Guest Rec: Sara McCrea - Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso (1.25 hrs)
Guest Rec: Sara McCrea - Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso (1.25 hrs)
Our first guest rec from rising star Sara McCrea. She calls this show an audio version of a New Yorker profile…
At least four times this year I’ll be sharing the host-chair with a guest recommender.
Sara McCrea was generous enough to be my first guest 2024! [Guests are paid for their work, supported in part by paid subscriptions.] Sara is an absolute treasure of a producer and gives me hope about the future of audio.
I was a little embarrassed I had never heard of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso when Sara told me the host is like a baby Terry Gross. I checked out his recent interview with legend David Remnick, who sounded delighted, surprised and impressed by Fragoso’s interviewing. [Listen here.]
I listened to that episode during a lunch-hour run around the frozen pond here in Portland and it was a good one. Excited for you to hear it. There was only one thing that made me mad (the # of ads! But that’s a convo for another day). Here’s Sara’s recommendation.
Guest Rec: Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Recommendation Type: Episode
Length: 1.25 hours
Format/Style: Host-Led 2-Way Interview
Release Date: December 2023
Listen to any ep on your preferred platform: https://talkeasypod.com/listen/
Talk Easy has been running since 2016. Over the past few years, I have become an evangelist for it. My paraphrased logline for the show is deceptively simple: each week, host Sam Fragoso invites on a notable guest—often a Hollywood star or beloved author, sometimes a politician or journalist or wild card—and discusses their recent work, the origins of their career, and the themes that weave throughout their life.
In one way, it’s “just” a two-way interview podcast. But the “Talk Easy” team takes every element of a generic interview show and elevates it to the most sophisticated and elegant extreme.
The show is a magazine profile in audio form, except the subjects get to tell more of their stories in their own words. 2023’s last interview of “Talk Easy” was a standout, a searching and rigorous conversation with legendary New Yorker editor David Remnick. The episode is an investigation of Remnick’s life on the page, his trajectory as a reporter, editor, and public intellectual. But before we get to Remnick’s story, we hear an extensive discussion between the editor and host of what it means to bear witness to the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It’s nuanced, and painful, and necessary. “To watch and witness all of this is to have your heart broken daily, sometimes hourly,” Sam says of the crisis in his host lines. “And yet, to keep your eyes open from a distance is, in itself, a privilege. It’s also a modest ask that is being made from those suffering at the hands of a war most did not seek out.“ This introduction alone is worth a listen, though you should stick around for the interview, too. [Note from Claire: it gets heated, folks! Stick around for challenging yet respectful interviewing at its finest…]
Talk Easy’s guests are an eclectic and enviable group of A-listers. Just in the past year they’ve hosted performers like Tom Hanks, David Byrne, Ke Huy Quan, Quinta Brunson, and Carol Burnett, as well as writers and thinkers like Margaret Atwood, Jenny Odell, George Saunders, and Min Jin Lee. Since the onset of the pandemic, the show has also occasionally brought on activists and politicians to dig into current events. This has included a rousing exploration of the WGA strike with writer Alex O’Keefe and a moving look at U.S. immigration reform featuring both Beto O’Rourke and host Sam Fragoso’s father.
Guests seem to appear on “Talk Easy” because they know the caliber of the interview will match the caliber of the creative work or ideas they are promoting.
The show’s research is meticulous, even fanatical. In so many episodes, you can hear the featured celebrities laugh in shock at the details Sam and his producers have dug up from their informal archives. Talk Easy’s tone hits a difficult balance between rigorous and relaxed. Sam isn’t afraid to push his guests or bring up less flattering moments from their pasts, and yet he always does so with evident respect. And it doesn’t matter whether you are familiar with the guest’s work. By the end of the hour, you will most likely care about them. The sound design is delightfully analog: music excerpts are introduced with the dropping of a record needle, movie clips start with the retro clicking of a film reel. The tile art, too, goes above and beyond: lifelike portraits of guests by illustrator Krishna Shenoi, with such exacting detail it’s hard to believe they are digitally painted by hand.
Amid the turbulence of the industry and the corporate push for profitable short-form, underproduced “content,” “Talk Easy” stands for what's possible with hard work, interview craft, and person to person connection.
Sara McCrea is a writer, audio producer, and researcher from Boulder, CO, currently living in Brooklyn, NY. She has recently helped produce podcasts and original audiobooks for companies including Pushkin Industries, Audible, and American Public Media. In her spare time she takes criminally long walks in Prospect Park and listens to many podcasts while doing so.
Follow Sara on Twitter | Linkedin | And (forthcoming) Substack
Thank you, Sara!
Producer – Karoline Ribak
Executive Producer – Janicza Bravo
Associate Producer – Kaitlin Dryden
Illustrator – Krishna Shenoi
Music – Dylan Peck
Web Developer – Ian Jones
Editors – Kaitlin Dryden, Clarisse Guevarra, CJ Mitchell, Lindsey Ellis
Research and Production Assistant – Paulina Suarez
Graphics – Derek Gabryszak, Ian Jones, Ethan Sinica
Special thanks to Corey Atad and Ian Chang