I Think You're Interesting
Vox
The entertainment industry is brimming with interesting people who are responsible for your favorite movies, TV shows, and more. Join Vox’s critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff every Thursday as she speaks with the very well known, up-and-coming and need to know folks responsible for the most exciting projects in art, entertainment, and pop culture – diving deep into their influences, inspirations, and careers in a frank, uncensored fashion. The series finale aired in December 2018.
Mahershala Ali, from Moonlight to True Detective
Few actors have had as surprising a past few years as Mahershala Ali. Known for his parts on TV shows like The 4400 and House of Cards and in movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the Hunger Games films, Ali went from steadily working actor to legitimate star with his 2016 role in Moonlight. He’s only in the film’s first half-hour, playing Juan, a drug dealer who can tell that a sensitive young boy needs a space to just be himself, but he’s magnetic and warm, caring and thoughtful,
Dec 20, 2018 • 58:59
What do The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Parks and Rec have in common? Michael Schur.
Michael Schur is one of the most adept minds in TV comedy. From his early days producing the Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon-era Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, to his work as one of the key writers on The Office, he charted a career that touched some of the best TV comedy of the 2000s. But in the 2010s, he’s become perhaps the principal figure in network TV comedy, with his shows Parks and Recreation and The Good Place. (He’s also co-creator of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, though his fellow co
Dec 13, 2018 • 1:09:12
Christmas music you won't get sick of, with R&B star PJ Morton
If you've talked to Todd at all, you know how much he enjoys Christmas music. And, sure, he enjoys the stuff that gets overplayed year after year, but he gets why you're sick of it. Finding good music often means going a little off the beaten path. That's why Todd talked to PJ Morton, a musician who's recorded with Stevie Wonder and was a member of Maroon 5, and who has his own successful, Grammy-nominated solo career. He asked Morton both about his new Christmas album (Christmas with PJ Morton)
Dec 6, 2018 • 56:34
Losing is hard. But comedian Chris Gethard says it’s necessary.
The Chris Gethard Show might have been Todd’s favorite talk show of the decade, a weird, tossed-off calamity that emerged every week like an odd magic trick. It made the trip from New York public access TV to more traditional networks. And then earlier this year, it ended, as its network, TruTV, and comedian Gethard opted not to continue with it. It ended up being the most weirdly appropriate promotion for Gethard’s new book imaginable. Lose Well, published in October, is a self-help book with a
Nov 29, 2018 • 1:11:30
How to not screw up Thanksgiving dinner, with Salt Fat Acid Heat's Samin Nosrat
This episode originally ran in November of 2017. It’s almost Thanksgiving, which means home chefs all around the United States (Todd among them) are trying to find a way to hew to tradition without turning their plates into a giant pile of indistinguishable starches. In this Thanksgiving Spectacular, we’ve invited Samin Nosrat to join us and offer her hints and tips for a successful Thanksgiving meal. Samin’s book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, is one of the best cookbooks Todd’s ever read, and the inf
Nov 22, 2018 • 1:04:49
Hollywood’s past can help us understand its present. Karina Longworth shows us how.
Karina Longworth’s Hollywood history podcast, You Must Remember This, is one of the most essential shows out there for movie fans. Each week, Longworth dives into a story from the film industry’s past, revealing the truth behind legends, the hidden stories that weren’t reported at the time, and the often corrupt systems Hollywood has always been built upon. Long a terrific film critic, Longworth turned what was initially an extreme DIY operation into one of the top film podcasts. Now Longworth h
Nov 15, 2018 • 49:44
Writer Diablo Cody, on Jennifer's Body, Juno, and Jagged Little Pill (the musical)
Diablo Cody's career took off into the stratosphere when her very first produced script — 2007's quirky comedy Juno — led to a massive box office hit that also won her the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Since Juno, she's written numerous movies, including the cult favorite horror flick Jennifer's Body, the moody comedy Young Adult (one of Todd's favorite movies of the decade), and this year's twisty comedy Tully, which stars Charlize Theron as a mother of three who hires a night nan
Nov 8, 2018 • 59:13
How to build a civilization from scratch
Imagine you're a time traveler whose time machine has functioned somewhere in Earth's past — after humans have evolved but before they've, say, invented language or agriculture or any of the other pillars civilization was built upon. How might you try to kickstart that process with all these hominids you keep meeting? And how would you avoid rebuilding civilization with all of the flaws of our current world? That question is the basis of Ryan North's new book How to Invent Everything, a hugely
Nov 1, 2018 • 1:19:23
What great horror looks and sounds like, with the makers of The Terror and A Quiet Place
With Halloween right around the corner, we felt it's as timely as ever to revisit this episode from earlier this year. Sometimes, the scariest thing is what you don’t see onscreen. It’s a lesson taken to heart by the folks behind two of the best horror projects of the first half of 2018 — the AMC miniseries The Terror and the gigantic hit movie A Quiet Place. In this special horror showcase episode, Todd talks to Soo Hugh and David Kajganich, the showrunners and head writers of The Terror; an
Oct 25, 2018 • 58:13
Why Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, launched a true crime podcast
Yeardley Smith is one of the most famous women on Earth — though you might not know it if you just bumped into her somewhere, at least until she said something. See, Smith is the voice of Lisa Simpson, the precocious 8-year-old middle child of the Simpson family and the center of some of the show’s very best episodes. (“Lisa’s Substitute”! Sob!) But Smith is more than the famous kid she’s played for more than 30 years now. She’s starred in numerous films and other TV shows, including the infamo
Oct 18, 2018 • 1:00:05
Better Call Saul's showrunner tells us everything about the show's amazing finale
Few TV shows are better than AMC's Better Call Saul. But if you told that to someone in 2015, when the show debuted, they might look at you askance. Yes, the show was a spinoff from Breaking Bad, one of the most acclaimed TV shows ever made, but it was still a spinoff, a format with an oft-indistinguished legacy. It was so easy to see how this series could have gone wrong. Instead, the show's writers, led by co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, have turned Better Call Saul into a sad fu
