Rob Lee
500 episodes listed below
Patient conversations with working creative people.
The Truth In This Art gathers artists, filmmakers, educators, and cultural workers for unhurried conversations about how their work gets made. Its strongest moments come when craft talk opens into place, identity, memory, and the communities that keep creative life moving.
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The Truth In This Art is a long-form arts interview show built around attentive conversation rather than quick promotion. Rob Lee brings artists, filmmakers, educators, and cultural workers into a space where biography, craft, and community can sit together. The pace is leisurely. Questions tend to make room for context, and guests are often invited to introduce themselves before any formal topic takes over. That choice matters, because the show is most alive when people explain not just what they made, but how they came to make it. Recent episodes trace a wide creative map: improv at High Wire Improv, MICA’s Bicentennial, mixed media work with vintage magazines and oil pastels, feature filmmaking for the Maryland Film Festival, and documentary portraiture of Dr. Leslie King Hammond. The conversations stay close to process. A filmmaker can talk through the small realism of live-chat timing in a screen-life movie, while an artist can describe the pull between precise cuts, smeared pigment, and materials that leave evidence of the hand. The show also gives weight to institutions and scenes. MICA, Maryland Film Festival, Baltimore, and community arts spaces are treated as part of the story, not as background decoration. There is humor, but it usually arrives through rapport and stray personal asides. There is seriousness, too. Guests speak about Black women’s representation, living while Black in the United States, loneliness, civic life, and cultural critique without the conversation becoming remote or academic. Rob Lee’s role is less interrogator than steady companion. He affirms, circles back, and lets answers breathe. That makes the show especially useful for listeners who care about the working realities of art: rooms, materials, programs, festivals, friendships, teaching, and the stubborn act of continuing. It is not slick arts coverage. It feels like a table conversation with people who are still making, still learning, and still looking for art, culture, and community close to home.
Made for: For listeners who care about artists, filmmakers, educators, and local creative ecosystems more than celebrity-driven arts chatter. It fits people who enjoy reflective interviews with room for process, place, and personal history.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its grounded intimacy: it connects craft talk to community life without flattening either one. Baltimore and Maryland arts contexts recur as living infrastructure, while guests still get space to define their own work.
The Truth In This Art with Rob Lee is an arts and culture interview podcast connecting arts, culture, and community. Sharing stories that matter through in-depth conversations with artists and creatives — photographers, filmmakers, designers, musicians, chefs, writers, and more. Guests share studio routines, community roots, career insights, and the ideas and choices that shape their projects. New episodes, show notes, and transcripts available here.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Rob Lee connects screen work to the creative choices, material constraints, and cultural settings that shape it.
Rob Lee builds interviews around how creative work gets made and what conditions shape it. Guests are asked to describe themselves in their own words before the conversation moves toward process, resources, and artistic choices.
Rob Lee gets artists past the polished bio and into the expensive, tactile, stubborn reality of making things.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A patient look at improv as craft, teaching, and community.
Barry Wright III's return to The Truth in This Art keeps its focus on improv as teaching, community work, and creative discipline, with High Wire Improv at the center of the conversation. Rob Lee lets the discussion move at an easy pace, and that suits the material.
A grounded campus conversation about art, civic life, and a bicentennial that looks forward as well as back.
Cecilia M. McCormick joins Rob Lee to talk through MICA's bicentennial, and the episode stays centered on what the school has meant to Baltimore and what comes next.
A patient, tactile artist interview that turns process into personality.
Jess Owens-Young and Rob Lee spend the conversation on how a life turns into material: collage scraps, acrylics, oil pastels, ink, and the slow discipline of layering.
A calm arts conversation about screen-life craft, digital realism, and a filmmaker talking process.
Chandler Chavez talks through his first feature, American Stream, and the episode settles into a clear look at screen-life storytelling, chat rhythm, and the small choices that make digital spaces feel credible.
A calm conversation about Mouse, loneliness, connection, and social media.
Rob Lee lets Kenny Riches introduce Mouse in his own terms, and the discussion stays with the film instead of drifting off it. Riches talks about being based in Miami and Salt Lake City, his hometown, and the conversation keeps returning to loneliness, connection, and the way…
A careful sports-and-identity interview that treats ambition as something practiced, not proclaimed.
Rolando Reid's turn on The Truth in This Art follows movement in more than one register: track to bobsled, Jamaica to the Winter Olympics, and personal drive to team duty.
