TOBIN: Kathy and Tobin, back at it again, accosting people on the street.

KATHY: It's what we do best!

[BEAT]

TOBIN: Were there any books or TV shows that you were obsessed with as a kid?

PERSON ON THE STREET 1: I mean, in high school I was obsessed with Henry Miller.

TOBIN: Who's Henry Miller?

PERSON ON THE STREET 1: He wrote Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer. ... Stuff I shouldn't have been reading at my age, definitely. [ALL LAUGH]

PERSON ON THE STREET 2: As a kid? Huh, I dunno. Clifford the Big Red Dog, probably?

PERSON ON THE STREET 3: Books?

KATHY: Yeah!

PERSON ON THE STREET 3: I looooove Harry Potter! I think the ... what do you call them ... characters are so lively, you just wanna be friends with them. Except for, like, Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

TOBIN: Right.

PERSON ON THE STREET 4: From WNYC Studios, this is Susan.

[BEAT]

PERSON ON THE STREET 4: Do you want me to read the whole thing the way it says?

KATHY: Yeah, yeah! But will you read it as "Nancy"?

PERSON ON THE STREET 4: "Nancy"?

KATHY: That's the name of our show.

PERSON ON THE STREET 4: I'm so sorry.

TOBIN AND KATHY: That's alright!

PERSON ON THE STREET 4: I'll start over. From WNYC Studios, this is Nancy. With your hosts, Tobin Low and Kathy Tu.

[THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

[WHISTLE]

KATHY: You know my favorite thing about Harry Potter?

TOBIN: What's your favorite thing about Harry Potter?

KATHY: It's a world with rules.

[BOTH LAUGH]

[MUSIC INTRO]

TOBIN: I did not see that coming.

KATHY: I love that they go to school and they learn all the rules of magic. [TOBIN LAUGHS]

TOBIN: You like that there's magic, but that there's a cap on it.

KATHY: Yeah! I never liked kid's content, because they're just magical without any rules. And when they market that stuff to me, I'm like, "Don't talk down to me."

TOBIN: Wait, so, as a lover of rules in the Harry Potter world, does it make you mad that all of the protagonists are the rule-breakers?

KATHY: [SIGHS] Yes. [TOBIN LAUGHS] But it's also why Hermione's my favorite.

TOBIN: Oh. Oh, because she likes the rules. Mhm. Yeah.

KATHY: Because she's the least of the rule-breakers. I do hate that they spend all of the last book just camping and not in school.

TOBIN: That's actually hilarious. You're like, "Forget about these plot lines. I wanna know how they did on their exams."
KATHY: Yeah, I was like, "Enough of Harry Potter-goes-camping. When does Harry Potter graduate?"

TOBIN: You know what else I love about this series is, it has a famously gay character!

KATHY: Yeah!

MATT: Guys, no, no. I ... really don't think that's true.

TOBIN: Oh, boy.

TOBIN AND KATHY: Here it comes.

KATHY: Our producer, Matt Collette, with the Harry Potter nerd rage.

MATT: No ... yeah, yes, yes. This is completely true. But like, I have thought a lot about this, and I really think that JK Rowling gets way too much credit for, like, writing this iconic gay character.

TOBIN: It's true.

KATHY: Are you sure?

TOBIN: No, I mean, I'm gonna say that I sit next to Matt on the daily, and the hot-button issue -- nothing gets him to rage faster than saying, "Hey, Harry Potter -- tell me your thoughts."

MATT: This is very --

TOBIN: [KATHY LAUGHS] And then he just goes, and goes, and goes.

MATT: Guilty as charged. But like -- I really think I can make a very strong case for this. And, like, if you just trust me, I know what I'm talking about.

[HARRY POTTER THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

MATT: I can tell you when and where I got each Harry Potter book.

The first two came at once, from my mom, who bought them at a book sale at the school she taught at. I got in trouble for reading them in class.

I got the third a couple weeks later -- my dad picked it up the day it came out.

When the fourth came, I was away at camp -- so I had to wait to read it, on my way home, in the backseat of our minivan.

