Talkhouse Podcast

Lil BUB is a tiny, very special cat from outer space who has been an internet star since 2011, when her "dude" — recording studio owner Mike Bridavsky — posted some photos of her on Tumblr. She's been the subject of an award-winning documentary, she's the author of Lil BUB’s Lil Book: The Extraordinary Life of the Most Amazing Cat on the Planet and she hosts Lil BUB's Big Show, a web-based talk sh...

Lil BUB is a tiny, very special cat from outer space who has been an internet star since 2011, when her "dude" — recording studio owner Mike Bridavsky — posted some photos of her on Tumblr. She's been the subject of an award-winning documentary, she's the author of Lil BUB’s Lil Book: The Extraordinary Life of the Most Amazing Cat on the Planet and she hosts Lil BUB's Big Show, a web-based talk sh...

Sleater-Kinney singer-guitarist and Portlandia co-star Carrie Brownstein has published a critically acclaimed memoir, the candid, moving and eloquent Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. And to kick off her book tour, she sat down and had a great conversation with another acclaimed musician-author, the Roots' Questlove, on October 27th, 2015 at St. Vitus, the beloved metal bar in the Greenpoint section...

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, two of contemporary cinema’s most controversial, boundary-pushing directors are in conversation. From New York City, Gaspar Noé – whose new film, the pornographic 3D romance Love, is now out in theaters – chats with Abel Ferrara, a fellow scourge of the censors, who is currently living in Rome. Over the course of their highly entertaining talk,...

JG Thirlwell came out of the early ’80s New York underground scene and, under multiple pseudonyms that all had the word “foetus” in them, made lots of intense albums that evoke what AllMusicGuide has called “a harrowing netherworld of death, lust, disease and decay.” You can hear the Foetus influence in bands like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. Over the years, Thirlwell broadened his musical scope...

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, in conversation are two former actors who are now two of the funniest and liveliest writer-directors in the U.S. indie sphere. Lynn Shelton, best known for her movies Humpday, Your Sister's Sister and Laggies, chats with the impishly provocative Bobcat Goldthwait, whose new film, the excellent documentary Call Me Lucky, reveals yet another face...

Back when they were in college in the late '80s, Laura Cantrell and Mac McCaughan were in a band called Bricks. That band didn't get very far, but Laura went on to become an acclaimed country singer-songwriter hailed by the likes of Elvis Costello and legendary BBC DJ John Peel. Mac soon founded Superchunk, who went on to 26 years (and counting) of indie-rock glory, as well as co-founding the phen...

El-P, legendary hip-hop producer and half of the celebrated rap duo Run the Jewels, and acclaimed new singer, rapper, songwriter, producer, musician and filmmaker Boots (Beyoncé, FKA twigs, Run the Jewels), sat down and recorded a Talkhouse Music Podcast while they were on tour, backstage at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They talked about lots of things: their jazz-musician dads, the creativ...

On this new episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, two highly original and idiosyncratic British writer-directors are in conversation: Ben Wheatley and Alex Cox. In addition to their new projects (the current festival hit High-Rise and the multi-perspective Western Tombstone Rashomon, respectively), the two email friends discuss numerous movie-related topics, from their favorite portmanteau films...

The iconic multimedia artist Laurie Anderson always has two or three projects going at any one time, and aside from her acclaimed new feature film Heart of a Dog, she’s unveiling an installation and performance called Habeas Corpus, which takes place at the cavernous Park Avenue Armory in New York, October 2nd through 4th, 2015. Among Anderson’s collaborators on the show are the great Syrian singe...

If there's a running theme in London neo-post-punk band Art Brut's rock music, it's rock music. The band's leader Eddie Argos isn't just a musician, he's a big-time music fan. And one of the musicians he's a big fan of is indie-pop sensation Ezra Furman, whose new album Perpetual Motion People takes inspiration from brilliant, nasal auteurs such as Bob Dylan, the Violent Femmes and Jonathan Richma...

Hiss Golden Messenger’s most recent album Lateness of Dancers came out in the autumn of 2014, and found frontman M.C. Taylor’s songwriting process still evolving. He obviously thinks a lot about the craft and inspiration involved, so it’s no surprise that the songwriting process was the main thing he talked about with My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James in this edition of the Talkhouse Music Podc...

