My friend W. Kamau Bell has a new show out, Who's With Me?. Known for having conversations about the issues that divide, enrage, and confuse us, Kamau sits down with someone he admires to give them their flowers, ask his most burning questions, and invite his guest to give him and his audience homework on how to make the world a better place.

Daveed Diggs joins Kamau to discuss his hip-hop career, parenthood, breaking out with Hamilton, and pursuing creative projects with friends. Kamau gives Daveed his flowers for being intentional with the work he selects. From his rap group to his role in the final season of The Boys, to his new film Magic Hour, Daveed busts his ass with projects he believes in.

Donate to Cool Hand Series at coolhandseries.org to support bringing the arts into the prison systems.

Find new episodes of Who's With Me? with W. Kamau Bell on YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.

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Melissa Auf der Maur came of age in Montreal's bohemian art scene in the '80s and early '90s, at the very moment that alternative rock was becoming the defining sound of a generation. Through an unlikely chain of events, her band Tinker landed an opening slot for the Smashing Pumpkins, and Billy Corgan, sensing her natural talent on bass, recommended her to Courtney Love. What followed was a turbulent apprenticeship. Auf der Maur joined Hole for the Live Through This tour in 1994, just weeks after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff. She later toured with the Smashing Pumpkins, released two solo albums, and has since built a life as a musician, photographer, and cultural curator, co-founding Basilica Hudson, a multidisciplinary arts center in New York's Hudson Valley.

Melissa Auf der Maur's book, "Even the Good Girls Will Cry" is a bestseller, part rock memoir, part travel diary, and part psychedelic scrapbook. It's a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade that captures that era in all its messy, angsty glory. Auf der Maur writes with the tenderness of a true survivor: about the illness and death of her father, her past relationship with Dave Grohl, and her complicated, deeply human portrait of Courtney Love. Now she's following it with a companion photo book, "My 90's Rock Photographs," drawn from the remarkable archive she shot from inside one of the most photographed moments in music history.

On today's episode, Justin Richmond talks to Melissa Auf der Maur about both projects - how her parents encouraged an unconventional life in the arts, how alternative music went mainstream, and how her relationship with Courtney Love has evolved over the years.

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Today we're revisiting a conversation with acclaimed British guitarist Johny Marr. Marr started playing guitar as a young teenager growing up in Manchester. When he turned 15 he dropped out of school and moved to London to join the band Sister Ray.

A couple years later he would help form The Smiths with Morrissey, Mike Joyce, and Marr’s friend and bassist, Andy Rourke. After The Smiths broke up in 1987, Marr went on to collaborate with an array of different musicians and play in bands like The Pretenders, The The, and Modest Mouse.

On today’s episode Justin Richmond talks to Johnny Marr about his exciting work scoring movies with Pharrell and Hans Zimmer. Marr also recalls the terror he felt performing live in front of stadiums full of fans with The Pretenders on U2’s Joshua Tree tour. And he talks about the time he bought a Fender Stratocaster while hanging out with Oasis’ Noel Gallager. That Strat has nine pickups and it eventually led to him writing one the best songs of his solo career.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Johnny Marr songs HERE.

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Joe Jackson showed up in the late '70s UK New Wave scene, all nervous energy and biting wit, with hits like "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" putting him in the same conversation as Elvis Costello and Squeeze. But where a lot of his peers stayed in their lane musically, Jackson kept moving: into the jump-blues swing of "Jumpin' Jive," into the sophisticated, Latin-tinged jazz of Night and Day, and then into classical composition, into a music-hall concept album framed around a fictional Edwardian performer named Max Champion. He's rarely made the same record twice, and that restlessness has probably cost him the kind of mainstream consistency that turns an artist into a household name.

On today's episode, Justin Richmond sits down with Joe to talk about his new studio album Hope and Fury, digging into the songwriting on it and on older records, Joe's collaboration with his longtime and criminally underrated bassist Graham Maby, and why comedy is such an important part of Joe's artistic sensibility.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Joe Jackson HERE.

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Ed O'Brien has spent decades crafting some of the most textured, expansive guitar in modern rock. From the fragmented beauty of Kid A and Amnesiac to the experimental layers of The King of Limbs, with the more straightforward muscle of OK Computer somewhere in between, few players have done more to expand what the instrument can do in a rock context.

In recent years, Ed has been building a parallel universe, one where he's at the center. It started with Earth in 2020, released under the moniker EOB. Now comes Blue Morpho, out under his full birth name, Ed O'Brien. The title isn't incidental: like the striking butterfly it references, Ed went through a genuine transformation over the six years it took to make this record, and the album reflects it.

On today's Broken Record, Ed walks us through the journey, beginning in solitude, playing guitar figures purely for himself, then gradually moving toward collaboration, eventually pulling in a crew of talented friends to help bring the songs to life. He also talks about how his playing has evolved over time, what Brazil has meant to him musically, and which producer he wishes Radiohead had worked with back in the '90s.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Ed O'Brien HERE.

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Just before the premiere of Earth, Wind & Fire's new Questlove-directed documentary , the three OGs of the group stopped by Broken Record: vocalist Phillip Bailey, singer and percussionist Ralph Johnson, and bass player Verdine White.

Host Justin Richmond will tell you straight up that talking about Earth, Wind & Fire's music feels a little beside the point. It exists on a level that resists explanation — spiritual, emotional, somewhere in the body before it reaches the brain. What the conversation reveals instead is the kind of people these three are: warm, grounded, and deeply committed to what they've built together. And maybe that's the whole answer.

In this episode, they talk about Maurice White, founder and spiritual leader of the group and Verdine's brother. They listen to some music together. And Phillip finally spills on what "Reasons" is actually about.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Earth, Wind & Fire HERE.

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The New Pornographers have never been easy to pin down. Since forming in Vancouver in the late ’90s, the band became one of the defining acts of the Canadian indie rock explosion. They’re part of a scene that also produced Neko Case, Dan Bejar, and a generation of artists who seemed to operate entirely outside the commercial mainstream. Co-founders Carl Newman and Kathryn Calder have spent more than two decades making records that sound like they arrived fully formed: densely layered, relentlessly melodic, and somehow both euphoric and melancholy at the same time.

Their latest album, The Former Site Of,  draws on a different kind of raw material. Part of it came from a friend’s terminal illness and the weight of watching someone you love reckon with time running out. Part of it came from something more unexpected: the last remaining payphone in New York City, which became a kind of anchor image for the record, a physical object standing in for everything we hold onto after it stops being useful.

On today’s episode, Bruce Headlam sits down with Carl Newman and Kathryn Calder to talk about where their new album came from, what it’s like to make something beautiful out of grief, and how the Canadian music scene that shaped them still runs through everything they do.

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Mopreme Shakur is 2Pac's half-brother, a rapper, filmmaker, and record producer living at the intersection of revolutionary politics and hip-hop. He's one of the only surviving members of Thug Life and Outlawz, raised alongside 2Pac in the tradition of Black liberation activism.

And now, for the first time, he's telling his own story. His new book, This Thug's Life, is a book about brotherhood, survival, movement building, and the making of a legend.

On today's episode Justin Richmond talks to Mopreme about growing up in a family steeped in activism, how he started his rap career with a classic appearance on "Feels Good" by Tony! Toni! Toné!, and what it was like to witness the evolution of 2Pac's career.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Mopreme Shakur HERE.

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Before Hardy was known as the breakout artist who pushed country music into hard rock territory, he was a self-proclaimed redneck from Philadelphia, Mississippi who studied songwriting at Middle Tennessee State University. Since moving to Nashville in 2013, he's written 22 number ones for artists like Morgan Wallen, Blake Shelton, and Dierks Bentley.

In 2018, with the encouragement of producer Joey Moi and his label Big Loud, Hardy started writing songs for himself — and it paid off. He's now a five-time ACM Award winner and two-time CMA Award winner, joining the upper echelon of Big Loud artists that Moi has helped build, alongside Morgan Wallen and Florida Georgia Line.

On today's episode, Leah Rose talks to Hardy about the craft of writing a song that sticks — including what he's learned from studying artists like Eminem. They also get into how AI is showing up in Nashville's writer's rooms, and why Hardy thinks bro country isn't going anywhere.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Hardy HERE.

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Recently, we had visionary music producer Robert Margouleff on the show and today we're sharing an excerpt from his new audiobook, Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music. In legendary studios like Electric Lady and the Record Plant, Margouleff became a pioneering producer and engineer for artists like Billy Preston, Jeff Beck, DEVO, The Isley Brothers, and David Sanborn. A true sonic innovator, he was an early adopter of immersive audio and surround sound, developing new mixing techniques for home theaters that brought some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters to life. 

Here's a preview of the audiobook, where Margouleff talks about working with The Isley Brothers on their 3+3 album. If you want to hear more, check out Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music wherever you get audiobooks. You can use the code SOUNDS25 at pushkin.fm/shapingsounds to save 25% on the audiobook.

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Robert Margouleff is one of the most quietly consequential figures in modern music — a sonic architect who helped build some of the most innovative and enduring sounds of the last half century. Together with his partner Malcolm Cecil, Robert created TONTO, the world's largest analog synthesizer, and used it to co-produce a string of era-defining Stevie Wonder classics including Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale. He went on to work with Jeff Beck, The Isley Brothers, and a scrappy art-punk band from Akron, Ohio called DEVO — helping shape their early sound into something that felt like it arrived from another dimension entirely.

You might remember Robert from his Broken Record interview a few years back. Now he's releasing an audiobook, Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music. It's a memoir about creativity, collaboration, and artistic courage, told by someone who was in the room when the future was being invented.

On today's episode Justin Richmond sits down with Robert and Mark Mothersbaugh, the frontman of DEVO, composer, visual artist, and one of the most original creative minds of his generation. They recall working together to make DEVO's Freedom of Choice, and the glory days of recording at the Record Plant studios in Los Angeles in the '80s.

You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Robert Margouleff and Mark Mothersbaugh HERE.

You can use the code SOUNDS25 at pushkin.fm/shapingsounds to save 25% on the audiobook.

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