This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comIn what might be Nancy’s favorite Smoke ‘Em episode to date, she and Sarah discuss:* The mass shooting on May 6 in Allen, TX, where Sarah drove the next morning to check out the scene * The problem of guns and the moral dilemma of violent real-life pictures: Do they numb us to reality or push us toward action?* The subway killing of Jordan Neely, including attempts to paint his killing as racially motivated and politicians “gravestanding” for political goals* Sebastian Junger on “Why Men Seek Danger” and maybe why you should, too* Our coronation correspondent wonders: What up with Michael Strahan’s lisp?* When you write something controversial and the subjects who once derided you start looking to you for answers* The best survival movie Sarah has seen in years* What is the sexiest quality in men?* Sarah squirms in her chair as Nancy tells a near-death driving story from Panama* How we deal with geniusesAnd much more! Also: Mail-call! Send us your compliments, criticisms, suggestions, and desires, and we’ll read them on an upcoming episode. smokeempodcast@gmail.comWe believe in reporting that is calm and compassionate and following our curiosity and our guts. Doing this podcast gets easier when you become a paid subscriber

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com* Who wore it best? Jared Leto’s catsuit, Chrissy Teigen’s negligee, Kendell Jenner’s bathing suit and other appropriate/inappropriate attire at the Met Gala and the Washington Correspondents’ Association Dinner* The decline of BuzzFeed and Vice, and some love for Traffic author/media columnist Ben Smith* The problem with women’s magazines, including the time Marie Claire inserted something disturbing into Sarah’s, um, opening* The time Gene Simmons told Nancy he wouldn’t pay her* Is Robert Kennedy Jr. a rancid narcissist or a troubled addict who deserves sympathy. And by the way, who is he?* Some Robert De Niro love, and the dress Sarah wants to buy after watching Casino* A lesson from Succession on undermining someone’s confidence at the last minute* Sarah’s triumphant appearance on House of StraussAnd so much more!Don’t forget (what we forgot to mention): This coming Sunday is the First Sunday Zoom! Deets sent to paying subscribers day-of. It’s not too late!Become a paid subscriber, and find out who will show up to our Zoom hang in a cat suit.

Every affair has its origin story. At “Smoke Em,” ours began when Sarah wrote an article Nancy appreciated so much she called her on the phone. One year later, they’re together in Nancy’s Chinatown recording studio, teeing up episode 68, including:* Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon getting the heave-ho on the same day and what this might portend for TV news* You gonna trust Ben Dreyfuss?* Blue checkmarks: Who cares?* “Blocked and Reported” makes a case for why you might care* Podcast names that (thank God) didn’t make the cut* Amanda Fortini, awesome writer* Cokie Roberts gives marriage advice* Nancy’s fave part of “Smoke” so far (hint: it involves Sarah’s writing!)* Meanwhile Sarah reminisces about … Pop Rocks?* Nancy makes kick-ass fake animal noises* What did we teach each other?* That time David Sedaris tried to avoid writing in the first person * Nancy’s least favorite words are …* FIRE is the new ACLU* Sarah gives Nancy an anniversary gift, firmly establishing who the wife is in this relationship, and who the husband.And much more! We’re sharing this entire episode with our listeners, whether they pay or not, but if you’d like to give us a gift, we have some ideas:Thank you for coming along with us. Let’s keep going. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comThe Dalai Lama did a very weird thing. Harlan Crow’s memorabilia collection causes a national scandal. Over in Dallas, Sarah drives to Crow’s mansion to confirm that rich people do indeed buy the craziest things, while Nancy jets off to good old Portland and finds: So much! (The phrase “death eaters” is used.) Also: Sober sex, fancy hotels, and which of us is more likely to dance?In the paid-subscriber bonus: MILF Manor finale! The greatness of Succession’s Matthew McFadyen, the Fox-Dominion lawsuit, and Sarah drops her head on her lap as Nancy uses a word you’re not supposed to use anymore. ATTENTION: There will there be an IRL Smoke ‘Em meet-up this Sunday, April 23 in NYC, starting at 6pm. Details coming soon for paid subscribers.Rumor has it there will be dancing. Will Nancy be imbued with grace from her current Barre3 addiction? Will Sarah bust out David Lee Roth moves? Come find out! Confirm we aren’t ChatGPT bots with a groovy meet-up, but only when you become a paid subscriber.

