Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em Podcast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comIt’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 who still inspires, the latest twist in a post-Roe landscape, a mac-and-cheese heist scheme and MORE! Also: What the New York Times’ 30 Greatest American songwriters got wrong and why his name is Billy Joel. Also discussed: * Sarah’s visit to Colossal Biosciences: Bring back the woolly mammoth! * “We’re headed into Nutville”* Blowing up pipelines* The more freedom you give people, the more freedom they want?* Would Sarah hate-f*ck Hasan Piker?* More tragic attempts to pronounce “Douthat” * Sarah’s first SUPERlove* How telehealth changed the abortion landscape* What would a GOOD biopic of Michael Jackson look like? * Shout out, Amy’s frozen dinner macaroni and cheese* Whither Tom Waits and Paul Westerberg?REMINDER: Zoom hang for paid subscribers TOMORROW, Sunday, May 3, 5pm PT / 8pm ET, link sent day-of. We have the perfect anniversary gift …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comEric 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 raping her. She’s filed a criminal complaint. Swalwell has ended his run for governor, resigned from Congress and possibly public life. But what went on back there? The downfall was so fast, it’s worth slowing down the tape, especially if (like Sarah) last week happens to be when you learned a person named Eric Swalwell existed. Nancy and Sarah’s conversation includes a discussion of drinking and consent, what we know (and don’t know) about roofies, and the strange impulse to return to a bad sexual situation and try to wrest back control. Also discussed:* Ft. Worth is the Brooklyn of Dallas* Nancy confuses what she heard on The Fifth Column with real life* If Katie Porter is the best California can do …* PSA: Don’t fuck the interns* “sexual revictimization cycle” * Nancy offers a translation: If he has not seen you in five years and says he cannot stop thinking about you, he wants in your pants * “Will you help me out?” 🤮* A NYT story on fertility and aging … leaves out some details* Why are younger women dating older men? * Nobody likes the acronym MILKPlus, 38-year-olds should not be on Snapchat, Michael Tracey has a point, a rare sports Hot Box, and much more!Get the full story. Become a paid subscriber.Swalwell’s downfall makes way for…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy 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 us make to keep love - or its simulacrum - in our lives. No strangers to overdramatic relationships, the gals then take a trip down the memory lane of terrible boyfriends, the insecurities that make people act like creeps and victims, and the trap that is the public persona.Also discussed:* Virginity as liability* Love addiction = the frothy dilemma of it all* Nancy’s theory of Lindy West’s self-sabotage* The Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes school of romance* Sarah is a sucker for a tough childhood* That time Leigh contemplated a three-way* “I remember going to a psychic …”* An addiction to Intervention* Rescuing someone over and over makes them weaker, then bitter* Who do you become if you stop solving other people’s problems?* What would Dan Savage say? * Heather Havrilesky, preach!Plus, polyamory as a conceptual art project, Nancy’s dad’s tough love, contemplating the many meanings of “the love hole,” and much more!Announcements galore:Go see Leigh in conversation with our beloved Kat Rosenfield, at the Darien Library on Tuesday, April 21, 7-8pm. Details here.It’s the first Sunday of the month so you (if not Nancy) recall what that means: First Sunday Zoom, 5pm PT / 8pm ET, come celebrate Easter evening with us. Zoom link for paid subscribers will be sent the day-of.How long does it take to make coffee? Nancy is thinking eight minutes, the average time of her new weekly mini-series, New York Stories. Paid subscribers get it delivered hot and tasty Sundays at 8am.No April Fool’s joke. Life is better as a paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy 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 revisits a MeToo defenestration from 2020 and examines the angles of opportunity that led to it. Also discussed:* Wait, who wants men to be androgynous?* Some love for Conan O’Brien * Rob Reiner’s amazing ’80s-’90’s run* Michael B. Jordan was always our favorite* Nancy and Sarah have a Safdie brothers problem* Leo underrated?* Sean Penn: a counter-opinion* Bye bye, network TV* Do NOT offer the intern coffee on your apartment deck* How would you like to become the “referendum” on your profession? * A journalist’s blistering 23-point email: How to NOT get a subject to respond* “The Art Newspaper only runs stories we can verify.”Plus, the lessons of the Seymour Hersh documentary, the greatness of Casey Affleck, Nancy leaves her body listening to a podcast, and much more!Don’t you wanna peek behind that paywall? Become a paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comThe 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 should)* Without the hyperbole, Trump’s SOTU would have 20% shorter* Hottest! Country! Ever! * Isn’t the emphasis here supposed to be on union? * “Seven pounds of Botox.” * Melania’s tight miserable smile* “Third term” ???* The Men’s US Hockey Team players were made in the Nancy factory* Medals! Medals! Medals!* The BAFTA dust-up * That Atlantic essay on the measles sure did stir the pot!* Some 10,000 Maniacs lovePlus, will the most caustic word in the English language always remain caustic? An invitation for listeners to write the addendum The Atlantic should have written, Nancy has her greatest hot box ever, and much more!REMINDER: First Sunday Zoom is this Sunday, March 1, 8pm ET/5pm PT. Paid subscribers get link-day of. We’re a good hang! Become a paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comJanuary 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?* Football needs stories (for Sarah)* Nancy does accents!* Super Bowl ads we loved* A bad day for MAGA, a good day for America* What up with that Brad Pitt trailer?* Nancy wants to see what new movie?* The Epstein saga is longer than the Friday the 13th franchise* The abandoned Western movie Larry McMurtry wrote before Lonesome Dove* Peter Bogdanovich vs. Peter Boghossian* What Olympic sport would Nancy and Sarah choose?* Our sports crushesPut an end to the dreariness. Become a paid subscriber.

