Vice writer and editor Mitchell Sunderland is what they mean when they talk about wunderkinds and also what they mean when they talk about human miracles. Okay, so the wunderkind fact: he’s 23 and already the Managing Editor of Broadly, Vice‘s forthcoming women’s interest channel. Now for the second part: he grew up in Florida which, according to him, is traumatic in itself. He comes from a family where his mother would fall asleep at the wheel while on Ambien. She also breastfed him until he was five. Then, last year, he discovered that the man he’d always thought was his father was not. So there’s been some stuff to work through.
It wasn’t all disastrous though; Sunderland’s brilliance, humor and charm saw him through and he became the party throwing king of his high school, charging the jocks who’d once been mean to him $10 a head as an entrance fee. But things came to a head after he spent his junior year of college in England and Sunderland, inspired by previous podcast guest Alexis Neiers, ended up getting sober the day he was hired at Vice. In this episode, we talk about the ridiculousness of trying to get sober in England, why New York parties aren’t as decadent as Florida ones and thinking people intervening on you are calling because they want to have a threesome, among other topics.
Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or listen to it on Soundcloud or Stitcher. Find Mitchell Sunderland on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Vice. Mitchell Sunderland photo by Matthew Leifheight.
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