Impolitic with John Heilemann
Join Puck’s chief political columnist, MSNBC/NBC News national affairs analyst, and best-selling author John Heilemann as he roams the corridors of power and influence in America on this twice-weekly interview show, taking you behind the scenes and beyond the headlines with the people who shape and shift our culture: icons and up-and-comers, incumbents and insurgents, moguls and machers in the overlapping worlds of politics, entertainment, tech, business, sports, media, and beyond. The conversations are rich and revealing, unrehearsed and unexpected … and reliably impolitic. A Puck-Audacy joint, new episodes drop every Wednesday and Friday.
Episodes
September 1, 2025 • 91 mins
John welcomes Jonathan Mahler, New York Times Magazine staff writer and bestselling author of “The Bronx Is Burning,” to discuss his new book, “The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990.” Mahler unpacks the reinvention of the Big Apple in the second half of the Eighties; riffs on the outsized characters (from Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani to Larry Kramer, Al Sharpton, and, of c...
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August 31, 2025 • 2 mins
With every episode, Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett take you on a historical deep dive into the life of a woman society dismissed by calling her mad, sad, or just plain bad: Lindsay Lohan, Judy Garland, Winona Ryder, Mariah Carey, Lil Kim and many more. Join them for a rich, hilarious, and heartbreaking look into exactly what it means when we call a woman “crazy.”
The C-Word was originally published behind a paywall from 2019 - 202...
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August 29, 2025 • 99 mins
John welcomes legendary music and pop culture writer, thinker, and theoretician Chuck Klosterman to talk about the runaway success of the Oasis reunion tour and why America is suddenly gaga for the band 30 years after its peak. For those too young to remember the Britpop era or too addled to recall it clearly, Klosterman explains just how huge Oasis was back then; how the Internet and social media conspired to keep the perpetually ...
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August 25, 2025 • 67 mins
John welcomes Democratic Texas state representative James Talarico to discuss the escalating war over redistricting kicked off by Lone Star State Republicans. In the wake of Texas's enactment of a new congressional map sought by Donald Trump and designed to deliver five House seats to the GOP in next year’s midterms, Talarico explains why the two-week walkout by him and 56 of his colleagues succeeded despite the map’s adoption—by s...
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August 22, 2025 • 68 mins
John welcomes Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, back to the show to discuss the past week’s flurry of diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. McFaul analyzes the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska; the subsequent visit of Volodymyr Zelensky and a phalanx of European leaders to the White House; the signals emanating from Russia that Putin’s maximalist war aims remain unchanged...
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August 18, 2025 • 65 mins
John welcomes Pod Save America cohost, Message Box author, and former top Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer back to the show to discuss the burgeoning competition to be the face of the Democratic Party’s future. Pfeiffer assesses the risks and rewards of California governor Gavin Newsom’s redistricting gambit for his presidential ambitions; the efforts of Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker to make his billionaire status tolerable to the popu...
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August 15, 2025 • 91 mins
John welcomes USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan to discuss her runaway bestseller “On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports.” Brennan lays out the formative experiences that turned Clark into a national sensation; the WNBA’s lack of preparation to capitalize on the surge in popularity, income and impact that her arrival has unleashed; the troubling outbreaks of jealousy and resentment sparked by a ...
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August 11, 2025 • 57 mins
John welcomes second-term Democratic congressman and former mayor of Long Beach, CA, Robert Garcia to talk about the imperative for his party to move away from “respectability politics” to combat the Trump 2.0 agenda. Garcia explains why the Texas redistricting fight transcends the particulars of the Lone Star State as a central part of Donald Trump’s plan not just to steal the 2026 midterm elections but to stay in office past 2028...
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August 8, 2025 • 65 mins
John welcomes Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum back to the show to discuss her new cover story in The Atlantic on the devastating civil war in Sudan. Applebaum—whose 2004 tome “Gulag: A History” won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and whose most recent book, “Autocracy, Inc.” comes out in paperback this month—explains how anarchy, greed, and nihilism have replaced the liberal world order in Sudan; the role that D...
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August 4, 2025 • 84 mins
John is joined by Adam Pritzker and Daniel Squadron, co-founders of a pair of increasingly influential Democratic groups trying to cure what ails their party by looking WAY beyond Washington, D.C.—to the nation’s state legislatures. Pritzker and Squadron explain the genesis of the States Project, which they formed eight years ago and is already the largest Democratic donor to state legislative races (to the tune of $130 million in ...
