[MLYT] Reddit has been hosting some interesting and quite candid interviews with prominent public figures recently. Today they posted their session with Dennis Kucinich. Previously: Barney Frank, Ron Paul, and Mike Rowe (host of Dirty Jobs on Discovery). All questions created and voted on by the community.
posted by sophist on Dec 14, 2009 - 19 comments

You ever wonder what sorts of computers and software people use to get their job done? Yeah, me too.
posted by chunking express on Dec 4, 2009 - 195 comments

A chance meeting between Kevin Pollak and Jason Calacanis at a poker game gave birth to Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, a weekly, web-based interview program. Episode 29, with guest Weird Al Yankovic, will be streaming live at 8PM ET/5PM PT. While you're waiting, check out previous episodes with guests like Eddie Izzard, Hank Azaria, and John Hamm. Or try your hand at the Larry King Game.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Oct 25, 2009 - 25 comments

Grain Edit is focused on classic design work from the 1950s-1970s and contemporary designers that draw inspiration from that time period. Site content includes interviews, articles, designers’ libraries, as well as examples of rare design annuals, type specimens, ephemera, posters and vintage kids books from their bookshelves.
posted by netbros on Oct 18, 2009 - 5 comments

If you can't Ask MetaFilter, try asking What Would Rob Do? In his podcast, "NPR's Rob Sachs talks about life's sticky situations and how turn them into an opportunity for adventure, growth, or at the very least, laughter." Like how to propose, or if that doesn't work, what to do when you run into your ex (Mp3) (turns out being calm and collected beats out feigning not to have made eye contact), how to talk to strangers (Mp3), sing a lullaby (by interviewing Rob Springfield), or how to, you know, avoid, um, Verbal Ticks. Each podcast episode is an interview with one kind of expert or another. Some posts also go on the Monkey See blog as well as a facebook fan page.
posted by pithy comment on Sep 11, 2009 - 3 comments

Lester Young (Aug. 27, 1909–March 15, 1959) is given not just a memorial, but extensive musicological criticism and contextual information in this ten-chapter series by jazz pianist and blogger Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus. Solo transcriptions and analyses, interviews with Lee Konitz, Tootie and Jimmy Heath, Benny Golson, an essay on Young's influence on Miles Davis, a discographic primer and more. (Previously.) [more inside]
posted by ism on Aug 27, 2009 - 14 comments

"You could be a doorstop or paperweight or maybe a national anthem." Beck talks to Tom Waits. Part of Irrelevant Topics: a new section [of Beck's web site] featuring conversations between musicians, artists, writers, etc. on various subjects, without promotional pretext or editorial direction.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy on Jul 8, 2009 - 23 comments

Bob Claster was a DJ on KCRW in Los Angeles. In the 80's he had a comedy show called Funny Stuff and he would interview comedians. He has many of these interviews online as mp3s. He interviewed Tom Lehrer, Douglas Adams, Danny Arnold (a.k.a. Barney Miller), Peter Cook, Terry Jones, two interviews with John Cleese, one solo and another with Michael Palin, Emo Philips, Billy Connolly, Mort Sahl, Quentin Crisp, "Brother Theodore" Gottlieb, June Foray and Bill Scott (a.k.a. Rocky and Bullwinkle and an epic five-part interview with Stan Freberg, the subject of my last post.
posted by Kattullus on Mar 27, 2009 - 7 comments

The Highlights is an online arts journal. It consists of web-based projects and essays by artists. An example from the current issue, Master of None, where the author posits that a new model of work for artists can exist, one where the artist retains agency while also getting paid to do complementary work which is informed by the subtlety, strangeness, and sure-footed temperament of the artist’s persona. Two years of journals in the archives. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Mar 24, 2009 - 9 comments

Illustration Friday is a weekly illustration challenge. A topic is posted every Friday and then participants have all week to come up with their own interpretation. Check out the illustrator interviews. Here you'll find motivations, processes and styles, with links to the fine contemporary artists. From MeFi's own annathea. [via mefi projects]
posted by netbros on Mar 14, 2009 - 4 comments

