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After a brief discussion of the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight, Nancy and Sarah talk about health, weight, and other confusions. The inspiration is a recent New York Times story that three-quarters of Americans are overweight or obese, a report that coincides with the rise of new gurus like Dr. Casey Means, who recently appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher to talk about how little doctors understand nutrition and why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be a disruptor in the Department of Health. (Debatable.) Sarah, who has struggled with weight most of her life, expresses frustration at the mixed messages around eating. Nancy, who carried 20 extra pounds as a young woman, wonders how much people let weight keep them in a holding pattern.
Also discussed:
* JerryWorld!
* Was the fight fixed?
* “You gotta let people take their shot.”
* One word: Plastics
* Glucose monitors?
* The U.S. state with the most obese women is …
* To Ozempic, or not to Ozempic?
* Bill Maher is never backing down from January 6
Plus, Sarah gets a walking desk, a new Taylor Sheridan show drops, Nancy’s daughter has a doppelganger, and more!
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“I didn’t transition to replace cis women in sports,” begins Brianna Wu, the straight-shooter who chats with Sarah and Nancy this week. “I transitioned because I wanted to get along.” Joined by Kelly Cadigan, who co-hosts their new podcast “Dollcast,” both women talk openly about the frustration of watching the trans civil rights conversation hijacked by extremists, pitting people against each other. We discuss how the election may have been affected by the trans issue, the challenge of integrating trans women into sports, and what a more sane approach to dealing with trans minors might look like.
Also discussed:
* The newest member of Sarah’s family
* Gamergate
* Brianna just wants to have lunch uptown
* Vaginoplasty, actually rare among trans women
* “You do not want to know me without HRT”
* The nonbinary phenomenon
* “I don’t have any delusions I’m a biological woman, just admit I’m a kind of woman, albeit a weird one.”
* 15 is terrible for every girl!
* “It’s dangerous for me to out myself.”
* Who drank the Zionism super-serum?
Plus, the conundrum of granting grace, the hope that we’ve reached a reset on conversations, the sexiness of Seth Moulton, and more!
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Rats in the walls, ghosts in the bull rushes and some extreme reactions to the election of Donald Trump as president. What to do? Swear off sex? Buy a blue bracelet at Target? Excise at least 53% of Americans from your life? Sounds tragic. Maybe what we need is a child actress from the ‘80s to deliver some common sense …
Also discussed:
* A 🌹 is code for …
* Worry is not useful
* When a protest for sexual freedom becomes a vow of chastity
* Say “blue bracelet” three times fast
* Top o’ the morning, I doff my blue top hat
* Nancy wants the ladies to “bring their bushels”
* Joy Reid gonna Joy Reid
* Young men and #MeToo
* Justine Bateman’s cri de coeur
Plus: A fond farewell to “A Special Place in Hell,” Nancy pronounces the word “pianist” a lot like a DIFFERENT word, and Sarah studies up for this week’s biggest! boxing! event! of all time!
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Trump won, Kamala lost. People have feelings about this (including us). But it’s not going to get easier imagining that 50% of Americans are racists, misogynists, or whatever other -ist can be deployed to explain how Republicans pulled off a stunning victory on Tuesday, which some worry is ushering in an unprecedented period of darkness…
As it turns out, the sun rose! And Nancy and Sarah talk about What Happened: Are people uncomfortable with a woman leading? How big a factor was abortion? Do people just want change?
Also discussed:
* “Hollywood lost its grip on the popular imagination.”
* Polling: What is it good for?
* I mean we like Queen Latifah too, but …
* Sarah once wrote a column called “Crying in Restaurants”
* Trump announced during his acceptance speech that Melania’s book was #1. Does it shock anyone that this is not exactly the case?
* What’s up with all the crying videos?
* “Shut up, Mom!”
* Some love for Brianna Wu
* Is kissing cheating?
* Wishing our pal Steve Kornacki a nap
Plus, some day-after podcasts that made sense of the election, an eye-popping new Netflix bio on Martha Stewart, and a bonus video of … Eli Lake dancing?
