Podcasts by I Think Youre Interesting
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.
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What do The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Parks and Rec have in common? Michael Schur. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 write...
ListenChristmas music you won't get sick of, with R&B star PJ Morton from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 mu...
ListenLosing is hard. But comedian Chris Gethard says it’s necessary. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 a...
ListenHow to not screw up Thanksgiving dinner, with Salt Fat Acid Heat's Samin Nosrat from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenHollywood’s past can help us understand its present. Karina Longworth shows us how. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 p...
ListenWriter Diablo Cody, on Jennifer's Body, Juno, and Jagged Little Pill (the musical) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Or...
ListenHow to build a civilization from scratch from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 agric...
ListenWhat great horror looks and sounds like, with the makers of The Terror and A Quiet Place from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 —...
ListenWhy Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, launched a true crime podcast from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, Smit...
ListenBetter Call Saul's showrunner tells us everything about the show's amazing finale from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenThe history of the American circus, with the people who worked there from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenBoJack Horseman's sly, funny brilliance, explained by the people who make it from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 historie...
ListenJon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s bandleader, on making music in New Orleans, on the subway, and on late night TV from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 tu...
ListenJanet from The Good Place and Kelli from Insecure on making TV's funniest shows even funnier from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, sidlin...
ListenTV ratings, explained from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 cancele...
ListenOne of the best TV shows of the year is a documentary about racial inequities in education from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenHow to make a movie starring the internet, with Eighth Grade director Bo Burnham from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 grad...
ListenThe incredible true story behind Spike Lee's new movie BlacKkKlansman from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 becaus...
ListenWhy the binge model doesn’t always make the best TV from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ti...
ListenSharp Objects’ Patricia Clarkson on finding the mom roles worth playing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, Ador...
ListenSorry to Bother You director Boots Riley on labor unions, capitalism, and his hit movie from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenHow Neko Case writes her beautiful, brilliant songs from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 chao...
ListenThe Handmaid’s Tale season 2 and the summer’s biggest movies, discussed and explained from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ou...
ListenInside the world’s best true-crime podcast from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 crim...
ListenYou may not immediately recognize Bob Balaban’s name. But you know his voice from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenStand-up Hari Kondabolu is so much more than The Problem with Apu from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenAisha Tyler on Archer, standup comedy, and being Aisha Tyler from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenHow to make great TV, according to the showrunners of Black Lightning, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Vida from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenThe Americans' showrunners and star bid farewell to TV's best show from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 nig...
ListenVeteran comedy writer Nell Scovell on 30 years of being "the only woman in the room" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 th...
ListenThe Magicians' Sera Gamble on making great fantasy TV without Game of Thrones money from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
“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 ...
ListenThanos and Roseanne: how two mad titans took over pop culture from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenWhy 2001: A Space Odyssey is still one of the greatest films ever made, 50 years later from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenHow Jean Smart beat Hollywood's age biases to build a nearly 40-year career from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenWonderful Midwestern moms, explained by comedian Louie Anderson (who plays his own mom on TV) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 seaso...
ListenThe 5 best coming-of-age movies about teen girls from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenJason Katims, showrunner of Friday Night Lights and Rise, on why teens make great TV from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 televisio...
ListenHow to write a joke for President Obama from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenBill Nye, on becoming the Science Guy and Saving the World from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenDesigning the worst workplace in the world. (Only for a TV show. Don’t worry.) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenThe "I Think You’re Interesting" Oscars Spectacular from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenLove the look of Black Panther's Wakanda? Meet the woman who designed its costumes. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 W...
ListenFinding work — or just creating your own — as a deaf actor in Hollywood from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen"Narnia was not up to code": The Magicians' Lev Grossman on building fantastical worlds from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenJustina Machado is giving one of TV's best performances. Here's her acting advice. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"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 j...
ListenHow Hans Zimmer found the music of the ocean from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenThe best film and TV performances of 2017, according to our critics panel from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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. B...
ListenPhil Rosenthal created Everybody Loves Raymond. Now he hosts a food and travel show. Can we have his life? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 p...
ListenAsk Todd Anything, with guest host Caroline Framke from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, gre...
ListenIs the secret to battling climate change a better promotional strategy? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Ic...
ListenWhat happened in Hollywood in 2017 — and where it might go in 2018 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 reve...
ListenHow 2017's best animated film came to be from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Kel...
ListenJohn Ridley, Oscar-winning screenwriter, on how Los Angeles has and hasn’t changed since Rodney King from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenExploring the role of religion in the Trump era with Matt Carter, co-host of the Bad Christian podcast from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenHolly Hunter, Kumail Nanjiani, Ray Romano, and Emily V. Gordon talk about their movie The Big Sick from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 a...
ListenHow to not screw up Thanksgiving dinner, with chef Samin Nosrat from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenThe man who wrote the West Wing theme tells us how TV music is made from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Thirtyso...
ListenGlenn Gordon Caron reinvented TV in the ’80s. Now he’s reviving the case-of-the-week show. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 dramed...
ListenRussell Brand on life, addiction, and the pursuit of happiness from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenThe 5 best superhero performances of all time, according to The Tick’s Griffin Newman from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenModern Family star Eric Stonestreet on making it as a heavyset actor in Hollywood from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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-na...
ListenNovelist Tom Perrotta on white privilege, gender identity, and Tracy Flick 20 years later from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 hi...
ListenKen Burns’s name is synonymous with American history. His new film is eerily prescient. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenNancy Cartwright is a grandmother — who plays the world’s most famous 10-year-old cartoon boy from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, ...
ListenActress Kellie Martin has been working since she was 7. Listen to this, and you'll love her as much as we do. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 '...
ListenHow The Handmaid’s Tale traveled from page to screen, explained by showrunner Bruce Miller from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 nominatio...
ListenHow beloved book The Glass Castle became a movie. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Lars...
ListenHow PBS is navigating an especially hostile political era. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 elect...
ListenHow one small town recovered from being gutted by the Great Recession — and how it didn’t. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 e...
ListenMichaela Watkins on audition rituals, her worst college party, and playing a “coastal elite” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 th...
ListenHow did a sheet with eyeholes come to be the symbol for a ghost? Director David Lowery explains. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 co...
ListenErrol Morris, one of the best interviewers ever, on true crime and the art of the documentary. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 everyt...
ListenTired of boring blockbusters? Our critics pick the best summer movies of the 2000s. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenComedian Maz Jobrani on making people laugh in a deeply divided America from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 w...
ListenAlan Sepinwall, on why he doesn’t like the Netflix model of full-season stories from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 re...
ListenFear the Walking Dead's cast on shooting in Mexico in the era of Trump from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 w...
ListenDamon Lindelof from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenThe Americans showrunners from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 somewh...
ListenAne Crabtree from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenChris Parnell from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenEzra Klein from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenFull Frontal from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 dissec...
ListenRichard Kelly from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
ListenPhil LaMarr from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 bes...
ListenRhea Seehorn from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 pa...
ListenCeyda Torun from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenDave Malloy from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
ListenLaura Zak and Kate Fisher from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 serie...
ListenDesmin Borges from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 amusi...
ListenRyan Murphy from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Ryan Murphy is one of the most influential TV producers in the history of the medium. He's won Emmys for series like Glee and The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime St...
ListenRyan Murphy from 2017-03-01T16:00
Ryan Murphy is one of the most influential TV producers in the history of the medium. He's won Emmys for series like Glee and The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, and with American Horr...
ListenRyan Murphy from 2017-03-01T16:00
Ryan Murphy is one of the most influential TV producers in the history of the medium. He's won Emmys for series like Glee and The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, and with American Horr...
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