Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture. Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney's, which called it "the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world."

Episodes

I Wish I Made That: Mary Randolph Carter

June 13, 2025 • 13 mins
Mary Randolph Carter is an expert on all things junk. She's written many books on the topic including her latest called Live With the Things You Love: And You'll Live Happily Ever After. We asked Carter if there was ever one piece of junk she acquired over the years that stuck with her so much and lived inside her head rent free for so long that she wishes she made it. The object that came to mind was a very peculiar clock.
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Questlove

June 10, 2025 • 48 mins
Questlove, drummer and bandleader for The Roots joins us on the latest episode. The legend. Lately, he's been working on music documentaries: Sly Lives! and Summer of Soul were both fantastic. He joins us to talk at length about Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music. Questlove gets into his early memories of Saturday Night Live as a kid and gets into how he's been involved with the show over the years. We also get into the fo...
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Carson Lund made Eephus, the best baseball movie in recent memory

June 6, 2025 • 33 mins
This week on Bullseye, we talk to Carson Lund, director of the new slice-of-life baseball film, Eephus. The movie is about two rec league baseball teams meeting to play their final game on a field, which will be torn down the next day to make way for a middle school. Lund talks to Bullseye about representing downtime in baseball, and rejecting the grand finale you might expect in a movie about a sport.

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Alexander Skarsgård

June 3, 2025 • 32 mins
Alexander Skarsgård joins us to talk about the new Apple TV + sci-fi series Murderbot. He also gets into his upbringing and what it was like growing up around different artists and performers. Plus, he'll chat with us about some of his most memorable red carpet outfits.

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Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey

May 27, 2025 • 51 mins
Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey will be forever linked together – thanks to one show: The Office. The sitcom is celebrating its 20th anniversary. They were strangers when the show started, but soon formed a friendship that has lasted long after the show wrapped, including their podcast Office Ladies and their book The Office BFFs. They joined Bullseye to talk about seeing the show through a new lens and becoming geeks for The Offic...
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Author Jane Borden on 'Cults Like Us'

May 23, 2025 • 48 mins
Jane Borden is a writer with bylines in Vanity Fair, the Washington Post, and the New York Times Magazine. Jane is kind of obsessed with cults. She enjoys reading books on them, watching documentaries, and vintage news pieces on the subject. Jane's obsession has become her latest book. She joins us on Bullseye to talk about Cults Like Us. The book is not just a study on the history of cults, but an examination on why they seem to b...
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Rapper Dezzy Hollow's new wave of West Coast funk

May 20, 2025 • 35 mins
Rapper and producer Dezzy Hollow is a master of modern day West Coast funk. Earlier this year he released an album called OCEANSIDE, which he named after his hometown. He chats with us about the record, what he hopes his music can bring to the city and much more.

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Keita Takahashi created one of the most beloved cult video games ever

May 16, 2025 • 33 mins
Video game creator Keita Takahashi joins us to talk about how he got into designing video games and how he pitched the idea for his popular game Katamari Damacy to the folks at Namco. He also talks with us about his new game, to a T, which comes out soon. A version of this interview originally ran in April of 2024.

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Lisa Kudrow

May 13, 2025 • 46 mins
Lisa Kudrow's big break was on the massively successful sitcom Friends. She portrayed the street-wise, but kind of clueless Phoebe Buffay. She's one of Friends' most beloved characters. Before she broke out on that show she envisioned a very different future. Kudrow on her early career in science research, the cruelty of middle-schoolers that set her on the path to acting, and being mentored by Jon Lovitz.

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Jean Grae

May 9, 2025 • 46 mins
Jean Grae is back on the show! The multidisciplinary artist just wrote a collection of personal essays called In My Remaining Years. She joins us to talk about the new book, why she distanced herself from rapping, her upbringing and much more.

