
Maureen Callahan kicks off this episode of The Nerve talking about the “Today Show” lineup, which included an interview with Damian Lewis where he claims that he was instrumental in catapulting Timothée Cham-Lama-Ding-Dong’s acting career into stardom. Maureen also discusses Lewis' attempt to reinvent himself as a musician, and takes a look at his newly released music video that has garnered very little attention. She then turns to the fourth hour of the "Today," calling out Sheinelle Jones' perseveration on one specific topic and her inability to say anything of substance. Maureen also goes all in on "The Motherload" author Sarah Hoover, highlighting the many dark revelations mentioned in her book as well as her marriage to the volatile NYC artist, Tom Sachs. She is later joined by Producer Marlaina to get her firsthand account of Hoover's book talk event at the 92nd St. Y that was moderated by charisma vacuum, Chelsea Clinton. MUD/WTR: Our listeners get an exclusive deal up to...
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Maureen Callahan
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Marlena
Like what?
Maureen Callahan
She puts things on her face. So many things. One by one. Do you watch her? I sit on the bathroom floor and
Marlena
wait the whole time.
Maureen Callahan
She has like 10 bottles. Hello and welcome to your Friday edition of the Nerve. I am your host Maureen Callahan. We have another stacked and packed show for you. Lots going on. We are going to begin with a celebrity roundup that involves some new cultural offenders. So we've got Damian Lew, who many of you may know from Homeland, and then more recently, billions. Damien went to like the locus of cultural hell. I would say There might be two centers of cultural hell. They're related. Studio 1A over at the Today show and then Andrew Cohen's clubhouse. Andrew Cohen's clubhouse on watch what happens live. So Andrew went over there. Sorry, Damien went over there and took quite a bit of credit for gifting us with a nerve repeat offender who keeps escaping the woodshed to
Chanel
to be
Maureen Callahan
seated courtside at Knicks games. Okay, we'll talk about that then. We've got Anderson Cooper coming in. We've got Jennifer Aniston and her boyfriend coming in. It's going to be super fun. It's going to be super fun. Then we've got, as we promised in our most recent nerve, a ton of troublemaker feedback. There's a lot to discuss and I think a lot of you know exactly what we're going to be talking about. Paul from New Zealand has submitted amongst his many pieces of art this week. And Paul, I've been meaning to email you directly this week. In particular, the Warholian Aspect is strong. We are excited to show you a new Paul from New Zealand creation. And then we're going to get into a scandal that the Venn diagram would be the literary world, the art world, and then a 92nd Street Y live event that once again our beloved Marlena infiltrated and she's going to come on to talk to us all about it. And so we ask you, are you ready? Are you ready? Let's go. Coffee lovers, and I count myself among them, know the drill. You want the taste, the ritual and the energy. But sometimes the caffeine overload comes with jitters, anxiety and a hard crash later in the day. That's why MUDWTR has created their new Low Calf coffee blend. It tastes like actual coffee because it's made with organic arabica beans, but it also has functional mushrooms like Lion's Mane and Cordyceps Plus L Theanine. It delivers real coffee flavor with only 45 milligrams of caffeine. So we all get a calmer, more balanced boost. Super grounding, really smooth energy. And I also do really love that everything is USDA organic, vegan, non gmo and they use the Swiss water decaf process with the zero chemical solvents. Make the switch to cleaner energy and head to mudwater.com to grab your starter kit today. Right now, Nerve listeners get an exclusive deal. Up to 43% off your entire order, plus free shipping and a free rechargeable frother when you use Code Nerve. That's right. Up to 43% off with code Nerve at M U D W T R dot com. After your purchase, they're going to ask how you found them. Please support our show. Tell them you're a troublemaker and that the Nerve sent you. Damian Lewis. Damian Lewis is most famous for his role as Brody the. Is he or isn't he a terrorist who was converted during his time as a POW over in the Middle east on Homeland, which started out great and then just went completely off the rails. But anyway, he's most famous for that and then for the Showtime series Billions, in which he played, I believe, the hedge fund executive known as Axe. He's out currently promoting a new movie. I'm very interested in this movie, actually. It's a World War II film called Pressure. We can talk about that on a later show. But anyway, so he. So I, I said to Marlena this week, I feel so lucky that I caught this particular interview because he doesn't otherwise interest me. Um, but the conversation turned to. And this is all, of course, Pre scripted. They pre interview these celebrities. And so when they get on the set, every single person in the arcade fire, by which I mean the 80 Today show hosts who interview one single celebrity who's got maybe four minutes tops to push out their product, can have a moment. Damien is taking. Is proudly taking credit proudly. And you gotta. Craig's. Craig Melvin is doing a lot here, okay? He's Jimmy Fallon at Stephen Colbert's final round table. When Colbert was like, you know, Paulina Porsche Kova said I was her hall pass. And Seth Meyers is sitting there like, when is this over? And Jimmy Fallon is the one who's doing all the heavy lifting in that scene, right? Jimmy Fallon's like, what? Oh, buddy. Right. Okay, so that's Craig. As Damien proudly talk about living in a bubble. Proudly tells us who he's responsible to gifting to the culture. Here we go. We even had Timothee Chalamet on our show. Where do you think he learned how to handle the stress of a softie movie?
Damian Lewis
We made you, Timothy. Just saying. Yes, you did. Yes, you did.
Maureen Callahan
What was it like getting back together with Claire?
Damian Lewis
And did Timothee Chalamet at least acknowledge
Maureen Callahan
that you did help make him, that he made him?
Damian Lewis
Timothy's. There's a whole other story here, and I don't know how much to get into it. No, get into all of it.
Maureen Callahan
Craig's like, get into all of it. Get into all of it. America's riveted by the backstage machinations that brought us one Timothy Shamalama. Ding dong, here we go.
Damian Lewis
I'm gonna get so much flack for this. But it was in North Carolina, and I called my agent in L. A and I said, you got to come down and see this young dude who's acting in this show. I think you're going to love him. And I don't think he has representation yet, etcetera, etc, etcetera. And my agent of the time, Brian, came down.
Maureen Callahan
Yeah.
Damian Lewis
Fell in love with him, said, I think he's got all the stuff. This is amazing. And right at that moment, had the rights to call me by your name with his partner, a guy called Peter. And we just met this guy Luca Guadagnino. Maybe you'd like to meet him.
Maureen Callahan
Oh, my goodness.
Damian Lewis
And they. And off he went into call me by your name. So I'm taking 15 of everything.
Maureen Callahan
At all you did get. Yes.
Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
Guest Commentator
That's amazing.
Damian Lewis
I literally, I'm.
Guest Commentator
Can I say it here?
Maureen Callahan
Yeah.
Damian Lewis
I made Chalamet.
Maureen Callahan
You made Chalamet. Who would take Credit for this. The guy talked himself out of a nearly guaranteed Oscar. With a little help from the Nerve. Damian, Join the rest of us down on terra firmament. This is what you gave us. Never forget. Here we go.
Damian Lewis (continued)
Sometimes you gotta call things as. As it is, as they are and not tiptoe, especially as you get older. I'm about to be 30. I wanna look back on my interviews when I'm fried and mentally anguished in my 60s and look back at my interviews in my late 20s, I go, Man, I was really speaking the truth and not afraid of, of the truth. Well, may you always that said, like, this is probably my best performance, you know, and then it's been like seven, eight years that I feel like I've been handing in really, really committed, top of the line performances. And it's important to say it out loud because the discipline and the, the work ethic I'm bringing to these things, I don't want people to take granted. I don't want to take for granted. This is really some top level.