Oct 11, 2018 • 1:05:22
The history of the American circus, with the people who worked there
The circus! At one time, it was one of the country’s most reliable forms of mass entertainment, crisscrossing American backroads to perform for people all over the nation. Everything from the circus train to the people who put up the big tent made its way into American legend. But the American circus isn’t in great shape anymore. The treatment (or mistreatment) of animals tarnished the image of the once-venerable Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, which closed down in 2017 after it beca
Oct 4, 2018 • 37:11
BoJack Horseman's sly, funny brilliance, explained by the people who make it
This episode is a rebroadcast of an episode from 2017, but with BoJack Horseman's fifth season recently debuting, we thought it was a great time to revisit it. Todd loves few TV shows more than BoJack Horseman, Netflix's weird animated comedy about a sad horse. Its recently completed fourth season, which delved into the histories of many of the characters and talked about the roots of trauma and depression, just might be the best the series has ever done. To understand why the season was so p
Sep 27, 2018 • 1:11:16
Jon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s bandleader, on making music in New Orleans, on the subway, and on late night TV
Jon Batiste makes some of TV’s best music, night in and night out. As bandleader of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the multi-instrumentalist comes up with perfect tunes to introduce guests, to complement Colbert’s jokes, and to keep the audience hyped up. (Many of the tunes fitting that last category are Batiste originals, performed by him and his band, Stay Human.) But Batiste’s career stretches beyond late-night TV. He started out making music at a very young age in his hometown of Kenne
Sep 20, 2018 • 51:56
Janet from The Good Place and Kelli from Insecure on making TV's funniest shows even funnier
We're focusing on TV scene stealers this week, as we head into a new fall season. These two performers take some of the best shows on TV and make them even better, sidling into any given scene and swiping it right out from under everybody else with a perfect one-liner or pratfall. First, we're talking with D'Arcy Carden of NBC's The Good Place and HBO's Barry. Her work as Janet (and Janet's evil twin, Bad Janet) on The Good Place is some of the funniest stuff you'll see on TV. As what am
Sep 13, 2018 • 1:12:36
TV ratings, explained
The Nielsen ratings might not have as much power as they once held, but they still can decide the fate of your favorite TV show. If nobody's watching, it could be canceled. That's always been true. But what's also always been true is that the Nielsen data-gathering procedure is a little opaque and hard to understand. Don't worry, though, because we've got your back. This week, Todd and guest Joe Adalian, of New York Magazine's Vulture, take you through how the Nielsens work, how they decide whi
Sep 6, 2018 • 56:38
One of the best TV shows of the year is a documentary about racial inequities in education
Steve James is one of the best documentary filmmakers to ever have lived. His movies examine the fault lines that underlie American society, often (but not always) those of race and class, and how those who have power often attempt to maximize the amount they wield over those who do not. His seminal 1994 film Hoop Dreams, one of the greatest movies ever made, served as a kind of calling card for his interests going forward. He was going to tell stories about what it means to grow up and to live
Aug 30, 2018 • 35:22
How to make a movie starring the internet, with Eighth Grade director Bo Burnham
The new coming-of-age comedy Eighth Grade is one of the surprise success stories of the summer, turning a tiny story of a 13-year-old girl’s last week in the titular grade into a much larger tale of the universally awkward and cringeworthy experience of being an adolescent just trying to figure shit out. Its hero, young Kayla (played by the remarkable Elsie Fisher), deals with trying to launch her YouTube channel, with a crush that goes nowhere, and with her feelings of inadequacy when compared
Aug 23, 2018 • 54:56
The incredible true story behind Spike Lee's new movie BlacKkKlansman
The new movie BlacKkKlansman is careful to let you know very early on that, yes, its story is a true one, with a few embellishments for film. And it likely does so because said story — a black man goes undercover and becomes a trusted confidant of people in the Ku Klux Klan, including David Duke himself — would be written off as preposterous if it occurred in a fictional context. But, no, that man really existed. His name was Ron Stallworth, and as an officer with the Colorado Springs Police De
Aug 16, 2018 • 1:03:08
Why the binge model doesn’t always make the best TV
There’s a reason TV critics and reporters call FX Networks president and CEO John Landgraf the “mayor of television” — and it’s not just because that’s kind of a funny title to give to somebody. Of all the executives in the TV game right now, Landgraf has a reputation as the most thoughtful about the past, present, and future of television, and his semiannual addresses to TV journalists have coined the term “Peak TV” and first raised the issue of Netflix not measuring its viewership. In this we
Aug 9, 2018 • 50:32
Sharp Objects’ Patricia Clarkson on finding the mom roles worth playing
Adora Crellin is a difficult woman to love. The monstrously suffocating mother of Camille, the protagonist of HBO's terrific murder mystery miniseries Sharp Objects, Adora keeps finding ways to undercut her damaged daughters and to visit the deep-seated trauma in her soul upon the women who should be able to rely on her most. So just imagine playing Adora and how that might seep into your soul. Fortunately, we've got Patricia Clarkson, one of America's finest
Aug 2, 2018 • 1:01:33
Sorry to Bother You director Boots Riley on labor unions, capitalism, and his hit movie
The riotously funny, incredibly inventive new movie Sorry to Bother You has become one of the summer’s most acclaimed films, as well as an unlikely hit in arthouses. The movie’s tale of a young man named Cassius Green (played by Lakeith Stanfield), who takes a job in a call center, drifts wildly from genre to genre, sometimes seeming like a comedy, sometimes like a call to political action, and sometimes like a near-future science fiction movie. But uniting all these ideas is a commitment to fo
Jul 26, 2018 • 1:02:58
How Neko Case writes her beautiful, brilliant songs
Neko Case’s nearly 20-year career has been marked by some of the best songs of that time frame, chronicles of a country and world that often seem to be plunging into chaos but always manage to just avoid doing so. Her solo albums, including the brand new Hell-On, have been a major part of that, but so has her work as a vocalist with the indie-pop group the New Pornographers and as part of a trio of singer-songwriter superstars with K.D. Lang and Laura Veirs.
