Talk Easy in 2024: A Mixtape

It’s been a year. And while we’re not quite done with it (3:15), we wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of our favorite episodes and guests from 2024. On the front half, we revisit passages from actor-turned-director Dev Patel (5:45), the legendary Francis Ford Coppola on Jacques Tati and failure (11:45), filmmaker Ava DuVernay on the state of Hollywood (17:47), and Dr. Seema Jilani on her work in Gaza (26:36). On the back end, Abbi Jacobson’s interview with Sam (35:05), NYT reporter Astead Herndon on why the 2024 election was not inevitable (42:47), and national treasure Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Wiser than Me” https://lemonadamedia.com/show/wiser-than-me-with-julia-louis-dreyfus/) on perseverance and posterity (49:55). Plus, a Joker ending (1:08:00). What was your favorite from the past twelve months? Write us below or say hello at [email protected]. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  Pushkin.

• 0:30Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:48Sam Fragoso?

  Hey, everyone. Today on the show, we're highlighting some of my favorite moments from the past year on the program. But before we do that, I have a little bit of housekeeping to do. First, yes, I'm a little bit under the weather. That's why I sound like this. If you're thinking, but you kind of always sound like this, point taken. In the coming weeks, we will be announcing some big news about the future of Talk Easy. It's good news. Don't worry. We'll also be releasing a couple new conversations before the end of the year. One, next Sunday, and then another on Sunday, the 22nd. There may even be a midweek bonus episode in there, so stay tuned for that. Also, if you'd like to keep up

• 1:33Sam Fragoso?

  with everything happening on the show, you can sign up for our newsletter at talkeasypod.com. Just scroll down the homepage and you'll see a place to sign up. If you don't want to do that and you just want to email me, you can sign up by dropping me a line at [email protected]. That's [email protected].

• 1:57Sam Fragoso?

  For today, though, in the spirit of Spotify wrapped and all of those annual year-end best of lists, we've curated a mixtape of moments that have really stayed with me this year. We've released just about an episode a week for the past 52 weeks. So this is in no way an exhaustive overview of all that we've done. So I'd love to hear what episodes or moments meant something to you in 2024. Again, you can reach me at [email protected]. The emails we have received from people this year about particular moments or particular guests are just an absolute joy to read. And it also lets us know what kind of conversations

• 2:42Sam Fragoso?

  you want to hear on the show. To start, I want to offer two stories about two very different filmmakers of varying ages who both laid everything on the line to get their respective passion projects made. First up is Dev Patel and his directorial debut, Monkey Man, which he fought tooth and nail with the guidance of Jordan Peele to bring to life and into theaters. And in this section, he talks about the process of making the movie and a response that he received from an audience member that I think reminded him why he got in this business in the first place. Here is actor turned director Dev Patel.

• 3:35Sam Fragoso?

  You said once, ambition is beautiful, but you have to remember what you're doing it for. And at the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about that ambition, your desire to make this movie, the lengths you and your crew were willing to go to, to make this movie. Now that you've made it, do you have a better idea of who or what you're doing it for?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  I think I was doing it for little dev, young dev, who, you know.

• 4:05Sam Fragoso?

  Acne dev?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  No, yeah, acne dev. I was doing it for acne dev. Big ear, fresh prince of Bel-Air haircut dev.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Really, I, um, my gateway into cinema was watching Bruce Lee. You know, a guy that had similar skin color to me and dark hair and all that.

• 4:20Sam Fragoso?

  Enter the dragon?

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, Enter the Dragon, man. Changed my life. And I wanted to be expressed in the genre. I wanted to exist in the genre. I want people like me to exist. After South by, you know, this, this Indian man came up to me and he goes, um, I'm jealous of my 14 year old son. And I was like, that's a really weird thing to open a conversation with. And he was holding my hand and shaking and wouldn't let go. And I go, what, what, what do you mean? And he was like, it's the first time he's got someone on screen in a film like this that looks like him to look up to. And he goes, I'm so proud of you and, and, and keep it up. And I, I again was like, I don't know, maybe it was my hormones that day, but it was, I'm not the best with compliments, but that one, that one caught me off guard and, and it meant the world because that was the objective of it.

• 5:03Sam Fragoso?

  Making this film was hard. The pre-production was hard. The production was hard. The post-production.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:10Sam Fragoso?

  Sounds like it was hard.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:13Sam Fragoso?

  I want to know, when you're struggling in post-production, what did Jordan Peele see that others could not?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  We got on the, our first conversation was almost three hours long. And he understood what I was going for, which is to use genre as a Trojan horse to talk about more stuff. I didn't want to just do a film that just had a barrage of punches and kicks that kind of wash over you like a video game. I wanted the emotional punches, the political punches, the kicks to mean something too and kind of wrap it in this kind of film that will, you know, people will access. If you want to talk about, you know, violence against women, you know, about the caste system against, you know, religion. Basically, it's a revenge film about faith. He got all of those things. As a guy, you know, who does that incredibly well, you know, with his films. I think he saw that.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  And at the same time, you know, he saw, he's someone that's kind of, was able to step out of a kind of box that he was put in. And reinvent himself, you know. And there's a line in the, in, in, in Monkey Man, this character Alpha tells me, he goes, you know, you need to destroy in order to grow, to create space for new life. I was reading about, you know, the Aboriginals in Australia and controlled burnings in order to nourish the soil to create new life. And I just thought, what an incredible philosophy. It's like, you know, I had to destroy myself, my old avatar of myself, destroy everything. And I, I wanted to destroy the image the audience had of me or all of those, even the guys that we'd hired, that we fired because they overlooked me as this, this, you

• 6:46Speaker 02

  know, oh, he's just this silly actor. He's, this is going to crumble. We're in Indonesia and they're not helping. I wanted to prove them all wrong. I wanted to destroy that perception.

• 6:57Sam Fragoso?

  And did you?

• 6:58Speaker 02

  I mean, the last song in the movie is called Grow by Faisal. And that's me hopefully growing and showing, you know, this is a new chapter, I hope.

• 7:06Sam Fragoso?

  Your father is fond of quoting a philosopher.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Hmm, Tagore.

• 7:11Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. My dad doesn't quote a lot, by the way. He doesn't talk a lot at all. So when he dropped those lyrics, I was like, dad.

• 7:18Sam Fragoso?

  The lyric was, "I've spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung."

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:28Sam Fragoso?

  What does that mean to you now?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  I couldn't let it go because.

