Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean offers a long-view take on what’s needed in this pivotal moment as Joe Biden takes office. Dean talks about vaccines, prioritizing the important while attending to the urgent, and what unity might look like for our deeply divided country. Dean has studied democracies around the world, yet much of his adult life has been rooted in Vermont where he practiced family medicine before becoming the state's longest-serving Governor from 1991 - 2003. Dean ran for the D...
Jan 19, 2021•47 min
Actor Kristen Bell (The Good Place, Frozen, Veronica Mars) has a happy marriage that requires a lot of work, and she’s good with that. She considered a life in the theater as a student at NYU, even making it to Broadway before graduation. However, on a whim, she moved to Los Angeles and has been starring in movies and TV ever since. Like her most memorable characters, Bell is plucky, relatable, and very funny. That’s her lane and she’s good with that, too. She tells Alec, at 40, she’s more comfo...
Jan 12, 2021•39 min
Join award-winning actor Alec Baldwin in conversation with some of the most dynamic artists, policymakers, and performers working today. This season, Alec will talk with Kristen Bell about marriage and why generosity always wins, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean on the difference between the important and the urgent, and music legend Mick Fleetwood about why Fleetwood Mac has survived for more than half a century - just to name a few. If you like listening as much as Alec likes talking with i...
Jan 05, 2021•1 min
Here’s The Thing is moving from WNYC to iHeartRadio. Over the past several years, Alec has talked with some of the greatest artists, musicians, actors, writers, thinkers, public policy makers, and sports figures of our time. The final two programs on WNYC highlight a compilation of some of Alec’s favorite interviews from the past several years. This penultimate WNYC episode features clips from interviews with David Letterman , Audra McDonald , Carly Simon , Robert Osborne , and Jon Robin Baitz ....
Nov 10, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Today, Alec announces that Here’s The Thing is moving from WNYC to iHeartRadio. For nearly a decade, Alec has spoken with some of the greatest artists, musicians, actors, writers, thinkers, public policy makers, and sports figures of our time. The final two programs on WNYC highlight a compilation of some of Alec’s favorite interviews. This penultimate WNYC episode features clips from interviews with Barbra Streisand, Joe Dallesandro, Elaine Stritch, David Crosby, and William Friedkin. Join Alec...
Nov 03, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Today, Alec plunges into the politics of real estate with two guests. The first is David Schleicher of Yale Law School, whose expertise is Land Use. He gets to the heart of gentrification and continuously surprises Alec with one idea after another through their riveting conversation. Later in the show, Alec talks with Elizabeth Kim, Gothamist Senior Editor and real estate correspondent for Gothamist , the New York-focused news website. She and Alec discuss “retail blight,” the hollowing-out of t...
Oct 20, 2020•43 min
As a singer, guitarist, producer, and manager, Peter Asher has been at the center of some of the most important music - and moments - of the rock era. In 1964, he was just 19 when his London-based duo Peter and Gordon released its first single, “A World Without Love.” It reached number 1 on the charts on both sides of the Atlantic -- and was written by his sister’s then-boyfriend, Paul McCartney. Later, after Peter and Gordon fizzled, Asher joined forces with the Beatles to launch Apple Records,...
Oct 06, 2020•37 min
Few actors are as deeply associated with a character as Davis Gaines is with the Phantom of the Opera. When the Kennedy Center honored Hal Prince, Phantom’s original director, they turned to Gaines to perform the musical’s signature song, “Music of the Night.” Gaines’ spine-tingling vibrato shook the risers more than two thousand times in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and eventually Broadway, where Phantom remains the longest-running show in history. Alec speaks with Gaines about how his childhood...
Sep 22, 2020•33 min
Jordan Klepper is a very funny person, and Comedy Central took notice, making him one of their go-to stars: he's hosted his own late-night talk show and two excellent documentary series for the network. But with about 90 million views on YouTube and Facebook, Klepper's work as the Daily Show's Trump-rally correspondent is what turned him into a political celebrity. He's been on the beat from the beginning: Jon Stewart hired him in 2014 and he started attending the rallies right as Trump was taki...
Sep 08, 2020•40 min
The Tribeca Film Festival has launched a new podcast, Tribeca Talks , and we want you to know about it. Here's a conversation Alec had with director Guillermo Del Toro at last year's Tribeca Film Festival, covering Del Toro’s incredible career, the meaning behind his films, and prepping for shoots. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Sep 03, 2020•1 hr 15 min
Alec looks at the art world from two angles -- from someone in it, and from someone who has observed the world from a distance. First, writer Michael Shnayerson -- his latest book, Boom, gives an exhaustive history of how today’s art market came to be. Shnayerson writes for magazines -- including Time and Vanity Fair -- and has written seven books. He has collaborated with Harry Belafonte, written a portrait of Andrew Cuomo, and unpacked General Motors and the electric car. Art dealer Richard Fe...
