Eileen

Todd loves the Oscars, so this week's episode features not just one but two Oscar nominees from this year's crop. First, Todd talks with Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson about the year's biggest prizes.

Then he's joined by Julian Slater, the Oscar-nominated sound designer and sound editor of the action-musical Baby Driver. Julian tells Todd all about crafting the sonic world of one of 2017's most ambitious aural experiments, then he explains the difference between the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing Oscars' categories.

The episode concludes with a discussion with I, Tonya editor Tatiana Riegel who joins from Berlin to explain why editors are so important to the filmmaking process. She also talks about balancing the many complicated tones of one of the year's most tonally adventurous movies.

If you've seen Marvel's new movie Black Panther, you know that one of the best things about it is its use of costumes and sets not just to create the fictional world of Wakanda, but also to tell little stories about its history and culture in every single frame. Just looking at this movie, which opened to the second-biggest four-day box office in film history, is half the fun.

That's why for the first episode in a post-Black Panther world, we wanted to talk to Ruth Carter, the designer of the movie's costumes, from that sleek superhero suit, to the Dora Milaje's battle gowns, to the plethora of other costumes that tell you, at a glance, which part of Wakanda certain characters are from. And that's to say nothing of the moments of high fashion, when T'Challa and his allies step out onto exciting spy missions.

Though Black Panther is Carter's biggest movie yet, she's been designing costumes since the 1980s, having designed the costumes for almost every one of Spike Lee's films and

Though 20 percent of the American population has some form of disability, just 2 percent of working actors represent that population on screen and stage. Is it any wonder so many roles for those with disabilities are played by actors without them? And is it any wonder that this discrepancy is causing more and more controversy and discussion?




That's what makes the new Sundance Now series This Close so interesting. It's the first show in American television history to be created and showrun by two deaf writers, and those creators, Josh Feldman and Shoshannah Stern, also star as Michael and Kate, two best friends whose co-dependent relationship sometimes keeps them from building healthy relationships with other people (or, on the flip side, helps keep them from being burned by genuinely unhealthy relationships).

The show is a fascinating little slice-of-life dramedy, but it's also an insightful look at what it means to be deaf in America, and the many different forms of exper

Opening Ceremony co-host Katie Couric discusses what to expect from the broadcast (8:30 ET, NBC), the unified team of North and South Korea, and her interview with figure skating star Nathan Chen. We'll also take a look back at some pivotal moments in Olympic history and how the Winter Games have evolved from 1924 to today.

Few fantasy series of the past 10 years have had the reach of Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy, beginning with The Magicians in 2009, continuing with The Magician King in 2011, and concluding with The Magician's Land in 2014. The books, which attempted to blend the fantastical elements of books like Harry Potter and the Narnia series, garnered warm reviews (including from Todd), then were quickly scooped up to be turned into a TV series before the books had even completed the publication process. The process of adaptation took many years and several false starts, but the (excellent) TV show version of The Magicians finally debuted in December 2015 on Syfy, and it has gone on to forge its own identity — similar to the books but also separate from them. That made it a great time to talk to Grossman, whose books are probably more visible than ever but who also has to deal with readers who come to his books knowing the characters better for their TV versions, who have slightly different pe

"I have people that are not Latino arguing with me about what we’re like," Justina Machado says about two-thirds of the way through her chat with Todd. The actress, who joins ITYI to talk about the latest season of her Netflix sitcom One Day at a Time, has been giving superlative performances for two decades now, with a career that encompasses everything from the live episode of ER to an Arsenio Hall sitcom to the classic HBO drama Six Feet Under.




But it's One Day at a Time that has given Machado a part that lets her show off all she's capable of. In any given episode, she might play the highs of being a hugely accomplished working mom, or the crippling lows of depression and PTSD. She gets to deliver wisecracks that bring instant laughter and long monologues that will wring tears. She gets to do anything and everything and a little bit of what's in between.




That's why Todd wanted to have her on, but their conversation very quickly ranged from talking about One Day at

Blue Planet II is one of the most stunning visual achievements of the year. The new BBC America nature documentary takes viewers deep beneath the waves to observe strange creatures and the delicate balance that keeps the world's largest habitat in harmony.

