Tim Heidecker talks about his new comedy series Moonbase 8, collaborating with fellow comedy geniuses John C. Reilly, Fred Armisen, and Jonathan Krisel on the show, and what it was like to visit NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and SpaceX headquarters as part of their research. He discusses how Bob Odenkirk gave him his first big break, the cult following for his Adult Swim series The Time and Eric Awesome Show, and how one Tim and Eric sketch got the attention of QAnon conspiracists. Plus Tim weighs i...
Nov 05, 2020•40 min
Legendary newsman Dan Rather talks about his 60 year career and how his travels and conversations have given him a “wide shot” of the American experience and the values that unite us. He condemns recent attacks on some on those values (including freedom of the press), he shares his own family's experience during the Great Depression as a lesson in empathy, and he recalls how his time spent with men like Martin Luther King Jr. and Medger Evers opened his eyes to institutionalized racism in Americ...
Oct 29, 2020•43 min
Grammy-wining musician Lenny Kravitz shares how his parents' biracial marriage and very different personalities fostered what he calls his "gemini soul," how his mom, actress Roxy Roker from TV's The Jeffersons, inspired the artist in him, and how he and his dad still found connection through music even as their relationship deteriorated. He recalls the rock concert that changed his life, the first song he ever wrote, and sneaking out of his parents' house every night to explore LA’s thriving mu...
Oct 26, 2020•41 min
Rock legend Peter Frampton talks about the making of that seminal rock album Frampton Comes Alive! and the story of his famous guitar that he nicknamed "The Phoenix." He recalls learning to play guitar by ear when he was a boy, growing up with another future rock legend David Bowie, and what it was like to be in high school during the day and perform in a rock band at night. He tells the story of the time he barely escaped Noriega’s Panama with his life, how he took the the news of the death of ...
Oct 23, 2020•39 min
As the actor and writer behind Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and films like A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese is among the most creative minds in entertainment. He opens up about his writing process, why he often finds inspiration in the most unlikely of places, and how you can foster creativity in whatever you do. He explains why overconfidence is the enemy of creativity, where he gets his particular disdain for pompous politicians and feckless authority figures, and why he says that people in ch...
Oct 20, 2020•59 min
Former Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt discusses how former college football coach Bill Campbell mentored him and many of Silicon Valley's greatest visionaries from Jeff Bezos and Larry Page to Marc Andreessen and Steve Jobs. Eric recalls how he initially reacted when venture capitalist John Doerr suggested that he work with a coach, how Coach Campbell helped shape the relationship between Eric and Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and how the coach talked Eric out of resigning ...
Oct 13, 2020•35 min
Oscar-winning actor/writer/director/producer Tim Robbins shares how he originally developed his latest project Bobo Supreme as a movie with the director Adam McKay, but he was inspired to adapt his screenplay for an auditory medium when the pandemic shut down film production. He reveals how he managed to record with 35 different actors in 35 different locations simultaneously during quarantine, and how it has given him a renewed appreciation for the radio dramas of Orson Welles and his Mercury R...
Oct 08, 2020•45 min
99% Invisible host Roman Mars discusses his new book why it’s taken him a decade to finally write a 99% Invisible book The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design, all of the thought that this design fan put into the look of his first book, and some of the secret publishing considerations that determine everything from how many units get returned to whether a book gets sold by Costco. We talk about the baseball player who became synonymous with stairs to nowhere ...
Oct 05, 2020•46 min
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster served in the US Army for 34 years and then as National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump. He discusses what it was like to take over that job in the chaotic period following the firing of his predecessor Michael Flynn, how studying LBJ's mistakes during the War in Vietnam made him even more determined to provide the current Commander-in-Chief with straight-forward, unvarnished policy advice, and why he believes that some others in the White House might ...
Oct 01, 2020•49 min
John Lithgow shares some of his favorite poems from his new book Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age and how a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most famous song inspired him to express his political voice through rhyme and verse. He reveals that he originally wanted to go into fine art instead of acting, how his poetry books have returned him to his childhood love of drawing, and why the motley cast of characters around Donald Trump serve as endless sources of inspirati...