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August 1, 2025 • 76 mins
John welcomes David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, and David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, to discuss Israel’s war with Hamas and the humanitarian horror show unfolding in Gaza. Having just authored his fourth major reported piece on the conflict since October 7, 2023, Remnick explains Israel’s sense of “national euphoria” after the Twelve-Day War launched by Benjamin Netanyahu against Iran to cripple it...
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July 28, 2025 • 74 mins
John welcomes legendary Democratic strategist Bob Shrum to discuss Donald Trump’s inability to extricate himself from the Jeffrey Epstein quagmire and the opportunity for Democrats to weave the story into a broader political narrative. The Los Angeles-based Shrum, who rose to prominence as Ted Kennedy’s speechwriter and played a central role on both Al Gore’s and John Kerry's presidential campaigns, also offers his take on his stat...
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July 25, 2025 • 68 mins
John welcomes Maggie Haberman, New York Times White House Correspondent and author of the bestselling “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump & The Breaking of America,” to discuss the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein imbroglio and why Trump has thus far been entirely unsuccessful in his efforts to stanch the bleeding from what may prove to be the most damaging of his many self-inflicted political wounds. Plus: Maggie’s take on Stephen ...
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July 21, 2025 • 72 mins
John welcomes legendary former New York Timesman Todd Purdum to the show to discuss his new book, “Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television.” Purdum tells the story of Arnaz's rise to become the most powerful and influential Latino executive in Hollywood history: from his arrival in America as a Cuban refugee in the 1930s to his first taste of fame as a nightclub bandleader (and instigator of the Conga dance craze) in the 1940s;...
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July 18, 2025 • 73 mins
John welcomes Democratic media strategist and crisis communications wizard Lis Smith—who has worked for candidates ranging from Barack Obama and Pete Buttigieg to Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer—to discuss the ongoing MAGA meltdown over the Jeffrey Epstein files. Lis explains why the Epstein scandal is different (in severity and in kind) than any of the prior imbroglios that Donald Trump has weathered; how his efforts to douse the s...
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July 14, 2025 • 72 mins
John welcomes Will Leitch—New York Magazine columnist, MLB.com national correspondent, and author of the acclaimed new novel “Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride”—back to the show to discuss the mix of sports, culture, and politics that mingle on his journalistic playground. A year out from the next World Cup, Leitch weighs in on the Trump administration’s capacity to play host to players and fans from countless countries it regularly condemn...
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July 11, 2025 • 74 mins
John welcomes his bestie Nicolle Wallace, host of MSNBC’s Deadline White House, back to the show to discuss the intra-MAGA fallout from Donald Trump and Pam Bondi’s Trump failure to release the long-rumored list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients; Nicolle’s new podcast, The Best People, and why its approach to politics is so different from than her daily TV show; and their shared enrapturement with the fourth season of The Bear.
To lea...
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July 7, 2025 • 84 mins
John welcomes Andrew Sullivan—former editor of The New Republic, first-wave blogger, current Substacker, pioneering gay marriage advocate, #BritishGayCatholicConservative public intellectual, and controversy magnet for nearly 40 years—to discuss the Trump 2.0 era and Sullivan’s recent New York Times op-ed, “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost its Way.” Sullivan argues that Trump is less an aspiring dictator than a wann...
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July 4, 2025 • 73 mins
In a special July 4th weekend episode, John welcomes the country rock/indie folk/Americana musician Ben Kweller to talk about his remarkable new record, “Cover The Mirrors,” and the journey of love, loss, and recovery that inspired it. A musical prodigy who burst on the rock scene nearly 30 years ago as a teenaged phenom, Kweller explains the role that music played in the wake of the death of his 16-year-old son Dorian in a freak c...
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June 30, 2025 • 75 mins
John welcomes Independent Senator Angus King of Maine and Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado to discuss the strategic and political fallout from America’s bombing of Iran. In back-to-back conversations, King and Crow—both members of the intelligence and armed services committees on their respective sides of Capitol Hill—contend that they have more questions than answers regarding the impact of U.S. air strikes on Iran’s ...
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