The miniseries is also a huge sonic accomplishment in representing the sounds of the sea. Crackling icebergs, creatures scuttling along the seafloor, and water washing along — they all contribute to a show that sounds like nothing else. Much of that is thanks to the music, composed by the team of Jacob Shea, David Fleming, and Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. The series' musical themes evoke the undulation of the waves and the beauty of the undersea habitat. What Zimmer describes as the ocean's "epic" quality is evident throughout.

Zimmer, Shea, and Fleming joined Todd this week to talk about writing the series' music, and after that conversation, he talks with series producers Orla Doherty, Mark Brownlow, and James Honeybo

Awards season is once again upon us. We’ll soon know which films and performances have been nominated for the Oscars, and the Golden Globes are receding into the past.

But let’s talk about what’s really important: Which performances from 2017 did our panel of critics like most? Todd is joined by Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson and Buzzfeed’s Alison Willmore to discuss their favorites. The list (across film and television) is wide-ranging, from Star Wars: The Last Jedi to the little-seen Chilean film A Fantastic Woman.

Along the way, the three talk about how hard it can be to describe a great performance, whether Adam Driver breaks the new Star Wars movies, and who gave the best performance in Get Out.

Phil Rosenthal is one of Todd’s favorite people within the TV industry to talk to, because he loves making television — whether he’s writing it or starring in it.

He's probably best known for creating the Emmy-winning series Everybody Loves Raymond, starring Ray Romano. The show ran for nine seasons, winning the Emmy for Best Comedy Series twice, and it has gone on to a healthy life in reruns. Rosenthal spent several years after Raymond left the air creating new sitcom pilots, translating Raymond for the Russian audience (which he covered in the very funny documentary Exporting Raymond), and trying to get his dream project off the ground.

Now, not only is that dream project happening, but it’s in its second season on Netflix. Somebody Feed Phil follows Rosenthal as he travels the world’s great cities, looking for their most delicious dishes, whether it's incredibly spicy soup in Bangkok or an unexpectedly tasty taco (made from “a part of the cow” rarely eaten in America, Rosentha

It's a very special episode of I Think You're Interesting, as guest host and Vox culture writer Caroline Framke asks Todd all the questions you asked about criticism, great TV, and life itself. Along the way, they'll discuss whether Todd can possibly watch TV just for fun anymore, what it's like working with an editor, and what his favorite TV show of all time is. Stick around for Todd's answers to the same questions he asks his guests in other episodes!

The ways climate change is altering our planet can be hard to see, since they happen so incrementally, and often far away. That’s what’s made the documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral (a finalist for Best Documentary Feature at the 2018 Oscars) so valuable. The former tracks shrinking glaciers, while the latter shows the devastating die-offs of coral reefs, all thanks to the planet’s rapidly warming atmosphere.

But Richard Vevers, a former advertising expert who's one of the main subjects of Chasing Coral, thinks he might have the answer: a better promotional strategy, one that shows human beings how the world is changing, while still preserving hope that something might be done about it.

Chasing Coral itself is an example of that strategy. Pull it up on Netflix, and you’ll see formerly colorful coral reefs, home to all manner of sea life, bleached pure white. Yet the movie does offer hope that there’s some way out of this, if we change our ways in time.

Richard joins T

From the Oscars mixup to the Disney-Fox deal, and from Netflix’s continuing inability to launch major movie hits to the seemingly endless stream of sexual misconduct revelations, 2017 was a big year for entertainment news, arguably the biggest in decades. Every new week brought a new story with the potential to alter the industry in incalculable ways.

It was such a big year that a near-strike by the Writers Guild of America ended up being a footnote.

Covering all of it was Richard Rushfield, a veteran entertainment journalist whose new newsletter, The Ankler, launched in 2017 and instantly became a must-read for anybody hoping to understand the business of show. Rushfield’s open, chatty publication broke major stories (like the existence of a group of powerful Hollywood women looking for a way to force the industry to deal with its sexual misconduct issues) and offered an often iconoclastic take on the biggest stories of the year.

