Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comWe interview Sherman Alexie, Native American author and top-tier Substacker, about Pretendians like Sasheen Littlefeather and Buffy Sainte-Marie, who steal trauma for their own status. We also discuss:* The ruse of the word “indigenous”* How inclusivity plays out in a younger generation of “defendians”* “I grew up in hell”: hard life on the rez* The genetic link of blackout drinking* You wake up naked on the top of a hill, what do you do?* You should be so lucky to have an ancestor named Thunder Meatflayer* Will the current surge in Indian film and TV creation continue?* The “shocking and amazing” classic novel Sherman just re-read* Scorsese Scorsese Scorsese

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comWriters write. And sometimes talk shop! This week, Sarah and Nancy chat with one of the best: Kerry Howley, essayist extraordinaire and author of the superlative and unclassifiable Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, a book about “the deep state,” according to its cover, though Kerry admits, “I don’t know what this book is about.” Bottoms Up is unsettling, quietly profound, introducing us to whistleblowers like Reality Winner (yes, her real name) and how technology has us flattened us into data that can be harvested to create whatever story the Powers That Be want to tell. Good times! Also discussed:* Is Monster energy drink a tool of the devil?* Why Kerry thought the subject of her book sounded boring, too* Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning are not the heart of this book* Reality Winner is a hell of a character* The Intercept’s fateful mistakes* Do you have to interview a person to profile them?* When the “compulsion to help” leads to dangerous places* Why a bad memory is the key to good writing* Empathy for Britney Spears’ father Jamie* Profiles on Larry Nassar, whistleblower Daniel Hale* The argument for reading celebrity memoirs* We love a journalism assignment!* The first pages of Moby Dick are … funny?* The writers we turn to for inspiration* Kerry and Nancy each have a daughter named Tavi* Why writing is like a possession

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comSarah and Nancy dive into that mess of a Congressional hearing on college antisemitism. Did the three presidents — Claudine Gay from Harvard, Liz Magill from University of Pennsylvania, Sally Kornbluth from MIT — step up to the moment? They did not. But were the questions unfairly stacked? Did they make fair points about “context”? Is part of living in a diverse society the privilege — yes, privilege — of being offended? We answer these questions, as well as:* Did the Swiss Family Robinson live in a tree?* Is “It’s a Small World” the most annoying song ever?* Are the ideological chickens coming home to roost on college campuses?* Can Nancy successfully include two audio clips in one episode?* Why are so many women leading Ivy League universities?* What’s going on in the field of social work?* Which cat made CAT HISTORY this week?* What literary tragedy is Sarah currently obsessed with?And much more, including darkness and life lessons in our hot boxes and a banger of an outro by some lady with a cat.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comAmid the protests that have shut down more than one New York bridge, we take time to celebrate our rizz, explain why the term “tipflation” won’t catch on, and invent an entirely new word. Also on tap:* Word of the year* What happens when the right to free speech clashes with your right to get to work?* Philadelphia pro-Palestinian protest gets ugly* Columbia School for Social Workers are not sending their best* The ambient anger over tipping* Europe brings tipping to the New World, leaves it behind like trash* That time Nancy bribed the guy performing her daughters’ baptism* The lameness of Hot Topic* Nancy kneejerks! Sarah slut shames (but only because she loves sluts)!* Is The Golden Bachelor sadistic?* Has a man ever lied and told you he loved you?* “Who’s the boss?! Who’s the boss?!”* Buffaloes are sexy

