In which Hell & High Water is pleased to introduce you to another podcast in the Recount family: Battleground with Amanda Litman and Faiz Shakir. Battleground episodes normally drop on Thursdays, but we're giving you a sneak preview of this week's edition, which features Elie Mystal – justice correspondent for The Nation and a frequent guest on MSNBC. If you're interested in the future of the Democratic Party — or American democracy — you're going to love Battleground. Amanda Litman is a co-foun...
Jun 15, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 40
In which John Heilemann talks with Christopher Jackson, the Tony award-nominated and Grammy and Emmy award-winning actor, singer, musician, and composer best known for playing George Washington in the original Broadway cast of Hamilton. Heilemann and Jackson discuss his journey from growing up in Cairo, Illinois to becoming a bona fide theater and television star; how the traumas of Covid-19 and the post-George Floyd racial reckoning impacted the creative community; how Broadway is faring as it ...
Jun 08, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 39
In which John Heilemann talks with Rick Doblin, the pioneering champion of psychedelics who has waged a decades-long crusade to bring about mainstream acceptance of psychoactive drugs for therapeutic and recreational use. Heilemann and Doblin have known each other for more than 30 years, and they discuss Doblin’s path-breaking work at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which he founded and has turned into a multimillion dollar research and advocacy group employing 130 neu...
Jun 01, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 38
In which John Heilemann talks with writer Will Leitch, sports columnist for MLB.com and New York magazine, founder of Deadspin, and author of a new novel, How Lucky. Heilemann and Leitch discuss the inspiration for How Lucky, including a friend of his young son with spinal muscular atrophy, the genetic disorder that Leitch gives to Daniel, the book's hero; Leitch's love for Athens, Georgia, where he and his family now live and where the book is set; how a complimentary tweet from Stephen King is...
May 25, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 37
In which John Heilemann talks with Steven Johnson, New York Times best-selling writer on science, technology, and their intersection with human behavior. Heilemann and Johnson discuss his latest book, Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer, and the new four-part PBS documentary series of the same title based on the book, which explore what Johnson calls "one of our greatest achievements: the doubling of global life expectancy over the past century;" the historical roots of the anti-vax mov...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 36
In which John Heilemann talks with John Ellis and Rebecca Darst, co-hosts of "News Items Podcast," a new daily show from The Recount. "News Items Podcast" is based on the influential "News Items" daily newsletter founded and run by Ellis, a longtime veteran of the news business. Both the podcast and newsletter focus on three big topic areas, with occasional forays into a fourth: (1) World in Disarray; (2) Financialization of Everything; (3) Advances in Science and Technology; (4) Electoral polit...
May 11, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Hell & High Water brings you a bonus episode from another podcast in the Recount family: "Just Something About Her" with Jennifer Palmieri. Palmieri spent more than two decades as a big-time political and communications strategist, serving as communications director for Barack Obama's White House and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. “Just Something About Her" was born out of Jennifer's experience working for Hillary, when she kept hearing people say, "I don't know, there’s just some...
May 06, 2021•50 min
In which John Heilemann talks with Don Lemon, host of CNN Tonight and author of the new book, “This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism." Heilemann and Lemon, who opens his book with a letter to his nephew describing his emotional response to George Floyd's murder, discuss his reaction to the Derek Chauvin trial and the spate of police shootings during and after the proceedings; Lemon's place in the media landscape as the only Black male anchor in primetime cable news; his childho...
May 04, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Ninety percent of the news out there tells you nothing about where the world is going — ten percent of it tells you everything. On the News Items Podcast with John Ellis, John and Rebecca Darst dissect news items that help you understand where the world is going. Tune in every Monday through Thursday afternoon to hear decades of journalistic experience packed into 20 minutes of insight, plus guest interviews on finance, U.S. politics, foreign affairs, science and technology. Learn more about you...
Apr 28, 2021•4 min
In which John Heilemann talks with Dr. Vin Gupta and Dr. Leana Wen, two public health rising stars who have emerged as influential and indispensable voices on Covid-19 in the past year. Heilemann, Gupta, and Wen discuss the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic and whether its success in exceeding its vaccination goals portends victory in the fight against Covid; the controversies over the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines in America and Europe, respectively; the factors behin...