Maureen Callahan
It never fails to make me laugh out loud. The gall, the unmitigated gall to say, you know, as an actor, when I show up to my job, I give committed performances. Literally the job description. So you want a gold star, right? And then, and then, you know, the top level shit for it's memorialized over, over at the nerve shop go I. I wish I. With me, I've said this before. My top level nerve baseball cap available. Still, for those of you who would like to avail yourselves now, Damien is also having the mother of all midlife crises. Okay. Because he's been trying for quite some time to reinvent himself as a rock star. And, you know, he might want to take a note from Kiefer Sutherland, who also became iconic for the television show 24. Amazing show. Amazing. When it was at its height, there was nothing like 24. But Kiefer recently took to, I think Instagram and said, listen, I was going to tour the United States and I'm no longer going to tour the United States. And he was brutally honest about it. You got to give the guy credit. He was like, our ticket sales are way too slow. Can't do it. Damien's got a second album coming out. It's called Sweet Chaos. June 5th. Mark your calendars. And we're going to take a look at the official video just released on his YouTube channel. And you guys, if you're just listening, you have to look at it. He's wearing like a tailored coat with either like a fur or velvet, sweetheart neckline, nothing underneath it. And now he's standing in a corner of concrete like he's in a shitty neighborhood, like with graffiti. And he's wearing sunglasses. It's like gray out. And he's like posing hard. It's hard. It's very Zoolander. It's very Zula. Like it would be camp if you were in on the joke. But he's not. He's not. I don't know if his attempted foray into rock and roll predates. I think he's still in a relationship with the Kill the Kills front woman. What's her name? Oh, my God, why am I blanking on her name? Marlena. Can you help me? Alison Allison Moss. Right, of the Kills. Sorry. Alison Mosshart. Allison Mosshart. Back to the Today show, the fourth hour with Jenna and Chanel. Now, again, this is a morning chat show meant to ease you into your day. What do we begin talking about? Chanel and her grief. This is becoming her brand. Chanel doesn't really have anything to say. I mean, really. And we're going to revisit something that we aired a couple of episodes ago. But she recently did Anderson Cooper's podcast. Now, Anderson Cooper has a podcast that's all about grief. It's called All There Is. And you know, I, I know he's had a lot of loss in his life. His brother committed suicide. His father died when he was young. His mother died fairly recently. She lived to a ripe old age. And I ask this question in a very genuine, open hearted way, like I'm not trying to be flip about it. I don't know that it's healthy to perseverate on grief. I don't know. I don't think that it would be necessarily healthy to swim in that at least, you know, once a week with other, you know, it's, it's, that's a tricky business. It's a tricky business. Anyway, Chanel went on to talk about, you know, her husband died about a year ago of cancer and they have two children. And she tells Jenna now, again, this is our real talk about fake people. Because there is a gulf between what Chanel is going to tell us she's all about and what Chanel tells us she actually does in her actual life. Okay. Chanel wants to be America's point person for grief, even though it's very difficult for her to talk about. She went over to Anderson's podcast to talk about it in a very public forum for one reason. And I'll bet you troublemakers can Guess the ostensible reason. Here we go.
Chanel
You know, if I can just maybe help one person. I got a call and I didn't listen to it until this weekend. I got a call from one of my best friends in life.
Maureen Callahan
Okay, so Chanel says the reason she did Anderson Cooper's podcast, even though she says to Jenna right before that, I really don't like talking about it. I don't like talking about it, but I'm going to talk about it here with you, and I'm going to use it to help sell my book. And I'm going on to Anderson's podcast because Anderson's super famous and he's super. He's got a lot of credibility in the news space. You know, he's a smart guy. She wants to be seen as smart. So I toddled over there. Now, she says, even though I don't like to talk about it, I talked about it because if I could just help one person, if I could just help one person. Well, there is one person in Chanel's actual life, her best friend, she says, of many, many, many, many years who called her. And Chanel knows the reason. We're going to get to it in this next clip. But Chanel let that voicemail sit all week. Let me tell you, if my best friend was grieving and left me a voicemail, I would call her back immediately. It wouldn't sit there for a week. But Chanel had other shit to do. Chanel had to go talk to Anderson first. Then she could get back to her best friend of many, many years. Here we go.
Chanel
She lost her grandmother and her mom. Lost her mom, obviously. And she called. My God. I woke up at 3 o' clock this morning and my mom, who has never listened to a podcast a day in her life, was listening to the podcast, and she said, please tell Chanel that that just really helped me.
Maureen Callahan
Oh, that's so beautiful.
Chanel
She cried about it and I cried about it, and I thought, okay, that is why you did it. I share. Yeah.
Maureen Callahan
Yeah.
Chanel
It's not easy for.
Maureen Callahan
For me.
Chanel
Well, should we look? No, it's not. Yeah, but let. If we can, let's look a clip of this conversation.
Maureen Callahan
Why. Why couldn't we? If we can, why couldn't we? She goes, it's not easy for me. I would love to get Mark Bowden on that little clip. And we will at a future date, possibly now, when I tell you it's all a full circle here at the Nerve. We are moving the culture. This dim bulb is going to tell us On Anderson's pod how it is she came to realize that her late husband has materialized in her life. And this should remind you of somebody that the nerve has. Has wood shedded more than once. Here we go.
Chanel
I was sitting on a beach in Jamaica, and my girlfriend was like, it's okay to cry. I think it was the first time I had just, like, really let it go. And I just said, where are you? Like, where are you? Like, are you okay? Where are you? And all of a sudden, and we are in the middle of the ocean. It was like this rock, and we took a picture of it, and here comes this yellow butterfly.
Maureen Callahan
And we both went, okay. There was a guest on the Today show who we will get to who was on the Today show because he is currently sleeping with an A list actress. No other reason, I promise you that. Just my opinion, but it's well founded. This is. You know, any of us who have lost a loved one, a close loved one, we go through this. And, you know, sometimes you'll. You'll see. You'll see things, signs, and you'll think, that's a sign. Other times, you'll think, as I have sometimes, oh, that's just pattern recognition. Like, our brains are wired to seek out patterns and for those patterns to be imbued with meaning that help to make sense of a senseless existence. But, you know, Chanel is very wedded to this idea. No pun intended. She's very invested in this idea that. That her husband is not just that yellow butterfly, but all the yellow butterflies that she's. Because she's seeing them all. Here we go. Here we go.
Chanel
And then it. And she was like, is that you Uche? And I said, oh, my God, stop it. And she's like, no, just if it's you or if it's like anything that Chanel needs to know, like, just let her know that you're okay. Can you come back? And said, mia, a butterfly is not coming back. And sure enough. And we were like. And I was like, oh, my God.
Maureen Callahan
Oh, my gosh.
Chanel
How beautiful is that? And now you see them all the time. Do you remember when we were in Jamaica?
Marlena
Yes.
Chanel
And I told you guys, and I told the viewers. And I remember Jen and I, we were just talking, and then we heard the audience go, you know. And there it was. And remember when we were also on that tram?
Maureen Callahan
Oh, my gosh.
Chanel
And there were yellow butterflies.
Maureen Callahan
I forgot about that.
Guest Commentator
Yeah.
Maureen Callahan
She really likes going to evoke butterflies, which are soundless. Why do I bother? Why do I bother? I Think this may be where Chanel got the idea in the first place. This is a one on one and as we just saw at the top. Damian. Kurt. Damian. Oh, my God, why am I blanking on his name? Damien. Marlena. Marlena just yelled at me. She's like, Louis Damian Lewis, who is an accomplished actor, did not get a one on one. He had to sit with three of those numb skulls, okay? But Jim Curtis, the self appointed self help guru, the manifestor, he used to work in finance, I think then he was like this, I'm just gonna shill my for like fun and profit. I'm going to tell people that they should look for yellow butterflies. He was promoting his new book, which I bought. It's like a pamphlet, okay? The Book of Possibility. Talk about a meaningless title. What does that mean? What does that possibility is baked into being human? Here's Craig. My favorite part of this clip is watching and listening to Craig. Listening to Craig's whether. Listening to Craig, whether he's on or off screen and then watching his facial expressions because his face will fall more than once during the segment. He cannot believe he has been conscripted to talk to this guy. Craig is the big cheese over at the Today show, okay? Especially when Savannah was absent, he was the big cheese. And he's like, I got to talk to this asshole just because he's fucking Jennifer Aniston. Here we go.
Damian Lewis
Last but not least, the yellowfly manifestation. The yellow butterfly manifestation.
Jim Curtis
I challenge most of the people that I work with in my groups. This is an easy one to start with. The yellow butterfly manifestations challenge your subconscious mind to find a yellow butterfly. So at night before bed, write it on a piece of paper. Remember to see yellow butterflies. Put it on your bedside table when you wake up in the morning, say, I'm so grateful for all the yellow butterflies that I'm going to see today. And in the middle of the day, say, I wonder where these yellow butterflies are. And then let us know. Let me know when you start to see him everywhere in your life.
Maureen Callahan
Why does that work, Craig? Don't ask a logical question of an illogical mind that is using rampant hucksterism. You think these people would be embarrassed to be engaging with the likes of this bullshit? It's total horseshit. Now Jim is going to use a fancy word and he's going to start speaking really fast. And this is designed to cover over all the bullshit. It's not supposed to make sense, but it's supposed to make you, the recipient of this garbage, think, am I Not smart enough to keep up with this. What's a reticular oracular system? Here we go.
Jim Curtis
Because we're training our reticular activating system. We're training. We're telling our subconscious mind to go out and find yellow butterflies, right? And sometimes it's. People will say to me, well, I'm in Scandinavia and it's winter. I'll never see a yellow butterfly. I say, well, you're kind of attached to how you'll see it, right? Be flexible. Maybe it's a photograph. Maybe all of a sudden, you see it on a paper cup.
Maureen Callahan
Hey, at least he said all of a sudden and not all of the sudden. As we wrap this up, we have got to revisit Chanel reacting to a clip in which she begins by saying, I think. Here we go. Oh, why?
Chanel
What's wrong with us?
Maureen Callahan
That's so beautiful. So beautiful. I love that.
Chanel
You know, I think.
Maureen Callahan
Look at me.
Chanel
I'm saying I think, and then I'm quiet.
