Talking Sopranos
The Best…
…Podcast Episode I Listened To This Week
“Catching Up” — Talking Sopranos podcast, June 18, 2025
When I think of the early months of the pandemic, what immediately comes to mind is the feeling that the future was completely unclear. We didn’t know how bad the virus would get or when we’d be able to socialize with friends and family in person again or when businesses would return to “normal” — or if they (or we) would survive at all.
We didn’t know what would happen to our cities, our country, our world.
I have a distinct image of myself during that time. I’m alone, cooped up in my New York City apartment, pacing all the time (gotta get in those 10,000 steps!). Sometimes I’m on work Teams calls, sometimes I’m reading a book, sometimes I’m watching TV. But I’m always pacing. And worrying about the future.
On one particular afternoon, when everything in the world seemed particularly fraught, I remember walking into my bedroom, collapsing face-first onto my bed and just sobbing. At that moment, lacking any other outlet for emotional release, my mind and body just decided, “This is what we’re doing now.” And I gotta say — it was cathartic.
From a more mundane perspective, we also didn’t know when there would be anything new again. Live sports completely stopped, as did film and television production. No games, no new shows, no new movies. There was nothing to look forward to. So many of us found comfort in watching old, familiar things.
In May 2020, in this swirl of nostalgia and uncertainty, I stumbled across an unlikely lifeline: a new podcast called Talking Sopranos.
This was an early “re-watch” podcast, hosted by Sopranos stars Michael Imperioli (who played Chrisopher Moltisanti) and Steve Schirripa (Bobby Bacala). Every week, they would discuss one episode of the series, going in chronological order, starting with Season 1, Episode 1 (“The Pilot”).
I was intrigued. So I re-watched “The Pilot,” then listened to the first podcast episode. It began with a sober discussion of what was unfolding before us, with Imperioli admitting that, because of the pandemic, they almost canceled the podcast after six months of pre-production. He noted that a mutual friend of his and Schirripa’s had recently died from the virus.
“It’s a terrible, terrible crisis,” Imperioli said. “But then we started getting a lot of communication from our fans, particularly through social media… They were watching the show, bingeing the show, during shelter in place and quarantine, and they were telling us they really wanted the podcast. We decided to figure out a way to do it from our [homes].”
I’m thankful they pushed through, because I was immediately hooked. I had watched The Sopranos from start to finish several times over before, and I knew it well. But Imperioli and Schirripa shared insights and memories about the show that I’d never heard before. They made it personal. And when they started interviewing members of the production team, the show’s richness deepened.
The foundation of the podcast, though, was the relationship between its two stars. Imperioli and Schirripa were clearly friends and shared a lot of experiences with each other, on and off set. They talked about the show, of course, but they also discussed their favorite restaurants, crazy stories about fellow cast members, and went on odd tangents, like whether they think ghosts exist (Imperioli: yes; Schirripa: no).
They could get cantankerous with each other too, and part of the appeal of listening every week was hearing them get mad at each other — at times even seeming to drift apart — only to come back together and become friends again.
We got a taste of that chemistry again this past week, when they unexpectedly released a new episode for the first time in 3 1/2 years, “Catching Up,” during which they revisited some of the show’s most memorable scenes and promoted their upcoming tour dates. It was a pleasure to dive back into their worlds.
The reunion special was also a reminder of how, during the pandemic, Talking Sopranos gave me something to look forward to every week. Because I not only got to hear a new edition of the podcast, I also got to re-watch another episode of possibly the greatest TV show ever made.
Following this weekly pattern became an important ritual in my life that went on for 18 months, until they finally reached the series’ iconic conclusion, Season 6, Episode 21 (“Made in America”), in December 2021.
The night I finished the re-watch and the podcast, I wrote this note to myself:
[The Sopranos] is such an existential show and so much of the philosophy is that nothing lasts forever, everything gets washed away, and while there’s some amount of comfort in that, there’s also tremendous discomfort. Like, what are we doing here? What is any of this for? What’s the point? Fuck if I know.
Fuck if I know is right.
More than five years on since the start of the pandemic, we still have plenty to be worried about. But most of the old cadences of work, school, and life are back. All of us now understand, though, how quickly it can all go away, how the future really is as uncertain as we fear it may be. Hopefully, armed with that knowledge, we’re all living accordingly.