Arts

Talkhouse Podcast

Your favorite musicians, filmmakers, and other creative minds one-on-one. No moderator, no script, no typical questions. The Talkhouse Podcast offers unique insights into creative work from all genres and generations. Explore more illuminating shows on the Talkhouse Podcast Network.

Latest Episodes:

Zola Jesus with Circuit des Yeux Aug 23, 2018

Show notes

On this week’s episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, another powerful and funny conversation recorded backstage at Pitchfork Music Festival 2018. Zola Jesus—real name Nika Roza Danilova—and Circuit des Yeux, aka Haley Fohr, posses two of the most breathtaking voices in music today. The two sat down backstage at the fest to discuss all things vocals: finding non-traditional places to warm up while on tour, knowing when to party and when to rest, and how to react when your instrument gives out.

They got into a lot more, too, including: diva moves for one's show rider; the difficulties of being people who go to 11 all the time; and why Joanna Newsom stayed silent for two months straight.

Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

— Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer

This episode was co-produced by Mark Yoshizumi.

Big thanks to Pitchfork Music Festival for hosting Talkhouse, and to Karolina Barej for all of her coordination work.

The Talkhouse Podcast’s theme song is “Plastic Man vs. the Giant Red Phase of the Sun” by Iced Ink.

Julie Byrne with Lætitia Tamko (Vagabon) Aug 16, 2018

Show notes

On this week's episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, another of the incredible conversations recorded backstage at Pitchfork Music Festival 2018: a talk between two of the breakout artists of 2017, Julie Byrne and Vagabon’s Laetitia Tamko.

Fresh off a national co-headline tour, the friends sat down backstage to discuss the physical and the metaphysical elements of self-care on the road; the often delicate symbiosis of creating art and managing one’s business; the pressures of creating new music when people are watching; and that one guy in the front row in St Louis. Fuck that guy.

Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

— Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer

This episode was produced by Mark Yoshizumi.

Big thanks to Pitchfork Music Festival for hosting Talkhouse, and to Karolina Barej for all of her coordination work.

The Talkhouse Podcast’s theme song is “Plastic Man vs. the Giant Red Phase of the Sun” by Iced Ink.

Hannah Fidell (The Long Dumb Road) with Josephine Decker (Madeline’s Madeline) Aug 09, 2018

Show notes

The latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast is a conversation recorded at Sundance 2018 between directors Josephine Decker and Hannah Fidell, who were at the festival with, respectively, Madeline's Madeline and The Long Dumb Road. The fact that Decker's and Fidell's movies are so radically different – the former is an intense, female-centric drama about a young woman of color with mental health problems, the latter a fun, masculine road-movie comedy – is a focus of their discussion, but they also find points of connection in the incredible care they took in telling the stories of people of color — and also the remarkably creative storytelling games they played in their youth. Their talk also touches on their upcoming TV projects, how failure and success feel remarkably similar, silencing exercises, clown breakdowns, and much, much more. Madeline's Madeline is in select theaters from August 10 through Oscilloscope, and The Long Dumb Road is forthcoming in November through Universal. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse at talkhouse.com/film. Subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) with Alex Cameron Aug 02, 2018

Show notes

Each summer, Pitchfork Music Festival brings to Chicago musical legends, the hottest new acts, and the artists that are about to become your new favorites. And for the past four years, Talkhouse has been backstage to record these artists in conversation.

Over the coming weeks, we'll be bringing you the rad episodes we cut at the fest last month, including:

— Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold x Nilüfer Yanya

— Blood Orange's Dev Hynes x Raphael Saadiq

— Tierra Whack x Nnamdi Ogbonnaya

— Zola Jesus x Circuit des Yeux

— Vagabon's Lætitia Tamko x Julie Byrne

This week, we kick off our series of Pitchfork Fest episodes with Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner talking with Alex Cameron. Alex and Michelle chop it up about a lot, including their onstage electrocutions, the triumphs and tribulations of the hometown gig, Michelle's future music production goals, the massive on-stage panic attack that nearly ended Alex's career, and his collaborator Brandon Flowers’ extremely unorthodox way of recording The Killers’ vocals.

Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

— Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer

This episode was produced by Mark “North Side” Yoshizumi.

Big thanks to Pitchfork Music Festival for hosting Talkhouse, and to Karolina Barej for all of her coordinating work.

The Talkhouse Podcast's theme song is “Plastic Man vs. the Giant Red Phase of the Sun” by Iced Ink.