Richard and Todd got together shortly before

Chang Rae Lee’s books include “Native Speaker,” “Aloft,” and “The Surrender,” for which he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His most recent book is “On Such A Full Sea,” a cool, sci-fi dystopia. It was published in 2014. His novels tackle some of the most important themes in American life today, including immigration, life after war, and even the divided Korean Peninsula. Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea, but moved to the U.S. with his family at the age of three. His home country has been in the news a lot lately. And we’ll be hearing about it for more cheerful reasons in February, when South Korea hosts the 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

This conversation is part of The Podium, a podcast collaboration between NBC Sports Group and Vox Media. Beginning in January, we'll bring you athlete profiles, daily updates and exciting stories from the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Director Nora Twomey and her colleagues at Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon have made a habit of turning out some of Todd’s favorite animated films. From 2009’s The Secret of Kells to 2014’s Song of the Sea, the mini-studio makes beautiful, evocative films about the need for storytelling and the hard-earned magic of growing up.

The company’s latest film — Twomey’s debut as sole credited director — is called The Breadwinner, and it traces the story of a young Afghan girl who is forced to take on the burden of making money for her family after her father is sent to prison. Since the film is set during the rule of the Taliban, the hero has to pose as a young boy to keep making money. This story is balanced against several others in a beautiful feat of storytelling.

Twomey joins Todd to talk about The Breadwinner, her filmmaking philosophy, and finding kids who are also great voice actors.

John Ridley has been active in Hollywood since the early ’90s, to the degree that he wrote for one of the best obscure sitcoms of that era, The John Laroquette Show. But his career hit turbo speed when he wrote the script for the 2013 Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave, for which he received an Oscar for his screenplay. Since then, he’s written even more movies and produced American Crime, a three-season ABC series that dug into political and social issues with real nuance and depth, in a way even cable television struggles with, to say nothing of broadcast network television.

Now his new documentary, Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992, tackles the long buildup to what are commonly known as the LA riots, but which the film calls the LA uprising. Tracing the history of racially charged incidents leading up to the police beating of Rodney King, as well as the horrific relationship between the LAPD and black Angelenos, the film also looks at how Los Angeles was — and wasn’t — change

Few religion podcasts have proved as vital to understanding evangelical Christian America in the Donald Trump era as Bad Christian, a podcast hosted by three friends, who all used to be in a band together. (Two of them still are in that band.)

Hosts Matt Carter, Toby Morrell, and Joey Svendsen, all Christians, discuss their issues with the modern church, without flinching. They also reveal their personal journeys as believers, which serve as real-time markers of individual Christians’ evolution on particular issues, especially LGBT rights.

Matt Carter joined Todd this week to talk about the role of the church in Trump’s America, but also his favorite chord progressions, how to protect your voice when you’re scream-singing every night, and how he thinks moving from small-town South Carolina to Seattle influenced his views — religious, moral, and political.

The Big Sick is a little slice of romantic comedy perfection and one of 2017's best movies. Based on a very real story from the life of very real couple Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, the movie boasts a script by the two, with Holly Hunter and Ray Romano, two real acting heavyweights, joining them as Emily's parents. The Big Sick manages something too few movies do nowadays. As you watch it, you might find yourself hoping that everybody in it will end up happy and more or less okay, which is rarer than you'd think. From Nanjiani's work as a version of himself to Hunter and Romano's estranged-but-trying-to-fix-things couple, the movie is full of beautifully sketched characters, brought together by an unlikely medical emergency. Now, right as the movie hits streaming on Amazon Prime (on Friday, November 24), Hunter, Romano, Nanjiani, and Gordon joined Todd to talk about The Big Sick — but also everything from Gene Hackman and writing partnerships to the best ear of corn Ray Romano

It’s almost Thanksgiving, which means home chefs all around the United States (Todd among them) are trying to find a way to hew to tradition without turning their plates into a giant pile of indistinguishable starches. And for our first annual I Think You’re Interesting Thanksgiving Spectacular, we’ve invited Samin Nosrat to join us and offer her hints and tips for a successful Thanksgiving meal. Samin’s book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, is one of the best cookbooks Todd’s ever read, and the information it provides about how the four elements in the title interact to make delicious food will help any chef — no matter how experienced — cook even better food. But it can also help brighten up that Thanksgiving plate, and Samin offered Todd advice on making tastier turkey, zingier mashed potatoes, and sharper Thanksgiving salads. She also stuck around to talk about writing a cookbook, devouring delicious food she didn’t cook, and enjoying the perfect vegan holiday season. Pull a chair up to the

