Judd Apatow’s films—The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Funny People—feature emotionally immature men forced to grow up after confronting sex, responsibility, and death. Of all Apatow’s movies, This is 40 may be his most personal; it stars his wife, Leslie Mann, their two daughters, and one of his long-time heroes, Albert Brooks. Apatow thinks of each movie he makes as a letter, telling him something he needs to know about how better to live life.

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This week Alec sits down with Jamie and Alex Bernstein, to hear about growing up with the maestro, Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein had three children: Jamie, Alexander and Nina. And while they knew him in the tux and tails, they also knew him as the dad who loved games – he was a killer at anagrams – and always up for tennis or squash or skiing or touch football.

Jamie and Alexander talk to Alec about listening to music – Jamie says she learned “more about music by listening to The Beatles with my dad than I think I did any other way” – and how their father's relationship to fame evolved during his lifetime. Alex remembers his dad saying, “I’m so sick of Leonard Bernstein. I’ve had it with him."

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Two of Leonard Bernstein’s three children—Jamie and Alexander—speak to Alec about growing up with the maestro. And while they knew him in the tux and tails, they also knew him as the dad who loved games—he was a killer at anagrams—and was always up for tennis, squash, skiing, or touch football. 

The two talk about listening to music—Jamie says she learned “more about music by listening to The Beatles with my dad than I think I did any other way”—and how their father's relationship to fame evolved during his lifetime. Alex remembers his dad saying, “I’m so sick of Leonard Bernstein. I've had it with him."

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Special thanks to Jenny Houser, Andy Lanset, Ryan Lohr, Brent Reno, Mark Travis and Craig Urquhart.

This week Alec talks with Lewis Lapham, who's been refining his prose for over 50 years. Lapham says he still has to write “three or four or five, sometimes eight drafts of something,” but takes pleasure in “getting it right.” Today, he’s at the helm of Lapham’s Quarterly. He was at Harper’s for many years – and he started out at The San Francisco Examiner before stints at The Saturday Evening Post and Life.

To talk with Lewis Lapham, you’re struck with the sensation that you’ve stumbled onto the set of a 1940’s film noir movie. He wears pressed suits and pocket squares -- and his stories evoke another era. He tells Alec about being a rookie reporter at The Examiner and what it was like to go on a meditation retreat with the Beatles in India.

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To talk with Lewis Lapham, you’re struck with the sensation that you've stumbled onto the set of a 1940’s film noir movie. He wears pressed suits and pocket squares—and his stories evoke another era. Lapham says he’s been refining his prose for over 50 years and that he still has to write “three or four or five, sometimes eight drafts of something,” but takes pleasure in “getting it right.” Before taking the helm of Lapham’s Quarterly he was at Harper’s for many years—and he started out at The San Francisco Examiner before stints at The Saturday Evening Post and Life.  

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This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with writer Paula Pell – who has been making people laugh at Saturday Night Live for the last 17 years. Pell landed her dream job as a writer at SNL after working at a Florida theme park. Her agent told her that Lorne Michaels wanted to meet her – “it is not an audition, but he wants to fly you up and talk to you.” Pell wasn’t sure what she was headed up for, but she got a job writing for the show.

Because of her longevity on the show, Pell calls herself “Nanny SNL,” but she’s the first to admit, “if you have a good night there you feel like you’re 20 again.” Today, Pell also spends time writing for movies -- she’s an executive producer on the upcoming "This is 40."

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Paula Pell was having the time of her life singing and dancing at a Florida theme park when she got a phone call from SNL creator Lorne Michaels. She moved to New York, and two decades later, Pell was the show’s head writer. She says she’s still baffled by her charmed life. Pell calls herself “Nanny SNL,” because of her lengthy tenure on the show, but she says having a good night at SNL makes you feel 20 again.

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This week Alec talks with Andrew McCarthy – about making movies, directing, and what it’s like to reinvent oneself as a travel writer. Most people know McCarthy for his roles in "St. Elmo’s Fire" and "Pretty in Pink" – as a member of the “Brat Pack" -- but those movies were only one stop on Andrew McCarthy’s journey.

Almost 20 years ago, McCarthy discovered that traveling the world was the perfect antidote to the fame and exposure that came with his acting career.  He has spent much of the last decade writing about his experiences in distant and exotic lands.  McCarthy talks with Baldwin about his new book, called The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down.

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Andrew McCarthy careened into adulthood on the tails of his childhood fame from St. Elmo’s Fire and Pretty in Pink. He then left the so-called brat pack and picked up a suitcase, quickly developing a passion for travel and travel writing. His recent book, The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down, chronicles his life on the road. He tells Alec, “Make yourself vulnerable to the world and the world receives you." 

This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with two men who have spent much of their lives living and working in Africa. Photographer Peter Beard first set foot on the continent in 1955. Richard Ruggiero, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, began his Peace Corps stint in 1981 in the northern Central African Republic.

“We are enemies of nature,” says Beard, whose photographs have documented the destruction of wildlife in Africa, including the plight of the African Elephant, the very topic of Ruggiero’s doctoral dissertation. Ruggiero continues to work in Africa today and says the situation with elephant poaching right now is a “nightmare.” That says, says Ruggiero, “People are the problem, but they are also the solution.”

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