The fifth came early, covered in plastic, smuggled to me by a friendly librarian.

I was on vacation when the sixth came out, so I bought it at the closest store selling it -- a little supermarket at the edge of town.

And the seventh one came out the summer before my junior year in college. I bought it at midnight and didn’t sleep until I finished it.

[BEAT]

These books cover seven years of Harry Potter’s life and about ten of mine. Like first days of school and birthdays and Christmases, they marked the time. Me and Harry, we grew up together -- and over and over again I’d find myself imagining I lived in his world. Sometimes I was a student, sometimes a professor. Sometimes I’d pretend to be a reporter for the Daily Prophet.

[BEAT]

Back when he was just a little orphaned kid, living in the cupboard under the stairs, Harry Potter didn’t know he was a wizard. But he knew he was different. And so it sort of makes sense one day when a letter, delivered by an owl, arrives for him.

[CLIP] DUDLEY: Harry's got a letter!

HARRY: Hey! Give it back! It’s mine!

VERNON: [LAUGHS] Yours? Who’d be writing to you?

MATT: “Dear Mr. Potter. We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

[CLIP] HAGRID: You're a wizard, Harry.

HARRY: I'm a what?

HAGRID: A wizard. And a thumpin' good one, I'd wager.

MATT: Plenty of kids grew up hoping for their Hogwarts letter to arrive, and, of course, it never does. And eventually most of them move on. It’s just a book, anyway.

But I think this story is different for queer kids. Because if you’ve ever spent time in any sort of closet, then the story of Harry Potter can hit you in a much deeper place.

JACKSON: I definitely remember -- I say as a kid. but I think it went on through high school -- I would sort of daydream about Harry Potter characters showing up at my front door taking me away  to the wizarding world. It would usually be like Remus Lupin or other members of the Order of the Phoenix -- but there would always be a catch. They’d be like: But we have to transfigure you into a boy first.

MATT: Jackson Bird is trans, but he was imagining all this well before he even knew that was a thing. What he did know was that he’d be happier, or at least more complete, if he could transform somehow, like Harry Potter characters can do with potions or spells.

JACKSON: I think, you know, the magical world to me, especially once we learned about Polyjuice Potion and metamorphmagi and all those things like that, it was an idea of this place where I could look the way I wanted and, like, be the way I wanted and it wouldn't be a big deal. Because you know, I was raised in the time and in a culture in Texas where I didn't understand really what trans people were. So a magical world was really the only place in my head where I could think that that was a possibility.

[BEAT]

MATT: After seven books, the series ended. The story was over.

Then, last year, came a something new: a play called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Obviously I bought the script the day it came out.

This story picks up 17 years after the books ended. It follows adult Harry Potter and his son, Albus Severus Potter, who’s about to go to Hogwarts himself. Young Albus Potter becomes friends with Scorpius Malfoy, the son of Draco Malfoy, his dad’s rival growing up.

As I’m reading the play, something seems ... different. Their friendship doesn’t look like any other in the series. The boys confide everything in each other and get jealous when one spends too much time with someone else. And they also just, like, hug all the time. And it dawns on me: I think Albus and Scorpius … might be ... gay?

[EXCITED MUSIC IN]

MATT: It was incredible. Finally: a queer relationship in the world of Harry Potter. I had to interrupt my roommate, who was also reading it, just to check that I wasn’t just making this all up.

She’s straight, and she saw it too.

And then, it’s the end of the play and the good guys have won, and more or less out of nowhere, Albus and Scorpius just decide ...

[MUSIC COMES TO A GRAND FINALE, THEN GOES OUT]

MATT: "You know what? Let’s get girlfriends!" Which is this huge “No homo!” moment that totally undermines what felt like a very real relationship.

And that pissed me off. Because in the world of Harry Potter, this has happened before. Of all JK Rowling’s many accolades, there’s one I find particularly noteworthy: Queerbaiter. That's a writer puts in just enough of a queer storyline to appease the fans who’d like one, but not so much as to offend anyone who doesn't like gay people. There’s subtext -- hints at queer stories -- throughout her work, but nothing more.