• 7:32Sam Fragoso?

  The film?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I had, I'd actually walked off it when our financier went bankrupt and they kind of took the film over and were doing a bad job with all the sound and the color and the VFX. So I'd left it because I couldn't endorse it. And then, um, you know, we had such a short time with Universal to kind of make it mine again and undo all of the kind of stuff that, you know, some random third party had done to the movie. But, uh, you know, there was many a times when I was writing this long text on my phone to apologize to my cast and crew for letting them down. And I never sent it, thank God. But, um, you know, at one point I told my dad, I can't endorse this. I can't be like in this movie. He's a performing monkey for a crowd. I don't want to be that performing monkey for something I've worked so hard on if it's not going to be what I want it

• 8:16Speaker 02

  to be. And, uh, he goes, he told me this quote and he goes, "I'm with you, son, but remember this." And I was like, fuck, I gotta, I gotta sing this song. Cause like I said, young Dev, you know, he would want to see it. People like me will want to see this and feel it. So, yeah.

• 8:31Sam Fragoso?

  There's a line in the movie, I think, um, "The pain will leave you once it's finished teaching you."

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:38Sam Fragoso?

  What has it taught and hasn't left?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  The pain hasn't left, but what it taught me is to never take no for an answer. I really found this next level possessed level of belief in this thing. And I've never had that before. And, you know, that's what it's taught me is to believe in myself a bit more.

• 9:04Sam Fragoso?

  Next up, a story about another filmmaker who bet the farm, determined to make his dream project a reality. This is the one and only Francis Ford Coppola.

• 9:17Sam Fragoso?

  You know, the thing I want to talk about, when I mentioned the Apocalypse, Megalopolis, how they're linked, one of the ways these two films are linked is that, one, you own them. And two, you own them because you struggled to find support from.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  I own them because nobody wanted them.

• 9:36Sam Fragoso?

  Exactly. But I'm curious, this rejection, for people who don't remember, of Apocalypse Now, came after having made The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part Two. Like, there's almost no run in the history of cinema that is.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  And five Oscars.

• 9:51Sam Fragoso?

  Better than that.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  And still, they wouldn't let me make Apocalypse Now.

• 9:54Sam Fragoso?

  They wouldn't let you do that. And I wonder, both then and now, do you think that resistance comes back to what your father, who was a great musician, who you hired on both of the Godfather films, to the thing he always told you growing up? Which is that, like kids resisting a new kind of food, it's always tough to get people to try something new.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  I don't remember him saying that, but I'm sure he did. But yes, that's, that's, oh, yeah, no, no, it's just struck a little bit. That's exactly true. I mean, like, you know who is the filmmaker who really did the closest to what I've done in my career? Jacques Tati. Jacques Tati had this wonderful career. He made these wonderful monuncles.

• 10:39Sam Fragoso?

  Unbelievable.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, wonderful. And he made a lot of money with the success. And he took everything he had. And and he wanted to make a film no one wanted him to make. And he took everything he had and invested it in this one dream project that he had and made it and it was a big flop. And he was lived in poverty and it sort of hung out in the houses of people who loved him because he was Jacques, but he had lost everything and died. And that film was Playtime, which is a magnificent masterpiece. I mean, how do you not get on your knees and say to Jacques, thanks for making us so happy to, for anyone who's not seen Playtime, see it and you'll laugh, you'll laugh yourself

• 11:23Speaker 03

  silly in a profound way, you know, his comment on modern life is so great. So we wouldn't have had it if he hadn't made that sacrifice. Or Bizet wrote Carmen and they booted and he had a bad heart and he died of a heart attack at 50 and never knew that Carmen, the opera that is the favorite of people who go to see operas, was made by a guy who thought it was the giant flop. So so the history is full of this stuff.

• 11:54Sam Fragoso?

  And did you think of the historical context as you yourself were bumping up against that?

• 12:01Speaker 03

  I don't know ever, you know, I lucked out with Apocalypse Now, but when Apocalypse came out, it was the interest in those days that I was borrowing the money was 20, 20, I thought it was more, but they say it's 21% during that period. I mean, that's a lot of interest, you know, and it opened so, so, you know, the wonderful Dustin Hoffman movie, what was the one that won everything with Meryl Streep and the divorce?

• 12:27Sam Fragoso?

  Kramer versus Kramer.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was one of all the Oscars, Apocalypse Now, you know, and it got bad reviews from some very important, Frank Rich said it was the biggest disaster, Hollywood and everybody, you know, so I was pretty.

• 12:40Sam Fragoso?

  I wonder if he still believes that.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I don't know. I don't even know, I think he is alive, but, but a lot of people, I mean, people, there are people who even said bad things about Apocalypse Now that, I mean, Godfather that I remember. I remember someone, which particularly annoyed me, saying, well, Godfather has great actors and great photography and great art direction and great music, but the direction, and, and my answer was, well, I chose all those people who did all those great things. But, I don't know, I'm an old man now, I mean, I've led, lived this, I've seen some wonderful things in my life, I have the most wonderful children you could have, I have a great grandson, I'm okay.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  And I've had this, what is to me the greatest reward of all, when a filmmaker that I admire comes to me and said he became a filmmaker because he saw Apocalypse Now or Rumblefish or so, you know, it's always tough to make a film and have people say, what the hell is that?

• 13:39Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  I feel it says what it's trying to say pretty clearly at the end, but I realize it's a, it's a, it's an experience that it's not like anything particularly, you could say, oh, you, you look at it and you say, wow, what's that? And then I want to see it again, usually is the reaction I get.

• 13:55Sam Fragoso?

  In terms of what films say, you have this quote, every movie has a theme, and that the style of that film ought to be something that comes out of this theme. For the Godfather pictures, not unlike Megalopolis, the theme was succession, right?

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Right. I always have one word, I learned that from Kazan.

• 14:14Sam Fragoso?

  One word?

• 14:15Speaker 03

  One word. You have to be able to say one word, because the director makes a million decisions a day, most of them you just make them fast, but if you, if you say, oh, I don't know the answer, check that word and that word will help you.

• 14:30Sam Fragoso?

  That was director Francis Ford Coppola. He put roughly $120 million of his own money into Megalopolis. However, the film was met with mixed responses and a pretty underwhelming performance at the box office. No matter, Coppola is set to go into production on his next film, a 30s-style musical, this coming spring. He'll be 85 years old, doing what he's done best for the last half century: making movies.

• 15:00Sam Fragoso?