The Secret Lives of Comic Store Employees presented by Wired. [more inside]
posted by gman on Feb 27, 2009 - 77 comments

Guitar Noise is a free guitar lesson website with hundreds of articles, tips and reviews for students of this versatile instrument. Whether you are a beginner, a lefty, a bass player or a singer, Guitar Noise has lessons on nearly everything and anything to do with the guitar. There are many talented musicians out there. The artist profiles section includes interviews with dozens. The forums, blog and podcasts help you keep up with this thriving community.
posted by netbros on Feb 23, 2009 - 11 comments

The Drunken Boat publishes poetry from around the world, translations of poetry, reviews of poetry collections and anthologies, and interviews with well-known poets. The current issue features Cave Canem poets, home for the many voices of African-American poetry and committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African-American poets.
posted by netbros on Feb 22, 2009 - 3 comments

Scene 360 is an online film and arts magazine, profiling and interviewing artists & web designers, filmmakers and writers.
posted by netbros on Feb 14, 2009 - 2 comments

If you didn't know, there is a war going on in Sri Lanka. Jailed journalist Jayampathy Wickramaratne discusses what a political solution to the conflict might entail. Noam Chomsky offers up his opinions on the war and its eventual aftermath. Want to hear from some Tamils? MIA offers up her take on the situation. And in a very precient article from May of last year, D.B.S Jeyaraj discusses the LTTE at 32. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Feb 13, 2009 - 18 comments

Seed Salon Short conversations (video/transcription) hosted by Seed Magazine. For example: Albert-László Barabási + James Fowler | Will Self + Spencer Wells | Paola Antonelli + Benoit Mandelbrot | David Byrne + Daniel Levitin.
posted by carter on Feb 1, 2009 - 6 comments

The Sling Shot Man is Rufus Hussey, a man who's awesome with a beanshooter. This is a segment from 1985 of Down Home with the Carolina Camera which is a long-running part of Charlotte's WBTV's Top o' the Day variety show. There are a total of 22 videos on the YouTube channel which all feature interesting but non-famous Carolinians. Here are some other stories I liked: The Dulcimer School, Alligator Catchers, The Checker Players, The Gourdman of Angier and Backwards Man.
posted by Kattullus on Jan 15, 2009 - 18 comments

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has started videotaping its events and making them available online. Highlights include in-depth video interviews with Guillermo Del Toro, Mike Leigh, Anthony Minghella, and the Coen brothers, as well as a lecture by Will Wright. If that's not enough, BAFTA's online archives include treasures like this 1962 Academy publication on the making of Lawrence of Arabia.
posted by yankeefog on Dec 2, 2008 - 6 comments

The Archive of American Television "produces extensive video oral history interviews with television legends of all professions and makes them available online. To date, the Archive has completed over 2000 hours of videotaped conversations with over 570 Actors, Producers, Writers, Newscasters, Executives, Directors, Craftspersons, and more. ... The interviews are conducted by reviewing the subject's life and career chronologically. They discuss their childhood, early influences, how their career began, and thoroughly cover their television careers, ending with their thoughts on the industry and legacy."*
posted by not_on_display on Nov 11, 2008 - 9 comments

Expat Interviews With People Living In Countries Like Japan - Holland - China - Thailand And A Lot More.
posted by nickyskye on Oct 16, 2008 - 84 comments

Dalkey Archive conversations with William Burroughs, Angela Carter, Robert Creeley, William Gaddis, William H. Gass, Danilo Kis, Harry Mathews, Richard Powers, Raymond Queneau, Hubert Selby, William T. Vollman, David Foster Wallace, and many other writers.
posted by Iridic on Oct 12, 2008 - 9 comments

Woosta is an interview driven website that is dedicated to the promotion of artists and their work. [mild nsfw] [more inside]
posted by netbros on Oct 4, 2008 - 2 comments

