Rax King is a writer. Her first book of essays is called Tacky. Her new one is Sloppy. The cover shows the figure of a woman in very short shorts holding up what looks like a chianti bottle covering each breast. 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-hosts a podcast called Low Culture Boil which she describes as trash-themed. We talk about the allure of being a bad girl, why watching Jersey Shore helped her to bond with her father and tips on how to audition as a stripper.

Footwear runs in the family. Kenneth Cole’s father had a shoe manufacturing company in Brooklyn. When Cole went into business for himself, he managed to control every aspect of the products he made including sketching designs for the shoes. Cole’s brand is also known for the social issues he embraces, from combatting HIV/AIDS to calling attention to the stigma of mental illness. The new documentary A Man with Sole looks at how Kenneth Cole’s company took off after he rented a trailer, parked it in front of the Hilton Hotel, installed a red carpet and sold 40,000 pairs of shoes in three days. He also made it through some hard times, figuring out how to revive his company when the going got tough. I spoke to Kenneth Cole in his Manhattan headquarters about the downside and the rewards of being a risk taker.

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.  She also co-wrote the cookbook Appetites with Bourdain. After the shocking phone call in 2018 letting her know that her boss had taken his own life, Woolever felt lost. She wound up changing her own life. She no longer drinks alcohol or takes drugs, and in Woolever’s memoir Care and Feeding, she talks a lot about the influence of the two celebrity chefs who came to dominate her life.

Author, painter and illustrator Maira Kalman is prolific - in addition to writing more than 30 books for children and adults, she also creates New Yorker Magazine covers. She likes to channel historical figures. Kalman’s latest book is called Still Life with Remorse. It’s been described as a meditation in words and pictures and contains family stories and vignettes about artists like Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. I spoke to Maira Kalman in her Manhattan studio about the difference between regret and remorse and why she chose to pull up a chair in a cemetery next to her husband’s grave to start writing her next project: a book about joy.

James Carville’s nickname is The Ragin’ Cajun. Some critics consider him a pit bull when it comes to his work as a political consultant. Carville became famous when Bill Clinton hired him as his lead strategist in 1992 and he helped the guy from Hope beat George H.W. Bush to become the 42nd U.S. president. Carville’s aggressive tactics are highlighted in the documentary “The War Room.” He’s also famous for being part of a couple who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Carville has been married to former Republican strategist Mary Matalin for more than 30 years. He now co-hosts the podcast “Politics War Room.”  He also spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to help the Democratic party regain power. We talk about what went wrong and how scared we should now be on this episode of “Now What?”

Larry Charles showed up for our conversation wearing a Wo Hop tee shirt, one of my favorite restaurants in Chinatown. We talked about the shrimp with lobster sauce and Charles’ career in Hollywood. Larry David has been Larry Charles’ mentor ever since they were writers together on a show called Fridays. Charles liked to wear his pajamas to work. He was one of the original writers of Seinfeld. He also wrote and directed Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes. In between, Charles made a movie with Bob Dylan called Masked and Anonymous that was never released. He also directed Sasha Baron Cohen in Borat and Bruno where Cohen ran down the street in an orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood wearing pink hot pants. Larry Charles wrote a memoir called Comedy Samurai. The book is very funny. This conversation is hilarious.

I recognized Paul Hawken’s name from a long time ago. It was the late 1960s. I was living in the East Village and I was eating a macrobiotic diet: grains, vegetables, miso, tamari, aduki beans. I often went to the health food store and bought Erewhon products. Hawken is the man who started the Erewhon Trading company. He also co-founded the garden supply company Smith and Hawken, businesses with an emphasis on operating in a socially responsible way. Hawken also hosted a PBS series called Growing a Business. And through it all he has thought a lot about our environment, the climate and how people relate to one another. He’s also written many books. His latest is called Carbon: The Book of Life. We talk about natural foods, being an entrepreneur and the future of the planet on the new episode of “Now What?”

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.