As a kid, Brian Williams grew up in a CBS household. Dinner didn't start until Cronkite was done. He didn't think journalism was attainable, but his work ethic and blue blazer opened doors. From White House intern to young television reporter, Williams eventually found his way back to New York. On the job, Williams keeps his opinions quiet. Off the clock, Williams still enjoys vestiges of his youth: NASCAR and Spam. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omn...
Mar 04, 2013•55 min
Patti LuPone was only four years old when she realized she belonged on stage, and she started by entertaining family members in her Long Island living room. LuPone won her second Tony Award for Evita, which she initially described as merely “noise from Britain.” Although she has enjoyed tremendous, long-term success, she talks candidly to Alec about blows to her career and ego. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy inform...
Feb 18, 2013•47 min
In this 2013 interview with Alec, the former New York Times executive editor talked about how she grew up in a family where the paper was so vaunted that two copies were delivered to her house. Some media critics have speculated that this interview may have been a factor in Abramson's dismissal. Abramson was the first woman to hold the top editorial position at the paper. She told Alec that she took a “particular interest in the careers and work of many of the younger women at The Times and ... ...
Feb 04, 2013•40 min
Dunham, the creator of HBO’s GIRLS, says when she was younger, she thought she’d be a "Gender and Women’s Studies teacher who showed movies at the occasional film festival." Instead she's trying to figure out what to wear to shoot the cover of Rolling Stone. Dunham talks with Alec about getting a dog and her first date with her boyfriend Jack Antonoff. She’s not ready for children—yet—but they are on her mind: “I was raised to think that the two most important things you could do in your life we...
Jan 21, 2013•43 min
This week Alec talks with Judd Apatow, whose films include ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin,’ ‘Knocked Up,’ and ‘Funny People;’ all of which feature emotionally immature men forced to grow up after confronting, respectively -- sex, responsibility and death. Of all Apatow’s movies, his most recent, “This is 40”, which opened the weekend before Christmas, may be his most personal and stars his wife, Leslie Mann, and their two daughters. Apatow talks with Alec about working with some of his heroes, like Alb...
Jan 07, 2013•38 min
This week Alec sits down with Jamie and Alex Bernstein, to hear about growing up with the maestro, Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein had three children: Jamie, Alexander and Nina. And while they knew him in the tux and tails, they also knew him as the dad who loved games – he was a killer at anagrams – and always up for tennis or squash or skiing or touch football. Jamie and Alexander talk to Alec about listening to music – Jamie says she learned “more about music by listening to The Beatles with my ...
Dec 24, 2012•46 min
This week Alec talks with Lewis Lapham, who's been refining his prose for over 50 years. Lapham says he still has to write “three or four or five, sometimes eight drafts of something,” but takes pleasure in “getting it right.” Today, he’s at the helm of Lapham’s Quarterly. He was at Harper’s for many years – and he started out at The San Francisco Examiner before stints at The Saturday Evening Post and Life. To talk with Lewis Lapham, you’re struck with the sensation that you’ve stumbled onto th...
Dec 10, 2012•44 min
This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with writer Paula Pell – who has been making people laugh at Saturday Night Live for the last 17 years. Pell landed her dream job as a writer at SNL after working at a Florida theme park. Her agent told her that Lorne Michaels wanted to meet her – “it is not an audition, but he wants to fly you up and talk to you.” Pell wasn’t sure what she was headed up for, but she got a job writing for the show. Because of her longevity on the show, Pell calls herself...
Nov 26, 2012•43 min
This week Alec talks with Andrew McCarthy – about making movies, directing, and what it’s like to reinvent oneself as a travel writer. Most people know McCarthy for his roles in "St. Elmo’s Fire" and "Pretty in Pink" – as a member of the “Brat Pack" -- but those movies were only one stop on Andrew McCarthy’s journey. Almost 20 years ago, McCarthy discovered that traveling the world was the perfect antidote to the fame and exposure that came with his acting career. He has spent much of the last d...
Nov 05, 2012•38 min
This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with two men who have spent much of their lives living and working in Africa. Photographer Peter Beard first set foot on the continent in 1955. Richard Ruggiero, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, began his Peace Corps stint in 1981 in the northern Central African Republic. “We are enemies of nature,” says Beard, whose photographs have documented the destruction of wildlife in Africa, including the plight of the African Elephant, the very topic of Rugg...
