Pope Leo XIV Diagnosed With Lung Cancer

The announcement was made following the pope's surgery on Tuesday to remove the lower lobe of his lung

Pope Leo XIV greets faithful as he holds the Sunday Angelus prayer from his studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square on October 11, 2026 in Vatican City, Vatican.

Pope Leo XIV has been diagnosed with lung cancer, the Vatican said in a statement. The announcement was made following a surgery on Tuesday to remove the lower lobe of his right lung.

An examination confirmed a diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma, which the statement said was “suspected by the pre-operative tests.” The pope was in the operating room for three hours and the surgery itself lasted about 90 minutes. “The operation was successful and there were no complications,” the statement said.

According to the Lung Cancer Foundation of America, lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer in the United States and makes up about 40 percent of all lung cancer cases.

The Vatican has not disclosed what stage the cancer was in or whether the pope will undergo further treatment.

On Sunday, the pope announced that he would be undergoing surgery. The pontiff made the announcement while addressing those gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Angelus prayer, as subsequently on social media.

“Dear friends, during some recent medical examinations, the doctors found a small, localized nodule in my lung,” Pope Leo XIV wrote. “It was detected at a very early stage and is well-localized. The doctors believe that it is best to intervene, so, following their advice, I have decided to undergo surgery to remove it. The operation is already scheduled to take place in the coming days.”

He added, “I thank you for your spiritual closeness and entrust myself to your prayers.” At the time, it wasn’t revealed whether or not the nodule was cancerous.

The Vatican said in a previous statement that Pope Leo XIV will spend an additional week spent recovering in the hospital, likely Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, which has a special apartment for the pope. The Vatican will function as usual during that time, but decisions needing the pope’s input or signature will be put on hold.

The pope is scheduled to embark on a trip to South America on Nov. 6, visiting Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru over the course of 11 days; it’s unclear whether the pope’s surgery and recovery will postpone that trip.

This article was updated on Oct. 13 at 10:26 p.m. ET to include news of Pope Leo XIV’s diagnoses.

Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian writer to receive the prestigious award since Alice Munro in 2013.

The Swedish Academy announced the 76-year-old Toronto-born writer as this year’s laureate on Thursday, recognizing what it called her “bold and inventive oeuvre” and her ability to create new forms of contemporary literature through a “playful dialogue with the classical tradition.”

Carson’s work has long blurred the boundaries between poetry, fiction, translation, criticism and classical scholarship. Among her best-known books are Autobiography of Red, Eros the Bittersweet, Men in the Off Hours, Nox and Float. Her writing frequently reworks ancient Greek literature, bringing figures and stories from antiquity into distinctly contemporary settings.

Educated at the University of Toronto, Carson briefly taught at McGill University in Montréal. She was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2005, and won the Governor General's Literary Award for Norma Jeane Baker of Troy in 2020.

Carson was in Iceland when she received the news. According to Reuters, when asked how she felt about winning, she said: “Crazy, I think they're all crazy.” She then added, “I'll get a sticker on the front of my book.”

The Nobel committee singled out Autobiography of Red, her 1998 verse novel inspired by fragments of the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus, as an example of her ability to make classical literature feel contemporary.

The award comes with a prize of roughly $1.2 million USD. Carson will receive the Nobel Prize at the annual ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.

Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate talk to the media outside their residence on March 23, 2025 in Bucharest, Romania.

Andrew Tate, the embattled manosphere influencer currently in federal detention in Miami, is facing a litany of new allegations in the United Kingdom, according to a request for extradition filed in U.S. federal court this week.

Tate has been accused, among other allegations, of producing pornographic material in 2015 with a girl who was 17 years old at the time, which is illegal in both the U.S. and the U.K. The allegations in the court document, which had been previously unreported, detail the relationship, during which Tate apparently demanded that she learn to “fist” herself — insert her entire hand into her vagina — because he had a “rich guy” who was willing to pay $1,000 for each video of this sexual act. “I want your whole hand up to your wrist,” he wrote to her, according to the filing.

