The star podcaster’s success is rooted in his early-career failure and despair. the american monologue, once you get an ear for it, is everywhere, beguiling and blustering and buttonholing. It raises you up, it bums you out. It has its pulpits and its sanctified places—the radio booth, the campaign trail, the AA meeting, the comedy club—but it is not confined to them. Anywhere a mouth opens, anywhere the wind blows, you can hear it. The Ancient Mariner (U.S. edition) on the park bench, his mind at sea, his skinny hand upon your sleeve; the shopper behind her cart in the aisle at Whole Foods, loudly volunteering to nobody in particular, or to everybody in unparticular, the information that she was expecting the place to be empty because it is so early; the newly met neighbor at the cocktail party, the fellow parent or dog owner, who talks into your face with such innocent and unflagging zeal that you begin to wonder whether he might be slightly insane—all artists of the American monologue, all busy singing the song of themselves, like Walt Whitman and Donald Trump.
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