting thing about being a performer who's, like as a standup most standups are predominantly using their life as the canvas for what they're writing material about. And so it can become a little perverse, where something bad happens to you. You know someone in your family gets sick and you're like, okay, how can I make this into a show? You know it can become a little grim in that sense. So I think you are constantly kind of self-evaluating of am I ready to talk about this on stage? Am I just trying to make the most of this to make it into material? So I think when I was writing the book, took a break from standup, a couple years actually, and I think that kind of gave me a chance to reset with the mental health stuff and be like, okay, let me see what I actually wanna say about this versus just for the sake of attention or clicks or likes or, yeah, it gave me a chance to kind of reflect on that.
- And when you came back to it, how was the material different or did you bring, yeah, different rules for yourself about what you would talk about or?
- Yeah, I think I just got a lot more intentional about writing work that I was excited by rather than leaning so heavily on what was driving the audience's interest. Which is subtle but I think you can get, like when you're doing sets all the time or you're really immersed in the bubble of comedy, you can develop tunnel vision where you're really like every set is sort of determining how you feel about yourself. And I think I needed to get out of that mindset and be like, wait, I'm a person first and then I'm a comedian and, yeah, it doesn't define me.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- [Jennifer] Were you worried that people would expect this material from you and be less happy if you ventured into other topics?
- Yeah, I mean I think that was part of the fear when I stepped away from it was that I was getting so attached to like the audience's expectations or my perceived assumption of what they wanted to hear from me. And I think a lot of that is you know your own manufactured anxieties. So I had to really remove myself for a while to, yeah, I guess recalibrate.
- Um-hm.
- Yeah.
- [Jennifer] Yeah. Are there any questions that have been collected that anyone wants to bring up? Great, thank you. Do you have any, yeah, any rules for yourself and we've just been talking about this, so maybe you've already answered it about what you would consider too personal to share on stage or in the book?
- Yeah, I think for me the lines are a lot about involving other people in my life. 'cause I feel I have decided I wanna be a performer and put my life in a more public way, but I feel other people in my life never agreed to that. So I think I always wanna be sensitive about what I'm saying about people I know or anonymizing to the best of my ability when it feels like someone doesn't want their business on, yeah.
- And do you ask people is it okay if I use this bit about your life or you just try to work it in a way that people are not identifiable or?
- Yeah, I will ask people if I'm being pretty candid about something where it feels they're going to feel a way about it. Yeah, I think I err on the side of over caution just 'cause I, yeah, I'm pretty sensitive myself, yeah.
- Right. So you are also an actor with a number of really wonderful roles. How does that fit into the rest of your creative life? Is there a particular itch that acting scratches that writing doesn't?
- Yeah, I guess acting is its own thing and the weird thing about being a comedian is sometimes you enter, like I entered Hollywood as a standup primarily, and then people'd be like, oh, I like your sort of, because standup is so self presentational, people'd be like, "Oh, I like kind of what you're doing or your voice and I could see you acting in this role that kind of fits that." But yeah, I would say acting is kind of its whole own thing. And the nice thing about being a comedian is sort of like I can play parts that are sort of just one step over from who I am naturally and it isn't like I'm not like Kate Blanchett where I'm like a true chameleon. But I'm like this Aparna with a higher voice, you know. I feel I'm cheating the system a little sometimes.
- Um-hm, so, thank you. So here is a question about art versus commerce. How does the work of comedy, which is creative butt up against the capitalist forces of Hollywood?
- Oh, my god, I would love to know.
- [Jennifer] Please tell us everything that you know on this topic.
- Yeah, I mean I think it feels like a constant just, mm, thing you have to take stock of in your own life of what your values are versus the values of the system, which I feel are inherently corrupt in so many ways or exploitative. And especially I think as a minority in Hollywood, it's like sometimes you gain power and then you're like, okay, now am I just repeating the pattern of doing what the system did to me before. I think you're just constantly sort of having to wrestle with these battles and kind of take stock of the battles you can fight and the ones you have to maybe put aside sometimes in favor of a longer term goal. 'Cause I think I've gotten opportunities where it feels like should I say yes to this? It feels like maybe this isn't fully in line with my values, but could it help me get to a place where I can then change the system? I think you're constantly kind of trying to navigate that line and it's, yeah, you're not always maybe making the right decision, but I think that's also just being a human, yeah.
- Um-hm. This is a little bit in line with others, a student who is seeking to work in entertainment who says, how do you manage comparing yourself to other people who work in traditional industries like finance?