This edition of the Talkhouse Music Podcast features Fred Thomas, longtime mainstay of the beloved, idiosyncratic lo-fi indie-pop band Saturday Looks Good to Me, with musician, motivational speaker, producer, nightclub impresario, advice columnist, and TV and radio host Andrew WK. It's a little-known fact that Mr. Thomas and Mr. WK go back a long way — 20 years, to when they were teenagers in the...

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, writer-director Allison Anders talks with her mentor, iconic German filmmaker Wim Wenders, on the occasion of Wenders' new touring film series. In their fascinating and wide-ranging conversation, the two old friends talk about a possible sequel to Paris, Texas, why Wenders didn't direct True Detective, how Until the End of the World presciently...

This edition of the Talkhouse Music Podcast features two of the more acclaimed new singer-songwriters of 2015: Jessica Pratt and Tobias Jesso, Jr. Both musicians have deep roots in the sounds of the '70s, but two very different sides of the '70s. Jesso's piano-driven debut album Goon evokes superstar '70s singer-songwriters like John Lennon, Carole King, Harry Nilsson and Elton John. But Pratt's l...

“Transsexuals are the stormtroopers of the future.” So says Genesis P-Orridge, the iconic, visionary musician who has fronted influential bands like Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle. While P-Orridge isn’t transgender — they* call themselves a pandrogyne — their partner in this Talkhouse Music Podcast, Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace, came out as transgender in 2012. Still, as P-Orridge poi...

Dan Zanes has long been one of the biggest names in the still-exploding genre of so-called "kindie-rock" — music made especially for kids. As the leader of the Grammy-winning Dan Zanes and Friends, he’s made over a dozen hugely popular and acclaimed albums and played concerts for adoring audiences all over the world. And Bill Sherman has not only won a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmmy, he's the music d...

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, acclaimed English composers Geoff Barrow (Ex Machina) of Portishead fame, and Clint Mansell (Noah, Black Swan) discuss their creative processes, working with filmmakers, Ennio Morricone's low­ opinion of modern composers, the questionable quality of most films today, and much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film a...

Lower Dens leader Jana Hunter is a frequent Talkhouse contributor and a fine writer — in April of 2015, she wrote a widely read piece for Cosmopolitan titled "What It's Like to Be a Female Musician When You Don't Identify as a Woman." And Perfume Genius, aka Mike Hadreas, has said he's pretty fluid with gender too. But that was only one reason why we invited these two to sit down and chat for the...

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Gayby's writer­-director Jonathan Lisecki talks about the best new TV show of the summer, UnREAL, with Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, its co-­creator, writer and supervising producer. The pair discuss Shapiro's background, her inspirations, how she turned an award­-winning short film into a hit TV show in record time, getting over "the Lifetime of it...

In the late '70s, Andy Gill and Jon Langford were schoolmates at the University of Leeds in England. That was where Andy co-founded a band called Gang of Four and Jon helped start a band called the Mekons. Those bands went on to great things, such as helping to invent post-punk — and becoming iconic bands in the process. The Mekons are possibly the longest-running and certainly the most beloved po...

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, Joe Swanberg becomes the first person to make a return appearance, here talking to Kris Swanberg, his wife and the writer-director of the recently released Unexpected. In a really frank and revealing conversation, they discuss the Sundance experience, selling a film, finding the right distributor, dealing with agents, taking meetings, shaping a...

You might think that Chicago rapper Vic Mensa and Samuel Herring, the frontman of Baltimore synth-pop band Future Islands, don't have much in common. But you'd be wrong. And it's not because Mensa used to rap in a rock band and Herring has been a hip-hop fan since he was a kid. And it's not because Mensa is a fan of the Beatles and Nirvana, and Herring is about to drop a hip-hop EP he recorded wit...

Chvrches was playing a great set at the 2015 Pitchfork Music Festival when we noticed all three members of Haim rocking out by the side of the stage. Clearly, they're big Chvrches fans. When our producer bumped into Este Haim in the VIP area, he asked if she'd like to do a podcast with Lauren Mayberry, Chvrches' lead singer (and a regular Talkhouse writer). She absolutely did. Then Danielle Haim w...

On this latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, writer­director Mary Harron sits down with Rose McGowan, the actress turned director who last year moved behind the camera for the acclaimed Sundance short, Dawn. Their wide­ranging discussion touches on everything from punk, religious cults and pyromania to Harron's experiences making American Psycho, McGowan's past as a teenage runaway and th...