JK Rowling's first defense came in 2007, right after the last Harry Potter book came out. She was doing a reading at Carnegie Hall in New York and during a Q&A, a fan asks: "Did Dumbledore ever fall in love?"

And Rowling answers: “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.”

[CLAPPING AND CHEERING SOUND IN]

Cue standing ovation, followed by worldwide media circus:

[INTRIGUE MUSIC IN]

NEWS ANNOUNCER 1: The plot apparently isn't over yet for Harry Potter -- not by a long shot.

NEWS ANNOUNCER 2: Most Potter fans think the controversy is a bit of a tempest in a cauldron.

NEWS ANNOUNCER 3: The headmaster Albus Dumbldore ...

NEWS ANNOUNCER 4: -- Albus Dumbledore --

NEWS ANNOUNCER 3: ... is gay.

NEWS ANNOUNCER 5: Probably safe to say the news may have broken a few witches' hearts.

[MUSIC OUT]

[BEAT]

[CLIP] RADCLIFFE: Was that something that was just thrown out for the American press to get them stirred up a bit?

ROWLING: No, though it did.

RADCLIFFE: Though it did -- which is obviously -- which is very funny.

MATT: Here is Harry Potter himself -- Daniel Radcliffe -- talking with Rowling.

[CLIP] ROWLING: I found people's reaction to that really interesting, and I'll tell you why. By the time I said that, I had been working on these characters for 17 years. Now, not many writers have been with the same set of characters for that long. So, I feel ... I can sort of speak for all of us who have, and say it becomes a very intense experience and, inevitably, you are gonna know things about characters -- and I'm ... characters in the plural -- that, in some cases, will be relevant. And you'll think, "Oh, yeah, yeah, this is the moment that that becomes relevant. And I will say that or show that ..."

MATT: Rowling almost never gives interviews. This here is one of the only times she talked publicly about Dumbledore being gay.

[CLIP] ROWLING: And as time went on and I got to know Dumbledore, and this was before the publication of Philosopher’s Stone, so bear in mind at this point I’ve been with him for seven years. And I knew he was gay, I just knew he was gay.

[BEAT]

JACKSON: As a queer person who is always trying to push characters together, hoping and hoping they were gonna be queer, I did not read that at all when I first read Deathly Hallows. That totally came out of nowhere for me when she announced it.

MATT: This announcement happened around the time I was coming out, so you might expect this would be a pretty big deal for a fan like me. But it mostly rang flat because the scene Rowling is talking about is this tiny interaction between Dumbledore and this guy named Gellert Grindelwald.

This is barely in the book and definitely isn’t in the movies, so let me fill in a couple of the details here... myself --

[MATT PLAYS A KAZOO VERSION OF THE HARRY POTTER THEME]

MATT: Flashback to Dumbledore as a young man, talking to another wizard:

MATT AS DUMBLEDORE: Hello, you must be Gellert Grindelwald. I can tell because you’re so handsome.

MATT AS GRINDELWALD: It’s true. I am so handsome and also quite charming. And together, we are two of the most powerful wizards in the world.

MATT AS DUMBLEDORE: Yes! We are more powerful than all wizards, and also all Muggles. But we must use our power responsibly!

MATT AS GRINDELWALD: [MENACINGLY] Or... we could use that power to rule over all.

[GLOCKENSPIEL PLAYS GENTLY]

MATT: Later, after Grindelwald has followed-through on his super-obvious evil plan:

MATT AS DUMBLEDORE: Grindelwald! You need to stop being evil!

MATT AS GRINDELWALD: I’ll never stop.

MATT AS DUMBLEDORE: Then I guess we have to duel.

[SPELL SOUNDS, INCLUDING MATT SAYING, "MAGIC, MAGIC"]

MATT AS GRINDELWALD: Oh no, I am defeated! But before this duel ends, I shall cast one final spell!

