Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah discuss the continuing saga of Luigi Mangione, newly minted folk hero and alleged assassin of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. “Here’s this man who is a revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, he’s smart, he’s a person who seems like a morally good man, which is hard to find,” said journalist Taylor Lorenz on CNN, and while there was some context to that comment, there wasn’t much. At Coachella, Circle Jerks’ frontman Keith Morris called for an “army of Luigis,” while folk singer Jesse Welles is selling out venues with his Luigi-inspired song “United Healthcare.” Nancy and Sarah talk about anti-heroes, the politics of protest music, the catharsis of Netflix, and why our culture has a hard-on for murderers.Also discussed:* Would you go to space?* Why wasn’t Oprah on that flight?* Nancy’s Circle Jerks encounter* Sarah eats two-week old steak. Pays the price.* Cody Balmer is no Luigi Mangione — or is he?* Taylor Lorenz is one strange bird* Luxembourg, Rosenberg, same diff …* Missing Ross Perot* Sarah confuses Dallas Morning News baseball writer Evan Grant with Ryan Murphy favorite/teen heartthrob Evan Peters …* Weinstein case = can of worms with snakes inside* Sarah tells a dad joke, stands behind it* Someone looks like four miles of bad road* Candace Owens, if we must* You gotta put batteries in your vibratorPlus, Clyde Barrow was not impotent, ChatGPT roasts Sarah and Nancy, a special friend-of-the-pod on Bill Maher this Friday, and much more!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah discuss former “Shagger of the Year” Russell Brand, who’s been charged with sexual misconduct, a year or two after an explosive documentary landed on British TV about the comedian/entertainer/podcaster/New-Age guru. That show kicked off a criminal investigation, now headed to the courts.Brand is at once an obvious and peculiar #MeToo target, since he was so outspoken about his misdeeds in real time, including a memoir about his sex addiction called My Booky Wook. The ladies discuss changing cultural climates, why women are drawn to charming reprobates, the logic of age-of-consent laws, and the appropriate legal consequences for someone who behaved badly and got lavishly rewarded for it.Also discussed:* Are Americans horny for anger, or is it just our Twitter feeds?* Disinhibited by a nap, Sarah falls into Twitter spat* Carrie Coon stans came to win* The spitfire that is (recent Smoke ‘Em guest!) Meghan McCain* Sarah regrets editing out a line about Russell Brand asking about panties* “Attention hunger”* The late great David Carr* “Feeding the fat kid” into perpetuity* Beware the older man saying, “I want to buy you a dress and take you out in it.” Honeytrap!* Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver screenwriter, should have known better* Sarah challenges Kmele Foster to an “antic conversation”* “It’s dudes all the way down.”Plus, Sarah tries to explain a “vacation hat,” Nancy nominates Tom Hardy for perennial “Sexiest Man Alive,” a pic of where dozens of your favorite podcasters have peed, and much more!Correction: Nancy said the tariffs had wiped out $10 trillion in “debt,” when she meant to say “wealth.” Management regrets the error, while thinking she might have been wish-casting …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comLiz Wolfe, Reason writer/podcaster, joins Nancy and Sarah to talk about the mess of politics, the value of free speech, and how to talk about parenting in a world where fewer and fewer women are parents. Wolfe is not your average 28 year old: Unapologetically pro-life and pro-natalist as a time when many in her generation haven’t even started contemplating freezing their eggs. Or, in the case of singer Chappell Roan, 27, they might tell an interviewer, “All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I actually don’t know anyone who’s happy and has children at this age.”Liz has thoughts!With her surfboard in the background and her toddler occasionally in her lap, Liz talks about choices, wonders, border chaos, her Catholic faith, reproductive tech, and why she’s pleased that Grok compared her to Kat Timpf.Also discussed:* Happy Liberation Day?