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Sarah is scared to fly, Nancy is freaked out by moldy cheese, and both of them have scary stories related to times they got in a car they shouldn’t have. In honor of Halloween, we talk about classic horror movies, break out some October 31 trivia, and discuss what scares Americans most.
Also discussed:
* Is Jaws a horror movie: a debate!
* Nancy’s almost-star turn in said same movie
* 2023’s #1 Halloween costume
* Alligators in the sewers: real or urban myth?
* The movie image that freaked out 12-year-old Sarah
* The devil’s entrance from hell was in … Nancy’s dad’s apartment?
* Everyone is afraid of one of these: snakes, rats or …
* Small planes have a better chance of survival?
* “The guy with the pin cushions in his face.”
* Elevator shaft close calls
* “The line between blooper reel and tragedy is very thin”
Plus, how to swim out of a riptide, Nancy does a Vincent Price impersonation, Sarah’s top scary movie, and much more!
First Sunday — and last call before the election — Zoom: For paid subscribers, this Sunday, November 3, 8pmET/5pmPT. Bring your predictions, your fears, what’s left of your kids’ Halloween candy and/or something stronger.
It was a dark and stormy night when you finally became a paid subscriber …
Forgot to mention: Our pal Michael Moynihan will be on “Real Time with Bill Maher” this Friday. Last show before the election should be a doozy.
Episode Notes:
“Bannon's Prison Sentence Is Over and He Has Nothing New To Say,” by Nancy Rommelmann (Reason)
“Highest Grossing Horror Movies of All Time,” by Travis Bean (Forbes)
“What Are Americans Really Afraid Of?” Chapman University survey
Americans’ #1 fear? Corrupt politicians. In related news …
“Alligators in the sewer myth is true: City workers find out in jaw-dropping video,” by Ben Cost (New York Post)
Thank you, Stephen King
What’s in your hot box?
Sarah: Stoner, by John Williams
Nancy: Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, by Simon Schama
Sarah picks the outro
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“The election is a week from tomorrow, thank God,” says Sarah, speaking for the rest of us, feeling as though we are Danny in The Shining and the candidates are the twins…
We take a break from political news (well, kind of) to talk about two recent TV distractions: Anatomy of Lies, a three-part docuseries about the bundle of fraudulence that was Grey’s Anatomy writer Elisabeth Finch, and Woman of the Hour, a tense Netflix drama directed by and starring Anna Kendrick and based on the real-life story of a serial killer contestant on The Dating Game.
Also discussed:
* Tony Hinchcliffe’s very bad joke
* Nancy wants the media to use more precise language
* Joe Rogan podcast: Trump has logorrhea
* Be careful what you say in the supermarket …
* Andie MacDowell and the afterlife
* A side effect of knee surgery replacement is … obsessive lying?
* What with all the serial killers?
* Should we watch the Menendez Brothers documentary?
Plus, Sarah can’t go anywhere without being recognized, Nancy has a question about crossing over, a very enthusiastic hot box recommendation, and much more!
Correction: Nancy initially said the pro-Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden took place in 1939, then changed it to 1936. Right the first time!
First Sunday — and last call before the election — Zoom: For paid subscribers, this Sunday, November 3, 8pmET/5pmPT. Bring your predictions, your fears, what’s left of your kids’ Halloween candy and/or something stronger.
Our girl Nancy has a birthday this week, and we know the perfect gift:
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Let’s say you want to promote a book and you have a little ad money to burn. If you are author and communications consultant Melanie Notkin, you might contact Shelf Awareness, which sends free newsletters to, per its Instagram bio, “booksellers, librarians, publishers, book collectors, literary antiquarians, and everyone else who loves to read.” Shelf Awareness publisher Matt Balducci was happy to run the promo, for the U.S. release of Bernard-Henri Lévy's latest book… until two days later, when he emailed Melanie to say they were cancelling the ad.
“I’ve never been denied the ability to pay for an ad in any outlet,” says Notkin, who knew, before she spoke with Balducci — a conversation Notkin recorded — that he was backing out because of one of the words in the book’s two-word title, and it wasn’t “Alone.”
Francesca Block at The Free Press reported on the story earlier today. Here, Notkin picks up the conversation, including:
* Is the anti-Israeli movement contracting or going underground?
