David Sedaris wants to be better (at everything)

This week on Shortwave, El Nino. This year we're really seeing an El Nino for the record books. Raising risks of more intense floods, droughts, temperature changes, what a supercharged El Nino means for you, and how climate change is making things worse. This week on Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. This is fresh air.

I am Terry Gross. For over three decades, beloved humorist David Sederis has chronicled the absurdities of modern life, including his own. He got his start writing about his short tenure at Macy's as Crumpet, a Santa Land elf, in an essay titled The Santa Land Diaries, When he first read the essay on NPR's Morning Edition back in 1992, it generated more tape requests than any other story in the show's history to that point, and turned him into an overnight sensation. He's since published several best selling collections of personal essays, been awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.

His latest book of personal essays The land and its people cast Sederis in several roles, devout brother, itinerant traveler, grieving friend, and reluctant caretaker. Sederis, who is now 69, writes, I'm in the hard part of getting old, the part where everything irritates you. The easy part comes a little later, when my short term memory disappears. David Sederis spoke with guest interviewer Sam Fragoso, host of the interview podcast Talk Easy.

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