You may not know the name Glenn Gordon Caron, but if you’re a TV fan, you’ve heard of one of the shows he’s worked on, especially his groundbreaking ’80s detective dramedy Moonlighting, which popularized the will-they/won’t-they relationship, introduced the world to Bruce Willis, and created a tabloid sensation. But Caron’s résumé is so much more than Moonlighting. He’s worked on numerous films, he’s created a short film about human sexuality for Epcot Center, and he’s made many more TV shows, ranging from one-season wonders (like 1999-2000’s Now and Again) to long-running hits (like Medium, which aired throughout the 2000s). His latest task is taking over as showrunner on CBS’s legal series Bull, and he’s given the CBS case-of-the-week format a bit of spit and polish, focusing more on the characters than the cases but still leaving plenty of room for intriguing investigations and legal maneuvering. Caron joins Todd to talk about how he came to Bull, the height of Moonlighting media at

Comedian Russell Brand would probably bristle at being described as a comedian. It’s not that he’s not funny, or doesn’t occasionally perform stand-up. It’s more that in the years since he’s achieved fame, he’s become just as notable for his wonderfully unhinged performances in a number of films, as well as for writing books that sensitively and thoughtfully probe questions about himself, our society, and existence itself. The latest of these is Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions, and it continues Brand’s string of works that seem rooted less in his desire to make everybody laugh and more to connect with everyone on the planet. The book — which posits that you can use a 12-step program to fix problems and addictions in your life far beyond traditional chemical dependency — made Todd push back against it quite a bit, but by the end, Brand’s argument started to seem more solid. Twelve-step programs are terrifically effective means for forcing us to confront our own weaknesses and depe

Todd loves few TV shows more than BoJack Horseman, Netflix's weird animated comedy about a sad horse. Its recently completed fourth season, which delved into the histories of many of the characters and talked about the roots of trauma and depression, just might be the best the series has ever done.

To understand why the season was so potent, creator and showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg, production designer and producer Lisa Hanawalt, and supervising director Mike Hollingsworth joined Todd to talk about not just season four but also the show's evolution and where it might be headed next.

They talked about balancing different kinds of jokes, making sure the audience understands the subtext, and building dramatic stakes when so much of what's happening is about the characters' emotions.

One of Todd’s favorite actors for elucidating, perfectly, what makes one performance work where another doesn’t is Griffin Newman, who plays Arthur, the moth-man sidekick on Amazon’s The Tick. Newman also co-hosts the podcast Blank Check With Griffin and David, where his discussion of acting frequently helps explain things like why one of the hardest characters to play is someone who’s unfailingly good and decent (because the psychology can be harder to tap into) and why Newman so reveres Philip Seymour Hoffman’s work.

That meant when Todd wanted to make a list of the five best superhero performances of all time, Newman was a natural choice to join him. The two trade lists back and forth, and Newman’s is just as idiosyncratic as you’d hope (just wait until you hear which performance he picks from the Marvel universe!), but with some great, deep defenses of his choices. You can also listen to Todd speak up for Christopher Reeve as Superman, which will surely be a controversial choice

Tom Perrotta’s books have become one of our most consistently enjoyable dissections of a very specific sort of America — upper-class, wryly comic, and white. Even when his books dig into a world where something very much like the Rapture has happened (as in The Leftovers), they take place long enough after the catastrophic event for things to be reverting to the status quo. That makes him terrific at picking apart the foibles of our modern world, and it’s also made him a frequent target for Hollywood adaptation. His Little Children became an Oscar-nominated film in 2005, while The Leftovers turned into a tremendous HBO series. It’s Election, however, that won him the most fame. A book the author had largely given up hope of seeing published, Election found its way into Hollywood’s hands and became a classic 1999 film that helped propel Reese Witherspoon to stardom and cemented Perrotta as a novelist to watch. Now, nearly 20 years on from Election’s 1998 publication, Perrotta’s latest b

For a large number of people, just seeing the name "Ken Burns" is mark enough of quality. Whether Burns is producing or directing, his long, multi-part documentaries have been PBS mainstays since the 1980s.