Maureen Callahan
Okay, so that clip was Jenna and Chanel reacting to one of the insufferable exit interviews that Stephen Colbert had given, and he was really, really feeling himself. You. And he was. It. It was. It was a lot to take. But those two are like, oh, it's so beautiful. But my favorite part. My favorite part is Chanel goes, you know, I think, look at me. I say, I think. And then I get quiet. And I think that sums up the brain activity that's going on up there. That's what's up. And I just drives me nuts. Because this job. The very description of this job is, can you get on TV morning after morning and speak extemporaneously, react to things, bring things to the table? Are you able to keep up a conversation? And she's not. She is not. And hence, we're going for the Queen of Grief title. Okay? Trust me. Trust me. Now, onto again, the nerve. And I heard from more than one of you about this. I, too, yes, I am late to Summer House, but I think I've tuned in at the right time. I don't really think it hit its stride until this year. Just my opinion. But the first episode of the reunion was the other night. And mind you, these people on this reality show are in their 30s. They live and work in one of the most competitive cities on the planet. Listen to this woman pronounce a very simple word incorrectly. Here we go. I just don't know if I can't breathe because I'm, like, anxious or because
Marlena
my corset is so Tight.
Maureen Callahan
Probably most. And that dumb boy she's with, who she blew up her marriage for, is like, probably both. Instead of being. He's a sports journalist. Okay. Any real journalist would be like, you just mispronounced the word corset. What's wrong with you? It's not corset. It's. It's not even spelled. With two T's and an E. Where you could think that would be an honest mistake. It's corset. I can't. I can't. But I will say, if you follow me on Instagram, you know that I've begun watching Widow's Bay on Apple tv, and I am loving this show. Loving it. And I'm going to talk to you guys about it more as it progresses, because I. My theory about this show. Matthew Rhys, this is probably. He was amazing in the Americans, but I feel like this role is, like, a perfect fit for him. And I think of shows like this, I mean, this show is at another level. It's elevated. It's great. I think what it really is about is it's what I call the comedy of incompetence. But this show has the right lens because Matthew Reese is a guy who's like the mayor of a seaside town who's just trying to get the New York Times to write a glowing piece so they can attract tourists. But the town is full of misfit toys and they all think it's haunted. And so Matthew Reese is the mayor, and he's trying to convince this guy who's an obstacle, this guy who, like, will not get out of his way, who I believe is played by Steven Root, the great comic character actor who I first fell in love with on news radio, which was an incredible sitcom. It brought us. It brought Dave Foley into the mainstream. More a tierney into the mainstream. Andy Dick, before he kind of lost his mind and was such a brilliant, brilliant comic. Anyway, Steven Root is that guy. And so Stephen Root says to Matthew Reese, who's the mayor, I'll sit down with you, but you. Here's. Here's the deal. You can't correct my grammar, okay? The nerve moves, the culture. Because watch Matthew Reese react to this guy one second after he makes a. An incredible mistake. Here we go.
Damian Lewis
Five minutes. And I don't want you correcting my grammar. I don't have time to sit here and go, tit for Titan. Will you. Now,
Maureen Callahan
Matthew Reese in that scene, shuddering, jaw clenching, looking up, then jaw falling open, like, I cannot believe. This is the Nerve Spirit Animal Nerve Award 2026ameme for the Nerve for the rest of the year. We love it. We love it. Coming up, Troublemaker Feedback Troublemaker Art Back in a minute. Have you ever left a doctor's appointment feeling like you got no real answers or useful insight about your own health? You hear, hey, everything looks normal. Great. See you next year. But you leave with 0 useful information or an actual plan. Introducing Superpower Their app breaks down insights around your metabolism, hormones, heart health, vitamins, toxins, and even your biological age, which can often differ from your chronological age. Plus actionable recommendations you can use. They make it incredibly easy. A licensed professional can come to your home or you can visit a nearby lab and you will get comprehensive lab testing for with over 100 biomarkers, this feels way more proactive than reactive because it is so make this the year you stop guessing about your health with Superpower. For a limited time, nerve listeners get $20 off to unlock your new health intelligence. Head on over to superpower.com use code nerve and get $20 off your membership. That's code nerve and after you sign up, they're going to ask you how you heard about Superpower. Tell them that your superpower is that you're a troublemaker and that the Nerve
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Maureen Callahan
this is what I forgot to do at the end of that earlier segment when we were talking about the butterflies. I brought this back because this is one of Marlena's favorite things to do to me. She she often throws her daughter under the bus and says it was her idea, but I know it was Marlena's idea. They go to party stores and they buy these butterflies which sort of fold up and she'll stash them, like, while I'm taping. She'll stash them in like my handbag or my tote bag, in between my books, my notebooks, near my makeup bag, you know, anything I'm sure to be picking up after a show. And these things like, like, talk about, like, they fly at you with like your hearts in your chest. Like you think like some kind of animal is attacking you. Nothing makes her happier. Nothing makes her happier. But she's laughing. But that one, that one was a dude. That, that when she came in to my makeup room after one one shoot we did in the city and she was like, so anything happen between you finishing the show and getting into your bag? And I was like, not really, Marlena. There's a dead butterfly in my bag. She was so heartbroken. But, you know, hope springs eternal. I'm sure she'll get me another time. Okay. Anyway, we got. And I was so happy to hear this feedback because I didn't know how this segment would land. I just, I just, I had it in my back pocket and I was waiting for when to do it. And the opportunity presented itself with the Kylie documentary. But that letter I read from Tim Stewart, who was the guy who wrote to the family of the late In Excess frontman and songwriter Michael Hutchence
Marlena
and
Maureen Callahan
said, you know, when we were children, like nine year old boys, I had a very hard time in school. I was made fun of relentlessly. My parents kept me very sheltered. I had no social skills. I had Tourette's. Nobody understood what Tourette's was. I got made fun of every day at school and I would go home and cry myself to sleep every night. And then I met Michael. And at nine years old, Michael befriended this kid and treated him with such emotional maturity without ever making this kid feel like he was being pitied. It's incredible. If you haven't, if you haven't seen that segment, we're actually going to carve it out and put it distinctly on the YouTube channel so you can access it very easily. It. It's one of the most moving things I've ever read and you guys had very similar reactions. And I'm going to read some of those before we get into other topics that you guys are interested in discussing. Some of this is from our YouTube comment section beginning. Kaylin self wrote, thank you so much for sharing the letter from Michael Hutchins, his childhood friends. It brought me to tears. Everyone should have such an understanding friend in their early years. Oliver's mom, a frequent commenter. Maureen, that ending essay from Tim about his friend Michael. Wow, this is high praise. We can't take credit for it. It's all Tim and all Michael was one of the high points of the Nerve since its inception. Absolutely wonderful that sentiment, Winston says. Maureen, what an amazing and wonderful surprise to hear you speak about the amazing and wonderful Michael Hutchins. I know his family well. This is what this troublemaker says, but it has the ring of truth. And I remember crying when I first heard Tim's story about Michael in Hong Kong from Michael's sister. And to hear you tell it made me cry again. Not only was Michael an extremely talented and gifted artist and performer with a voice unmatched even today. Very true. But he was a wonderful human being. He is truly missed and always will be. Thank you so much for remembering him and how much he meant to so many people. From Janie, I love this one. Michael is an Aquarius. They always look out for the underdog. My best friend is one as well. You know, one of my best friends is also an Aquarius. Susanna Cahalan, who you guys know. She was on our inaugural nerve show. Our inaugural nerve show. And Susanna is an Aquarius and she is exactly who you want. In your corner. Hand stitched rhythm About Michael Hutchins. I am in floods of tears. What a beautiful letter about Michael. I won't forget that story of a brave 10 year old at 68. I can attest to most are born the way they will continue. And Hutchins was born a good one. May he rest in peace. Hi Maureen. About this story now. In my late 60s I was a child who didn't fit in as well. Leading a happy and privileged life now. Happy to hear it. Troublemaker C from New Zealand. I was deeply moved by this account and taken back to kindnesses shown to me that were similar, that filled my heart and should inspire all. Okay, Janie. Troublemaker Janie, I am very. If this is true, which it's. I'm sure it's true. I'm very jealous of you. Although in 1987 I was like a kid in high school, so this was way beyond my reach. I loved your segment on Michael Hutchins. The letter from his childhood friend rings so true. I actually met Michael in Heidelberg during the summer of 87. I was with a group of students touring Europe with my university. We had a free day. I decided to Go out alone and take in the sights at my leisure. I remember wearing my denim jacket. See, it's these details that make me think this is legit. I remember wearing my denim jacket that had those metal buttons all over it. We used to call them, I think, what do we call them? Like pins. You get like your band pins and like, you put them on your jacket. One was a green piece button. One was a Genesis band button with their logo from the Foxtrot album. I met Michael at a record shop. Yes, they were both record shopping solo. He took note of my jacket and asked me if I knew who the Genesis was that matched the logo. We had quite a lengthy conversation about Peter Gabriel and his progressive rock years with Genesis. He told me that he. Oh, he was so hitting on you. He told me that he was impressed that a young girl would know about Peter Gabriel's life. Prior to the SO album. We sat in an outdoor cafe and talked for hours about life, culture, art, music, basically everything. We walked the streets of Heidelberg. I remember thinking how gorgeous the sky was. Yeah, he was wearing a deep green T shirt that made his brown eyes pop. The day went by too fast. He walked me to the Hotel Hollander. I had to rejoin my group because we had dinner reservations. Oh, no, you did not. But, you know, he was a gentleman, she writes. He walked me to the lobby, kissed my cheek, told me that he'd had a wonderful day. It wasn't until later that fall when Kick came out, that I realized I had spent an entire day with Michael Hutchins. He had introduced himself only as Michael, which tracks with every story I've ever heard of him. Very humble, dear Maureen. Joan Rivers once said that whenever a celebrity turns up with a different hairstyle, it likely means they've had work done and are trying to distract from it, you know, Troublemaker. I didn't know that it was Joan Rivers who said that. It doesn't surprise me, but I remember hearing it and it has never left me. And