Classic Conversations: Pop culture Interviews with Jeff Dwoskin

The Dick Van Dyke Show turns 65, and historian David Van Deusen celebrates with stories from three decades inside the Petrie living room, from the pilot that aired the day before he was born to Carl Reiner's reunion set. His new interactive book, From Fandom to Friendships: My Adventures with The Dick Van Dyke Show Cast, puts never-heard cast interviews one QR code away. Show Highlights: The 159th...

Ari Lehman, the first Jason Voorhees, tells the story behind the Friday the 13th ending that almost never existed, and what Sean S. Cunningham whispered to a 14 year old kid right before he went under the water at Camp Crystal Lake. From a soccer movie audition to Tom Savini's makeup chair to the brotherhood of actors who followed him in the role, it all leads to Into the Fray, the new First Jason...

Dylan Brody tells the story of the phone call he got from George Carlin, the one he performed at Kelly Carlin's tribute to her father at the New York Public Library. Four decades of comedy around it, from a 1989 Fox debut to his award winning solo special, Dylan Brody's Driving Hollywood, streaming now on Amazon Prime and NextUp Comedy. Show Highlights: The George Carlin phone call. The story at t...

Comedian, podcaster and actor Jackie Kashian has been doing stand up since 1984, when she got thrown out of a Madison, Wisconsin comedy club for heckling Sam Kinison and came back three weeks later for the open mic. She talks about featuring for Brian Regan and Maria Bamford, playing an airport cop on the final season of Murphy Brown, the year Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle told her she was too much...

Rhonda Shear hosted more than 400 episodes of Up All Night on USA Network from 1991 to 1998, and she is one of the only hosts from that era who still owns the name. She talks about the Happy Days incident with Henry Winkler that got her blackballed from every Paramount sitcom at 23, the one line in Spaceballs that Mel Brooks cast her in himself, opening for Robin Williams at the Holy City Zoo, and...

Rebeca Arthur was hired for one week on Perfect Strangers and stayed eight years. Before that she was a working private investigator in New York, and one of her agency's cases was Robert Durst. She talks about playing Mary Anne Spencer opposite Bronson Pinchot's Balki Bartokomous, photocopying her own backside for Scrooged, improvising with Bill Murray, getting career advice from Bob Newhart at a...

Thirty years after the last shot was fired, the bank robber and the FBI agent who chased him are sitting down together. Steve Meyers helped Scott Scurlock pull off the Hollywood Bandit crime spree that hit 19 Seattle banks and took roughly $2.3 million between 1992 and 1996. Shawn Johnson was the FBI case agent who spent four and a half years hunting them. Both appear in the Netflix documentary Ho...

Douglas M. Wilson has been in the room for some of the strangest and most memorable television of the last thirty years. A four time Emmy nominee, he went from being an assistant at MTV to the Comedy Channel, then spent the better part of a decade on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, rising from associate producer to showrunner. From there he built an entire second career in unscripted televi...

Bob Gunton has spent five decades building one of the most quietly essential careers in American acting, from originating Juan Perón in the first Broadway production of Evita to becoming the face of institutional evil as Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption. He talks about how a pseudo Spanish accent almost got cut from Evita until Hal Prince intervened, what it took to make Sweeney Todd his...

John O'Hurley has spent forty years in television as J. Peterman on Seinfeld, the host of Family Feud and To Tell the Truth, a season one finalist and eventual champion on Dancing with the Stars, and for more than two decades the voice of the National Dog Show every Thanksgiving morning. He talks about landing the Peterman role one day after his own sitcom was canceled, the ten years he spent as a...

Jack Pesin, co-host of Dark Passengers (the deep-dive Dexter podcast he runs with his wife Diana), joins for a wide-ranging conversation on the Dexter universe, from the original series' peak seasons to the making of Original Sin and Resurrection. Pesin shares how a chance connection with Original Sin producer Robert Lloyd Lewis led to set visits and conversations with creator Clyde Phillips, and...

Some careers you can trace on a shelf of movie posters, and Michael Pressman has one of the great ones. Across forty years he moved from a scrappy Roger Corman debut to a beloved studio sequel he made at twenty-six, then into the Richard Pryor dramas, the Dan Aykroyd comedies, the turtle movie a generation grew up quoting, and a decade of prestige television. Underneath all of it runs a family sto...