Jul 19, 2018 • 44:13
The Handmaid’s Tale season 2 and the summer’s biggest movies, discussed and explained
Believe it or not, the summer entertainment season is half over. Fall TV will be firing up in just a few short weeks, and the summer movies of 2018 have just about run out. (Mission: Impossible — Fallout is the only big release still coming.) That makes it a great time to check in on some of the biggest pop culture items of the summer, in this special episode with two different segments. First, Salon's Melanie McFarland and Vanity Fair’s Sonia Saraiya join Todd to talk about the second season o
Jul 12, 2018 • 1:01:00
Inside the world’s best true-crime podcast
Call the APM Reports production In the Dark a “true crime" podcast, and everybody involved in it will bristle, just a bit. Yes, it starts from the place of exploring crimes that really happened. But it’s not interested in exploring the crimes so much as it is the injustice of the American justice system. So my apologies for calling In the Dark a true-crime podcast, when it’s so much more than that. But every week, when I listen to it, I’m reminded that the form could be so much more than it has
Jul 5, 2018 • 39:55
You may not immediately recognize Bob Balaban’s name. But you know his voice
Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Gosford Park. Moonrise Kingdom. The original cast of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. These might seem like wildly different projects, but they have one man in common: actor Bob Balaban. Balaban is one of the consummate “hey, it’s that guy!” actors. His name might not immediately ring a bell (unless you, like me, love to keep track of all the great character actors), but the second you see his face or just hear his voice, you’ll instantly know who he is. He’
Jun 28, 2018 • 44:22
Stand-up Hari Kondabolu is so much more than The Problem with Apu
Hari Kondabolu identified a problem. His self-hosted, self-produced 2017 documentary, The Problem With Apu, which aired on TruTV, discusses how The Simpsons character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon created a caricature of South Asians and perpetuated a stereotype that hung over South Asian kids like Hari and followed them into adulthood. The documentary isn’t a call for Apu to be removed from the show or fired into the sun or anything like that. No, it’s an earnest discussion of how these types of stere
Jun 21, 2018 • 53:50
Aisha Tyler on Archer, standup comedy, and being Aisha Tyler
Does Aisha Tyler sleep? That’s a question you might reasonably ask after looking at her IMDb page for a moment or two. She’s a regular on two TV shows — FXX’s Archer and CBS’s Criminal Minds — while also hosting Unapologetic, a new talk show for AMC. And that’s in addition to all the other one-off hosting gigs she takes on. And yet she’s always fresh, funny, and on point. Tyler got her start as a standup comic in the late '90s, at a time when, she says, black
Jun 14, 2018 • 58:36
How to make great TV, according to the showrunners of Black Lightning, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Vida
Another TV season is over. You might not have noticed its end, thanks to the way TV never goes away any more, but technically, the TV season wraps at the end of May. So it seemed like a good time to get some of the best TV showrunners together and ask them how they create great standout TV, when there's way too much of it. Salim Akil of Black Lightning (CW), Aline Brosh McKenna of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' (CW) and Tanya Saracho of Vida (Starz) join Todd for a lively discussion about this era in TV.
Jun 7, 2018 • 1:03:55
The Americans' showrunners and star bid farewell to TV's best show
If you've listened to this show ever, or read anything Todd has ever written, then you know The Americans is one of his favorite shows of the past several years. Last night, it ended. For this special episode of the show, Todd is joined by star Matthew Rhys (who plays Philip) and writers Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, who run the series, to talk about the series' incredible final season and its even more remarkable finale. There are spoilers if you haven't wat
May 31, 2018 • 54:33
What great horror looks and sounds like, with the makers of The Terror and A Quiet Place
Sometimes, the scariest thing is what you don’t see onscreen. It’s a lesson taken to heart by the folks behind two of the best horror projects of the first half of 2018 — the AMC miniseries The Terror and the gigantic hit movie A Quiet Place. In this special horror showcase episode, Todd talks to Soo Hugh and David Kajganich, the showrunners and head writers of The Terror; and then with Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn, the sound designers of A Quiet Place. All four talk about how to build hor
May 24, 2018 • 55:54
Veteran comedy writer Nell Scovell on 30 years of being "the only woman in the room"
Writer Nell Scovell has worked for some of the best, most popular TV shows of the past 30 years. She wrote for David Letterman. She wrote for The Simpsons. She created the '90s show Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She wrote on NCIS. And at too many of those jobs, she was the only woman working in the writers’ room, countering Hollywood’s endless boys’ club. Scovell’s new memoir, Just the Funny Parts, is an excellent chronicle of her time in the TV trenches, as wel
May 17, 2018 • 51:51
The Magicians' Sera Gamble on making great fantasy TV without Game of Thrones money
“This shit should not be cheesy,” Sera Gamble says. She’s talking about the visual effects and production design on the terrific Syfy fantasy series The Magicians, which just completed its third season, a cinch to make Todd’s top 10 of the year. While the show is one of TV’s most inventive, it has a fraction of the budget of something like Game of Thrones, which makes finding interesting ways to present otherworldly scenarios without breaking the bank a creati
May 9, 2018 • 37:23
Thanos and Roseanne: how two mad titans took over pop culture
This week on I Think You’re Interesting, we’re trying something different, by dissecting two of the biggest pop culture stories of the spring. First, Vox culture writer Alex Abad-Santos joins Todd to talk about the fallout from Avengers: Infinity War. The conversation is full of spoilers, particularly when it comes to the film’s controversial ending, which some love and some hate. If you haven't seen the movie and want to avoid spoilers skip ahead to 24:29 to hear Todd's conversation about the
May 2, 2018 • 49:21
Why 2001: A Space Odyssey is still one of the greatest films ever made, 50 years later