Oct 22, 2012•41 min
This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with David Brooks on stage at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in Manhattan as part of the Public Forum series. David Brooks has been a New York Times op-ed columnist since 2003. He is known as a Conservative voice -- he was a senior editor at The Weekly Standard -- but former Obama advisor David Axelrod described him as a “true public thinker.” Join Baldwin and Brooks on stage at Joe's Pub for a wide-ranging conversation: Brooks tells Baldwin about writi...
Oct 08, 2012•52 min
This week, Alec talks with Pulitzer-prize winner George Will, whose passion for politics began early: he remembers Truman’s election when he was seven years old. George Will is a political conservative, but he’s not afraid to direct criticism to the right. Will analyzes the current election for Alec – this isn’t a “slam-dunk for either side,” he says, and offers some historical perspective on the current animosity in political life. “We've been through really violent times,” says Will, “and we'r...
Sep 24, 2012•39 min
This week, Alec talks with Fred Armisen. Armisen has been a punk rock drummer, currently he’s a cast member on Saturday Night Live and is also the co-creator and co-star of IFC’s Portlandia. Armisen has always been ambitious; when he was a drummer, he recalls, he always "wanted much more." Long ago, Armisen played drums with the Blue Man Group in Chicago and he tells Alec he learned a lot: about "simplicity," "reinvention" and "that audiences want to be entertained." Armisen admits that he’s alw...
Sep 10, 2012•30 min
This week, Alec talks with Zarin Mehta who retired as president and executive director of the New York Philharmonic at the end of this past season. Mehta, an accountant by trade, grew up in 1940’s Bombay before it became the booming city of Mumbai. In Mehta’s memory, Bombay was more like a colonial fishing village. Mehta talks with Alec about his father, who founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, his brother Zubin, and the realities of running a major arts organization in New York. As Mehta stat...
Aug 27, 2012•36 min
This week, Alec talks with documentary filmmakers Anthony Baxter and Dylan Avery – each of whom has made a controversial political films, one about a golf course in Scotland; the other about whether 9/11 was a government cover-up. Both films were made on meager budgets and both have attracted significant attention. Dylan Avery’s film, Loose Change, became an internet sensation and spawned a “Truther Movement” composed of people that believe that the government’s version of 9/11 is a lie. Anthony...
Aug 13, 2012•36 min
This week on Here’s the Thing – Alec sits down with fellow Long Islander Billy Joel – at the piano – for a conversation about life and the musical choices he’s made. Joel joined his first band at age 14 and became the third best selling solo artist of all time in the United States. He’s sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, but at this point, he says, the “rock star thing” is something he can “take off.” “I go shopping, I cook my own food, I wash the dishes, I take ou...
Jul 30, 2012•57 min
This week on Here’s the Thing, Alec talks with Grammy-winning guitarist Peter Frampton. “Sound is very inspirational to me,” explains Frampton – and it always has been: he started playing guitar before he was 8 years old. Frampton talks about his musical roots in England, playing in bands like The Preachers and The Herd. At age 14 he was playing at a recording session produced by Bill Wyman, who he says is “sort of like my mentor, my older brother.” Eleven years later, Frampton was on stage in S...
Jul 16, 2012•39 min
This week, Alec talks with Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco, about our country’s addiction to sugar. Children today are the first American generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, in large part due to obesity. According to Lustig, this obesity often comes from eating too much sugar. Sugar is hard to avoid. A recent study reveals that 80 percent of the 600,000 food items in America are laced with added sugar. Lustig says, “There is not one...
Jul 02, 2012•28 min
This week on Here's The Thing, Alec talks with late-night legend David Letterman. Letterman describes his early years on TV in Indiana; his decision to try radio despite a boss who said “You will never be heard of again”; and his eventual journey to LA where after 3 years at comedy clubs he found himself on The Tonight Show. As Letterman says, "that's not supposed to happen." Letterman’s been doing the Late Show for 30 years and he says for a long time he “just didn’t do anything else.” Things h...
Jun 18, 2012•43 min
This week Alec talks with playwright Jon Robin Baitz, whose Broadway play, Other Desert Cities, is up for a Tony later this month. Baitz grew up in Brazil and South Africa -- transferring to Beverly Hills High School for his final year of school where he says he “became friends ... with fellow freaks.” He’s been writing ever since -- even though “writing plays has always been very tricky.” Baitz talks about the origin of the new play, his short-lived adventures writing for television in Hollywoo...
