32 episodes

Artist Neil Goldberg uses a collection of thousands of index cards onto which he's obsessively jotted observations, reflections, and ideas to prompt conversations with some of his favorite New York artists, writers, performers, and beyond.

She’s A Talker Neil Goldberg

    • Arts
    • 5.0 • 122 Ratings

Artist Neil Goldberg uses a collection of thousands of index cards onto which he's obsessively jotted observations, reflections, and ideas to prompt conversations with some of his favorite New York artists, writers, performers, and beyond.

    Stephin Merritt: Aren't They A Gem?

    Stephin Merritt: Aren't They A Gem?

    Songwriter Stephin Merritt talks about bridges and key changes.
    ABOUT THE GUEST
    Stephin Merritt is a singer-songwriter who has released more than a dozen albums with his band the Magnetic Fields, along with albums from the 6ths, Future Bible Heroes and the Gothic Archies. He’s also composed music for movies (Pieces of April, Eban and Charley) and stage (Coraline, The Orphan of Zhao, Peach Blossom Fan) and was the subject of the documentary Strange Powers.

    ABOUT THE HOST
    Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
    ABOUT THE TITLE
    SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
    CREDITS
    This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund
    Producer: Devon Guinn
    Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
    Mixer: Andrew Litton
    Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
    Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
    Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho
    Intern: Emme Zhou
    Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg
    Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor
    TRANSCRIPTION
    STEPHIN: Should we do a slate?
    NEIL: Yeah, sure. I'll just clap. Neil, talking to Stephin Merritt whose work he has adored since whenever the Faraway Bus came out.
    STEPHIN: Wayward.
    NEIL: Wayward Bus. There's a faraway. Where does faraway fit in that? I know there's something.
    STEPHIN: I don't know. I have a large catalog.
    NEIL: Yeah, I've heard. Word on the street. But it is true, I have just so profoundly loved your work since way back then.
    STEPHIN: Thank you. I'm thirsty. It's hot in here because I've turned the air conditioner off for audio.
    NEIL: I appreciate that.
    STEPHIN: I will be doing product placement for Mineragua Sparkling Water again and again.
    NEIL: Mineragua sounds like it could be a symptom. I'm sorry, I can't have a podcast today. I have Mineragua. I feel a little bit refreshed just looking at the label. Do you mind my asking, before we got on online, you were mentioning that you had COVID and you are experiencing brain fog. Can you describe what that feels like?
    STEPHIN: Well, it feels like writer's block and an inability to organize anything. I mean, everybody, pretty much... A lot of people have writer's block, but I have really weird writer's block. I agreed to write an article about ELO for a book someone is doing about the albums that changed my life. And I tried to write about ELO out of the blue. I just had to write 1000 words. I happened to have already written 1000 words on ELO out of the blue in junior high school, so it should not be a problem. But it took me six weeks and I eventually gave up. I just couldn't do it.
    STEPHIN: At the risk of interviewing you, in your background you have what seems to be a painting studio with a television on it, on the desk. Do you paint the television?
    STEPHIN: When I was in film school I filmed the television all the time. It's a really good source of images.
    NEIL: I don't paint, my studio mate does, so those are her paintings. Then the TV, I've got asked to do a project where I'm reviewing some work I did back in the mid 90s and reflect on it, so I broke out the old CRT and I've been pulling a Stephin Merritt in film school, I've been filming the TV set. Which is a very familiar, old feeling because I used to do that a