Even if you haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s mind-melting 1968 science fiction epic, you probably know at least something about it. It’s one of those movies, like Star Wars or Citizen Kane, that has become so thoroughly dissolved into our pop culture that you’ll have heard of the villainous computer HAL or know the famed music cue (Richard Strauss' “Also sprach Zarathustra”) that plays over its most indelible images. But how were those moments created? The story of 2001 is
Apr 25, 2018 • 1:05:44
How Jean Smart beat Hollywood's age biases to build a nearly 40-year career
Designing Women, Frasier, 24, Fargo, Legion, some of the best TV shows of the past 30-plus years have one terrific actress in common: Jean Smart. Tall, striking, and bold, Smart has carved out a path in Hollywood that involves never doing the same thing twice — to the degree that her immediate follow-up to the sitcom Designing Women was a role as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in a made-for-TV movie. Smart is currently one of FX’s Noah Hawley players, bouncing between the TV producer’s Fargo (whe
Apr 18, 2018 • 46:08
Wonderful Midwestern moms, explained by comedian Louie Anderson (who plays his own mom on TV)
One of the most sympathetic, compelling portraits of motherhood on television centers on a performance by a man. On FX's Baskets, which recently completed its third season, comedian Louie Anderson plays Christine Baskets, mother of twins Chip and Dale (both played by Zach Galifianakis), and he describes the experience not as trying to put on a character but, instead, as channeling his own mother, Ora, a South Dakota native who spent most of her life in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. When he
Apr 11, 2018 • 47:07
The 5 best coming-of-age movies about teen girls
Lady Bird was one of the surprise hits of 2017, with its bittersweet, deeply funny depiction of teen girl adolescence. And that got Todd to thinking: Why is it so rare to see good movies about teen girls coming of age? To answer that question, he brought in Kay Cannon, director of the new comedy Blockers, a very funny gross-out raunchfest, which just so happens to be about teen girls figuring out their sexuality while their parents wrestle with the sexist double standards we apply to young wome
Apr 4, 2018 • 41:20
Jason Katims, showrunner of Friday Night Lights and Rise, on why teens make great TV
Few TV heavyweights have done as much to tell thoughtful, moving stories about teenagers as Jason Katims. While he was a young playwright, Katims broke into the television industry as a staff writer for My So-Called Life — ground zero for realistic depictions of adolescence on TV — then quickly went on to work on any number of iconic teen shows, culminating in his five-season stint as the showrunner of the gorgeous small-town drama Friday Night Lights, following football players in a Texas town.
Mar 28, 2018 • 44:22
How to write a joke for President Obama
How do you write a joke for the president of the United States? How do you come up with something that will seem perfectly cutting but not too cruel, silly but not stupid? How do you not denigrate the highest office in the land with — sniff — comedy? Those were all questions David Litt, a speechwriter for President Obama and one of the folks most instrumental to Obama’s comedy monologues at the White House Correspondents Dinner, had to face when he worked in the White House. And after he left,
Mar 21, 2018 • 57:34
Bill Nye, on becoming the Science Guy and Saving the World
If you don't hear the words "Bill Nye" and automatically fill in, mentally, "the Science Guy" (ideally with the exact right tune and rhythm from his old theme song), then you probably weren't alive during the 1990s, when Nye's series (Bill Nye the Science Guy, naturally) became a hit with kids, parents, and teachers throughout the country. A former engineer and stand-up comedian, Nye's ability to blend introductions to scientific concepts with goofy humor made him a favorite. Since that show le
Mar 14, 2018 • 47:59
Designing the worst workplace in the world. (Only for a TV show. Don’t worry.)
Comedy Central’s Corporate is a deep, dark dive into American corporate life that is one of the most promising new comedies to debut in years. Set in the nondescript but completely soulless corporation Hampton DeVille, Corporate finds dark yet incredibly funny humor in the concept of just trying to survive within the sorts of corporate structures many of us work in every single day. The series was co-created by Matt Ingebretson and Jake Weisman (with series director Pat Bishop), and Ingebretson
Mar 7, 2018 • 57:47
The "I Think You’re Interesting" Oscars Spectacular
Todd loves the Oscars, so this week's episode features not just one but two Oscar nominees from this year's crop. First, Todd talks with Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson about the year's biggest prizes. Then he's joined by Julian Slater, the Oscar-nominated sound designer and sound editor of the action-musical Baby Driver. Julian tells Todd all about crafting the sonic world of one of 2017's most ambitious aural experiments, then he explains the difference between the Sound Mixing and Sound E
Feb 28, 2018 • 1:11:42
Love the look of Black Panther's Wakanda? Meet the woman who designed its costumes.
If you've seen Marvel's new movie Black Panther, you know that one of the best things about it is its use of costumes and sets not just to create the fictional world of Wakanda, but also to tell little stories about its history and culture in every single frame. Just looking at this movie, which opened to the second-biggest four-day box office in film history, is half the fun. That's why for the first episode in a post-Black Panther world, we wanted to talk to Ruth Carter, the designer of the
Feb 21, 2018 • 1:01:01
Finding work — or just creating your own — as a deaf actor in Hollywood
Though 20 percent of the American population has some form of disability, just 2 percent of working actors represent that population on screen and stage. Is it any wonder so many roles for those with disabilities are played by actors without them? And is it any wonder that this discrepancy is causing more and more controversy and discussion? That's what makes the new Sundance Now series This Close so interesting. It's the first show in American television history to be created and showrun by
Feb 14, 2018 • 1:00:23
"Narnia was not up to code": The Magicians' Lev Grossman on building fantastical worlds
Few fantasy series of the past 10 years have had the reach of Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy, beginning with The Magicians in 2009, continuing with The Magician King in 2011, and concluding with The Magician's Land in 2014. The books, which attempted to blend the fantastical elements of books like Harry Potter and the Narnia series, garnered warm reviews (including from Todd), then were quickly scooped up to be turned into a TV series before the books had even completed the publication process
Feb 7, 2018 • 1:01:13
Justina Machado is giving one of TV's best performances. Here's her acting advice.