* Grok summarizes your narrators, and Sarah gets grumpy* Nancy’s alter-ego has a pie in her backpack, with a gun* Truth Czar, Disinformation Chief … have the American people not suffered enough?* Sarah is pissed on Matt Taibbi’s behalf* Talk to your hairdresser about the New York Times …* Warren Beatty quote: “One of the nice things God does is, he does not let people who don't have kids know what they're missing.”* Chappell Roan, a second-rate Lady Gaga* “Ambiguous loss”* Will Sarah have a kid on her own?* Do NOT call Nancy a single mother* Unrealistic expectations about our fertility window* “I bite Mama!”Plus, sliding out of Obama-era liberalism, the hazards of toxic empathy, poop under your fake nails, and much more!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comInvestigative reporter Lee Fang talks with Nancy and Sarah about his latest Substack story, “Democrats' Dark Money Fund for TikTok Influencers,” about secret forces behind the sudden media enthusiasm of Kamala Harris’ presidential announcement. “As it turns out, the tidal wave of enthusiasm was not entirely genuine. Much of the content,” writes Fang, “was quietly funded by an elusive group of Democratic billionaires and major donors in an arrangement designed to conceal the payments from voters.”Fang may be familiar to listeners from a kerfuffle in summer 2020, when his colleagues at The Intercept turned on him publicly after he tweeted about riots amid the George Floyd moment. Fang talks about how he came to journalism, how to remain an honest broker, and why he’s fascinated by the money behind power. Also discussed: * “Tits,” “rack,” and “bosom” all on-air in record time!* Fang, raised on WaPo and cereal* The eerie brilliance of Michael Savage* On being addicted to conservative radio* Fitness bloggers and Mommy bloggers go pro-Kamala!* Nancy has other thoughts about Kamala in the kitchen …* Why do conservative voices dominate the podcast space?* Kamala as “intersectional dream” and “where intersectionality goes to die”* “Call Lee Daddy”* Sarah’s been pimping Diet Coke for 20 years and got bupkis* Going viral on Twitter. (Lee does not recommend.)* Sarah repeatedly refers to “Twitter Files” as “WikiLeaks” (durr)* That time Nancy and Lee went to Israel…* Sarah dives back into Depp/Heard; comes back with new information!* The possible Pfizer vaccine hold-up of 2020Plus, Lee recounts “The Intercept Incident,” why dark money won’t see the light of day any time soon, Lee dispels conspiracy theories about him, and much more!REMINDER: First Sunday Zoom is this Sunday, April 6, 8pm ET/5pm PT, for paid subscribers only. We’ll send the link day-of.Watch the video that caused so much trouble for Lee but made him a better journalist. Become a paid subscriber …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah are joined by Aaron Gywn — paragon of good will on Twitter/X (follow at x.com/AmericanGwyn), literature professor, and author of numerous works of fiction, including The Cannibal Owl — to discuss a recent viral story in Compact Magazine, “The Vanishing White Male Writer.” We talk about shifts in publishing/culture, the trap of identity, and what great literature can do. Since Gwyn is a Cormac McCarthy expert, we also discuss the controversial 2024 Vanity Fair story about McCarthy and his muse, Augusta Britt.Also discussed:* The lost Pop Rocks episode* St. Louis, cool town* The epic beauty of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove* “Jonathan Franzen is too much with us.”* 2014, the cultural swing year* The Michel Foucault of it all* “Most of publishing is throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks.”* Nancy needs to go to therapy* Aaron’s message for writers: “If you want something, go get it.”* “NICE TITS”* Love and admiration for fiction writer Phil Klay* Male writers trying to “reassure the reader that he is the right sort of white man.”* On not getting over the 2008 death of David Foster Wallace* Butt-chugging Infinite Jest* How Ric Ocasek won Paulina Porizkova* Drakkar Noir makes Sarah horny* How Aaron reacts when caught in the tractor beam of beauty* “I contain multi-tools”* Mary Gaitskill, the honey badger of writersAlso, why Aaron cannot get fired up about anything that happened after 1876, how fiction writing is like ventriloquism, why we’re all broken but still deserve love, and much more!