Tate has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. In response to a detailed list of questions, Tate’s lawyer, Joseph McBride, wrote in an email to Rolling Stone that, as is noted in the court filings, Tate denied that the devices on which evidence was allegedly found were used solely by him. “Those of us who see this despicable attack for what it is… recognize it as a good old-fashioned reputation assassination,” he wrote.

The 185-page extradition document was the latest development in the numerous cases against Tate, 39, and his brother Tristan, 38, who are dual American-British citizens. The brothers once ran a large online empire that included an online manosphere “university,” as well as a lucrative cam-girl business for which they allegedly trafficked women to Romania, where they had been living since 2017. (Tate has categorically denied the allegations of trafficking, saying that all the women who participated in his camming operation did so willingly.)

In 2022, Andrew and Tristan were detained in Romania on charges of human trafficking and put on house arrest as they awaited trial. Romanian authorities granted the U.K. an extradition request, but said they would not release them into British custody until their Romanian cases had been adjudicated. In April 2026, Romanian authorities lifted all travel restrictions, and the brothers flew to Miami. Though U.K. authorities previously dropped the charges against them in 2019, they reopened the case in 2026. In July, the brothers were arrested in Miami after 38 new charges were filed against them in the U.K., who requested the U.S.’s help in extradition. Though their legal team argues that their detention is unlawful, the documents filed this week list the allegations behind those new charges in graphic detail.

The first set of charges stem from alleged victims’ accusations of sex trafficking, assault, and rape, which allegedly took place between 2011 and 2017. The documents claim that they “incorporated features commonly associated with the ‘lover-boy’ model of exploitation” — love-bombing individuals before coercing them into performing online sex work for his profit. Though the charges vary, they allege a pattern of violence by Andrew, claiming that he was violent with his sexual partners — choking and slapping women during sex when they did not consent to such behavior — as well as engaging in vaginal, anal, and oral sex with women against their will.

McBride denies that there was any coercion. “Not one of these women went to the police while any relationship at issue was going on,” he says. “The first police report came in August 2022, years after the last event alleged, and three of the women did not come forward on their own: British police contacted them in 2025. Britain’s papers cite no rape kit, no medical record, and no forensic evidence of any assault. One of the women told police she realized she had been ‘trafficked’ only after Andrew became famous.”

The other set of allegations against Andrew stem from images and videos found on devices confiscated from his home in 2015 after he was arrested for “separate matters,” according to the court documents. Two of the devices, a Samsung phone and a laptop, were found on the dining room table of his home; the other was an iPhone found on him when he was taken into custody.

On the laptop, authorities allegedly found images that depicted bestiality — the images involve people having sexual contact with an eel and horse — as well as disturbing, violent images of a man’s genitalia being mutilated using nails and a hammer.

Tate has said that these images did not come from him, and that the devices were not exclusively in his control, denials which are cited in the court documents and confirmed by his attorney. “British police seized those devices in July 2015 and questioned Andrew in August 2016,” McBride tells Rolling Stone. “He told them visitors used the devices in that house. He told them he had never downloaded, received, or viewed images of people with animals, and that images circulating in large group chats could have been saved to the devices automatically.”

One of the devices also include exchanges that appear to be between Tate and a girl who was 17 at the time. According to the court documents, authorities found a copy of the girl’s passport, which indicated her age, as well as messages between Tate and the girl in which he acknowledged that she wasn’t yet 18 and that could cause issues if her parents didn’t consent to her visiting him. “If [your father] wants to bring direct heat on me it’ll be easy and I could get in legal trouble cause ur 17,” he allegedly wrote.

At the time, according to the documents, Tate denied that the device was exclusively his, saying that they were “freely available within the property and that all devices at the address were used by visitors.” However, authorities lay out evidence they claim prove the exchanges came from him, including its link to WhatsApp using his known telephone number and email address, and that the “user of the device refers to himself as Andrew Tate.”