"I have people that are not Latino arguing with me about what we’re like," Justina Machado says about two-thirds of the way through her chat with Todd. The actress, who joins ITYI to talk about the latest season of her Netflix sitcom One Day at a Time, has been giving superlative performances for two decades now, with a career that encompasses everything from the live episode of ER to an Arsenio Hall sitcom to the classic HBO drama Six Feet Under. But it's One Day at a Time that has given Ma
Jan 31, 2018 • 1:05:29
How Hans Zimmer found the music of the ocean
Blue Planet II is one of the most stunning visual achievements of the year. The new BBC America nature documentary takes viewers deep beneath the waves to observe strange creatures and the delicate balance that keeps the world's largest habitat in harmony. The miniseries is also a huge sonic accomplishment in representing the sounds of the sea. Crackling icebergs, creatures scuttling along the seafloor, and water washing along — they all contribute to a show
Jan 24, 2018 • 1:04:37
The best film and TV performances of 2017, according to our critics panel
Awards season is once again upon us. We’ll soon know which films and performances have been nominated for the Oscars, and the Golden Globes are receding into the past. But let’s talk about what’s really important: Which performances from 2017 did our panel of critics like most? Todd is joined by Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson and Buzzfeed’s Alison Willmore to discuss their favorites. The list (across film and television) is wide-ranging, from Star Wars: The Last Jedi to the little-seen Chilea
Jan 17, 2018 • 1:01:50
Phil Rosenthal created Everybody Loves Raymond. Now he hosts a food and travel show. Can we have his life?
Phil Rosenthal is one of Todd’s favorite people within the TV industry to talk to, because he loves making television — whether he’s writing it or starring in it. He's probably best known for creating the Emmy-winning series Everybody Loves Raymond, starring Ray Romano. The show ran for nine seasons, winning the Emmy for Best Comedy Series twice, and it has gone on to a healthy life in reruns. Rosenthal spent several years after Raymond left the air creating new sitcom pilots, translating Raymo
Jan 10, 2018 • 1:13:18
Ask Todd Anything, with guest host Caroline Framke
It's a very special episode of I Think You're Interesting, as guest host and Vox culture writer Caroline Framke asks Todd all the questions you asked about criticism, great TV, and life itself. Along the way, they'll discuss whether Todd can possibly watch TV just for fun anymore, what it's like working with an editor, and what his favorite TV show of all time is. Stick around for Todd's answers to the same questions he asks his guests in other episodes! Learn more about you
Jan 3, 2018 • 57:28
Is the secret to battling climate change a better promotional strategy?
The ways climate change is altering our planet can be hard to see, since they happen so incrementally, and often far away. That’s what’s made the documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral (a finalist for Best Documentary Feature at the 2018 Oscars) so valuable. The former tracks shrinking glaciers, while the latter shows the devastating die-offs of coral reefs, all thanks to the planet’s rapidly warming atmosphere. But Richard Vevers, a former advertising expert who's one of the main subjects
Dec 27, 2017 • 58:30
What happened in Hollywood in 2017 — and where it might go in 2018
From the Oscars mixup to the Disney-Fox deal, and from Netflix’s continuing inability to launch major movie hits to the seemingly endless stream of sexual misconduct revelations, 2017 was a big year for entertainment news, arguably the biggest in decades. Every new week brought a new story with the potential to alter the industry in incalculable ways. It was such a big year that a near-strike by the Writers Guild of America ended up being a footnote. Covering all of it was Richard Rushfield,
Dec 20, 2017 • 1:10:07
How 2017's best animated film came to be
Director Nora Twomey and her colleagues at Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon have made a habit of turning out some of Todd’s favorite animated films. From 2009’s The Secret of Kells to 2014’s Song of the Sea, the mini-studio makes beautiful, evocative films about the need for storytelling and the hard-earned magic of growing up. The company’s latest film — Twomey’s debut as sole credited director — is called The Breadwinner, and it traces the story of a young Afghan girl who is forced to take on the bur
Dec 13, 2017 • 1:00:56
John Ridley, Oscar-winning screenwriter, on how Los Angeles has and hasn’t changed since Rodney King
John Ridley has been active in Hollywood since the early ’90s, to the degree that he wrote for one of the best obscure sitcoms of that era, The John Laroquette Show. But his career hit turbo speed when he wrote the script for the 2013 Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave, for which he received an Oscar for his screenplay. Since then, he’s written even more movies and produced American Crime, a three-season ABC series that dug into political and social issues with real nuance and depth, in a way
Dec 6, 2017 • 1:06:24
Exploring the role of religion in the Trump era with Matt Carter, co-host of the Bad Christian podcast
Few religion podcasts have proved as vital to understanding evangelical Christian America in the Donald Trump era as Bad Christian, a podcast hosted by three friends, who all used to be in a band together. (Two of them still are in that band.) Hosts Matt Carter, Toby Morrell, and Joey Svendsen, all Christians, discuss their issues with the modern church, without flinching. They also reveal their personal journeys as believers, which serve as real-time markers of individual Christians’ evolutio
Nov 29, 2017 • 1:10:13
Holly Hunter, Kumail Nanjiani, Ray Romano, and Emily V. Gordon talk about their movie The Big Sick
The Big Sick is a little slice of romantic comedy perfection and one of 2017's best movies. Based on a very real story from the life of very real couple Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, the movie boasts a script by the two, with Holly Hunter and Ray Romano, two real acting heavyweights, joining them as Emily's parents. The Big Sick manages something too few movies do nowadays. As you watch it, you might find yourself hoping that everybody in it will end up
Nov 22, 2017 • 1:05:51
How to not screw up Thanksgiving dinner, with chef Samin Nosrat
It’s almost Thanksgiving, which means home chefs all around the United States (Todd among them) are trying to find a way to hew to tradition without turning their plates into a giant pile of indistinguishable starches. And for our first annual I Think You’re Interesting Thanksgiving Spectacular, we’ve invited Samin Nosrat to join us and offer her hints and tips for a successful Thanksgiving meal. Samin’s book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, is one of the best cookbook
Nov 15, 2017 • 1:06:36
The man who wrote the West Wing theme tells us how TV music is made
W.G. "Snuffy" Walden doesn't read or write music. That didn't stop him from writing the theme for The West Wing. Or Friday Night Lights. Or My So-Called Life. Or Thirtysomething. Or, really, many of your favorite TV shows. Walden's career began as a member of a rock band, and he went on to become a studio musician, even appearing on an episode of Laverne & Shirley as a member of Squiggy's band, "the Squigtones." But his big break, the one that would lead him to a massive career and an Emmy (atop
Nov 8, 2017 • 1:05:12
Glenn Gordon Caron reinvented TV in the ’80s. Now he’s reviving the case-of-the-week show.
