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

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