According to the extradition document, Tate exchanged more than 1,000 WhatsApp messages with the girl, including the direction in June 2015 to insert her entire hand into her vagina. “Told her I’d dump her if she didn’t fist herself so now she keeps sending me vids trying,” he allegedly wrote to another individual. The documents allege that the girl sent him multiple videos of her, in which she is laying on her side, naked, showing herself pushing her hand inside her vagina, changing positions so she can continue pressing it in deeper. “Does it make you smile daddy,” she allegedly wrote, to which documents claim he replied, “I’ll smile when your fist is inside.”

In chat logs between him and the other individuals, Tate allegedly shared these videos, and bragged about his apparent control over her. “One guy said he would pay her 1,000 dollars every day if she could fist herself,” he allegedly wrote. “So I told her she had to do it.” He also shared a screenshot showing that someone sent him $2,000 via PayPal.

McBride, Tate’s lawyer, tells Rolling Stone that the timing of the charges are “dubious.” “Britain waited almost 10 years to charge any of it, authorizing these charges on July 10, 2026, eight days before Andrew was arrested in Miami,” he wrote in an email. “The United Kingdom has carried out a political kidnapping of two American citizens and is now defaming them before the world with the most lurid accusations it could assemble.

“The United Kingdom asks the United States to surrender two American citizens on the word of accusers it will not name, on stories told to police years after the fact, and on charges it waited a decade to bring, which is to say on nothing that has ever been tested [in court],” McBride wrote. “God bless Andrew and Tristan Tate.”

According to a federal filing, both parties — U.K. authorities and Tate’s legal team — have until Oct. 8 to suggest dates for a final extradition hearing. On Wednesday, McBride filed a writ of habeus corpus, demanding the brothers’ immediate release on bond, arguing that their “detention is unlawful based on the deficiencies and errors in the detention proceedings.”

Oct. 7, 7:40 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include the writ of habeus corpus filed by the Tates’ legal team on Wednesday.

With the 2026-27 NHL season officially underway, the league is once again trying to grow its market size this year. From attempts to humanize its players through docuseries to letting the players compete in the Olympics again, Gary Bettman’s circuit is using seduction tactics- to mixed results.

After the wild and unexpected success of shows like Heated Rivalry and Off-Campus, hockey has by far become the biggest sport in the sports romance genre, on-screen and in books. For the NHL, that has translated to a new, largely female audience of first-time ticket buyers.To try to capitalize on that hype, the league has launched a campaign called Hot for Hockey, and people have questions.

The activation is a set of 60 to 90 second narrated short stories about real NHL players. Written and narrated by popular romance novel authors, including C.R. Jane, creator of the Pucking Wrong series. Among the announced titles, fans can listen to Jack of Hearts, a story about Las Vegas Golden Knights captain Jack Eichel, or The Storm Between Us, featuring Stanley Cup winner Sebastian Aho. It’s not just players, even mascots are getting their own audiobooks, like the hilariously named The Summer I Turned Gritty.

Obviously, do not expect steamy, homoerotic scenes from Hot for Hockey. While the short stories will play on the tropes of romance novels, they will not feature any actual love stories between players. Rather, the players and the action will serve to help advance the narrative of the stories.

“The hockey romance genre is extraordinarily popular”, league commissioner Gary Bettman said in a press conference. “Not all of it is suitable for every audience or every age group, but for the people who are connecting to it? They’re also connecting to hockey.”

2026 seemed like a promising year for Haïti-born, Montréal-based author Thélyson Orélien. His debut novel, «C'était ça ou mourir» ('It was that or death'), tells the story of a Haitian history teacher who must flee Port-au-Prince amid the gang violence. His journey takes him over the border into the Dominican Republic, and then through large swaths of South America, before ending up in the United States and being met with Trump's ICE agents, to eventually end up in Canada. Captivating, poetic and heartwrenching, the novel is on the list of nearly every literary prize in France, including the Goncourt, the most prestigious of them all. Monday, it won the people's choixe award at the Prix FNAC, but that celebration was short-lived. On X (formerly Twitter), an account accused Orélien of having used artificial intelligence to write the best-seller. On both sides of the Atlantic, authors, journalists and public figures were quick to come to Orélien's defence, notably claiming that AI-verification tools, which themselves use AI, can hallucinate. The AFP submitted excerpts from the novel to several such AI agents, to wildly varying results, with some claiming that it was ''almost certainly written by a human''. Accusations of racism and jealousy were also brought up by the author's staunch defenders.

