Dave Chappelle on investing in his Ohio town and backing its local public radio station

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: For more than 25 years, comedian Dave Chappelle has called the small village of Yellow Spring, Ohio, home.

I recently traveled there to understand why he’s invested millions of dollars into this community and why he believes the local public media station is crucial to the town’s future. It’s part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Dave Chappelle, Comedian: Everybody who comes into town from this way,they get to see this new building.

Amna Nawaz: Walk through Yellow Springs, Ohio, with Dave Chappelle and it’s clear how much this small town means to one of the world’s most famous comedians.

Dave Chappelle: I think this was an unlikely pairing, but a powerful one.

Amna Nawaz: Born and raised in the Washington, D.C., area, Chappelle first started coming here as a child. His father, the late William Chappelle, was a professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs.

Dave Chappelle: My parents split up when I was very young and my dad relocated here. So I would spend parts of every year visiting him here. And then in, say, like, ’98, he fell really ill, and I would drive back and forth from New York to check on him and then ended up buying a house here.

There’s only like 3,800 people living in this town. It’s a small town, but it is a real community. Everyone kind of knows everybody. And I like that.

Amna Nawaz: Chappelle and his wife Elaine have raised their three kids here.

Is it hard or weird to be Dave Chappelle in a town of 3,800 people? I mean, you raised your kids here, right? Your family’s here. This is your home.

Dave Chappelle: I don’t think it’s any harder than — it was maybe easier in some ways?

Amna Nawaz: Yes.

Dave Chappelle: People will tell me if my kids are messing up or anything.

Amna Nawaz: They tell you that?

Dave Chappelle: Oh, yes, I just saw your kid over there doing this and that.

This is a small-town community, not too many surprises. So it’s a good contrast for what the rest of my life is. And it keeps you humble. These people don’t care about any of the stuff I do.

I have been very busy in Ohio. And a lot of people say, what are you doing out there?

Amna Nawaz: What Chappelle has always done is tell jokes.

Dave Chappelle: The town that I have been living in for the last 25 years, I bought most of it.

(Laughter)

Dave Chappelle: I like it there.

Amna Nawaz: Including in a 2025 Netflix special about how much property he now owns in Yellow Springs, where more than 80 percent of residents are white.

Dave Chappelle: If I was white and the people in this town were Black, you know what they’d say? They would say I was gentrifying the town.

(Laughter)

Dave Chappelle: But there’s no word for what I’m doing to these people.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz: How much of it do you own now?

Dave Chappelle: I got a lot of property.

Amna Nawaz: Chappelle says many of his purchases started during the pandemic, as several businesses in town struggled to survive.

Dave Chappelle: So I just bought the buildings. I waived people’s rent for a couple of years so they get back on their feet. And the town moved on. But that’s like behind the scenes. I don’t really talk about that publicly, but that’s why I did it. It’s not like I want to be a land baron in Ohio or far from it.

But it was expediency. It was just the right thing to do at the time.

Man: I’m so glad that you bought that space.

Amna Nawaz: It’s all part of a larger effort, one he says could help protect this town’s future by preserving its past.

Announcer: This is station WYSO, owned and operated by Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Dave Chappelle: In 1958, the local NPR station, WYSO, or WYSO, first went on the air from Antioch College. The station called the small liberal arts college home until 2018, after a string of financial troubles hit the school. Facing an uncertain future, WYSO was nearly forced to move out of Yellow Springs.

Luke Dennis, General Manager, WYSO: We didn’t want to leave this place. Our name, WYSO, stands for Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Amna Nawaz: Luke Dennis is WYSO’s general manager. He says Chappelle offered a lifeline at a critical moment.

Luke Dennis: He listens to our station and heard that we might have to leave this community to find a new facility, and actually reached out to us and said: “I’m thinking about buying the old Union Schoolhouse. Do you think it could be renovated to suit your needs, and then we could enter into a lease agreement?”

Amna Nawaz: Chappelle spent about $15 million to save this 1870s schoolhouse, one of the first integrated schools in the region, and renovate it for WYSO’s needs.

In those summers you spent here with your dad and the time you spent here, did you listen to WYSO?

Dave Chappelle: All my life.

Amna Nawaz: Really?

Dave Chappelle: Yes, it’s a big part of the local life here.

(Cheering)

Amna Nawaz: Last week, after more than four years of construction, offices for his production company upstairs, a separate entrance and wing for WYSO downstairs, Chappelle and local leaders welcomed them to their new home.

Dave Chappelle: It’s hard to think of what’s comparable in another community like WYSO is for us.

Amna Nawaz: Yes.