[MORE SPELL SOUNDS, INCLUDING MATT SAYING, "MAGIC"]

MATT AS DUMBLEDORE: You’ve killed my sister! Nooo! [KAZOO FLOURISH] I have defeated Grindelwald, but at a terrible cost!

MATT: And that, Rowling says, was so damaging that Dumbledore just never let himself fall in love again. But really, guys, he’s gay. She swears.

[CLIP] ROWLING: The relationship he has with Grindelwald -- don’t you think that it was perfect that Dumbledore, who is always the great champion of love -- "Love, Harry, love will save us!" -- his one great experience of love was utterly tragic.

[BEAT]

CASPER: For me, it wasn’t new information. It confirmed what I hadn’t given voice to but intellectually I just already knew.

MATT: Casper ter Kuile co-hosts a podcast called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. He saw what I didn’t. He’s also married now, to a man, so maybe he’s just a little bit ahead of me in gay years.

CASPER: I recognized that older lonely gay man in Dumbledore.  A man that had survived,y'know, like, the AIDS crisis, right? Like, he’s made it through and now he’s there on his own and has so much love to give, which he embodies through his love for these kids and his school. But yet -- there’s something sad about him, right? There’s something unfulfilled, or -- Like, it totally makes sense to me. So I feel like there's plenty of evidence in the text for that, and not just in his kind of, like, thigh-high boots.

MATT: I guess that could be true -- but if it is, I don’t understand why it isn’t part of that plot somehow? In the end, Rowling didn't think it was necessary to actually include Dumbledore's sexuality in the books.

[CLIP] ROWLING: To me it was not a big deal. This is a very old man who has a very terrible job to do and his gayness is not really part of it. It’s not really relevant. Very relevant to him as a character because I always saw him as a very lonely character ...

MATT: So being gay means being tortured and alone? That's a pretty 1990s straight woman view of what it means to be gay.

LEV: I really feel as though she did kind of fail there.

MATT: Lev Grossman is a novelist who wrote the fantasy trilogy The Magicians. It’s sort of like Harry Potter if the characters were American college kids who drink too much and have regrettable hook-ups. He’s also a Potter fan himself, but he says you don’t get to just rewrite your own story after the fact.

LEV: If Dumbledore is gay, she ought to have said so in the books. You don’t actually get to go back and say, such and such character was gay, and such and such was -- I dunno, Latino ... and such and such was going on. That doesn’t actually change the books. I think that Rowling, if she were to do it right, she would have had him be out and gay in the books, and everybody could just deal with that.  She didn’t do that and I -- well, I’ll always wonder why.

MATT: Lev’s book is, in a lot of ways, a response to Harry Potter. One of the main characters is this guy named Eliot. He’s a great magician, a bit of a lush, and also very gay. And that last part in particular is central to who Eliot is. It informs just about everything about him, from how he was raised to who he lets get close to him.

LEV: There were lots of things about fantasy that I loved and there was a lot that was missing. There wasn’t that much sex in Harry Potter or drinking or drugs or depression or other related mood disorders. And, y'know, there weren’t gay people as well -- that was one of a number of things that I felt, is that if I were going to remake fantasy along the lines of the world that I knew, that was going to be in there too.   

[MAGICAL MUSIC COMES IN]

[CLIP] FANTASTIC BEASTS VOICE 1: You've known for 24 hours that an unregistered wizard set magical beasts loose in New York?

FANTASTIC BEASTS VOICE 2: Yes.

MATT: A whole new series in the Harry Potter universe started late last year: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It’s about this wizard who loses a bunch of magical creatures and has to find them in 1920s New York.

I had a feeling it was going to be bad, but I wasn't not gonna see it.

[CLIP] VOICE FROM FANTASTIC BEASTS: You could not have chosen a worse time to let that creature loose. We’re in the middle of a situation here.

MATT: And, spoiler alert: One of the main characters turns out to be Grindelwald -- that evil wizard young Dumbledore crushed so hard on.

JACKSON: So Fantastic Beasts is a great opportunity for JK Rowling to now have awesome representation.

