Adam Mansbach and W. Kamau Bell: Go the Fuck to College
W. Kamau Bell joins Adam Mansbach to discuss humor, race, and his new picture book in City Arts' radio and podcast format at Sydney Goldstein Theater.
Why we picked this
Mansbach turned a parody bedtime book into a cultural touchstone — Bell is the ideal conversation partner for a writer whose humor has always been about something more than the joke.
Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep became one of the most shared books in recent memory — a parody that somehow captured the actual emotional reality of parenthood and spread accordingly. Go the Fuck to College extends that sensibility to a new target, with Oakland native W. Kamau Bell alongside for a conversation about what makes comedy land and why certain subjects reward the irreverent treatment.
Bell brings his own body of work on race, culture, and American contradiction — from United Shades of America to his stand-up — making him more than a co-presenter. The two together are likely to push past the books and into the bigger questions: what humor does that direct argument can’t, and what it costs to be funny about things that also matter.
Recorded in City Arts’ radio and podcast format, the conversation will have a different texture than a standard author talk — looser, more iterative, built for listening.