    • 39 min
    Ray Lipstein: The One Hundred Face

    Ray Lipstein: The One Hundred Face

    Writer Ray Lipstein describes the melodrama of looking in the mirror. 
    ABOUT THE GUEST
    RL (Ray) Lipstein is a writer, editor, and performer who works for The New Yorker, and previously for the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and the United Nations. They were elected president of Girls Nation in 2009, on a universal healthcare platform, before leaving mock politics and organized gender.
    ABOUT THE HOST
    Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
    ABOUT THE TITLE
    SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
    CREDITS
    This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.
    Producer: Devon Guinn
    Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
    Mixer: Andrew Litton
    Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
    Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
    Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho
    Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg
    Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor
    TRANSCRIPTION
    NEIL: I am so happy to have Ray Lipstein with me on a remote version of She's a Talker. Ray, thank you so much for being with me.
    RAY: It is my pleasure. More than my pleasure.
    NEIL: What is more than your pleasure?
    RAY: My pain, I guess. I don't know.
    NEIL: So you're saying it is painful to be here.
    RAY: Yeah. It fits somewhere between ennui and delight. It goes backwards.
    NEIL: There falls the shadow. So we're talking remotely, how are you doing? Whatever that means. We're talking, I think, probably two months into quarantine in New York.
    RAY: I am holding up well. I rearranged my bedroom last night in a feat of extreme 2:00 AM industriousness and it feels great. It's converted the bed psychologically into a day bed, the new orientation. So I'm excited for my roommate to get back who is with their partner. They're not a Gog. I'm going to send them away again. It's very big news.
    NEIL: Okay. When someone asks you what you do, how do you succinctly describe to them what it is?
    RAY: I work at The New Yorker. No further questions.
    NEIL: Okay. I'll accept that.
    RAY: No, no, no, don't accept it. Don't accept it. If someone asks me, what do I do, well, first of all, I would say, "Do you mean for a living? What do you mean? And why are you asking?" Those are all first line questions. And if push comes to shove, I say I'm a copy editor at The New Yorker.
    NEIL: All right. So first card is most photography is melodramatic. By definition, photography is melodramatic because it's the moment, right? It's always the moment.
    RAY: To preserve a moment is melodramatic.
    NEIL: Well, I don't know if to preserve it, to present it, to say, okay, here's this flux of life and I am going to take this one moment. Fuck preserving it. And I'm going to offer it. I'm offering you this one moment. Okay. That's the theoretical problem with it, but then I think pragmatically, photographs often look melodramatic just by virtue of something being stopped in the middle of something. So let's say you're looking at a picture from a photo album where your mother is looking into the camera and your father is looking off to the side and you're in the baby carriage holding a rattle. That is melodrama, because all that shit by virtue of being extracted from the flux of time is being given this outsized importance.
    RAY: It definitely

    • 39 min
    Kathleen Turner: Unspoken Treaties

    Kathleen Turner: Unspoken Treaties

    Actor Kathleen Turner talks about not bringing characters home. Neil wonders if he himself created COVID.
    ABOUT THE GUEST
    Among Kathleen Turner’s numerous accolades are Golden Globes for Romancing The Stone and Prizzi’s Honor, an Academy Award nomination for Peggy Sue Got Married, Tony Award nominations for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. Most recently she guest starred on The Kominsky Method, Mom and Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings. Her film credits include The Man With Two Brains, Jewel Of The Nile, The Accidental Tourist, The Virgin Suicides, among many others. On Broadway, she has starred in High, The Graduate and Indiscretions. Also a best-selling author, she wrote the books Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts On My Life, Love, and Leading Roles and Kathleen Turner On Acting.
    ABOUT THE HOST
    Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
    ABOUT THE TITLE
    SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
    CREDITS
    This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.
    Producer: Devon Guinn
    Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
    Mixer: Andrew Litton
    Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
    Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
    Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho
    Social Media: Lourdes Rohan
    Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg
    Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor
    TRANSCRIPTION
    NEIL: Kathleen Turner, thank you so much for being on SHE'S A TALKER.
    KATHLEEN: I think this is going to be a pleasure.
    NEIL: Oh. Let's check in at the end and see. What's something that you find yourself thinking about today, May 16th?
    KATHLEEN: Oh my. I'll tell you, being able to tolerate this isolation. Because I live alone. I have a wonderful cat, thank you very much, but this really means that I ... I don't have a spouse or a kid or something with me. And I've had a women's poker group for about ... some of them have played together for over 30 years.
    NEIL: Wow.
    KATHLEEN: And we get together at least once a month and play poker and eat and have a silly time. And so, we are Zooming together every Sunday evening, but they almost ... well all of them have spouses or people that they are isolating with, but it's hard. It's really hard right now.
    NEIL: I can totally imagine. Are you finding outside comfort in having your cat there?
    KATHLEEN: Yes, I do. He's this beautiful black. A little black cat. He can seemingly pretty much sense when I need him.
    NEIL: This podcast, the mascot of this podcast, is my black cat, Beverly. What's your cat's name and what color are his eyes?
    KATHLEEN: His name is Simon and his eyes are mostly yellow, sometimes into green. But when I went to get another rescue, I'd had one that died, I've been told that black cats are hard to get adopted out of superstition, or I have found out, being difficult to see in the middle of the night, especially if you have a dark rug.
    NEIL: Yes. Yeah. Often, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I will mistake certain things for the cat. Let's say I've left my backpack on the floor, and the tender way I touch my backpack makes me kind of think about the backpack differently. If only I touched everything as tenderly as the things I thought are my cat. I know you were born here, but you s