To some, Exclaim! is more or less the northern equivalent of Pitchfork, a free monthly mag for the hipster masses. But I've always enjoyed the way their Questionnaire page provides an often surprisingly clear glimpse into an odd array of celebrities' lives. This month's subject is Motörhead’s Lemmy. [more inside]
posted by mannequito on Oct 1, 2008 - 30 comments

What was it like during the Great Depression? University of Oregon Economist Mark Thoma links to interviews by Studs Terkel which deal with the Great Depression. All interviews in Real Player format. Interviewees: Gardner C. Means, economic adviser to FDR. Peggy Terry, a migrant farm worker (my favorite interview). Virginia Durr, civil rights activist. Ed Paulsen, dayworker. Emma Tiller, cook. Pauline Kael (yes, that Pauline Kael). Mary Owsley, farm worker. Much more in the Hard Times section of the wonderful Studs Terkel website, which has been featured twice previously on MetaFilter (1, 2) [via Obsidian Wings]
posted by Kattullus on Sep 29, 2008 - 30 comments

Savez-vous que Jodie Foster parle et chante en français?
posted by taursir on Sep 14, 2008 - 53 comments

Voices of the Delegates: Democrats : Republicans [via: NYTimes] " [more inside]
posted by clearly on Sep 7, 2008 - 8 comments

Leo Ornstein is generally considered to have been one of the greatest pianists of the early twentieth century. His performances of works by avant-garde composers and his own innovative and even shocking pieces made him a cause célèbre on both sides of the Atlantic. By the mid-1920s, he had walked away from his fame and soon disappeared from popular memory. And although he passed away in 2002, the internet still remembers him and his amazing legacy of work. At this website dedicated to the artist and his work, you can read all about him as well as listen to many of his scores and MP3s-on-demand. There's also readable sheet music here at the International Music Score Library Project . And there's a register of archived documents spanning Leo's career over at Yale University's website. [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 on Sep 3, 2008 - 7 comments

MeFite scrumtralescent thought it would be fun to interview people who dared to take a chance and do something cool or exciting, like leaving their jobs to travel for a year, picking up an unusual hobby or starting their own business, and then share these interviews via a website for all to enjoy. So she did, and the result was 'The Life Less Traveled: How Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things…And How You Can, Too!' [via mefi projects]
posted by Effigy2000 on Jul 5, 2008 - 13 comments

Liberalisation's children. The Financial Times interviews seven 24-year-old Indians, all of the average age but of very different circumstances.
posted by goo on Jun 7, 2008 - 6 comments

The Atlantic Monthly has helpfully indexed literary interviews from its archives. These include, among others, Alice Munro, Chinua Achebe, Dennis Lehane, Zadie Smith, Charles Simic, Salman Rushdie, Susan Sontag and John Irving.
posted by Kattullus on May 31, 2008 - 5 comments

Invisible Handwriting is the blog of Heron & Crane Productions, who do podcasts for the MIT, Harvard, Yale and University of California presses. Heron & Crane link to every episode they produce from their blog. The Rutgers Press and University of Michigan Press do their own podcasts. All podcasts are almost exclusively interviews with authors of books recently published by the presses. Heron & Crane also does a business management podcast called The Invisible Hand.
posted by Kattullus on May 4, 2008 - 8 comments

Garry McDonald, aka Norman Gunston, aka the "little aussie bleeder," may be well known out Australia way. For most Americans, however, Norman G remains far, far down under the radar. But he's the forefather of the UK's Ali G; he's Canadian Nardwuar thee Human Serviette's nerdier dad; he's America's Lazlo Toth (US) with a combover and a microphone; he's Jiminy Glick's Jack Sprat. Perhaps you saw Norman long ago in a segment on USA Network's Night Flight variety show. [bonus: many many youtubes of Night Flight segments, courtesy of this awesome website.] But I bet you didn't know he released a KIckaSS single (among others), jammed with Frank Zappa, and was at the right place and time to upstage a piece of Australian History. Not bad for someone whom Keith Moon dumped his drink on and called a "great pooftah." [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on May 4, 2008 - 21 comments