* Pro tip: When you basically tell someone you’re caving to the mob, maybe try not to sound patronizing
* The shadow-banning of books and authors leads nowhere good
* Quick: A group of masked people on the subway chant, “Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist!” What do you do?
* “I don’t want to live in a world where my friend denounces me.”
* #nevershuttingup
Plus, big love for Douglas Murray, when intolerance becomes a show of valor, and did casual Fridays ruin everything?
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Greetings from Nancy’s 31st hotel room! Our roving reporter is on the scene in Asheville, North Carolina, where she gives Sarah the scoop on hurricane damage, what the politicized coverage has gotten wrong, and why it’s good to live near churches when catastrophe strikes. The two of them talk Ted Cruz vs. Colin Allred, as well as Kamala Harris vs. Bret Baier. Then it’s on to the New York Times’ latest story on University of Michigan’s DEI double-down.
Also discussed:
* What up with those shower half-doors?
* Fewer “talking points” Kamala, more Feisty Kamala
* Name someone more weasely than Ted Cruz. We’ll wait …
* “Whore’s bath”???
* FEMA controversy = not that controversial
* Does DEI cause plane crashes?
* How long will colleges ignore the ROI?
* Anatomy of Lies: Next week’s topic?
* What does it say about us that we love exposing liars?
Plus, the problem with the docu-series, the man who puts Sarah to sleep every night, Nancy needs a bath, and more!
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“The path to success may not always be easy, but with determination and courage, you can achieve your dreams.” So writes Melania Trump (or ChatGPT?) on page 34 of the memoir released yesterday by the former first lady. And we have questions! Such as, did any of the Big Five publishers bid on the book? Who wrote Melania’s memoir and has she seen it? Is Donald Trump, as portrayed here, actually made out of wood?
Also discussed:
* Every Ta-Nahesi Coates interview doesn’t need to be a tongue bath
* Nancy’s turning point with Palestinian protestors
* Will Melania’s pro-choice position sway undecided voters?
* But really: No way is Donald Trump pro-life
* Why did Skyhorse, which published Melania, demand $250,000 when CNN asked for an interview?
* “Who gives a fuck about Chrismas decoration?”: Melania caught on hot mic
* The explanation of that weird “I don’t care, do you?” fashion moment
* Point-counterpoint: Was Melania truly out of the loop on January 6?
* Melania’s plastic surgery
* The case for the middle ground on abortion
* How to get “maximum spillage and bobble”
Plus, the viral performance artist imitating trash bags, the disturbing face-eating disease Nancy brings up at the last moment (why?!), some love for FIRE, and more!
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“[The Russians] always claim to free us and to help us. They free us from our houses, schools, hospitals, from our families, from everything. They want to make us completely free, and maybe even from our bodies.” - Oksana Hutnyk
Nancy here. It is the 29th of September, 2024, and I'm going to take us back a few years to, February 24th, 2022, the day Russia invaded Ukraine and started a war that is ongoing. We are going to hear from two people in Lviv, Ukraine, and by way of introduction, I'd thought I’d tell you how I know them.
I wound up in Ukraine on March 4th of 2022, a little over a week after the war started. I got over there simply because I wanted to go. Michael Moynihan of The Fifth Column podcast was then at Vice News. He was going to be heading over and I said, Hey, can I tag along with your crew? He said, sure. But then his trip was delayed.
I had already bought my ticket, so I headed over alone. I'm not a war correspondent, and I was only in Ukraine for about a week, so I'm not telling you some super-secret anything, but it is the case that you learn very quickly what the fog of war means, because nobody really knows what's going on. Modes of communication had been cut. I don't speak Ukrainian. It was a tense time, obviously; the country's being invaded.
I wound up in Warsaw and had no idea how I was getting into Ukraine. You can't take a bus, you can't take a plane, you can't drive over. But I got a DM from a woman on Twitter; I'll call her T. She was from the area around Lviv, Ukraine. She lived in Portland, Oregon now and had been following my reporting from that city in 2020 and 2021. She contacted me and said, Listen, I have a friend in Lviv. If you can get there, I'm sure you can hook up with her. I'm like, that sounds great.