    • 42 min
    Monique Truong: Peak Desperation

    Monique Truong: Peak Desperation

    Writer Monique Truong describes her love of showering when it's raining outside. Neil realizes he is bad in a crisis.
    ABOUT THE GUEST
    Monique Truong is the Vietnamese American author of the bestselling, award-winning novels, The Book of Salt, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Sweetest Fruits. She’s also a former refugee, essayist, avid eater, lyricist/librettist, and intellectual property attorney (more or less in this order).
    ABOUT THE HOST
    Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
    ABOUT THE TITLE
    SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
    CREDITS
    This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund, Western Bridge, and the David Shaw and Beth Kobliner Family Fund
    Producer: Devon Guinn
    Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
    Mixer: Andrew Litton
    Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
    Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
    Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho
    Social Media: Lourdes Rohan
    Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg
    Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor
    TRANSCRIPTION
    NEIL: I'm so happy, Monique Truong, to have you on SHE'S A TALKER. Thank you for joining. You mentioned that you were teaching up until now. I actually don't know where you teach.
    MONIQUE: Oh, well, it was the first time that I was teaching at Columbia at the school of the arts? Yes. School of arts. I don't know if there's an article.
    NEIL: It doesn't matter. It feels very important.
    MONIQUE: Yes.
    NEIL: Which would you prefer it to be?
    MONIQUE: The.
    NEIL: Yes. Exactly.
    MONIQUE: That sounds even more important.
    NEIL: Yeah. Yeah.
    MONIQUE: Yeah. I was teaching a fiction workshop. I had taught undergraduate fiction writing classes before, but never to graduate students and so that was interesting.
    NEIL: Interesting can contain so much.
    MONIQUE: Yeah.
    NEIL: Would you care to unpack interesting for us?
    MONIQUE: Well, okay. Let's begin here. I had heard from my friends who are women of color, who teach at the graduate level, that respect and authority was often an issue. Specifically, the lack thereof. Their suggestions to me was that really, even though the others professors would say to the students, "Please, call me Neil," that for me, it probably won't work out very well if I did that. I know you teach Neil and so you can imagine it's a small workshop. It ended up being nine students.
    NEIL: Okay.
    MONIQUE: Yeah. Yeah. It was really great in that way, and so I said, "Look, I'm going to ask you to call me Professor Truong as opposed to Monique. As soon as this workshop is over, we can see each other on the street and please feel free to call me Monique. For the rest of the semester, it's going to be a professor." They were really, I think, frankly horrified. I do think that it's a mistake to actually encourage your graduate school students to call you by your first name, because it assumes a non-hierarchical relationship.
    MONIQUE: That's actually a disservice to the students because if the lines are blurry and then let's say we, professor, act in some way inappropriately, it's the student, I feel, who will have the most to pay, will be at the disadvantage.
    NEIL: It reminds me of ... Maybe it's different, but those therapists who talk a lot about themselves or

    • 42 min
    Angela Dufresne: Our Sex is Aesthetic

    Angela Dufresne: Our Sex is Aesthetic

    Artist Angela Dufresne makes the case that painting is like cats, fashion is like dogs. Neil proposes that certain worked-out bodies are never naked.
    ABOUT THE GUEST
    Angela Dufresne is a painter originally from Connecticut, raised however in the town in Kansas (Olathe-Suburbs) that Dick and Perry stopped in before they killed the Clutters (In Cold Blood), and now based in Brooklyn. She received the first college degree in her lineage. Her work articulates non-paranoid, porous ways of being in a world fraught by fear, power and possession. Through painting, drawing and performative works, she wields heterotopic narratives that are both non hierarchical and perverse. She’s exhibited The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, The National Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, the Kemper Museum in Kansas City, Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, The Cleveland Institute of Art, The Aldrich Museum in Connecticut, the Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz, among others. She is currently Associate Professor of painting at RISD. Awards and honors include National Academy of Arts and Design induction 2018, a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, residency at Yaddo, a Purchase Award at The National Academy of Arts and Letters, two fellowships at The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, The Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, and a Jerome Foundation Fellowship.
    ABOUT THE HOST
    Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
    ABOUT THE TITLE
    SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
    CREDITS
    This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund
    Producer: Devon Guinn
    Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
    Mixer: Fraser McCulloch
    Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
    Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
    Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho
    Social Media: Lourdes Rohan
    Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg
    Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor
    TRANSCRIPTION

