Key Change: Rian Johnson on Wagner's 'Das Rheingold'

My guest today is director Rian Johnson, which is exciting for me, because I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since seeing his first feature film, ‘Brick,' in 2006. Since then, he’s made six more feature films, including ‘Looper‘ in 2012; ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘ in 2017; the murder mystery ‘Knives Out‘ in 2019; and his most recent movie, another in the 'Knives Out' series, ‘Wake Up Dead Man,‘ which is already out in theaters, and comes to Netflix on December 12. I talked to Rian about a piece of music that had a profound impact on him, which was the overture to ‘Das Rheingold‘ by Richard Wagner. For more info, visit songexploder.net/rian-johnson.

You can listen to Key Change: Rian Johnson on Wagner's 'Das Rheingold' online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Key Change: Rian Johnson on Wagner's 'Das Rheingold' is an episode from Song Exploder by Hrishikesh Hirway.

This episode is 23:24 long.

This episode was published on Dec 10, 2025.

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