I bought what I thought was a bus ticket to the border, to Przemyśl in Poland. It turned out to be a train ticket. On the train, I met a Ukrainian who was coming from Holland. Vitaly had been working there and was going back to Odessa. He had to. All Ukrainian men between certain ages were being called back to fight, and those in-country were not allowed to leave. The elderly and some women and children were allowed to get out. Anyway, Vitaly was also going back because he had family in Odessa. They'd been staying in his house; his sister and nieces and nephews. He's got to go back, first of all to fight, and also to see how they were doing. So we met, he spoke pretty good English, and we get to Przemyśl and it’s a madhouse.
We're not very far from the border, probably about 10 miles, but it's pretty much the middle of the night, and while there are some cabs, it’s a bit sketchy and what are they going to do? Take you to the border and drop you off in the woods? This doesn't sound so smart. Anyway we get off the train and walk past all this stuff that's already been donated. There are baby carriages, there's food, there's clothing, just piles of it. We walk past it all and to an area where there are a lot of people waiting, mostly men, mostly Ukrainian, coming from different parts of Europe. They've been working in Spain and other countries. There are a few Americans, these guys with an attitude like, We're going to go over and we're going to help the Ukrainians. I don't think things worked out well for a lot of them. My friend Antonio Hitchens wrote a really good piece about them for the New York Review of Books, you can read that here.
Anyway, I don't know what's going on, nor does Vitaly, and we are just waiting in this line of a couple hundred people. It's getting really cold, too. I went to Ukraine with just a child-sized knapsack, it had my computer a warm jacket that folded to about the size of a deck of cards and a tiny bit of clothing; I didn't pack much because I didn’t know how I was going to get around, if I were going to be on the back of a motorcycle or something. Anyway, I'm freezing; we're all pretty much freezing as we watch hundreds of people come out of this doorway, women, the elderly, children, carrying no more than a shopping bag and sometimes not even that. We don't know where they’ve come and we don’t get a chance to speak with any of them, but we figure, correctly, they are refugees coming from the eastern parts of Ukraine and into Poland. [For more on this journey see, “Dispatch from Ukraine: The Road to Lviv.”]
After about an hour and a half, two hours, the refugees peter out and we are allowed to walk in. Nobody knows where the train is going. It could be going to Odessa. It could or could not be stopping first in Lviv, but Vitaly feels pretty certain it will. Meanwhile, I’ve been trading messages with T in Portland, she’s saying, When and if you get to Lviv, my friend Oksana’s husband, he's going to be waiting for you at the train station. I'm like, okay; if we get there.
We board this train. It’s very rudimentary, no bathrooms, hardwood seats. We get on, it's about midnight now, and we're just sort of hurtling through the night. We can see nothing really out the windows and no way of knowing where we are going. A few young men walk through with rifles; a few young women ask to see some ID, which we show them. We have no tickets and no one asks for them. Meanwhile there are a couple of gals sitting next to us. They're probably in their thirties. They have gone over the border and dropped off their children. Think about this. It's the first week of the war. You want to keep your children safe so you cross the border and drop them off, hopefully with family, and then you go back because you want to go back. You want to help protect your country. This is the message I will get later on, over and over. In any case, they gals are very sweet with me. I hadn't eaten anything and they're forcing a sandwich on me. I'm like, I'm going to take their sandwiches, after what they are going through? No, no. But they’re like, You have to eat, eat please. I did.
Anyway, Vitali is just heroic and wonderful, and after about an hour and a half, the train stops. Are we in Lviv? Not sure. We all get off and walk for a bit through a dark empty area. Vitaly is going to try to catch a train for Odessa, he doesn't know if there will be one, we are all hoping the connections we need are going to happen. We walk through the darkness and then we make a turn, and in the distance, maybe a quarter of a mile, there are thousands of people, we walk toward and then through and among them, people trying to get out of Ukraine, people moving further in-country, aid organizations like World Central Kitchen there feeding and clothing people, and while it could have devolved into mayhem, it does not at all, there is no shouting or pushing, it’s like a very efficient ant colony working under bright lights in the middle of the night.
