This is a hot one! Pamela Paul — longtime editor of the New York Times Book Review, author of nine books, current writer-at-large for the Wall Street Journal — tells Nancy and Sarah about her unceremonious exit from the New York Times, where she had been an Opinion columnist. What happened? Well, it’s a long and juicy story, one that includes a J.K. Rowling column, a “lot of dishonesty and fear,” and an email dispatched in the middle of the night, a story that caused Nancy’s and Sarah’s jaws to literally drop. (It’s on video!) Paul joined the Opinion section in 2022 to “create space for liberal opinions that had been snuffed out,” the thorny topics most journalists in 2020 were afraid to write about — and might still be. “It’s really unsettling when an Opinion section is afraid of opinions,” says Paul. “You cannot pretend culture out of existence.”

Also discussed:

* How were things inside the New York Times in 2020? “Really awful.”

* George Will, 2014: “Victimhood [as] a coveted status that confers privileges.” NYT 2020: “Hold my beer.”

* “You’ve lost the room…”

* We are not finished talking about the defenestrations of Times’ James Bennett, Bari Weiss, Donald McNeil Jr….

* New York Times readers are smarter than we give them credit for.

* Props for Jesse Singal, Michael Powell, whoever Pamela’s editor was at Opinion, whose stand-up-ness makes Nancy tear up

* “The truth is a motherfucker.”

Plus, tasty bits in the hotbox: a Disneyland for Netflix grown-ups, the 1000-page book about revenge and justice you should be reading, a new old-skool medical drama, and much more!

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Going 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…

Mary Katharine Ham is a journalist and political commentator who’s worked for both CNN and Fox. Her book End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) came out in 2015 but basically predicts the next decade. A “natural contrarian,” Ham came to conservatism at a time when culture (and her Durham hometown) was dominated by liberals. It’s made her a rigorous and original thinker, clear-eyed and calm amid the political circus.

She talks with Nancy and Sarah about why Trump isn’t a conservative, how her faith helped her endure the death of her first husband, and how that experience shaped her perspective on Erika Kirk’s role since her husband Charlie’s assassination, when Ham found herself playing “widow defense.” We also talk the Trump-Mamdani summit, motherhood, and the utility of political commentary.

Also discussed:

* It’s good to have a weirdo in the room.

* Unintended lessons of a ‘90s public-school education

* MKH early inspiration: Rachel Campos-Duffy from The Real World

* “Politics is just not fun,” and yet…

* What is conservatism?

* What Obama and Trump have in common

* The Russiagate delusion

* Marjorie Taylor Greene folds

* The Tetris movie: Go, capitalism!

* “Charlie himself, as an example, was a bulwark against so many bad examples.”

* Admiration for George W’s post-presidential ride into the sunset

* The radical efficiency of freaking people out

* The hunger to find hypocrisy among people of faith

* A sunnier portrait of motherhood

* “God is good no matter what.”

* The necessary solace of Jeremiah 29:11

* Enthusiasm plus delusion is a very bad combination, and yes, we’re looking at you, Candace Owens

* Mary Katherine to Nancy: “Get lifting.”

* Sarah “resisted Apple TV for a heroic amount of time.”

Plus, Kelsea Ballerini wonders what she missed, the over-selling of freezing one’s eggs, Usha Vance gives good advice, and much more!

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