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, The Perfect Storm, about the sinking of the commercial fishing vessel Andrea Gail. More recently, Junger is the author of In My Time of Dying, a chronicle of a medical emergency that brought him within seconds of death.“And then my dead father appears above me to welcome me to help me cross over,” says Junger. Did it make sense that Junger, an atheist, would be visited at that moment by his father, who was “a physicist and an atheist, which is like atheist squared”? Or is that the wrong question? Had he come, as physicist Sir Author Eddington did 100 years ago, up against the essential nature of existence and concluded, “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.” Nancy and Junger talk politics, publishing, the liberal publication that asked him to write a piece about what it means to be a man in today’s society and then spiked it because, as the editor wrote, “The science seems solid but the conclusions go against the prevailing political currents at this publication,” and the public capacity for collective resistance, viz. Minneapolis.“At the end of the day, our politics have to be calm and reasonable,” Junger says. “If they’re inflamed and angry, it leads to chaos and conflict.”Also discussed:* Sebastian Junger, flip-phone devotee* Substack is the new busking* On 95% of workplace and combat fatalities being male: “You can kill enormous numbers of men with almost no impact on the population. You kill the same number of women and the population crashes.”* “Megyn Kelly’s, in my opinion, almost sociopathic remarks…”* The deeply empathetic filmmaker Meg Smaker and the shame of the people who don’t want her work seen* Some love for National Review* Hemingway’s penchant for five-syllable titles* The sinking this week of another fishing boat off GloucesterPlus, Junger on Restrepo, the documentary he made with his late friend Tim Hetherington (“A human and experiential look at what it feels like to be a soldier in combat”); on WWI/WWII reporter Mary Heaton Vorse (“One of the most extraordinary voices in American literature”), the sexiness of a book that fits in the back pocket of your jeans, and much more!NOTE: Sarah’s schedule kept her from being on this podcast, but she will be back soon.This podcast sounds 95% sexier when you become a paid subscriber

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah speak with Ellie Avishai, who offers an inside look at how the ambitious project to build a bold new university — based on liberalism and open dialogue — fell victim to some of the same censorious behavior it sought to oust. The University of Austin was announced in 2021 with big names attached, perhaps none bigger (or more controversial) than Bari Weiss. Touting itself as a “coalition of the sane” at a time when college campuses seemed to be veering off-course, UATX was an inspiration to many, including Avishai, who joined forces with UATX through her own project, the Mill Institute, to help educators foster more open dialogue in classrooms. As a recent Politico story lays out, things did not go as planned.We talk about why a modest social media post led to Avishai getting booted from UATX and how the dogma of woke is transforming into the dogma of anti-woke, not just at one university but throughout culture.Also discussed:* How education departments got flooded with reductive social justice ideas* The prescriptive, anti-meaning-making stuff that went on in the social justice movement…* “… to be clear, this wasn’t just Harvard.”* Also: Harvard is pretty awesome!* Intellectual “space spaces” versus psychological “safe spaces”* “If you can’t teach Plato in a college course, you’re out of your mind.”* #MeToo controversy at UATX* How do you prove the strength of your core ideas if you won’t let them be tested?* Where is Bari Weiss in all this?* When open dialogue is perceived as weak sauce* Cannibal-Americans?Plus, ‘70s football greatness, three books to read aloud in bed, the phenomenon that is Heated Rivalry, and much more!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comThe end of 2025 is here, whether we like it or not. Nancy and Sarah celebrate with a year-end episode that includes a pop quiz, their favorite culture recommendations, and even a few resolutions. Have and attend more parties! Don’t pay attention to nonsense! It’s an annual look-back with cameo appearances by Paul Thomas Anderson, Sean Combs, Sydney Sweeney, Charlie Kirk, Billy Joel, Chappell Roan, old classic books, and the AI future that awaits us.Also discussed:* FaceTime doesn’t work in Australia?* Hard times for America’s bourbon industry* Nancy doesn’t flunk the pop quiz!* Sarah favorite 2025 pop song is actually from …* Nancy explains VistaVision; gets it wrong* Sarah’s love-hate thing with Yorgos Lanthimos* Olivia Colman gives an all-time performance* The time-weathered face of Ethan Hawke* American Studies is a bangin’ major* A John Travolta gifting story* Whoodoggie, did things get hot on the set of CleopatraPlus, Sarah invents Drinking School, Nancy accidentally chugs weed lemonade, we all have Moby Dicks to climb, and much more!