  But the nature of doing that job, of being a filmmaker, has changed a whole lot in the past year. And there are few people as invested in its future as director Ava DuVernay. Her latest film, Origin, opened in theaters in early 2024. In the passage you're about to hear, we talk about the contraction in the film industry post-strikes and how she plans to pivot in the next chapter of her career. Let's take a listen.

• 15:30Sam Fragoso?

  We're sitting here at the top of 2024, where you very intentionally, three years ago, knew you wanted to be sitting with this film. And we're sitting post this historic double labor strike, where we've already seen a contraction in budgets, development deals, diversity initiatives, programs designed for young filmmakers looking for mentors like yourself. That's already happened and it's already been contracting since the strike was resolved in the fall. There was a recent report from USC that found 116 directors attached to 100 top grossing films in 2023. 14 of them were women.

• 16:13Sam Fragoso?

  Four of them were women of color. The gains in representation, as per usual, have been overstated, to say the least. And yet, I have here, quote after quote, from film executives in this industry, in The New York Times, in the paper of record, saying things like, "For three years, we hired nothing but women and people of color. Indeed, there was an overcorrection." I can go on and-

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Who said that?

• 16:39Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, they're all anonymous, as you can imagine.

• 16:41Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, did someone put their name to that?

• 16:43Sam Fragoso?

  No one put their name to it. But I'm voicing it here. Because I know you've had conversations with people in your life, maybe some friends of ours, where there is a fear of backsliding, where there's a fear broadly in this country of reverting to a kind of conservatism. How do you make sense of this moment?

• 17:02Speaker 00

  You know, I'll have to say, I'm probably not doing it in the way that's- that is the most-

• 17:09Speaker 00

  I don't know. I'm not sure about the way that I, how to define how I'm doing it now. All I know is that I feel like I'm tapping out. I've tried to work within the system for the last 10 years. I've sat on the boards of Sundance. I am DGA board. I am, I am a governor of the academy in my second term. I really wanted to learn. I wanted to understand how these institutions worked. And there's some great people there and beautiful legacy. But ultimately, the shifts and the cumulative effect of this, like how the overall industry works are so insignificant in their velocity, in their scope, in their real impact,

• 17:54Speaker 00

  that I feel like, you know what, I've done what I could because it was a lot. It's a lot of extra time, a lot of extra effort, a lot of calls, a lot of meetings, a lot of thinking, a lot of trying. And it's time to pass the baton to someone else who has a fresh energy and who wants to take, and I, and we did, I've achieved some things within those organizations that I'm proud of. But for me, it's just not, it's not moving at a pace that feels worth my time and effort. And I'm going to put my time and effort into what I've continued to do, but it needs to have all my time and effort, which is building Array, building independent systems, building disruptive, disruptive systems.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  And to put my focus on, on a garden that will actually grow and blossom. I feel like I'm tilling ground that I'm like an old pioneer on a bad plot. It's like, I've got my little house on the prairie and I'm trying to move this thing forward. I'm going to build another house. I'm going to go over to the house that I've built on my own and focus on that. That's my, that's where I am today. Like, I did it all. And, and I'm, I'm good. I'm just going to go over here and make my movies. You know what I mean? That's how I feel right now.

• 19:10Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Do you think I'm going to do it? You look like you don't believe me.

• 19:15Sam Fragoso?

  I make it a habit to believe people who come on this show.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 19:19Sam Fragoso?

  I certainly would make it a habit to believe you. Do I think you're tapping out? I think you'd have to define tapping out for me. Because what you just described, make more movies, run a company, something about gardening, I was trying to follow. Doesn't sound like tapping out.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Tapping out of the Hollywood industrial complex.

• 19:40Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  That's more specific.

• 19:42Sam Fragoso?

  That's what I want to understand.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:43Sam Fragoso?

  I've never heard you say, "I'm tapping out."

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Not to, of, of the way in which I've been working, which is really trying to be kind of a, you know, push forward a certain new framework for the way in which certain institutions that, you know, embody our industry work.

• 20:00Sam Fragoso?

  You said it didn't move fast enough.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:02Sam Fragoso?

  It didn't accomplish the things you wanted. What did it not do?

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Anything.

• 20:07Sam Fragoso?

  That you thought it would do?

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Anything.

• 20:08Sam Fragoso?

  Anything. You think you've done nothing to help?

• 20:11Speaker 00

  I think I've done things to help, but those are isolated incidents that are not.

• 20:15Sam Fragoso?

  Anomalies.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:16Sam Fragoso?

  Complete aberrations.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:18Sam Fragoso?

  The system itself.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:20Sam Fragoso?

  Irretrievable, can't be fixed.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Sure it can, but it needs cooperation. It needs people to want to do it, and this town does not want to do it.

• 20:27Sam Fragoso?

  Here's my fear, is that if you couldn't do it.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  But I'm just one person. It needed more, it needed more people.

• 20:34Sam Fragoso?

  That's right, okay.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  It needed more people. There's a lot, there's a lot of people trying for it.

• 20:37Sam Fragoso?

  I know that.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  But there's, there's not, not enough.

• 20:40Sam Fragoso?

  Can I ask you then, maybe this is more specific then? What does it say about the industry? And your trajectory in it? And all the experiences you're talking about and not talking about? What does it say about the industry that you went through it? And where you've landed with this new film is philanthropy?

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Well, you say philanthropy like it's a dirty word.

• 21:04Sam Fragoso?

  I'm not saying it's a dirty word. I'm saying it's a model to be replicated.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  Hmm, why not?

• 21:08Sam Fragoso?

  I don't, I don't know. Does Melinda Gates and Jobs and another woman collectively, they're worth north of $24 billion? Do I think they're going to keep financing movies? I, I guess I'm wondering where you, how you stand on all that? How you make sense of this?

• 21:24Speaker 00

  I think that, um.

• 21:26Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, I agree, this sounds great. I would love 10 more Origins. I mean, it's not possible, but.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Look, I'm not the first independent filmmaker, and I'm certainly not the first filmmaker that's made a big film, that's decided I, I'm going to make films a different way.

• 21:37Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  I'm going to make smaller films, I'm going to, I take my, less money and have more flexibility. Man, look at Soderbergh. I mean, he's just like, "I'm out. Thank you. I'm going to do it over here this way."

• 21:47Sam Fragoso?

  So you're out like Soderbergh?

