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Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em

a podcast from the outskirts of the zeitgeist smokeempodcast.substack.com

news news commentary

All Episodes

78:42

49. Harvey Weinstein Is Guilty, But of What?

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/12/23

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comThe Los Angeles trial of Harvey Weinstein ended with jurors proclaiming the disgraced movie mogul alternately guilty, not guilty, and [shrug emoji]. Nancy and Sarah plumb deeper on the trial, centered on the allegations of four Jane Does (including one spouse of a California governor). The two-month trial gained little traction in the press, perhaps because Weinstein was convicted in the court of public opinion

62:23

48. Elon, Elon, Elon

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/12/19

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comTwitter seemed so simple at first. Both of us joined in 2009, and Nancy loved the economy of form, though Sarah was confused by the purpose and character count. She wound up live-tweeting things like, “Her hat is weird.” Thirteen years later, Twitter is the white-hot center of a cultural debate over politics, civility, and the future of journalism. Elon Musk is trying to build the plane while he flies it, and

60:58

47. Stars, They're Not Like Us

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/12/13

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah watched the Harry and Meghan series on Netflix so you don’t have to. Actually, they never finished it, but that doesn’t stop them from having opinions. “I’d rather watch an hour-long ad for Purina cat food,” Nancy declares, while Sarah is still processing how the Prince was first drawn to Meghan after seeing a SnapChat photo where she’d used the filter of a puppy dog.Then it’s on to the Golden

61:01

46. Sex Cults and Twitter Files

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/12/11

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comThe New York Times stages a (one-day!) strike, and Nancy and Sarah debate unions, or what Sarah sees as a “20th-century infrastructure being dragged to 21st-century.” We also talk the Twitter Files, in which Elon Musk releases thousands of internal Twitter documents to two independent journalists, and legacy media lose their collective minds. The first Twitter Files dump (ew!) came a week ago Friday, a 40-plus

72:27

45. Baby, Remember Our Names

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/11/30

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comPerformer Irene Cara died this week, but what was she doing before that? How did a major ‘80s talent just … disappear? We answer that question and discuss the cultural impact of the 1980 musical Fame, which is like a blueprint for our American Idol-inspired, TikTok-addled moment. The Alan Parker movie may be remembered for its kick-ass theme song (and lesser TV adaptation), but the film holds up, kinetic and

63:32

44. Thanksgiving Blue-Plate Special!

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/11/24

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comNancy and Sarah talk Thanksgiving turkeys — both the actual food, and the items we could do without. After killing off some sacred cows (Nancy’s looking at you, Brussel sprouts), we delve into She Said, the movie about the New York Times investigation that helped bring down Harvey Weinstein and launch #MeToo. Despite Oscar buzz and critical acclaim, the film tanked at the box office. What happened? We talk

98:13

43. How To Solve a Problem Like Candace Owens?

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/11/18

We weren’t thrilled by the idea of covering Candace Owens’ new documentary on George Floyd. Sarah was so nervous to log onto Daily Wire, you’d think she was downloading porn. Nancy scoffed at giving 90 minutes to a provocateur she detests. “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold” is flawed, but it also raises questions the media has largely ignored, introducing us to Floyd’s two roommates, who carried the financial burden of his death but never saw a dime of the $90 million raised by Black Lives Matter. A

74:29

42. Democracy Lives in Darkness!

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/11/10

Why is Nancy in Tel Aviv? Was it Nick Gillespie or the ghost of Michael Moynihan who gave Sarah COVID? We dive into the mid-terms, or “the normie elections,” as one person on Twitter called them. Not a red wave, but a repudiation of political extremism, a reminder that MAGA is a losing hand, that abortion matters, and that election polling doesn’t work.It’s possible the only thing this country can agree on is Steve Kornacki, MSNBC data analyst and khaki-wearing dreamboat who also happens to be a

98:56

41. Truth, Consequences, and "Shitty Media Men"

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/10/27

It’s hard to overstate the impact of the Shitty Media Men List on the media landscape back in October 2017. If you’ve never heard of it, good for you (not said sarcastically). If you have, you know it was a Google spreadsheet where 70 women, who remained anonymous, input names of media colleagues and acquaintances along with their alleged misbehavior, from creepy DMs to rape. This was a week after the Harvey Weinstein bombshell in The New Yorker, and men on the list lost jobs, friends, and

77:56

40. Radical Empathy

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/10/19

Hey Smokers! Zoom hang #1, Wednesday, October 19, at 9pm ET. Paid subscribers get a link emailed day-of. Not yet a subscriber? Let’s fix that!Nancy and Sarah have fallen hard for documentary filmmaker Meg Smaker after her recent appearance on Sam Harris’ podcast. Smaker’s film, originally titled Jihad Rehab (now called The UnRedacted), was canceled before it was ever released, having met a perfect storm of identity politics, institutional cowardice, and social media pile-on. But what we see in

