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
October 31, 2025 • 70 mins
John welcomes conservative legal eminence and former U.S. Court of Appeals judge J. Michael Luttig to discuss his new piece in The Atlantic about the prospect of Donald Trump remaining in office after his second term ends. Luttig argues that Trump isn’t joking or trolling when he floats the notion of running for president again in 2028, despite the Constitution’s clear proscription against him doing so; that in the past nine months...
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October 28, 2025 • 98 mins
In the second installment of John’s conversation with Cameron Crowe about his new memoir, “The Uncool,” the Oscar-winning writer-director explores his relationship with legendary rock critic Lester Bangs (and casting Philip Seymour Hoffman to play him in “Almost Famous”); the previously unacknowledged teenage suicide of his elder sister and how it fed into the complex family dynamics that compelled him to spend much of his adolesce...
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October 27, 2025 • 81 mins
John sits down for an epic conversation with Oscar-winning writer-director Cameron Crowe about his new memoir, “The Uncool,” which covers his years as a teenaged rock music writer for Rolling Stone in the 1970s — years that served as the inspiration for his classic movie, “Almost Famous.” In the first installment of this special two-part episode, Crowe details his seminal experiences on the road with The Eagles, The Allman Brothers...
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October 24, 2025 • 76 mins
John welcomes California Democratic congressman Ro Khanna to discuss a raft of headlines this week—from Donald Trump seeking $230 million in compensation from the Justice Department for its past investigations of him to his demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make space for a 90,000 square foot ballroom—that bolster Khanna’s argument that Trump and the GOP majority are running a government “of, by, and for the billion...
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October 20, 2025 • 77 mins
John welcomes former CNN primetime anchor and current YouTube prospector Don Lemon to discuss Trump 2.0 and life after cable news. Lemon offers his take on the No Kings Day protests, Donald Trump’s efforts to prosecute his perceived political foes, the situation on the ground in Chicago, and the pros and cons of Zohran Mamdani. Lemon also discusses his testy interview with Elon Musk last year, which killed his nascent partnership w...
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October 17, 2025 • 82 mins
John welcomes Dennis Ross, the longtime diplomat sometimes referred to as the Zelig of Middle East peace talks, to discuss the deal brokered by Donald Trump to end the war in Gaza. Ross—whose career at the center of U.S. foreign policy included stints in the Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and Obama administrations—explains why the significance of Trump's achievement shouldn’t be diminished, even if his claim of delivering “the h...
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October 13, 2025 • 88 mins
John welcomes the host of Pablo Torre Finds Out back to the show to discuss a pair of freak-outs at the intersection of sports, politics, and commerce: the Republican outrage over Bad Bunny being chosen to headline next year's Super Bowl halftime show, and the NBA's panic over the unfolding scandal, exposed by Pablo's exclusive reporting, involving billionaire LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and the team's superstar forward, Kawhi ...
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October 10, 2025 • 82 mins
John welcomes former Republican National Committee chairman and current MSNBC host Michael Steele to the show to discuss the government shutdown, Pam Bondi’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Donald Trump’s militarization of law enforcement in America’s cities. Steele argues that Democrats have the upper hand in Washington’s fiscal standoff, Bondi beclowned herself on Capitol Hill, and Illinois governor J.B. Pri...
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October 6, 2025 • 68 mins
John welcomes Puck's master of the media multiverse, Dylan Byers, back to the show to discuss Bari Weiss's elevation to editor-in-chief of CBS News and Jimmy Kimmel's east coast victory lap after the furor around his suspension and reinstatement by Disney and ABC. Byers also weighs in on the panic in Hollywood over OpenAI's Sora and the first signs of the remaking of the Washington Post's op-ed page as directed by Jeff Bezos.
To ...
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October 3, 2025 • 70 mins
John welcomes former Obama White House comms director (and his ersthwile cohost on The Circus) Jennifer Palmieri to discuss the shuttering of the federal government earlier this week. Palmieri argues that Democrats were right to deny Republicans the votes it needed to further operationalize its agenda; that focusing on health care is fighting both the good fight (morally) and the right fight (politically) for her party; and that Do...
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September 29, 2025 • 71 mins
John welcomes celebrated First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams to discuss Donald Trump’s efforts to stifle and/or prosecute his political opponents. Abrams—who has argued more free-speech cases before the Supreme Court than any attorney and whose clients have ranged from the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case to Mitch McConnell in Citizens United—explains why Jimmy Kimmel’s reinstatement isn’t likely to end Trump’s legal and ...
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September 27, 2025 • 2 mins
Simpsons fans —THE VAULT IS OPEN!
I’m Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson for 35+ years, and I’m finally taking you inside Springfield. Simpsons Declassified is your all-access pass to the world’s most iconic, animated series.
Each week, we crack open wild predictions, eerie coincidences and fan conspiracies and stories from 36 seasons (that’s 800+ episodes!) behind-the-scenes with writers, directors, the cast and c...
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September 26, 2025 • 73 mins
John welcomes Rahm Emanuel—former Democratic Illinois congressman, White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, U.S. ambassador to Japan, and likely 2028 presidential candidate—to discuss the lessons of the Jimmy Kimmel conniption; how the broadcast networks could band together to beat back Donald Trump's regulatory and legal campaign against them; and the strategy and tactics his party should employ in the battle over shutting do...
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September 22, 2025 • 68 mins
John welcomes Drew Nieporent, the celebrated owner-operator behind Nobu, Tribeca Grill, and Montrachet, to discuss his new memoir, “I’m Not Trying To Be Difficult: Stories From the Restaurant Trenches.” Nieporent describes his role in transforming the stuffy, fussy, French-focused fine dining culture of New York in the 1970s into the dynamic, freewheeling, scene-driven atmosphere that took hold in the late 1980s; how his fabled par...
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September 19, 2025 • 79 mins
John welcomes New York Times scribe Robert Draper and Atlantic staff writer and podcast host David Frum to discuss the political reverberations from the fatal shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Draper joins the show from Kirk’s home base in Arizona, and assesses the impact of the shooting on those who revered him in the MAGA movement and the future of the organization he founded, Turning Point USA. Meanwhile, Frum takes ...
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September 15, 2025 • 64 mins
John welcomes world-renowned epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm to discuss the threats to America’s public health system under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Osterholm catalogues the damage Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health & Human Services has inflicted in just seven months in office; the misstatements and misinformation he put forward in his recent appearance before the Senate; and his especially dangerous and scientifically baseless ...
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September 12, 2025 • 74 mins
John welcomes former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi back to the show to discuss the murder of Charlie Kirk. Figliuzzi assesses the state of the investigation into the apparent assassination and manhunt for the killer; what we know and don’t know on the basis of the evidence that's been made public; what’s driving thecross-partisan epidemic of political violence in America; and what, if anything, can be done to break the vic...
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September 8, 2025 • 68 mins
John welcomes writer, director, and actor Rob Reiner to the show to discuss the release of the sequel to his genre-defining 1984 mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” — “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues". Reiner explains why it took 30 years for the follow-up to get made; how the original film went from box-office dud to cultural landmark; and its influence on a generation of comics, from Ricky Gervais to Ben Stiller to Jack Black, and...
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September 5, 2025 • 56 mins
John welcomes Puck’s chief Washington correspondent, Leigh Ann Caldwell, back to the show to discuss Congress’s return to work after its August recess. Leigh Ann assesses the political potency (and limitations) of the public display of solidarity by a phalanx of Jeffrey Epstein survivors in the face of Donald Trump’s continued insistence that the story is a “Democrat hoax”; the potential implications of the Senate Finance Committee...
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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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