• 21:48Speaker 00

  I don't know. He's still around. He's doing his thing, but he's doing it his way. And he doesn't care about that other stuff. I respect it, you know? I have to care about it a lot less. You know, I think on Origin, one of my challenges is that I'm caring way too much for a lot of things that just don't care back. And I need to care about building systems and structures that lend itself to the kinds of things I want to do.

• 22:12Sam Fragoso?

  That's right.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  You can't make Chinese food in the Italian restaurant. He rolled his eyes. He's like, I know what you're getting at, but that's a bad analogy.

• 22:20Sam Fragoso?

  I know.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  I was like, you don't have the right, you don't have the right ingredients. But actually, you do. You can do it.

• 22:25Sam Fragoso?

  I was gonna say, I think Cheesecake Factory disagrees with you.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  That's good. That's good. That's good. You know what I mean?

• 22:37Sam Fragoso?

  Of course, I know what you mean.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Like, if you want to do a certain thing, you're in a place. And I think that I started, and I was like, oh, this place can change. Like, Pete, there are people here. This is a little town. Like, it'll change. And there have been some beautiful things that happened. But my success is not change.

• 22:50Sam Fragoso?

  What does that mean?

• 22:51Speaker 00

  My success is not change. Nia DeCosta's success, Gina Prince Beithwood's success. When you can name us all on two hands. And when you read a stat like the one you just read, that's not change. That's a few lovely things that happened to a few people. And for me, that's not worth it. I would rather just try to build something sustainable and beautiful and smaller and lovely in my own likeness with people who think like me. And in some ways, I think, ah, is that small minded? Is that just closing ranks? But at some point, it just becomes what's healthy.

• 23:24Sam Fragoso?

  I don't think it's small minded.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  No, I'm glad. I don't want to feel like I'm giving up on something. I don't. I feel like I'm reaching for something new.

• 23:33Sam Fragoso?

  That was director Ava DuVernay. Her latest film, Origin, is now available to stream on Hulu. That conversation was recorded back in January. It was around that time that I came across the work of Dr. Seema Jilani, a pediatrician and aid worker who's provided humanitarian assistance in Libya, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and most recently Palestine. We spoke with her upon her return to the States after spending two weeks at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, a job she would later describe to me as, quote, "the most nightmarish thing I've seen in my career." Here she is.

• 24:14Sam Fragoso?

  In recent press, you have said that after working in Gaza, every single factor of the tapestry of society has been affected. Community, schools, hospitals, food and shelter. You said every factor of the tapestry. In real time, as you're leaving, what did that look like? How did that manifest?

• 24:37Speaker 04

  I give the example of a child that I saw around seven years old. Was not a life-threatening injury. It was a deep lacerations to his legs and required stitching. It's something I, as a pediatrician, would use ketamine for. Ketamine is an excellent drug in pediatrics. We use it for procedures. It provides pain management, but it also allows the patient to not remember the procedure. So amnesiac and pain management. We didn't have any. So I tried to distract the seven-year-old with whatever pediatric tools I have that we are taught in training. Some of them are bubbles or light flashers. I didn't have my bubbles with me that day, but I had something that typically would have worked. Didn't work for him.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  He was still screaming in agony. And then I started to do what a distraction technique that we've been taught. Children are very easily distractible and actually can withstand some degree of pain with distraction. But every single question I might ask this kid was a total landmine. If I ask him the things that I would ask a kid in the US, "What's your favorite subject at school?" He hasn't been in school in three months. "Are you closer to your mom or dad?" He was bought in by an aunt or uncle, so his parents are likely dead. "What's your favorite food?" He... I don't know the last time that this child would have seen or eaten food. And it showed me exactly what you said, is that every single facet of their society

• 26:03Speaker 04

  has been impacted or dismantled from the ground up. And to get back to the targeting of hospitals, because you're right, to hold space for that. It should offend every ounce of civility in all of us that hospitals would ever be targeted. And it's deeply appalling because it ties my hands to be able to save lives. It ties Palestinian doctors' hands and humanitarians from providing critical aid. I just always have thought that I would be safe in a hospital. It's never occurred to me that I would feel more in danger. That's wild.

• 26:38Sam Fragoso?

  How does it feel that you were wrong about that?

• 26:41Speaker 04

  And that's why I'm speaking to you, to try and change some of that. That's why I'm speaking to media and trying to do advocacy, because it's all I can do. Because the heart of this is not a humanitarian solution. It's a political solution. And we're playing this sort of mental gymnastics around trying to get around, how can we provide aid? How many trucks? And how many? And it's quite easy to stop the war. It's not that hard.

• 27:14Sam Fragoso?

  That was Dr. Seema Jilani from February of this year. She currently works as assistant professor for Texas Children's Hospital, the largest children's hospital in the world. After a short break, I hand over the car keys to one of my favorite people, actor, writer, and comedian. One of the best gifts you can give someone is something they'll actually use, not just during the holidays, but months or even years later. Something that's well-made, feels good, and becomes part of their everyday life. That's what I like about Quince. I've been wearing their merino wool all-season tees for just over a year now, and they've become some of the most reliable pieces in my closet. They're comfortable, easy to layer, and they've held up incredibly. They're exactly the kind of thing I'd want to give to somebody else.

• 28:00Sam Fragoso?

  Quince makes those everyday staples with premium materials, including 100% Mongolian cashmere, Italian leather, and 14-karat gold. Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60, and they also have wool coats, down jackets, and cashmere accessories for the colder months. And beyond clothing, there's bedding, cookware, luggage, and more, so you can find something for just about everyone on your list. By working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen, Quince prices everything 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Talk Easy.

• 28:45Sam Fragoso?

  It's the best way to support the show. Abbi Jacobson. Stay with us.

• 29:07Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back. Back in September, I turned 30 years old, which, as you may know, as a longtime listener, is not something I was excited about. And moreover, birthdays, it's a hard pass for me. But to make it tolerable, to, dare I say, even celebrate it, I invited friend and past guest of the show, Abbi Jacobson, to ask me some questions about how we make Talk Easy each and every Sunday. So here's a little bit from that.

• 29:39Speaker 05

  One thing I've noticed as a listener of Talk Easy, and I don't think that this was there from the beginning, and it's something I think really separates you and Talk Easy from other similar podcasts, is the care that you show to your audience. Okay, so episode 137, which is May 12, 2019. The episode is you interviewing Werner Herzog, who I would imagine is a hero of yours. And the episode starts, as they all do, with an introduction. But this isn't an intro about Werner Herzog. This is about what happened that week in the US, about Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, signing into law a fetal heartbeat bill that sought to outlaw abortion after about five to six weeks.

