Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Director, writer, and actor Benny Safdie stops by Sam’s home this week to discuss his new film, The Smashing Machine (1:30)—an unflinching portrait of mixed martial arts icon Mark Kerr (7:00), played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (9:00).

In the second half, we revisit our conversation from 2023. There, Safdie unpacks his collaboration with comedian Nathan Fielder on their television series The Curse (4...

Few writers have examined the tension between history and morality more urgently than Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Last fall, on the heels of his new book The Message, Coates joined Sam for a conversation live in Los Angeles. At the top, they discuss how his Atlantic piece The Case for Reparations guided these three new essays (6:10), Coates’ early education growing up in West Baltimore (14:57), and his powerful dispatches from S...

“Sometimes I feel that I’m not going to write again,” says Arundhati Roy, “but then it becomes harder to keep quiet than to write it.”

Few writers have bridged the personal and political as powerfully as Arundhati Roy. With her first memoir, fittingly titled Mother Mary Comes to Me, she turns to her turbulent relationship with her late mother, Mary Roy, a pioneering feminist who reshaped In...

Director Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t just want to make movies. He wants to change them. This was true in 1969 when he co-founded Zoetrope Studios with George Lucas, and it remains true today.

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

We return to our talk with Coppola upon the anniversary of his modern-day Roman epic fable Megalopolis, discussing his decades-long process developing the film (6:16) and the...

At this year’s Primetime Emmys, Seth Rogen took home four major awards for The Studio, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

We sat with Rogen around the show’s release back in the spring to discuss his key influences (6:15), from Robert Altman’s The Player to The Larry Sanders Show (13:25), the evolving state of “show business” (15:36), and a life-c...

This month marks 50 years of Terry Gross as the host of Fresh Air. What began in 1975 as a local experiment at WHYY in Philadelphia has since grown into a national institution—one that not only transformed public radio, but laid the groundwork for the world of podcasting.

To commemorate a half-century on the air, Terry Gross joins us for a rare appearance in the interview seat. At the top, we discuss her Brooklyn upbri...

Eight years ago, cook and writer Samin Nosrat created a kitchen staple with Salt Fat Acid Heat: a New York Times bestseller that later became a hit Netflix series. Nosrat returns with Good Things, a collection of personal recipes straight from her dining table.

We discuss the influences that shaped the book (8:30), the ephemerality (and pleasure) of produce (9:30), her complicated San Diego childhood growing up with Iranian ...

Over the long holiday weekend, Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) released his latest album, Essex Honey. To celebrate, we return to our 2022 conversation with the visionary musician.

At the top, we dive into his EP Four Songs (3:15), performing at Madison Square Garden with Harry Styles (4:40), and the process that guides much of his music (6:39). Then, Dev describes growing up in Essex, England (7:04), falling in love with music at ...

We’re excited to share a new show from Lemonada Media: The Dan Buettner Podcast. Today’s episode features the incomparable Laura Dern.

In his groundbreaking Blue Zones research, National Geographic explorer and bestselling author Dan Buettner uncovered the secrets to longevity and happiness from the world’s longest-lived populations. Now, on the podcast, he’s sharing the practical habits, mindset...

It’s been a year in Los Angeles. Between the historic wildfires, rapid recovery efforts, and the ICE raids over the summer, Mayor Karen Bass has been tasked with moving at a breakneck speed to meet the demands of a city in peril.

Watch this conversation on our new YouTube channel.

The Mayor joins us this week to reflect on her office’s response to ICE in Los Angeles (7:00), the federalization of thousands ...

With the arrival of Weapons in theaters, we return to our conversation with actor Josh Brolin.

Since the turn of the century, Brolin has had quite a run. From No Country for Old Men and Hail, Caesar! from the Coen Brothers, to Inherent Vice from Paul Thomas Anderson, to Sicario and the Dune films from Denis Villeneuve.

His memoir, From Under the Truck, contains stories about the life in between. We discuss his upbringing ...

Actor Julia Garner (Ozark) has built a career out of shapeshifting. This summer, the Emmy-winning performer lands on the silver (surfer) screen with two major projects—The Fantastic Four: First Steps and the highly-anticipated horror film, Weapons.

At the top, we walk through the spine-tingling world of Zach Cregger’s new film (6:45), the Moleskine character journals she keeps for each role (9:22), and some lesso...

David Mamet is one of the most celebrated American playwrights of the last century: Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, and Glengarry Glen Ross— which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1983 and remains timely today. Our conversation unfolds, fittingly, in three acts. 

Act I: the inspiration behind his new novel about education, Some Recollections of St. Ives (5:38), weathering the &lsqu...

Long before Celine Song was nominated for an Academy Award for her feature directorial debut, Past Lives, she was a struggling playwright in New York City with an unusual side hustle: matchmaking.

In this special episode presented by Death, Sex & Money, host Anna Sale sits with Celine to unpack how this personal experience inspired the plot of her new A24 movie, Materialists, starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pasc...

After nearly four decades of working in Hollywood, actor Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent, Pieces of April) says her portrayal of women’s rights activist Lilly Ledbetter is “the greatest privilege” in her storied career.

We sat with the legendary actress as part of this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival to discuss her powerful turn in Lilly (4:10), her colorful New Orleans upbringing (10:17), and the educator ...

“I wanted to be good, but I completely burned up the morning,” said Joaquin Phoenix on day 1 of Eddington. “Ari and I stayed on set when everyone left for lunch—and, slowly, something emerged. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it didn’t make me want to end everything.”

With the film’s arrival in theaters, we return to our candid, long-form talk with Phoenix. At the top, we unpa...

“Eddington is a film about a bunch of people who know that something is wrong,” says writer-director Ari Aster. “It’s just that nobody can agree on what that thing is.”

Aster joins us this week to unpack his controversial, COVID-era western: his time back home in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he wrote through lockdown (9:30), the works of Robert Altman (18:00) and Oliver Stone (19:15) that served as so...

Writer/director Lena Dunham is the voice of my generation. Or at the very least, a voice of a generation. Her new show, Too Much, is now available to stream on Netflix.

We start by discussing her 2022 film Sharp Stick (6:20), the 1970s cinema that inspired it (9:50), and how it offers a “three-way mirror” to the female experience (12:41). Then, Lena reflects on meeting Judd Apatow on the heels of Tiny Furnitur...

From the opinion pages of The New York Times to his popular TikTok feed, Jamelle Bouie is a leading voice in American politics.

This week, Bouie helps us sift through the inner workings of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (4:38): its promise of prosperity for the middle class (8:44), the “moral economy” guiding the legislation (13:00), the projected losses in healthcare coverage across the country (18:07),...