Apr 27, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 33
In which John Heilemann talks with Kenny and Keith Lucas, the 35-year-old identical twin comedians, actors, producers, and writers who share a 2021 Oscar nomination (with Will Berson and Shaka King) for Best Original Screenplay for "Judas and the Black Messiah." Heilemann and the Lucas Brothers discuss their decade-long quest to persuade Hollywood to green-light the story of Fred Hampton, the precocious and charismatic chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party in the late Sixties, and his ass...
Apr 20, 2021•2 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 32
In which John Heilemann talks with Cory Booker, Demoratic senator from New Jersey. In the first single-topic episode of the podcast, Heilemann and Booker do a deep dive into an issue that's been central to Booker's career: criminal justice reform and racial equity. They discuss the Derek Chauvin trial and their fears if justice isn't served; the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, just recently passed by the House, and the criticism it has received from Black Lives Matter and others on left fo...
Apr 13, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 31
In which John Heilemann talks with Nicolle Wallace, the host of Deadline: White House on MSNBC. Heilemann and Wallace discuss Joe Biden’s first 11 weeks in office and the striking boldness of the agenda he's pursuing; the state of the Covid-19 pandemic amid the vaccination boom and the series of moving COVID eulogies (Lives Well Lived) that Wallace has delivered on her show each day for the past year; the Republican Party as it struggles to define itself in the post-Trump era; the aftershocks fr...
Apr 06, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 30
In which John Heilemann talks with Nicolle Wallace, the host of Deadline: White House on MSNBC. Heilemann and Wallace discuss Joe Biden’s first 11 weeks in office and the striking boldness of the agenda he's pursuing; the state of the Covid-19 pandemic amid the vaccination boom and the series of moving COVID eulogies (Lives Well Lived) that Wallace has delivered on her show each day for the past year; the Republican Party as it struggles to define itself in the post-Trump era; the aftershocks fr...
Apr 06, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 30
In which John Heilemann talks with Michigan congresswoman Debbie Dingell, co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. Heilemann and Dingell discuss the continuing fallout from the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and ongoing violent extremist threats; her recent grilling of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the role of social media in spreading misinformation and disinformation; her view of President Biden's first ten weeks in office and the major items on his...
Mar 30, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 29
In which John Heilemann talks with Franklin Leonard, the founder and CEO of The Black List, a company best known for its annual survey of the most popular screenplays among Hollywood executives that remain unproduced. Heilemann and Leonard discuss this year's Oscar nominations, and in particular the historic levels of diversity among the slate of nominees, as well as the epic fail that was the recent Globe Globes; filmmaking amid the continuing threat of Covid-19, the explosion of streaming fuel...
Mar 23, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Clint Watts has built his career around the study of extremism: online and off, foreign and domestic, from Russian disinformation campaigns and cyberwarfare to homegrown conspiracists, militia movements, and white supremacists. A former Army infantry officer and FBI special agent, he has served on the bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force and consulted for its National Security Branch. Currently a distinguished research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-resident fellow at the ...
Mar 16, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Andrew Ross Sorkin is arguably the country's most important and influential financial and business journalist — and, without doubt, its most plugged in. Having started his career at the New York Times as intern when he was still in high school, he now presides over DealBook, which began its life in 2001 as a newsletter about Wall Street and the mergers and acquisitions game, but over the past 20 years has grown into a sprawling finance, business, and economic news fiefdom within the larger Times...
Mar 02, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 26
The story of John Brown and Harpers Ferry is a pivotal piece of American history that's neither well-known nor well-understood — to the extent it's known or understood at all. In 1859, Brown, a militant white abolitionist and religious zealot, led a raid on the federal armory in that small Virginia (now West Virginia) town to acquire weapons and spark a slave revolt to end the peculiar institution and cleanse America of its original sin. The raid was a debacle, failing utterly in its immediate o...
Feb 23, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Jaime Harrison is one of the brightest young rising stars in the Democratic Party. Born and raised by a single mother in Orangeburg, South Carolina, educated at Yale and Georgetown Law, and mentored by legendary Palmetto State congressman Jim Clyburn, Harrison became the first African American chairman of his home state's Democratic Party in 2013, at the age of 37. After a stint as an Associate Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Harrison launched a campaign to topple incumbent South Car...