The train station is massive, with big wide gigantic steps leading in. T texts again -Oksana’s husband is there, he will meet me on the train steps, he's wearing a blue jacket. There are literally hundreds of people moving on the train steps, and I don't want to hold up Vitaly any longer; he’s been so wonderful and so protective, and he's got to catch a train to his family. I'm like, Go, go. I'm going to be fine. And he's says, No, we are going to find your friend’s husband. And he turns around and says, Maybe that is him. He is looking at a man looking at us, a man who holds up his phone, and on the phone is a picture of me. [He recognized me, he will later say, from my pink hair.] He and Vitaly grasp hands and say something I took to mean, I got her this far; you will take her now? Yes, I will take her.
I'm getting overcome remembering this, that people who don't know you at all will come in the middle of the night to pick you up, during the second week of a war. This is what he did. And he didn't speak any English. And I spoke no Ukrainian. I tried to be composed as we drove in his nice very warm car to his home, where his wonderful wife Oksana opened the door to me at 3:30 in the morning and we sat in her kitchen and we talked. Her English was very good. She worked as a travel agent. They had two daughters, at the time ages 8 and 14, the 14-year-old was staying with the grandparents nearby and in whose bedroom I slept for five nights and reported, including on Oksana and her family.
Oksana and I went and did a lot of different reporting, and I was unbelievably fortunate to have had this happen. And then you also wonder if it’s the case if you get yourself there, things are going to work out. I was never in any danger. I was not running into any kind of war zone. But there was bombing there soon after I left, which brings me a little bit up to today.
Oksana and I have stayed in touch. She and her two daughters came to New York in September 2022 and stayed with me for five days. They were in the States for a couple of months traveling around. Her husband had really wanted her to get out because do you want your wife and kids around during the war? She had definitely not wanted to leave when I was there. She said essentially, I'm going to stay here, I'll pick up a gun if I need to. And that was very much the sense I had when I reported from Ukraine, how devoted people were to keeping themselves safe and protecting their countrymen and protecting their country.
More than two and a half years later, the war is still going on. We have obviously been preoccupied with another war, in Israel. There are so many stories of carnage that I think Ukraine sometimes sort of fades, but of course there are still bombings and there's still information we're trying to parse, what's happening and what's true from propaganda and wishful thinking. I have stayed in touch with Oksana, who last week sent me information about a family who had perished, all except for the father. More of their story is here and it’s brutal and horrible and includes the line, “The world hardly notices anymore…”
I asked Oksana if she would record with me, and perhaps with her brother Roman, a software developer, to let people know what is going on in their country from people living it day by day. Without further ado, here is Oksana and Roman Hutnyk.
Related reading:
“Dispatch From Ukraine: 'Let's Go. Let's Not Go,’” by Nancy Rommelmann (Reason)
“Dispatch From Ukraine: The Hutnyks of Lviv,” by Nancy Rommelmann (Reason)
“Dispatch From Ukraine: Living as a Russian in Ukraine,” by Nancy Rommelmann (Reason)
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To talk or not to talk about this week’s red meat media story? Well, we’re talking. Are we surprised at the appetite that some in media take in shredding one of their own in public? Of course not; it’s the same old boring mob behavior. But what’s really behind it? Professional jealousy? The moronic idea that if you knock a person off her perch, that gets you closer to her gig? And does anyone believe, as a kajillion tweets enjoin us to believe, that women and journalism have been set back decades?
Also discussed:
* Melania Trump as new and improved political spouse
* Who among us has not posed for tasteful nudes?
* No one should doubt the pulverizing power of the Kennedy machine
* The irresponsibility of running “too good to verify” stories
* The necessary intimacy between reporter and subject. “It’s a dance of sorts.”
* Status, the new fragrance for men…
* Things worked out well for the creator of the Shitty Media Men List: yea or nay?
Also discussed: the literary imposter Laura Albert (aka, J.T. Leroy), an unrecognizable Colin Farrell, Nancy’s got a new book (if no pre-publicity nudes, dammit!) and much more!
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Nancy here. One of the super-cool things about being a journalist is that you can contact people whose work amazes you and say, “Come on my podcast!” and they almost always say, “Sure!”