His breakthrough film, The Civil War, released in 1990, announced him as one of the best-known, most beloved documentarians in America, and he's since chronicled just about every corner of American history through a variety of lenses, including the much loved projects Baseball, The National Parks, and The War, among others.

Now he and co-director Lynn Novick have launched one of his most massive miniseries yet: The Vietnam War, a new PBS documentary told over 18 hours and 10 parts. Burns and Novick joined me to talk about the incredible scope of their new project, how they pulled it all together, how they managed to get the rights to all that great music from the period, and the eerie similarities between America then and America now.

Even if you're the least pop culture–aware person in the world, you know who Nancy Cartwright is. You just might not know why you know.




In the late '80s, Cartwright, a voice actor, went on an audition for the role of an 8-year-old girl in a series of brief animated shorts that would air in the middle of Fox's sketch comedy The Tracey Ullman Show. She didn't particularly want that part, but she sparked to something in the girl's older brother, a rascal named Bart Simpson. The Simpson family would be spun off into its own show, Cartwright would turn Bart into a world-famous icon, and she's still playing the kid 30 years later.




But Cartwright is more than her most famous part, even on The Simpsons (where she voices a host of the show's other well-known characters). She was the second Chuckie on Rugrats. She was on a bevy of '80s cartoons, including Pound Puppies. And she's had several memorable on-camera roles, even if you wouldn't instantly recognize her in any of them.

If you have been watching TV — like, at all — since the 1990s, you've probably seen (and loved) Kellie Martin in something. After beginning her career as a child in the '80s, she landed the role of Becca on the critically acclaimed family drama Life Goes On, a role that would eventually earn her an Emmy nomination. But her career is far more than that one role. She was part of one of the most terrifying moments in ER history. She worked with Lucille Ball. She was a voice in The Goofy Movie, for goodness sakes. Even as she's moved into adult parts, she's continued to work frequently, in everything from Mad Men to Hallmark movies. And now, she's one part of TBS's new, very broad comedy, The Guest Book. But look, Todd just wanted to talk to Kellie because his 10-year-old, Life Goes On-loving self wouldn't forgive himself if he didn't. They discuss everything from how she managed to keep from falling into the pitfalls that consume so many child actors, to how she balances her work and her

Few of 2017's new TV shows have hit with the impact of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, which went from "they're making a TV show out of _that_" territory to 13 Emmy nominations (including Drama Series) in what seemed like record time. Taken from the book by Margaret Atwood, the series depicts a dystopian society, built from the ruins of the United States, where women have no legal rights and where fertile women (also known as "handmaids") are held as slaves by powerful men and ritually raped once a month with the purpose of conceiving a child. The show's reality seemed, for many viewers, to eerily dovetail with actual reality in the wake of the election of a president who boasted about committing sexual assault and still was voted into office. But The Handmaid's Tale would have been excellent regardless of who was in office. The series is beautifully directed, hauntingly performed, and terrifically written. The show's writers room is headed up by longtime TV hand Bruce Miller, and he joins

After more than 20 years building her stage and screen resume, Ann Dowd has become a star thanks to her roles as Patti Levin on The Leftovers and the menacing yet maternal Aunt Lydia on The Handmaid’s Tale. Her characters are a product of the fractured worlds around them, but she manages to imbue them with depth and dimensionality that suggests their tragic origins. They’re villains, but ones who feel just as human as the protagonists they play against.

With season two of The Handmaid’s Tale confirmed and a host of other projects in the works, Dowd now finds herself one of the most in-demand character actresses on television. She speaks with Todd about her theater roots, what it was like to be filming the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale while Donald Trump rose to prominence, and how having children later in her career has given her valuable perspective and balance.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton made 2013's Short Term 12, one of Todd's favorite movies of the 2010s. For his follow-up film, he reteamed with that film's star, Brie Larson, and adapted the beloved memoir The Glass Castle.

The film follows the story of journalist Jeanette Walls, whose childhood years were spent living in extreme poverty, thanks to parents who went way, way off the grid, checking on her at many points throughout her life (including her young adulthood, when she tried to put her past behind her). It's a movie that displays Cretton's tremendous gift with actors, and his ability to tell heartwarming stories in a way that remains, nevertheless, clear-eyed and honest about how hard life can be.

