Director, writer, and actor Benny Safdie stops by Sam’s home this week to discuss his new film, The Smashing Machine (1:30)—an unflinching portrait of mixed martial arts icon Mark Kerr (7:00), played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (9:00).

In the second half, we revisit our conversation from 2023. There, Safdie unpacks his collaboration with comedian Nathan Fielder on their television series The Curse (44:30), the timely premise that inspired the show (47:20), and his history of capturing real-life personalities on film (51:20). Then, he describes his early connection to the 1979 movie Kramer v Kramer (54:20), a New York encounter with photographer Robert Frank (59:20), and how directors Robert Bresson (1:03:20) and Frederick Wiseman (1:03:50) opened his eyes to the possibilities of street casting.

We also dive into Benny’s co-directing work alongside his brother, Josh Safdie (1:05:15), a heartbreaking scene from their debut feature Daddy Longlegs (1:09:26), and the projects that followed (1:14:15): Good Time, Lenny Cooke, and Uncut Gems. To close, Safdie talks about why he worked as a boom operator while directing (1:20:00), his recent pivot to acting (1:21:23), and his full circle moment of playing an astrophysicist in Oppenheimer (1:33:20).

Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at talkeasypod@gmail.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Few writers have pressed more urgently on the tension between history and morality than Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Last fall, on the heels of his new book The Message, Coates joined Sam for a conversation live in Los Angeles. At the top, they 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-half, Coates unpacks why he believes the mainstream media prioritizes “factual complexity over self-evident morality” (37:47), his advocacy for Palestinian journalists (39:20), and his reflections about the U.S. election (47:28). To close, a formative passage from James Baldwin's The Lost Generation (52:38) and a story about love and writing (57:45).

Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at talkeasypod@gmail.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Sometimes I feel that I’m not going to write again,” says Arundhati Roy, “but then it becomes harder to keep quiet than to write it.”

Few writers have bridged the personal and political as powerfully as Arundhati Roy. With her first memoir, fittingly titled Mother Mary Comes to Me, she turns to her turbulent relationship with her late mother, Mary Roy, a pioneering feminist who reshaped Indian law.

Act I: Let It Be

We begin with the imagery that animates the new book (4:10), her tumultuous household growing up (10:00), and how she sifted through those memories while writing The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (15:40).

Act II: She’s Leaving Home

Roy reflects on her mother’s impact as a teacher (22:00), navigating her severe asthma as a child (24:30), and the moment she ultimately left home (27:20) for architecture school where she worked on film sets (30:00) and discovered The Beatles.

Act III: Revolution

Then, finally, how her writing sprung from her past (32:00), the political attacks that followed the success of her debut novel (35:00), bearing witness in the age of authoritarianism (41:00), and the timeliness of her 1998 essay The End of Imagination (1:01:00).

Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at talkeasypod@gmail.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.