As did Michael Powell, one of my favorite journalists working today, currently at The Atlantic and previously at The New York Times, where, during the height of our national meltdown (aka 2020 to 2022), Michael took on subjects many of his colleagues and others in media would not touch: DEI, Title IX, and using identity as a scythe to cut down those deemed not the right color or gender or whose whose views were opportunistically seen as problematic. “We lost our bearings,” says Michael, who kept true to course, and to say his clear-eyed work made me feel less crazy is an understatement.
Of deep value and delight is also his 2019 book, Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation. I felt as though I were living inside the work as I read, and I cannot wait to see Rez Ball, the movie it inspired and which opens September 27.
Also discussed:
* The explosive DNC protests that weren’t
* COVID would cool down the culture wars, right? [Insert laugh track here]
* The “scurrilous piece of journalism” in the Daily Beast by a writer Nancy now admires*
* The firing of veteran New York Times science reporter Donald McNeil Jr.? “Not the best moment of the New York Times, at all.”
* The tenderness and importance of Jihad Rehab (now retitled The UnRedacted) and the shame of Abigail Disney
* “Hey Michael, you’re white…”
Plus, the permeability between worlds that you start to see when hanging in the Native world, the politician Michael always thought of as “a clown,” some high-tone hot boxes, and much more!
Want to become a paid subscriber? Skoden!
*Max Tani, now at Semafor
Cross-posted at Make More Pie
Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation, by Michael Powell
“Star New York Times Reporter Donald McNeil Accused of Using “N-Word, Making Other Racist Comments,” the Daily Beast piece that Michael calls “scurrilous” and which drove Nancy up a tree…
Michael tweeted repeatedly in support of McNeil…
“The New York Times Succumbed to Another Mob. Journalism is Unrecognizable,” by Nancy Rommelmann (Newsweek)
“Kids and Cowards: What Really Happened to Donald McNeil at the New York Times,” by Nancy Rommelmann (Newsweek)
McNeil writes his own story on Medium, starting with, “NYTimes Peru N-Word, Part One: Introduction” (Medium)
“Sundance Liked Her Documentary on Terrorism, Until Muslim Critics Didn’t,” by Michael Powell (New York Times)
Michael wrote several articles about rez ball before embarking on the book, “For Navajo Team, a Season of Change and Challenge”…
… and “In Navajo Nation, a Basketball Elder Earns Respect.”
Nancy inadvertently referred to Mendoza at “Menendez.” Management regrets the error
“The membrane between life and magic is very thin there…”
What’s in your hot box?
Michael: The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
Nancy: Small Rain: A Novel by Garth Greenwell
Michael picks the outro
Clip Nancy filmed in final day of “Reservation Dogs” shooting, season 1…
… and on the red carpet at Emmys 2024
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“It’s a Tuesday night in downtown Austin, and Joe Rogan is pretending to jerk off right in front of my face. The strangest thing about this situation is that millions of straight American men would kill to switch places with me.”
With that on-fire of a lede, Helen Lewis explores the appeal of the world’s top podcaster and, by extension, the city of Austin, to whence a platoon of self-proclaimed heterodox thinkers have decamped, in her latest essay for the Atlantic, where she’s a staff writer. (Our own Sarah Hepola is interviewed for the piece.) Helen discusses the podcasts of the man-o-sphere, how Trump’s conversations with Theo Von, et al, were like a chat show circuit for men, and her upcoming book, The Genius Myth.
Also discussed:
* That infamous Jordan Peterson interview
* The time Helen was invited to Tucker Carlson’s log cabin
* “The male Oprah”
* What is the “heterodoxy,” anyway?
* Elon Musk is to Thomas Edison is to Prometheus
* “Shit-posting has eaten the world”
* Can a genius also nurse a baby?
* The optimum age to be considered a genius is …
* Teal Swan is not a good hombre
Plus, Helen lives up to Sarah’s idea of British stereotypes, Robin D’Angelo disappears, the mysteries of the corn dog, and much more!