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comSarah and Nancy are together in New York, along with a pink tree and some confusing Christmas lyrics. In this season of love and war, we discuss:* Which holiday standard will make us millions?* What is “parse and brown” and what does it have to do with Christmas?* What was Nancy’s Not Finest Hour and does it involve yelling at protestors on the Manhattan Bridge?* Macy’s Day Parade protesters apply Super Glue directly to their hands* Your hosts decline to “pick a lane”* Susan Sarandon says a dumb thing, gets the boot* Matti Friedman educates us* Is Nancy the last person to realize her unconventional reporting from Portland might have impacted her career?* The steep decline of family dining and the rise of solo-everything* The younger the woman, the more they report “disrespect from the opposite sex”* Who’s lonelier: Boomers or Gen Z?* Sarah mixes up Leonard Cohen and Leonard Bernstein* Nancy mixes up the actress from The Gilded Age with the actress from DeadwoodPlus, delightful new hot boxes, and a sultry money pitch you won’t want to miss.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comThe Fall of Minneapolis is a crowd-funded documentary that raises serious questions about the George Floyd trial. Was officer Derek Chauvin actually following protocol? Why didn’t jurors see critical body cam footage? And what was going on with that autopsy? Buuuut the documentary comes from a Minnesota group with right-wing politics, so you likely won’t read much about it outside Fox News. Too bad, because one of the biggest news stories of the decade deserves real scrutiny. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the documentary, plus:* Minneapolis as special source of white guilt* Revolution is not getting with the season of gratitude* When evidence doesn’t fit a public narrative* Are protests getting more violent, or is Nancy cherry-picking?* Did the sexual revolution mostly serve men?* Attachment-free sex is not a good end point* A new beauty box (or, as Sarah calls it, “dirty hair ahead”)* Albert Brooks (and Tom Arnold?) love* An outro song that captures what it means to make a place at the table, to know that “everyone's a little broken, and everyone belongs.”And much more!

Good morning! There are five days to Thanksgiving and a lot of us are already making shopping lists, if as yet for me only in my head. I love grocery shopping, a love I passed down to my daughter, and somewhere on the interwebs is a short video of her surfing her shopping cart through Fred Meyer market in Portland saying, “Wheeeee!” I love New York City, but the grocery shopping experience after nearly 30 years of well-lit, wide-aisled west coast supermarkets? Abysmal. As I mention in the audio, my plans this year got a little kiboshed. But! From adversity, opportunity, and I’ll now go to two Thanksgivings, one day-of event with a lot of people I don’t know and to whom I will get to feed pie, and a smaller one with family, for which I am not going go the whole 9 yards, there will be only 5 or 7 of us, a number likely to swell. We will not have turkey at this one but a roast goose, because one of the guests ate it once 30 years in Prague and remembers it fondly. I have never roasted a good but did watch some YouTubes and scanned for recipes and feel pretty confident, though will be very happy for your tips, and especially for a not-too-sweet glaze with which to baste the bird. I like sweet-and-meat but others do not so, hit me up. I am also going to be making a change to a standard recipe, if not a change this horrific. As I mentioned yesterday on the Twitter* machine, the correct number of eggs in mac-and-cheese is zero. What a I changing? The stuffing. Let me be clear: THIS WOULD NEVER BE THE CASE WERE I MAKING THE TURKEY. Stuffing, the kind I learned from my mom, is my favorite food, and while this means I should make it more than once a year, maybe just to stick in a chicken, I do not. A lack of at-hand giblets (which I knew meant the whole mess of innards you find in the bird; in the audio I meant gizzards, which I think is probably a fake word but anyway) might contribute, but mainly it’s because to my mind you need to make vat of stuffing because it’s so delicious and you want to feed it to many people and, if you are me, you need eat a great deal of it for yourself, before it goes into the turkey, and while you’re stuffing the turkey, and at the dinner (three helpings), and cold from the fridge. I already look forward to 2024’s repast.This year, along with the goose - and the potatoes that will be roasted in the goose fat - I will try a new stuffing recipe, one from my girl Alison Roman. As mentioned in the audio, I am already making changes to the recipe in my head. Here she is making it.Food is love (say it with me), and we’ve had a lot of both in this apartment these past few weeks, dinner parties and late-night hangs, including a few nights ago with a lot of the Reason mag peeps as well as the Fifth guys and their most recent guest, the awesome, funny, super-cute, whip-smart Mary Katherine