We Need To Talk About Kevin with Jia Tolentino

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Blank Check Productions / Talkhouse

Tv & Film, Film Reviews, Society & Culture, Comedy

4.7 • 6.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2026

⏱️ 174 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The time has come for us to talk about Kevin. The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino joins us to talk about Lynne Ramsay's depiction of every parent's worst nightmare - 2011's We Need To Talk About Kevin. We need to talk about how Griffin grew up with Ezra Miller, and even auditioned against them to play Kevin. We need to talk about Lionel Shriver's awful politics. We need to talk about Tilda Swinton comparing her performance here to Buster Keaton. And we need to again explain the whole Fantastic Beasts franchise to another guest who is blissfully unaware of Credence Barebone. Read Jia's Profile of Jennifer Lawrence and her other work at the New Yorker. Check out the r/HowIsLivingThere Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook! Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Black Jack with Griffin and David
0:05.0	Black Jack with Griffin and David
0:09.0	Don't know what to say or to expect
0:12.0	All you need to know is that the name of the show is Black Jack It's like this.
0:23.2	You wake and you watch podcasts, get in your car and listen to the podcasts.
0:28.7	You go to your little jobs, your little school, but you don't really hear about that on the 6 o'clock news.
0:33.3	Why?
0:34.2	Because nothing is really happening.
0:36.0	You go home and you watch some more podcasts, and maybe it's a fun night, and you go out and you watch a podcast. I mean, it's got so bad that half the people on podcasts, inside the podcast, they are listening to podcasts. It's TV? Oh, sorry, sorry, you're not talking about. I was, and what are, what are these people watching podcasts like me? It's TV.
0:56.1	He's talking about TV. But also, it extends to radio. I was replacing a couple different words there. Yeah. Because we, yeah, he also. That's Kevin. That's, uh, the titular character Kevin in a movie that is called, we need to talk about Kevin. But he's doing the talk of there.
1:09.1	Well, shut up.
1:10.3	Usually he's just, you know,
1:11.5	jacking it and locking eyes with you or whatever.
1:13.6	Here's a question.
1:14.2	I can only defend... need to talk about Kevin. But he's doing the talk of it. Hey, well, shut up. Usually he's just, you know, jacking it and locking eyes with you or whatever.
1:13.6	Here's a question.
1:14.2	I'm sorry.
1:14.2	I can only defeat this movie with humor or, like, confront this movie.
1:17.0	You strongly dislike this movie.
1:18.5	That's not true.
1:19.1	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
1:20.9	But I'm pretty mixed on. It is my least favorite, and I still think it's very good.
	...

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