Sep 28, 2020•46 min
Based on James Comey's memoir A Higher Loyalty, The Comey Rule is a two night television event that is written/directed by Oscar-nominee Billy Ray and stars Emmy-winner Jeff Daniels as the embattled FBI Director. They join me on the podcast to open up about their own initial anger at James Comey over the 2016 Hillary Clinton probe and why they want to set the record straight about the man behind the two most controversial investigations of the 21st Century. Jeff reveals what attracts him to role...
Sep 24, 2020•42 min
Oscar-nominated actor Richard Jenkins talks about his prolific career as one of Hollywood’s most reliable character actors and achieving fame later in life on the hit HBO series Six Feet Under. He talks about some of his favorite films including Step Brothers and The Shape of Water, how director Guillermo del Toro gives actors a whole bible of background information on their characters, and the difference between working with the Coen Brothers and the Farrelly Brothers. Richard discusses his rol...
Sep 21, 2020•43 min
Actress Carrie Coon talks about her incredible hot streak from The Leftovers to her new film The Nest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 17, 2020•45 min
For more than 25 years, actors and musicians Jack Black and Kyle Gass have been performing as the rock satire band Tenacious D. They’ve toured around the world, recorded Grammy-winning albums, started a music festival, made a tv show, made a movie, then made an animated movie, and now they’ve even put out a new graphic novel. Today Kyle and Jack join me on the show as we get into how they’ve managed to outlast the lifespan of most bands and how satirizing rock bands has led to their playing Lear...
Sep 14, 2020•44 min
As Official White House Photographer under Ronald Reagan and then Barack Obama, Pete Souza was an eyewitness to the unique and tremendous responsibilities of being the most powerful person on Earth. Now he's the subject of a new documentary film titled The Way I See It. Pete discusses the life of a White House photographer and what it was like to go from being a journalist on the outside looking in to being at the President’s side all day, every day. He talks about the delicate balance between g...
Sep 10, 2020•34 min
Dr. David Eagleman is creator/host of PBS's The Brain, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, and CEO/founder of Neosensory, a company that builds the next generation of neuroscience hardware. He overturns science's traditional understand of brain plasticity and explains how the mind is able to constantly adapt to suit different circumstances. He shares how a child can still function with half his brain missing, how babies start modeling the world from the moment they are born, and ...
Sep 03, 2020•48 min
Pulitzer-winning historian Jon Meacham recalls his 30 year friendship with the late Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Meacham describes as an almost Biblical arc to John Lewis's life, and how Lewis’s Christian faith informed his activism. He describes the horrible day in Selma, Alabama known as "Bloody Sunday," and how Lewis remained steadfast and at peace even as state troopers beat him within an inch of his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He discusses his final conversation wit...
Aug 31, 2020•36 min
20 years after the film Erin Brockovich raised awareness about water contamination, the real Erin Brockovich talks about how her that movie changed her life, the moment when she realized that she had to stand up for the citizens of Hinckley, California, and her outrage that dangerous levels of Chromium-6 still exist in the water of hundreds of municipalities across the U.S. She explains why environmental regulators aren’t doing their jobs, and how she’s helped angry moms mobilize their communiti...
Aug 27, 2020•49 min
Before Greg Gutfeld was a Fox News star and a New York Times bestselling author, he was a self-help writer for health magazines who had no idea what he was talking about. Now, after years of experience, he finally feels qualified to guide people on the journey of life with his new book The Plus: Self-Help for People Who Hate Self-Help. Greg returns to the podcast to share some of the lame self-help advice he used to give in magazines like Maxim and Men’s Health and why he generally abhors self-i...
Aug 24, 2020•29 min
Adam Carolla takes on cancel culture and hashtag heroes. He explains why he has given up on apologizing to people, why he’s standing by his friend Jimmy Kimmel during the late night show host’s blackface controversy, and why he believes that people who virtue signal on behalf others are really quietly racist. He discusses his political philosophy, his impression of Donald Trump from his stint on Celebrity Apprentice, and how a segment producer on that show hoodwinked him into getting fired from ...