You may not know the name Glenn Gordon Caron, but if you’re a TV fan, you’ve heard of one of the shows he’s worked on, especially his groundbreaking ’80s detective dramedy Moonlighting, which popularized the will-they/won’t-they relationship, introduced the world to Bruce Willis, and created a tabloid sensation. But Caron’s résumé is so much more than Moonlighting. He’s worked on numerous films, he’s created a short film about human sexuality for Epcot Center, and he’s made many more TV shows, r
Nov 1, 2017 • 1:06:35
Russell Brand on life, addiction, and the pursuit of happiness
Comedian Russell Brand would probably bristle at being described as a comedian. It’s not that he’s not funny, or doesn’t occasionally perform stand-up. It’s more that in the years since he’s achieved fame, he’s become just as notable for his wonderfully unhinged performances in a number of films, as well as for writing books that sensitively and thoughtfully probe questions about himself, our society, and existence itself. The latest of these is Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, and it cont
Oct 25, 2017 • 1:04:38
BoJack Horseman's sly, funny brilliance, explained by the people who make it
Todd loves few TV shows more than BoJack Horseman, Netflix's weird animated comedy about a sad horse. Its recently completed fourth season, which delved into the histories of many of the characters and talked about the roots of trauma and depression, just might be the best the series has ever done. To understand why the season was so potent, creator and showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg, production designer and producer Lisa Hanawalt, and supervising director Mike Hollingsworth joined Todd to ta
Oct 18, 2017 • 1:08:12
The 5 best superhero performances of all time, according to The Tick’s Griffin Newman
One of Todd’s favorite actors for elucidating, perfectly, what makes one performance work where another doesn’t is Griffin Newman, who plays Arthur, the moth-man sidekick on Amazon’s The Tick. Newman also co-hosts the podcast Blank Check With Griffin and David, where his discussion of acting frequently helps explain things like why one of the hardest characters to play is someone who’s unfailingly good and decent (because the psychology can be harder to tap in
Oct 11, 2017 • 54:49
Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet on making it as a heavyset actor in Hollywood
Fans of ABC’s Modern Family, which just entered its ninth season, know Eric Stonestreet as Cameron Tucker, the role for which he’s won two Emmys. The neurotic but good-natured Cam was half of one of TV’s first major married gay couples, and over the course of the show’s run, Cam and his husband, Mitch, have settled into the sort of farcical bliss we might wish on all sitcom couples. But the road to Modern Family wasn’t always guaranteed for Stonestreet. He es
Oct 4, 2017 • 1:06:02
Novelist Tom Perrotta on white privilege, gender identity, and Tracy Flick 20 years later
Tom Perrotta’s books have become one of our most consistently enjoyable dissections of a very specific sort of America — upper-class, wryly comic, and white. Even when his books dig into a world where something very much like the Rapture has happened (as in The Leftovers), they take place long enough after the catastrophic event for things to be reverting to the status quo. That makes him terrific at picking apart the foibles of our modern world, and it’s also made him a frequent target for Holl
Sep 27, 2017 • 58:38
Ken Burns’s name is synonymous with American history. His new film is eerily prescient.
For a large number of people, just seeing the name "Ken Burns" is mark enough of quality. Whether Burns is producing or directing, his long, multi-part documentaries have been PBS mainstays since the 1980s. His breakthrough film, The Civil War, released in 1990, announced him as one of the best-known, most beloved documentarians in America, and he's since chronicled just about every corner of American history through a variety of lenses, including the much loved projects Baseball, The National
Sep 20, 2017 • 1:07:21
Nancy Cartwright is a grandmother — who plays the world’s most famous 10-year-old cartoon boy
Even if you're the least pop culture–aware person in the world, you know who Nancy Cartwright is. You just might not know why you know. In the late '80s, Cartwright, a voice actor, went on an audition for the role of an 8-year-old girl in a series of brief animated shorts that would air in the middle of Fox's sketch comedy The Tracey Ullman Show. She didn't particularly want that part, but she sparked to something in the girl's older brother, a rascal name
Sep 13, 2017 • 1:05:04
Actress Kellie Martin has been working since she was 7. Listen to this, and you'll love her as much as we do.
If you have been watching TV — like, at all — since the 1990s, you've probably seen (and loved) Kellie Martin in something. After beginning her career as a child in the '80s, she landed the role of Becca on the critically acclaimed family drama Life Goes On, a role that would eventually earn her an Emmy nomination. But her career is far more than that one role. She was part of one of the most terrifying moments in ER history. She worked with Lucille Ball. She was a voice in The Goofy Movie, for
Sep 6, 2017 • 1:04:37
How The Handmaid’s Tale traveled from page to screen, explained by showrunner Bruce Miller
Few of 2017's new TV shows have hit with the impact of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, which went from "they're making a TV show out of _that_" territory to 13 Emmy nominations (including Drama Series) in what seemed like record time. Taken from the book by Margaret Atwood, the series depicts a dystopian society, built from the ruins of the United States, where women have no legal rights and where fertile women (also known as "handmaids") are held as slaves by powerful men and ritually raped once a
Aug 30, 2017 • 1:13:26
Actress Ann Dowd on how she builds her twisted, darkly iconic characters on The Handmaid's Tale and The Leftovers.
