Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat, represents the 80th Assembly District in her hometown of San Diego. Raised by a single mother who worked as a nurse, Lorena learned the value of service early. She went to Stanford, Georgetown, and UCLA Law and dedicated her career to labor organizing before taking office in 2013. Her impressive list of wins includes: paid sick leave, overtime for farmworkers, protecting janitorial workers against sexual assault, automatic voter registration at the DMV, diaper tax relief…the list goes on and on. She talks with Alec about her controversial “gig worker bill,” which required companies to reclassify independent contractors as employees, her sharp words for Elon Musk, and why it’s time for California to elect a Latina to statewide office.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As part of our summer archives series, we revisit Alec’s interview with two rock legends, Patti Smith and Peter Frampton. Alec’s conversation with Patti Smith took place before a live audience at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey, in December 2016. She tells Alec she was never looking for fame. Her love of poetry, art, and a desire to “do something great” motivated her to move to New York when she was 20. She chronicled her formative friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe in her best-selling memoir, Just Kids. She talks to Alec about fame, friendship, and motherhood. Peter Frampton’s double album, Frampton Comes Alive! is one of the best-selling live albums of all time, and it completely changed his life. Frampton started playing guitar before he was eight years old. He talked to Alec about his musical roots in England, playing in bands like The Preachers and The Herd, and how, at 14, the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman became his mentor.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alex Gibney is one of the most respected and prolific documentary filmmakers in history. His stories feature strong characters and a propulsive narrative that often exposes malfeasance or incompetency, and the victim is often the little guy or our highest ideals, like democracy. Gibney has made over 30 has made in the last two decades, including Taxi to the Dark Side, his 2008 film about the CIA’s use of torture for which he won an Oscar. Alex Gibney talks to Alec about his latest film, The Crime of the Century (HBO), which he wrote, directed, produced, and narrated, and which explores the crime and manipulation at the center of the nation’s opioid crisis. He also talks about inheriting his anti-authoritarian views, early lessons working with Scorcese, and what it was like to take on a legend like Sinatra. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As part of our every-other-week summer archives series, we revisit two interviews from 2015 with masters of misdirection, Penn Jillette and David Blaine. Penn Jillette is half of the world-famous act Penn & Teller, and they star in one of the longest-running shows in Las Vegas history. In addition to juggling and card tricks, Penn Jillette plays upright bass and is the author of eight books, including his New York Times bestseller, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales. Blaine is an acclaimed street magician and sleight of hand artist and also performs staggering feats of endurance. He once spent 35 hours on a hundred-foot-high pillar without a harness. He encased himself in a six-ton block of ice for 63 hours, and, in 2006, he spent seven days and nights submerged in a tank of water in public.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When he was just out of high school, Jackson Browne moved to NYC and wrote songs for some of the biggest names of the 1960’s folk scene. Then, when he returned home to Los Angeles two years later, he began singing his own material and set his course to become one of the greatest singer-songwriters of his generation. Today, Jackson Browne’s voice is still strong and political. He talks with Alec about his new album, Downhill From Everywhere, reflections on a life of activism, and the artists he’d still love to sing with.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s summer, and every other week, members of the Here’s The Thing staff are selecting favorite interviews from the archives. This week, we revisit Alec’s interviews with two award-winning, dynamic actresses who happen to have a lot in common, Julianne Moore and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Alec and Julianne Moore worked together on Still Alice (Julianne won an Academy Award for Best Actress) and 30 Rock. She spoke with Alec in 2014 about the chops she developed doing soap operas early on, her work on a string of independent movies in the 1990s, and why it’s always important to give even the most minor roles your best. Alec talked with Maggie Gyllenhaal before a live audience in 2018 at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Maggie talked about her early experiences in theater, what she’s learned about trust, and the ways her confidence has grown over her remarkable career.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Musical theater legends Ken Page and Betty Buckley have a lot in common. Both grew up dreaming of performing on Broadway: Ken in St. Louis; Betty in Fort Worth. Both were in the original Broadway production of Cats, Ken as Old Deuteronomy and Betty as Grizabella, for which she won a Tony. And both were pioneers in transforming musical theater over the past several decades. One of Ken Page’s most recognizable roles was as Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and, on Broadway, he starred in the 1976 all-Black revival of Guys and Dolls and in the original cast of The Wiz and Ain’t Misbehavin’. Betty Buckley has been called “the Voice of Broadway” with and she’s also starred in TV (Eight is Enough) and films (Split, Carrie, Tender Mercies, Frantic).  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Kurt Andersen started working on his new podcast, Nixon at War, he thought he knew a lot about Richard Nixon’s presidency, especially the bookend events of his 1968 campaign and his 1973 resignation. Devastating events with far-reaching consequences but unrelated - or so he thought. The surprising connections between the two are at the heart of Nixon at War. Kurt Andersen is a prize-winning novelist, historian, and public radio host (Studio 360). His most recent books -- Evil Geniuses, Fantasyland, and You Can’t Spell America Without Me, were all New York Times bestsellers. For more, visit Nixonatwar.org.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alec talks with two very different actors. Eddie Marsan grew up in working-class London and left school at 15 to become a printer. He was discovered on a dance floor, and a patron helped him afford drama school. Marsan’s worked with the likes of Martin Scorcese, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Mike Leigh, and he often gets cast as the tough guy. It’s an image he’s ready to shed. One of his most recent roles was in the Showtime series Ray Donovan as Terry Donovan, Ray’s brother with Parkinson’s disease. David Arquette comes from a long line of entertainers. His career hit a lull two decades ago when he won a WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It seemed Hollywood scorned him due to his love of pro wrestling. A self-produced documentary, You Cannot Kill David Arquette, chronicles David Arquette’s journey to store his name and his sense of self. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alec’s guest Mark Harris has written a compelling new biography about one of the most celebrated directors of all time, Mike Nichols. Drawn from more than 250 interviews, Mike Nichols: A Life tracks Nichol’s difficult childhood as a German Jewish immigrant growing up in New York City to his college years at the University of Chicago where Nichols found a community of performers, including his life-long collaborator Elaine May. In 1963, Mike Nichols and Elaine May performed more than 300 sold-out comedy shows on Broadway. Nichols then spent decades moving fluidly between directing on Broadway and in Hollywood. His movies include The Graduate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Silkwood, and Working Girl, and his plays include Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and Monty Python’s Spamalot. Over the course of his lifetime, Mike Nichols’ won every major award in his field and, as Mark Harris movingly chronicles, it took a lifetime for Mike Nichols to learn to be happy.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.