When Laura McKowen landed at her first AA meeting, she sobbed as she told strangers how she’d placed her daughter in danger one night. Afterward, a woman in the audience approached her. “I’m a mother too, and I want you to know, you can push off from here.”Push Off From Here became the title of Laura’s second book, following her much-beloved 2020 memoir, We Are the Luckiest. Laura is a friend as well as an inspiration. In addition to her Substack LoveStory, she also runs an online community for folks who want to get ahold of their drinking, called The Luckiest Club.Laura and I talk about the false binary of “alcoholism,” why 12-step programs might be the biggest pain in the ass to ever save you, whether “love addiction” is a thing, and if substance abuse problems are better understood as a disease or a disorder, or neither But we talk about more than booze: Chasing boys and attention, body-image issues, quieting inner demons. Laura’s book is fundamentally about change — how hard it is, but how worth the struggle. Her story is testimony to the quiet and profound choice of owning your own life. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comSpecial guest Matt Welch apologizes “for being a dude, for being taller, and that I’m not from Texas.” All of which is to say he can never replace the lovely Sarah Hepola as co-host. Nevertheless! Matt, editor-at-large at Reason and true-bluest member of the Fifth Column podcast (fight me), joins Nancy to talk about the tantrum Elon Musk threw last week when Substack unrolled a new feature called Notes, which appears to be a lot like Twitter, sans ads and tribal warfare. Musk wants to make Twitter “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner,” but he more than blinked at the advent of competition, making a bunch of bogus claims and planting his edge-lord boot between the platforms. This led to some very staunch allies, including Twitter Files news-breaker Matt Taibbi, to vamoose and declare Musk “a hostile rival.” Then it’s on to Portland, where Nancy lived from 2004-2019 and a city where Matt has deep family ties. Both now wonder: Why does the news media in the Rose City hedge on certain subjects? And what up with local scribes declining to appear onstage with Nancy to discuss those hot topics? Will there be a baseball segment? You bet! Topics include: taxpayer-funded ballfields (boo!); the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum; the World Baseball Classic Ohtani-Trout nail-biter (video in episode notes), never-before-seen fan footage of Yankee Roger Maris breaking the home run record in 1961 (ditto), and Matt’s new Substack, “The View Level,” where he expresses opinions on all-things-baseball, including an iconic film that New Yorker writer Roger Angell declared his least favorite, although ballplayers loved it. “I remember coming out of a screening of that awful film and running into my friend and neighbor Mike Wallace,” Angell wrote. “‘Wasn’t that awful?’ I said, and then noticed he was weeping.” It’s a vote for baseball, which is to say a vote for America’s old-school favorite past time, when you become a free or paid subscriber.

Good Sunday morning from the Outer Banks. The winds blowing across Ablemarle Sound are nearly always a loud and gigantic presence; you never feel alone. But this morning? All is calm. I can hear only the birds from where I am sitting, at a dining table covered with dozens of documents I’ve numbered 1 - 17 and lettered A - P, in the hopes that such organization and annotation will help me to stitch together what needs to be stitched. That, and/or I can accept the succor offered by Rick Rubin, in conversation with Bari Weiss on her Honestly podcast: to consider, when we are creating work and trying to be perfect, that “everything we make, we’re making as an offering to God. If you’re making it for God, you’re not taking any shortcuts.” It does not matter, or does not matter to me, whether you believe in God. The idea appeals!I am deeply fortunate to be staying in a 5-bedroom home (it’s just me!) arranged by my friends Laura and Andy, who live next door. Here is the breakfast room:And here, a bit of that wind. I love it here so much.As mentioned in the audio, I have been extended this invitation because of a podcast, The Fifth Column to be exact, and the community of people that has grown around them in the past seven (!) years. These people include Laura and Andy, fans of the Fifth (and twenty year subscribers to Reason, where Matt Welch is editor-at-large). Back in 2021, my last scheduled stop of a 5,000-mile road trip was Miami, to see a live Fifth show, drive the guys to Key West, hang out for a few days, then zip home solo to NYC.I