While we still don't have a clear answer as to whether or not Thélyson Orélien did use generative AI to write his novel (the author and his publisher, Grasset, vehemently deny the accusations), he is nonetheless being haunted by a history of plagiarism.

An investigation from Montréal newspaper La Presse found that short stories published by the author at the beginning of the 2010s contained word-for-word passages lifted from other authors and writers. «Où va le monde?», which Orélien published in 2012, was found to essentially be a rewriting of the preface to Louis Pauwel's 1964 novel The Morning of the Magicians. In 2013, an opinion piece published in La Presse itself lifted from sports writer Andy Bautista's article published in English in the Philippines five days earlier. Their investigation discovered a number of other instances where Orélien simply translated and adapted other writers' work and appropriated it as his own. Les Éditions du Boréal, the author's editor, told La Presse that it took the situation very seriously and was conducting its own investigation. “We continue to make every effort, both with the author and internally, to fully investigate the allegations that the author used generative AI to write C’était ça ou mourir,” said the editor.

As generative AI continues to gain ground in nearly every aspect of our lives, the arts, in particular, will be a big part of the conversation. Last May, Trinidadian writer Jamir Nazir won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region for "The Serpent in the Grove," a story he published in Granta magazine. Soon after, the author was accused of using artificial intelligence to write it. In the music world, artists such as Tyga and Fenix Flexin have admitted to using AI tools to craft songs on their latest projects.

Bill Burr would like to make one thing crystal clear: He never wanted to be “the angry guy.”

Oh, the legendary stand-up knows that he has a reputation as someone who can rage with the best of them. His unparalleled ability to vent his spleen onstage and on his twice-weekly Monday Morning Podcast, which Burr started way back in 2007, has long fueled his popularity. “Believe me, dude,” the 58-year-old comedian says, “I can blow my top like anybody. I can still lose my shit. I’ve got 50-something years of practice of that.”

But Burr has been working on himself a lot over the past few years. And while there is no shortage of things that still make him mad — social media, tech billionaires, your everyday displays of blatant hypocrisy, the whole left-versus-right thing — he has finally mastered the art of anger management, as well as letting go of a lot of the pain behind it. Part of this change was spurred by a mind-blowing mush­room trip Burr took in the early 2020s, which he memorialized in his seventh comedy special, Live at Red Rocks. Part of it was the result of therapy, which Burr has credited with saving his life. Part of it involves his loved ones and realizing that he had accidentally become the very person he vowed to never be.

And part of it, as Burr will confess during our hour-plus conversation, was an unexpected moment of clarity that happened when he was preparing for his role in The Social Reckoning, writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s return to the world of Facebook, some 16 years after he helped give the world The Social Network. Burr’s character, a composite of several longtime investors, is worried that Mark Zuckerberg (played with characteristic intensity by Jeremy Strong) isn’t taking a whistleblower and a series of Wall Street Journal exposés seriously enough. Coming on the heels of his turn in the all-star Broadway revival of Glengarry Glen Ross last year, it’s a great example of both Burr’s facility as an ensemble player and his ability to parlay his comic persona into a legitimate acting career. But there was an added benefit: A spontaneous crying jag while rehearsing lines prompted Burr to finally address decades’ worth of issues and become a much happier version of himself.

Yes, Burr still blows gaskets — but on a scale of one to 10, he’s no longer “coming in at an eight because someone got my dinner order wrong.” Yes, Burr is still hilarious — probably more than he’s ever been, both in his own estimation and gauging by the dozens of record-breaking, sold-out shows he’s played everywhere from Boston to London to Greece. No, he hasn’t lost his edge, even if he knows he’s lost some fans who expect him to be a misanthrope 24/7. But as he’s been touring his latest stand-up hour around the U.S., he’s now dedicated to countering the divisiveness he believes is tearing this country apart. Enough with the angry guy. “I want to be the meet-in-the-middle guy,” Burr says.