Aug 25, 2020•51 min
Marc Kudisch is a Broadway staple. With three Tony nominations, he has played such roles as The Proprietor in Assassins , Gaston in Beauty and the Beast , and the sexist blowhard boss in Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 . On screen, Kudisch has carved out a niche for himself working for some of the greatest directors in TV, including David Fincher in Mindhunter and Barry Sonnenfeld in The Tick . His current TV role is Dr. Gus, the intense, love-to-hate-him corporate coach in Billions . Alec talked with Kud...
Aug 18, 2020•37 min
Today, Alec speaks with two colleagues he’s known for a long time, Brian Delate and Dick Hughes -- both actors whose lives were touched by the Vietnam War. Delate, Alec’s first guest, served in Vietnam after high school. He has performed on stage, in movies and on TV, and he’s also a playwright. His play, Memorial Day , tells the story of a Vietnam veteran on the verge of suicide over a Memorial Day holiday. Dick Hughes, Alec’s second guest, thought he was going to enter the priesthood as a youn...
Aug 11, 2020•47 min
Writers Kaitlyn Tiffany and Ashley Fetters may be the country’s most astute observers of modern romance. Fetters even wrote the definitive history of Tinder. Alec discovered their jointly written article, The ‘Dating Market’ Is Getting Worse , published in February, 2020, and knew he had to talk to them. The writers talked to historians and sociologists to analyze the use of concepts like “market value” and “supply and demand” in thinking about romance. They conclude that our sense that we can m...
Aug 04, 2020•30 min
Filipino-American filmmaker Ramona Diaz says each of her films is a “yearning for the motherland.” She’s in a unique position, as she says, able to “decode” the Philippines for the rest of the world. Her most recent film, A Thousand Cuts, tells the story of Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa and the struggle for a free press and the crackdown on news media in the Philippines under President Duterte. In 2018, Ressa was an honoree when Time Magazine’s Person of the Year issue focused on “The...
Jul 28, 2020•36 min
Alec and Stanley Tucci have only been on set together a couple of times, but they established a rapport deep enough to carry over into a Zoom interview more than a decade later. The two share stories from their families, discuss what they love about working with certain fellow actors, and the difference between working in Hollywood and the UK. Tucci also talks about how he gets into character for his most recent role, an 80-year-old woman in Apple TV's wonderful new animated series, Central Park...
Jul 14, 2020•37 min
Ingrid Newkirk is the co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA. It may be America’s best-known animal rights organization thanks to legal sophistication, scientific seriousness, and off-the-wall publicity stunts like throwing fake blood on models wearing fur, or infiltrating a KFC chicken-supplier to publicize alleged cruelty. They're also famous because a lot of big-name vegetarians have lent them a hand, including Alec, who narrated a documentary for PETA about animal...
Jun 30, 2020•35 min
Micky Dolenz was a successful child-actor, but he became a full-fledged star at 20 in 1966 as the exuberant singer and drummer of The Monkees -- or rather, as the actor playing that character. At first, the band was a creation of NBC and only existed on the show The Monkees . For the first season, much of the backing music was played by a studio band. Eventually, that changed, and The Monkees' transition from a TV band to a real band is a fascinating story of hard work, perseverance, and marketi...
Jun 16, 2020•38 min
Woody Allen's new book, Apropos of Nothing , starts with a portrait of his father, a tough-guy World War One Navy veteran and onetime gunman in a firing squad. It's the first of a series of surprising, fascinating stories from a life that went from working-class Jewish Brooklyn in the 1940s to movie sets in Rome and Paris. The book also addresses the accusation of an incident of sexual abuse leveled by Dylan Farrow. Allen and Alec cover it all -- plus how he's doing in the age of coronavirus -- ...
Jun 02, 2020•43 min
In the midst of a crisis it can be healthy to think of what comes after. In this episode of Here's the Thing, two of the most influential New Yorkers when it comes to long-term economic planning join Alec to discuss whether the current economic crisis will end quickly when businesses can reopen, or whether instead it's the start of a longer decline. Kathryn Wylde is a veteran of the urban renewal battles of the 1980s and currently the head of the city's elite business consortium, the Partnership...
