This animator—you don’t know his name, but you know his work for MTV and SNL—is fascinated by Samuel Insull, Thomas Edison’s former assistant, who brought electricity to Chicago, achieved global fame, and whose name you (and I) also didn’t know. “There’s no reason he shouldn’t be up there with Carnegie and J. P. Morgan.” Music: … Continue reading »
Category Archives: Television
378: Justin Baldoni
He became widely known playing Rafael Solano on Jane the Virgin and went on to direct a series about young people facing terminal illness and create a podcast challenging ideas of masculinity. Busy guy. Then he had an unsettling insight: “What’s actually making me happy is preventing my own happiness.” Changes were made. A conversation courtesy of the … Continue reading »
371: Laraine Newman
An original cast member on Saturday Night Live (Connie Conehead!), she’s now a voice actor—Shrek, Finding Nemo. Her later-in-life pleasure: Coachella, but she won’t attend this year. “I can’t, I can’t, my knees just won’t take it any more.” We talk about phases of life and the inadequate seating at music festivals. Continue reading »
355: Penn Badgley
This actor, perhaps best known as Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl and Joe Goldberg in the Netflix series You, is modest about his craft. “The only thing that’s ours as actors is how we feel as we say lines we didn’t write, as we wear clothes we didn’t purchase or even choose.” The importance of emotional honesty, the burden of … Continue reading »
Movies / Television / Theater
338: Kamilah Forbes
I expected this writer-director, executive producer of the Apollo Theater, to be insightful about theater and film, and she is. I did not expect her to mount a staunch defense of comic books. If she’s not entirely persuasive on this topic (to geezerly me), she’s thoroughly intriguing. Continue reading »
337: Tommy Oliver
He double-majored in economics and digital media, and, unlike those in show business who enjoy the show but decry the business, “I love the business as much as I love the creative, as much as I love the technical.” The result? Black Love, the TV series he and his wife, Codie Elaine Oliver, created, is in its … Continue reading »
330: Mo Rocca
A regular on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!, he has a historic-homes preference: “I like the houses of the presidents that you can’t remember were actually president, the guys between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.” And they’re a great fit for his other project, Mobituaries, what with their being, you know, dead. Continue reading »
Movies / Television / Theater
326: Alec Baldwin
Admired for both comedy (30 Rock) and drama (Streetcar), he is an astute observer of other actors and once wrote a fan letter to Tom Courtenay for his work in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Courtenay replied, “How odd that you would take the time to write this to me about this film I did so long ago.” No … Continue reading »
322: Jeff Greenfield
For decades, he has provided astute political commentary with an admirable knack for seeing contemporary events in historic perspective. During our conversation, he prudently contextualized some of his observations, “when this nightmare is over,” referring either to the coronavirus or to the current administration (circa 2020), but which one? Listen. Continue reading »
321: Merrill Markoe
The greatest gift to any humorist is a parent who is impossible to please. This writer, a co-creator of Late Night With David Letterman, describes a note in her mother’s copy of David Copperfield. “It said, ‘Not one of his best works. I was disappointed.’ If she was giving Dickens a hard time, what did I think that I was going to get?” … Continue reading »
12: Dick Cavett
The celebrated talk-show host has surprising affection for both the German Luger and the samurai sword — such martial objects, such a humane person. A conversation from the archives, remixed, remastered, remarkable. (Rebarbative? Recalcitrant?) Continue reading »
Episode 284: Shakina Nayfack
Actor, writer, singer, transgender activist, she argues surprisingly (and persuasively) that anti-LGBTQ laws need not arise from animosity toward LGBTQ people but from something even more cynical. With music from, well yes, Shakina Nayfack. Continue reading »