“I had started out determined to learn about Amanda, but as more people contacted me wanting to talk, it was Jason they wished to talk about.” - from To the Bridge, A True Story of Motherhood and Murder*

This 7th installment of “The Sociopaths Among Us” is about the person who put me I mind to do the series in the first place. His name is Jason Smith, and he is the father of the two children his estranged wife, Amanda Stott-Smith, dropped from Portland’s Sellwood Bridge shortly after 1am on May 23, 2009. Amanda was arrested later that same day, a story I partially tell you in the audio (and fully in the book).

Walking into a story like this, one knows nothing other than one’s own and others’ preconceived notions. In the case of a mother who kills a child, these notions run from evil to crazy and not much more. Neither answered for me why Amanda did what she did.

It can also be the case, in stories like this, that the real story, or stories, reveal themselves slowly. You can charge directly at it all you like and you are not going to get it. But if you wait, and you listen…

In the audio you will hear how people started coming to me with stories about Jason Smith, he was not the man he presented himself to be, they said; that he was very, very good at what he did, and what he did was practice deception.

“He could sell ice to an Eskimo, he could sell you the dream,” I was told by the man who’d thought of Jason as his best friend, a thought the man had, by the time he called me, been thoroughly disabused of.

I have written before of the sociopath’s terrific and terrible talent of being able make you feel as though you ‘get’ him as others do not. They spin webs of so, so, so many, lies that eventually catch up with them. They do not register the damage they leave in their wake, or not as something they should care about, and by the time people realize what has happened, the sociopath is onto the next person or situation from which he can gain sustenance. From To the Bridge:

“We become grist for the sociopath’s mill, in other words; we become his fuel. Dr. Hervey Cleckley, in his seminal work on the psychopathic personality, The Mask of Sanity, posited that what sociopaths lack is ‘soul quality.’ Another work I came across called sociopaths “soul eaters of Psychophagic.’ Reading this, I pictured Goya’s painting Saturn Devouring His Son and considered the idea that sociopaths must feed on others because they lack souls of their own.”

Consider what this consumption can do to others.

I can understand someone wondering right about now why I do not have more sympathy for Jason Smith, who after all lost his four-year son. Read on…

* To the Bridge is a"Kindle Exclusive Deal" this month. If you grab it, let me know what you think.

“The Left has done itself a huge disservice by demonizing men,” says Sebastian Junger, while discussing his recent piece, “Young Men and How the Democrats Lost Them.”

The post ran on his new Substack, named TRIBE, also the title of his 2016 book, though readers may know him best from his 1997 blockbuster, The Perfect Storm, about the sinking of the commercial fishing vessel Andrea Gail.

More recently, Junger is the author of In My Time of Dying, a chronicle of a medical emergency that brought him within seconds of death.

“And then my dead father appears above me to welcome me to help me cross over,” says Junger. Did it make sense that Junger, an atheist, would be visited at that moment by his father, who was “a physicist and an atheist, which is like atheist squared”? Or is that the wrong question? Had he come, as physicist Sir Author Eddington did 100 years ago, up against the essential nature of existence and concluded, “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.”

Nancy and Junger talk politics, publishing, the liberal publication that asked him to write a piece about what it means to be a man in today’s society and then spiked it because, as the editor wrote, “The science seems solid but the conclusions go against the prevailing political currents at this publication,” and the public capacity for collective resistance, viz. Minneapolis.

“At the end of the day, our politics have to be calm and reasonable,” Junger says. “If they’re inflamed and angry, it leads to chaos and conflict.”

Also discussed:

* Sebastian Junger, flip-phone devotee

* Substack is the new busking

* On 95% of workplace and combat fatalities being male: “You can kill enormous numbers of men with almost no impact on the population. You kill the same number of women and the population crashes.”

