Historically Incorrect

Alonzo Bodden has always worked as a sort of practical-minded skeptic on stage, a demeanor that serves him well when examining a culture that seems to have lost its collective mind. For his second Showtime special, filmed at The Vic Theatre in Chicago, he directs that skepticism toward a society that cannot get its facts straight about its own history, let alone its present. Bringing the same measured, deep-voiced authority listeners recognize from his regular appearances on NPR’s news quiz show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, he takes on the absurdities of the 2016 political landscape, the bizarre rise of the gluten-free trend, the endless marketing targeted at millennials, and the NFL’s public relations crises. The centerpiece of the set is a highly personal and deeply cynical routine about the American healthcare system. Having donated a kidney to his older brother a few years prior, Bodden uses his firsthand experience with hospital bureaucracy to illustrate how the medical industry prioritizes billing over actual human lives, grounding the evening’s broader social commentary in real, lived frustration.