After more than 20 years building her stage and screen resume, Ann Dowd has become a star thanks to her roles as Patti Levin on The Leftovers and the menacing yet maternal Aunt Lydia on The Handmaid’s Tale. Her characters are a product of the fractured worlds around them, but she manages to imbue them with depth and dimensionality that suggests their tragic origins. They’re villains, but ones who feel just as human as the protagonists they play against. With season two of The Handmaid’s Tale co
Aug 23, 2017 • 1:00:49
How beloved book The Glass Castle became a movie.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton made 2013's Short Term 12, one of Todd's favorite movies of the 2010s. For his follow-up film, he reteamed with that film's star, Brie Larson, and adapted the beloved memoir The Glass Castle. The film follows the story of journalist Jeanette Walls, whose childhood years were spent living in extreme poverty, thanks to parents who went way, way off the grid, checking on her at many points throughout her life (including her young adulthood, when she tried to put her
Aug 16, 2017 • 1:02:38
How PBS is navigating an especially hostile political era.
By many standards, PBS has had a pretty great 2010s. Downton Abbey was its biggest hit since The Civil War (which aired way back in 1990), Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election (and thus could never follow through on his threats against the broadcaster), and the network has gone from the 15th most watched to the 6th. But all of that fails to account for a budget released by the Trump administration that would cut the federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting completely. The bud
Aug 9, 2017 • 1:01:44
How one small town recovered from being gutted by the Great Recession — and how it didn’t.
Janesville, Wisconsin, was one of the towns hardest hit by the economic collapse of the late 2000s. When the local GM plant closed, thousands of jobs that supported the entire city evaporated, leaving residents struggling to stay above water. That’s where journalist Amy Goldstein began following their story. The Washington Post reporter started profiling various residents of the town, following them over the course of several years as their fortunes shifted and changed, and as one Janesville spl
Aug 2, 2017 • 55:22
Michaela Watkins on audition rituals, her worst college party, and playing a “coastal elite”
What Michaela Watkins does in Casual, Hulu's dramedy about self-involved Los Angelenos, is low-key remarkable. Her character, Valerie, is outwardly pulled together and the smartest woman in the room. But inwardly, she's falling apart, constantly dragged down in spirals of her own narcissism and self doubt. Watkins's trick is that she makes this both relatable and weirdly sympathetic. You can hate Valerie -- and many devoted Casual viewers do -- but you can never quite escape all the ways she's j
Jul 26, 2017 • 1:05:07
How did a sheet with eyeholes come to be the symbol for a ghost? Director David Lowery explains.
A Ghost Story is that most unusual thing -- a tiny movie that seems to encompass the entire universe. Made for a modest budget, the movie shows what happens to a young couple when the husband dies. It starts as a standard romance -- then somehow comes to skip across all of space and time. Director David Lowery (who also made the Pete's Dragon remake) joins Todd to talk about the movie's genesis, why we think of ghosts as sheets with eyeholes, and how he bounce
Jul 19, 2017 • 51:03
Errol Morris, one of the best interviewers ever, on true crime and the art of the documentary.
Academy-Award winning documentarian Errol Morris is one of Todd's favorite filmmakers ever, not to mention a world-class investigator and interviewer who's managed everything from getting Robert McNamara to admit he could have easily been branded a war criminal to getting an innocent man freed from death row. He joins Todd to talk about his new movie, his love of photography, and the true-crime boom he kinda kicked off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.
Jul 12, 2017 • 47:39
Tired of boring blockbusters? Our critics pick the best summer movies of the 2000s.
It's a special edition of I Think You're Interesting as Todd is joined by David Sims of The Atlantic and Alison Willmore of Buzzfeed to pick the top summer movies of the 2000s. Each critic picks their five favorites, and then the arguing begins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jul 5, 2017 • 1:03:08
Comedian Maz Jobrani on making people laugh in a deeply divided America
Maz Jobrani comes by his love of political humor honestly. He studied political science in graduate school, before deciding to pursue his dreams of comedy instead. This week, Maz joins Todd to talk about figuring out how to make Trump supporters laugh as a liberal comedian, learning to own his political interests on stage, and avoiding typecasting as a Persian-American taking acting roles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 28, 2017 • 1:04:49
Alan Sepinwall, on why he doesn’t like the Netflix model of full-season stories
Alan Sepinwall's blog What's Alan Watching launched in 2005, when he was working as a TV critic at Newark newspaper The Star-Ledger. The site would take the TV episode recap, something popularized on sites like Television Without Pity, and turn it into a place for almost instant analysis of readers' favorite shows. He's since moved on to Hitfix and Uproxx and has written two books, each on some of the greatest shows ever made. He joins Todd to talk about why he favors strong episodes to full sea
Jun 21, 2017 • 46:27
Fear the Walking Dead's cast on shooting in Mexico in the era of Trump
No matter your thoughts on Fear the Walking Dead, the zombie show spinoff now entering its third season on AMC, it's hard to argue with the show's cast, which is filled with great actors from top to bottom. Recently, three of those actors -- Kim Dickens, Colman Domingo, and Frank Dillane -- joined Todd to talk about whether they prefer playing zombie fights or big conversations, shooting the series in Mexico, and what they've learned over three years on one of the biggest shows on TV.