• 30:23Speaker 05

  You knew that your listeners would have been grappling with this devastating piece of news that week. And you chose to talk about this in the introduction. And it had nothing to do with Werner Herzog. But it has a lot to do, I think, with the DNA of Talk Easy.

• 30:39Sam Fragoso?

  I feel bad for Herzog now.

• 30:41Speaker 05

  No, the interview is great, and it's separate from the introduction. But other podcasts don't do that.

• 30:47Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 05

  And I do think that holding of space for the community that you've created and that acknowledgement of what's happening in the world is really important. And that wasn't from the beginning. And I'm really curious, like, when that happened.

• 31:01Sam Fragoso?

  I think what happened was, in 2019, the show became more consistent. I started taking the podcast a lot more seriously. It just became more week to week. And anything that's week to week has to try to reflect what it's like to live in this country week to week. It's funny you're bringing that up, because I do remember, I guess it felt like the loudest story in the room. And there was no way in a Hertzog episode that I was gonna be like Werner.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  No, yeah.

• 31:29Sam Fragoso?

  Ryan Kemp. You know, but, but I can in an intro say, this is insane and it, you know, should be said by someone who looks like me. And it should be out there. It should be there on the record. I don't always do that in part because the world keeps making new bad history.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  Impossible.

• 31:46Sam Fragoso?

  It just keeps getting worse.

• 31:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:47Sam Fragoso?

  It seems. So we try to just actually make episodes about some of those issues.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:52Sam Fragoso?

  But back then in 2019, we didn't do that many episodes with people that weren't in film or TV. And that really changed in March, April of 2020. And then the focus of the show changed and the guests that we brought on and asked to come on changed a lot. Cause it no longer felt appropriate to make a podcast about movies and television in March of 2020. It felt kind of silly. And I thought, well, then like, why are we making a show if we're not gonna have on Dr. Ja or Noam Chomsky or any of those people? I don't really know what the point is of like really working hard to make a podcast in a pandemic.

• 32:23Speaker 05

  When that shift happened, how did you feel about interviewing Noam Chomsky? Like, that's a different person to interview.

• 32:30Sam Fragoso?

  I had interviewed him once before.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  Oh, you had?

• 32:32Sam Fragoso?

  In print, before I made a podcast. And then I realized, why did I ever limit the show to the degree that I did? And I didn't even do so consciously. The moment it happened, it was just like a door opened. And I was like, that door's been there the whole time. Why didn't I ever open it? And the moment we did, I felt recharged and excited again about the future of the show in a way that I didn't prior to that moment.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  It was like Talk Easy 2.0.

• 32:57Sam Fragoso?

  Kinda.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:58Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. While also dealing with how horrible it was for all of us.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:03Sam Fragoso?

  In, in that year.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  We're already talking about this, but do you feel that you're sort of in the business of vulnerability? Like, is there a moment in every interview or in some where you're like, okay, that's as far as they're going?

• 33:17Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  Or you're like, I'm gonna push and see and test and like, try to see if I can really get to know this person in a different way or?

• 33:27Sam Fragoso?

  Yes, I'll definitely push. I think a lot of people do interviews and they lead with attitude. And it's like, I'm the tough interviewer.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:36Sam Fragoso?

  And it's like, cool, but you're not tough about facts. You're not tough about quotes. You're not tough about research. You're not actually laying out a case.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:44Sam Fragoso?

  And I feel like the best way for someone to be vulnerable is to show that you understand the facts of their life, you're respectful enough of their story and respectful enough of them that you've put in the time to show up for them. And then I think you lay it out in ways that are generous and fair. And so when someone doesn't want to go there, I won't keep pestering them.

• 34:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:03Sam Fragoso?

  But I'll, I'll try to figure out, well, why do they not want to go there? And maybe talk about something adjacent to that, or talk about the thing that they want to talk about, and then maybe circle my way back to the thing I wanted to ask. I actually think sometimes people are more willing to be vulnerable with me than they are with people in their life. Like, the thing I hear a lot from friends who know people who come on the show is, I've been friends with ex-guests for 10 years. I've never heard them talk about that.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 34:32Sam Fragoso?

  That happens all the time. You've probably had some people like that, that have come on the show that you, that you know, going like, huh, I haven't heard them talk about that.

• 34:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I definitely have. And I think that that's because what you just said about all the research and all the prep that you've done, everyone wants to be seen and heard and like known. And you're sort of creating a space where like, I think they're often surprised by how seen and heard and known they feel.

• 35:00Sam Fragoso?

  I just want them to lay it out as clearly and honestly as possible. That's all I'm after. I don't want to make anyone look stupid. I don't want them to feel stupid. I don't want them to feel bad about having done the show. I always tell guests, like, right before we tape, if you start saying something and you don't like how you're saying it, go ahead and start over. We'll use the thing you like.

• 35:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:23Sam Fragoso?

  This is not a gotcha program. I want them to feel proud of having made this thing together.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:29Sam Fragoso?

  And that's really the aim I have. And it doesn't mean I won't ask hard questions. I just think a lot of people doing this work, it is the presentation of toughness, as opposed to just actually doing the amount of homework required to get someone to answer something honestly.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Well, and that presentation is counterintuitive because you're not going to get what you want from that.

• 35:48Sam Fragoso?

  No.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  I don't think.

• 35:49Sam Fragoso?

  What you'll get is, oh, that person was evasive.

• 35:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:52Sam Fragoso?

  Well, were they evasive because you didn't actually show up for them in any meaningful human way? And by the way, we've had guests where I have done all the research in the world, I have been as decent and sympathetic and empathetic as possible, and the person still says, I'm good on this.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  And that, obviously, is?

• 36:12Sam Fragoso?

  Brian De Palma.

• 36:13Speaker 05

  Really?

• 36:14Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 05

  I know, I really wasn't trying to make you say it.

• 36:16Sam Fragoso?

  I've said it before in other interviews. I'll happily, and this tape can be forwarded to him. I have no problem saying it.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  Well, I guess it's like, that kind of like has to happen.

• 36:25Sam Fragoso?

  It has to happen.

• 36:26Speaker 05

  It kind of like highlights everything else or something.

• 36:29Sam Fragoso?

  There's nothing against like, I can still watch Brian De Palma movies. He just wasn't psyched about doing it.

• 36:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:35Sam Fragoso?