Aug 20, 2020•44 min
Jim Belushi is a man of many talents, actor, singer, dancer, and now legal cannabis farmer. He shares how he’s using cannabis to combat the opioid crisis and heal vets suffering from PTSD, how high school football might have led to his brother John Belushi's tragic death, and why he believes that John would be alive today if he’d done more weed and less cocaine. Jim discusses some of his best films and his two seasons on Saturday Night Live, how a man known as the "Smell of SNL" is helping him L...
Aug 17, 2020•44 min
CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin talks about his new book True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump. He discusses why this was the hardest book he’s ever written, and how he managed to gain access to a number Robert Mueller’s lead investigators (including a few of those so-called "angry Democrats"). He reveals why Mueller declined to subpoena Donald Trump, why he never attempted to get ahold of Trump’s financial records, and why he ultimately stopped just short of Lea...
Aug 13, 2020•43 min
CNN's chief national security correspondent and anchor of CNN NewsroomJim Sciutto discusses the Nixon-era origins of the so-called "Madman Theory" and how it applies to President Trump’s unpredictable approach to foreign policy. He reveals that the President’s intelligence team deliberately avoids bringing up Russia for fear of upsetting him and how this has lead to a dangerous ignorance of America’s number one geopolitical foe. Jim delves into the President’s fraught relationship with China, Le...
Aug 10, 2020•47 min
Ambassador Susan Rice is currently at the top of Joe Biden's shortlist for Vice-President. It's not hard to see why. She established a good working relationship with Biden during the Obama Administration, and she has been at the table during the most pressing international crises of the past 30 years. She talk about her family’s unique American story and how playing peacekeeper during her parents troubled marriage made her grow up fast but also prepared her for a life in international diplomacy....
Aug 06, 2020•46 min
Paul Begala, former strategist to Bill Clinton and CNN political commentator offers a game-plan for how Democrats can beat President Trump in November. He starts be admitting what he didn’t understand about Donald Trump in 2016 and sharing which of the lessons learned in 2016 can be applied in 2020. Paul tells the story of how the Obama White House warned the incoming Trump Administration about the threat of a global pandemic almost 4 years ago, and he outlines the best way for Joe Biden to addr...
Aug 03, 2020•47 min
Al Roker returns to the show to tell stories from The Today Show and his early days in local television including how he annoyed his way into his first gig as a TV weatherman, some of his worst on-air flubs, and what he loved about doing those quirky, feel-good segments at the end of your evening news. He says every local news team has there own version of Ron Burgundy, recalls working with a young Maury Povich back when Maury was serious DC newsman, and how he once handled a racist comment from...
Jul 30, 2020•35 min
Silicon Valley icon Guy Kawasaki recalls his childhood in Hawaii, his start in the jewelry business, and how his skills at jewelry sales came in surprisingly handy when he became chief evangelist for Macintosh. He talks about personally witnessing the genius and dark side of Apple founder Steve Jobs, he shares some rules that he calls "the Gospel According to Steve," and opens up about the argument that led him to quit Apple in the 90s. He talks about honor and honesty in the tech industry, his ...
Jul 27, 2020•41 min
Oscar-winning writer/director Oliver Stone (Platoon, Wall Street, JFK) discusses why he dropped out of Yale and volunteered to go fight in Vietnam, some of the horrors that he witnessed during that war, and how the black soldiers in his platoon opened his eyes to injustice and saved his life. He talks about how writing a screenplay about the experience helped him process what he had been through in Vietnam, why it took him 16 years to get Platoon made, and how the ouster of Filipino strongman Fe...
Jul 23, 2020•46 min
Jennifer Palmieri served as the former Communications Director to President Barack Obama and then for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. She spent most of her career advocating for herself and for other women from "within the system," but now she says it is time from women to break from that system and rewrite the playbook in her new book She Proclaims: Our Declaration of Independence from a Man's World. Jennifer looks back at the roots of the American feminist movement, the surprisin...
Jul 20, 2020•48 min
Max Brooks (World War Z) discusses what a fictional Sasquatch massacre can teach us about the perils of eco-utopianism, what happens when man encroaches on nature, and those people who still refuse to wear a mask in public. Max says people in the 21st Century are exchanging resilience and know-how for technological convenience - a trade-off that may not serve us very well when we’re put to the test in a true emergency like the COVID-19 crisis. He talks about his childhood fascination with the le...
Jul 17, 2020•42 min
