Need a hand?

From Allison Williams' Marnie, Chef José Andrés, or artist Ruth Asawa?

May 23, 2025

NEW SPECIAL GUESTS FOR OUR 6/11 TRIBECA SHOW.

I’m interviewing actor Allison Williams on stage at the Tribeca festival, and we will also be joined by the very funny, very Girls-era-of-life hosts of the Girls Rewatch podcast, Amelia Ritthaler and Evan Lazarus.

Get. Ready. Get your tickets here before they’re gone.

As the Girls Rewatch-ers say: the Marnie renaissance is here to stay. Let’s all be a part of it.

Chef José Andrés in your podcast feed

This week in the Death, Sex & Money podcast feed, the humanitarian and restaurateur discusses parenting, letting down investors, and a new kind of American dream.

We revisit our conversation from 2019 about his childhood, his work, and why he googled ‘how to be a father.’ When I listened back, I was struck by his charisma and big personality, yes, and how that was extended outward, with a generous spirit and humility about the help he’s needed from others.

Listen to our latest episode

LOVE LOVE LOVE

Miss our episode last week that was full of in-person falling-in-love stories? Listen!

Other Recommended Reading and Listening

— “I’m sure at the coffee shop, they were all laughing at me.” This is a hopeful and beautiful piece in The New York Times about an Oklahoma rancher who changed the way he watered his cows to keep them out of a creek, and the ecological renaissance that followed. Read.

— Speaking of Oklahoma, I missed the This American Life episode “Children of Dave” the first time it ran and was so glad I caught this story, based in part in Oklahoma, on a refeed this week. Boen Wang is such a gifted, original storyteller. Listen. (And it prompted me to revisit his Radiolab piece about camping in West Virginia on a work retreat, and it was not relaxing — listen to that too.)

— I’ve been reading Carl Hiassen’s Squeeze Me and smiling along to the outrageous characters of Palm Beach: presidential fangirls, freelance wildlife wranglers, burned-out law enforcement, and exotic free-range pythons. Hiaasen’s recent interview with

Tommy Tomlinson

on the Southbound podcast is a sweet and wild appreciation of South Florida. Listen.

— Binge watch versus Episodic viewing? For me, it’s no contest. Hear my most indignant self as I defend episodic TV time on the Pop Culture Debate Club podcast with

greta johnsen

and Ronald Young, Jr. Listen.

— Fresh off his Celebrity Jeopardy Win,

W. Kamau Bell

is now doing standup benefits for Bay Area arts nonprofits who’ve recently lost National Endowment for the Arts funding. Watch.

— Speaking of art in the Bay Area, Part 1: I got to go by the Berkeley office of Transit Books, the independent publishing house whose author list includes the 2023 Nobel Prize Winner. I want you to know: they are the coolest and the nicest. Maybe you’ve also seen the Transit book sensation that’s become known as “The Handmaid’s Tale for Gen Z?” Emily Gould wrote about its unlikely rise in NYMag earlier this year.

— Speaking of art in the Bay Area, Part 2: I finally made it to the Ruth Asawa retrospective at SFMOMA after writing about her a few months back. I loved it so much. I especially liked the area set up to resemble the big art-filled living room where she and her husband raised six kids. Her hands were displayed in a glass case at the front of the room.

Until next week,

Anna

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