The Social Reckoning is not a follow-up to The Social Network, exactly. But it’s Aaron Sorkin, it’s about Facebook …Yeah, it’s about a whistleblower that was working at Facebook. When it started to go sideways, she reached out to somebody at The Wall Street Journal, which caused all of this internal strife with the company. It put some information out there that people needed to know. Social media platforms are [still] new. We’re just seeing the fallout of them now. It started off as fun and silly, and then it got monetized, and then it just got evil.

One minute you’re using it to talk to an old high school buddy. The next, somebody’s being dragged before Congress to talk about why Instagram is evil for teenage girls.That is kind of what happened. The internet’s this crazy place. I don’t understand why you can’t say curse words on TV, but you can post whatever you want on the internet, and there’s no rules of libel or slander and all of this stuff. And now with AI, everybody is just like, “Well, you know, it’s here … so you just have to deal with it.” It’s weird.

Who asked for this AI wave?Nobody. Nobody wants it. That’s the thing. Maybe CEOs want AI because they don’t want to pay anybody. They’ve never wanted to pay anybody. But we’re too busy yelling at each other about red ties and blue ties, so we don’t realize we’re on the same team.

So if you’re in an ensemble with an actor who’s maybe got a certain process, a certain way that they need to kind of get into a scene …[Laughs.] Uh-huh.

How do you work with somebody who needs to approach things in their own specific way?Everybody’s got a process. And if their process starts spilling over to your cup, you gotta let them know that doesn’t go in this cup. You go drink your shit over there. Whatever the fuck you need to do.

Why are you laughing? It’s like you think I’m referring to someone in particular.You know what? I’m going Henry Hill. “I’m just listening.” I’m just listening [laughs].

The Social Reckoning is getting into this stuff that you’ve been talking about in your act for the past few years — the lack of accountability, how the media works, the way tech is taking control of our lives. Did this seem like a natural extension of what you’ve been doing onstage?It’s way deeper. You know, I’m a stand-up. I’m joking around. But we live in a world where if somebody tells their version of the truth of what’s going on, it’s like they’re trying to escape Russia in the Eighties. It’s insane. [Facebook] is an American company that seems to function like the CIA, which is really sort of indicative of you’re doing something wrong.

I mean, if you look at the response to the Luigi [Mangione] thing. It wasn’t “Maybe we need to look at what we’re doing if it makes some crazy person do this.” [Healthcare executives’] response was to take their faces off of the internet and get security. It’s like, “You don’t think you need to examine this? You’re just the CEO of a business. Why do you need this level of security?”

Even just touring as a comic, I’ve seen it change. It used to be we hated the Russians. Now it’s like, Texas hates California, California hates Texas. These people hate Florida. Everybody hates New York. It’s like, “Guys, same teams. We’re on the same teams here.”

Right!I was talking about that ICE stuff onstage, talking about my people, white people. We’re not nearly as upset as we need to be, because we don’t see ourselves going into the van. I go, “Who do you think’s going in the van next?” And this guy in the crowd yells, “Liberals!” And I go, “Did you just say liberals?” Like, dude, you’re literally talking about half of your team. They’re gonna work their way back to you eventually. People think they’re in the in-group. They think they’re gonna get under the mountain or get on the spaceship. You’re not. They’re using you, and they’re making you not like me, and they’re trying to make me not like you.

Part of the impetus to start working on yourself came from an acting gig, right?Yeah, this acting gig. The Social Reckoning role.

As my therapist would say, let’s hear more about this.I was in my hotel room, getting ready to do this big scene the next day. I got about a page and a half in, and one of the lines was my character was disappointed, probably in the Mark Zuckerberg character. I said the line, and it made me choke up, like I was gonna cry. But it didn’t serve the scene. The scene was not at that emotional level. I was thinking, “What is this?” So I stopped myself, because that’s what you do as a guy. You’re not allowed to cry.