Chris Hummel packed up his life, loaded a trailer, and drove his band from Mississauga, Ontario to Palm Springs on the bet that the world still needed rock and roll. As the co-founder and frontman of the Dreamboats, the ultimate 50s and 60s band experience, he has taken a for-fun open mic project and turned it into a touring act that has played the Cavern Club in Liverpool, opening parties for maj...

Marta Kristen spent three seasons drifting through the stars as Judy Robinson on Lost in Space, but her real story started years earlier in a hidden wartime orphanage in Norway. In this conversation, she traces her adoption into a Michigan family, the chance encounter in a Santa Monica deli that launched her Hollywood career, and the wild shift her most famous show took once a certain caped crusad...

Before there were influencers, before comment sections, before anyone thought to scroll through customer letters for content, there was Wendy Kaufman, doing it all from a desk at a small drinks company in New York. The woman who became the face of one of the most beloved ad campaigns of the 90s as The Snapple Lady shares what it really took to get there, and what nobody knew about her at the time....

Jim Meskimen is one of those rare performers who can disappear into a thousand different voices while somehow remaining completely himself. In this return visit to Classic Conversations, Jim breaks down his current wave of on-screen work, from trading blows with Billy Bob Thornton on Landman to surviving a hippo attack in the upcoming thriller Hungry. He also opens up about the craft of impression...

Author Samuel Garza Bernstein returns to dig into his new book, Roddy McDowall: An Actor's Life, How Green Was My Valley to Lassie to Planet of the Apes , the first full biography of the legendary actor. Drawing on newly opened archives at Boston University, Samuel traces Roddy's path from child star to Hollywood institution, and unpacks the work that made him a household name across generations o...

Clay Aiken is back. After 18 years away from recording, the American Idol Season 2 fan favorite has released "Rewind," a high-energy comeback single that proves every year of the wait was worth it. In this conversation, Clay pulls back the curtain on what it was really like to be on Idol before anyone knew how massive it was going to become, shares the behind-the-scenes stories behind his most ico...

Kathy Garver has spent 60 years as one of television's most beloved figures, and she shows no signs of slowing down. Best known as Sissy Davis on Family Affair , Kathy reflects on why the show has never truly left the cultural conversation, what it was like to nearly lose the role to The Brady Bunch , and how she went from child actress to Grammy-nominated audiobook narrator. She also reveals the...

Jennifer Elise Cox didn't just play Jan Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie, she became her. From landing the role on her very first film audition to sharing a wig with RuPaul, Jennifer brings the same infectious energy and razor-sharp comedic timing to this conversation that made her an icon. She talks about being directed by Betty Thomas, keeping a straight face across from Christine Taylor, guest st...

Rich Little has done impressions of presidents, Rat Pack legends, and Hollywood royalty for decades, but the stories behind those performances are even more entertaining than the impressions themselves. The man of a thousand voices sits down to share what it was really like performing in front of the very people he was imitating, the moments that went sideways, and what keeps him performing in Las...

From a gapped-tooth kid who dreamed of Hollywood to the woman who gave Kim Kardashian her first TV appearance and generated over a million dollars a day on home shopping, Dr. Forbes Riley has built one of the most extraordinary careers in entertainment and sales history. In this conversation, Forbes opens up about the acting career that took her from Splatter University to Broadway opposite Christ...

Marc Sotkin has written and produced some of the most beloved sitcoms in television history, and the stories behind those shows are even better than the episodes themselves. From selling underwear in Houston to running the writers room on Golden Girls, Sotkin's career is a masterclass in persistence, instinct, and surviving chaos with a sense of humor. Show Highlights: How an underwear salesman fr...

Greg Evigan has lived one of the most colorful careers in Hollywood, and this conversation brings all of it rushing back. From the stages of Broadway to the cab of a big rig, from a home recording studio he built himself to Abbey Road in London, Greg sits down to revisit the stories, the shows, and the music that have defined his remarkable life. Along the way, he reveals that he has never stopped...

A deep dive with Lindsay Denninger into the cultural phenomenon of Gossip Girl reveals just how powerful storytelling can shape generations. From downloading episodes overseas to becoming fully immersed in the fashion, music, and drama, Lindsay Denninger shares how Gossip Girl became more than just a show, it became a defining force in pop culture. Through her new book, she explores the lasting in...