Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Dec 15 2024 458 ep. 61 mins 721
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso Podcast artwork

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, activists, and politicians. Where people sound like people. Hosted by Sam Fragoso. New episodes every Sunday.

  Society & Culture  TV & Film
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The Year of Actor Sebastian Stan (‘The Apprentice’)

Dec 15 2024 76 mins  
Actor Sebastian Stan has built a career out of shapeshifting. This week, he joins us to discuss the process of transforming into Donald J. Trump in The Apprentice (8:27), his personal relationship to the American dream (15:35), and the extensive research that went into recreating 1970s-1980s New York City in the film (17:27). Then, we unpack Sebastian’s Romanian upbringi

Remembering Poet Nikki Giovanni

Dec 11 2024 44 mins  
For the past 50 years, Nikki Giovanni has been one of our preeminent poets. Rest in Power to the legendary writer and activist, who passed this week at the age of 81. Today we return to our conversation from 2021, reflecting on how her childhood led to a life of writing (6:21), the enduring impact of a televised conversation with James Baldwin (13:40), the story behind her famous p

Talk Easy in 2024: A Mixtape

Dec 08 2024 58 mins  
It’s been a year. And while we’re not quite done with it (3:15), we wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of our favorite episodes and guests from 2024. On the front half, we revisit passages from actor-turned-director Dev Patel (5:45), the legendary Francis Ford Coppola on Jacques Tati and failure (11:45), filmmaker Ava DuVernay on the state of Hollywood (17:47), and Dr.

Host Padma Lakshmi (‘Taste the Nation’) is Just Getting Started

Dec 01 2024 53 mins  
To close out the holiday weekend, we're revisiting our conversation with writer, food expert, and television host Padma Lakshmi. At the top, we discuss her Hulu docuseries Taste the Nation (4:40), a formative episode in El Paso, Texas (8:14), and how the show connects to Padma’s personal history (11:59). Then, she reflects on her childhood in New York City (14:07), a heartbreakin

Play It Again: Jeff Daniels

Nov 27 2024 73 mins  
Today, for your holiday week, we’re returning to one of our favorite 2024 conversations with actor Jeff Daniels. Daniels is always writing. Plays, songs, a script or two. Even in interviews you get the sense the Michigan native is trying to relay the stories of his life in a way he’d find compelling as a reader, or listener. Bystander — as a viewer. We sat in April around th

Jesse Eisenberg Steps Into His Past

Nov 24 2024 62 mins  
Actor, writer, and director Jesse Eisenberg’s latest project, A Real Pain, is perhaps his most personal to date. He joins us today to unpack the journey that shaped the film (9:18), memories from his travels to Poland (15:40), and what he observed about his family growing up in East Brunswick (22:23). Then, Eisenberg reflects on his first jokes written on post-it notes (29:20), h

Actor Josh Brolin: A Life in Vivid Color

Nov 17 2024 85 mins  
Since the turn of the century, actor Josh Brolin has had quite a run. From No Country for Old Men and Hail, Caesar! from the Coen Brothers, to Inherent Vice from Paul Thomas Anderson, to Sicario and the Dune films from Denis Villeneuve. His new memoir, From Under the Truck, contains stories about the life in between. We discuss his upbringing bouncing from Paso Robles to Santa Barb

What Can Be, Burdened By What Has Been (with Astead Herndon of NYT)

Nov 10 2024 69 mins  
It’s been a week. To help us through it, we’ve enlisted The New York Times political reporter Astead Herndon. We start with election night 2024 versus election night 2016 (6:35), what Astead discovered about the electorate reporting across the U.S. on his podcast The Run-Up (9:25), and how insider Democrats arrived at a second Biden run in 2023 (13:30). Then, we discuss politic

Ta-Nehisi Coates (‘The Message’) is Live in Los Angeles

Nov 03 2024 60 mins  
On the heels of his latest book The Message, author Ta-Nehisi Coates joins Sam for a conversation in Los Angeles. At the top, we discuss how his Atlantic piece The Case for Reparations guided these three new essays (6:10), Coates’ early education growing up in West Baltimore (14:57), and his powerful dispatches from South Carolina (22:00) and the Middle East (29:30). On the back-

Actor and Director Anna Kendrick: Life Imitates Art

Oct 27 2024 62 mins  
Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect, Up in the Air) has been a fixture in Hollywood for the past fifteen years. She joins us this week to discuss Woman of the Hour, her directorial debut and most revealing project to date. At the top, we dive into the film’s true crime story (7:00), its examination of gender politics in the 1970s (19:29), and the personal Hollywood experiences Anna embe