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Episode 594: Alex Winter
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When we last spoke to Alex Winter, he was in the midst of a publicity push for his Zappa documentary – a longtime passion project about enigmatic musician of the same name. This time out, the actor-turned-documentarian has returned to the tech world. It’s topic that he has returned to several times, including 2012’s Downloaded and 2015’s Deep Web – the latter of which was the subject of our first conversation that same year. The YouTube Effect finds Winter and company exploring the light and dark sides of the world’s most powerful media organization. The documentary includes conversations with YouTubers, media experts and top executives at the Google-owned platform, in a bid to understand its influence and power.
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Episode 701: Gabríel Ólafs
44:24|Polar is as much an exercise in world building as it is a classical album. Icelandic pianist Gabríel Ólafs describes a lifelong desire to score films. In the meantime, he’s making his own. The new record combines worlds defined by his compositions, narrated by work from science-fiction author, Rebecca Roanhorse. It’s fascinating latest chapter from one of the most exciting new voices in classical.
Episode 700: Chester Brown
47:46|Since its debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Paying For It has garnered rave reviews from critics, drawing comparisons to fellow comic adaptation, Ghost World. Based on Chester Brown’s beloved 2011 work of the same name, the film centers around Brown and a fictionalized version of Sook-Yin Lee, the director who also happens to be his real life ex. Brown joins us to discuss the memoir, drawn from his own experiences with sex workers. We also discuss 2016’s Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus and the recent loss of his longtime friend, cartoonist Joe Matt.
Episode 699: Lloyd Kaufman
51:41|One thing you should know about Lloyd Kaufman is that he isn’t dead. The introduction to Mathew Klickstein’s new interview collection is very adamant about this. The Troma founder was certainly well enough to engage in an hour-long conversation about the early days of indie filmmaking, Michael Bay and making transgressive art amid a second Trump administration. Besides, at very least, the man needs to make to the end of August to see the Toxic Avenger’s triumphant return to the big screen.
Episode 698: Duke Amayo
56:44|At 17, Duke Amayo moved from Nigeria to U.S. for a football scholarship at Howard University. Despite his study, a career in medical illustration wasn’t in the cards. After making his way to Brooklyn, he landed a role as the frontman of beloved Afrobeat band, Antibalas. Amayo set out on his own, after nearly a quarter-century with the band. The musician released Lion Awakes in January, an eclectic solo album dedicated to his "shamanic medicine woman” grandmother.
Episode 697: Denison Witmer
47:42|Recorded over the course of two years, Anything At All is, fittingly, about slowing down. Denison Witmer finds beauty in domesticity. It’s a meditation on mindfulness, fatherhood and even banal. Witmer’s 11th album is also a collaboration, birthed from a songwriting session with long-time friend, Sufjan Stevens, who also came on as producer.
Episode 696: Charles 'Wigg' Walker
44:56|Seventy years since kicking off his music career in his hometown of Nashville, Charles “Wigg” Walker is still madly in love with music. This Love is Gonna Last is the soul singer’s first album in more than a decade, and a testament to surviving all that life throws at you. Dedicated to his late-wife, who passed in 2024, the album is a joyful celebration of life from an artist who has performed with the a Mt. Rushmore of musicians, including James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Otis, Redding and Sam Cooke. While his own work never released the heights of popularity experienced by those singers, Walker carries the flame of soul music’s heights, as a legend in his own right.
Episode 695: Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson (Tsunami)
40:44|After 35 years, Tsunami returned with a bang. The Virginia-based band capped off 2024 by reuniting to deliver a massive, career-spanning boxset, Loud As. During their time away from the band, however, Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson were never too far apart. The roommates, turned bandmates, turned cofounders of indie label, Simple Machines never started too far from activistic – and musical -- roots. In 2000, the pair formed the Future of Music Coalition, a non-profit focused on music education and advocacy.
Episode 694: Chuck Ragan (Hot Water Music)
50:04|“I am edging away from apathy,” Chuck Ragan bellows, “I am drifting away from the dark. The rain has got my mind in motion.” The stanzas that open Love & Lore, the latest from the Hot Water Music frontman, feel strangely appropriate as we speak. Ragan is a few days out from dealing with a flooded basement, courtesy of torrential rains. It’s a consequence, perhaps, of living in a land of rivers near the California/Nevada border. There is, however, no place he’d rather be. When he’s not touring, the musician works as an in-demand river guide, spending days off nearby, fly fishing.
Episode 693: Chuck Prophet
41:44|Music is, at once, a vector for connection and escape. Chuck Prophet found both, as at a bar in San Francisco’s Mission District. Cumbia, a popular dance genre born in Columbia, pulsates through Wake the Dead. Forty years into his professional and on the other side of a battle with stage four lymphoma, the album finds the Bay Area musician with a new musical lease on life.