whenever I see a celebrity, especially one who's has an iconic look and they've changed up their hair, I start looking like, what did they do? What did they do? She thinks this is why John Travolta showed up at Cannes in a beret, beard and eyeglasses, I would bet he has had plastic surgery. Okay, Maureen, I am a fan and I try not to miss an episode. I am struggling with your recent interview with authority Christopher Anderson. We have heard this. I enjoyed some of his information, but I felt that the details of Catherine's cancer Experience and journey were a bit much. I don't know him, but health issues are so personal. I just think it is up to the person living it to share if and when they want. Just my humble opinion. Take care, troublemakers and troublemakers. I will leave you. Anonymous. It's by your username. I could not agree with you more. I've shared with you guys. You know, my father died of cancer. He had a 10 year battle with a cancer that we were, we were told was going to kill him within months. He lived for 10 years. Some of it was good, some of it was really, really, really bad. Cancer has affected my family and my life in ways that I never saw coming. And I hope, hope that you all know I would never ever be flippant or cynical about anybody else's experience with cancer or their health. The discussion that Christopher and I were having, you know, I was really trying to get at the way the palace we thought possibly could have handled that better so that Catherine might have had even more time to process her diagnosis, to share it with her children when she was ready. But we in no way ever, ever meant to offend or overstep in that regard. And we also do trust that troublemakers who have been with the show for a long time know that, you know, we only go after the cultural offenders who truly deserve it, but our hearts are otherwise pure. We are so I, we do. I, I do apologize to anyone who was offended by that. I really, really do. Oh my God, Maureen. Now this was another response to the Christopher Anderson interview. And I got this from more than one of you. So Christopher Anderson also wrote this biography years ago of John F. Kennedy Jr. Called the day John Died. And that came up briefly because I said to him, you know, I had read that book when I was researching Ask not. And he said, you know, I, Christopher Anderson said, I found that JFK Jr. Was a great guy. And some of you were like, maureen, how come you didn't push back? I didn't push back because you guys know what I think. And he was a guest in our house and you know, that's his opinion and he's entitled to it. And you guys, well, well know what I think. Hey, Maureen and crew, just home from work, put on YouTube. This was dated Wednesday. Before I even knew what was going on. A video by an instigator who shall remain unnamed is dissing, dishing some about you. Posted about 6 hours ago GMT General Mountain Time. I'm really pissed off for what she is saying. Thank you troublemaker Graham. Thank you we think this stuff tends to sort itself out in the wash. We close this segment with our beloved Paul from New Zealand. Paul, I owe you several emails. I promise I will email you this weekend, but this one we can just share with all of us. Okay? This is Paul's new artwork of P. Diddy and Sarah Ferguson. Rob and I were talking about their lengthy sexual affair and the report in the Inquirer, the front page report that Sarah Ferguson is terrified that Diddy has sex tapes because as Rob told us, Diddy had cameras everywhere. Everywhere. Rob worked for Diddy. He was in Diddy's Park Avenue townhouse all the time and saw them himself. Himself. And so you have to look at the Easter eggs. If you're just listening to this, go to this part of the nerve on YouTube. Look at all of the Easter eggs that Paul put in here, which he very helpfully said in his email, includes a baby oil gun. Paul, you are a genius. What the Nerve has done to deserve you, we know not. Keep your feedback coming. Email me at maureenevilmaycaremedia.com or DM me on Instagram or Maureen Callahanrider or at the Nerve show. And remember to subscribe to the Nerves substack. That is our weekly email full of bonus content and video. Over atthe nerve show.com go to the mothership thenerveshow.com it will say, hey, would you like to subscribe? Put your email in, that's it, you're done. And you can access paywall content for like five bucks a month, which if you can do it, we hope you will because it really does help the show to grow up. Next, we have got two new. Two new offenders. And I mean real ones. Real ones heading. Marlena says woodshed. I say wood chipper. I say wood chipper. Stump grinder, burn pile. We will see you in a minute. Are you looking to be more deliberate about what you wear day to day? With pieces that feel effortless, comfortable and still leave you looking put together, Quince has your solution. Quince makes it easy to refresh your everyday staples. This spring they've got timeless pieces made from premium materials such as 100% European linen, organic cotton, ultra soft denim. 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Maureen Callahan
Breathe in. Feel the sense of calm that comes from having up to $300 in overdraft protection with Goto bank now. Did you say $300? Yes. Now back to our breathing. So if I overspend my balance, Goto bank has my back up to $300. Yes. Can we breathe out now? Less worries, more zen. With over $300 in overdraft protection, tap to open an account today. Eligible direct deposits and opt in required for overdraft protection fees. Terms and conditions apply. We are back. Now we are going to talk about a bestselling author who has made the rounds on many prominent television shows and podcasts, has been featured in many prominent publications, most recently Airmail and her husband who is a very famous problematic artist. And what this goes to. It's again, it's our real talk about fake people. These two are selling us something that is quite different than what they're actually trying to convince us of. Marlena and I have been talking about this book since the inception of the Nerve. It's called the Mother Load, written by a woman named Sarah Hoover. And this book has gotten a lot of acclaim. And this book I think is a real problem. This is not a postpartum book. This is a book about an awful woman and her equally awful husband and two people who I think probably never should have had kids. Her book, the Mother Load, which she spells O L, O A D, like the load of being a mother is that she had a baby and she instantly regretted it. Again, this is not a postpartum book. She's going to try to spin it that way. It's not. When you have the wherewithal to take your baby and fly to LA and put yourself up in a bungalow at a very chic, expensive hotel and leave that baby with the nanny so that you can invite all your fashionable shitty friends over and do a ton of drugs during the day. You're a piece of shit. You're a piece of shit. Now, this also allows us to talk about the art world and the New York City art world in particular, which also gave us Lena Dunham. Another conversation for another time. My friend Susanna is reading the Lena book as well, and, like, we're kind of at odds about it. Maybe she'll come on the show and talk about it. It would be interesting. Anyway, I kind of consider the art world godless now. And by that I mean, like, you don't have to believe in God to. I mean, like, godless in, like, a colloquial, cultural way. Like, these people, like, there are. There are a lot of psychopaths roaming around that world, and they hide behind art as their excuse to do whatever they want to whomever they want. This extract from the Mother Lo. This is very early on in. In this book. Sarah came from, like, the Midwest. She calls herself small town rich, right? So she came from, like, a privileged background, but she wanted to come to New York and hang with the cool kids and the art world crowd and I think land herself a big fish. And I think. I think, frankly, Tom Sachs was the best she could do. Okay. She writes of encounter, of becoming a part of this world. There was an artist couple in New York. These people sound insufferable. Like, it's. It's like. It's like, are you. Are you trying to be cool or are you, like, mentally ill? There was an artist couple in New York who lived without electricity. Lit their townhouse only by candlelight. I'm sure their neighbors loved that. Dressed like it was the Victorian era and rode horses to work across the Brooklyn Bridge. I. I saw artists show up to parties, nursing babies not their own. Leave their breasts out during dinner. Rail line of lines of coke at the table at incredibly lavish events, put out their cigarettes in rooftop swimming pools and get into fights over ideas. The artists were the cool kids, to which I say, not really. Okay, now we are going to get to Sarah wanting to. She starts dating Tom, even though, as outlined in their New York Times wedding announcement, that Tom had a girlfriend at the time, she's really not part of the narrative in the Motherlode. She's kind of excised out. In fact, Sarah depicts herself as the Carolyn Bessette to Tom's would be jfk. She plays hard to get. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to go out with you. You're an art world star and I'm enamored by the art world and I just want to be accepted, but I'm not an artist, so I guess, yeah, I'll just try to nab you. So they're out walking and she says to him that if they want to move forward in a way that is substantial, such as having children, she wants to be married and she wants an engagement. And with that engagement, she wants a ring. And you know, it's like a red flag when you have to tell the guy, yeah, along with the engagement, I need you to buy me a diamond ring. Okay? He, he then says to her, the oldest line in the book from guys that are just not that into you. He says to her, you should know. You know, he's like 20 years her senior, so he's, you know, you should know that real marriage isn't a rock. I buy a 10 minute ceremony or some giant party paid for by your parents. That's a shiv. The guy, his pieces sell for like $300,000 a pop. Or they did. I don't know if they still do. It's living together for a very long time. Tom tells her it's falling out of love and figuring it out. It's being stuck no matter what. It's all that. What you're describing is just expensive stuff plus a piece of paper. It is till it isn't. Okay. Talk about power of attorney or like who, who says whether you can come off a life support machine? You know what I mean? Sarah writes, maybe it was my midwestern cultural conditioning, but I wanted the ceremony. Maybe you're just like a normal person. You want a commitment. I wanted a public declaration. She writes, that we belonged to each other. I wanted to tell the world how much I loved him while all our friends sat there in fancy clothes. He didn't have to change. Red flag. That's not what I was saying. He didn't have to leave the studio early and come home every night for a seated dinner. Where's he going? We'll get there. Trust me. He didn't have to move to the suburbs and buy a station wagon and start wearing dad jeans. They're so much better than everyone out in suburbia. They're not. In fact, they're miserable. We'll get to it. I didn't want to take his last name and insist people call me by it, even though I knew it was a fallacy. I wanted him for myself. And at the time, I was naive enough to believe that marriage would corral him into loving me the way I wanted to be loved. We smash cut to Sarah going through Tom's cell phone when he's in the shower, which seems fairly often. She says, sometimes I think it's just about every night. Right before our wedding, Sarah writes, I saw a conversation with an ex fling who is passing through New York. I'll be in the city next week, she said, using all the most flirtatious emojis, adding the exact dates. Tom's reply. Baby, what do you call it? Sarah, she writes, I have to travel. Can't get out of it. Take you to dinner next time. Sarah writes. What he didn't say was, I'm getting married. She marries him. She marries him. Now they have a baby.
