Kathryn Hahn & Jason Zinoman

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This week on Invisibilia, Emotions.

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I felt at times that maybe my feelings were too intense for the situation. I had never felt anything like that before.

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We introduce a completely different way of thinking about your emotions.

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Listen in the MPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:34)
It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn.
Kathryn Hahn, the actress, is starring in a new TV show. It's called I Love Dick. It's created by Jill Soloway, who also made Transparent, another show that Kathryn's on.
In Transparent, Hahn plays Raquel, a rabbi. She's terrific in it. She's compassionate, compelling, totally one of the smartest characters on the show. Hahn, though, was actually born Catholic. She went to Catholic school. She went to Mass, the whole deal. And she remembers being really into her faith growing up. Like, I have a legit crush on our Lord and Savior into it. Not even kidding.

**Kathryn Hahn** (1:09)
I mean, I remember going to a sleepover party when I was, oh, third grade. There were a couple girls that we didn't know that were friends of the birthday girl from like another, you know, from her preschool or something. And these two girls were really, really, really deeply religious.
And they couldn't go to bed without praying. Like the two of them side by side, like on their knees praying very deeply. And I went up and I like pretended to be as deep into it as they were because it looked so romantic.

**Jesse Thorn** (1:37)
It's Bullseye.
Coming up, I'll talk with Kathryn about her roles in both Transparent and the new Amazon series, I Love Dick. She's worked a lot with Jill Soloway now, so why does she keep coming back?

**Kathryn Hahn** (1:56)
What I've always loved about it is that she has an ability to step outside and just kind of a little bit make fun of pretense or any kind of, if preciousness starts to like sink in at all, she has a way of diffusing it, which is always like, I really appreciate.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:11)
Then I'll talk with Jason Zinoman. He's the comedy critic for The New York Times, the only full-time comedy critic at a newspaper in the United States. He's got a new book out about David Letterman.
He's talked with a lot of people who knew him and watched hours and hours and hours of The Late Show and Late Night. And he came to appreciate the really particularly specific things about David Letterman, like the way he makes jokes out of non-joke words.

**Jason Zinoman** (2:41)
It's not just that Letterman finds words funny. It's that a funny word is enough of a joke.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:48)
Finally, I'll tell you about Concrete, one of the saddest, sweetest and most honest superhero comics I've ever read. Seriously, Watchmen's got nothing on Concrete. Okay, maybe it's got some things on Concrete, but I personally prefer Concrete and recommend it to you. It's all coming up on Bullseye. Let's go.
It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. My first guest this week, Kathryn Hahn. She's an actress. She's been in comedy movies like Stepbrothers, Anchorman, a bunch more. On TV, she starred in the NBC series Crossing Jordan. She was also a regular on Parks and Rec.
She played Jennifer Barkley. She was the campaign consultant. Lately, she's been working a lot with the writer and director, Jill Soloway. She was in Soloway's 2013 movie, Afternoon Delight. She plays Raquel the Rabbi on Transparent. Now she's starring in another Amazon series called I Love Dick. It's based on the Chris Krause book by the same name. Kathryn plays Chris, a New Yorker who moves to Marfa, Texas with her husband, played by Griffin Dunne.
There, she meets Dick, played by Kevin Bacon. Dick's an artist. He runs an institute in town. He's also condescending and withholding kind of macho.
But Kathryn's character sort of becomes infatuated with him. She starts writing him letters. The letters are as much about her as they are about him.
Here's a clip from the show. In this scene from the first episode, the two of them have just met for the first time in an art reception.

**Kevin Bacon** (4:32)
Hello, Chris Krause. That's me.

**Kathryn Hahn** (4:36)
I've heard a lot about you, Dick. Love that you just go by Dick because usually someone would, you know, when it's born a Richard, they would, Rich, Rick, Nichi, Ricky, and so many. Just Dick.
Is it possible that I saw you on a horse yesterday?

**Kevin Bacon** (4:58)
Yeah, I have a ranch just outside of town.