Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com April 22, 2022 will go down in the history books — for some reason, surely, though it’s also the date of our first Smoke ‘Em podcast. We celebrate our second year on the books with a pop quiz, some serious giggles, and (of course) Kegels for Peace.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Coleman Hughes was still an undergrad at Columbia in 2018 when the Quillette contributor landed a high-profile appearance on Sam Harris’ podcast. Since then, his own podcast Conversations with Coleman — along with his writing on race, tribal politics, and free expression — have made him one of the country’s m...

Married journalists Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer are the forces behind “The Harvey Weinstein Trial: Unfiltered” podcast, in which actors read daily excerpts of the courthouse testimony verbatim. Released during the trial in 2020, it’s an extraordinary document of a cultural flashpoint, providing a far deeper and more troubling portrait than most media coverage did at the time. Nobody was shoc...

Title IX started as a modest part of the Education Amendments of 1972; it was the part that prohibited sex-based discrimination in education programs. In the 50+ years since, it’s become shorthand for many things: Women in sports, a sexual reckoning, a cultural over-correction, a legal shitshow. What no one ever seems to ask is: Why are colleges adjudicating sexual matters between students anyway?...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Eli Lake is a longtime journalist, but we know him best for the tremendous “Re-Education With Eli Lake” podcast (Nancy’s #1 pod pick in 2023). Lake has recently become a contributor to the Free Press , where he writes about this world as it explodes. Nancy and Sarah talked with him about the paradox of anarch...

Michael Moynihan, FIFTH COLUMN co-host and man about town, joins Nancy and Sarah to discuss The Incomparable Mr. Buckley , the new PBS documentary about conservative firebrand William F. Buckley. They discuss his eloquence, mistakes, and political evolution, and Sarah calls the old Firing Line episodes “a call to civility in a time of chaos.” Also discussed: * Sarah puts her vibrator on time-out *...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy’s still pissed they interrupted the 1994 Rockets-Knicks NBA finals to show the slow-speed OJ Simpson chase on every LA channel , and Sarah is driving through Texas in, yes, a Bronco, as the gals talk OJ Simpson, who died yesterday of cancer at age 76. Where were they heard about the murders of Nicole Br...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin launched Phoenix New Time s in 1970. Working out of a closet in a women’s clothing store, the paper covered stories most media at the time would not, including then-Arizona senator John McCain’s involvement with the Charles Keating Savings & Loan scandal, McCain’s wife Cindy forging...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Participants in April’s First Sunday Zoom kindly submitted to being recorded while discussing the 1973 film version of Chandler’s The Long Goodbye , which we watched as a group. How did people feel about Elliot Gould playing the classic 1940s gumshoe? What about all those naked women (too much, too little)? A...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Correction to this episode: In our discussion of the late comic Ed Piskor, accused of sexual misconduct, we conflated the accounts of two women, both of whom happened to be named Molly. In the first case, 17-year-old Molly D. never claimed a physical relationship with Piskor, only messages she exchanged with...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com The new HBO docuseries about Nickelodeon’s dark side, Quiet on Set , reveals the bad things that can happen when kids do adult work while actual adults behave like (troubled) kids. Child stars can be ultra-performers: Michael Jackson, Judy Garland, Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Olivia Rodrigo. But at what cos...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Christine Blasey Ford is back with her memoir One Way Back , and Nancy took one for the team and read it. Sarah, meanwhile, re-watched the eight-hour 2018 trial, because she’s insane. The Kavanaugh trial was a real moment: squee, boof, “I like beer.” Beyond the memes, however, it was more: a reckoning, a mora...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Leigh Stein worked at Richual, a fast-rising women’s wellness company, when she was fired for posting about the company’s colon hydrotherapy requirement. *Actually, this did not happen to Leigh Stein , it happened to a character in her 2020 female empowerment satire SELF-CARE, which Stein has been promoting i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Days of Rage by Bryan Burrough is a modern classic. Nancy gushed over it so often Sarah finally read the thing, and damn, Nancy was right. Burrough is a longtime Vanity Fair contributor whose seven (!) books cover oil tycoons, Fortune 500 companies, and true crime, but we’re here to talk about his 2015 epic o...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com It was Hollywood’s big night! Oscars 2024, a spectacle Nancy hadn’t seen in years ( ed: she watched it last year ) and Sarah found exhilarating, especially the Oppenheimer sweep ( ed: her quote was, “It’s so boring” ). But both found plenty to love — mostly Ryan Gosling burning down the house and reminding us...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com “I need to be clear that I don’t want to like Tucker Carlson,” Sarah says, right before going to the mat with Nancy over the controversial news host’s recent appearance on The Lex Fridman Podcast . Fresh from his Putin interview and his discovery of coin-operated shopping carts, Carlson gave a three-plus hour...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com “I Was a Heretic at the New York Times,” an Atlantic essay by Adam Rubinstein, exploded on the old Twitter/X/Hate Machine. The story opens at a staff orientation where Rubinstein expresses love for Chick-Fil-A’s spicy chicken sandwich and gets rebuked. Did it happen? Can we know? What sauce goes best with a s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah discuss male nudity: Barry Keoghan going bare for Vanity Fair , shirtless men in public, and which of them actually enjoyed getting a dick pic, though that’s NOT an invitation. Also discussed: * Sarah gets a new gig, and it’s a good one. * Did Shane Gillis bomb on Saturday Night Live ? * “Our...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com This is a hot one! Nancy and Sarah fundamentally disagree about Emily Gould’s viral essay on the lure of divorce. Nancy compares the story to the rot in France before the formation of the Vichy regime. Sarah believes personal essays like this help people feel less alone. Can she change Nancy’s mind, as Walter...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Walter Kirn sees the world with a spooky clarity. He’s an acclaimed novelist, podcaster, and the editor-in-chief of the print-only publication County Highway , a reading experience that could also be called, What We Lost in the Clickbait Era . Kirn joins Nancy and Sarah to discuss the absurd pageant of politi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com It’s Valentine’s Day, like it or not. To celebrate, Nancy and Sarah brought on Dan Savage, the most influential sex expert of the past 30 years, and he did not disappoint! Savage is the man behind the long-running Savage Love column and its audio sibling, the Savage Lovecast , but he’s no longer with The Stra...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com On Jan 2, a writer named Celeste Marcus published an essay entitled, “After Rape: A Guide for the Tormented” in the free-speech literary journal Liberties, where Celeste is managing editor. She wrote about an incident in 2021 with a close male friend as they slept beside each other in bed. She called it rape;...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Jon Ronson’s 2021 podcast Things Fell Apart was that rare example of journalism that explains our current divisions without getting dragged down by them. A journalist and storyteller, Ronson’s documentaries, books, and essays have taken him into strange worlds — porn, the paranormal, neo-Nazis — and he’s alwa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com American Nightmare is a docu-series on Netflix that has everyone talking. Sarah and Nancy are no exception! They discuss the case of the “real-life Gone Girl” who became a 2015 media sensation after her boyfriend reported a home invasion and a kidnapping with details so bizarre they couldn’t be real … or coul...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com The Oscar nominations dropped, and folks are MAD. Despite breaking box-office records, Barbie failed to get the nod for Best Director or Best Actress. Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, foiled again! As our friend Ben Dreyfuss tweeted : “The Other Genocide: The Oscars Treatment of White Women.” We talk about who...