* “Megyn Kelly’s, in my opinion, almost sociopathic remarks…”

* The deeply empathetic filmmaker Meg Smaker and the shame of the people who don’t want her work seen

* Some love for National Review

* Hemingway’s penchant for five-syllable titles

* The sinking this week of another fishing boat off Gloucester

Plus, Junger on Restrepo, the documentary he made with his late friend Tim Hetherington (“A human and experiential look at what it feels like to be a soldier in combat”); on WWI/WWII reporter Mary Heaton Vorse (“One of the most extraordinary voices in American literature”), the sexiness of a book that fits in the back pocket of your jeans, and much more!

NOTE: Sarah’s schedule kept her from being on this podcast, but she will be back soon.

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It’s been a rough few weeks, especially in the city of Minneapolis, which saw two citizens engaged in protest gunned down in the streets. Nancy and Sarah talk about how much has gone wrong, including statements from federal officials that directly contradict video evidence, a hiring spree at ICE that seems to have left many without training, and creeping paranoia in Minnesota and beyond. As Trump begins to course-correct, following pushback from his own side, we wonder if Minneapolis could be a turning point for an administration that has gone too far.

Also discussed:

* How’s the snow?

* 2020 protests versus 2026 protests

* Nancy’s daughter forbids her from going to Minneapolis

* “The city is a giant eyeball”

* Bye-bye, Greg Bovino

* Is Kristi Noem on her way out?

* Sarah tells Nancy about watching Alex Honnold climb Taipei 101; Nancy spazzes out

* Layoffs coming to WaPo, which, frankly, Nancy could be a little nicer about

* Nancy and Sarah’s favorite Instagram-er reacts to Alex Honnold

* Amanda Seyfried and her “moon-maiden eyes”

* Holland, England, whatever

* Lewis Pullman, flirty birdie

Plus, the time Nancy shimmied up an elevator shaft, the time Sarah thought she might fall into an abyss while rock climbing, Nancy mixes up Hemingway titles, and much more!

REMINDER: Monthly Zoom hang is this Sunday! 8pm ET/5pm PT. Link sent day-of.

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Nancy and Sarah speak with Ellie Avishai, who offers an inside look at how the ambitious project to build a bold new university — based on liberalism and open dialogue — fell victim to some of the same censorious behavior it sought to oust. The University of Austin was announced in 2021 with big names attached, perhaps none bigger (or more controversial) than Bari Weiss. Touting itself as a “coalition of the sane” at a time when college campuses seemed to be veering off-course, UATX was an inspiration to many, including Avishai, who joined forces with UATX through her own project, the Mill Institute, to help educators foster more open dialogue in classrooms. As a recent Politico story lays out, things did not go as planned.

We talk about why a modest social media post led to Avishai getting booted from UATX and how the dogma of woke is transforming into the dogma of anti-woke, not just at one university but throughout culture.

Also discussed:

* How education departments got flooded with reductive social justice ideas

* The prescriptive, anti-meaning-making stuff that went on in the social justice movement…

* “… to be clear, this wasn’t just Harvard.”

* Also: Harvard is pretty awesome!

* Intellectual “space spaces” versus psychological “safe spaces”

* “If you can’t teach Plato in a college course, you’re out of your mind.”

* #MeToo controversy at UATX

* How do you prove the strength of your core ideas if you won’t let them be tested?

* Where is Bari Weiss in all this?

* When open dialogue is perceived as weak sauce

* Cannibal-Americans?

Plus, ‘70s football greatness, three books to read aloud in bed, the phenomenon that is Heated Rivalry, and much more!

Emily Zanotti is a writer, a Catholic, a political operative, a mother of three, and a professional chicken tender, which is a thing. Nancy and Sarah know her from Twitter, where she is a great follow, but they’re taking this relationship to the next level. Podcast guest! The three talk about the mental health benefits of putting hands in the dirt, how Emily came to define herself as conservative (and what happened when the conservative movement shifted from her), all those female troubles women rarely talk about, and the booming fertility-industrial complex.

Also discussed:

* Chickens and gunshots

* “My goal is to not be a hypocrite”

* The intellectual side of Catholicism

* The beauty of having bees come to die in your garden

* “2016 broke a lot of people.”

* The Greeks identified endometriosis, but Western medicine didn’t come up with a treatment until… last year?

