David Lynch was an artist in every sense of the word. Rest in peace to the legendary filmmaker, who passed away this month at the age of 78. Today we present a tribute to Lynch, featuring excerpts from two of his most enduring collaborators: actors Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern. In each conversation, they reflect on t... more
Writer Emily Witt (“Health and Safety: A Breakdown”) has spent the past two weeks on the ground covering the Los Angeles wildfires for The New Yorker. Her latest story centers around the Benns (5:39), a multigenerational Black family with deep ties to Altadena (8:35), where they’ve raised children in homes they’ve owne... more
This week, we revisit a soulful conversation around climate change and the restorative power of nature with author Richard Powers. We begin by defining the thematic through-line between The Overstory and Bewilderment (5:06), the eco trauma articulated in each text (9:10), how we may redefine hope today (16:08), and wha... more
Writer Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker) became a literary sensation in 2019 upon the release of her best-selling essay collection, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. She joins us this week to ring in 2025. We start by discussing the erosion of privacy online (11:26), the potentially forthcoming TikTok ban (13:32... more
To close out the holidays, our conversation with actor Harris Dickinson. We discuss his latest role in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (6:50), Nicole Kidman’s “disarming and generous” quality on set (9:27), and the exploration of masculinity in Harris’ roles— from Beach Rats (12:48) to Triangle of Sadness (13:03) to Babygirl (... more
For the holiday week, we’re revisiting one of our favorite conversations with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and critic Hilton Als. At the top, we unpack his approach to writing profiles (5:50), inspired by the words of photographer Diane Arbus (6:10), and how he captured Prince in a new, two-part memoir entitled My Pin... more
Actor Sebastian Stan has built a career out of shapeshifting. This week, he joins us to discuss the process of transforming into Donald J. Trump in The Apprentice (8:27), his personal relationship to the American dream (15:35), and the extensive research that went into recreating 1970s-1980s New York City in the film (... more
For the past 50 years, Nikki Giovanni has been one of our preeminent poets. Rest in Power to the legendary writer and activist, who passed this week at the age of 81. Today we return to our conversation from 2021, reflecting on how her childhood led to a life of writing (6:21), the enduring impact of a televised conver... more
It’s been a year. And while we’re not quite done with it (3:15), we wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of our favorite episodes and guests from 2024. On the front half, we revisit passages from actor-turned-director Dev Patel (5:45), the legendary Francis Ford Coppola on Jacques Tati and failure (11:45), filmma... more
To close out the holiday weekend, we're revisiting our conversation with writer, food expert, and television host Padma Lakshmi. At the top, we discuss her Hulu docuseries Taste the Nation (4:40), a formative episode in El Paso, Texas (8:14), and how the show connects to Padma’s personal history (11:59). Then, she refl... more
Today, for your holiday week, we’re returning to one of our favorite 2024 conversations with actor Jeff Daniels. Daniels is always writing. Plays, songs, a script or two. Even in interviews you get the sense the Michigan native is trying to relay the stories of his life in a way he’d find compelling as a reader, or lis... more
Actor, writer, and director Jesse Eisenberg’s latest project, A Real Pain, is perhaps his most personal to date. He joins us today to unpack the journey that shaped the film (9:18), memories from his travels to Poland (15:40), and what he observed about his family growing up in East Brunswick (22:23). Then, Eisenberg r... more
Since the turn of the century, actor Josh Brolin has had quite a run. From No Country for Old Men and Hail, Caesar! from the Coen Brothers, to Inherent Vice from Paul Thomas Anderson, to Sicario and the Dune films from Denis Villeneuve. His new memoir, From Under the Truck, contains stories about the life in between. W... more
It’s been a week. To help us through it, we’ve enlisted The New York Times political reporter Astead Herndon. We start with election night 2024 versus election night 2016 (6:35), what Astead discovered about the electorate reporting across the U.S. on his podcast The Run-Up (9:25), and how insider Democrats arrived at ... more
On the heels of his latest book The Message, author Ta-Nehisi Coates joins Sam for a conversation in Los Angeles. At the top, we discuss how his Atlantic piece The Case for Reparations guided these three new essays (6:10), Coates’ early education growing up in West Baltimore (14:57), and his powerful dispatches from So... more
Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect, Up in the Air) has been a fixture in Hollywood for the past fifteen years. She joins us this week to discuss Woman of the Hour, her directorial debut and most revealing project to date. At the top, we dive into the film’s true crime story (7:00), its examination of gender politics in the 1... more
For the past decade, Jason Reynolds has become an inspiring voice in the literary world. He’s a New York Times bestselling author and as of this month, a 2024 MacArthur fellow. Reynolds sits with us today to share his latest YA novel Twenty-Four Seconds from Now… (7:45), why he was interested in writing a story about b... more
Today, culture critic Wesley Morris (The New York Times) returns to Talk Easy for a conversation about The Wonder of Stevie, his new podcast with the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions. At the top, Wesley unpacks Stevie Wonder’s legendary five-album run from 1972-1976, his recent “battleground states” tour in the run up... more
Since his directorial debut in 2006, Jason Reitman has made the kind of films they say Hollywood doesn’t make anymore. Today, we sit to discuss his latest project Saturday Night (9:09), the influence of 1970s movies like Michael Ritchie’s The Candidate (12:46), and the details Reitman and his co-writer Gil Kenan collec... more
Director Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t just want to make movies. He wants to change them. This was true in 1969 when he co-founded Zoetrope Studios with George Lucas, and it remains true today at age 85. We begin with the historical context of his modern-day Roman epic fable Megalopolis (9:40), his decades-long process ... more
Joaquin Phoenix is one of the greatest actors of his generation. For three decades, he’s moved seamlessly between auteur-driven films (Her, The Master) and box-office sensations (Gladiator, Joker). We sit today for a rare, long-form conversation with Phoenix, starting with his latest film, Joker: Folie à Deux (9:10), ... more
For actor Myha’la, the role of a lifetime arrived less than a year out of college. “Lightning struck,” she says, “and in so many ways I have been preparing my entire life to be here.” In this case ‘here’ is Industry’s Harper Stern, a fiercely ambitious New Yorker who has come to London to join Pierpont, a prestigious f... more
For the past couple decades, actor Ken Leung has played scene-stealing characters in films like Rush Hour, Keeping the Faith, and A.I. Or, prestige TV shows like Lost and The Sopranos. Today, he joins us to discuss his spectacular turn in HBO’s Industry (7:30), how he created his character in baseball-bat-wielding mana... more
To commemorate his 30th birthday, Abbi Jacobson interviews Sam! They talk about Sam's early days in journalism (8:00), his Almost Famous-like experience as a teenage film critic (10:30), making Talk Easy and how the show evolved post-pandemic (13:15), and the email from the late Roger Ebert that changed his life (22:30... more
To start, Sam sits with another week in American life, before returning to our timely conversation with Congressman Maxwell Frost (FL-10). At the top, we discuss the five-year aftermath of the horrific shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (10:29), his first two months in office as the first Gen... more