- Oh, I think I mean I remember when I graduated so many people were going into like iBanking and I didn't even know what the I stood for. I just felt so, I felt so outside that world that I think I just was like, there's no way I would survive one day in that. So I think I just, I know a lot of people have outward pressure, familial pressure to do something traditional, but I guess I just knew I wasn't gonna make it in those worlds. So I was sort of like I'm gonna go my own way. But yeah, it's not easy. I think pursuing a career in the arts, you are frequently maybe trying to justify yourself to people who become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever it is. But yeah, I think a lot of it is kind of surrounding yourself with people who kind of support your vision or at least are maybe on a similar path where you guys can kind of be buddies and championing each other. 'Cause in those early years it's really hard already and if people are like you know you need to pursue a serious, actual job, it is hard to sometimes explain yourself to people when you're starting. 'Cause it is like you're like, well I'm doing this show for three people in a basement and you'll see.
- I promise this is part of a grand plan.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah. I wonder if you could say a little bit about developing a comedy community. Have you been able to find that? Is that something that's important to you?
- Yeah, I mean I think that is the nice thing about comedy and maybe I'm not sure about other art forms, but I think standup is so trial by fire and you kind of have such highs and lows that I feel like the community is pretty strong. 'Cause everyone knows what it's like to bomb. Everyone knows what it's like to have a better set. And so I think people are generally looking out for each other or just not out to, like it's not cutthroat in my experience. I find that people are just trying to kind of support each other as well as they can. And the nice thing is once you are in that world, you know you can go to another city and you'll be like, hey, I'm a standup. Do you know of any shows to a standup that you maybe know off the Internet and they can like help you. It's sort of this little world that everyone is if you're in it, they kind of trust you and accept you on some level implicitly, yeah.
- Um-hm. Here's an Amherst question. Can you speak to how your Amherst experience informed your comedy? And did you know you were funny in college?
- Hm-hm, I know I think I first did standup when I was at Amherst, but it wasn't here. It was when I was home for the summer. So I think I maybe did it one or two times like maybe. I don't know if this still exists, but at Marsh Coffeehouse, is that still a thing? Okay, great. But yeah, I think it was very much still a pipe dream when I was here. I was too scared to audition for the improv group. I think I was just felt like an imposter in terms of wanting to be a performer or wanting to be a writer. Yeah, I remember I ran track and cross country for a little bit when I was here and one of the other freshmen who went out for the teams, she went on one run and she was like, "I hate this." And then she went into theater and comedy and I remember my whole four years I was just like she's doing what I wanna do. So, you know you can use longing or spite to propel a career.
- Perhaps speaking of spite, is there a style of comedy that you don't enjoy, that you steer clear of and say either that's not for me or just nobody should be doing that?
- Yeah, I mean I think comedy is like accessible enough to people now that I think everyone's aware there's different genres of comedy. It's not just like this is standup, everyone should find it funny. I think there's comedy that's more irreverent or edgy or more experimental. There's just different types, so I don't think everyone has to like every type of comedy. It's like music in that sense. But there is comedy that I feel is sort of the anti-woke thing that's been happening in a sort of polarizing way where some comedians are moving more towards the alt-right, for a lack of a better way to put it and then others are kind of reacting to that and being like, why did you feel the need to go in that direction? And I guess for me it is kind of like if you are taking shots at underrepresented groups or persecuted groups, what are you really gaining? Or how brave are you really being if you're just on this platform of bullying? I think I just don't find that interesting or, yeah, like rebellious in the spirit that I think they think it is.
- Yeah.
- Yeah. Are you always on the lookout for funny situations in everyday life?
- Hm-hm? I think I do as a performer have the type of brain where as soon as something happens to me or is happening to me, I'm already like, okay, how can I make this a bit? Sometimes it's a little annoying where I'm just like, okay, just live your life. You don't have to be like how can I monetize this? Yeah.
- I mean do you carry a notebook or how do you keep track of your ideas?
- I'll put notes down in just the notes app on my phone. It'll just be like a word or two and later I might be like, oh my God, it was such a good idea. Or I'll look at it and I'll be like that is so, no. Yeah.
- So you, yeah, you can edit them, let's say.
- Yes, yes.
- As they come along. Someone asks if there were any particular books or writers that you were reading when you were writing your book?
- Hmm? what did I read when I was writing my book? I think I was reading a lot of like personal essays, but actually a little removed from what I was writing. I wasn't reading other essay books by comedians. It was more, I don't know, this was a little I think self loathing of me, but I would read books by like Jia Tolentino or something where I was like this is a real writer and what are you doing? Get back to work you garbage hag.
- That sounds very noble.
- Yeah. Yeah, it was-
- Buy very motivational.
- It was so motivational, yeah.
- Are there, yeah, are there any comedy books that you would recommend or books by comedy writers?
- I mean I've always gravitated towards, like I love absurdist writers. These are like more, I guess, for young adults or younger readers. But I loved "The Phantom Tollbooth" or the "Wayside School" stories. I think those are the first books that kind of taught me to think a little bit more in weird ways. So I think those are the books that really interest me or something, honestly, when you're in comedy, I think you're so saturated in it that, usually, the book I wanna pick up when I'm reading is very removed. It'll be like "The Girl in the Window of the Train" or whatever, where it's like something that's very outside my own genre.