    • 37 min
    Cassie da Costa: Thanks In Advance

    Cassie da Costa: Thanks In Advance

    Neil discusses the micro-acting exercise of saying “my husband.” Writer Cassie da Costa finds deep truths in customer service language.
    ABOUT THE GUEST
    Cassie da Costa is a writer and editor who works for The Daily Beast and the feminist and queer film journal Another Gaze. Her newsletter of stories, Mildly Yours, is irregular and mysterious.
    ABOUT THE HOST
    Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
    ABOUT THE TITLE
    SHE’S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
    CREDITS
    This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund
    Producer: Devon Guinn
    Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
    Mixer: Fraser McCulloch
    Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
    Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
    Website: Itai Almor & Jesse Kimotho
    Social Media: Lourdes Rohan
    Digital Strategy: Ziv Steinberg
    Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Larry Krone, Tod Lippy, Sue Simon, Jonathan Taylor
    TRANSCRIPTION
    NEIL GOLDBERG: I'm so happy to have with me on SHE'S A TALKER, Cassie. Hi Cassie.
    CASSIE DA COSTA: Hi Neil. Thanks for having me.
    NEIL: Oh, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. When you're meeting someone for the first time, how might you succinctly describe to them what it is you do?
    CASSIE: Succinctly.
    NEIL: Yeah.
    CASSIE: I would say I'm a writer and an editor, and I write both criticism and sometimes reportage. I sometimes do more investigative stories.
    NEIL: I believe both of your parents are around. Correct?
    CASSIE: Yes. They are.
    NEIL: So how would, if they were talking to their friends, how might they describe what it is you do?
    CASSIE: They would say that I'm a writer, and that I write for the Daily Beast, and that I used to work at the New Yorker. Yeah, that I'm a writer and an editor, I guess they would say. My dad's always been saying I'm going to write a book, and I'm like, oh dear. It's been a struggle to get beyond 5,000 words. So, I don't know that.
    NEIL: Right. What's the book he would have you write, do you think?
    CASSIE: I think he's thinking about a novel or something narrative, because it goes along with my personality as a child growing up and making up stories and being very much in my own head and in my own world. But it's funny because I didn't go into fiction writing. I thought maybe in college that I would be a poet, and then I kind of ... I'm very scatterbrained, so I just didn't do it. I ended up just doing other things, not for any thought through reason.
    NEIL: But I feel like you're already, if I may, writing poetry, For me, Mildly Yours, I understand that at least partly as poetic. I don't know, I guess-
    CASSIE: Yeah, it is. It definitely is. And I don't think that poetry has ever left the work that I do. I got in trouble a lot because the pieces that I wrote were too lyrical, and I've done things-
    NEIL: In trouble with who?
    CASSIE: Well, not in trouble in trouble, but just, editors would be like, what is this? Or, even professors in college, I would write a term paper and they'd be like, what the hell are you talking about?
    NEIL: I love the idea of getting in trouble for poetry.
    CASSIE: Yeah. That's my orientation towards poetry, that it is a kind of trouble.
    NEIL: Yeah.
    CASSIE: In a good way.
    NEIL: I would love to move on to some cards. Shall we?
    CASSIE: Ooh, ye

    • 34 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
122 Ratings

122 Ratings

Fight4URight ,

probably great

so. i have this disease, and it’s pretty famous for causing excruciating pain—especially when you smile too much. (did you know there was such a thing as smiling too much?)

thing is, i listen anyway. it’s a delight.

so. give her a whirl. maybe she’ll twirl ya back.

BrilliantMove ,

Something for everyone <3

Smart and provocative without being exclusive. Sweet and earnest but not at all saccharine. Deep AND deeply funny. A true pleasure.

jon kinzel ,

Is trust the only real currency?

SO Thankful Neil's steadfast and articulated approach towards seemingly random yet subtantive passages of contemporary record making, and mix of uninhibited pleasure and delibrerated insights, are riding the air waves. Brilliant! Genuine, and gently probing. Great guests. More than a meow.

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