Lifestyle
A member of the 'T-Shirt Swim Club' chronicles life as 'the funny fat kid'
“The first place I learned to be funny was on the schoolyard trying to defuse this weird tension around my body, says Ian Karmel. He won an Emmy Award in 2019 for his work on James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” special with Paul McCartney.
Kenny McMillan/Penguin Random House
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Kenny McMillan/Penguin Random House
Comedy writer Ian Karmel spent most of his life making fun of his weight, starting at a very young age.
“Being a kid is terrifying — and if you can be the funny fat kid, at least that’s a role,” Karmel says. “To me, that was better than being the fat kid who wasn’t funny, who’s being sad over in the corner, even if that was how I was actually feeling a lot of the time.”
For Karmel, the jokes and insults didn’t stop with adolescence. He says the humiliation he experienced as a kid navigating gym classes, and the relentless barrage of fat jokes from friends and strangers, fueled his comedy.
For years, much of his stand-up comedy centered around his body; he was determined to make fun of himself first — before anyone else could do it. “At least if we’re destroying me, I will be participating in my own self-destruction so I can at least find a role for myself,” he says.
Karmel went on to write for The Late Late Show with James Corden. He has since lost more than 200 pounds, but he feels like he’ll have a lifelong relationship with fatness. He wrote his new memoir, T-Shirt Swim Club: Stories from Being Fat in a World of Thin People, along with his sister Alisa, who channeled her experience into a profession in nutrition counseling.
“Once we lost a bunch of weight … we realized we’d never had these conversations about it with each other,” Karmel says. “If this book affects even the way one person thinks about fat people, even if that fat person happens to be themselves, that would be this book succeeding in every way that I would hope for.”
Interview highlights
On using the word “fat”
There’s all these different terms. And, you know, early on when I was talking to Alisa about writing this book, we were like: “Are we going to say fat? I think we shouldn’t say fat.” And we had a conversation about it. We landed on the determination that it’s not the word’s fault that people treat fat people like garbage. And we tend to do this thing where we will bring in a new word, we will load that word up with all of the sin of our behavior, toss that word out, pull a new one in, and then all of a sudden, we let that word soak up all the sin, and we never really change the way we actually treat people. …
I’ve been called fat, overweight or obese, husky, big guy, chunky, any number of words, all of those words just loaded up with venom. … We decided we were going to say “fat” because that’s what we are. That’s what I think of myself as. And I’m going to take it back to basics.
On the title of his memoir, T-Shirt Swim Club
T-Shirt Swim Club
Penguin Random House
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Penguin Random House
Thank God for learning about the damage that the sun does to our bodies, because now all sorts of people are wearing T-shirts in the pool. But when we were growing up, I don’t think that was happening. It’s absurd. We wear this T-shirt because we … want to protect ourselves from prying eyes — but I think what it really is is this internalized body shame where I’m like, “Hey, I know my body’s disgusting. I know I’m going to gross you out while you’re just trying to have a good time at the pool, so let me put this T-shirt on.” And it’s all the more ridiculous because it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t actually cover you up, it hugs every curve!
On how bullying made him paranoid
You think like, if four or five people are saying this to my face, then there must be vast whisper campaigns. That must be what they’re huddled over. … Anytime somebody giggles in the corner and you are in that same room, you become paranoid. There’s a part of you that thinks like, they must be laughing at me.
On how fat people are portrayed in pop culture
Fat people, I think, are still one of the groups that it’s definitely OK to make fun of. That’s absolutely true. … I’m part of this industry too, and I’ve done it to myself. … Maybe it’s less on the punch line 1719964293 and more on the pity. You know, you have Brendan Fraser playing the big fat guy in The Whale. And at least that’s somebody who is fat and who has dealt with those issues. Maybe not to the extent of like a 500- and 600-pound man, but still to some extent. And good for him. I mean, an amazing performance, but still one where it’s like, here’s this big, fat, pathetic person.
On judgment about weight loss drugs and surgery
It’s this ridiculous moral purity. What it comes down to for me is you [have] your loved ones, you have your friends. And whatever you can do to spend more time on earth with those people, that’s golden to me. That’s beautiful, because that is what life is truly all about. And the more you get to do that, the healthier and happier you are. So those people out there who are shaming Ozempic or Wegovy or any of that stuff, or bariatric surgery, those people can pound sand. And it’s so hard in a world that is built for people who are regular size, and in a world that is also simultaneously built to make you as fat as possible with the way we treat food. It’s like, yo, do the best you can!
Therese Madden and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Lifestyle
‘War of the Worlds’ remake sinks to the bottom at this year’s Razzie Awards
A screenshot from the all-out winner of the 46th annual Razzie Awards, War of the Worlds, starring Ice Cube.
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Amazon Prime Video
A surveillance industry take on HG Wells’ 1898 classic sci-fi novel War of the Worlds starring Ice Cube cleaned up at the 46th Annual Golden Raspberries, or Razzie Awards.
The Razzies are a parody of the Academy Awards, and celebrate Hollywood’s most embarrassing efforts every year ahead of the mainstream ceremony on Oscars weekend.
War of the Worlds won five Razzies in total: worst remake, worst actor, worst screenplay, worst director, and worst picture. Critics panned the movie; it scored abysmally low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
In a news release about its selections, members of the Golden Raspberry Foundation, a voting body of more than 1,200 movie fans, journalists, and film industry professionals from the U.S. and around the world, described the direct-to-video War of Worlds remake as a “cult hate-watch classic” and “a near sweeper of our $4.97 trophy.”