Ham.Then two two nights ago - I am typing this at 8:39am on Sunday, hoping to get this up in time! - we welcomed our beloved Yael Bar Tur back from Israel. She was on the pod last month and in our hearts always. We ate all the food and drank all the wine and sang some songs and gave each other shirts we picked up in war zones. These friends, this life, I love it so much.A few links mentioned in the audio:“Sam Harris: The Bright Line Between Good and Evil,” Honestly podcastAnd the recipe! This, too, I love to much, and am sending all buttery love to you and yours xxThanksgiving Stuffing* 3 loaves white bread, supermarket variety, not too dense. I am liking potato bread these days. * 2 good-sized yellow onions, small dice* 6-8 stalks celery, small dice* 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter* salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, thyme if you have it* 6 - 8 cups turkey stock, plus the giblets you’ve simmered in the stock, choppedA day or two before you plan to make the stuffing, let bread slices dry out a bit. Turn then a few times so somewhat evenly dried but don’t stress. Once semi-dry, cut bread into cubes.In a large heavy-bottomed pot, melt the butter. Add onions and celery and cook, stirring frequently, until translucent and onions are starting to brown just a bit. Add your chopped giblets. (You are of course welcome to add the meat you chop off the turkey neck. I eat the neck, sending all squeamish people running from the room.) Unless your pot is massive, remove half of the onion mix; you’ll be making the stuffing in two batches.Add half your cubed bread to onion-mix, stir to start coating the bread, sprinkling with salt, pepper, poultry seasoning and some thyme. Stir stir. Now start adding your stock, a cup at a time, until stuffing is moist but not wet.Stuff your turkey - or not! Any that does not fit in the bird, and there will be plenty, you can put in a buttered dish, maybe drizzle a little melted butter, and bake at a 350F oven until crisp on top.*And some outro love from the original X (man). Would that I could, I would feed him a wheelbarrow of stuffing and it would not give him half the joy he’s given me. Happy Thanksgiving John Doe! 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.comProtests are the gift of a free society. But also: Annoying! We talk about three recent stories on the explosion of activism over the Israel-Hamas war, and when “building a better world tomorrow” ends up tearing apart the community today.* Nancy stans Dave Barry; Sarah needs convincing* Humanity is hard. Protesting is easy.* Why has the 21st century seen a threefold increase in protests?* What would you do if your kid tore down posters?* “We need to stop acting like these are serious people.”* The moral rot of anti-Semitism* Political cartooning as latest culture war battlefield* Ayaan Hirsi Ali is down with Jesus* Do you feel comfortable in church?* A Beach Boys confession* We ❤️ Jeff TweedyWhere else are you going to hear about Home Goods, Philip Roth, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Rammstein in one convo? Plus a listener request (in episode notes), and what’s in our hot boxes!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comAfter an update about how mice might have gotten into Nancy’s apartment (human trafficking, anyone?), she and Sarah discuss the 44 minutes of footage Nancy recently saw at a screening in New York, “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre.” Nancy wrote about it in a recent essay, “This is Terror,” and they talk about the carnage, sorrow, and soul murder that is war.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comIt’s our 100th episode! Time for a pop quiz, then on to the following:* HBO president caught secretly striking back against critics* But is working on HBO’s The Idol grounds for any lawsuit?* Love for Alan Sepinwall, fastest TV critic in the West* Behind the scenes at Tucker Carlson’s exit from FOX* The “c-word”* “She said Tucker Carlson is a messenger from God, and he said nope.”* The word Nancy cannot stand, and the phrase that makes Sarah blush* Can The Real Housewives ever be a moral enterprise?* How RHONY’s Leah McSweeney became “Hurricane Leah” and the lawsuit she recently filed* Drinking and reality TV* “If you go to a whorehouse, you’re gonna get fucked”* Wild, hopeful, morally fraught stuff in the fertility industry* A baby made with the DNA of three people: Wait, what/how?* We cannot countenance an image of the Fleshlight, but if you mustPlus, a “pretend-ian” scandal and a smoking-hot sports star in the hot box