Breaking the Fourth Wall with Isaac Butler
Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin
iHeartPodcasts
4.4 • 8.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Isaac Butler is an author, critic, theater director, and professor known for his books The Method: How The Twentieth Century Learned to Act and The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, co-written with Dan Kois. Butler’s writing has appeared in numerous publications such as New York magazine, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Slate magazine. For Slate, he also created and hosted the podcast “Lend Me Your Ears”, about Shakespeare and politics, and currently co-hosts “Working”, a podcast about the creative process. Butler’s work as a theater director has been seen on stages throughout the United States and he is the co-creator of “Real Enemies”, which was named one of the best live events of 2015 by the New York Times. Butler currently teaches Theater History and Performance at NYU Tisch.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
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| 0:27.4 | slash back to school. Inspired by Drive, powered by innovation. What I told people, I was making a podcast |
| 0:36.9 | about Benghazi. Nine times out of 10, |
| 0:40.5 | they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why? Benghazi, the truth became a web of |
| 0:47.6 | lies. From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:54.1 | What difference at this point does it make? Listen to and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:56.8 | What difference at this point does it make? |
| 1:03.7 | Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:12.7 | This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from IHeart Radio. |
| 1:17.7 | My guest today is an author, critic, and theater director. |
| 1:23.2 | His most recent book, The Method, How the 20th Century Learned to Act, |
| 1:28.9 | has been named one of the best books of 2022 by the New Yorker, Time Magazine, |
| 1:31.8 | the San Francisco Chronicle, and Vanity Fair. |
| 1:36.0 | Isaac Butler has studied acting since childhood, |
| 1:39.2 | performing in Washington, D.C.'s theater scene. |
| 1:46.5 | He is now an adjunct instructor of theater history and performance at NYU Tisch. Butler is also the author of The World Only Spins Forward, The Ascent of Angels in America. |
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