Impolitic with John Heilemann

In a special two-part episode, John Heilemann talks with visionary film and television director Allen Hughes about Dear Mama — the sprawling, spellbinding documentary series about the lives and times of hip hop icon Tupac Shakur and his mother, Afeni, a prominent member of the Black Panther Party in the Sixties and Seventies — that Hughes has been working on for much of the past three years. The first episode of Dear Mama premieres on September 15 at the Toronto International Film Festival, with the entire five-part series airing on F/X later this year; Hughes's conversation with Heilemann is the first time he has spoken in detail about the project. They discuss the director's tumultuous relationship with Tupac in both of their early years in show business, which led to Hughes being brutally beaten by gang associates of the young rapper; how the relationship between Tupac and his mother shaped his outlook, politics, and attitude toward violence; the hot-eyed feud between hip hop's East Coast and West Coast factions in the Nineties; and the still much-debated circumstances surrounding Tupac's murder in Las Vegas in 1996. In second part of the episode, Hughes and Heilemann explore the director's groundbreaking career, from Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, and The Book of Eli to the game-changing HBO doc series, The Defiant Ones, about music-industry titans Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine, as well as Hughes's tantalizing next undertaking: a biopic of Motown legend Marvin Gaye, entitled What's Going On. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a special two-part episode, John Heilemann talks with visionary film and television director Allen Hughes about Dear Mama — the sprawling, spellbinding documentary series about the lives and times of hip hop icon Tupac Shakur and his mother, Afeni, a prominent member of the Black Panther Party in the Sixties and Seventies — that Hughes has been working on for much of the past three years. The first episode of Dear Mama premieres on September 15 at the Toronto International Film Festival, with the entire five-part series airing on F/X later this year; Hughes's conversation with Heilemann is the first time he has spoken in detail about the project. They discuss the director's tumultuous relationship with Tupac in both of their early years in show business, which led to Hughes being brutally beaten by gang associates of the young rapper; how the relationship between Tupac and his mother shaped his outlook, politics, and attitude toward violence; the hot-eyed feud between hip hop's East Coast and West Coast factions in the Nineties; and the still much-debated circumstances surrounding Tupac's murder in Las Vegas in 1996. In second part of the episode, Hughes and Heilemann explore the director's groundbreaking career, from Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, and The Book of Eli to the game-changing HBO doc series, The Defiant Ones, about music-industry titans Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine, as well as Hughes's tantalizing next undertaking: a biopic of Motown legend Marvin Gaye, entitled What's Going On. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann goes all-in on The Bear — the FX series set in the fictional sandwich shop The Original Beef of Chicagoland that came out of nowhere (Yes, chef) to become the breakout show of the summer (Heard, chef), the source of a jillion Internet memes (Hands!), and a full-blown cultural phenomenon (all day) — with its star, Jeremy Allen White, and creator, Chris Storer. White and Storer discuss the show's surprising runaway success; their passion for and commitment to creating the first scripted series ever to capture the realities of the world of restaurant kitchens accurately and authentically; their many, varied, and unlikely inspirations for The Bear, from The Panic in Needle Park to Terms of Endearment, Taxi, and Rounders; and how the rapturous reception of the show has changed both of their lives almost overnight. White, heretofore best known for his 11 seasons and 10 years playing Lip Gallagher (a gifted kid from a dysfunctional working-class Chicago family) in the signature Showtime series Shameless, reflects on his wariness about taking on the superficially similar character Carmen Berzatto in The Bear, and his approach to the seven-minute, show-stopping soliloquy in the show's finale that could make him a mortal lock for an Emmy Award next year — while Storer teases some elements of Season Two of The Bear that the show's legions of newly minted, hyper-obsessive super-fans (including Heilemann) are sure to find deliciously tantalizing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann welcomes former Obama campaign and White House communications guru and Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer back to the podcast just two months after his last visit — when the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v Wade preempted a proper discussion of Pfeiffer’s new book, Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America. This time, John and Dan go deep on that subject: the right-wing disinformation and propaganda machine, how it works, why it's so powerful, and what we can do to fight back; how Donald Trump’s birther conspiracy theory bedeviled Obama in his first term; and the moment in Obama's second term when Pfeiffer realized Facebook had turned into "Trump on steroids." They also discuss last week's headlines — from Liz Cheney's drubbing in Wyoming to Joe Biden's biggest legislative win of 2022 to Dr Oz's ill-fated visit to a supermarket with cameras rolling, and how Dan and his Pod Save America pals helped Crudité-gate go viral ... a behind-the-scenes story that's just one of many reasons that you do NOT want to sleep on this week's episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann goes deep with two leading voices at the intersection of law, national security, and Trumpworld – George Conway and Asha Rangappa — into the fallout from the FBI’s search-and-seizure operation at Mar-a-Lago and the Justice Department’s investigation of Donald Trump for illegally being in possession of classified documents, including top secret material ... some of which may pertain to nuclear weapons. Conway, an erstwhile conservative superstar litigator and one of the sharpest and most savage Never Trump Republicans – and also, ahem, husband to Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway — and Rangappa, senior lecturer at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale and a former FBI special agent focusing on counterintelligence, discuss the severity of the crimes that Trump appears to have committed; why, despite the continuing probe of Trump's culpability for the January 6 insurrection and an array of other legal threats, the document case now represents, as Conway puts it, "the shortest distance between Trump and an orange jumpsuit;" why, even so, Attorney General Merrick Garland might choose not to prosecute him; the appalling chorus of Republican elected officials and media magpies demonizing the FBI and stirring up animus, threats, and actual violence against federal law enforcement officials; and Trump’s bizarro-world (but not necessarily errant) belief that, despite the imminent legal jeopardy he faces, last week’s events were actually a boon to him politically. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the 100th episode of the podcast, John Heilemann welcomes hip hop veteran, DJ extraordinaire, and one of the inspirations for Hell & High Water: Derrick "D-Nice" Jones, fresh off a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. Heilemann and D-Nice discuss Club Quarantine, the experiment in Instagram Live DJing that D-Nice began in the darkest early days of Covid, and how his socially distanced dance parties exploded into an overnight sensation, with hundreds of thousands of housebound partiers around the world logging on to find community and solace (and fun!) in the face of the extreme isolation imposed by the pandemic; his musical philosophy and what he's learned from other elite DJs, including Q-Tip, Mark Ronson, and Questlove; and his experiences spinning for Barack and Michelle Obama both inside and outside the White House. They also explore D-Nice's storied history in rap music, starting with his role as as founding member of the legendary old-school hip-hop collective Boogie Down Productions, his self-reinvention as a DJ after his solo career fizzled in the 1990s, and what the future holds for D and Club Quarantine. It’s a centenary saturnalia that you won’t want to miss! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a special two-part episode, John Heilemann talks with Mark Leibovich, former chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, current staff writer for The Atlantic, and author of This Town, the iconic skewering of the culture of pre-Trump Washington, DC; and Tim Miller, former Republican strategist, current #NeverTrump gadfly-cum-firebrand, writer-at-large for The Bulwark, and host of Not My Party on Snap. Leibovich and Miller are also the authors of a pair of hot new books — Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission and Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, respectively — that tell essentially the same tale from different sides of the looking glass: the story of "the supplicant fanboys" and "parasitic suck-ups" who "permitted Donald Trump's depravity to be inflicted on the rest of us" (Leibovich); of "the army of [GOP] consultants, politicians, media figures" who "recognized all the risks but still climbed aboard for a ride on the SS Trump Hellship" (Miller). Heilemann and the authors discuss the dom-sub nature of the relationship between Trump and Mike Pence, Lindsey Graham's soulless craving for proximity to power, Miller's own flirtation with the dark side, and the broader pattern of Republican complicity, corruption, and cowardice that enabled Trump's rise, his rule, and his violent plot to overturn a presidential election and trash American democracy ... all of which, terrifyingly, persists unabated to this day.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a special two-part episode, John Heilemann talks with Mark Leibovich, former chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, current staff writer for The Atlantic, and author of This Town, the iconic skewering of the culture of pre-Trump Washington, DC; and Tim Miller, former Republican strategist, current #NeverTrump gadfly-cum-firebrand, writer-at-large for The Bulwark, and host of Not My Party on Snapchat. Leibovich and Miller are also the authors of a pair of hot new books — Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission and Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, respectively — that tell essentially the same tale from different sides of the looking glass: the story of "the supplicant fanboys" and "parasitic suck-ups" who "permitted Donald Trump's depravity to be inflicted on the rest of us" (Leibovich); of "the army of [GOP] consultants, politicians, media figures" who "recognized all the risks but still climbed aboard for a ride on the SS Trump Hellship" (Miller). Heilemann and the authors discuss the dom-sub nature of the relationship between Trump and Mike Pence, Lindsey Graham's soulless craving for proximity to power, Miller's own flirtation with the dark side, and the broader pattern of Republican complicity, corruption, and cowardice that enabled Trump's rise, his rule, and his violent plot to overturn a presidential election and trash American democracy ... all of which, terrifyingly, persists unabated to this day.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Heilemann talks with Jonathan Lemire, White House Bureau Chief at Politico, host of Way Too Early on MSNBC, and author of the new book, The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020. Heilemann and Lemire discuss the January 6 select committee's final hearing of the summer; the scandal over the Secret Service's purge of text messages from the day of the Capitol riot; and the growing impatience among top White House officials with Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department over its apparent lethargy around bringing criminal charges against former President Trump related to the insurrection. Lemire also unpacks the history of Trump's Big Lie as an idea; recalls what it was like to see his face on every TV screen in the world for days after asking the question at the 2018 Helsinki summit that led Trump to declare that he sided with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence officials regarding Russia's interference in 2016; and discusses various 2024 scenarios, from a Biden v Trump rematch to potential presidential runs by Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom, the ultra-thirsty governors of Florida and California. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a special two-part episode, John Heilemann talks with Lis Smith, the Democratic communications guru best known for her role in guiding Pete Buttigieg's long shot presidential campaign, and now author of a new memoir, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story. In Part 1 of the podcast, Heilemann and Smith discuss the 1/6 committee hearings and their potential impact on Donald Trump's political future; the early years of Smith's career working on campaigns; the saga of her romantic involvement with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, and the furor that erupted when the relationship became tabloid fodder. In Part 2, Lis looks back fondly on her time with Mayor Pete and much less fondly on her role as a member of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo's kitchen cabinet as he faced a wave of sexual harassment charges that ultimately forced him to resign. Lis also waxes (unaccountably) rhapsodic about her beloved Cincinnati Bengals, and explains why she refers to herself as a "competitive motherfucker." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices