Ice Cube never stopped thinking about making music, from the moment he started writing raps in typewriting class to sitting in his recording studio today making a new album. But he never expected his life to take a parallel track when John Singleton sought him out for Boyz N The Hood. Cube and Marc talk about how his two successful careers took shape and how he’s now branching out into a third with his sports league Big3.

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Rachel Weisz and her collaborators totally knocked Marc for a loop with the new series Dead Ringers, a show that’s still haunting him long after he watched it. Rachel and Marc talk about her dual performance as twin doctors, as well as her work with Yorgos Lanthimos, how Denis Leary was an influence on her as a young performer, and her time at Cambridge. They also compare notes on their shared love of Lou Reed and cats.

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When comedian Shane Mauss was on the show in 2016, he and Marc talked about the new trajectory in his life that involved psychedelic studies. A year later, he lost his mind doing lots of hands-on experiments in that field of study. As Shane gets his standup act back on its feet, he tells Marc about the Roger Waters concert that landed him in a psych ward, the ways people get mentally exploited by motivational hucksters, and how he’s trying to strike a balance between opening his mind and letting his brain fall out.

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Tituss Burgess was in the movie Respect alongside Marc, playing gospel singer James Cleveland. But it was Tituss’s own original gospel recordings that provided Marc with a fuller understanding of the Real Tituss. Tituss talks with Marc about finally being seen as the Real Tituss, thanks to his work in season two of Schmigadoon! and his writing of the new musical The Preacher’s Wife. They also talk about faith, self-acceptance, forgiveness and seeing the light.

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Both David Mandel and Marc were obsessed with the early years of Saturday Night Live, in large part because of a book they both had. It was the 1977 SNL Script Book and it actually set David on a path to become a writer for that very show. David tells Marc about his “wonderful and awful” time there, followed by genre-defining work on Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep and the new limited series White House Plumbers. 

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J. Smith-Cameron gets just as surprised while watching Succession as you do. With all the footage they shoot, she’s never sure exactly how any given episode is going to turn out, as she waits to see what will or won’t make the cut. Jean and Marc get into all the details about the show, like how Gerri was supposed to be a man, what her husband Kenneth Lonergan thinks of it, and how her New York theater background meshes nicely with a cast full of stage actors.

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As the daughter of Jill Clayburgh and playwright David Rabe, Lily Rabe felt a lot of pressure not to become an actor, believing she had to stake out her own artistic ground. But while dance was her passion, her acting talents were undeniable. Lily tells Marc what it was like to get her big break doing Shakespeare with Al Pacino at the same time her family was dealing with personal tragedy. They also talk about her recent string of miniseries, including The Undoing, The Underground Railroad, and Love & Death.

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From February 2013, Marc talks with comedian Darryl Lenox about the struggles he faced throughout his life and how he overcame the challenges in front of him. Darryl died on April 16, 2023.

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The last time Ray Romano was on the podcast, he was making the show Men of a Certain Age. Now Ray and Marc are both men of a certain age with a lot of the same concerns about their health and well-being at this point in their lives. They also followed a similar trajectory from standup comedy to dramatic acting and they’re now competing with each other for the same type of roles. They talk about taking risks, Robert DeNiro, and Somewhere in Queens, the new movie Ray co-wrote, directed and stars in.

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It's a series of firsts for Alex Borstein: The release of her first comedy special, her first podcast interview done during a power outage, and her first time meeting Marc, despite co-starring with him in The Bad Guys. Alex and Marc talk about Chicago, pizza, therapists, X-rated chocolates, Family Guy, Gilmore Girls, and the high-wire balancing act of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as it begins its fifth and final season.

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