He says that he used to hate magicians more than anything because they tried to fool the audience. Penn Jillette and his partner Teller have created one of the most successful and lucrative careers in show business by showing the audience how they do their tricks. Teller is the short one with sleight of hand who doesn’t speak. Penn is 6 feet 6 inches tall. He’s the juggler who talks and plays the bass guitar. They’re the longest-running headliners in the history of Las Vegas and they have a TV show called Penn and Teller: Fool Us. They recently celebrated their 50th anniversary as a team. In his spare time, Penn Jillette writes books. His latest is a novel called Felony Juggler. We talk about politics, why he thinks of himself as a professional atheist and how he lost 100 pounds in 3 months.

Alison Bechdel is a cartoonist and graphic novelist. She first started getting attention for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and later wrote a graphic memoir called Fun Home which is about her father’s troubled life and her own experience of coming out as a lesbian. In 2015, Fun Home was produced as a Broadway show and won 5 Tony Awards including one for Best Musical. Bechdel has also received a MacArthur Fellowship, one of those prestigious "genius grants.” Her new graphic novel Spent is about an artist trying to come to terms with her past success. And here’s a spoiler. She includes this in her story but Alison Bechdel doesn’t really run a sanctuary farm for pygmy goats in Vermont.

Writer Sophie Gilbert has a theory about the early 2000s. In her new book Girl on Girl, she’s written about some disturbing trends in popular culture focusing on the way that girls were portrayed in magazines and TV shows. Britney Spears, the "Princess of Pop,” appeared on 8 Rolling Stone covers dressed in scanty outfits and striking provocative poses. Lindsay Lohan became a pop idol at the age of 17 and there were seven websites devoted to counting down the minutes until Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen turned 18. Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which debuted in 2007, followed Khloe, Kylie, Kris, Kourtney, Kim and Kendall. The reality show glorified celebrity and set what some consider to be unrealistic standards of beauty. I talk to Gilbert about how the sexualization of young women damaged their self-image and hurt the feminist movement. 

Amy Irving made her Broadway debut at the age of 13 and her film debut in the movie Carrie. She was featured in Yentl, a role that earned her an Academy Award nomination. In the film Crossing Delancey, Irving plays a single woman who falls in love with a pickle merchant after being introduced by a matchmaker. In real life, Irving married Steven Spielberg, a relationship that ended in divorce. In the 1980 film Honeysuckle Rose, she co-starred with Willie Nelson. The movie also marked her onscreen singing debut and the beginning of a life-long friendship with Nelson. Irving’s career has shifted away from acting and towards music. She’s got a new album, her second, which features Willie Nelson covers. It’s called Always Will Be. I spoke to Amy Irving at her home in Westchester about singing as a second act, stage fright and what it’s like to be an older woman in Hollywood.

Elizabeth Ann Hanks is a writer. She’s also the daughter of Tom Hanks. Her mother Samantha was married to Tom Hanks before he became a movie star. Elizabeth grew up with her mother and older brother in Sacramento while her dad’s career in Hollywood took off with lead roles in movies like Big and Forrest Gump. Elizabeth could relate to something the character of Forrest said in the film. “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” What Elizabeth got is a childhood she writes about in her memoir called The 10. It’s the story of being raised by a mentally ill mother and forging a close relationship with her father. In the end, Elizabeth Ann wound up discovering herself.

Pico Iyer is a travel writer and a novelist who has spent time in far flung places like Ethiopia, Tibet, North Korea, Bhutan and Nepal exploring the history, culture and food of diverse cultures. In contrast to his life on the road in places, Iyer is now spending more time exploring his inner life. That’s what his latest book called Aflame: Learning from Silence Is all about. Several times a year, Iyer visits a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur which he finds to be a refuge from the crowded noisy world he usually inhabits. Iyer examines the benefits of just sitting still and doing nothing. We talk about stillness and how the places we live in help to define the people we become. We also hear about Iyer’s relationship with the Dalai Lama and with singer Leonard Cohen when Cohen was a Buddhist monk living on a mountaintop.

Pardons are about presidential power. Many presidents wait until the end of their term to issue them. Not Donald Trump. He has pardoned more than 1500 people who took part in the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. President Trump has also issued more than 70 executive orders, another instrument of presidential power. They focus on shrinking the government, imposing tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada and freezing foreign aid. Many of these actions are facing lawsuits and judicial rulings. So, what will the federal government look like when the dust settles? I talk to legal scholar Jeffrey Toobin about the future of American democracy, the prospect of abandoning our allies and his new book The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy.