Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Kat Owens is a plastic pollution researcher, artist, and activist. She merges science, policy, and the arts to address plastic pollution in her ongoing art series “Entangled and Ingested” which showcases portraits of animals affected by plastic pollution…made of plastic. Owens is also a National Geographic Explorer, a Fulbright Nehru fellow, and a Professor at the University of Hartford in the Department of Polit...

Jonathan Mahler is a longtime staff writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author of the best-selling book Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, New York Times notable book The Challenge: Hamdan V. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power, and recently published book The Gods of New York: The Tumultuous Eighties, from Donald Trump to the Tompkins Square Riots. Mahler’s first book was adapted into a mini-se...

Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker are an unexpected duo. Formerly a New York State Senator, Daniel Squadron represented New York’s 25th and 26th districts for almost ten years. After leaving public office, Squadron co-founded a civic engagement initiative called The States Project - of which he is currently President. Melissa Walker was formerly a magazine editor and journalist published in countless magazines such as Sevent...

Tommy James started making music when he was 4 years old and he hasn’t stopped. Tommy is a musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and the frontman of rock band Tommy James and the Shondells. Known for timeless classics such as “Crimson and Clover”, “Crystal Blue Persuasion”, “Hanky Panky”, “Sweet Cherry Wine”, and “Draggin’ the Line” Tommy James has ama...

Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi is one of the most in-demand maestros in the world, and one of Alec’s favorite conductors. Järvi is currently the chief conductor of the NHK symphony orchestra in Tokyo and the Tonhalle Orchester-Zürich. Over his career, he’s led orchestras in Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Malmö, and, for the decade between 2001 and 2011, here in the United States, as the musical directo...

Mallory McMorrow is a state senator representing Michigan’s 8th district and also a candidate for the United States Senate in the 2026 election. Mallory McMorrow currently serves as the Michigan Senate Majority Whip and is the first woman in state history to hold that position. A member of the Democratic Party, McMorrow represents the 8th district and previously represented the 13th district from 2019 to 2023. Pr...

Coming from a challenging, working class upbringing in the United Kingdom, Steve Jones discovered his outlet in music - as founding guitarist of the groundbreaking punk rock band the Sex Pistols. Despite the release of only one album,”Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols,” the band changed the course of music and history - vocalizing issues of class in songs like “Anarchy in the U.K.” &ndash...

Zoë Schlanger is an author, journalist, and current staff writer at the Atlantic, where she covers the newsletter “The Weekly Planet”. Schlanger has written for major outlets such as Newsweek, Quartz, Wired, The New York Times, The Nation, Time Magazine, and NPR. Schlanger is also the author of the 2024 book The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. He...

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. 

Originally aired Fe...

Andrea Barton Reeves is a former ad litem lawyer, CEO of Harc. Inc - a nonprofit organization supporting people with intellectual disabilities and their families, and the founding CEO of the Connecticut Paid Leave Program - the state’s first new agency in 12 years thanks to which over 200,000 individuals and families have received paid family leave benefits. With over twenty years of experience in advocacy, Barton Reeves has ...

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Most recently, filmmaker Alex Gibney directed an HBO documentary based on Wright's reporting in Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Unbelief.

Much of Wright's work is about how&n...

It’s the leading cause of preventable death across much of Europe and North America, responsible for the loss of 41 million lives in the US, UK and Canada between 1960 and 2020. These staggering statistics beg the question: Why is anyone still smoking? Dr. Lynn Kozlowski, renowned expert in tobacco use and nicotine policy, is Professor Emeritus and Dean Emeritus of Community Health and Health Behavior at the University of Buf...

Singer, songwriter, producer, and actor Steven Van Zandt aka Little Steven is perhaps best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. But the talented musician also co-founded the band Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, as well as his solo act, Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul. He later found success in an entirely different career, playing the inimitable role of Tony Soprano’s consigliere Silvio Dan...

Two leading voices in the fight for environmental and human rights justice are Steven Donziger and Paul Paz y Miño. Steven Donziger is an attorney and activist known for his decades-long legal battle against Chevron on behalf of Indigenous peoples and rural communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. His work has drawn international attention to issues of corporate accountability, climate justice, and the criminalization of human ...

Thom Yorke, Radiohead and Atoms for Peace frontman, admits that, even after over 25 years in the business, performing is “either wicked fun or really awful.” He talks with Alec about his pre-show ritual—"I stand on my head for a bit"—and how he and his bandmates have been able to stick together since they were teenagers. 

Originally aired April 1st, 2013

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy infor...

Isaac Butler is an author, critic, theater director, and professor known for his books The Method: How The Twentieth Century Learned to Act and The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, co-written with Dan Kois. Butler’s writing has appeared in numerous publications such as New York magazine, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Slate magazine. For Slate, he also created and hosted the podca...

Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s interview with Moby, who reflects on the unexpected success of his 1999 album Play—a record that transformed him from playing gigs in record stores to internat...

Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with David Letterman, who began his Late Night gig as a self-described “gap-toothed, unknown smart ass.” Three decades later, Letterman refl...

Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Barry Gibb, the last surviving member of the legendary Bee Gees. Barry reflects on the group’s rise from childhood dreams of stardom to becoming one of the best-selling music ...