Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Justine Bateman. In 2023, as the writers’ and actors' strike in Hollywood stretched into the fall, many have called this moment “existential.” After negotiations with AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, broke down, SAG-AFTRA and WGA members took to picket lines over dwindling wages and the use of artificial intelligence, which may change the entertainment industry forever. Writer, director, and producer Justine Bateman is one guild member warning of A.I.'s potentially devastating influence. Following her roles in Family Ties and Satisfaction, among many others, Bateman transitioned to working behind the scenes as a filmmaker and author. She earned her Computer Science and Digital Media Management degree from UCLA in 2016, which has become all the more relevant facing the rise of A.I. Bateman speaks with Alec Baldwin about the threat A.I. poses to the entire entertainment industry, how the business has changed since she first started in it, and what drives her creative work.
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Kurt Andersen has spent four decades chronicling America’s culture and politics in both fiction and nonfiction. In 1986, Andersen co-founded Spy Magazine, which became a cultural zeitgeist and influenced a generation of journalists. Andersen then co-created and hosted Studio 360, a Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast about art and pop culture which aired from 2000 to 2020. He is also a former editor-in-chief of New York magazine, columnist and staff writer for the New Yorker, Time magazine critic and columnist, and has written for television, film, and the stage. Andersen appears regularly as a commentator on MSNOW, and continues to contribute to The Atlantic and the New York Times. In addition to his work in print media, Kurt Andersen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History and Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, A 500-Year History, as well as the bestselling novels You Can’t Spell America Without Me, True Believers, Heyday, and Turn of the Century.
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Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Jon Anderson. Many words can be used to describe singer-songwriter Jon Anderson; cautious is not one of them. Born in England in 1944, he began singing on his brother’s daily route as a milkman before falling head first for rock n’ roll. After meeting bassist Chris Squire in the late 1960s, he joined a rock group called Mabel Greer’s Toy Shop—and the two left to form a band that was later renamed Yes. Now 72, he’s sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. But for the adventurous Anderson—whose rendition of Goldfinger earned him the nickname "The Shirley Bassey of Rock and Roll," it’s still all about the music.
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You would recognize Emmy Award-nominated actor Stephen Root from over 300 film and television credits including iconic roles in “Office Space”, “NewsRadio”, “King of the Hill”, “Dodgeball”, “Idiocracy”, and “Barry” - for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Stephen Root’s illustrious career on screen includes five Coen brothers films and prestige television series such as “True Blood”, “Boardwalk Empire”, “The Man in the High Castle”, “Perry Mason”, “Succession”, “Barry”, and AppleTV’s new comedy-horror series “Widow's Bay” - which has earned Root his second Emmy Award nomination. Stephen Root got his start in a traveling Shakespeare company, then continued to perform on and off-Broadway for fifteen years before becoming one of Hollywood’s most beloved character actors.
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Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Becca Heller. On January 27th, 2017, Donald Trump issued the travel ban barring visitors and migrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Becca Heller, founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), had seen it coming. She foresaw that it would catch people in planes, turning passengers into undocumented immigrants midair. She prepared by setting up a network of volunteer lawyers who would show up at airports to help travelers being held there. On the 27th, the lawyers came, followed by thousands of protesters. The Trump administration, facing legal losses and "chaos at the airports," gave up enforcing the ban until officials could draft a new version. For a while, the good guys had won. Two years later, with a MacArthur "genius" grant under her belt, the 37-year-old Heller is strategizing about where to take refugee-advocacy next. Serious stuff, but she's still one of the funniest people ever to come on Here's the Thing.
The International Refugee Assistance Project is at https://refugeerights.org/.
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