A candid look at the money, pressure, and persistence behind making art.
Rob Lee and Kayla E. use Precious Rubbish to get at the cost of becoming an artist, and the conversation keeps circling back to the split between creative promise and financial reality.
A local-first look at how a film festival fits its city.
Rob Lee's conversation with KJ Moore keeps its focus on the Maryland Film Festival as a place where local talent and community programming overlap.
David Remnick and New Yorker writers on Ukraine, Iran, Hollywood, and AI ethics.
Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant explain one topic per episode, from the bicameral mind to Boeing's MCAS.
Multi-part dramatized retellings of scandals like OceanGate's Titan and the Lehman Brothers collapse.
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins dissect Oscar races, new releases, and Hollywood news.
Barry Wright III traces his path from teaching and math at Duke to tech burnout in Baltimore and a late-20s pivot into improv through his wife, Kristen, and her friends.
Rob Lee welcomes Cecilia M.
Rob Lee welcomes Jess Owens-Young for a warm conversation about her work and the many roles that shape it.
Chandler Chavez keeps it simple.
Kenny Riches starts with place and personhood.
This episode features an interview with co-directors Ben Baker-Lee and Rahsaan Hammond about their documentary film on Dr.
Host Rob Lee interviews returning guest Estéban Whiteside, an artist who uses his concrete oppressionism method in bold, childlike paintings to critique American life and cultural absurdities.
This episode features an interview with visual artist Veronica Jackson, who explores the representation and identity of Black women in popular media through her innovative art practice.
Host Rob Lee interviews painter Lanice Howard about her multidisciplinary work reimagining black histories and her hypothetical planet Eludria.
Host Rob Lee interviews multidisciplinary artist and musician Root about her journey, music, and nonprofit work supporting women artists.
Host Rob Lee interviews comics and prose writer Barbara Perez Marquez about her work and creative process.
This episode is a retrospective review and discussion of the 1991 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, featuring host Rob Lee and guest Isaiah.
Host Rob Lee interviews writer and director Juan Morales about his background and upcoming film Oualie.
Host Rob Lee interviews multidisciplinary artist Jamila Akubo about her work centering the black silhouette and exploring cultural memory.
Host Rob Lee interviews photographer, stylist, and filmmaker Curry Lee about her work examining female identity and aesthetics.
Host Rob Lee interviews artist and writer Nicole Clark about her work fusing art and prose, focusing on feminine form and female experience.
An interview with artist Santos Shelton about his work blending storytelling, sci-fi, and personal trauma.
Host Rob Lee interviews monster maker and filmmaker Tristan Tresorex Johnson about his creative journey and projects.
This episode features an interview with Janine Lee, owner of No Name Gallery in Philadelphia, discussing her role as an art developer and community builder who emphasizes humanity and helping the greater good in her work.
Host Rob Lee interviews scholar Lawrence T.
Rolando Reid describes moving from Monroe College and Morgan State track to Jamaica’s 2022 Winter Olympics bobsled team after a 2019 call from his brother changed his path.
Host Rob Lee interviews entertainment correspondent Gianna Brooke about her career and creative journey.
Host Rob Lee interviews Nuyorican painter and photographer Daniel DeJesus about his work and background.
Rob Lee introduces himself and his podcast in a humorous alien scenario, then discusses overrated vegetables.
Host Rob Lee interviews Taiwanese-American multidisciplinary artist Thawne Honig about her large-scale paintings and installations envisioning a post-apocalyptic society.
This episode features an interview with cartoonist and author Lonnie Millsap, discussing his career, creative titles, and work featured in publications like The New Yorker.
Host Rob Lee interviews award-winning cartoonist Ben Passmore about his work, including graphic novels and social commentary.
Kayla E.
Glasses open the door.
A horror anthology gets personal.
Host Rob Lee interviews mixed media artist Genesis Rodriguez about her work and creative process.
Host Rob Lee interviews visual artist Sean Kinsey about his urban art style and creative journey.
Host Rob Lee interviews muralist and painter Ernest Shaw about his work and recent projects.
Host Rob Lee interviews Will Walker, founder of a BIPOC-led running crew in Baltimore, discussing community, fitness, and connection.
Host Rob Lee interviews knife maker Henry Hyde about his craft, background, and creative journey.