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 get down (!) to the serious business of ethical non-monogamy, thanks to the cover story in this week’s New York magazine. Is polyamory really a trend? Does opening your marriage ever work? Sarah finds this subject (professionally) fascinating; Nancy thinks it all ends in tears and grubbiness s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com With Nancy off in Israel, Sarah sits down with Matt Welch, crackerjack co-host of The Fifth Column — not to be confused with Matt Walsh , conservative commentator, or Matthew Welch, everyone’s favorite bagpiper . Matt is editor-at-large at Reason , whatever that means, and a long-time journalist, musician, an...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Our MLK Day episode kicks off with stories about the chain-smoking, philandering civil rights leader who is also one of the founding fathers of the American Dream. We discuss the terrific new movie American Fiction , and somehow segue to a discussion about Buckminster Fuller and geodesic domes. Which one of u...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com The Bill Ackman-Neri Oxman-Claudine Gay-whoever else storm continues to rage. How does anyone get work done? We sort through the madness, and along the way: * Sarah gets a curious invitation … * Nancy is the “Epstein Island” of the Illuminati * Did Sinead die of a broken heart? * Bill Ackman’s tweets are long...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah welcome their first-ever repeat guest, Kat Rosenfield , and the result is a hot and steamy conversation about beauty standards, fatphobia, plastic surgery, sexual awakenings (and creep-outs). Along the way we discuss: * What rhymes with “potsticker” AND is a symbol of the worst of mankind? * T...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Whose DNA does Sarah want to roll around in? What does “uncanny valley” mean anyway? Whose music did Sarah find “a beautiful Frankenstein amalgam”? What podcast helps us move out of the wood-chipper of the culture wars? Is 2023’s worst political story also its best? Plus, hot guys, SO many hot guys, and Sarah...

Good New Near’s Eve morning! I did not make that cake, a glacage miroir brilliant au chocolat but if you read French, have at! My better half Sarah Hepola is expecting me on-air within the hour so quick notes today… I was about to write, and then remembered what the gypsy lady told me… The voice of Ken Layne is something everyone should have in their life in 2024. I used to write fiction (and mayb...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com We’ve reached that joyous time of year when Sarah listens to the 22-episode podcast about the 2020 Harvey Weinstein trial, an annual tradition. Nancy takes a break from baking to tell us about peeing in the woods and the giant stuffed hedgehog (maybe? see photo below) she just (kinda) wrapped. But the centerp...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com We 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...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Writers 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 is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Sarah 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...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Amid 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? * Phi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Sarah 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...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com The 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...

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 n...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Protests 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. Pr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com After 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 th...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com It’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...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Our guest is the “Long Island-accented, turbocharged” Mike Pesca, host of The Gist . We begin — and end! — with fabu tech failure, but along the way, we talk to the intrepid podcaster about getting thrown on the funeral pyre at Slate , why he can’t stand slow talkers, Israel-Hamas press coverage and culture c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com This week has left many of us on a razor’s edge, watching posters of the Israeli kidnapped torn down,* protesters banging on the glass of Cooper Union’s library while Jewish students hide, and all variety of, “Did someone really say that”!? A “Flood Brooklyn for Gaza” march takes place tomorrow, the Sabbath,...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com An air raid siren went off the moment we sat down to interview Yael Bar Tur. “Give me five minutes,” said the co-host of the “ Ask a Jew ” podcast. “I have to go to the bomb shelter.” An Israeli who lives in New York City, Yael was visiting her family in Tel Aviv when Hamas massacred 1400 Israelis and kidnapp...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah are here to talk about beauty and wonder and love and heartbreak, from a wave of Natives in film to a new twist on an old reality show. But first, they discuss the utter failure of media outlets covering the missile strike on a Gaza hospital, most likely a misfire from a Palestinian group that...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Nancy and Sarah chat with the charming Bridget Phetasy, host of the podcast Walk-Ins Welcome and the YouTube show Dumpster Fire , her weekly take on the news-and-nonsense cycle. Bridget is ten years sober (tomorrow!), and we revisit her reckless youth with a discussion of her essay, “I Regret Being a Slut.” S...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.com Our guest is Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and author of the new book, The Canceling of the American Mind , which he wrote with Ricki Schlott. The book is a “walk down trauma lane” of the past several years, covering the feeding frenzy to go af...

Good morning Pie Talk listeners. Waking up to the news that Hamas attacked Israel and that the country is now at war. I immediately texted my friend Yael Bar tur , who lives in NYC but is home in Tel Aviv visiting with family, a family I know and love. I had not yet read anything else, but for her tweet below. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow Yael , who will assuredly be posting updates. Ten m...