MATT: That’s Jackson again. And he actually managed to turn his fandom into a day job. He works for a nonprofit called the Harry Potter Alliance, which rallies fans around social action.

JACKSON: Fantastic Beasts as part of the Harry Potter franchise is going to be one of the biggest series of the next several years. So to have one of the protagonists -- and, you know, the most powerful, gracious, awesome wizard of all time -- being openly gay would just be huge. It would be huge for the movement, it would be huge for all the queer kids out there growing up -- and the queer adults who didn’t get to see that as kids.

MATT: So if anything’s gonna happen, it’ll be in this new series.

[CLIP] REPORTER: Hi, it’s been confirmed that Dumbledore is in the sequel. I’m curious -- in that movie will he be portrayed as openly gay? And will you explore his romantic relationship with Grindelwald?

ROWLING: Well. [Laughter]

MATT: This is a press conference from last fall, just before Fantastic Beasts came out.

[CLIP] ROWLING: I can’t tell you everything I would like to say. Obviously, it’s a five-part story so there’s lots to unpack in that relationship. I will say that you will see Dumbledore as a ... as a younger man and quite a troubled man because he wasn’t always the sage. [HARRY POTTER THEME IN] He was always very clever but we’ll see him at what I think was the formative experience of his life. As far as his sexuality is concerned, watch this space, I would say.

[MUSIC FADES UNDER]

MATT: Maybe Rowling has this whole gay epic ready for us. But nothing in her history indicates that we’ll see anything.

It's been close to 20 years since I first read these books. And over all that time, Rowling's world has become a vital part of my own. It lives in my imagination and can’t be tarnished by her latest revisions. And in a couple of weeks, I'm getting on a plane to London. I have a ticket to see “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” -- that play with the two clearly gay wizards and the unfortunate “no homo!" moment. My seat is in the last row of the highest balcony. But, for a couple of hours, I'll finally be there -- at Hogwarts.

[MUSIC COMES UP, THEN OUT]

PERSON ON THE STREET 1: He is gay.

PERSON ON THE STREET 2: Yeah!

PERSON ON THE STREET 1: He's definitely gay. He's totally gay. I get the vibe. When you ask JK Rowling, she's like, "Yeah, he's gay." But yeah, he's definitely gay.

PERSON ON THE STREET 3: Nancy will be back in a minute.

[MIDROLL]

[LAUGHTER]

[MUSIC GENTLY IN]

PAT: This is my thing. Ain't nobody trying to change your opinion if you think being gay is a sin. Ain't nobody trying to change your opinion. I'm just saying, quit being such an asshole about it. Quit exaggerating the importance of it, y'know? If it was that big of a deal -- it's not even in the Commandments. How big a deal could it be if they didn't put it in the quick guide?

KATHY: That was Pat Brown, and -- we love Pat Brown.

TOBIN: Love Pat Brown.

KATHY: And that's from her comedy album Sex Tape.

TOBIN: And one of the things that I love about her is that she so embraces the gay part of her comedy. Like, it's a source of comedy, she makes jokes about it, she's proud of it. It's -- it's really cool.

KATHY: And a great thing about having this podcast is that we can have people we love on the show.

TOBIN: Exactly.

KATHY: So, we had Pat Brown in the studio with us, and she was hilarious, as usual.

[MUSIC ENDS]

TOBIN: I wanted to start by saying, we were reading your bio, and I thought it was amazing because you have this line where you said “I was an active girl that loved sports, outdoors, and playing with my brother, all to the dismay of my father who strongly felt I should sit my ass down somewhere which later I figured out was code for, 'Please don’t be gay.'”

PAT: [LAUGHS]

TOBIN: And then you say “Yeah, good luck with that.” [ALL LAUGHS]

PAT: Yeah, didn’t know it then, but yeah, I was always kind of wondering. Because his thing was – my sister was, you know, a girly-girl. And she was the ideal girl. Like very into, you know, dolls and all that kind of stuff. So when I came it was always just like a refrain. “Sit down! Don’t be so rough!” And I was like, "What is with you, guy? What’s your deal?" And so I figured out later on, because all that – you know, all of what I was doing was in his mind like, “Okay, she’s going to be different.”