Marlena
And
Maureen Callahan
this is the source really, I think, of Sarah's misery. Okay, her husband's a piece of shit. She's not much better. Okay, now I'm. We're going to get to this with Marlena, who infiltrated an event with Sarah Hoover. Nominative determinism, right? Hoover. She's sucking up energy. She's sucking up attention. She's just hoovering, hoovering, hoovering. In conversation with one of the most witless fuck wits of our time. Okay, we'll get to it. But Sarah writes this book about how onerous it is not only to be a mother, but how little she thinks of her child. A child who is now 8. She went on to have a second baby, a child who is now 8, who will read this someday. And again, I, I reject the premise that this is a postpartum memoir. This is a memoir by a malignant narcissist. Okay? Whose life? You know, life. Here, here's what she writes. My baby. This baby felt like a stranger to me and I was gearing up for another afternoon of faking it. This is one of the days she's throwing a drug fueled party in la. It wasn't that I'd hired a nanny that had kept me from some sort of maternal bonding. It wasn't that I thus avoided most of the poo poo diapers and Spit up and nighttime crying. So all the stuff that the average mother deals with, she's got night nurses round the clock, she's sleeping through the night. You think that like you know what I'm saying? Here we go. This is really brutal. This is really fucking brutal. Sarah writes, it was the simple, unspeakable reality that from the moment he was born, this baby. How depersonalized. She's not even using her son's name. This baby sometimes meant as much to me as a stone cold marble statue in the antiquities section of an art museum. AKA something that I knew was valuable, but not so much to me. It didn't help that I found him so ugly with all my worst traits. Don't care about what you think your worst traits are. I was performing the requisite maternal task of breastfeeding. I hadn't done that for one second of one day. I'm going to tell you my theory as to why breastfeeding interferes with the consumption of drugs and alcohol. There's other stuff in here that's so dark, I. I won't even read it. I won't read it. But now she's getting high and then Tom shows up early in LA to be with her. And when I say these two are both garbage people, they're garbage people. We'll get to Tom Sachs's particular odiousness in a moment, but she writes that Tom shows up. She's poolside with the baby. Tom asks Sarah, does the baby need sunblock? Sarah says, absolutely. She rolled over, it seems, to grab the sunscreen. As I turned to face the baby, Tom walked away. The baby fell, hit his head on the ground. I grabbed the baby while his little fists shook in front of his red face. Tears streamed from his eyes. He was so scared he could hardly get the sobs out. And I rushed behind some potted plants to soothe him. Tom followed soon after. Soon after. Is he okay? Tom asked, the words tumbling out quickly. The baby was screaming. If you had any natural intelligence, Sarah says she said to Tom, you would know not to leave a baby on a high surface. You keep one hand on a baby. These two are both so disgusting. Disgusting. She's yelling at him, but she's out partying, doing drugs and God knows what with these, you know, idiots in la. And he flies in and he's like, oh, does that baby need sunscreen? Not like, are you fucking high right now? Why is the baby with you? At least leave the baby with the nanny. Oh my God. Now the lead graph from a New York magazine expose on Tom Sachs. That was first published on March 13, 2023. And I remember reading this thing when it was first published and my jaw was on the floor. This, this is the New York Art world for you. The headline Tom Sachs promised a fun cult. The sculptor. This is the readout. Likes to call his studio part of his art practice. Working there could often be scary. I think scary is too little of a word. I'm going to read from some of it and settle in because you're not going to believe what you hear. But it's all true because pieces like this are legaled 8 Ways to Sunday and then they're run by the actual person who's being accused of all these horrible things. That would be Tom Sachs. And his wife is in here too. And she is no prize, trust you me. Okay. In February of that same year, an anonymous art world family posted a job listing for an executive personal assistant on the New York foundation for the Arts website. The listing sought someone who could, quote, make life easier for this couple in every way possible. This meant picking up clothes from high end stores, managing all medical needs and requests, helping with rooftop garden maintenance and in studio cats and learning complicated sounding closet and dog systems. It went viral. The New York Times covered it the paper's summation. The ad combined a tone so blithe with a detailed list of tax of tasks so unreasonable. A few days later Artnet revealed that the couple was likely artist Tom Sachs and his wife, former Gosian director. I mean she began like in the phone bank Sarah Hoover. Of course it was Tom Sachs. New York magazine goes on to say thought anyone who had ever worked for him. Those systems were the tell. In 2010 Tom Sachs released a film called 10 Bullets which was presented as both employee and handbook and artwork. Filmmaker Van Nestat, one of Sachs's former studio members, directed it. And in the film Sachs describes the rules that govern his art studio. Everyone must place all items at a parallel or 90 degree angle. They are to walk quietly as if in a monastery. Employees have to maintain a healthy diet and exercise regimen, avoid personal inventiveness, whatever that means, and respond to commands with the words I understand or I don't understand. That's it. Employees have been known to work out in a program called Space Camp three times a week at 7am wearing uniforms printed with their first initial last name and the serial numbers Sachs, who is Jewish, assigned them. We'd go out jogging in soho and people would take pictures of us. It's not like they knew who Tom was. That's a Shiv. They just thought they were a regular cult. That's a former studio assistant. Some got their serial numbers tattooed on their bodies. Again, Tom Sachs is a Jew. Plus, New York magazine goes on to say Sachs called it a cult constantly. This place is a cult. Tom told gq. And I mean that in the scariest, most Manson Family kind of way, in that we're totally committed to this way of life. When I tell you that these people always tell us who they are. They do. That kind of quote is so hyperbolic seeming that it's like as a casual reader, you might be like, this guy's just trying to like get some attention and go viral. He's exaggerating. I don't think so. Am I saying they're going to commit mass murder? No, but I mean, the guy's got a lot of rage. A lot of rage. And you know what I think the source of the rage is he is not that attractive. And he is a shorter man. Tom talked about his temper too. New York continues in Paradox Bullets, a follow up video to 10 bullets. Bullets, bullets, bullets. Strange, Strange. The fixation with bullets. Tom illustrates another motto called the virtues of a freak out by throwing a typewriter through a wall. It flies into a room where a woman is calmly eating noodles. It hits her, but it's art. It's art. If you say it's art, it's art. Leda Dunham said it herself in that interview she did with, I think it was David Marcus, David Marchese at the New York Times, which we went through. We went through. It was our first nerve back from like a little break. And she says, when I grew up, you know, my parents, my parents were artists and they would take me to things. They took her to an exhibit, an art exhibit at a gallery, a live art exhibit. A guy who installed himself underneath floorboards and jerked off naked for eight hours a day. It was called Seed Bed. They took her when she was a small child. She says if they say if in the art world, if you say it's art, it's art. Okay, There's a manual among the many manuals that you, you're given when you start working at Tom Sachs's studio. In one, New York magazine says after suggestions on how to properly approach Sachs about his lunch, there's advice for, quote, avoiding things that make Tom mad, which begins with a metered verse. Tom will sometimes scream, Tom will sometimes brood. Though dire life may seem, happiness lies in reading Tom's moods. Sachs's spokesperson says this manual was a joke. Recent employees say they took it seriously. Multiple studio members recall Sachs calling them autistic, the R word, bitch, and other names. His studio denied that. He also denied almost all of the allegations leveled at him in this story. He did not sue. As far as we know, he did not sue a third former studio assistant. And I quote, basically, if a light bulb went out in the middle of the night and you didn't change it, the second you got in, you were getting your ass biblically reamed out. According to several former studio members, you are at risk of having things thrown, if not at you, then in the direction of where you were working. Quote, I saw him throw a sheet of steel across the room because someone had left it in the wrong place and it almost hit a tank of welding gas. That's a former fabricator who continues. When I went to the studio manager to say, hey, he threw something toward me. Studio manager, you should have said at me. At me. Her response was, well, at least he didn't throw it at you. He did. He did. The studio manager says he used to throw stuff at people. It's semantics. Another studio member, former. He threw wood across the floor one