Podcast

An instant favorite at the iTunes Music Store, Julian's podcast asks his guests to reveal the songs they're most embarrassed to admit they love. Mortification is transformed into pride and guilt becomes greatness as, one by one, special guests (both famous and not-so) unburden themselves of a lifetime of secret shame...

Subscribe and get all the guilt you can handle for free! Just click right here to be transported to the iTunes store. Once you're there, just push the "subscribe" button and the latest episode downloads automatically!

The scion of one of the American Theater's reigning families, Martha Plimpton has been performing in one way or another for, well, a long time. Countless movies, plays and other gigs later, she is at her fighting best: young, sexy, irrascible and brilliant. In fighting trim and down for almost anything, Marty took time out from rehearsing Tom Stoppard's mammoth "The Coast of Utopia" at Lincoln Center to talk with her old partner in nightclub shenanigans about one of her great passions: the pop song. So pour yourself a stiff one and buckle up tight as Rowdy Roddy Marty Plimpy introduces you to some pretty dicey Guilty Pleasures. Ladies and Gentlemen: Miss Martha Plimpton...

Composer. Producer. Writer. Porn star? That's right. Polymorphously perverse Tom Judson wears many hats, most interestingly that of "Gus Maddox", recent winner of the GAYVN Performer of the Year Award -- a feat made more remarkable by the winner's all-to-brief tour of duty in the adult industry, his relatively advanced age among performers therein and his many successes outside thereof. Who better, then, to help us bridge the gap between pleasure and pain, guilt and glory, sex and song? Join your host, the ever-intrepid Julian Fleisher, as he tiptoes through the tulips of the charming and disarming Tom Judson's garden of earthly delights. Oh, and, um, Guilty Pleasures. Don't forget to write!

"A truly inspired pop musicologist" is how the New York Times described Kenny Mellman in its all-out rave of Kiki & Herb's recent limited run on Broadway. (This interview was conducted just weeks before they opened). "The secret ingredient" is how another observer trenchantly described the deceptively retiring Herb. But anything more than a cursory listen reveals the stunning and irreplaceable quality of not only his playing, but also his de facto curatorship of the entire K&H repertoire. As music director, pianist and, perhaps most importantly, arranger, he is in many ways responsible for their uncanny ability to own the songs they choose to perform, no matter how iconic the song may be. So what tune makes the tune-master feel ashamed...?

For more than a decade, Justin Bond has thrilled and terrified audiences around the world as Kiki Durane, the booze-swilling, fire-breathing, mind-blowing T-Rex of the washed-up lounge singer set. With the ingenious Kenny Mellman as Herb at the piano, these two fiercely original, yet strangely recognizable titans of the performance world have left a stunning, brilliant and inimitable swath of scorched earth behind them during their long march through the dense jungle of pop-culture, politics, music and modern life. With only days until their opening, they each sat down with Julian to discuss, among other things, their guilty pleasures. First up is Justin who, naturally, takes issue with the very idea of guilt itself. Soon enough, however, the tequilla is flowing...and so is the pleasure!

Most of you know Mr. Mo Rocca from his many appearances on The Daily Show, VH1, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and even Animal Planet's "Whoa, Sunday". Really. What you probably don't know about Mo, though, is that this charming, brilliant and easy-going "humorista" is also a veteran of New Jersey's Hunterdon Hills Playhouse's Song & Dance Review...not to mention that he's harboring a pretty substantial collection of Andy Williams DVDs. And that's just the tip of this icy 'berg. Come with us, wont you, as we plumb the depths of Mo's hidden pop-musical identity, dig for pearls and emerge fairly overwhelmed with precious booty -- and yet unburdened of baggage and newly alive. No, really!

Brian Sloan has written and directed several hit independent feature films including "I Think I Do", "Boys Life" and most recently "WTC View". He is also the author of two Young Adult novels, last years "A Really Nice Prom Mess" and the newly released "Tale of Two Summers", both published Simon & Schuster. Brian's a longtime downtown New York denizen with a fierce appetite for all things poppy -- music, movies and strip clubs included. With an uncanny knack for finding the hidden heart within the most banal situations, he's a gifted comic voice and hilarious storyteller. Sit on the hood with us while we watch the band practice in the garage...

Molly Ringwald is many things to many people, to be sure. To us, though, she'll always be the gal who cooked a 20-pound turkey to bronze perfection in under 2-hours, while graciously losing at Scrabble. As if that weren't enough, she's a willing participant in another game that doesn't always end so well: confessing one's sins as a lover of David Cassidy. Listen and learn...

One of the podcast-o-sphere's leading lights, the mysterious and yet simultaneously highly exposed, One Tryck Pony stops by to talk guilty pleasures. Instead of coughing up titles, however, she ends up in a shamelessly flirting with two of Julian's neighbors, both recent (and vulnerable) graduates of NYU. This episode-within-an-episode was originally thrown together at the request of Dawn and Drew, two even more important podcasters who now broadcast their shows on the wondrous SIRIUS radio. While marked #3 on the episode list, this was actually an early exercise, but one with some really groovy guilty pleasures. Listen in as OTP, Julian and new buddies Nick "Danger" and David "Manarm" indulge in precisely the sort of dorm-room kibbitzing you'd never actually want other people to hear.

It's hard to say how David Rakoff is best known: as an author, actor, comic, editorialist. If he weren't such a luddite, he'd surely have an influential blog. For the moment, then, it's probably safe to say his most lasting fame will result from his two bestselling comic masterworks, Fraud and Don't Get Too Comfortable, each a cunning, penetrating and hilarious look at one man's (as he puts it) intense discomfort moving through the world. It should come as no surprise, then, that David's take on the ol' GP should be tinged with the sadness of a childhood spent at the movies, rather than the record store. What's a guy who's never even heard of Duran Duran supposed to do when asked to choose his guiltiest popular pleasure? Never fear, dear reader. Rakoff his here!

Someone somewhere once called Cintra Wilson "The Dorothy Parker of the Cyber Age". But as Dorothy Parker herself once said "I don't care what is written about me as long as it isn't true." Indeed! For if Parker's keen eye had had half the fire that this dame's has, why the Algonquin would long ago have burst into flames. From her columns in Salon, The San Francisco Examiner and in weeklies around the nation, to her incendiary blog -- the dreaded Dregublog -- this Wilson flips the switch that lights the hair of the high and mighty on fire. With a flair for the well turned, acid-dipped phrase and an eye for the slightest chink in the most self-righteous armor, she's made a career out of taking the air out of some of our culture's hottest hot air balloons. Guess what her Guilty Pleasure is...

Sandra Tsing Loh is an icon in the cultural sphere of LA, and practically the patron saint of Van Nuys, where she lives -- and that's not some backhanded compliment. An award-winning writer/performer/composer/gadfly and, yes, also a beloved NPR personality, she's a wife, a mom and yet still somehow a really good time. And that's before lunch! Famous for having lost her job on LA's legendary WKCRW when her engineer failed to bleep the word "fuck" from one of her beloved dispatches, she was eventually offered her job back...but told them to, well, fuck off. Meanwhile, her books, articles, performances, music, and commentaries can be found in bookstores, theaters, magazines and on the radio just about any day of the week. But lucky you: you can get this one here...now!

Ravel, The Green Hornet and masturbation: just a few of the head-spinning juxtapositions you’ll enjoy when JF interlocutes his own elusive sire in this, the long-overdue latest edition of the podcast. On the eve of his coronation at the 2007 Kennedy Center Honors, piano papa Leon Fleisher hauls his cookies up to Kitchen Studios for a revealing - and sometimes troubling - look at one “longhair’s” guilty glee. Hear all the Oedipal drama as Julian confronts his daddy head on, grilling him about the past and challenging him to dig deeper and reveal more than any other interviewer ever has. Hs reward? Why it's Rachmaninoff, of course. What else did you expect? Get the real story...

You may know Joshua "Josh" Malina from such television warhorses as Sports Night, The West Wing and Big Shots -- well, maybe not Big Shots. But did you know that he is also the co-creator of Bravo's network-making series Celebrity Poker Showdown? He's also sire to a frisky brood of precocious insult comics who don't even take Shabbas off to spare a hapless visitor the business end of his forked, if funny toung. Perhaps that's why our guest, after sharing stories from the trenches of the Hollywood poker scene, shamelessly susses out his own kids for guilty pleasure gold. NB: This episode was originally recorded a very long time ago, and since then many things have changes. Rest assured, however, that where ever possible, we attempted to let you know. Huzzah!

©2009 mm+i communications, inc. All rights reserved.