TOBIN: [CHUCKLES]

PAT: Yeah, yeah. I’m going to take a few shop classes there, pop. [ALL LAUGH] I’m sorry you can’t prevent that. But yeah, I think people don’t even realize that they do that, that inherently they’re telling you something is wrong with you when you -- when you are whoever you are, and then they have to always try to modify your behavior in some way.

TOBIN: Yeah.

PAT: What is it about what I’m doing that is so disturbing to you? And I knew that at an early age.

TOBIN: Hmm. Yeah.

PAT: Yeah.

TOBIN: I spent many a soccer game on the sidelines asking my mom if I could help her with the uniforms.

[ALL LAUGH]

TOBIN: Can we help -- can I help organize and pass them out? And maybe not play?

[ALL LAUGH]

KATHY: So, how do you think being queer informs the kind of comedy that you do?

PAT: I think because I was gay I never really wanted to talk about, you know, male-female relationships or sex or whatever. So you start focusing on other facets of being funny, which you talk about, you know, little things: cups of coffee or driving on a highway. So you focus on those things because you don’t want to talk about relationships. You kind of avoid it. You take that one thing out, it makes you, actually, better, because you know you can't go there. So, let's focus on other things that I can talk about.

TOBIN: Right.

PAT: And I think that's why, uh, Ellen -- she probably would've been a great comedian if she was straight, too -- but I think that is where she excelled and so did Wanda.

TOBIN: Yeah.

PAT: Yeah.

KATHY: I feel -- I watched a few of her HBO specials, and I find it hilarious --

PAT: Ellen?

KATHY: Ellen's, yes. And I find it hilarious, her viewpoints on life and that sort of thing, but she almost never includes her queerness in her comedy. But you do!

PAT: But this is the first album I did. This is the first album.

KATHY AND TOBIN: Oh.

PAT: I moved to New York so I could be out and so I could actually talk about myself in the full spectrum of being a human. You know, all that comes with the relationships, sex, those things were absent from my life. And I felt like this is such a big gaping hole. But this is the first time I said that I was, uh, gay, and you know, I did a couple of lines on it and then I moved on. But ... I felt this wait, like I was waiting for a pushback, and then people were like, "Okay, would you go on with the story?" Because I was waiting for something like, "Why would you do that?" or "Boo!"

KATHY: Yeah, some sort of backlash.

PAT: I really was waiting for it, and I was like, "For real? [KATHY AND TOBIN LAUGH] That's it? Okay ... Uh, I didn't really have anything after that!"

[ALL LAUGH]

TOBIN: You were like, "That was supposed to add a minute to my act! I guess it's not a tight five anymore."

PAT: Yeah, no, not a tight five anymore. And I was so waiting for something, y'know, for somebody to respond in some type of negative way, and I never got that.

TOBIN: Hmm.

PAT: I love that New York throws a parade for everything. They had a parade for marriage equality, when it passed. So that was cool as hell because I’m a gay woman so I was happy about that. [APPLAUSE] Yeah. That was nice. That’s wonderful, that marriage equality passed because now I get to marry the love of my life. Yeah, hell yeah, Ricky Martin. [LAUGHTER] Hell yeah. In your face, evangelical Christians. In your face. Two gay people in love and you can’t stand it. You can’t stand our love. [LAUGHTER] Can’t stand it.

[ALL LAUGH]

TOBIN: Um, I'm wondering, like -- sometimes audiences put comedians especially in a box. And, um, do you ever feel like people want you to be, y'know, like, the "Black comedian" or the "female comedian" or the "gay comedian"? Do you feel people putting you in a box at all?

PAT: What I feel like? I don’t feel like people know how to package me yet.

TOBIN: Hmm.

PAT: But ... people have always gravitated to my sense of humor. And it doesn't change now that I'm adding more layers of myself. But I don't know. I can only continue to do what I do and hope there's a groundswell of like, "Oh, this comic here is -- she's bringing something a little different, or something special or something that we haven't heard before."

