Now What? With Carole Zimmer

In 2019, At the age of 45, Andrew Yang decided to enter the race for President of the United States. He'd never run for any elective office before. Yang hoped his signature proposal of giving every American adult a universal basic income of $1,000 a month would help get him into the White House. Though he wound up with a dedicated group of tech-savvy followers known as the Yang gang, the candidate dropped out after losing the New H...

He was editor of Vanity Fair for 25 years during a time that big glossy magazines ruled. Its pages were filled with stories about Hollywood royalty, Brangelina, fashion icons like Calvin, Giorgio and Donatella. Even Graydon's hair became famous for the way it took off on the sides like a winged creature. Graydon knows everyone and has juicy stories to tell. All this at a time when people turned real pages and lavish expense account...

Singer Ani DiFranco's career took off in the 90s when she became a big hit with people from the millennial generation, like my son Jon who spent his teenage years listening to DiFranco's song Untouchable Face over and over again. Her lyrics speak to the raw emotions of adulthood, especially when it comes to relationships and identity. And all these years later DiFranco's career is alive and well. She's about to embark on her Spirit...

Jeanette Winterson is a writer who grew up in a Pentecostal evangelical family in a little town in the north of England. She was adopted. Her parents were poor. There was no indoor bathroom. Winterson dreamed of escaping that life. When she was 16, she fell in love with a woman. Her parents were scandalized. Winterson left home, slept in her car and managed to get into Oxford. She's fascinated by the ancient fairy tales in The One ...

Caroline Paul is an adventure seeker. She's been a white-water rafting guide and pioneered first descents on unexplored rivers in Borneo. To experience wing walking, she strapped herself to the top of a biplane while it performed maneuvers like loops and rolls. She's also racked up credits as a luge athlete, that crazy sport where you race down steep, icy tracks on small sleds, lying on your back. Now, Paul pil...

When Jimmy Wales was 3, growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, a door-to-door salesman sold his mother a copy of the World Book Encyclopedia. Jimmy fell in love with it. As an adult he had the idea of creating an online encyclopedia that would give everyone free access to the sum of all human knowledge. The result is Wikipedia, which Wales co-founded 25 years ago. Though not without controversy, Wikipedia is a runaway success. It's the...

Until she was 10, Emi Nietfeld led a pretty normal life. It was when her parents divorced that her world fell apart. The parent she knew to be her father transitioned to a woman named Michelle. Her mother was a police photographer with serious psychological problems. In her book, Acceptance, Emi who is now 32, talks about the price she paid for working so hard to overcome circumstances that no child s...

It hasn't been a great year when it comes to treating our fellow human beings with dignity and respect. But it's been a great year for talking to extraordinary people on "Now What?" Larry Charles is a true character who wore his pajamas to work and directed Sacha Baron Cohen in the movie Borat. Along with Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman was a hilarious member of the original cast of Saturday Night Live which just celeb...

Gabrielle Hamilton's father always told his five kids they had to do something practical with their lives and whatever they did, they had to be excellent at it. Mediocrity was a family sin. In 1999 Hamilton opened Prune, a 30-seat restaurant in the East Village, to rave reviews. She was honored with a James Beard award for Best Chef in New York City in 2011, followed by Outstanding Chef in 2018. Hamilton was also featured on the PB...

Calvin Duncan grew up in the ninth ward in New Orleans. His mother died when he was very young. He stole food so he'd have enough to eat. When he was 19, Duncan was arrested for allegedly killing a man during a robbery. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, spending more than 28 years in Angola, Louisiana's notorious state penitentiary. That's when Duncan began studying law. In 2011, he was releas...

Picture this. It was my first job in radio. I decided to do a series about women and comedy. The idea coincided with the birth of Saturday Night Live. The first interview: Gilda Radner. We sat on the floor, right across from Studio 8H where the show is still performed. Gilda told me all about what life is like when you become an overnight star. Then I talked to Jane Curtin about people asking her for autographs when she walked her ...

E. Jean Carroll is a brave woman. In 2019, she sued Donald Trump for calling her a liar after she went public with the accusation that he had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. There was a second trial. This one was about defamation and sexual abuse. Juries in both cases found Donald Trump guilty. E. Jean Carroll was awarded more than $88 million in damages. Now, President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn t...

Paul Krugman is proud of his accomplishments including being chosen as the sole winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to new trade theory. When it comes to trade, Krugman is no fan of President Trump's tariffs. And President Trump is no fan of Paul Krugman. Trump has called Krugman a "deranged bum," a description Krugman considers a great honor. After 25 years as a columnist for the New York ...

Jake Tapper anchors several programs on CNN including the Sunday morning public affairs show State of the Union. Tapper has been reporting on politics at the network for more than 12 years. He recently conducted a controversial text interview with President Trump. Tapper has written two books so far this year including the best seller Original Sin about Joe Biden's mental and physical decline during his presidency. Tapper's new boo...

Former FBI Director James Comey is at the top of President Donald Trump's enemies list. Trump has made no secret of his dislike for Comey, who was in charge of the FBI probe that looked into whether Russia had interfered with the 2016 election. In May of 2017, Donald Trump fired Comey. The President has prodded the Justice Department to go after his political opponents. Now, Comey has been indicted for allegedly lying to Congress. ...

Virgil Abloh is a designer who broke the mold when it comes to the world of design. He had a degree in architecture, not fashion when he started out designing tee shirts. Kanye West became Virgil's mentor at a time the rapper's own career was taking off. Virgil went from designing streetwear to becoming the first Black artistic director of the French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton. Robin Givhan, a Pulitzer-prize winning Senior ...

Rax King is a writer. Her first book of essays is called Tacky. Her new one is Sloppy. King prides herself on being a model of bad behavior. Name a vice and she's got it: overspending, shoplifting from Brandy Melville, lying, former cocaine abuser. She likes to wear low cut tops to show off her numerous tattoos. A prominent ink decoration that curves around her neck says "I'll go on." It frames her Bitch necklace. King also co-host...

Footwear runs in the family. Kenneth Cole's father had a shoe manufacturing company in Brooklyn. Cole's brand is also known for the social issues he embraces, from combating HIV/AIDS to calling attention to the stigma of mental illness. The new documentary A Man with Sole looks at how Cole's company took off after he parked a trailer in front of the Hilton Hotel, installed a red carpet and sold 40,000 pairs of shoes in three days. ...

Laurie Woolever was chef Mario Batali's assistant at a time when his hit restaurant Babbo was attracting celebrity diners vying for reservations. Then she spent almost a decade working for Anthony Bourdain. Woolever made haircut appointments for the TV host in New York and she found places in Singapore or Mumbai where Bourdain could practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu when he was on the road filming his long-running TV show Parts Unknown....