  And it didn't matter that I had showed up or had done so much research. He was just like, okay, okay, okay, let's move on. And by the way, the episode came out and it's still a really good episode.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sure it is.

• 36:47Sam Fragoso?

  But like in the moment, that's the one that comes to mind. It's like, sometimes it ain't gonna happen. Brian De Palma, if you're listening, round two, worth the shot. Much love again to Abbi Jacobson for sitting down and doing all that prep. She actually made talking about myself for an hour tolerable. So much respect to her as always. Next up, on the subject of asking difficult questions, reporter Estad Herndon of the New York Times. We sat just days after this election where he offered us a sobering account of how exactly we got here.

• 37:27Speaker 06

  I was one time with these Biden aides and I was trying to tell them, you know, like, hey, like, this is what the run-up's doing for this year. Like, we're looking, you know, maybe there's some places we can collab, whatever, whatever, whatever.

• 37:38Sam Fragoso?

  Did you pitch it nice like that?

• 37:39Speaker 06

  I did, actually remember saying, we want to do an episode about a place that's better off than now than it was four years ago. They're like, classic reelection question. And I'm like, give us a place. And we will say, the Biden campaign said, go here. And I thought that was like an easy pitch for them to do. They never gave us a place. But I'm there explaining that type of stuff. And I'm like, and I'm like, hey, but just so you know, his age comes up a ton. And so we are gonna, you know, we have, we, we, that will be a thing. You know, that we talked about, we were thinking about kind of liability stuff. And the, and the people I was, the people I was meeting with. Push the like, push the table, like, you know, sit up from the table like, this is what we're talking about. Like, this is the media creating these type of narratives.

• 38:23Speaker 06

  And I was like, what? I was confused. And they were like, democracy is on the line and you're asking us about Biden's age. And I'm like, yeah. That's exactly.

• 38:40Sam Fragoso?

  Democracy is on the line and I'm asking you about Biden's age.

• 38:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, and you're running an 81 year old. So I'm saying like, that was the tenor and that was the tone in which they came to this stuff with.

• 38:52Sam Fragoso?

  That that question with a different intonation, that they couldn't hear that.

• 38:57Speaker 06

  They couldn't hear. They would not hear. They refused to hear.

• 39:00Sam Fragoso?

  I know we're making jokes, but it's bone chilling this week.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I'm saying there are real impacts to that refusal. Like, and the part that, you know, I was on the Daily All Mad on election night and that's the part that gets me is that the people who make these choices are largely not the people who experienced those impacts.

• 39:23Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 39:24Speaker 06

  And the certainty that they had that led us to this place, I just find so disgusting, like so nauseating.

• 39:33Sam Fragoso?

  We spent a lot of time in this episode talking about the left. We're going to do future episodes on this show about a second Trump term.

• 39:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, you got time.

• 39:43Sam Fragoso?

  2025 and we will hold all that in due time.

• 39:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, you got time.

• 39:48Sam Fragoso?

  But as we go, whatever the Democrats decide to do, or the independents, or whatever comes out of this moment, the backdrop of that activity is going to be unsettling. And then your colleague, Jamel Bowie, wrote something that feels fitting to hold. I think that the people interested in recriminations and scores settling right now aren't seriously grappling with the magnitude of what happened and the implication for the rest of our lives. Most of us will probably die living in the political order that will emerge out of this election.

• 40:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. I agree. This is why I say, does it matter or no? This is why I do politics stuff. Like, people will be like, oh, you do horse races and a lot, and I do. I do it because of the reasons he's laying out. And one thing that I, I am proud of myself and our squad for, it wasn't Monday morning quarterbacking.

• 40:45Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 40:46Speaker 06

  We did it in real time, and we did it in real time because it mattered in real time. Like, I wasn't just asking because I wanted another story. I knew that this moment was going to shape the options that people had before people tuned in. And I just feel the Democrats robbed a bunch of Americans of a real choice. And they woke up to that so extraordinarily late that to now call this a Trump win, to me, is not fully true. It's real, it, it is foremost, in my opinion, a Democratic loss. And the impact of that, in the Democrats' own words,

• 41:31Speaker 06

  is the type of fundamental reshaping of the country that we will live with forever. And so, I don't think that's hyperbole. That's two Supreme Court justices, that's mass deportations, that's all of that type of stuff. That's much less like legal system, bureaucracy, everything. And I'm just like, I wish we weren't alone. I wish we were, I wish we, I wish more folks were asking that. You know, like, it's been funny because in the last day or two, it's been this, like, deluge of interest in our work and appreciation for our work. And people talking about vindication for me from being like, for being like maligned by Democratic Twitter.

• 42:15Speaker 06

  I do not care about Democratic Twitter. I cared that millions of people were unheard. I wish we were less alone at that time for the purposes of more people getting voice. Like, whatever comes in the future from that, it kind of pales to me to just how, just how avoidable this all was. I, my biggest motivation is I do not want anyone to think this was always gonna happen, or this had to happen, or this was inevitably going to happen. It did not have to be like this.

• 42:55Sam Fragoso?

  That section, but really that, that whole conversation with the stud, it still haunts me hearing it now. Like, I'm upset, just as I was when we sat down over a month ago. Maybe I'm even more upset hearing it today. So, I don't know. What do we do? What do we do with that pain? With that heartache? I think sometimes we believe the hurdles we face in our personal lives are somehow not applicable to our political problems. That our response to personal adversity is somehow insulated, too narrow to be translated to these global issues. But I don't think that's right.

• 43:36Sam Fragoso?

  Resilience is always required in resistance. Whether that's toward this incoming administration, or toward a personal battle you're in the midst of fighting. As they say, the only way out is through. And so, to close, I want to turn to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017. We spoke in front of a live audience at this year's Aspen Ideas Festival. And it's this kind of exchange, this kind of vulnerability, that not only makes me want to continue making the show, which it does, but also, even in this moment, which is a bleak one, it actually gives me a little bit of hope.

• 44:20Sam Fragoso?

  So with that, I want to close out the show with the one and only Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Can we go to September, Sunday, September 17th, 2017? You make history that night when you win the sixth Emmy for playing Selina Meyer, which I think is the most anyone's won for playing one character. The next morning, it's Monday, you get a call from your doctor. When you replay that call in your head, what does it look and sound like? Well, the call was from my doctor saying that I had breast

• 44:59Speaker 07

  Breast cancer. So it was like a cartoon, you know, just when you thought you'd made it, you know, you got crushed. I got crushed in that moment. I actually started laughing, believe it or not, but that actually makes sense. It was hilarious to get that news on the heels of the night before. And then, of course, I started to weep. And then I just got into, you know, let's go mode, you know, after that. I mean, pretty quickly.