So then I went back to the top. I went through it again — and the same thing happened. And then I started freaking out, being like, “I’m gonna, like, emotionally lose it, I’m gonna look stupid, and they’re gonna fire me.” Some actors think if you’re crying that’s good. Well, not if it doesn’t call for it. It would have been bizarre. I literally just went, like, “OK, what is this?”

What was it?It’s almost like when you’re on mushrooms and you get an answer. For some reason, I got an answer, and I realized the way that I was raised, like 99.9 percent of my emotions were sort of shamed away. “That’s not what a man does.” I had basically three emotions. I navigated my life with laughing, being angry, or not giving a fuck. Everything else I just had in a vault.

But when I act, these characters feel emotions that are in the vault. So I’ve got to go in and get them, and then what happens is, like, a cry from 50 years ago sees the light and tries to run out. I had to sit there in this hotel room and cry for five minutes, and I didn’t even know why. Then the next day I went down and I did the scene, and it was totally fine. I realized, “OK, in my life I have the door closed. I need to open the door.”

How did you start opening the door? It’s exactly what you’re talking about in your most recent special, 2025’s Drop Dead Years, where sad men are only allowed to have, like, two emotions.Yeah, that was the beginning of me starting to acknowledge other feelings. I will tell you what’s fucked up about my last special.

Go ahead.I thought that bit saying, “Why is the Ku Klux Klan still legal? Why is it that in those groups, the Proud Boys and all of them, there’s the white privilege where you can join a terrorist fucking organization?” I was thinking I’d get a lot of shit for that from racist people. Nothing. It was more people going, [mocking voice] “Do you think there’s a lot of sad men, Bill?” No one wanted to talk about the dangerous topic.

All of these years we watched [people] not do the right thing with a lot of other [countries], and now it’s happening here, and that’s why so much of the world’s like, “Well, yeah … you fucking deserve it.” But I think that we’re going to get on the other side of it.

You do?Yeah, because the one thing I think people agree with on all sides is that people don’t want to live in an oppressive, not-free society, which is what we’re going towards. Just the amount of surveillance that they have on you and I — like, we’re not John Gotti in a social club. They have this level of surveillance on us, not because of what we’re doing but because of what they’re doing. Like, why the fuck do you need to know that I just went to 7-Eleven and got a Big Gulp? I got to walk around like Joe Pesci and [Robert] De Niro in Casino now, talking to my wife in my fucking driveway? Like, what are we doing here?

So what do you think it’s going to take for a change to happen?I don’t know. It would have to be a fucking bloodbath. It would be like Braveheart, except everyone was wearing Lululemon shit.

Behind every massacre is a man in a suit, they say.Yeah. Or a robe.

Let’s go back to that anger thing. So, how soon did this happen after you had taken that first big mushroom trip, which you said helped kind of open things up?Yeah, the mushrooms helped me realize how fucked up I was. If you’re not feeling 99 percent of your feelings, how do you know that you’re sad or you’re depressed or whatever? So, the first time I took mushrooms, as they were coming on, it was the normal giggly sort of thing. And then, all of a sudden, this profound sense of sadness washed over me. So I left the room, and I was in this dark room, just, you know, having a bad trip. I started thinking about the people in my life. I’m like, “Is it my wife? No, I love her to death. Best thing that ever happened to me. I know it’s not my kids.” I just kind of went around, and then I finally ran out of stuff. And then the answer came: This is how you felt growing up. I was like, “Oh. Yep.”

That’s heavy.Right? That bothered me. After that … I wasn’t really drinking at that point. But for like six weeks, I didn’t smoke a cigar. I didn’t do anything. I just wanted to work on myself, which is why I think that mushrooms are the best. It’s the only drug I’ve ever done that didn’t make me want to do more of it. It made me want to fix myself.

It’s funny, it’s such an East Coast thing: [Tough-guy voice] “Hey, man, don’t go out to West Coast and lose your edge.” What, don’t start enjoying my life? Don’t be a chill person to be around? In comedy, there’s this big thing of “Don’t get happy, you’re not going to be funny!” And it’s the exact opposite.