Does your IQ go up by 10 points when you become a paid subscriber? Listen and find out
Before you go! Home team represent. More info at Have I Got News For You
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Nancy and Sarah talk about a recent story in The Cut, “Was Casual Sex Always This Bad?” (Answer: Probably.) They discuss how subjective the phrase “good sex” is, but for both of them, the playfulness and abandon that makes sex one of life’s great pleasures almost never comes after picking up a stranger at the open-bar wedding reception. (Although Nancy does have that one story.)
Also discussed:
* Silent discos
* Pittsburghian slang
* The TikTok sex video we want to see
* The cinematic tyranny of people having sex against a wall
* Consent: the starter manual for drunk college kids
* Oof, blackout sex
* Men regret sex, too
* Swooning: it’s a goal!
* “Sex is not a thing you do, it’s a place you go.”
* A thing you should really, really not do to your teeth …
Plus, the classic conspiracy film that made Sarah pretty sure everything is a lie, the brand-new podcast Nancy wants to shoot into her veins, the existential thrill of home renovation, and much more!
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Nancy talks about the protests outside Democratic National Convention, where the expected hordes did NOT show. After ten-plus years of fashionable dissent, have we moved beyond the activism moment? We discuss the limits and rewards of protest: big on catharsis, light on real change.
Also on the docket:
* Sarah’s birthday bash at Nancy’s
* The secret sartorial life of Steve Kornacki
* When pink was for boys …
* “It’s like masturbating when you can’t get off.”
* The man who will always be Sarah’s president
* When did the Dems hatch the Kamala plan? A debate!
* Martin Luther King Jr. writes one hell of a letter
* DON’T FORGET! Forty Bucks and a Dream available for pre-order
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This week Nancy and Sarah riff on a fascinating essay in UnHerd by David Samuels, “The March of Kamala’s Brides: Miserable young women are the Democrats' foot-soldiers.” The story lays out damning statistics on happiness and liberal women. They’re childless, unmarried, on anti-depressants: Hey, Sarah ticks all the boxes!
Nancy and Sarah try to diagnose how we got here. Their discussion covers vibrators and dating apps, Obamacare and social security, politics and the patriarchy, social justice and social media, pets vs. children, and the ocean of meaning that lies underneath the phrase, "I'm fine." Also discussed:
* Nancy’s new book Forty Bucks and a Dream now on presale!
* Fifth Column live event tonight, WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.
* When will Wikipedia acknowledge that Nancy dated Eddie Vedder?
* Kneejerk Nancy asks, “Do I need to know everyone’s effing feelings?”
* Sarah asks, “If my cat is not a baby, why is he baby-shaped?”
* The “compare and despair” trap of social media
* Feminism and happiness: It’s complicated!
* Men on women’s tears: It’s annoying!
* The whole SSRI thing
* Fault vs. responsibility
* WE MISS THE ‘90s
* Camille Paglia, aka Sarah’s fake Italian grandmother, brings us home
Also: A (short) debate on Miranda July, how Andy Warhol turns out to be fascinating, Nancy drops a bomb about women’s happiness and birth control — and MORE!
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Nancy and Sarah tackle the week’s most controversial Olympics bout, when Algerian boxer Imane Khelif defeated Italian boxer Angela Carini in a 46-second fight. JK Rowling howled! JK Rowling-haters roared back at her! Has anyone ever cared this much about women’s boxing?
This actually isn’t a story about trans women in sports — though it kicked up plenty of opinions about that subject — but a more nuanced discussion of how genetic abnormalities should play out in athletics. Our roving conversation covers:
* DSD cases (Differences in sexual development)
* Why is boxing called “the sweet science”?
* The spectacle of women being hit —> kind of uncomfortable
* Title IX was never intended to expand women’s sports, but it did anyway
* What kind of sports do girls want to play?
* The golden age of female trick riders
* Stella Walsh, early intersex Olympic champion
* How much do men hate seeing women cry?
* The old Italian woman who yells Sarah to sleep each night
* But wait: What is a man?
… and much more!
REMINDER: First Sunday Zoom TONIGHT! 5pm PT/8pm ET. Check your email later today for link.