May 19, 2020•35 min
Over a 70-year career, Wynn Handman added sharpness and craft to the natural talents of actors including Christopher Walken, Allison Janney, Raul Julia, Richard Gere, James Caan, Anna Deveare Smith, Joanne Woodward, and Mia Farrow. The World War II veteran studied acting on the GI bill and fell in with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in 1946, when the "playhouse" was still two floors of an office building west of Times Square. In this remarkable conversation, Handman tells Alec abo...
May 14, 2020•28 min
Brian De Palma's astonishingly diverse hits as a director include Blow Out , Scarface , The Untouchables , The Bonfire of the Vanities , Raising Cain , Carlito’s Way , and Mission: Impossible . He wrote many of those screenplays, too. With his distinctive visual style and proven box office success, he's among the undeniable greats of both auteur and commercial filmmaking. In this live interview, he tells Alec about getting his start in directing as an undergrad at Columbia, and has stories from ...
May 05, 2020•33 min
Hall & Oates is the biggest-selling vocal duo in history. "Maneater," "Rich Girl," "You Make My Dreams Come True," and countless other hits will be beloved for generations. So Daryl Hall has long been at the top of Alec's Most Wanted list for Here's the Thing. When the conversation finally took place this past December, it was on Hall's home-turf: Daryl's House , his restaurant and music-venue in Pawling, NY. In a conversation interspersed with some classic recordings, Hall talks about his t...
Apr 21, 2020•40 min
Alec and Patti Bosworth became friends serving together on the board of the Actors Studio. When Bosworth died of complications from COVID-19, it wasn't just a loss to the literary and theatrical worlds; it was also personal for Alec and the rest of Bosworth's wide circle of friends and family. Not just a legendary Hollywood biographer, Bosworth also released an impossible-to-put-down memoir in two parts about her glamorous, tragic personal life and her time with the biggest names in Hollywood an...
Apr 16, 2020•39 min
Anjelica Huston has lived many lives, all with grace and charisma. As the daughter of John Huston (director of The African Queen , The Maltese Falcon , and more) she was movie royalty from birth. But she grew up in rural Ireland and went to high school in Swinging-Sixties London. That meant she developed a set of values far removed from Hollywood high society. Her first career was as a high-end fashion model, a favorite subject of Richard Avedon and later a muse of Halston. But she had always wa...
Apr 07, 2020•48 min
Butch Walker is one of rock and roll's biggest talents, and on May 8th, he'll be releasing his new album -- a rock opera called American Love Story . You can preview one of the songs on today's episode of Here's the Thing, taped live last month (just before coronavirus made such gatherings impossible) at the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood. In the 1990s, Walker got major-label contracts and radio-play as the guitarist for the "hair band" SouthGang, and later as front-man of the edgy, grunge-ting...
Mar 31, 2020•1 hr 1 min
New York Times reporter Eliza Shapiro ranks high on the list of the most powerful people in education because "no one on the education beat is a sharper – or more effective – thorn in the side of city officials." Over the course of a lively conversation with Alec taped before the pandemic, she broke down all the major issues in education policy, from unions to charters to racial equality, and tackled Mayor Bill De Blasio's rollback of Mike Bloomberg's education reforms. But since they spoke, Sha...
Mar 20, 2020•40 min
Barry Sonnenfeld was among Hollywood's most in-demand cinematographers ( Big , When Harry Met Sally , Misery ) when he decided to make the switch to directing in 1991. The producers were nervous, but the proof was in the pudding: Sonnenfeld's directorial debut was The Addams Family , one of the year's most successful comedies. From there, Sonnenfeld went on to direct Get Shorty , the Men in Black series, and some brilliant TV like The Tick and A Series of Unfortunate Events . Now he's written a ...
Mar 10, 2020•39 min
For more than a decade, Kelli O'Hara has been at the very top of the Broadway heap. She gets called " luminous " so often that it must get really very , very tiring . It's been a remarkable journey for a kid who grew up on a farm in western Oklahoma and cut her teeth doing repertory theater in Wichita. She tells Alec her story, with a fascinating, surprising twist: she deeply loves Broadway but wants to branch out, and says she's struggled to do so. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://ww...
Feb 25, 2020•35 min
Russ Tamblyn was born in Los Angeles in the middle of the Depression to a chorus girl and a Broadway "song and dance man." His father had moved his growing family west to press his luck in the talkies. Russ was a showbiz kid and found his talent young: Cecil B DeMille cast him as the young King Saul in Samson and Delilah when he was just 13 years old. Stardom came at 19 in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , where he stole scenes with his goofy enthusiasm and astonishingly acrobatic dancing. But t...
Feb 11, 2020•36 min