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comDonald McNeil Jr., a 45-year New York Times veteran, comes on the pod to talk with Nancy and Sarah about … so much. The prompt was the recent NYT story, “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives.” As the paper of record tries to come correct on Covid, we wanted to hear from the science journalist, one of the first to tell Americans about this strange thing called the coronavirus. A self-declared “cranky old-school” reporter, McNeil landed the story of his career in 2020 and became part of a team that won the Pulitzer. But by 2021, he was gone, amid scandal and speculation. He talks about the bizarre kerfuffle that led to his resignation, mean girl dynamics at the paper, being misled by scientists, and what we do and don’t know about Covid-19’s origins. As McNeil wrote in Wisdom of Plagues, "Covid coarsened us as a nation... The coarsening cracks our national skin. It makes us more vulnerable to infection."Also discussed:* Nancy tries not to fangirl. She fangirls anyway.* “It’s a great newspaper but it’s a second-rate corporation, and its personnel stuff is particularly bad.”* The walk McNeil took with James Bennet, a year after both getting booted from the Times, is a play we’d like to see* “Looks like Don nailed it. Let’s not tell him.” (!!!!!!)* NYT brass on their writing staff: “Widgets made here.”* Young turks vs. cranky old-timers in union leadership* The Daily Beast and Gawker do not cover themselves in glory* "The Western focus on personal liberty above all can kill."* The Mike Pesca of it all* The hope that Covid might “unite us with a common enemy” like WWII. Awww, what happened instead? We turned on each other.* “Ecstasy is a very good drug to get you talking”* McNeil = not a fan of Jay Battacharya* Thoughts on RFK!Plus, McNeil explains what “hot-box” once meant, where he thinks H5-N1 is going, how cancel culture is like the French Revolution, and much more!Does McNeil think Covid-19 was engineered in a virology lab or evolved in the wet market? Paid subscribers find out!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comAs we mark the fifth (yes, fifth!) anniversary of Covid, Nancy and Sarah look back at the mistakes, the time warp, the lessons. While some of these experiences are collective, some are quite specific, especially in blue states where enforced lockdowns and school closures stretched on longer. Was the misery of that time period a symptom of authoritarianism — or democracy?Big topic of the day: Ruby Franke, the Mormon mom with a YouTube channel currently serving time in prison for child abuse. A new docu-series on Hulu, Devil in the Family, connects the dots on how she got there. Nancy and Sarah talk toxic fundamentalism, mind control, sexual shaming, child abuse (and how it’s culturally constructed), and the ethics of talking/blogging/profiting from your children. We also watched the Baldwins’ new reality show, bless our hearts.Also discussed:* A crushing piece by a father on how COVID changed his young son* Hitchhiking!* The problems of safetyism* Sarah’s secret petty side* “Sorry I didn’t grow up in Appalachia…”* JD Vance memes are fun for everyone!* The ethics of writing/blogging about kids* How Sarah disappointed Katie Herzog* The vengeful figure of Jodi Hildebrant, therapist* Visions of Glory, the controversial Mormon book* We need to talk about Kevin* Nancy teaches Sarah the meaning of “May-December” romance* That time Alec Baldwin screamed at his daughter Ireland* Bad fathers can make good grandfathersPlus, a new theory on the Manson murders, Steve Kornacki’s secret identity as a Lifetime movie scribe, Senator Bob Kerrey on grace, and more!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah are joined by the Great Mike Pesca, one-time Jeopardy! contestant and host of news podcast The Gist, to talk about dudes and dude-related topics. They discuss men’s-only spaces and whether women’s workout wear has become hyper-sexualized (and is that a bad thing?). They also break down Gavin Newsom’s podcast debut with his guest, conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk. Good idea? Dangerous idea? It’s always a good time when Pesca visits the Smoke ‘Em pod.Also discussed:* In this house, we believe in peanut butter* Booo, Daylight Savings Time* A Pesca discourse on the copper content of pre- and post-1982 pennies* Lady Gaga on Saturday Night Live* High school Sarah had a crush on Mike Myers!