I Think You're Interesting

Mahershala Ali, from Moonlight to True Detective

Few actors have had as surprising a past few years as Mahershala Ali. Known for his parts on TV shows like The 4400 and House of Cards and in movies like The Curious Case

What do The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Parks and Rec have in common? Michael Schur.

Michael Schur is one of the most adept minds in TV comedy. From his early days producing the Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon-era Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, to his w

Christmas music you won't get sick of, with R&B star PJ Morton

If you've talked to Todd at all, you know how much he enjoys Christmas music. And, sure, he enjoys the stuff that gets overplayed year after year, but he gets why you're

Losing is hard. But comedian Chris Gethard says it’s necessary.

The Chris Gethard Show might have been Todd’s favorite talk show of the decade, a weird, tossed-off calamity that emerged every week like an odd magic trick. It made the

How to not screw up Thanksgiving dinner, with Salt Fat Acid Heat's Samin Nosrat

This episode originally ran in November of 2017. It’s almost Thanksgiving, which means home chefs all around the United States (Todd among them) are trying to find a way

Hollywood’s past can help us understand its present. Karina Longworth shows us how.

Karina Longworth’s Hollywood history podcast, You Must Remember This, is one of the most essential shows out there for movie fans. Each week, Longworth dives into a story

Writer Diablo Cody, on Jennifer's Body, Juno, and Jagged Little Pill (the musical)

Diablo Cody's career took off into the stratosphere when her very first produced script — 2007's quirky comedy Juno — led to a massive box office hit that also won her th

How to build a civilization from scratch

Imagine you're a time traveler whose time machine has functioned somewhere in Earth's past — after humans have evolved but before they've, say, invented language or agric

What great horror looks and sounds like, with the makers of The Terror and A Quiet Place

With Halloween right around the corner, we felt it's as timely as ever to revisit this episode from earlier this year. Sometimes, the scariest thing is what you don’t s

Why Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, launched a true crime podcast

Yeardley Smith is one of the most famous women on Earth — though you might not know it if you just bumped into her somewhere, at least until she said something. See, Smit

Better Call Saul's showrunner tells us everything about the show's amazing finale

Few TV shows are better than AMC's Better Call Saul. But if you told that to someone in 2015, when the show debuted, they might look at you askance. Yes, the show was a

The history of the American circus, with the people who worked there

The circus! At one time, it was one of the country’s most reliable forms of mass entertainment, crisscrossing American backroads to perform for people all over the nation

BoJack Horseman's sly, funny brilliance, explained by the people who make it

This episode is a rebroadcast of an episode from 2017, but with BoJack Horseman's fifth season recently debuting, we thought it was a great time to revisit it. Todd love

Jon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s bandleader, on making music in New Orleans, on the subway, and on late night TV

Jon Batiste makes some of TV’s best music, night in and night out. As bandleader of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the multi-instrumentalist comes up with perfect tu

Janet from The Good Place and Kelli from Insecure on making TV's funniest shows even funnier

We're focusing on TV scene stealers this week, as we head into a new fall season. These two performers take some of the best shows on TV and make them even better, sidlin

TV ratings, explained

The Nielsen ratings might not have as much power as they once held, but they still can decide the fate of your favorite TV show. If nobody's watching, it could be cancele

One of the best TV shows of the year is a documentary about racial inequities in education

Steve James is one of the best documentary filmmakers to ever have lived. His movies examine the fault lines that underlie American society, often (but not always) those

How to make a movie starring the internet, with Eighth Grade director Bo Burnham

The new coming-of-age comedy Eighth Grade is one of the surprise success stories of the summer, turning a tiny story of a 13-year-old girl’s last week in the titular grad

The incredible true story behind Spike Lee's new movie BlacKkKlansman

The new movie BlacKkKlansman is careful to let you know very early on that, yes, its story is a true one, with a few embellishments for film. And it likely does so becaus

Why the binge model doesn’t always make the best TV

There’s a reason TV critics and reporters call FX Networks president and CEO John Landgraf the “mayor of television” — and it’s not just because that’s kind of a funny ti