Jun 14, 2017 • 56:09
Damon Lindelof
The first TV show Damon Lindelof co-created was Lost, ABC's seismic, game-changing series about mysterious islands and the plane crash survivors who love them. Hence, his 2014 follow-up series, HBO's The Leftovers, was hotly anticipated. What TV fans got was at once a more mature work and perhaps an even stranger one, set in world where 2 percent of the population has disappeared and seemingly everybody left behind is losing their minds. In the wake of The Leftovers' series finale, Damon joins T
Jun 7, 2017 • 1:18:54
The Americans showrunners
Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields have spent five years at the helm of The Americans, the '80s-set spy series which many (Todd included) would call TV's best drama. And somewhat fittingly for a show about an arranged marriage made for business purposes, the two were pushed together in the early days of the show, when Weisberg (the show's creator) needed a steady hand to help him learn the ropes of running a big TV show. Usually, these sorts of creative marriages collapse quickly, but Weisberg and Fie
May 31, 2017 • 1:05:12
Alan Yang
Alan Yang's series, Master of None, might be the best TV show of 2017. Yang, who co-created the series with its star, Aziz Ansari, also worked on all seven seasons of the beloved NBC sitcom Parks & Recreation, as well as the first season of The Good Place. But the free-wheeling, deeply empathetic Master of None is where he's had greatest opportunity to shine. He joins Todd to talk about the second season, why he loves New York after growing up in California, and what that final shot means.
May 24, 2017 • 1:14:30
Ane Crabtree
Ane Crabtree has worked on so many of TV's best shows -- Rectify, Masters of Sex, Westworld, and Hulu's new The Handmaid's Tale to name just a few. And though you've seen her work every week on those shows, you might not have known it. She's the costume designer, responsible for bringing these wildly different worlds -- stretched across time and space (and sometimes reality itself) -- to life entirely via their clothes. In this week's episode, Todd and Ane tal
May 17, 2017 • 1:03:03
Chris Parnell
Chris Parnell's long comedy career has taken him through a surprising number of venerable comedy institutions. He started out in the improv troupe The Groundlings. He was a major player on Saturday Night Live for years, appearing in some of the show's best sketches. And after SNL, he played the batty Dr. Spaceman on 30 Rock, as well as appearing in almost every other one of your favorite 21st century sitcoms. At present, he's a major part of the voice casts fo
May 10, 2017 • 59:51
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein isn't just the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Vox (the site that produces this podcast, in case you were unaware). He's a major fan of superhero comics and the films based on them. For this week's episode, Todd sat down with his boss to discuss why he loves comics, how he avoids Twitter, and what he got wrong when he started Vox three years ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
May 3, 2017 • 1:06:33
Full Frontal
Since it debuted in early 2016, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee has become one of the most vital voices in late-night television. The show's trenchant but hilarious dissection of an America merrily flying off the rails has proved to be a proud heir to the legacy of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Todd talks with Ashley Nicole Black, Allana Harkin, and Mike Rubens, three of the show's correspondents, about redoing the show in the wake of the election, interviewing Trump supporters, and whether th
Apr 26, 2017 • 44:31
Richard Kelly
Richard Kelly's first feature film, Donnie Darko, was nearly lost to the ages when it debuted in October 2001. The Patriot Act had just been passed, and it was not a time when the American moviegoing public was ready to watch a film that featured plane engines falling from the sky. But over the next several years, the movie went on to become perhaps the definitive cult film of its era. Kelly's follow-up films, Southland Tales and The Box, struggled to achieve the same level of cult success (thou
Apr 19, 2017 • 58:02
Phil LaMarr
Phil LaMarr is one of the entertainment industry's premier voice actors, having worked on an intimidatingly large number of projects over his career. But he's perhaps best known for two roles: Hermes on Futurama and Jack on Samurai Jack. After a lengthy hiatus (the last original episode aired in 2004), LaMarr returned as Jack in the series' newest season, which is currently running Saturdays on adult swim. Phil joins Todd to talk about how to play a character who's aged mentally but not physical
Apr 12, 2017 • 1:01:43
Rhea Seehorn
When it debuted, Better Call Saul, AMC's Breaking Bad prequel about the early years of unscrupulous lawyer Saul Goodman, drew most of its attention for its ties to its parent series, one of the greatest TV dramas of all time. But over its first two years and now in its third, Better Call Saul has carved out its own space as a weird, funky hybrid of legal dramedy and dark crime tale. Lots of its success is thanks to this week's guest, Rhea Seehorn, who plays Kim, a woman who dragged herself up by
Apr 5, 2017 • 1:06:22
Ceyda Torun
Ceyda Torun's film Kedi is Todd's favorite of 2017 so far. It's a charming but surprisingly weighty documentary following the lives of several Istanbul cats -- some from the streets and others with more comfortable lives. (One even lives near a fish merchant, which seems like a good kitty life.) It's both a movie about cats and a movie about its city, and that made talking to Ceyda a must. She told Todd about why cats are better actors than you'd expect, what makes Istanbul one of her favorite c
Mar 29, 2017 • 58:06
Dave Malloy
The career of Broadway composer Dave Malloy can sometimes seem like a series of escalating dares. His works take on everything from the life of Rasputin to the pieces of classical musician Franz Schubert. But by far his biggest hit has been Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 -- a musical adaptation of a small slice of War and Peace, with many of the lyrics taken directly from Leo Tolstoy's novel. It's tremendous theater, invigorating fun, and finally on Broadway. Dave and Todd talk abo
Mar 22, 2017 • 57:09
Laura Zak and Kate Fisher
How do you make a great web series, if you don't have the backing of a major corporation? That's a question the creators and producers of Her Story, a YouTube-based series about the lives of a diverse community of trans and queer women in Los Angeles, seem to have asked and answered. They were the first ever independently produced series to be nominated for an Emmy. Co-creator, star, and producer Laura Zak and producer Kate Fisher joined Todd to talk about making great independent TV, bringing v
Mar 15, 2017 • 53:52
Desmin Borges
Desmin Borges is a vital part of what makes "You're the Worst," one of TV's most exciting comedies, so very good. The FXX series deals with serious topics in darkly amusing ways, and that includes Borges's character, Edgar, a veteran who suffers from PTSD and is trying to struggle through it without much support from his friends. Borges joined me to talk about his research into PTSD, the moment that made him realize he wanted to be a performer, and his secret dining nirvana in Los Angeles.
Mar 8, 2017 • 41:03