KATHY: Speaking of "special and different" ...

TOBIN: [LAUGHS]

PAT: That's us!

KATHY: ... We have another clip:

PAT: A woman’s body is just beautiful. Oh my God. Yeah. It’s just a feast for the eyes. It just really is, the vagina. And a lot of women don’t know this, but the vagina is like – it’s like a snowflake. All of them are different. All of them are different. [LAUGHTER] Absolutely. Some of them can really be really plain and some of them can be really extravagant, right? You know, it’s like having a little – playing with just like the little man in the boat and that’s it. And then you have one that’s really ornate. It’s like a bride with a wedding gown on. It was flowing. [LAUGHTER] You’ve got all these ruffles and folds.

[ALL LAUGH]

KATHY: Like, I've always known that that was true, but I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that out loud.

PAT: Oh. [LAUGHS] Wow, okay.

KATHY: People have said that I would be a reluctant host because I am so uncomfortable sometimes, just putting myself out there.

PAT: Right.

KATHY: Do you have any advice for, I dunno, just, like, being unapologetically yourself?

PAT: That's actually something that, uh ... I think that I was struggling with before I came to New York. The question I kept asking myself is "Why?" And I kept asking, "Why? Why can't you be honest? Why can't you tell your whole story?" and then writing it down and shooting down these justifications that are really not justifications that are really not just justifications -- it's the inner reason. And when you reach that, it usually is irrational. Mine was based on how my father reacted to me, and I was like, "Is there a shame about me?" Because, like I said, when you constantly tell a child to adjust to modify their behavior, after a while you start saying, "What'd wrong with me?" And so, knowing, realizing that that was his projection, and that it was not the truth -- and maybe that wasn't even what he was attempting to do! It was just what he did and how I responded to it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that's what he wanted from that action. So, getting down to that, I have to remind myself that, "Hey, what I do, I love doing, and I feel like I have something to offer. And what I have to offer, nobody else in the world can offer that but me. And so if I don't offer it, this particular thing that the world needs, the world doesn't get."

KATHY: Yeah.

TOBIN: I think we would like to end on another bit of your comedy that is actually, personally, my favorite:

PAT: Nice. Quit trying to make it hard for people that are different. Hell, we’ve already got it hard, at least I do. I’m Black, I’m gay, I’m female. I’m just so thankful I wasn’t left-handed. Oh. [LAUGHTER] Whew. Oh, whew. Shit. Ugh. And I don’t care what nobody say, that shit right there, that’s a choice. That is a choice. [LAUGHTER] That is a choice. That right – that don’t even look right, and now they’re doing it, flaunting that little crooked-ass hand all out in the open ... so people can see it and everything. They in the park using the left hand to throw the ball and the Frisbee like it’s normal. Ugh.

TOBIN: It’s such a good joke. It's so good.

PAT: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.

[MUSIC STARTS]

TOBIN: Thank you so much for talking to us.

PAT: Oh, this was a pleasure. This was -- I can do this. This was fun.

KATHY: [LAUGHS]

[MUSIC ENDS]

KATHY: That was comedian Pat Brown. You can find her stuff online at comedianpatbrown.com.

[CREDIT MUSIC STARTS]

TOBIN: Alright, credits time!

KATHY: Our producer...

TOBIN: Matt Collette!

KATHY: Sound design...

TOBIN: Jeremy Bloom and Isaac Jones!

KATHY: Editor...

TOBIN: Jenny Lawton!

KATHY: Executive producer...

TOBIN: Paula Szuchman!

KATHY: We're on Facebook and Twitter @NancyPodcast.

TOBIN: I'm Tobin Low.

KATHY: I'm Kathy Tu.

TOBIN: And Nancy is a production of WNYC Studios.

[CREDITS MUSIC ENDS]

KATHY: [FAKE LAUGH]

TOBIN: [FAKE CHUCKLE]

KATHY: [REAL LAUGH]

TOBIN: [FAKE LAUGH]

 

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