How so?You can have access to all these emotions that you can add into your act, and you can revisit topics that you were looking at through the lens of anger and rage. This whole journey of being a comedian is when I stopped doing this and started doing a little more of that. Like, “Hey, Bill, maybe chicks aren’t psychos. Maybe you’re bringing something to the party, you know?” [Laughs.] My whole view on women is changed now. I look back on all of the dumb shit that I said, it had nothing to do with how I felt. I wanted to be married. I wanted to have kids. I just didn’t know how to do it. So what did I do? I blamed what I wanted. It’s stupid. I missed out on a lot of good times, being that brooding guy with this three-quarter Donnie Brasco leather jacket, hiding in the corner.

Only Nixon could go to China, and only Bill Burr can get guys to go to therapy and deal with their shit.I know a lot of angry people that like my comedy. I want to tell them, “Look, if I can get on the other side of it, anybody can, because I was a first-ballot lunatic.” I didn’t want to be the angry guy.

Really?My whole career, it’s “Oh, you’re the angry comic.” It was always embarrassing to me. Anger was embarrassing because it reminded me of my dad, who had no control, and I used to always be like, “I’m not going to be like him.” And what happens? You’re doing exactly what he was doing. So I always felt shame. Then that would make me hate myself, which made me go darker, which made me get angrier. I didn’t know how to get out of it. It was just this spinning-down thing.

When you started to lose the anger, were you afraid you had gotten rid of your creative fuel?No, I felt liberated. Before, it was like, “You’re going to write a song on this piano — but you can only use these notes.” As opposed to, you can use the whole piano now. The best thing that happened to me, in terms of learning, was becoming a comedian. Because you learn the most through the failure of bombing. You can learn other things faster by just going into the same mindset.

When did you last bomb?Oh, recently. I was in Vegas, and I opened with that Luigi shit. Oh, my God! That ate a big dick. And then — this is what’s good about getting on the other side of my emotions. So it didn’t work, and rather than judge them and blame them, I went, “All right, I get it. You came to Vegas, you’re blowing off steam. I get it. I was wrong. I came out too hard. So … how’s everybody doing?” [Laughs.] And then, like, they were all laughing because I did, I came out guns a-blazing.

Yeah, bombing never goes away. If you’re continuing to try new jokes and push yourself, it’s a part of it. It’s like boxing. You’re gonna get punched, and it’s gonna fucking hurt. Even if you win. But you take the hit and you get back up.

You’re raising a son now, right?Yeah. I’ve got a daughter and a son.

So how are you helping him avoid some of that “men can’t cry” shit?I just let him be who he is. I let my daughter be who she is. And then I just go, “Hey, a little too much of this or that, guys! Ease up.” I expose them to all different kinds of music and sports and stuff, and I see what they gravitate towards. My wife is amazing with that. I learn a lot by watching her. And it helps that I remember what it was like to be a kid. To be scared, to not be listened to, and all of that awful stuff. I learned how to be a really good father by not doing what I saw. I remember the first time I felt it was working was when my daughter, who was probably two at the time, there was something that was upsetting to her. I was sitting on the stairs, and I said, “Well, come over here and talk to me about it.” And she walked over, and both of us just held each other’s hands. It was like … [Starts crying.] Sorry.

That’s all right. I don’t know what your growing-up situation was necessarily …It was the exact opposite of that.

It must have made you feel good to have an organic connection like that with your kid. That’s huge.Yeah! Yeah, it is. I mean, it’s funny, because my kids are not afraid of me at all, which I love. But then sometimes when I’m going, “Dude, I’ve told you three times, go to bed,” they’re still just doing a dance, thinking I’m joking around.

Are your kids funny?They’re hilarious. They roast me. Like my daughter one time, I was like, “How are you still up? Go to bed. Come on. I’ve asked you like 10 times.” I said, “This isn’t fair.” And she just goes “Life isn’t fair.” I was like, “Shouldn’t I be telling you that?” And she comes back with: “Yeah, well, you didn’t.” I was like, “Well, I lost that one” [laughs]. They’re good kids. They’re emotionally intelligent, and you know, kind of everything I’m not.

