I Know I Am, But What Are You?

As the Most Senior Correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Samantha Bee has demonstrated an ability to coax people into caricaturing themselves—most famously in segments like “Kill Drill,” featuring hunters and fossil fuel executives claiming to be environmentalists, and “Tropical Repression,” featuring a Florida politician running his campaign on opposition to gay rights. Here, in This Might Sting a Little, Samantha turns the spotlight toward her own life.

From suffering through her parents’ humiliating sex talk (that even included lesbian sex after a family vacation spent watching women’s tennis) to her Wiccan mother’s attempt to dissuade her from Catholicism at an early age, Samantha takes listeners on a very funny ride. She also shares interesting and bizarre careers from her past—including a brief stint at a frame store and a job working as Japanese anime character Sailor Moon in a live show that toured in Canada.

With laugh-out-loud anecdotes featuring the same smart, biting wit that has made audiobooks by Sarah Vowell and Chelsea Handler such successes, This Might Sting a Little is filled with stories that have critics calling Samantha Bee “sweet, adorable, and vicious.”