Now What? With Carole Zimmer

Ben Smith had a front row seat to momentous shifts in the media that changed newspapers and magazines forever. In the early 2000s, readers began flocking to websites like Gawker and the Huffington Post for gossip, news and information. After Smith became the founding editor of BuzzFeed News, he decided to publish the Steele Dossier, the controversial report containing allegations about a conspirac...

John Waters is having a moment. The filmmaker, who's also known as the Prince of Puke and the Duke of Dirt, is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He says he hopes it will be near the one celebrating Alvin and the Chipmunks. Plus, LA's Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is honoring Waters with an exhibit that features some of his old cameras and props like the exploding wig worn by Debbie...

At 6 feet 8 inches tall, people say Jim Comey could have been a basketball player. Instead, he became the top law enforcement official when President Barack Obama appointed him FBI Director and he led an investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. After concluding that there was no national security breach, less than two weeks before the Presidenti...

Dave Barry wrote a humor column in the Miami Herald for more than 20 years that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He also writes books. His latest is called  Swamp Story.  It's very funny with a totally ridiculous plot that takes place in the Everglades. There's a character who runs around pretending to be a creature called the Melon Monster and a support boar, as in wild pig, who pees o...

In June 2023, something shocking happened to Nicole Daedone, founder of OneTaste, which was once one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. OneTaste defined itself as a sexuality-focused wellness company dedicated to spreading the word about OMing or orgasmic meditation. That's a practice that involves an individual methodically stroking a partner's clitoris. Federal prosecutors indicted Dae...

Andrew McCarthy was still a teenager when he acted in his first film and became a member of what's called the Brat Pack. That's the group of actors including Demi Moore and Molly Ringwald who starred in 1980s films like  Pretty in Pink  and  St. Elmo's Fire.  There were a few bumps along the road like drinking too much alcohol and taking drugs before McCarthy became a travel writer. McCarthy also ...

She's a long-time activist for women's rights and she's also a Founding Editor of Ms. Magazine. Letty Cottin Pogrebin is the author of 12 books including  How to Make it In a Man's World . Her latest is called  Shanda  which means shame in Yiddish. It's about the secrets families keep and the ones that Pogrebin uncovered that wound up changing her own life. Pobregin begins her book by revealing a...

It's hard for me to believe that "Now What?" has just celebrated its 100 th  episode. We marked the occasion with a first: a conversation taped in front of a live audience at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. V (formerly Eve Ensler) and creator of "The Vagina Monologues" told stories about her remarkable life. The room was filled with fans of the podcast, friends and family. And as the conversat...

Jeannette Walls' memoir  The Glass Castle  became an international bestseller that sold over 5 million copies. Walls' father Rex was an alcoholic who dreamed of inventing a gold-detecting gizmo that would make him rich enough to build a glass castle. The family moved around a lot, usually before the rent came due. At one point Jeannette and her siblings were left at their grandparents' house where...

She was my first guest on "Now What?" and now she's come back to help me celebrate the 100 th  episode. There's no one quite like Gloria Steinem. But don't call her an icon. She doesn't like it. Gloria thinks of herself as a writer and an activist. She dressed up as a Playboy bunny for a Show Magazine article to tell the intimate story of what it's like to be treated as an object at work. She was...

She comes from a famous musical family. And she's always felt like she was number 4 on the totem pole behind her brother Rufus, her father Loudon Wainwright III and her mother Kate McGarrigle. These days Martha has come into her own, talking about her life in a memoir called  Stories I Might Regret Telling You.  There are tales about her parent's divorce and Martha's wild days as a druggie, drinke...

Tig Notaro had been doing stand-up for more than 10 years when she got up on stage in 2012, grabbed the mic and began her set with these words: "Hello, Good evening. Hello. I have cancer." Many critics called the set historic and ground breaking. When it was released as an album called "Live" it shot to number 1 on the comedy charts. in her Netflix special "Boyish Girl Interrupted" Tig went furthe...

Bruce Jackson grew up in a public housing project in Manhattan and got arrested when he was 10.  Some of his friends became drug dealers but Jackson went on to become the first person in his family to go to college. After earning a law degree from Georgetown, Jackson represented hip hop figures like LL Cool J, Heavy D and Busta Rhymes before leaving music behind to take a high-powered corporate jo...