Is there an itch that acting scratches that stand-up doesn’t?Yeah. The collaborative thing. I really like working with other people and seeing what they’re gonna do. I like hearing other actors say a line and thinking, “Wow, I never would have thought to do it that way.” I’ve gotten better just watching the choices, and to see somebody fearless as an actor. The way I gravitated towards a fearless comedian, to then be like, “OK, what is being fearless as an actor?” And then seeing that, and it’s the same thing. Like, “Oh, that’s like some Dave Attell stuff, but in the acting world.”

How did doing Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway for a four-month run make you think differently about acting?It combined stand-up and acting. In stand-up, I say the thing, you guys react positively or negatively. I get immediate feedback, and silence is bad. On a set, silence is a good thing. If somebody doesn’t come up to you after a take, that means you did a good job. With theater, there’s feedback. And when you’re with the other actors, you’re seeing how everyone else does it and how it changes every night. It made me love theater. I was a typical sports guy. I thought theater was Cats. It’s like, I don’t want to watch a bunch of people dressed like fucking felines.

I never read plays growing up. That was for the kids that got beat up. I was trying not to get beat up in high school. So I went back and I read a bunch when we were doing Glengarry. Sam Shepard plays and The Motherfucker With the Hat. Just great stuff that made me want to do more of it.

I hear there’s a revival of Cats. You might want to look into that.No [laughs].

You started your podcast before Joe Rogan and Marc Maron started theirs, right?Before they eclipsed me, you mean? “Bill, didn’t you do a podcast before those other guys became vastly more rich and famous than you?” [Laughs.] Yeah, I was there early. I still just do it into my phone. It’s just random thoughts. I don’t have guests a lot. I got into this to have fun, and I felt when you took it to the next level with a studio, employees, guests, it became a job. Not saying I would have done what Rogan and Maron did. I just kept it my way out of laziness.

When did you feel like you first found your voice as a comic?I feel like I’m finding it now. Before, that was Traumatized Me. Fight-or-flight mode, alopecia, losing clumps of hair and shit. I was a fucking mess. That tropey sad-clown thing. How many years was I going to go up there and take out my childhood on the crowd?

When you were doing press for Drop Dead Years, you talked about how the country is divided and you wanted people to feel like they could find common ground at your show. How’s that working with the hour you’re touring now?Oh, it’s been really fun. I just did a casino gig, and it was a really MAGA crowd, and my opener was a joke making fun of Trump, and half the room laughed, and then the other half really enthusiastically booed. So I was able to go up there, and just by what I was talking about, make it what I think it’s about.

What’s it about?This is not a battle of left and right. This is the working man versus this new era of robber barons. So I just was saying we got to stop these nerds with apps. They keep fucking over the working man. But then I was able to make fun of Trump, and they’re still laughing. And then I go, to the left, “Well, you know, you can’t laugh at them. You elected Joe Biden. I mean, both of these guys should be in a fucking home.” Like, we both kind of fucked up here.

How are you judging success now?A lot of liberals don’t like me and a lot of conservatives don’t like me, which makes me feel like I’m doing something right. The extremes on both sides are pretty vocal, but I feel like the people in the middle aren’t like these butt-hurt idiots. I travel everywhere. Eighty-five percent of people are cool. They can listen to somebody. “Oh, that’s how you see it. OK, cool. You want to get a sandwich?”

Let’s end on something less fraught. How did you get into flying helicopters as a hobby?I got into reading about the Federal Reserve, and I’m like, “The dollar could collapse at any moment. I live in L.A. I can barely get out of this city in two hours when it works. What happens when the shit hits the fan?” Up and out was the easiest way.

So this is your version of a mobile panic room?The thing about a panic room is once you go in it, you can’t get the fuck out of there. The thing I like about a helicopter … I can put one gallon of fuel in there, maybe take off and fly the pattern. But I still have to come back. I have nowhere to go. There is nowhere to go. You should stay and fight. All these fucking people moving to other countries. It’s just, like, that’s not what you do. You stay and fight.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Grooming by EVY DREW. Styling by LAUREN PRESTON. Photo assistance by GRACE TROUTMAN. Location: LUDLOW HOUSE