Nancy and Sarah talk about a lightning-rod conversation between NYT podcaster Ezra Klein and award-winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. The two men spar on the political project of Charlie Kirk and the problem with / way forward for Democrats, and pretty much every side of the audience gets ticked off.

Nancy was underwhelmed with the conversation; Sarah was reminded of private arguments she’s had and sees more common ground between Coates and Kirk than either might like to believe.

Also discussed:

* Sarah is done with echo chambers

* Coates: “I think Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger” mmmmkay

* The animating fuel of hate is bipartisan

* The world could use another James Baldwin

* Cue Rodney King: Can’t we all just get along?

* Buckley-Vidal cage match!

* Behold the sound of Sarah’s Diet Pepsi

* We are caught between real life and floating in the cloud

* America, a country of spoiled children?

* The ‘80s comic novel that wins every season

* Sarah vs. her ring light

* Nancy’s mantra: “I disagree with you. Let’s have dinner.”

* Does Sarah look like Nicole Kidman? Her parents think so.

* Pro/con: Keith Urban’s hair

* Baby Girl as overcompensation

* That time Nancy met Nicole Kidman and became the first journalist to learn Kidman and Tom Cruise were getting divorced

* Farts, snores: Human embarrassment, discussed

* Is Portland a war zone? Nancy reports.

* Wet panties are not a political endorsement!

Plus, love for Neil Armstrong and his son, Nancy and her daughter crush on a portly CIA director, and why America has many many stories.

Welcome to episode #2 of The Sociopaths Among Us. If you haven’t listened to the disclaimer at the opening, go ahead and do that.

I’ve been wanting to write about Candace Owens since 2019, when I engaged in a very short interview with her backstage at a political event. Was she charming and poised? Yes. Also, I’d never in all my years of reporting (or, heck, living) had someone suss me up so intensely and with such speed, deciding in an instant whether to trust or not trust me, and to deflect whatever might need to be deflected.

I didn’t write about Owens then, but I kept tabs on her. I wasn’t interested in the content she was promoting; I don’t believe Owens believes in anything other than whatever will advance Candace Owens. But she was the most masterful opportunist I’d encountered (such as it is), able to hone in immediately on what was hot in the culture, to shove her way into that patch of sun and consume its energy before moving on. This “get in, get what you need, get out” is a classic hallmark of the sociopath — their marriages, business partnerships, friendships do not last long — as is the lack of conscience.

It’s hard to know why Owens is so successful, and then again, it’s not. People crave conspiracy theories, and boy howdy has she been doling them out to her 5 million+ YouTube fans. I started on this series only two weeks ago, and since then, she has doubled-down on Brigitte Macron being a man, made a post-assassination claim that Charlie Kirk changed his mind on Israel, indulged the idea of a trap door in the floor where Kirk was killed and where the shooter might have taken aim, and suggested the murder of the Turning Point USA founder was an inside job. I said in the audio that by the time this posts, she will have floated another theory. Sure enough.

Do smart people wonder why she continues to do as she does?

I don’t wonder. Owens needs our attention like a fish needs water, and by water I mean tragedy or controversy or star-shine, and if she perceives a lack of these or, heck, if she’s just bored, she’ll invent some. There are many wounds in the culture right now, wounds into which Owens can insert herself, something she’s been doing since she came onto the scene: she’s been the girl boss, the anti-doxxer (by way of doxxing; details after the paywall), anti-GOP then pro-Trump, decrier of victim culture except when it serves her to play victim. She is someone who makes an eight-part series about the president of France’s wife having a penis. (What?!) This might all be seen as lunacy, easy to ignore, a flesh-and-blood version of The World Weekly News…

… but for the fact that she is feeding on real people’s tragedies: Kirk’s assassination, the slaughter in Israel on October 7. She is vampiric, and while it’s awful to see, can you imagine how tragic it is to be Owens? What must be going on inside of her that she makes these outlandish and cruel statements and, under the guise of “just asking questions,” demands people disprove them?

The charitable among us might say, “Just ignore her.” But this woman will not be ignored. She will claw her way to staying relevant, day after day, and thanks to our overheated media environment, people you consider smart sometimes lend credence to her theorizing. Have I mentioned the screenshot of the Fifth Column boys as Megyn Kelly pondered whether some of Owens’ theories might be true?

It would be a fool’s errand to predict what Owens will say next. But I can tell you some of her origin story and how she got where she did ...

Nancy and Sarah speak with Meghan Daum, the podcaster behind The Unspeakable and author of a great new collection of essays, The Catastrophe Hour. They talk about writing, Charlie Kirk, young people casting around for meaning, and a very eye-raising report in the New York Times about a recent blockbuster memoir about MDMA-assisted recovered memories of violent sexual assault. It raises some questions!