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comAndy Mills, audio storyteller extraordinaire, joins Nancy and Sarah to talk about the “AI hinge moment” we’re living in, the subject of his new podcast “The Last Invention.” How scared should we be? Let’s discuss. They talk creative process, journalism’s inflection point and what was lost and gained in “the war of public shaming.” Plus: Books books books!Also discussed:* Gotta love a rotund tree* “The thing about when you’re making your sauna …”* The country mouse/city mouse ideal* Are we really living in “unprecedented times”?* The secrets of how Andy builds a podcast* The trend to exaggerate victim status is REALLY UNHEALTHY* Bringing down a deer with a bow-and-arrow is harder than you think* When pain comes your way, don’t add regret to it* The Wall Street Journal is crushing it* Make centricism sexy again! * One was joyous, one was meh: Apple vs. Free Press holiday parties* Andy explains frog embryology to Nancy* Andy and Sarah are Magnolia stans* Alexander Hamilton got what he deserved* Demon Copperhead: Even funnier than Moby Dick! * “There’s so much comfort in history.”* WANTED: Presidential biography recommendationsPlus, three cheers for Bari Weiss and building new media, everyone loves Anna Karenina, “to be alive is to be heartbroken,” and much more!Give yourself the gift of deep conversation. Become a paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comGoing to Gacy: A Cross Country Journey to Shake the Devil’s Hand, tells the story of a drive I made cross-country with a pen pal of John Wayne Gacy’s, to visit the serial killer in prison in the weeks before his execution. I originally sold the piece -- my first feature -- to Details. I wrote a draft and faxed it to the editor - this was 1994 - who told…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah discuss political writer Olivia Nuzzi, who became the main character on Twitter this week when an excerpt from her new memoir, published in Vanity Fair, coincided with a bombshell story by ex-fiancee Ryan Lizza. The scandal included cameos by broadcaster Keith Olbermann, politician Mark Sanford, and Livvy, a pop-music persona Nuzzi created at 16. Nuzzi is a talented journalist who’s appeared on this podcast. Last year, she lost her gig at New York magazine after news hit about an entanglement with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This sordid new chapter created a feeding frenzy among (many less talented) journalists, but Sarah and Nancy try to push past the schadenfreude to understand how we got here: the little girl drawn to the spotlight, fluent in the double-speak of politicians, and the ambitious young woman who lost both parents by 30. Also discussed:* That time Patty Hearst and the SLA hid out in Disneyland* The magic of the open road* “I like messy people.”* A political profile vs. a celebrity profile* Rule #1: Don’t sleep with your sources.* Rule #2: Do not look through your significant other’s stuff* The Keith Olbermann of it all* Vanity Fair and glamour of the 90s* Remember that time a governor from New Jersey was caught having sex with a dude, and it became a whole giant scandal? Yeah, us neither* More Monmouth Musings could use a better name …* Livvy, the “morally bankrupt” and “undeniably infectious” pop tartlet* The dirty-girl era of Ke$ha and Lady Gaga* The exhibitionism of the iPhone * Sarah will lay her chips on Nuzzi’s futurePlus, Sarah can see alcoholism in people’s eyes, Nancy reconnects with a former flame, a nearly unbelievable story about a 38-year-old unopened letter from Ken Kesey and much more!Make your world bigger. Become a paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comMike Pesca, host of the longtime daily news podcast “The Gist,” joins Nancy and Sarah to talk about sports betting scandal that threatens to destroy an entire industry. Marked cards, special contact lenses, the mafia: This is deep Scorsese territory. Sarah is so checked out on sports she didn’t know Pete Rose was dead, but she has questions about how betting went from taboo to industry goldmine. Pesca is Smoke’s resident “voice of men,” whether he likes it or not, so we also talk about his take on the Great Feminization (last week’s pod controversy) and women taking testoserone to boost their sex drive.Don’t miss the backstage drama on Pesca’s podcast interview with former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. He’s done thousands of celebrity interviews, and only spiked a few. This was one of them.Also discussed:* A burning UTI of a question!* Over-under and point spread, discussed* Eight Men Out, a good movie* When the mafia ruled porn …* Three cheers for the red, white and corrupt* Theo Von, Louis CK, Chris Rock, greatest sex addicts anonymous group ever?* Longing for a “she-pee” that plays “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor* Norm MacDonald, poster child for gambling addiction* But what is addiction?* Mike suggests Karine Jean-Pierre should have called her book Incoherent* Sarah’s parents were Cuomo-sexuals* Nancy tries to explain “boofing”* A tone-deaf article about harm reduction* Women, sex drive, and Nancy’s testosterone levels * Andrew Cuomo: “I’m not perverted. I’m Italian.”* “Get me off the Lady Testosterone ride!”* Ozempic kills the urge to gamble* Pesca’s wife has complaints* Sarah’s Ethnic Stereotypes Corner! Plus, Sarah reconsiders One Battle After Another, Nancy’s erotic gym-class epiphany, Mike explains how to read marked cards, and much more!REMINDER: First Sunday this Sunday! Come one, come all, link sent out day-out. 8pm ET/5pm PT.Nancy’s birthday is October 30, and a girl likes presents. You know what to do …