Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Becca Heller. On January 27th, 2017, Donald Trump issued the travel ban barring visitors and migrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Becca Heller, founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), had seen it coming. She foresaw that it would catch people in planes, turning passengers into undocumented immigrants midair. She prepared by setting up a network of volunteer lawyers who would show up at airports to help travelers being held there. On the 27th, the lawyers came, followed by thousands of protesters. The Trump administration, facing legal losses and "chaos at the airports," gave up enforcing the ban until officials could draft a new version. For a while, the good guys had won. Two years later, with a MacArthur "genius" grant under her belt, the 37-year-old Heller is strategizing about where to take refugee-advocacy next. Serious stuff, but she's still one of the funniest people ever to come on Here's the Thing.

The International Refugee Assistance Project is at https://refugeerights.org/.

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Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Richard Kind. Single-handedly redefining the term “character actor,” the accomplished Richard Kind is surely one of the hardest working people in show business. His resume is unfathomably wide and deep, with over 270 film and television credits, spanning roles that exploit his killer comedic timing, like sitcoms “Spin City” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and those that exercise his dramatic chops, like HBO’s “Luck” and the CBS procedural “East New York.” He’s an actor just as likely to appear in an Oscar-winning feature film as an animated one, to scene-steal a sketch comedy series as to star in an indie short. Kind is also a Tony-nominated stage actor, having appeared on Broadway in “The Producers,” “Funny Girl” and “The Big Knife,” among many others. Richard Kind speaks with host Alec Baldwin about the type of comedians that raised him, how he found his way to the profession after almost attending law school – and why he believes he is the “Costco of acting.”

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Jon Tenney is a Juilliard-trained actor and director whose work spans film, television, and theater. Best known for portraying FBI Agent Fritz Howard on the hit TNT drama “The Closer”, Tenney appeared on the series for all seven seasons and directed episodes of both “The Closer” and its spin-off, "Major Crimes”. His television credits also include roles in “Scandal”, “True Detective”, “And Just Like That…”, and “The Lincoln Lawyer”. Tenney has appeared in films such as “I See You”, “The Seagull”, “Tombstone”, “You Can Count on Me”, and “Rabbit Hole”. A respected stage actor, he has performed on Broadway and at Lincoln Center in works by playwrights including Tom Stoppard and David Mamet. His latest role is on the new MGM+ comedy series “American Classic,” which was a labor of love for Tenney, who is also an Executive Producer in addition to a principal cast member alongside Kevin Kline and Laura Linney.

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