Will this be a tipping point for the publishing industry? We discuss integrity, celebrity, Oprah Winfrey, the challenge of selling books, and how to fact-check memories in the first place.

Also discussed:

* Tylenol: Latest tool of the Resistance

* Are Reddit posts the new sad girl diaries?

* That time Meghan observed Turning Point gatherings …

* The return of Alex P. Keaton!

* Books usually don’t have fact-checkers

* Sarah’s hard lessons when editing personal essays

* Incoherence, the theme of our time

* Fabulists in the memoir genre like moths to a flame

* Toot’n Totum!

* “Nancy is Marie Antoinette.”

* The 90s are back, and if you invite us to your party, we will totally stand around the kitchen smoking clove cigarettes

* “Monchhichi, monchhichi, oh so soft and cuddly”

* The truth vs. my truth

* How is Meghan’s new book like a handgun?

* Paul Newman used French eye drops?

* NYT reader comments FTW

Plus, the John Brown Gun Club, a tragic story of literary shame, more Robert Reford love, and much more!

Nancy and Sarah discuss the Charlie Kirk memorial. Was it a Nazi rally? Of course not. Was it a turning point in saving Western Civilization? Hmm, sounds like a high bar. But it was: Huge, culturally important, occasionally annoying, occasionally profound, mixing feel-good megachurch vibes with a saber-rattling political rally. It also included one of the most moving speeches in political memory.

Also discussed:

* Why does Nancy’s shirt says PORHN?

* Will Jimmy Kimmel coming back on the air be a dead-cat bounce?

* Why is Destiny mad? (Who is Destiny?)

* The algorithm wants to keep us mad

* “Amazing Grace,” a good jam

* Tucker and the “hummus eaters”

* What is a Stephen Miller?

* “Have a baby!”

* Who’s gonna get Sarah pregnant?

* Are we a Christian nation?

* Is Pete Hegseth hot? Nancy and Sarah debate!

* Sarah requests fireworks at her funeral

* Nancy has never seen Only Fans (which is exactly what someone would say if they were addicted to OnlyFans)

* What AA teaches you about spirituality

* Actual quote about Teddy Roosevelt (by his daughter Alice): “My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening”

* The usefulness of prayer

* “Forgiveness is a muscle you flex”

Plus, Nancy is REALLY excited about her hot box, the majestic perfection of Redford’s 70s hair, the necessary rightness of Ezra Klein right now, and much more!

Isn’t it time to jump the paywall, and become a paid subscriber?

Investigative journalist Michael Tracey is hard to pin down, maybe because he doesn’t play for one team. A journo in the old-fashioned “stick-poking” mode, Michael started debating Sarah on his own introduction before she was half-way through. Fair enough! We go on to discuss Charlie Kirk — whom Tracey sees as a “mouthpiece” for the administration — and then go deep on the Epstein Files, which Tracey tore into, in part, because no one else was. You might be surprised at the gap between the wild fantasy spun online and the facts on the ground.

We disagree on a lot (who doesn’t?), but Tracey has done some of the most honest journalism on Epstein — a case everyone talks about, and few people know. He’s also stood up for free speech, something that’s getting crushed as the right discovers their own powers of cancel culture.

Also discussed:

* Wikipedia suuuucks

* Why Michael thinks Kirk is not a martyr

* Pro tip: Don’t bring up that Ann Coulter story from Michael’s college years in your intro …

* Charlie Kirk the podcaster vs. Charlie Kirk the campus debater

* OK, well since the Ann Coulter story was already brought up, here it is …

* What happens when your ACLU lawyer is drunk

* The Jewish mafia of Ohio

* Epstein Survivors, Inc.

* The accusers in the Epstein saga are … complicated

* Was Epstein murdered in prison? It’s not impossible!

Plus, Nancy on the erotic power of 16-year-old girls, Sarah on vigilante justice-by-internet, Michael explains Nintendo Switch 2, and much more!

Marjorie Taylor Greene gets Michael thrown out of a press conference that Ro Khanna invited him to. For more of Michael’s reporting, hit him up on Substack

Freedom isn’t free, and neither is the entire version of this podcast. Become a paid subscriber.

Nancy and Sarah discuss the killing of Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Talking Points USA. He was a husband and the father of two young children, and he was shot yesterday while engaging with college students at a Utah College. There is no version of the world that makes his murder anything but a horror.

We talk about political violence, radical movements, violence versus microaggressions, bloodlust in the human animal, ideology as a leverage for murder, and how politics became religion. We also discuss the case of Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death on a Charlotte, NC subway. What stories make the news? What do we want our news to tell us? These are deep/complicated questions, and whether this moment pushes us closer or farther from the light, Nancy and Sarah are in it together.