time. He ripped the alarm system off the wall and threw it through a clipboard. A lot of clipboards. A ladder, okay? The wedding announcement in the New York Times. And trust me, if this behavior is well known in the art world, the culture writers at the New York Times and the art writers at the New York Times know about it. But they're going to publish this like it's a love story. And like Tom Sachs is some great fucking catch. They met by phone in September 2007 when she was working at the Gagosian gallery. She was 23, fresh out of Columbia. Quote, for sure, I had a crush on him. He's very sexy. But he was known to not be the sort of person who wanted to settle down. Total bachelor. He had what she called a, quote, bad boy reputation and was at the time also a bachelor with a girlfriend. A kind of routine emerged. He'd say, when are you going to go out with me? And I would say, oh, never. Ms. Hoover said, Carolyn Bessette, playbook. Careful what you wish for, careful what you have to engineer so meticulously to get. Now she's all over on air mail answering these questions. I think the book is out in paperback. The book's out in paperback now, which is why she's doing all this press. But she's getting all this press because of who she is married to. And trust me when I tell you she got this book deal because of who she is married to. She's married to a guy who is wealthy, who is famous in the art world, who has a lot of famous friends. One of his very close friends is Jenna Lyons. If you go back and look at Jenna Lyons on her seasons of Real Housewives, sorry, Real Housewives of New York City, you'll see in her loft, her downtown loft, she's got one of those folding NASA chairs. It's like a white folding chair and on the back of it is the NASA logo in red. That's Tom Sachs. So she answered a questionnaire in air mail. And you know, it's typically like, it's typically trying really hard to be cool to convince us all that she's got the perfect life and tons of money to buy lots of expensive things. Perfect child, she writes mine happy and pure. That child will need a lifetime of therapy to unpack what you've done to him with this book and on Instagram earlier. Earlier this year, Sarah posted a video on her son's eighth birthday walking down the street and giving her his mother, the middle finger. I mean, you can understand why, right? Sarah, what's your perfect dress? Oh, so glad you asked. It's Chanel, but it's chanel hemmed to 1.5 inches below the butt crack. Sarah, what makes the perfect mother? Oh, so glad you asked. Communicative, patient and fulfilled. Definitely not. Not breastfeeding so we can do a shit ton of drugs. Just my supposition from my reading of Motherlode. Oh, and also the perfect mother saves all her Prada for you. The self regard is just, I mean, the tone deafness. Okay, now Sarah in this promotional push is telling us the problem's not her husband and the problem isn't her own superficiality and her problem isn't her own real lack of talent or anything to offer culturally. And her problem isn't maybe having children to lock this guy into her life. Even though maybe she never really asked herself, do you really want to have kids? Is this for you? Why? Nobody is asking this about the damage she is doing to her children by memorializing the stuff. I mean, we'll get to it when Marlena comes in in just a moment. It was touched upon at the 92nd Street. Why? But you know, that's the only question here. That's the only fucking question. Is it this important to you to individuate yourself from your husband who is regarded as a talent? Whether you think he's a talent or not is subjective. But he's regarded as a talent. He's very wealthy. He runs a cult for Christ. He runs a cult. Did you feel the need to feel important by writing a book and that, you know, if you had to do it on the backs of your children's well being and future psychological and emotional stability, so be it? No. She went over to the Today show where she fielded a bunch of softballs from the likes of Jenna. You know, and she's. You know who she's going to blame? Going to blame us. Society did this to her. Society sold this otherwise sophisticated woman who's looking for a person to do everything in her life, who has night nurses on speed dial. Blake Lively would like a call. Sarah, you know, she can't get a night nurse to save her life. Apparently we learned that from discovery in the Justin Baldoni case. Anyway, we did this to poor Sarah. Here we go.
Marlena
It wasn't just sadness. It was a sadness I couldn't pull myself out of. Yeah, but it was also rage. I was so mad at my husband, at my doctor, at the world for having me believe that giving birth would make me a natural mother and I would be considered a good woman if I figured it out. And it felt great to me when the reality was I didn't meet those expectations. And I've had so much guilt about it, and I was just really mad that I had felt so misled.
Maureen Callahan
You cannot be intelligent enough to graduate Columbia unless you're a legacy. Make your way in New York City, get your foothold into the art world, which is hard to do. Marry a big fish. Actively decide to have a child. She writes in here often about the decision to have a child and her desire and then say, we all sold her. It's like when Oprah blamed all of us for making her fat. She blamed all of us. Get out. Get out. Okay, now, allegedly, this is being turned into a TV series and it's going to star somebody very unlikable, if so very unlikable. I don't know how you make this palatable. I don't know how you do. Anyway, she went and did a 92nd Street Y event with the one and only. When you think sparkling conversationalist, you think like Fran Leibowitz, you know? No, no, it's Chelsea Clinton. That dud. That dude was moderating this. And this. This goes to show you, by the way, how these worlds all intersect. You're like Chelsea. Chelsea Clinton is friends with Sarah Hoover. This. Otherwise nobody from the Midwest. Yeah, because of Tom Sachs. Because Tom Sachs moves in these very glittering Circles, because Larry Gagosian is one of the most powerful men in America in the art world. He's got more money than anybody. He's a huge donor. Tom Sachs was represented by Gagosian when they met these world. They all. So it's all. It's. Everybody's rubbing each other's back now. Of course, Marlena said, I gotta go to this. I gotta go to this. Before we bring her in, we gotta take a little look at. You know, Chelsea's got this podcast that she launched last October. It's got 13,000 followers. It's funded by the Clinton foundation, which truly is in existence so that Hillary and Bill can assuage their guilt for everything they put Chelsea through as the only child of those two moral ruffians in the White House. So, you know, they just subsidize her life. She's a dud. She's got nothing to say. Okay, this is from a recent podcast, a sizzling, sizzling podcast. Chelsea did. The title, a climate solution you can eat. Yes, comma, really, published April 24, 2026, currently has 970 views. Here we go. What advice or suggestions would you have for anyone listening who wants to be a smarter kind of climate informed consumer when they're thinking about what they eat? Okay. Okay. Marlena, please join me. Please help me. Please talk to us about what you encountered at the 92nd Street Y that evening. Marlena, you texted me this video upon entering the 92nd Street Y, which holds, like, thousands of people. Major literary events and other events are held there. We're going to take a look at the video Marlena shot from inside the Chelsea Clinton talk with Sarah Hoover. This is not people leaving. This is. I mean, it looks like there were maybe it looks like the same amount of people who showed up for Megan's chat at Geneva for speech in Geneva. It's similar. Yeah, exactly.
Guest Commentator
I was actually, like, running a little late and I was like, oh, this is going to suck. I'm going to have to, like, you know, I'm disrupting everybody. I walk in and the person standing there said, you can sit anywhere you want, even though you have a ticket for an assigned seat. I mean, and she really meant anywhere you want. I would say the full back half of the Y was completely empty with, like, a few people in there. You saw that? And then most of the front seats were taken, but there was also spaces in between those seats. So I was like, wow. And the crazy part is they never even took the questions. They give out those little cards where you have to write a question down, which is really funny, Maureen, because you and I never spoke about this. And you said it at the beginning. My question, which was still in the book, and it's right here. When your son is old enough to read your book, how would you talk to him about the time you were getting wasted while the nanny took care of him? It's the same thing. Like he's old enough to read this. Like how is he going to feel about it? You know, and she's going all over doing media about it and he's going to be hearing all about how she wanted nothing to do with him for the first year of his life.
Maureen Callahan
You know, I remember talking to you about this book when we were like in pre production before the nerve ever launched. And I was like, have you heard of this book? And you had it. And I said, will you get it and tell me if you think I'm crazy with my reaction to it? And you got it immediately. You read way faster, deeper into it than I did. And you were like, I cannot believe what I'm reading. I cannot believe what I'm reading. And you know, you have two girls, you've given birth. Like, this book to you does not read like a postpartum memoir, Am I right?