Razzie voters awarded Ice Cube with the Worst Actor award for his role as a Department of Homeland Security surveillance expert in this film. They also anointed Australian star Rebel Wilson Worst Actress for her “not-quite-believable performance as an action hero in Bride Hard with weaponized curling irons.”
Neither the Worst Actor nor Worst Actress winners immediately responded to NPR’s requests for comment about these dubious honors.
The Razzies for worst supporting cast went to Scarlet Rose Stallone for Gunslingers, and all seven of the CGI-enhanced dwarves in Disney’s live-action Snow White remake. “It cost a fortune and lost a fortune,” the Razzie press release said of the latter. (According to Forbes, the film lost $170 million of its massive $300 million budget.) “Perhaps cursed by Walt himself for having ignored his dying wish for it never to be remade.”
The winner of this year’s Redeemer Award – an accolade bestowed upon a previous Razzie nominee or winner for making a critical or commercial comeback – went to Kate Hudson for her Oscar-nominated performance in Song Sung Blue. Hudson’s name has shown up on Razzie hit lists over the years for her performances in My Best Friend’s Girl (2008), Mother’s Day (2016) and Music (2021).
The Razzies were launched in 1981 by Hollywood publicist John J. B. Wilson to “celebrate” the least compelling movies of 1980. The top prize winner that year was Can’t Stop the Music.
Full list of 46th Razzie Award Winners:
WORST PICTURE – War Of The Worlds (2025)
WORST ACTOR – Ice Cube / War Of The Worlds (2025)
WORST ACTRESS – Rebel Wilson / Bride Hard
WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Scarlet Rose Stallone / Gunslingers
WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR – All Seven Artificial Dwarfs / Snow White
WORST SCREEN COMBO – All Seven Artificial Dwarfs / Snow White
WORST PREQUEL, REMAKE, RIP-OFF or SEQUEL – War of the Worlds (2025)
WORST DIRECTOR – Rich Lee / War Of The Worlds (2025)
WORST SCREENPLAY – War Of The Worlds (2025) / Kenny Golde, Marc Hyman
RAZZIE REDEEMER AWARD – Kate Hudson / Song Sung Blue
Lifestyle
Man arrested after shots fired at door-to-door salesman
Lifestyle
Acclaimed 20th century philosopher Jürgen Habermas dies at 96
Internationally renowned German philosopher Juergen Habermas speaks to journalists in an auditorium of the Philosophical School of Athens in 2013.
Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP via Getty Images
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Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP via Getty Images
The German philosopher and influential thinker on modernity and democracy Jürgen Habermas died Saturday in Starnberg, Germany at the age of 96.
Habermas’ death was confirmed in a statement on the website of his Berlin-based publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag.
“His work, published by Suhrkamp since the 1960s and translated into more than 40 languages, continues to resonate worldwide,” said the head of the publishing house, Jonathan Landgrebe, in the statement. “We mourn the loss of a significant philosopher, ever-present advisor, and dear friend.”
For more than 60 years, Habermas helped shape the political discourse in Germany, particularly during the postwar and post-reunification eras.
He was perhaps best known for introducing the concept of the “public sphere” – a space for public discourse beyond state control, and therefore essential to a healthy democracy.
“Germany and Europe have lost one of the most significant thinkers of our time,” noted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Habermas shot to prominence in the mid-20th century as a member of the Frankfurt School, which was critical of capitalism, fascism, communism, and orthodox Marxism.
Throughout his career, he stressed the importance of confronting the Nazi era as uniquely criminal, insisting that postwar-German democracy must recognize and reckon with its guilt.
Friedrich Ernst Jürgen Habermas was born in 1929 in Düsseldorf into a middle-class Protestant family. Like many children of his generation, he joined the Hitler Youth as a boy and was drafted into the German military in 1944. He soon became a strong critic of the Nazi regime.
After the war, he studied philosophy, history, psychology, German literature, and economics in Göttingen, Zurich, and Bonn. As a student at Göttingen University, Habermas criticized Martin Heidegger, the greatest living German philosopher of the time, for a remark Heidegger had made nearly two decades earlier and never retracted concerning “the inner truth and greatness of the Nazi movement.”
“Habermas was a modern day Aristotle or Hegel for whom no precinct of culture or science was alien and a gifted polemicist and partisan in the great German political debates of the postwar and post-reunification era,” said Matthew Specter, an intellectual historian at Santa Clara University, in an email to NPR. “He was a philosopher who taught Europeans how to ‘learn from disaster’ by committing to the practice of reason and a radical liberal whose thought remains a resource for resisting illiberalism, nationalism and authoritarian currents worldwide.”
Habermas’s lectures and books were famously dense. He taught at, among other institutions, the Universities of Heidelberg and Frankfurt am Main, as well as the University of California, Berkeley, and was director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Life-Conditions of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg.
His “Theory of Communicative Action” published in 1981 is perhaps his best known work and is considered a foundation of 20th-century critical theory.
“Habermas has been able to go into discussions in political theory and sociology and psychology and legal theory and a dozen different disciplines and become one of the dominant voices in each one,” said former Georgetown University president John DeGioia when introducing the influential thinker before a lecture in 2012.
The philosopher won many awards, such as the prestigious Erasmus Prize in 2013, bestowed by the Dutch Praemium Erasmianum Foundation to individuals or institutions for exceptional contributions to European culture, society, and social science.
As lionized as he was, Habermas’s ideas also came under severe scrutiny. Among other issues, he has been criticized over the years for espousing an idealized theory of communication that ignores power imbalances and practical realities.
Habermas never lost his sense of unbridled hope and insistence on democratic ideals. “Democracy depends on the belief of the people that there is some scope left for collectively shaping a challenging future,” he wrote in a 2010 article for The New York Times.
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