- This is a question, I don't know if this is something that you practice necessarily, but the question is how do you do standup about politically incorrect topics?
- Hmm, for me, I think when I'm writing about a topic that maybe is a little bit divisive, I usually try to find a way in that's like more personal or more like my experience of the topic or my understanding of it, where I don't feel like I'm trying to make some grand statement about it for a bunch of people. But it's more like this is my in to this topic and this is sort of how I'm making sense of it for myself, but I'm not trying to make any grand, yeah, statements on it or be like this is the right way, end of statement. Yeah, where I try to kind of pay attention to that, the fact that people are kind of all over the map on it and sometimes it works and sometimes it's like, okay, I can't find that line for myself, yeah.
- Um-hm, right. And how much do you think about audience before a given set? Like if you're going to be in a different location or you know the demographics of the audience is gonna skew in a certain way, does that change your material?
- Yeah, I mean I think to a certain degree you can kind of cater your set to like you know it'll be a certain age group or a certain group of people. Sometimes it'll be an event that's for a tech magazine or something and then you might do your jokes about your experiences with the Internet or technology. So I think to some degree I cater, but then I'm usually not writing new jokes for just because I'm performing for a certain audience. 'Cause a lot of times, you don't have time to do that. But if I can I'll slip one line in. Of course, that'll be the one that does the best, yeah.
- Something very local.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just name a restaurant and they're like .
- Works like a charm.
- Yeah, you're like, hm, great. I only spent 10 years on this other joke. Right, right. What is the vein that you're currently mining in your comedy work?
- Hm-hm, I mean I guess just kind of a snapshot of where I am in life. You know I hit my 40s, so I think just exploring like, yeah, kind of getting to that stage and being a little bit more settled than I was in my 20s and 30s and just sort of, yeah, looking at aging and, yeah, still some mental health stuff. But a lot of just personal day-to-day life stuff, yeah.
- Are you working on another book or is that something that sits in the back of your mind?
- I think I don't have any plans to do another book as of now. But yeah, I think if the idea really gripped me, I'm not averse to it. But I think it would be very, I guess, what's the opposite of personal? Impersonal, right, a very impersonal book.
- [Jennifer] What would that look like?
- I don't know, a novel in the third-person and, yeah, about the sky.
- So I just wanna see if there are any last questions to collect and also, I want to remind people that Aparna's book is for sale. Her wonderful and funny and very fascinating book is for sale at the back and she will be signing in just a couple of minutes. So if there's any last minute cards, bring them up. Do you wanna say anything about the Substack that you're writing? The newsletter and sort of how you think about that and what goes into it?
- Yeah, I mean I think I started the Substack because I felt like over the years just increasingly disenchanted by kind of some of the other social media platforms, Instagram, Twitter. I don't know what Twitter is now X, Facebook. I think I just, I found them very, yeah, like diminishing returns and definitely pretty bad for my mental health the more I engaged with them. So I think the Substack was kind of just a way to kind of interface with an audience that's a little bit more slow, intentional content. And I know it feels like every tech platform is like as soon as I join it's like, "Oh, by the way they love Nazis."
- Yeah.
- Like you know there's no, it is like that art and commerce question, you are like I am, like I should leave. So I'm like maybe MailChimp next for me. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know it is weird as an artist you are kind of playing this weird game with technology these days where you're sort of do I really wanna have a lifespan on this platform? I haven't even, yeah, tried TikTok.
- Right.
- And who's to say there could be an alternate universe where I'm just really killing it on there.
- You'll have to go analog and write people postcards or chain letters or something.
- I know. That's what I was telling someone. I'm like I'm just gonna eventually be physically mailing things to two people and that'll be my audience.
- Well, I'm sure there are many people in this room who would love to receive your postcards, your letters and yeah, just anything. So the Substack is where we can find you. We can sign up.
- Yeah, that's just a weekly, like little, very casual bloggy sort of thing, yeah.
- But it sounds like it's important to you to have some kind of regular contact with readers or some kind of audience. Does it help you work through some material?
- Yeah, I think some of it is just discipline. It gives me like something to write to or I think it helps me kind of gather my thoughts if I'm like, okay, this is gonna go out to people, they're gonna see it. But yeah, I think part of it was also just as an artist you're kind of like let me try something new or something I haven't explored before and see if that kind of opens up any interesting, yeah, things for me.
- Um-hm.
- Yeah.
- [Jennifer] And you're back to performing?
- Um-hm, yeah, I think I'll be touring more in the spring, but yeah, as of now just kind of working on an hour, yeah.
- Will that be your first hour long?
- I think that I've done in-
- Yeah?
- Yeah, I mean I guess since before I took the break it'll be the newest hour, yeah.
- Okay, well we have that to look forward to. I wanna thank you so much for joining us today. This has been wonderful.
- Oh, thank you.
- So everyone, big round of applause for Aparna.