Guest Commentator
No, it doesn't. And now I'll say this. I never had postpartum, so I can't speak to exactly what that's like. However, I can speak to the fact that, you know, no one is necessarily ready for the changes to maybe your body or your lifestyle or whatever. But for me, when I had my kids, I mean, as soon as I had my first child, it's like something just clicks in you now, I guess it doesn't click for everybody. So I'm going to avoid that piece. I'm gonna avoid that piece. However, later on when you were talking earlier about how Tom said, oh, does that baby need sunscreen? Like stuff like that is next level, just sort of neglectful and just, you know, you're so self centered. Like the fact that he could even ask something like that and the fact that he didn't even call him by name is just weird. But for her, the baby falling, I mean, kids fall, accidents happen and I get it. But like your instincts are so much sharper after becoming a parent. I mean, more so I guess for the mother, but still, like your instincts are so much sharper and wait a second, hold on. She was the one who let he fell on her watch, right? Not on the guy's watch.
Maureen Callahan
Tom came to the Pool. She was poolside with the baby, right. And he, he swooped in. He was like, I came in early from New York. Aren't you so thrilled to see me? And then he's like, does that baby need sunscreen?
Guest Commentator
Right?
Maureen Callahan
And she doesn't write it, she doesn't write it with enough detail. But the, the way I interpreted that scene was the baby was so little that like, you know, it's like you have to, they can't sit up on their own. You have to prop them up or hold them, keep them upright. And nobody, neither one of them, the nanny clearly wasn't around because the baby's like, you know, left to his own devices and falls to the, to the ground and hits his head. And it sounds like the head was the first part of his little body that made impact. And that scene read like a horror movie to me. I could not believe it.
Guest Commentator
Same. So that, yeah, I was just trying to figure out where she was because I read this like almost a year ago. But she. When I, when my babies were small, they used to fall asleep on my chest at night. And like I would fall asleep with them and then eventually I'd wake up and I would roll them or transfer them. I was dead asleep. Dead asleep. Right. This is what I mean about instincts. And I was. All of a sudden, I just, my eyes opened, it was pitch black and my hand just went out like that and I grabbed my baby's foot. My younger daughter, I mean, pitch black out of a dead sleep. And I just went. Because my body knew that like my little one was falling off of me.
Maureen Callahan
Yes.
Guest Commentator
So she's upside down, hanging, and I pull and I'm like. Because I actually wasn't even in my house. I was actually visiting my parents at the time, so it wasn't even my room. And I turn on the light and she was totally fine. This close to going face like head first onto the floor out of a dead sleep. This is what I mean by instincts. Like my mind didn't do it, my body did that.
Maureen Callahan
So that's such an incredible story. And what you say about like the sharpening of the instincts, where it's just, it's reflexive. I would imagine that Sarah's instincts were blunted by drugs and alcohol. I mean, she opens the book where she's just like on this multi day bender. It sounds like she's at the Chateau Marmont or something. You know, like just a druggie culture, a druggie scene. Oh, she's got this, this baby. This baby is such an albatross this baby is like a designer handbag she overpaid for she thought she wanted, and she has buyer's remorse. It's so shallow and it drives me nuts that like the mainstream media and like the entertainment industrial complex is treating her like she's got something important to say to women. I think it's all bullshit.
Guest Commentator
I mean, yeah, I mean, it does sound like bullshit. The, the, the thing that got me though was her ketamine therapy and how she said that during this two week period where she was given six doses of ketamine, it was in that time period where she imagined herself having multiple kids. Like she saw herself in the kitchen with multiple children. And it was at that point she knew she was somewhere inside. So she was on drugs, high. And it was like in that state of euphoria is the only time where she said that she saw herself having more children. And she has obviously had another child, which shocked me. Shocked me.
Maureen Callahan
But yes, I know, it's very disturbing. And then she gets this platform in airmail where she's now pedaling this line that everything's sunshine and roses. And she's a perfectly well adjusted, happy mother of two and her children are perfectly happy and well adjusted, hence the video of her son giving her the finger, which she was laughing at, by the way.
Guest Commentator
She thought it was hilarious. And I'm like, that's not funny at all. I mean, my, my youngest is only a year older than her son and I would never, she would never come close to doing something like that. So what else is going on in the background where he's learning this and it's acceptable behavior?
Maureen Callahan
I know, you know, you say that and I think back to like my godchild, who is now older, but when she was that age, 7, 8. That's a really sweet age. That's, there's still, there's a lot of childhood purity there. And, and that, that image of, of an 8 year old giving his mother the finger says to me there's a lot of rage there. And that child's picking up a lot of darkness in that home. Just my supposition. Tom Sachs sounds like a nightmare. And she doesn't sound like she's that much better.
Guest Commentator
No, she doesn't. And I think her Instagram kind of speaks for itself. I mean, okay, she's promoting a book, so you're gonna see press on there, and that makes sense. But there are so many photos of her half naked or with like the Chanel dress she's talking about that's just below her Butt crack, that is. Now she has a daughter. Her daughter's gonna get older, her daughter's gonna get social media and she's gonna
Maureen Callahan
see her mother just.
Guest Commentator
This is the image that she's gonna see of not only so many other girls on the Internet, but her own mother kind of going down that road. So it's. And I just wonder for people like that, like kids that come up with a mom like that, it's like, do they follow suit or do they just run in the other direction? I guess it could go either way. But I don't know about Sarah Hoover. She's not very compelling. Obviously. The fact that Chelsea Clinton didn't even bother to collect. They gave her, actually some of the cards. They didn't take mine. But at the very end, she stood up. It ended early, and someone in the audience said, you didn't do the question? She went, oh, yeah, I didn't do the questions. I didn't do the questions.
Maureen Callahan
Chelsea said that. I mean, she's such a professional. She really knows what she's doing. Before we get to that, that clip, before we get to that clip from the, from the event, I just also want to say, to your point about, you know, Sarah Hoover showing herself half dressed on her Instagram account, there was a part in that New York magazine expose of Tom Sachs of, like, what goes on in his studio where they were talking about former employees were saying he would show porn on the walls. Like, he would project porn on the walls. And if you questioned it, you would be told, well, it was for work. But why? How? In what way? And that's what I mean about this kind of godless. And you can use it with a capital G or a lowercase G. Art world, you know, where it's like, this is why Lena Dunham is such a mess. It's why she's such a mess. There are zero boundaries. And the tension, the little bit of tension that does exist in Sarah Hoover's book is you can tell she, she, she, she thinks that being alarmed by some of this stuff is like her Midwestern provincialism. Like, she's too she. That that's being a square. But to be cool and a real artist, you know, no matter what deviance is going on, you just got to get with it. Hey, someone else wants to breastfeed your kid. You know, like, it's, you know, we're not in a war zone. You know, it's like downtown New York, everybody's living in multi million dollar lofts. You know what I'm saying? It's just wild.
Guest Commentator
And you know, this is something for Mark Bowden in the future maybe just to show him some pictures, like the few pictures she has of her kids. And I don't actually like fault her for that because I don't try to spread my kids faces all over social media either. But the ones that she does have, she has the kids sort of like on her hip and we can show it, but. And it's almost like the, it's like a little handbag. It's like an accessory, right? Like it's not like this. I mean, if you would see pictures of me, they're up here, they're over here. She's got it like right here on her hip. Like a six month.
Maureen Callahan
We should get Mark Bowden to look at some of those. We really should. It's evocative to me of the way Meghan Markle is often attempting to hold her children from. And you see her from the back and like one's like falling out of one arm and the other's got like a leg akimbo and they're like the center of gravity is just, just like completely off. But okay, let's look at this clip of Chelsea. And really, who better to ask this question than somebody who grew up in a white hot glare of her parents misdeeds? You know, I think the reason they've overcorrected with Chelsea, they bought her like a $10 million apartment in Nomad, a fashionable neighborhood in New York City. They're, they're bankrolling this like bullshit podcast that like five people are listening to is because they feel so guilty over what happened during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And you know, so who better to know how the sins of the parents are visited upon the child than Chelsea Clinton? If Chelsea had something on the ball, she had a little bit of edge, she would ask this and they'd have a very spiky, interesting conversation. But no, here we go.
Marlena
I was quite struck that you said
Maureen Callahan
both of them told you.
Marlena
Like it sounds like unimpeachably and without
Maureen Callahan
caveat, you know, to tell the truth.
Marlena
Yeah, they were really supportive. I mean, my husband is an artist, so I think he by nature of his work understood that it is your job as an artist. It's not meant to be like this scientific document. That's exactly what we down. It's meant to be. How you remember it down.
Guest Commentator
Yeah.
Marlena
How you experienced it. I think that's what makes the genre
Maureen Callahan
more fun to read.
Guest Commentator
Two things.
Maureen Callahan
Okay, before you say, before you say it, she was Talking about her children signing off on this book and her saying whatever she wanted. Her oldest is eight. Okay. I, I think that the youngest can't be more than three or four. So how they could possibly give their. A scent to this as an artistic expression, you know, it's. Anyway, go on. Sorry.