didn’t have a place to stay on the trip’s last leg, and I am not sure how it transpired, but Laura and Andy invited me to stay.with them. Their house is right on the Sound. I fell in love. I realize we often say that about places we visit, but let’s just say, I can see spending time here…Which I did last night at Laura and Andy’s, including with their friend Kim - ooh did we have a lot to talk about, including the move, happening even in Virginia, where Kim is a juvenile court judge, to get rid of cash bail entirely. Meaning, no matter what you do, stab me in the eye, run over my kid, the judge has the option to let you go free until trial. Having written about a case in which such a practice resulted in murder, I have a problem with repeatedly setting recidivistic violent felons free, a policy on which we will never all agree. Anyway! Also there last night was Andy’s friend Sludge, a name given to him his first week in college after he drank the backwash from the keg bucket (or whatever that’s called; I don’t drink beer). Sludge is a former engineer who now works in healthcare, but what does he love more than anything? BAKING! I have never engaged in a conversation like this, the words were spilling (the margaritas helped), we talked T45 flour and canele pans; he ate some shortbread (Pie Talk #7) I’d brought as a hostess gift, he gave me English muffins he made here because, of course, he travels with his starter.The last person I spoke baking with was… drumroll please… Alison Roman. Anyone who’s spent a few minutes here knows I am a super-fan of Roman’s, that I bake her blueberry-cornmeal tart compulsively all summer (scroll down), that it was her tweet about induction ranges that convinced me to buy one. That she wound up at my apartment last month was… it was just right. We sat for several hours with a few others, talking media and eating a pie I’d made (of course I made her a pie, and no I still cannot recall what kind it was!), and when everyone else peeled off to the living room, she and I talked crusts, and cookbooks, and whose recipes work (hers, always) and whose sometimes do not. I wish there were a video of Roman making the salted chocolate pudding, but in lieu, let her tell you about her new book:As mentioned, I once owned more than 100 cookbooks. Alas, these were sold to Powell’s when I left Portland, all that is but five: The Silver Palate Cookbook, which I rarely use and keep, maybe, for sentimental reasons, including a note I wrote in the back when I was a few months pregnant; New York Cookbook by Molly O’Neill, Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, in which I’ve tucked the handwritten thank you note Heatter sent me after I gave the book a nice review in Bon Appetit (I mean…), Tartine (are you sensing a dessert theme?), and How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, by Nigella Lawson, whose late-night snacking videos my daughter used to watch obsessively, to the point where she said, “I feel like she’s another mom to me.” More moms, more snacking, what is not to like? I have not yet made Roman’s a bowl of salted chocolate pudding so cannot tell you what I might change (likely nothing). I can tell you I learned, because she told me in the book’s “Ingredients” introduction, to not add more salt to her recipes; that she’s already done that, which is good for me to know as I almost always add more salt than called for; your cookies will thank you if you do. I can also tell you, her “Equipment” intro convinced me to get a kitchen scale, look, it’s nine bucks. Because everyone has been so nice to me, and because the sky is right now pink, this Pie Talk is free for all. May you, as Roman suggests, eat the bowl of chocolate pudding communally with friends, “when the lights are low and the music is loud.” xx This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comSuccession’s final season debuted, and it’s already giving us memes (all hail The Disgusting Brothers). The tragic arc of Logan (Brian Cox) makes the cruel media mogul a tad sympathetic, while suck-ups like Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Tom (Matthew McFayden) have become the show’s most lovable characters. Is Succession the best show on TV? What else could top it?Rising star Jonathan Majors, of Creed III, was arrested for domestic abuse, but the woman in question recanted her story. Is this justice, or the power of NDAs? The case will be a Rorschach for the peanut gallery, much like Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski trial. The glamorous star/wellness guru took to court this week, and boy, do folks love to hate her. What did the queen of Goop/jade eggs/bone broth ever do to you?Movie critic