* Infertility as a Catholic …

* The mirage of egg freezing

* Storage fees for zygotes

* Endometrial tissue in women’s … brains??

* Clocking your kids’ personalities while they’re in utero

* Is misogyny what drives laws that allow women to die on the floor of ERs from ectopic pregnancies, or nah?

Plus, Japanese New Wave vinyl! Werewolf romance fiction! Forty years and we still haven’t gotten over David Bowie’s pants in Labyrinth! And much more.

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The end of 2025 is here, whether we like it or not. Nancy and Sarah celebrate with a year-end episode that includes a pop quiz, their favorite culture recommendations, and even a few resolutions. Have and attend more parties! Don’t pay attention to nonsense! It’s an annual look-back with cameo appearances by Paul Thomas Anderson, Sean Combs, Sydney Sweeney, Charlie Kirk, Billy Joel, Chappell Roan, old classic books, and the AI future that awaits us.

Also discussed:

* FaceTime doesn’t work in Australia?

* Hard times for America’s bourbon industry

* Nancy doesn’t flunk the pop quiz!

* Sarah favorite 2025 pop song is actually from …

* Nancy explains VistaVision; gets it wrong

* Sarah’s love-hate thing with Yorgos Lanthimos

* Olivia Colman gives an all-time performance

* The time-weathered face of Ethan Hawke

* American Studies is a bangin’ major

* A John Travolta gifting story

* Whoodoggie, did things get hot on the set of Cleopatra

Plus, Sarah invents Drinking School, Nancy accidentally chugs weed lemonade, we all have Moby Dicks to climb, and much more!

The great Kat Rosenfield, Free Press columnist and novelist, joins Nancy and Sarah for a very special Christmas-themed conversation that includes: a new holiday short story by Kat, the whole man-keeping/emotional labor debate, the role dirty socks can play in the unraveling of a marriage, and what it means to “get what you deserve.”

Plus, each of the ladies builds her Mount Rushmore of Hotness, but only ONE MAN makes the cut on every woman’s list. Who will it be??

Also discussed:

* Will people ever stop freaking out about Bari Weiss?

* “I don’t want a birthday party!”

* Sarah would like to man-keep, thanks

* Kat and Nancy have thoughts on pie crust

* Epstein: Is the media trying to make “fetch” happen?

* Nobody likes the word “deserve.”

* Crying in trees, sleeping in trees …

* A totally unironic Leo DiCaprio calendar

Plus, sorrow over Ben Sasse’s announcement that he has terminal cancer, animatronic milk in Connecticut, what Kat texted her husband after watching that scorching “Wuthering Heights” trailer, and much more!

It’s Christmas and Kat has a special gift for you, if you’ll just step right into this post office, so cozy, so inviting, what could go wrong?

All we want for Christmas …

Andy Mills, audio storyteller extraordinaire, joins Nancy and Sarah to talk about the “AI hinge moment” we’re living in, the subject of his new podcast “The Last Invention.” How scared should we be? Let’s discuss. They talk creative process, journalism’s inflection point and what was lost and gained in “the war of public shaming.” Plus: Books books books!

Also discussed:

* Gotta love a rotund tree

* “The thing about when you’re making your sauna …”

* The country mouse/city mouse ideal

* Are we really living in “unprecedented times”?

* The secrets of how Andy builds a podcast

* The trend to exaggerate victim status is REALLY UNHEALTHY

* Bringing down a deer with a bow-and-arrow is harder than you think

* When pain comes your way, don’t add regret to it

* The Wall Street Journal is crushing it

* Make centricism sexy again!

* One was joyous, one was meh: Apple vs. Free Press holiday parties

* Andy explains frog embryology to Nancy

* Andy and Sarah are Magnolia stans

* Alexander Hamilton got what he deserved

* Demon Copperhead: Even funnier than Moby Dick!

* “There’s so much comfort in history.”

* WANTED: Presidential biography recommendations

Plus, three cheers for Bari Weiss and building new media, everyone loves Anna Karenina, “to be alive is to be heartbroken,” and much more!

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