Henry Miller Bathroom Monologues, part 2, part 3, and follow on - Miller takes us on a tour of the art in his bathroom. And a few years later, we have Dinner with Henry, 1979 . [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Apr 6, 2008 - 13 comments

Maximum Fun! Interviews with all sorts of interesting people. John Hodgman and Henry Rollins, Brendon Small and Peter Molyneux, Terry Jones, Jonathan Katz and Jonathan Goldstein, Patton Oswalt, Elmore Leonard, They Might Be Giants, Ira Glass, and many, many more, from all areas of the arts and sciences and stuff. Something for everyone! [more inside]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Dec 9, 2007 - 38 comments

Almost 100 audio segments of David Greenberger's The Duplex Planet are available on PRX (site requires registration -- Bugmenot). More about The Duplex Planet and a lengthy audio clip are available here. Interviews with David Greenberger here (transcript only), here (second one down, click the headphones) and here (~10 MB mp3 file, 45 minutes long). The infrequently updated Duplex Planet blog is here. Previous Metafilter post on Duplex Planet here.
posted by cog_nate on Nov 14, 2007 - 6 comments

Dick Cavett had a nice little run on T.V. He became quite a celebrity based on his intellectual conversations with notable persons of the time.
posted by snsranch on Oct 1, 2007 - 43 comments

A previously unreleased documentary [Google video, 37 min.] of Modest Mouse shot during the recording sessions for their 1997 album The Lonesome Crowded West.
posted by Neilopolis on Sep 29, 2007 - 19 comments

The Greatest Interviews of the 20th Century according to The Guardian. The interviews are with Princess Diana, John Lennon, Marlon Brando, Dennis Potter, Francis Bacon, Marilyn Monroe, Sex Pistols, Malcolm X, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Thatcher and Fidel Castro. You know who else is interviewed? That's right, Nixon. Oh, and there's a Hitler interview, too. Apparently he likes tea. So do I. Funny ol' world. [via Neil Gaiman]
posted by Kattullus on Sep 20, 2007 - 32 comments

Streaming interviews and performances from KGSR in Austin. Rufus Wainwright, Willie Nelson, The Gourds, Gomez, Kelly Willis, Pete Townshend, and many more.
posted by ColdChef on Aug 19, 2007 - 12 comments

Charlie Rose's new website has been in development over a year as technicians worked with Google to archive over 4,000 hours of interviews all culminating in 8,000 program segments including David Foster Wallace talking about David Lynch, Christopher Hitchens badmouthing religion, and Rem Koolhaas discussing recent changes in China.
posted by four panels on Aug 15, 2007 - 37 comments

Deleuze's ABCs A year before his sensational suicide by defenestration, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, known for his refusal to appear on television, offered to set the record straight with close student and friend, Claire Parnet, on the condition that it not be released until after his death. The interview, spanning eight hours, was conceived as an abécédaire, like a child's ABC book, with headings of "A comme animal," "B comme boisson," C comme culture". L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze: [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3]. Overview.
posted by Frankieist on Aug 11, 2007 - 12 comments

Writers on Writing: Interviews with Paul Bowles, David Markson, and Harry Mathews.
posted by mattbucher on Jul 2, 2007 - 11 comments

Read classic punk 'zines, without the inky fingers! Too young to have read the first issue of Flipside? Need confirmation that Maximum Rock 'N' Roll was just as boring (does/did anyone actually read those MRR Scene Reports?) and elitist back then as it is now? Do you find it hard to believe that Soul Asylum used to be credible enough to be interviewed by Suburban Voice? Or maybe you just want to marvel/feel-sad-for the obviously painstaking effort someone went through to scan every single page of these 'zines (including HeartattaCk) into PDFs? Well here 'ya go.
posted by melorama on May 23, 2007 - 25 comments