Also, here we are again, at September 11.

This is a free episode. Pass it around!

Nancy and Sarah go deep on Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, whose new memoir has been excerpted in New York magazine. We have thoughts! Does Gilbert have her finger on the tender heart of what women want? Is she a serial grifter who makes millions off women’s low rattle of unhappiness?

We talk about Gilbert’s long career — which has shifted from magazine profile writer to memoirist to social media something-something, plus novelist — and it’s hard not to see a woman caught in her own spin cycle. Sarah is a memoir writer; she lives in this glass house, so she is loath to throw stones. But some truths need to be said. What part of her success is narcissism, what part marketing savvy, what part is con? Plus, we put our hands on a third rail: Gilbert never had kids.

Also discussed:

* Nancy’s hair looks … okay

* Sarah and Nancy sing on-camera; lose subscribers

* Nancy will die in any ditch

* Malcolm Gladwell comes correct, Nancy skeptical

* Sarah says love addiction is maybe not a thing?

* The divorce memoir, unpacked

* Men’s magazines of the ‘90s

* Grape Nuts: “It’s like bullets in milk”

* Yoga in Indiana!

* Sarah wants an Eat Pray Love pilgrimage. Nancy says, nope!

* “You’re just Harold.”

* Nancy cannot get past the scenery-chewing in Tombstone

* Some love for author Jennifer Egan

NEW FEATURE! Today in Everyday Heroism. This MAN did something remarkable this week. When notified of his new title, inspired by his comment about the ubiquity of the term “survivor,” he replied, “It’s insane, and everyone knows it!”

Plus, that time Terry McMillan wrote a book about falling for a younger man who turned out to be gay, affection for Oprah’s weight loss/gain/loss/gain journey, Sarah’s new documentary obsession, and much more!

We have a letters episode coming up so send ‘em in! smokeempodcast@gmail.com

REMINDER: It’s first Sunday Zoom. Sunday, September 7, at 5pm PT/8pm ET. Link goes to paid subscribers day-of. Show us your animals! Come hang. Discuss a possible group read! It’s not scary, unless you want it to be, and then it’s soooo scary.

Become an everyday hero when you become a paid subscriber.

Nancy and Sarah chat with Bryan Burrough, author of Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild. Bloody history is something of a specialty for Burrough, a former Vanity Fair scribe whose other (great) books include Days of Rage, about violent radical movements of the ‘70s, Public Enemies, about the ‘30s crime wave, and Forget the Alamo, about, well, trying to remember that famous Texas showdown in a more accurate light.

Their conversation takes place several days after a shooter opened fire at a Minneapolis church, killing two children and injuring many more. Online discourse has yo-yo’ed from gun control to trans issues to the problem of marijuana, but America’s history of violence goes much deeper than culture-war issues. We’re a country forged in guns, whether we like it or not.

Burrough talks about the psychopaths, swindlers, and survivors who shaped the frontier and went down in pop-culture history: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp. We also talk Westerns: What’s his take on Tombstone? Deadwood? And which critically acclaimed Western movie made Bryan and Sarah bored out of their skulls? (Hint: It stars Brad Pitt.)

For a conversation ostensibly about the Old West, there’s an awful lot of talk about modern movies, books, and the craft of writing.

Also discussed:

* Sarah says: The Old West = BORING!

* Sam Colt’s pistol was initially a flop

* Honor culture, explained

* Why did Bob Dylan add a “g” to John Wesley Hardin?

* Doc Holliday was a … dentist in Dallas?

* “A man with that great equalizer: a gun.”

* Billy the Kid, the “most ambivalent” of the Old West gunfighters

* “Texans. We have a lot to answer for.”

* Lawlessness can be thrilling

* Wild Bill Hickok, the greatest fraud of the Old West

* Unforgiven is the ultimate anti-Western

* Comanches were not messing around

* When “whore” was a job description

* Jesse James, the first celebrity criminal

* Lonesome Dove is Texans’ War and Peace

* A big gush of love for author Beverly Lowry

* Sarah vs. Nancy on the movie Tree of Life: Pistols at dawn!

* The postpartum aimlessness that comes with finishing a book

* Remembering actor Graham Greene

Also, Nancy, Sarah and Bryan choose the Old West characters they’d most like to be (guess who chose “whore”?), the frontier’s go-to slur, and much more!

REMINDER! First Sunday Zoom hang this week! Sunday, September 7, 5pm PT / 8pm ET, link sent day-of.

OTHER REMINDER: Need advice? Have a story to share? Thoughts/feelings/playful recriminations? email us: smokeempodcast@gmail.com

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Didn’t happen this way, but great nonetheless: