Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

In 2013, Alec sat down with the late stage and screen veteran who, among many famous roles, played his mother Colleen Donaghy on 30 Rock. Stritch spoke to Alec about her transition from the Sacred Heart Convent and finishing school to finding herself in the New York theater classes sitting between Walter Matthau and Marlon Brando. She performed for nearly 70 years and throughout career, Stritch co...

Former New York City Commissioner of Correction and Probation, Martin Horn has held every job imaginable in corrections: from debating the fairness of a state’s sentencing guidelines to fixing leaky water pipes in aging facilities. Horn tells Alec that his opinion toward inmates was formed from his early years as a parole officer: “every one of them was just a normal, ordinary guy … who had made b...

Debbie Reynolds has been in show business for over six decades. She talks to Alec about her big break in Singing in the Rain. “I slept in my dressing room,” recalls Reynolds. “I didn't take any days off because I’d practice on Saturday and Sunday.” Reynolds went on to appear in Tammy and the Bachelor, The Unsinkable Molly Brown—and more recently, Mother. Reynolds talks about working with different...

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.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See...

In 2012, Andrew Luck was in his final year at Stanford University when he learned he was the top NFL draft pick. Luck, a self-proclaimed nerd, talks with Alec about going from being an unknown high school football hero to replacing his childhood idol, Peyton Manning. Off the field, Luck is passionate about travel, architecture and movies. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodca...

As a kid, Brian Williams grew up in a CBS household. Dinner didn't start until Cronkite was done. He didn't think journalism was attainable, but his work ethic and blue blazer opened doors. From White House intern to young television reporter, Williams eventually found his way back to New York. On the job, Williams keeps his opinions quiet. Off the clock, Williams still enjoys vestiges of his yout...

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.  Learn more about y...

In this 2013 interview with Alec, the former New York Times executive editor talked about how she grew up in a family where the paper was so vaunted that two copies were delivered to her house. Some media critics have speculated that this interview may have been a factor in Abramson's dismissal. Abramson was the first woman to hold the top editorial position at the paper. She told Alec that she to...

Dunham, the creator of HBO’s GIRLS, says when she was younger, she thought she’d be a "Gender and Women’s Studies teacher who showed movies at the occasional film festival." Instead she's trying to figure out what to wear to shoot the cover of Rolling Stone. Dunham talks with Alec about getting a dog and her first date with her boyfriend Jack Antonoff. She’s not ready for children—yet—but they are...

This week Alec talks with Judd Apatow, whose films include ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin,’ ‘Knocked Up,’ and ‘Funny People;’ all of which feature emotionally immature men forced to grow up after confronting, respectively -- sex, responsibility and death. Of all Apatow’s movies, his most recent, “This is 40”, which opened the weekend before Christmas, may be his most personal and stars his wife, Leslie M...

This week Alec sits down with Jamie and Alex Bernstein, to hear about growing up with the maestro, Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein had three children: Jamie, Alexander and Nina. And while they knew him in the tux and tails, they also knew him as the dad who loved games – he was a killer at anagrams – and always up for tennis or squash or skiing or touch football. Jamie and Alexander talk to Alec abou...

This week Alec talks with Lewis Lapham, who's been refining his prose for over 50 years. Lapham says he still has to write “three or four or five, sometimes eight drafts of something,” but takes pleasure in “getting it right.” Today, he’s at the helm of Lapham’s Quarterly. He was at Harper’s for many years – and he started out at The San Francisco Examiner before stints at The Saturday Evening Pos...

This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with writer Paula Pell – who has been making people laugh at Saturday Night Live for the last 17 years. Pell landed her dream job as a writer at SNL after working at a Florida theme park. Her agent told her that Lorne Michaels wanted to meet her – “it is not an audition, but he wants to fly you up and talk to you.” Pell wasn’t sure what she was headed up f...

This week Alec talks with Andrew McCarthy – about making movies, directing, and what it’s like to reinvent oneself as a travel writer. Most people know McCarthy for his roles in "St. Elmo’s Fire" and "Pretty in Pink" – as a member of the “Brat Pack" -- but those movies were only one stop on Andrew McCarthy’s journey. Almost 20 years ago, McCarthy discovered that traveling the world was the perfect...

This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with two men who have spent much of their lives living and working in Africa. Photographer Peter Beard first set foot on the continent in 1955. Richard Ruggiero, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, began his Peace Corps stint in 1981 in the northern Central African Republic. “We are enemies of nature,” says Beard, whose photographs have documented the des...

This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with David Brooks on stage at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in Manhattan as part of the Public Forum series. David Brooks has been a New York Times op-ed columnist since 2003. He is known as a Conservative voice -- he was a senior editor at The Weekly Standard -- but former Obama advisor David Axelrod described him as a “true public thinker.” Join Baldwi...

This week, Alec talks with Pulitzer-prize winner George Will, whose passion for politics began early: he remembers Truman’s election when he was seven years old. George Will is a political conservative, but he’s not afraid to direct criticism to the right. Will analyzes the current election for Alec – this isn’t a “slam-dunk for either side,” he says, and offers some historical perspective on the...

This week, Alec talks with Fred Armisen. Armisen has been a punk rock drummer, currently he’s a cast member on Saturday Night Live and is also the co-creator and co-star of IFC’s Portlandia. Armisen has always been ambitious; when he was a drummer, he recalls, he always "wanted much more." Long ago, Armisen played drums with the Blue Man Group in Chicago and he tells Alec he learned a lot: about "...

This week, Alec talks with Zarin Mehta who retired as president and executive director of the New York Philharmonic at the end of this past season. Mehta, an accountant by trade, grew up in 1940’s Bombay before it became the booming city of Mumbai. In Mehta’s memory, Bombay was more like a colonial fishing village. Mehta talks with Alec about his father, who founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra,...

This week, Alec talks with documentary filmmakers Anthony Baxter and Dylan Avery – each of whom has made a controversial political films, one about a golf course in Scotland; the other about whether 9/11 was a government cover-up. Both films were made on meager budgets and both have attracted significant attention. Dylan Avery’s film, Loose Change, became an internet sensation and spawned a “Truth...

This week on Here’s the Thing – Alec sits down with fellow Long Islander Billy Joel – at the piano – for a conversation about life and the musical choices he’s made. Joel joined his first band at age 14 and became the third best selling solo artist of all time in the United States. He’s sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, but at this point, he says, the “rock star thi...

This week on Here’s the Thing, Alec talks with Grammy-winning guitarist Peter Frampton. “Sound is very inspirational to me,” explains Frampton – and it always has been: he started playing guitar before he was 8 years old. Frampton talks about his musical roots in England, playing in bands like The Preachers and The Herd. At age 14 he was playing at a recording session produced by Bill Wyman, who h...

This week, Alec talks with Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco, about our country’s addiction to sugar. Children today are the first American generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, in large part due to obesity. According to Lustig, this obesity often comes from eating too much sugar. Sugar is hard to avoid. A recent study reveals that 80 per...

This week on Here's The Thing, Alec talks with late-night legend David Letterman. Letterman describes his early years on TV in Indiana; his decision to try radio despite a boss who said “You will never be heard of again”; and his eventual journey to LA where after 3 years at comedy clubs he found himself on The Tonight Show. As Letterman says, "that's not supposed to happen." Letterman’s been doin...

This week Alec talks with playwright Jon Robin Baitz, whose Broadway play, Other Desert Cities, is up for a Tony later this month. Baitz grew up in Brazil and South Africa -- transferring to Beverly Hills High School for his final year of school where he says he “became friends ... with fellow freaks.” He’s been writing ever since -- even though “writing plays has always been very tricky.” Baitz t...