Guest Commentator
I mean, it's, it, she's. It makes no sense. But, but so you know, you're not really supposed to record when you're at the 92nd Street.
Maureen Callahan
Why?
Guest Commentator
Even though I do every single time I go. And it just so happened this. I was so lucky that I got this before they came and told me to turn off my camera. The fact that she's a Clinton, I feel like the word, any form of the word impeach should not even come near your mouth hole. Not at all. And she's like unimpeachably. And it just. Who in their right mind would say that if you are the daughter of Bill Clinton. No, impeachably.
Maureen Callahan
You're so right. That is such a great catch. And the other thing I love is when she goes, she follows it up with and without caveat. You know, she thinks she's re. She's running a literary salon. And with. This actually sounds like you and I both agreed and this was a really fun one to dig up. SNL used to do this great recurring sketch. Anna Gasteyer, Molly Shannon spoofing what NPR hosts sound like. And that is a particular brand of insane, sufferable particular. Let's take a look.
Marlena
One of my favorite things about summer
Maureen Callahan
is that you can have your meals outside. That is neat. Yeah.
Marlena
It's fun because it's warm. It's warm outside.
Guest Commentator
Yeah.
Maureen Callahan
Summer's my favorite season.
Marlena
Same here. Because it's hotter than the rest of the year.
Guest Commentator
I mean, it's, it's uncanny. The sound, the tenor of their voice. It's the same, right?
Maureen Callahan
It's the same. And you know, my favorite, one of my favorite Chelsea Clinton stories is that, you know, she was, she was looking for a job at NBC News after her father left office. And she went up there and the executives like spilled all. They like, they gave her a job at like the Today show for like a hot minute. Then they cut her loose. And then Brian Williams had a show called 30 Rock. And I think they would give her. This was, this was her inglorious end. Anyway, they said she came in and they, they were like, she thought that she was interviewing us instead of us interviewing her for a job as a highly paid on air correspondent. Like that. The entitlement was just oozing. And. And. And then she. She was such a bomb. She couldn't. She didn't know how to conduct an interview. She didn't care to learn. She thought she knew everything. They began humiliating her. I think her final, final interview. And we should play it. We should find it and play it. Was with the Geico Gecko.
Guest Commentator
Hi, Gecko.
Maureen Callahan
Thanks so much for answering our questions. Ah, thank you, Chelsea. Look, sorry I couldn't be there in person, but I'm out on the road promoting my new book, you're Only human. Shameless plug. There. I completely understand now, Gekko. Do people recognize you on the street? Actually, Chelsea. I mean, people don't usually notice me on the street because I'm only 6.9 inches tall. I remember that animated Geico Gecko. Oh, my God.
Guest Commentator
Why do I remember that, though?
Maureen Callahan
Because it went viral. Because it was like they made the former First Daughter sit and interview an empty chair that they later filled in with a cartoon character who was a paid advertiser.
Guest Commentator
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I do remember that.
Maureen Callahan
Marlena, as always, we thank you for your service as chief troublemaker. Troublemaker in charge. Listen, we've got your next assignment in the hopper, so rest up, weary one.
Guest Commentator
Oh, I sure will.
Maureen Callahan
All right, we'll see you soon. Thanks, Marlena.
Guest Commentator
Bye.
Maureen Callahan
And, you know, just to put a button on this whole thing, the New York Times is trying to rehab Tom Sachs. This was a very recent piece with a new show. Tom Sachs wants to move on. Bet he would. The readout, the MacGyver of the art world weathered a scandal. There were multiple scandals contained in that article about his studio's culture in 2023. Culture? His studio's culture? No, it's abuse. It's abuse. I feel comfortable in saying that. I think the most apt word to describe that behavior is abuse. And I'm sure it's still going on. And like every reality TV villain has learned to say, tom's response in the New York Times is, I'm like, my sculpture. I'm a work in progress. Every psychopath's favorite line. I'm just a work in progress. Hey, don't ding me too hard. I'm just doing my best over here. I'm not saying he's a psychopath, but I'm saying he seems an awful lot like one. That does it. That does it. For our Friday edition of the Nerve, come back and see us tomorrow for a super fun mini with one of our favorites that will drop on YouTube tomorrow at 10am Eastern. And if you haven't already, go check out our substack@thenerveshow.com be sure to subscribe plus nerve merch including top level shit. Grab something for yourself or pick something up for a fellow troublemaker@shop thenerve.com we will see you tomorrow for the Mini and then again next week right here at the Nerve, where you will never guess what we're about to say next.
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Episode: “Timothée Chalamet's Fame Boost, Jenna & Sheinelle's Empty Banter, and Sarah Hoover's Motherhood Aversion”
Date: May 29, 2026
Host: Maureen Callahan
Produced by: MK Media
In this episode, Maureen Callahan delivers her signature incisive, witty, and skeptical take on a range of pop culture and literary topics. She eviscerates celebrity posturing, exposes hypocrisy in the art world, dives into motherhood memoirs gone awry, and spotlights feedback from listeners who fuel The Nerve’s “troublemaker” community. The primary threads are a deep dive into Timothée Chalamet’s somewhat mythologized "fame boost" story, a critique of the banality on display with Jenna and Sheinelle on the Today show, and an excoriating analysis of Sarah Hoover’s controversial motherhood memoir—complete with a live report from an under-attended 92nd Street Y event.
(05:00–10:00)
Maureen breaks down Damian Lewis’s appearance on the Today show, where Lewis brags about discovering and boosting Timothée Chalamet’s early career.
“I made Chalamet.” (Damian Lewis, 08:57)
“The gall, the unmitigated gall…Literally the job description.” (10:13)
Lewis is also, according to Maureen, undergoing a “midlife crisis,” attempting to rebrand as a musician à la Kiefer Sutherland—with questionable results and a campy, try-hard music video.
She skewers the showbiz ecosystem for indulging celebrities' self-promotion and inflated sense of cultural impact.
(13:30–24:10)
“Let me tell you, if my best friend was grieving and left me a voicemail, I would call her back immediately.” (15:23)
“[Sheinelle] is not. And hence, we’re going for the Queen of Grief title. Okay? Trust me.” (24:10)
(25:35–28:34)
“I don’t want you correcting my grammar. I don’t have time to sit here and go, tit for Titan.” (28:22)
(33:21–47:00)
Features an emotional exchange of audience feedback about a letter from Michael Hutchence (INXS frontman)’s childhood friend, demonstrating the show’s devoted, globally scattered following.
Listeners also weigh in about the show’s coverage of other subjects (e.g., Catherine’s cancer diagnosis, Christopher Andersen’s views on JFK Jr.), with Maureen addressing criticism and clarifying her intentions.
Notable quote:
“Our hearts are otherwise pure. We only go after cultural offenders who truly deserve it.” (46:25)
(47:57–97:26)
(47:57–76:19)
Claims the book isn’t a postpartum memoir but an extended narcissistic whine about regretting motherhood, despite extraordinary privilege (nannies, lavish hotels, drugs, fashion).
Quotes Hoover’s depersonalized language and admissions of emotional detachment from her own child:
“From the moment he was born, this baby sometimes meant as much to me as a stone-cold marble statue in the antiquities section of an art museum. AKA something that I knew was valuable, but not so much to me. It didn’t help that I found him so ugly with all my worst traits.” (57:53)
Hoover’s self-justifications (blaming society for her choices) are called out as deflections for deeper personal/marital issues.
Maureen rejects the “postpartum” frame, diagnosing Hoover as a “malignant narcissist” performing for the art world’s clout machine.
(57:35–73:00)
“This place is a cult...and I mean that in the scariest, most Manson Family kind of way.” (Sachs, 63:10)
(76:19–94:59)
(80:31–93:40)
The crowd is sparse; attendee questions are ignored, especially those challenging the ethics of writing so negatively about one’s children.
Marlena, herself a mother, offers a personal and critical perspective—that the book is not a postpartum memoir but a display of neglect, with children treated as “accessories.”
“This baby is such an albatross, this baby is like a designer handbag she overpaid for, she thought she wanted, and she has buyer’s remorse.” (85:04)
Both Maureen and Marlena are incredulous at Hoover’s rationalizations, Hoover’s public posting of her young son flipping her off (“she thought it was hilarious”) and the broader lack of boundaries in this art world milieu.
(92:43–96:27)
“Any form of the word impeach should not even come near your mouth hole.” (93:47)
“Every psychopath’s favorite line. I’m just a work in progress. I’m not saying he’s a psychopath, but he seems an awful lot like one.” (97:18)
Maureen Callahan delivers the episode with biting sarcasm, cultural savvy, and an unapologetic sense of moral outrage. She skewers faked vulnerability, calls out hypocrisy across industries, and reinvigorates audience commentary as an engine for community and interrogation. With help from field correspondent Marlena and the ever-present "troublemakers," the show lives up to its tagline—having conversations no one else dares to have.