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Bob Mackie

May 6, 2025 • 40 mins
This week, it's Bob Mackie! Mackie has made a career out of dressing big personalities in kinetic, sparkling garb. His life and career were profiled in an incredible documentary late last year. Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion covers the era-defining design work he did and the extraordinary life he's lived. Mackie talks to Bullseye about his early affinity for performance outfits, marrying costumes and comedy, and getting started in the ...
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Comedian Mike Drucker on the craziest day of his career

May 2, 2025 • 13 mins
The Craziest Day of My Entire Career is a segment where folks join us to talk about some truly unbelievable stories. Comedian Mike Drucker has had his fair share of crazy days – he's work for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Adam Ruins Everything, and Saturday Night Live. But his craziest day? It all happened at a paintball game when he was working for a little company called Nintendo. Good Game, No Rematch by Mike Drucker is out no...
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Andor creator Tony Gilroy

April 29, 2025 • 53 mins
Writer, director and showrunner Tony Gilroy joins us to talk about the new season of Andor and what makes the show so different than any other Star Wars program. He also shares what his plans are after the series concludes, and tells us about how he almost entered a career in music instead of film.

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Charles Burnett

April 25, 2025 • 29 mins
This week on Bullseye, we talk to filmmaker Charles Burnett. His most famous film, Killer of Sheep, was part of his Masters' thesis at UCLA Film School in 1977. Now, it's in the Criterion Collection and the Library of Congress. His 1999 romance film, The Annihilation of Fish, has just been restored and set for its first theatrical release. He talks to Bullseye about representing communities authentically, the tension of studying at...
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Fat Joe

April 22, 2025 • 32 mins
Rapper Fat Joe is charming, verbose, and direct. He is a man who radiates confidence. You wanna make a banger for the club? Fat Joe's got em – Lean Back, What's Luv? ft. Ashanti, and All The Way Up. The Bronx legend joins us on the latest episode of Bullseye to talk about collaborating with KRS-One , LL Cool J and his latest record The World Changed On Me. He also gets into his childhood, his family and how he keeps it real after t...
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Hieroglyphics' Casual on the song that changed his life

April 18, 2025 • 13 mins
The Song That Changed My Life is a segment that gives a chance for musicians and artists to tell us about the song that made them who they are. This week, we talked to Casual – he was a founding member of underground Bay Area rap crew Hieroglyphics. Casual talks about Ride the Rhythm from Chill Rob G's debut album. The track helped Casual visualize his own flow when he was coming up. Casual breaks down the song's lyrics and Chill R...
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Josh Gad

April 15, 2025 • 38 mins
Josh Gad joins us to talk about his new memoir In Gad We Trust: A Tell Some. He also gets into what life was like growing up in South Florida, the one time he refuses to use his Olaf voice and winning three national titles in teen oratory competitions.

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Bruce Vilanch is proud of all the awful TV he made

April 11, 2025 • 41 mins
Bruce Vilanch wrote for countless TV variety shows dating back over 50 years. Sometimes, those shows turn out great! Think of Billy Crystal at the Oscars! The stuff that's not so great, you can read about in his new book: It Seemed Like A Bad Idea At The Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote. Vilanch tells Bullseye stories from behind the scenes of the Oscars, The Brady Bunch, and the Star Wars Holiday Specia...
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Christina Hendricks

April 8, 2025 • 46 mins
Christina Hendricks joins us this week to talk about the new Hulu series Good American Family. She also chats with us about her time as a model and a ballet dancer, and what life's been like for her after starring on one of the biggest shows ever – Mad Men.

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Laurie Metcalf

April 4, 2025 • 34 mins
Jesse talks with one of the greats: Laurie Metcalf. For nine years she played Jackie on the hit TV show Roseanne. These days, she's starring in The Conners, the ABC produced spinoff of the show. The Conners is wrapping its 7th and final season right now. On the latest episode, Laurie talks about her Oscar-nominated role in Lady Bird as well as her role on Roseanne and The Conners.

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