Month: February 2025

Pedro Almodóvar is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of all time. He’s the director of the movies Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown and, most recently, The Room Next Door . He chats with us about his dramatic endeavor Julieta, his new wave band, and his unseen ailment.

(Image credit: Kate Green)

Philip Shenon talks about the past seven popes, and how efforts to reform the Church with the Second Vatican Council led to power struggles and doctrinal debates that lasted for decades.

Live Fast won France’s top literary prize in 2022. Brigitte Giraud’s haunting book revisits the death of her husband in a motorcycle crash 20-odd years earlier.

The papal thriller and the lead in Bob Dylan biopic ‘A Complete Unknown’ were surprise winners on Sunday, adding a few final wrinkles to an unusually unpredictable awards season.

(Image credit: Chris Pizzello)

We are currently unable to answer your call, because everyone has been fired except Bob. If this is Melania, press 183 if you wish to accept the buyout.

A California fourth-grader’s interview with her grandfather, who was forced out of Uganda before moving to the U.S., is one of our outstanding podcasts.

(Image credit: Janet Woojeong Lee)

We’re back with “All the Lonely People,” a series diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives.

This week: can tech cure our loneliness? Companies like Meeno (an AI relationship coaching app), Peoplehood (a platform that organizes guided group conversations), Timeleft (an app which matches strangers for dinner), and Bumble for Friends all say they want to help people make more and better connections. But do we need tech solutions to what may partially be a tech problem? Brittany sits down with Sam Pressler, who studies community and social connection at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, and Vauhini Vara, veteran tech reporter and author of the upcoming book Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, to break it all down.

The standard line for awards season goes: “It’s an honor just to be nominated.” But when it comes to the Oscars, there’s quite a long list of great performers who have never received this honor. Today, we’re talking about some of our favorites who should have at least one Oscar on their mantle — including Pam Grier, John Goodman, Oscar Isaac, and Regina Hall.

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(Image credit: Richard Harbaugh)

Ricky Riccardi says Armstrong’s innovations helped set the soundtrack of the 20th century. John Powers reviews I’m Still Here. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson talks about the “anti-social” century.

News of Amazon’s takeover of the 007 franchise has shaken and stirred James Bond fans in the secret agent’s homeland of Britain.