A.O. Scott makes a classy exit from the NYT film desk, prompting a discussion of Hollywood’s decline and how anger was turned into clicks. What is the 1999 film that made Scott (and Sarah) burst into tears? Does — debate alert! — There’s Something About Mary hold up? Plus: Boogie Nights, 70s vs. 90s cinema, movies as sacred texts, Lex Fridman, the allure of fashion, what the hell is an “atelier,” and more importantly: Can it really rain frogs from the sky? Ed. note: A distracting mechanical rumble happens three times during this pod. Best guess? This is Sarah adjusting her microphone, which she will not do again.This week only, we’re opening our boudoir to (part of) our copious episode notes, to show non-paying subscribers what they’re missing. Have at it, friends.Episode Notes:Correction: Kathleen McCormack Durst (left, below) was a medical student and Robert Durst’s first wife. Susan Berman (right, below) was a journalist and author. The management apologizes for not naming them in the last episode.* Q: How to make every day better by doing one simple thing?* A: “How do I listen to episodes on my podcast app?” (Substack)It will be #HotChicksColdTakes redux when Liz Wolfe sits in during Sarah’s hiatusMy Favorite Murder. Not to Nancy and Sarah’s taste but extremely popular and one of the highest-earning podcasts …Pie Talk #7: Shortbread“Boar on the Floor,” a classic scene of villainy from Succession’s second season:“On ‘Succession,’ Jeremy Strong Doesn’t Get the Joke,” by Michael Schulman (New Yorker) “Jonathan Majors Arrested in New York After Domestic Dispute,” by Matt Stevens (New York Times)“Jonathan Majors’ attorney claims woman recanted assault allegations after arrest,” by Christi Carras (Los Angeles Times)“Jonathan Majors U.S. Army Commercials Pulled After Actor’s Arrest for Alleged Assault,” by J. Kim Murphy (Variety)“With Few Able and Fewer Willing, U.S. Military Can’t Find Recruits,” by Dave Phillips (NYT)“The Agony and the Ecstasy of Depp v. Heard,” by Sarah Hepola (Substack)“Cowboys' Williams And Irvin Investigated,” by Sam Howe Verhovek (NYT)“Women Recants Rape Tale” (LAT)“In Cowboy Case, a Flagrant Foul?” by Howard Kurtz (Washington Post)“Woman who says Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is her father now accuses him of defamation,” by Don Van Natta Jr. (ESPN)“Mining a Few Thick Desires …” by Luke Burgis (Anti-Mimetic Substack)“Gwyneth Paltrow ski crash trial: Paltrow testifies that the accident wasn't her fault” (NBC News)There’s Something About Mary bears up upon repeat viewing for Nancy. Sarah, not so much. What say you, listeners?Goop Wellness Jade Egg, $66, “final sale,” in case, you know, you were thinking of returning it … You could buy a jade egg from Goop OR you could take that same money and buy a year’s worth of bonus episodes, Zoom hangs, premium extras, and belly laughs. Now which of these is better for your health?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comSarah and Nancy discuss the new documentary, Jussie Smollett: Anatomy of a Hoax, about the fake hate crime of the Empire star who once dubbed himself “the gay Tupac.” The real stars are the Osundairos, two Nigerian brothers and aspiring actors hired for the bizarre stunt. Why did they do it? What was up with that bottle of hot sauce? And is celebrity culture a bigger problem than victim culture?Also: Stanford Law School has a DEI mess following an appearance by Fifth Circuit court judge Kyle Duncan, and once more, ambition overrides judgment (a running theme). Which moment in the 2015 HBO miniseries The Jinx turned Nancy off entirely? Who is the godfather of true crime, and why is it Skip Hollandsworth? The rise and fall of PornHub; yet another glowing recommendation for Jon Ronson’s oeuvre; a fascinating convo about journalism’s working-class roots; and the mysteries of our Google searches. But don’t forget MILF Manor, because Sarah cannot.

Nancy and Sarah read letters from listeners. Topics include moral complication, British sitcoms/podcasts, the courage of Stephen Elliott, and a counter-point on Matt Taibbi. Nancy tells us about an LA journo pal who died in 2007, and Sarah wonders whether journalism is ultimately a profession of hucksters and frauds. Along the way, they discuss 12-minute naps, the celebrity they’d most like to, uhh, kiss, how big pigeons can get, who they’d call from jail, where they’d go if they had to disappear (and why Sarah won’t be informed of Nancy’s location, booo). Plus: Martha Mitchell, The Jinx, Sarah’s fake British accent sounds like Monty Python, and Nancy proclaims she’s part of Gen Z — until she learns what Gen Z actually is. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com/subscribe