Feb 16, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Joyce White Vance and Jill Wine-Banks entered the Trump era with gold-plated resumes and sterling reputations in the legal world but modest public profiles outside it. Today, however, they are widely known as two members of a cadre of MSNBC legal analysts who conducted a four-year national civics lesson about the rule of law when it was being tested in unprecedented ways — a cadre notably dominated by women, many of them pioneers in their profession. Wine-Banks earned that status in the 1970s, w...
Feb 09, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 23
If you looked up the hyphenate "artist-activist" in an illustrated dictionary, next to the entry would likely be a picture of Sean Penn. In a film career spanning forty years, Penn has appeared in more than 50 features, received five Best Actor Oscar nominations and won the award twice — for his leading roles in "Mystic River" and "Milk" — and staked a plausible claim to being the preeminent actor of his generation. He has directed five films, three of which he wrote, as well as publishing two n...
Feb 02, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Kurt Andersen and Lawrence O’Donnell first met 46 years ago as undergraduates at Harvard, forming a friendship that’s flourished alongside their careers as two of their generation’s most incisive, insightful observers of American politics and culture. Andersen made his mark in the 1980s as co-founder of the iconic Spy magazine, then went on to serve as editor-in-chief of New York magazine, host of the Peabody Award-winning radio program “Studio 360,” and best-selling novelist and non-fiction aut...
Jan 26, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Over the course of the past four decades, Robert Reich has worn a multitude of hats: professor and professional idea merchant; federal official in three presidential administrations, candidate for governor of Massachusetts, and economic adviser to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders; author of 18 books, creator of heralded documentaries, and wildly popular social media dynamo. But in all these roles — including the one for which he's best known, Clinton's first secretary of labor — Re...
Jan 19, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 20
The Lincoln Project launched in late 2019 with an op-ed in The New York Times under a headline that made the group’s identity and intentions clear: “We are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated.” Since then, the group has established itself as a leading force in the fight against Trumpism, becoming a household name in the process. Led by an array of lapsed Republican operatives including Heilemann’s guests this week, Jennifer Horn and Rick Wilson, the Lincolners have raised tens of millions of...
Jan 12, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 19
The Lincoln Project launched in late 2019 with an op-ed in The New York Times under a headline that made the group’s identity and intentions clear: “We are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated.” Since then, the group has established itself as a leading force in the fight against Trumpism, becoming a household name in the process. Led by an array of lapsed Republican operatives including Heilemann’s guests this week, Jennifer Horn and Rick Wilson, the Lincolners have raised tens of millions of...
Jan 12, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Shannon Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America — a self-described “accidental activist” who, in less than a decade, went from being a stay-at-home mother in Indiana to the face of a national grassroots movement with more active members than the National Rifle Association. When Watts launched her advocacy group as a simple Facebook page in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012, she had just 75 friends on the site but grand ambitions, boundless en...
Jan 05, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 18
When Jack Black and Kyle Gass formed the mock-rock band Tenacious D in 1994, they were just a pair of unknown members of The Actors' Gang in LA with a spiritual and satirical kinship with Spinal Tap, a penchant for R-rated lyrics about their sexual prowess and prodigious cannabis consumption, and surprisingly serious musical chops. Twenty-six years later, Tenacious D has accumulated a large and passionate following, released three platinum albums and a feature film, and won a Grammy Award — and ...
Dec 29, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Over the past three decades, Aaron Sorkin has staked a claim as America’s most renowned film and television writer. With a list of credits that runs from "A Few Good Men," "The American President, "The Social Network," and "Moneyball" on the big screen to "Sports Night," "The Newsroom," and his crowning achievement, "The West Wing," on TV, Sorkin's work has achieved vast popular success, critical acclaim, and cultural resonance. On this week’s episode, Hell & High Water continues its year-end re...
Dec 22, 2020•55 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Rich Eisen has been a fixture in the sports media firmament for a quarter century. Sharp and funny, as well-versed in pop culture as in the prevent defense or the pick-and-roll, Eisen was still in his twenties when he first lit up ESPN during its heyday in the 1990s, before becoming the face of the NFL Network and his eponymous talk show and podcast. But what sets Eisen apart from many of his peers is his comfort in the place where top-flight athletics collide with broader social and political d...
Dec 15, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 15