Black Thought (The Roots) with Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting) Jul 26, 2018

Show notes

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, two hip-hop stars who have reshaped how we think about the genre – former Hamilton star Daveed Diggs and The Roots' MC Black Thought – sit down for a fascinating conversation at 30 Rock, recorded after a taping of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Over the course of their talk, the two friends discuss each of their long-gestating projects, Daveed's movie Blindspotting and Black Thought's album Streams of Thought, parallels between the current Oakland film explosion and the Philly music boom of the late '90s, Black Thought's (pre-Hamilton) dislike of musicals, life-work balance, John Malkovich's surprising on-set viewing habits, and much, much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse at talkhouse.com/film. Subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

The Best Moments of 2018 (So Far) Jul 19, 2018

Show notes

Life is busy, and it can be tough to stay up to date on your favorite shows. So, to highlight a few of the Talkhouse team’s favorite moments from the first six months of 2018, we bring you our semi-annual Best Of episode. This week’s show features clips of:

— Aasif Mandvi and Jason Jones talking fashion at the flagship Sonos store

— Natalie Prass and Matthew E. White discussing the challenges of writing political pop songs at the Strand

— Meredith Graves and Cameron Lynch chatting the intersection of music and sports at On Air Festival (in collaboration with The Players Tribune)

— An unreleased clip of Adam Goldberg and The Flaming Lips’ Steven Drozd on confronting Nazi internet trolls

— Oscar winners Guillermo del Toro and William Friedkin on Academy nominations and the apocalypse (in collaboration with Vanity Fair)

— Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson and writer Samantha Irby recounting their hilarious path to collaborating on the upcoming TV show Meaty, recorded live at Books Are Magic

For this special episode, I’m joined by joined by Talkhouse’s Brooklyn team: Film Editor-in-Chief Nick Dawson, Associate Editor Annie Fell and Operations Manager Keenan Kush.

Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

— Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer

This episode is produced by Mark “the new papa” Yoshizumi.

Devendra Banhart with Tim Kinsella (Joan of Arc) Jul 12, 2018

Show notes

On the heels of covering each other’s music as part of Joyful Noise Recordings’ very cool Cause & Effect series, Devendra Banhart and Tim Kinsella (Joan Of Arc) sat down to record a Talkhouse Podcast episode about the project. They touch on it for a moment and then, as one might expect from such restless and prolific artists, veer away, never to return.

Their talk instead covers their upcoming books, the poems that came out of Devendra’s “ashram-hopping in India,” and the nuts and bolts of what goes into staying sane as highly productive working artists. Oh, and we also hear their argument for a hallucinatory experience as a prerequisite to lead the United States of America …

Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

— Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer

Today’s episode was recorded by Tim and Devendra, and co-produced by Mark Yoshizumi.

Reinaldo Marcus Green with Boots Riley Jul 10, 2018

Show notes

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Podcast, two of the most exciting emerging writer-directors of the moment sit down together for a chat at the Sundance Film Festival. The filmmakers in question – Reinaldo Marcus Green, whose Monsters and Men is forthcoming this fall, and Boots Riley, frontman of the Coup and mastermind behind the current cinematic sensation Sorry to Bother You – talk about the contrasting routes they took to making their debut features, the stresses of selling your movie at Sundance, how internet-age distraction is the enemy of creativity, partying with Idris Elba, and much, much more. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse at talkhouse.com/film. Subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

Revisited: David Cross with Jean Grae and Fab Moretti Jul 05, 2018

Show notes

For the Independence Day break, we revisit one of our favorite Talkhouse Podcast episodes of the past year, a conversation recorded live at Sonos' flagship store in Soho NYC featuring Mr Show and Arrested Development's David Cross chatting with two of his longtime friends, comedian and hip-hop star Jean Grae and Fabrizio Moretti, the drummer from the Strokes and Little Joy. Over the course of a hilarious and thoroughly unpredictable conversation, the trio talk about David going into an old people's home, the ills of social media, Jean's inability to ride a bike, the mysterious “gum incident,” the movie and musical of Newsies, conspiracy theories, jobs they were fired from … and David and Fab give Jean an opportunity to prove her talents at the last job she was fired from: a phone sex operator. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at talkhouse.com/film. Subscribe now to stay in the loop about future Talkhouse Podcasts.

Episode engineered and mixed by Mark Yoshizumi and produced by Talkhouse Podcast producer Elia Einhorn.

Natalie Prass with Matthew E. White Jun 28, 2018

Show notes

Natalie Prass' new LP, The Future and The Past, has been a long time in the making. Reeling from the results of 2016's presidential election, Prass made a last-minute decision to cancel the recording sessions she'd booked with producer Matthew E. White, feeling that the songs she'd written about a breakup had to be replaced with new ones which addressed what was unfolding in America.

To celebrate the release of this powerful new record, Prass was joined by White at Manhattan's iconic bookstore The Strand for a deep-dive conversation about her creative process and vision for these songs. Their talk also gets into sexism in the studio, aborted attempts at writing with L.A. songwriters, and how Prass almost chose running a dog-clothing company over her music career.

Check it out, and subscribe now to stay in the loop on future episodes of the Talkhouse Podcast.

— Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Podcast host and producer

Today’s episode is in partnership with The Strand. It was recorded by Jason Kelly and co-produced by Mark Yoshizumi.