Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah discuss Graham Platner and an explosive Politico story accusing him of sexual assault. Do you think social media has opinions on this? Do you think people will show consistency, calm and rationality in their discussion of this sensitive topic? Of course not! But then, what would we talk about...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Are you proud of America? It can be a complicated question. Sarah and Nancy tackle the topic of patriotism and whether American is an unfinished experiment or a beautiful place unlike any other country. (But wait: Why can’t it be both?) We talk about a Tom Hanks-produced Netflix series on the nation’s foundin...

Note: Our recording app crapped out at the one-hour mark (rude!), but we include our hot boxes in the copy below, which you ALL get since we’re making this episode free xx Nancy and Sarah talk to Justine van der Leun, the author of Unreasonable Women: Three Stories of Violence, Imprisonment, and Extraordinary Survival . Justine is a heavy hitter in the occasionally lightweight genre of true-crime...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy bravely went alone to see Backrooms and is not sure if she’s right yet. Backrooms is one of two movies Gen Z is currently obsessing over (the other is called, um, Obsession ). Sarah and Nancy talk about art in the age of YouTube, what gets people to the theater, the spookiness of the unknown, and whatev...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy asked Sarah to watch two documentaries, and because Sarah is a supportive pod partner, she did just that — and fell into an existential depression. My God! What darkness did Nancy thrust her into? Maternal Instinct is a true-crime documentary currently dominating the Netflix top 10, about a deeply troub...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com David Marchese has spent the past decade interviewing famous people, from Quincy Jones to Nicolas Cage. He is co-host of “The Interview,” the New York Times Q&A series, and before that, he interviewed bold-faced names for Vulture and NYT Magazine . But he doesn’t see his job as “interviewing celebrities” — at...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Graham Platner is not having a good week. Nancy and Sarah discuss the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate whose high-profile campaign hit yet another snag with recent revelations of sexting. But wait: What kind of sexting? And is sexting “cheating”? We debate these topics, along with the old Nazi tattoo issu...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah discuss a New York magazine story called “The Big Little Penis Panic,” about how social media, a modern detachment from the body, and the derangements of porn have fueled anxiety for Gen Z men, who are more body-conscious than earlier generations of dudes. (Remember the olden days when only wo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah talk to journalist Mary Lisa Gavenas, whose new biography of cosmetics queen Mary Kay, Selling Opportunity , also traces the profound role that direct sales had in selling the American dream. It took a while for women to enter the salesforce, but once they did, oooh , watch out. Mary Kay, in p...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah talk with Helen Lewis, whose latest for The Atlantic , “ The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet ,” introduces us to a new breed of religious, cultural, and political figures with very retro ideas about women’s roles. Where did this come from? Where is it going? The trio talk manosphere, the excess...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy speaks with war correspondent James Verini, who reported from Ukraine about the devastating 2022 bombing of a theater in Mariupol housing 1500 refugees. James (and photographer Paolo Pellgrin ) made his way to survivors of the bombing, and later tracked down every survivor he could find. The result is T...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah discuss “Should I Marry a Murderer?,” the grabby new Netflix docuseries about a fiancee turned key witness. Caroline Muirhead is a smart, beautiful doctor in Glasgow swept up in a romance where things gets … dark . Sarah wanted to talk about this show, because it illustrates troubling habits o...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com It’s a special day and by some miracle, Nancy remembered: It’s SMOKE ‘EM’s third anniversary, thus making this podcast the longest committed relationship of Sarah’s life. We celebrate with a quiz, riffing on a news week that brought us a bizarre manifesto, a podcast about eating the rich, a former politician...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Jake Siegel talks about his new book The Information State , which explores how government and technology joined forces over the past century to squash dissent. Siegel is an editor at Tablet , an original thinker with great writing chops (our kinda guy), and he talks with Nancy and Sarah about the tools of in...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Eric Swalwell did not have a good week. Actually, last week was very bad, when articles hit CNN and The San Francisco Chronicle within hours of each other, a one-two punch alleging a series of unsavory acts, including sexual assault. Then earlier this week, another woman accused him of drugging, choking, and...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah talk about how watching Artemis II was the injection of awe we all needed. Nancy is reminded of a podcast she recently heard with former senator Ben Sasse, who has pancreatic cancer and talks about facing the end of his life with grace. That’s a different psychic universe than the dysfunction...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah talk with Leigh Stein, whose recent Substack essay might be the best thing to come out of the Lindy West discourse. Entitled “I Escaped Bluebeard’s Castle. Lindy West Didn’t ,” the essay describes an abusive relationship from Leigh’s past and sheds light on the painful accommodations some of u...

Thank you to listeners who commented, “Hey, what gives with the audio cut off??” It’s fixed! Old link should work but here it is again xx The management 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.com Nancy and Sarah talk about the Oscars and a question that lingers after the show: Why did the public turn on Timothée Chalamet? The Academy Awards have never been about the BEST so much as who speaks to the current cultural appetite. Speaking of cultural appetites, Nancy’s latest for RealClearInvestigations r...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah discuss a NYT interview with Lindy West, the former Jezebel firebrand whose new memoir describes her path toward polyamory — and it’s a rocky one! Nancy and Sarah are split on this one, but West’s account raises an interesting question: When a woman who doesn’t want an open marriage learns to...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com The State of Our Union is … long, apparently, with Trump holding court for close to two hours. It was an evening of hyperbole, hockey players, trolling, so many medals and about 5-10 too many guests. Our hearts go out to the fact-checkers. Also discussed: * Nancy makes no apologies for her hairdo (but really...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah talk Love Story , the latest Ryan Murphy jam, about the romance between, and tragic end of, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. Do the kids even know about these two people anymore? (One of them, it turns out.) Based on the book, Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com January 2026 was bleak, and February ain’t doing much better. Or is it just a matter of where you’re looking? Nancy and Sarah talk about bright spots in the culture, which starts with a big communal TV experience and somehow involves… a lot of sports. Also discussed: * Patriots’ coach Mike Vrabel, kind of hot...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com “I had started out determined to learn about Amanda, but as more people contacted me wanting to talk, it was Jason they wished to talk about.” - from To the Bridge, A True Story of Motherhood and Murder* This 7th installment of “The Sociopaths Among Us” is about the person who put me I mind to do the series i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com “The Left has done itself a huge disservice by demonizing men,” says Sebastian Junger, while discussing his recent piece, “ Young Men and How the Democrats Lost Them .” The post ran on his new Substack , named TRIBE, also the title of his 2016 book , though readers may know him best from his 1997 blockbuster,...