• 45:34Sam Fragoso?

  What did that look like?

• 45:36Speaker 07

  Meeting, you know, finding out what kind of cancer it is, meeting multiple doctors, interviewing doctors, talking to people that I knew that had breast cancer. I mean, the list goes on. The crash course in breast cancer and finding the right doctor for you.

• 45:53Sam Fragoso?

  You said in the past that you didn't allow yourself to think about the bad outcome.

• 46:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 46:01Sam Fragoso?

  How did you do that?

• 46:02Speaker 07

  With a sort of blinder-like focus. I liken it to, a long, long time ago, I was with my husband and we were in the Bahamas, actually, on a scientific boat and we were doing some stuff. And I was swimming in the water and I was far away from the boat and my husband came to the bow and he said, Jules, I don't want you to panic, but there's a shark in the water. And it was, in fact, like a 12 or 13 foot bull shark. So it was a significant animal.

• 46:40Speaker 07

  And he said that and I saw the ladder on the boat and I just swam towards the ladder. And I just kept my eyes on the ladder, that I was getting to the ladder. And that's exactly what I did with this diagnosis. I did not, I could not allow any other thing to come into my head.

• 47:02Sam Fragoso?

  You focused on the ladder?

• 47:04Speaker 07

  I focused on the ladder, yeah. And it got me through.

• 47:13Sam Fragoso?

  David Mandel was a showrunner on Veep. You worked with him back in your Seinfeld days.

• 47:19Speaker 07

  Yes, and also on Curb.

• 47:21Sam Fragoso?

  Just the best.

• 47:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 47:23Sam Fragoso?

  And he gave a quote to The New Yorker, because he was asked about that time, that period when you were sick and the changes in schedule of the show and all that, and also what it did to him.

• 47:33Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 47:33Sam Fragoso?

  And he said something that, I have to tell you, has just stayed with me, sorry, all week. So I'm just gonna read the quote and see if it matches. We keep touching the foot, I'm sorry about that.

• 47:45Speaker 07

  Oh, it's fine. I didn't notice it. These are wedges, so it's probably not a problem.

• 47:52Sam Fragoso?

  No, it's okay. This is me putting off the emotional quote. Okay. "I had the sense of the walls closing in on me. And I was racked with guilt and other weird Jewishness, and I was a goddamn wreck. She seemed great. Then we watched her go through chemo, and you can see its effects on her. She got thinner and thinner, and we couldn't hug her because we were afraid to get her sick. It was the first time that, all of a sudden, she looked her age and seemed human and vulnerable." Did you feel those things too, in that time?

• 48:29Speaker 07

  Which things?

• 48:30Sam Fragoso?

  Human, vulnerable.

• 48:32Speaker 07

  Very.

• 48:33Sam Fragoso?

  In ways that he makes it seem like he had never seen from you before.

• 48:39Speaker 07

  Well, it's a very dear thing that he says, and I love Dave Mandel with my heart. You know, it's funny, because he did something, and actually hearing that, it's sort of, I'm thinking about this in a new way, speaking of pentimento. Originally, when I was first diagnosed, I had this idea that I was going to still shoot the show of Veep in between chemo treatments. I had this, oh yes, I can keep working, it's gonna be fine.

• 49:09Sam Fragoso?

  You'll squeeze it in.

• 49:10Speaker 07

  I'll squeeze it in, yeah, squeeze it in. And, you know, we may have to slow the schedule down, but I can do it. Well, obviously, that was... And he was like, sure, sure, sure. Bless him. And then, that was not possible. But what was possible was, I had chemo treatments every three weeks, and in that third week before the next treatment, I would start to feel better. And so what we would do is, we would all gather... And have a table read of the next script. And I realize now that they were sort of, it was a kindness, you know.

• 49:51Speaker 07

  And because we would all gather and we would read these scripts and I would give notes on the scripts and stuff, but it was, it was a real gesture of love for them. And it kept me, it kept me looking for that letter too. You know what I mean? Yeah.

• 50:12Sam Fragoso?

  I love that.

• 50:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was really dear.

• 50:14Sam Fragoso?

  It's odd how kindness can move us like that.

• 50:21Speaker 07

  I know, right? At the time, I thought I was helping them because I was working on the show with them. We were working, for real, you know, coming in, this doesn't work, we need to retool this, you know, giving all these stuff. But I think it was the other way around.

• 50:37Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 07

  Yeah. I hadn't even considered that until this moment.

• 50:42Sam Fragoso?

  I love that. Jane Fonda, I want to bring it all the way back where we started a little bit. I'm thinking about how she, she talks about life in three acts.

• 50:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 50:51Sam Fragoso?

  You know, it's like zero to thirty, thirty to sixty, sixty to ninety. And she's lived so many lives in that. But it also makes me think about her work as an actor and like your more dramatic work in the past decade, the vulnerability of films like Enough Sad, You Hurt My Feelings, Tuesday. And I know in the beginning you said, twenty years ago, they would have never offered me that.

• 51:16Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:17Sam Fragoso?

  But now that you have, do you think like the work, it doesn't just come on the heels of the past few decades, but it's a result of them, of the journey we've talked about?

• 51:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 51:27Sam Fragoso?

  In some way, I don't know, do you imbue those performances with that experience, with that lived experience?

• 51:33Speaker 07

  Oh, without question. I mean, well, I mean, I couldn't have played Selina Meyer when I was thirty-eight because I didn't have the life experience that I could inject into that woman. I had a better understanding of who she was. Was, given the life experience I'd had up to that point. And in, for example, in this movie Tuesday, I'm a mother of two grown children. I have lost people very dear to me in my own life. I have experienced both parenthood and deep and profound loss. I can bring all of that to bear in the film. Uh, so that's not, I could have tried to find a way into it if I hadn't had those experiences,

• 52:17Speaker 07

  but having had them, I can bring them to bear. So sure, you bring all of that, yeah.

• 52:22Sam Fragoso?

  The parrot or the macaw as a death doula. You men- you mentioned all the loss you've endured and we haven't spent that much time talking about your father, but, but he wrote a book of poems.

• 52:34Speaker 07

  He did.

• 52:35Sam Fragoso?

  That he finished, I think, two or three days before he passed.

• 52:38Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 52:39Sam Fragoso?

  It's called Letters Written and Not Sent.

• 52:41Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:42Sam Fragoso?

  Um, and it's so, so good.

• 52:44Speaker 07

  Oh, thank you.

• 52:45Sam Fragoso?

  I just think it's fantastic. And I thought, um, before we go, if you would be open to reading, um, a piece from that book.

• 52:53Speaker 07

  Oh, my God, I'd love to. That's so nice.

• 52:55Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 52:56Speaker 07

  This is incredible. Oh, yes. Uh, this is a poem that my father wrote. It's called Explanation. "God must mean for us to reason that the flower, first in bloom, taut and shining, is not altered even in its dying season. God's the present, ever missing, till we meet it when we die. Life's the ambush of tomorrow and the sorrow of goodbye." Ooh, that gives me goosebumps. Yeah.

• 53:37Sam Fragoso?

  Did you and your family put that on his tombstone?

• 53:39Speaker 07

  Yes, put that on his tombstone, yeah. Life's the ambush of tomorrow and the sorrow of goodbye. I mean, I think that applies to everyone.

• 53:49Sam Fragoso?

  That quote is so linked to this new movie.

• 53:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 53:54Sam Fragoso?

  To Tuesday.

• 53:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 53:56Sam Fragoso?

  And there's a line in it where the macaw, and again, you have to see it to believe it, but the macaw says to your character, a mom that's in denial, a mom that doesn't want to say goodbye, that how you live it is how she lives. And I'm thinking, like, in the Fonda three-act structure of life,

• 54:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:19Sam Fragoso?

  you just started, you're 60s. How do you want to live it?

• 54:25Speaker 07

  Oh, my God.

• 54:28Speaker 07

  Fully, openly, with arms outstretched. It's funny, you know, I feel youthful in that way, you know? I want to try new things. I want to keep fighting the good fight. I want to look for good art. I want to fully live my life and be, hopefully, a good person doing so.

• 54:51Sam Fragoso?

  I love that.

• 54:53Speaker 07

  So basic, but I think everybody feels that way, right?

• 54:58Sam Fragoso?

  What's kind of amazing is, your first two acts, you've lived so fully. So to imagine the next one is kind of impossible.

• 55:07Speaker 07

  It's going to blow your mind, Sam.

• 55:08Sam Fragoso?

  It's going to blow my mind. And obviously, we're going to have to come back to Aspen to talk about it.

• 55:14Speaker 07

  No fucking way, we're not going to.

• 55:19Sam Fragoso?

  But truly, I so love all that you have brought into this world.

• 55:25Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 55:25Sam Fragoso?

  In Act One and Act Two. And whatever happens next in Act Three, I'm so looking forward to it. And I thank you profoundly for the time tonight, truly.

• 55:36Speaker 07

  Oh, that's so nice of you. Thank you, this has been really fun.

• 55:40Sam Fragoso?

  Julia Louis-Dreyfus, everyone.

• 55:45Speaker 07

  Thank you, thank you.

• 56:37Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. If you enjoyed this special mixtape episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. If you want to go above and beyond, you can share the program with a friend, share it online. All of it really does help us continue making Talk Easy each and every Sunday. To hear each of the full episodes we feature today, be sure to visit our site at talkeasypod.com. As always, to hear those and more Pushkin podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at Talk Easy Pod. For the holiday season, if you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come

• 57:20Sam Fragoso?

  in cream or navy, or our vinyl record with writer Fran Lebowitz, visit our website at talkeasypod.com/shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Joshua Siegel and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Krista Shannoy. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Kerry Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Amy Hagadorn, Sarah Brugger, Owen Miller, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening

• 58:02Sam Fragoso?

  to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with a brand new episode. Until then, stay safe and so long.

• 58:23Sam Fragoso?

  I really appreciate you coming in and doing this. I know, I know you're not gonna be able to hear this, but I really do care about so much that you've put into this world. It has meant a lot to me and it means a lot that you've showed up for this show and talked for as long as you have. And I appreciate you for that.

• 58:40Speaker 07

  Thank you. I can't end on a good note. I just wanted to tell you, I'm gonna go home and just feel awful. I'm gonna, I'm gonna replay this in my mind. I'm so insecure. I'm gonna hate myself. The amount of verbiage, it's just repulsive. It is. It's because we're in this fucking cocoon with this goddamn burgundy and it just fucking does this number on you. Like, I don't like myself. I'm gonna go out into the fucking light and the real sun, the real world, and the voices are just gonna be screaming at me and I'm not gonna have your soothing voice in my head. It's gonna be back to my inner voice. My inner voice is gonna be mean. So I'm leaving here and I wanna say thank you, but now I'm feeling like fuck you. So that's how I'm ending this. Okay? You can end with whatever

• 59:24Speaker 07

  sincere gesture you want. That is a perfect example of not running to the rescue with love.

• 59:30Sam Fragoso?

  You, you do have my number.

• 59:33Speaker 07

  I will. I'm going to immediately delete it and don't follow me out. Thank you, Sam, so much. Honestly, really. I'm sure that was like a lot to enjoy. Bye-bye.

• 59:47Sam Fragoso?

  That was Joaquin Phoenix. You know, you've seen his movies. You heard the show. Always, forever. One of one.

• 1:00:01Speaker 07

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together. We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats. I mean, how many rats?

• 1:00:14Speaker 06

  Would you guess we're back there?

• 1:00:15Speaker 07

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 1:00:18Speaker 06

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 1:00:24Speaker 06

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be. History gets written, then rewritten, sometimes by scholars correcting the record, sometimes by committees deciding what a generation of kids will and won't learn. The version that makes it into the textbook isn't always the only story. It's the one that won out. That's the kind of thing Ground News was built for. It shows you how outlets across the spectrum tell the same story, side by side, so you can spot the shading for yourself. Ground News gives each outlet a factuality rating, so you know how much weight to give the source, and shows you who owns it, so you know what's behind it.

• 1:01:10Speaker 06

  The Nobel Peace Center called it "an excellent way to stay informed, avoid echo chambers, and expand your worldview." So go to groundnews.com/rz. That's G-R-O-U-N-D-N-E-W-S dot com slash R-Z for 40% off unlimited access vantage plan. Get it yourself or gift it to someone who'd rather know than not. Use my link, groundnews.com/rz, so you get the discount and they know I sent you. If you're a fan of learning all sides of history, then Ground News is for you. One more time, groundnews.com/rz.