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Ann Bauer is a top-notch personal essay writer, who built a reputation for eloquence and honesty at Salon.com, back in the aughts when the site was still a cultural force. (Sarah was lucky enough to work with Ann back then.) More recently, Ann has become a spitfire on Twitter, where she’s sounded off on COVID-related school closures, the progressive politics of Minneapolis, where she lives, and the various absurdities of our culture-war era.
Nancy and Sarah had a far-ranging and often profound conversation with Ann: About what speaking her mind on social media cost her (professionally, personally), about the potential link between RenFests, polyamory, and Rachel Maddow, and about the son she lost a few years ago, whose autism diagnosis Ann now questions (along with many scientific “certainties”).
Also discussed:
* The ickiness of self-promotion
* “You’re trying to kill me and my family”
* Getting dropped by the Washington Post
* Bruno Bettelheim, somehow
* Writing: It’s all in the execution
* Ann did NOT burn down Minneapolis’s Third Precinct
* The Stations of the Cross for Trump Derangement Syndrome
* “Why are you dressed up as druids and maidens?”
* Big love for Tablet Magazine
* No love for an author who promotes autism as magic that makes you special
* The Cinderella story of Kamala Harris
* The lonely estrangement of the white male in culture
* Writing about your own children: good? bad? both? all?
* What is autism, really?
Plus, people who should not wear leather, Sarah gets sucked into a classic 70s mini series, the coolness of Debbie Harry, and much more!
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Nancy and Sarah are back after a brief summer hiatus to talk about: white women for Kamala, “brat” and its aftermath, why Gen Z has so many slang terms for oral sex (or is that just our intern?), and how JD Vance radicalized childless cat ladies and prompted Twitter to make jokes about sex with a couch. America: It’s going great! Note: This episode gets pretty blue, might want to keep it out of the little ones’ earholes.
Also discussed:
* “Did I miss anything?” asks Sarah, after emerging from a literal cave in the desert.
* Gen Z pop star Charli … MCM?!
* Childless cat ladies were trending, and nobody called Sarah for a quote?!?
* You say KOMM-uh-lah, I say Kuh-MAH-lah, let’s call the whole thing off.
* Trump avoiding an assassin’s bullet was 60,000 news cycles ago.
* The Kamala Harris prosecution that Nancy cannot get over
* What is the sound of 100,000 white women clapping?
* "I am here tonight, embracing myself in your incredible, profound white women midst, because we've got a fucking job to do, y'all” is a thing that was said.
* Race essentialism + radical self-care = cringe-fest
* Brat, cap, munch, throat goat: Nancy learns to speak Gen Z
* That time Sub Pop Records trolled the New York Times
* Did Elon Musk succeed in making Twitter a public square?
* “Ass play is not my jam.”
* Ben Shapiro for president?
* Steve Kornacki will chase down that Snackwells truck
* J.D. Vance, the punching bag for a post-assassination-attempt Trump
Plus, the wisdom of NOT talking politics, report cards on how Biden dipped, and that time Hemingway married an African woman when he was already married.
We are here tonight, embracing ourselves in your incredible, profound audio-listener midst, because you’ve got a fucking subscription to pay, y'all
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Nancy is in the woods, Sarah is in bed, where she does her best work, when they chat over the phone about the epic spectacle that was this week’s Republican National Convention and the hot mess that is Democratic politics. “God is among us,” Tucker Carlson told the crowd, and the thing is: Nobody can fact-check God. Is it true? Is it false? No one can say. We’re in the realm of belief, and in the days following Trump’s assassination, what’s clear is: People want to believe in him.
Also discussed:
* Bill Maher’s double-fisting handjob Trump videos
* Can Trump actually change?
* “God is among us.”
* Smoke Em’s first sincere usage of the word “rizz”
* Nancy rejects an organ!
* Pretty women, walking down the stage
* Make Kid Rock stop!
* Trump, the grandpappy
* Love for Semafor
* Amber Rose, online avatar
* Trump as king: Kissing the ring
* Media feeds us shit sandwiches
* In the future, will we all be Melania Trump?
* RIP to the people we lost, the people we miss
Thank you to the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum for letting Nancy tap into their WiFi and upload this episode. Also: Christy Mathewson has Nancy’s vote
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