Magazine junkies New magazine in beta, looks promising. Nice interface lets you preview the entire issue online. Contains interviews with some of my favorite online personalities. I hope it flies!
posted by sparky on Jan 22, 2007 - 17 comments

What I've Learned: Al Green, Alex Trebek, Alyssa Milano, Andy Grove, Arianna Huffington, Arny Freytag, Arthur Miller, Bill O'Reilly, Billy Bob Thornton, Bobby Bowden, Burt Reynolds, Carroll Shelby, Charles Townes, Christie Brinkley, Christopher Reeve, Clive Davis, Conrad Dobler, Curt Gowdy, Dan Rather, David Bowie, David Brown, Don Rickles, Edward Teller, Even Knievel, Faye Dunaway, Forest Whitaker, Garry Shandling, Gene Simmons, Haley Joel Osment, Heather Locklear, Homer Simpson, Hugh Hefner, Hunter Clemons, J. Craig Venter, 1=8991">Jack Bauer, Jaime Pressly, James Caan, James Watson, Jeff Bezos, Jim Willett, Jimmy Dean, Joe Frazier, John Kenneth Galbraith, John McCain, JR Simplot, Julia Child, Katie Couric, Keith Richards, Kirk Douglas, Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, Mark Burnett, Mia Farrow, Michael Wright, Muhammad Ali, Neil Young, Ozzy Osbourne, Pamela Anderson, Peter O'Toole, Phil Spector, Philip Johnson, Ray Charles, Red Auerbach, Richard Branson, Richard Petty, Rip Torn, Robert Altman, Robert DeNiro, Robert Evans, Rod Steiger, Rodney Dangerfield, Roseanne, Roy Jones Jr., Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel, Siegfried and Roy, Suge Knight, Tom Petty, Tommy Franks, Walter Cronkite. [Slightly More Inside]
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on Jan 17, 2007 - 59 comments

Helmut Newton's "Big Nudes"[NSFW] (previously) was the object of my search when I stumbled upon The Amazon Connection, dedicated to Amazon Warrior Women in history, and present-day embodiment of the type. Oh yeah, and Pippy Longstocking kicks ass!
posted by sluglicker on Jan 15, 2007 - 21 comments

Radio Lab! Already listened to everything This American Life offers or maybe looking for something a bit smarter and full of science? Maybe you'll like Radio Lab. Maybe you'll like the mind-blowing and historically expanding episode on music. Maybe older history is your cup of tea -- how about biblical times and how they sit in shoeboxes in Oxford. A stack of shows available via podcast, MP3 download (and some .RAM, sorry).
posted by Ogre Lawless on Oct 13, 2006 - 11 comments

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is pumping out a pile of podcasts that have covered the importance of offensive comics to Art Spiegelman, 600 bands over 54 shows, Captain America versus the American government, Amy Sedaris and geekdom, the journey of young immigrants, French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut and Harper's publisher John MacArthur discussing Europe and America perspectives since 9/11, the after life, sex with monkeys, what radio producers do, the french word "corps", Bonnie Fuller's "The Joys of Much Too Much: Go For the Big Life — The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted (Even If You're Afraid You Don't Have What It Takes)", Veteran Washington reporter Helen Thomas and some other bits & bobs [Breakdown inside]
posted by boost ventilator on Jun 5, 2006 - 25 comments

Author Interviews from the Center for Book Culture. I particularly liked the interview/bout with David Foster Wallace. Also the only interview Gaddis has ever done stateside is here. Good times.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket on May 15, 2006 - 9 comments

Face to Face: The Science of Reading Faces. Transcript(and video)of a 2004 interview with psychologist Paul Ekman, who is known for his research on facial expression and the development, with associates, of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Includes a few facial expression photos. Part of the "Conversations with History" series at the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley .
posted by hortense on Dec 10, 2005 - 10 comments