But the book was more than an assignment for Cretton, who grew up in rural Hawaii and loves stories about people bumping up against their own vulnerability. He joined Todd to talk about his ties to the book, the best surfing in Southern California, and what's next for his young

By many standards, PBS has had a pretty great 2010s. Downton Abbey was its biggest hit since The Civil War (which aired way back in 1990), Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election (and thus could never follow through on his threats against the broadcaster), and the network has gone from the 15th most watched to the 6th.




But all of that fails to account for a budget released by the Trump administration that would cut the federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting completely. The budget hasn't become the law of the land yet -- and even if it seems like it might, PBS has plenty of friends in Congress -- but it's still the most embattled the network has been in many, many years.




That's why Todd was so happy to have PBS's president and CEO, Paula Kerger, on the program to talk about what happens if the government stops funding PBS, how the network tries to serve everybody from digital streamers to rural antenna users, and just what it's like working with the famo

Janesville, Wisconsin, was one of the towns hardest hit by the economic collapse of the late 2000s. When the local GM plant closed, thousands of jobs that supported the entire city evaporated, leaving residents struggling to stay above water. That’s where journalist Amy Goldstein began following their story. The Washington Post reporter started profiling various residents of the town, following them over the course of several years as their fortunes shifted and changed, and as one Janesville split into two Janesvilles — one that recovered from the recession and one that didn’t. Amy joins Todd to talk about why it’s still so hard to look at the effects of the recession, how she reported a massive story over a massive period of time, and why it’s important to tell big stories like this through the lens of individual human beings.

What Michaela Watkins does in Casual, Hulu's dramedy about self-involved Los Angelenos, is low-key remarkable. Her character, Valerie, is outwardly pulled together and the smartest woman in the room. But inwardly, she's falling apart, constantly dragged down in spirals of her own narcissism and self doubt. Watkins's trick is that she makes this both relatable and weirdly sympathetic. You can hate Valerie -- and many devoted Casual viewers do -- but you can never quite escape all the ways she's just like you. That means Michaela and Todd had a lot to talk about when it comes to her acting technique, but also what it means to make a show about such rich, privileged people in a world where those monikers increasingly sound like epithets.

A Ghost Story is that most unusual thing -- a tiny movie that seems to encompass the entire universe. Made for a modest budget, the movie shows what happens to a young couple when the husband dies. It starts as a standard romance -- then somehow comes to skip across all of space and time. Director David Lowery (who also made the Pete's Dragon remake) joins Todd to talk about the movie's genesis, why we think of ghosts as sheets with eyeholes, and how he bounces between big Hollywood and smaller indies.

Academy-Award winning documentarian Errol Morris is one of Todd's favorite filmmakers ever, not to mention a world-class investigator and interviewer who's managed everything from getting Robert McNamara to admit he could have easily been branded a war criminal to getting an innocent man freed from death row. He joins Todd to talk about his new movie, his love of photography, and the true-crime boom he kinda kicked off.

It's a special edition of I Think You're Interesting as Todd is joined by David Sims of The Atlantic and Alison Willmore of Buzzfeed to pick the top summer movies of the 2000s. Each critic picks their five favorites, and then the arguing begins.

Maz Jobrani comes by his love of political humor honestly. He studied political science in graduate school, before deciding to pursue his dreams of comedy instead. This week, Maz joins Todd to talk about figuring out how to make Trump supporters laugh as a liberal comedian, learning to own his political interests on stage, and avoiding typecasting as a Persian-American taking acting roles.

Alan Sepinwall's blog What's Alan Watching launched in 2005, when he was working as a TV critic at Newark newspaper The Star-Ledger. The site would take the TV episode recap, something popularized on sites like Television Without Pity, and turn it into a place for almost instant analysis of readers' favorite shows. He's since moved on to Hitfix and Uproxx and has written two books, each on some of the greatest shows ever made. He joins Todd to talk about why he favors strong episodes to full seasons, the biggest changes to TV criticism over the years, and the greatest TV series ever made.

No matter your thoughts on Fear the Walking Dead, the zombie show spinoff now entering its third season on AMC, it's hard to argue with the show's cast, which is filled with great actors from top to bottom. Recently, three of those actors -- Kim Dickens, Colman Domingo, and Frank Dillane -- joined Todd to talk about whether they prefer playing zombie fights or big conversations, shooting the series in Mexico, and what they've learned over three years on one of the biggest shows on TV.

The first TV show Damon Lindelof co-created was Lost, ABC's seismic, game-changing series about mysterious islands and the plane crash survivors who love them. Hence, his 2014 follow-up series, HBO's The Leftovers, was hotly anticipated. What TV fans got was at once a more mature work and perhaps an even stranger one, set in world where 2 percent of the population has disappeared and seemingly everybody left behind is losing their minds. In the wake of The Leftovers' series finale, Damon joins Todd to talk about both of his series, plus the shows that inspired him, what he thinks of the new Twin Peaks, and the Leftovers episodes he would have written if he'd had a few more Leftovers episodes.

Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields have spent five years at the helm of The Americans, the '80s-set spy series which many (Todd included) would call TV's best drama. And somewhat fittingly for a show about an arranged marriage made for business purposes, the two were pushed together in the early days of the show, when Weisberg (the show's creator) needed a steady hand to help him learn the ropes of running a big TV show. Usually, these sorts of creative marriages collapse quickly, but Weisberg and Fields have thrived. Todd talks with them about learning to work together, the rise of Russia in the headlines, and the show's most recent (and next-to-last) season.

Ane Crabtree has worked on so many of TV's best shows -- Rectify, Masters of Sex, Westworld, and Hulu's new The Handmaid's Tale to name just a few. And though you've seen her work every week on those shows, you might not have known it. She's the costume designer, responsible for bringing these wildly different worlds -- stretched across time and space (and sometimes reality itself) -- to life entirely via their clothes. In this week's episode, Todd and Ane talk about designing those haunting Handmaid's cloaks, Ane's rural upbringing, and what clothes can say about a character.

Chris Parnell's long comedy career has taken him through a surprising number of venerable comedy institutions. He started out in the improv troupe The Groundlings. He was a major player on Saturday Night Live for years, appearing in some of the show's best sketches. And after SNL, he played the batty Dr. Spaceman on 30 Rock, as well as appearing in almost every other one of your favorite 21st century sitcoms. At present, he's a major part of the voice casts for FXX's Archer and adult swim's Rick and Morty. He joins Todd to talk about why great comedy requires great acting, working with his friends who've become megastars, and why he's glad he didn't get that part in Homeland.

Ezra Klein isn't just the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Vox (the site that produces this podcast, in case you were unaware). He's a major fan of superhero comics and the films based on them. For this week's episode, Todd sat down with his boss to discuss why he loves comics, how he avoids Twitter, and what he got wrong when he started Vox three years ago.

Since it debuted in early 2016, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee has become one of the most vital voices in late-night television. The show's trenchant but hilarious dissection of an America merrily flying off the rails has proved to be a proud heir to the legacy of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Todd talks with Ashley Nicole Black, Allana Harkin, and Mike Rubens, three of the show's correspondents, about redoing the show in the wake of the election, interviewing Trump supporters, and whether they're part of the liberal bubble.

Richard Kelly's first feature film, Donnie Darko, was nearly lost to the ages when it debuted in October 2001. The Patriot Act had just been passed, and it was not a time when the American moviegoing public was ready to watch a film that featured plane engines falling from the sky. But over the next several years, the movie went on to become perhaps the definitive cult film of its era. Kelly's follow-up films, Southland Tales and The Box, struggled to achieve the same level of cult success (though both have their fans), but he's a fascinating, distinctive filmmaker. He joined Todd to talk about the 15th anniversary of Donnie Darko, his other films, and why he loves musical sequences so much.

Phil LaMarr is one of the entertainment industry's premier voice actors, having worked on an intimidatingly large number of projects over his career. But he's perhaps best known for two roles: Hermes on Futurama and Jack on Samurai Jack. After a lengthy hiatus (the last original episode aired in 2004), LaMarr returned as Jack in the series' newest season, which is currently running Saturdays on adult swim. Phil joins Todd to talk about how to play a character who's aged mentally but not physically, how he approaches playing incredibly famous roles, and the importance of diverse voice actors behind the microphone.