91:37

39. The Dahmer Dilemma

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/10/14

Sarah finally caved and watched Ryan Murphy’s Jeffrey Dahmer series, the second most-popular show in Netflix history. (Can you guess the first?). It was difficult viewing, if also able to inspire a kind of love for one of Dahmer’s victims. As she and Nancy discuss, the reasons to watch/not watch these shows are complicated. Is it possible to humanize victims who met a most inhumane end? Who gets to profit from misery, and what, if anything, do creators of dramatized true crime owe to those whose

83:05

38. Men Are Very Necessary

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/10/07

We talk men: They’re falling behind in school, crunched (or checked out) in the labor market, confused about their purpose. Not all men (of course, of course). But signs point toward what we in the media are calling “a masculinity crisis,” a landscape explored in two new books, Richard Reeves’ Of Boys and Men and Nicholas Eberstadt’s post-pandemic update of Men Without Work.How did the pandemic hit men? Why do men struggle to make friends? Are there too many women teachers? (And is calling your

77:54

37. On 'Blonde' and Bourdain

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/10/02

The NC-17 Blonde has hit Netflix, and boy, are people fired up (“necrophiliac entertainment” wrote Manohla Dargis at NYT). At nearly three hours, the fictionalized version of Marilyn Monroe’s life is tough to watch — unrelentingly bleak, a bit disjointed, with a camera that can be as vulturous as the vultures it critiques — but damn if that movie didn’t haunt us both, and Ana de Armas gives an incandescent performance that has both of us thinking of cutting and bleaching our hair (which Sarah

80:46

35. Women vs. Women! Girls Against Boys! It’s Cage...

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/09/22

Sarah interrupts Madame Nancy in the middle of a seance, but hey, no better time for a podcast. After a brief discussion of their top five liquids (inspired by a recent interview with Malcolm Gladwell), they turn toward a 4000-word New York Times story about how Russian trolls might have influenced the implosion of the Women’s March. Nancy thinks the story whitewashes the leaders’ excesses and prejudices, particularly the anti-semitism of Linda Sarsour. Sarah finds the prospect of outside forces

37:43

A Ukrainian Leaves the War for New York

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/09/17

Nancy Rommelmann was fortunate, through accident and the fog of war, to stay with Oksana Hutnyk and her family in Lviv, Ukraine this past March, two weeks after Russian forces invaded the country. Now, in mid-September, Oksana and her daughters, ages 13 and 7, have received special permission to leave Ukraine and visit America. First stop: Nancy's cramped apartment in NYC, where Oksana has a chance talk about why Ukraine banded together so quickly to fight Russia (hint: super-not interested to again

84:54

34. When Do-Gooders Do Bad Things

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/09/14

Nancy’s reporting from Portland, where tragedy struck after a man accused of domestic abuse was bailed out by an activist organization. Sarah’s reporting from her couch, where the Emmys forced her to sit through a women-pooping commercial not once but three times. They discuss the glory of Sheryl Lee Ralph bursting into song and how Jimmy Kimmel’s gag went wrong. Is “White Lotus” worth watching? Did everyone but Sarah know that Matthew McFayden, aka Tom on “Succession,” was British? And can Ricky

92:28

33. Go Ahead and Worry, Darling

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/09/09

It was hard to be a person on the Internet last week without getting sucked into the sordid drama of Don’t Worry Darling, whose premiere at the Venice Film Festival brought a carpet-bombing of memes and gossip and online buffoonery that proved just how badly we all needed a collective experience. The psychological thriller, directed by Olivia Wilde, got middling reviews but captivated the masses with backstage feuds, both real and imagined (“Q’Anon for very online people” as one Twitter user called

76:51

32. The Hoax Heard Round the World

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/09/01

Mikhail Gorbachev’s passing reminds Sarah of one of the strangest assignments of her career: Interviewing the man who presided over the end of the Cold War … about his luggage. Meanwhile, Nancy is apoplectic about an uptick in Portland violence, including a tragic and preventable murder over the weekend.But the crux of this week’s episode is “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist,” a two-hour Netflix documentary about the Manti Te’o catfishing scandal that hijacked the college linebacker’s career

17:06

The Camera and The Audience

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/08/30

Adventures in failing to become a movie star, from chocolate "blood" squirted onto peignoirs to having a Times Square "agent" ask me to stand on his chest. Next chapter of my book, FORTY BUCKS AND A DREAM: STORIES OF LOS ANGELES, being published on Substack 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

78:27

31. The Fashion of Feminist Crank

Smoke "Em If You Got "Em Podcast ·

2022/08/25

Linda Evangelista’s appearance on the cover of British Vogue sparks controversy over beauty and fantasy. The ladies discuss "quiet quitting": Is it good, bad, a sign of progress, not a story at all? Is "House of Dragons" worth it? And how did Andrew Dice Clay get memory-holed? 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

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