Dave Chappelle: But that’s our New York Knicks or our Golden State Warriors. That’s our team. You know what I mean?

(Laughter)

Dave Chappelle: That’s — we’re very proud of them.

Man: Midday music on WYSO.

Amna Nawaz: There are state-of-the-art studios, beautifully redesigned spaces, and nods to the station’s long history.

What does WYSO mean to this community?

Luke Dennis: It means local, local, local. And the way that we have come back to life, back to health and stability has been to just invest really big in our local service.

Amna Nawaz: That includes nine local reporters covering 14 counties in Southwest Ohio, reaching about 65,000 listeners.

Adriana Martinez-Smiley, Reporter, WYSO: Arming people with information, I think, is what allows people to be more civically engaged.

Amna Nawaz: Ohio-born and raised, Adriana Martinez-Smiley covers the environment and indigenous affairs.

Adriana Martinez-Smiley: To be able to contribute to this community in that way as a journalist, which I view as being a public service, is something that I was very excited to take on.

Jerry Kenney, WYSO Host: And this is 90.3 WYSO News.

Amna Nawaz: Jerry Kenney been with the station since 1991, from local volunteer to local host of “All Things Considered.”

Jerry Kenney: When I first started listening to this radio station, there were so many programs and voices that I had not heard before, programs like “This Way Out,” which was a gay and lesbian news magazine, WINGS, the Women’s International News Gathering Service. It became a really special experience for me to tune in.

Amna Nawaz: But this unlikely pairing, as Chappelle puts it, raises some questions.

Was there any hesitation or second thought about a major celebrity basically stepping in to back you right now? What is that relationship? Is it a benefactor? Is it a landlord?

Luke Dennis: I’m glad you asked. There was a lot of hesitation, because our independence is our most important asset. And we have spent 68 years earning it, and you could destroy it in a moment, right? We are utterly independent from Dave Chappelle.

Dave Chappelle: I ain’t doing trans jokes no more. You know what I’m going to do tonight? Tonight, I’m doing all handicap jokes.

(Laughter)

Dave Chappelle: Well, they’re not as organized as the gays.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz: That independence could include reporting on Chappelle himself, no stranger to generating headlines, from jokes about the transgender community to his decision to perform at a comedy festival in Saudi Arabia last year.

You told an audience in Saudi Arabia last year it’s easier to talk there than it is in the U.S. right now. Is that true? You feel that?

Dave Chappelle: It was for me that night.

Amna Nawaz: Why do you say that?

Dave Chappelle: Because the kings said I could say whatever I want.

(Laughter)

Dave Chappelle: And I know I got a lot of criticism.

Amna Nawaz: You did. Did that surprise you?

Dave Chappelle: No, it doesn’t — but they’re mad about anything. Where is this clean money that everyone’s speaking of? There’s actual slave owners on my local currency. So, I don’t know whose money is clean or dirty. It’s like, I go there with good intentions. I do what I do and they pay me well for it. That’s the extent of it.

And if they could have seen that crowd screaming like I was doing magic tricks just for jokes, it’s like watching a baby taste sugar. How satisfying is it? If you can’t say everything you want to say and then you see a guy just saying anything, man, that’s inspiring. That’s empowering. They need to know that that’s like the last great thing we have got in America. And they’re threatening that.

Recently, in the news, I have been getting a lot of grief again.

Amna Nawaz: Did you have to have conversations about that or what that looked like, how they maintain their editorial independence?

Dave Chappelle: I don’t know that we ever really discussed it.

Amna Nawaz: Yes?

Dave Chappelle: But, in my mind, I’m just the landlord. It’s a church and state-type thing. I don’t want to tell them how to do anything that they do.

Amna Nawaz: So if you, for example, say something that generates headlines, they can cover that the same way any other journalist would?

Dave Chappelle: Well, I hope they’d be a little nicer than most of the journalists would be. But I also know — I’m realistic. I don’t — I can’t control that.

The more you empower institutions like PBS or like NPR, the more they can be ours, of and for the people. I think now, more than ever, it’s been proven that that’s necessary. There has to be some baseline of truth. And good journalism is a godsend at a time like this. So I support it.

Because this is very exciting.

Amna Nawaz: This 19th century schoolhouse has now assumed its new role in Yellow Springs, with an eye to the next generation in this corner of Ohio.

Dave Chappelle: It’s not always easy, but with a good family and with good friends and good community, I really do feel like the whole world is less daunting and less scary. And I only know what’s going on because I listen to you guys in the morning. So keep it positive, would you?

Amna Nawaz: And you can see more of our conversation with Dave Chappelle on the next episode of our podcast “Settle In.” You can find that on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.