When the U.S. was hit by the Covid 19 pandemic, President Trump often praised unproven treatments. While trying not to contradict Donald Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the top infectious disease experts in the country, became a calming presence, advocating practical remedies like social distancing.  He also became the target of right-wing conspiracy theorists who sent him death threats. I talk t...

Judy Woodruff got her start in the news business at a time when you didn't see many women on the air. Her first job was getting coffee for her bosses at a local TV station in Atlanta. That was nearly 50 years ago and she's covered Presidents and crises ever since. She's also spent the last decade as an anchor on the PBS NewsHour. No happy talk, no screaming and yelling. She's even been parodied on...

Dani Shapiro is a writer who is very interested in family secrets. After Shapiro sent a sample of her saliva to a DNA company to find out more about her heritage, the results that came back rocked her world. Shapiro discovered that the man she spent her life calling dad was not her biological father. We talk about identity, what we hide from one another and the family secrets in Shapiro's new nove...

Welcome to 2023. It's a good time to take a fresh look at who we are and how we might want to change.  Dr. Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist and a Buddhist. In his new book,  The Zen of Therapy , Epstein writes about how he uses his spiritual beliefs to help his patients understand the importance of their own personal and unique stories. We talk about the need to laugh at ourselves and how to feel co...

She's been called one of the most beautiful women in the world. Paulina Porizkova also had what many considered a fairy tale marriage to Cars lead singer Ric Ocasek. But after Ocasek died in 2019, the former supermodel found she'd been cut out of his will.  Porizkova writes about that in  No Filter: The Good, The Bad, and the Beautiful.  We talk about what it takes to recover from grief and heal f...

Lucy Sante is the award-winning author of numerous books. Her latest,  Nineteen Reservoirs  tells the story of the massive and disruptive project undertaken to bring a clean water supply to New York City. While Lucy was writing the book, she was also going through a major change in her own life. Named Luke at birth, at the age of 66, Sante decided to do something she had thought about all her life...

If you've seen the Netflix documentary  Orgasm Inc . you've been introduced to One Taste Founder Nicole Daedone who created a company dedicated to spreading the word about a practice called orgasmic meditation. OneTaste closed its doors after a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article included complaints of sexual assaults and financial improprieties. Daaedone is at the heart of much of the controversy. In...

Woodstock, New York is famous for the music festival that actually didn't take place there. It's also known for famous musicians like Bob Dylan who once lived there and for its writers like Larry Beinhart who wrote the political satire  American Hero . The film  Wag the Dog  is based on Beinhart's book. Beinhart has also written a mystery series featuring the private detective Tony Casella. Much o...

Constance Wu first gained attention playing a tiger mom on the TV series  Fresh Off the Boat . While she was in the series, Wu was cast in a movie called  Crazy Rich Asians , a critical and commercial success that made Wu a movie star. But then she made a mistake. She tweeted about how disappointed she was that  Fresh off the Boat  had been renewed. The backlash was swift with fans calling Wu spoi...

The midterms are right around the corner. With politics in the air I found a couple of interesting people to shoot the breeze with about where we're heading.  Brad Tusk is a political consultant and venture capitalist who helped a company called Uber gain a foothold in New York and became very rich as a result. Tusk has opened a book store called P&T Knitware on the lower east side of Manhattan. Y...

Pa. Lt. Governor John Fetterman is running for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania against Dr. Mehmet Oz. He's a most unusual politician. Fetterman is 6 feet 8 inches tall. He's got a row of tattoos on his right arm that memorialize the dates that people were killed by gun violence in Braddock, Pa during the 13 years that Fetterman was Mayor. He's also known for campaigning in shorts and hoodies and he'...

What does it take to create a work of art with another person? Talent, inspiration, hard work. But the most important part of the equation may be whether the creators hit it off and find themselves on the same wavelength. James Lapine found his best collaborator in Stephen Sondheim, one of the greatest theater composers ever. Their first work together turned out to be a Broadway show called  Sunda...