This is the most 2026 thing I’ve ever heard: Sigmund Freud’s great-granddaughter Bella Freud has a video podcast on YouTube where she interviews people (Cate Blanchette, Lorde, Graydon Carter) while they lie on a psychiatrist’s couch.
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I confess to signing up for a year’s subscription to the New Yorker last fall so I could read about this.
I stumbled upon her video podcast (thanks, algorithm) and binged two episodes while I was dealing with the flu. It's bizarre and also kind of good, in an unsettling way. The Knausgaard episode appealed to my obsession with my favorite writer, but I wanted her to ask better/different questions.
I tell everyone I know about this podcast. I think she is a remarkably subtle interviewer, and wise in ways that catch you off-guard. Among my early favorites: Eric Cantona, Courtney Love, Hanif Kureishi (whose bitterness at his misfortune is riveting) — and Kate Moss, as it dawns on you that she is not just Bella’s close friend but also her late father’s lover. Freud-Freud-Freudian.
My favorite episode is with Nick Cave (the singer). He famously wears a suit everyday, and his suits are designed and made by Bella Freud.
Bella is the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud.
It's striking how talking about clothes can bring folks into such startling intimacy and vulnerability. I liked Bella's questions for Knausgaard; they got to different places than you'd expect out of a typical lit/celeb interview. And the recent one with Charlotte Gainsbourg—who should play Bella in any film in which she appears as a character—is like this layered combination of vocal ASMR and posh-bohemian anthropology.
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