Jun 04, 2012•36 min
This week Alec talks with opera singer Renée Fleming, whose singing voice has been described as "double cream." Fleming remembers her professional debut -- “I was just jelly at the end of the first rehearsal” -- and celebrates her long association with The Metropolitan Opera. Fleming talks about performing and the challenges of being heard, without amplification, over an orchestra, but also about the pleasure of being in the audience “where I have literally been sobbing at the end” of an opera. ...
May 21, 2012•33 min
This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks about the financial crisis with Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Stiglitz shows no restraint when unleashing criticism of presidential policies -- on both sides. Of President Barack Obama’s financial-industry rescue plan, Stiglitz said that whomever designed it was "either in the pocket of the banks or … incompetent." Stiglitz talks to Alec about growing up in Gary, Indiana and how that impacted his decision to become an economist. Learn...
May 07, 2012•29 min
This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies. Today Osborne plays the role of ambassador to a bygone era. We hear the journey he took to get there -- which could have been a classic movie itself. Osborne tells Alec about meeting Lucille Ball: “If it had been Lana Turner I met or somebody I wouldn't have been able to talk, but it was Lucille Ball.” Nonetheless, Ball ended up playing an influential role in Osborne’s life, encouraging him to pursue wr...
Apr 23, 2012•36 min
Alec talks with Kristen Wiig -- who catered, did floral design, answered phones at a law firm and handed out peach samples at a farmer’s market -- all before landing her current gig, as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. Kristen says she loves performing, but admits there’s also a “big part of me that’s just like: don’t look at me.” Kristen talks about auditioning for SNL, and the prospect of life beyond SNL: “I mean that’s my family, it’s my heart, it’s New York to me.” Learn more about your...
Apr 09, 2012•37 min
Alec talks with Herb Alpert, legendary trumpeter and co-founder of A&M Records, the independent record label Alpert eventually sold to Polygram. In 1966, Alpert’s band, The Tijuana Brass sold over 13 million records, outselling The Beatles. Alpert talks about the thrill of signing musicians like The Carpenters, Cat Stevens, and The Police but also reveals what it was like to lose -- and slowly regain -- his trumpet voice over a period of nearly 8 years. The struggle was so intense it made hi...
Mar 26, 2012•40 min
Kathleen Turner made her film debut 30 years ago in the blockbuster thriller, Body Heat. Since then, she’s been leading lady in numerous films and on stage and she’s earned Tony nominations for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Turner sits down with Alec to talk directors – from stage and screen; raising a daughter in New York; dealing with rheumatoid arthritis; and her passion for performance: “If I couldn’t act, I’d just curl up, shrivel up and die … I can’t live withou...
Mar 12, 2012•29 min
Alec visits with Dick Cavett at his house on Long Island – a place called Tick Hall. They survey the view: stunning. Meet Riley the dog: cute, if "neurotic," says Cavett. Then go inside to drink iced tea and hear about Cavett's career in television. Cavett shares some of his memories with Alec: meeting Orson Welles in the lobby of the Plaza; talking with Marlon Brando by phone -- “I was told he would [call] at a certain time and we talked with the sun about 15 degrees above the horizon until wel...
Feb 27, 2012•29 min
Alec talks with Rob Morris, president and co-founder of Love 146, an organization that fights to prevent child sex slavery and provide aftercare for its victims. The numbers around the child sex trafficking industry are staggering. Over a million children are sold into this multi-billion dollar industry each year. As Rob explains to Alec, he sees behind the numbers: “This is not about an issue, this is not about a cause. This is somebody’s daughter, this is about somebody’s son. Little boy. Litt...
Feb 13, 2012•28 min
Lorne Michaels is one of the most influential figures in American entertainment. Alec goes to Rockefeller Center to visit Michaels in his office – the same office he’s had since 1975, when he created Saturday Night Live. Michaels went on to launch the careers of some of the biggest names in comedy: Belushi, Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey … the list goes on and on and on. “The only way you can manage creative people is with very loose reigns,”...
Jan 30, 2012•40 min
Alec talks with director Joe Berlinger about his latest film for HBO Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory -- the third film in a series of documentaries about a crime that took place 18 years ago in rural Arkansas. Berlinger says, “We made these three movies as acts of advocacy” – which is not his usual style as a long-time documentary filmmaker. “I believe the audience should be treated like a jury. You give them the information, you weigh both sides, and you let them come to their own conclusion.” These...
Jan 16, 2012•20 min