* What Lululemon did to women — and men* Nancy does not like to see men without their shirts on! * Curves is the Jenny Craig of gyms* Why does a man buy a woman a steak?* Sarah is the whore of Babylon Williamsburg* Murder podcasts should not be snack food* The RFK Salon story that had to be retracted* Why do men dominate the podcast space?* Theories on Chris Hayes* Parker Posey’s Lorazepam accent* Sadness and horror over Gene Hackman’s deathPlus, why Sarah said no to Megyn Kelly, the time Pesca thought Lady Gaga was a drag queen, a PSA to take care of your olds, and much more!It’s always an hour earlier when you become a paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com“It was a very bad night for American boobs,” Sarah observed of the 2025 Oscars, where a conspicuous fashion trend has gone mostly unnoticed. Nancy and Sarah are on record for believing boobs are magic, so why did so many gorgeous actresses hide their tractor beams under a bushel? Could it be a sign of fashion’s increasing androgyny… or Hollywood’s increasing irrelevance? Then, Nancy goes on a multi-part rant about the Tate brothers coming back to the U.S., while Sarah ponders how those two became avatars of American manhood. Finally: Body language in the Trump-Vance-Zelenskyy showdown.Also discussed:* McDonald’s serves the world’s best Diet Coke* Please don’t tell Sarah you appreciate her* 75% of Eagle Scouts are girls?* “Your Dune 2 fan is not watching the Oscars.”* “Boys just want the pretty girl in math class.”* Is J.D. Vance being cast as the heavy?* The end of reading?* Don DeLillo was “a beautiful culmination of the 20th century.”* Why Sarah shies away from talking politics* Has news replaced our need to read tragedy?Plus, Smoke gets a “Dear John” letter, the mystery of Gene Hackman’s death, and much more!PS: Spare a thought/prayer for Kat Timpf, recently diagnosed with cancer, whose boobs are rightly being used right now only (or mostly!) to feed her newborn son. Love you Kitty Kat, godspeed xxActual footage of Sarah watching Oscar dresses on the red carpet …Oscars fashion fun behind the paywall, only for paid subscribers …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comEli Lake is not a historian but a “journalist who loves history.” The former “Re-Education of Eli Lake” host and current Free Press contributor comes on Smoke for the second time to discuss his latest pop-history podcast, “Why We’re Obsessed with JFK Conspiracies.” As usual, Lake puts his own distinctive spin on a story that may have been told before, yes, but not this way.First, though, Nancy and Sarah have to talk to Eli about Israel. Eli explains that what happened to the Bibas family has hardened his heart, but he’s trying not to let it radicalize him. We talk morals and ideologies, the horrors of war, and the necessities for civil society.Also discussed:* “A rabbit hole the country has never been able to climb out of”* Eli teaches Sarah some Yiddish* “If Baruch Goldstein had been Palestinian, they’d be naming schools after him.”* Gaza-lago?* On conspiracy susceptibility: “It’s either, ‘You’re a moron’ or, ‘How can you be so naive, kid?” And yet we want to believe …* Eli coins new and helpful word: Mono-cause* JFK is the “octopus conspiracy”* Even LBJ thought something weird was going on …* The unspeakable abuses exposed by the Church Committee* We are a pro-Norman Mailer podcast!* Nancy says something profound?* Sarah quotes Timothee Chalamet award speech, nobody cares* Editor’s note: Hal Ashby directed Harold and Maude* Second editor’s note: Waylon Jennings sand Dukes of Hazzard theme song* “What happened to normal movies?”* The Emilia Perez kerfuffle is so 2020Plus, Eli is such a good guest he brought his own outro (AND wrote Nancy a Sleater-Kinneyesque theme for her new interview series CHEFS TALK), Nancy and Sarah wrassle over what movie wins Best Picture, we imagine a woke Dukes of Hazzard, and much more!