Who are The Best People? They’re the most magnetic and engaging people in the room; the ones who know how to get that extra something out of every collaboration, connection, and endeavor. These people are the best at what they do and know how to bring out the best in others. Now, in an era of social and political upheaval, The Best People share lessons that we can all use. Listen as Nicolle Wallace seeks varied perspectives on how to keep reaching for truth, decency, and connection.
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As we reflect on 2025 and prepare for the new year, we thought it would be a good time to share an episode we recorded back in September that blends themes of comedy, friendship, and community. Please enjoy this “Best of the Best” with Nicolle’s dear friend and former co-host, Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie O’Donnell has never shied away from a microphone. And while her decades-long public feud with Donald Trump has at times been fodder for tabloids, she is quite clear that her decision to move to Irela...
Marc Elias is a formidable elections attorney and a fierce defender of voting rights. As Republicans hone a strategy of subtracting voters from the rolls in the 2026 midterms, Elias relentlessly challenges their efforts—in the courts and in the public square. Against the backdrop of notching over 60 legal victories against Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Elias joins Nicolle to talk about the quiet legal war he says the Justice Department is waging to acquire data on voters...
It takes a rare kind of brilliance to be universally funny, and Leslie Jones is Exhibit A. With the release of her new comedy special "Life: Part Two”, the Emmy-award winning SNL alum joins Nicolle — who she affectionately calls “Nickkkaaay!” — for a conversation packed with candor, irreverence, and unadulterated hilarity. Whether she’s calling out the narcissism fueling our leaders or recounting how she noticed Donald Trump’s famously small hands on the set of SNL, Jones dives headfirst into co...
With the backdrop of intensifying scrutiny over the Trump administration's boat strikes, Nicolle’s friend and colleague Rachel Maddow returns — this time with a chilling piece of American history in hand. Rachel’s latest podcast, “Rachel Maddow Presents: Burn Order”, examines one of the most astonishing chapters in American history: the U.S. government’s decision to forcibly target, detain, and uproot innocent Japanese American citizens during World War II. Maddow holds a spotlight on the people...
Claire Danes knew she was destined to act at five years old, and audiences have felt that certainty ever since – from her turn as Angela Chase in the cult favorite series “My So-Called Life” to the iconic Carrie Mathison in “Homeland,” her devotion to her craft has delivered some of television’s most compelling characters. Her latest work in Netflix’s “The Beast in Me” is no different, with Danes playing a grieving mother who finds purpose through a dangerous connection with her mysterious neigh...
"Rachel Maddow Presents: Burn Order" is the story of one of the most shocking decisions in American history: the executive order to target and round up innocent citizens, Japanese Americans, at the outbreak of World War II. This six-episode narrative podcast will examine and shed new light on how that policy came to be, who was behind it, who attempted to stop it, and the heroism needed to end the policy for good. Listen to the trailer here and search for “Burn Order” to follow the show. The fir...
Since the government shutdown ended, there’s been a renewed focus on releasing the Epstein files. And after the House and Senate voted to compel the Justice Department to make the files public, President Trump signed the bill, beginning a 30-day countdown to their release. With this as a backdrop, we thought it would be a good time to re-up an episode of "The Best People" we released back in mid-September with Jess Michaels and her lawyer, Jennifer Freeman. This episode was originally recorded o...
Historian Heather Cox Richardson discusses a significant realignment in American democracy, highlighting the growing power of citizen agency against an executive branch leaning towards aristocracy. She explores how everyday people are reclaiming control, evolving media landscapes, and the historical context of challenges to democracy, emphasizing the importance of public engagement over elite capitulation.
Scott Galloway — affectionately known as “Prof G” to his legion of podcast followers — is deeply concerned about young men in America. In his new book “Notes on Being a Man,” he reflects on how a lack of economic viability and social connection has created powerful headwinds that make the experience of young men today far different from his own. Scott joins Nicolle to share his analysis of several careening crises at play, from the intentionally isolating effects of social media to a stark imbal...
“Pod Save America” began as a way to “narrow the distance” between the conversations former Obama White House staffers were having in private and the ones echoing throughout the public sphere. And since launching in 2017, it’s become a force in America’s competitive media culture. As two of the three co-founders behind Crooked Media, Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor are ushering in a new era of political communication, championing a craft many Democratic lawmakers might learn from – one that threads...
Governor JB Pritzker has mastered the art of standing up to Donald Trump. Whether he’s mocking Trump’s threat to jail him (“Come and get me, Mr. President!) or calling on the citizens of Illinois to grab their phones and document how ICE is targeting black and brown people, Pritzker is showing us how it’s done. With the threat of deployment of federal troops to the streets of Chicago, Pritzker is determined to lessen the fear and suffering of his constituents (“People are traumatized”) and hold ...
Charlamagne Tha God’s more than 7 million monthly listeners hang on his every word for a reason: Charlamagne is plugged into real Americans’ lives. Listening to Charlamagne’s nationally syndicated radio show “The Breakfast Club” has been likened to “sitting on America’s front porch” – a sensibility Charlamagne honed growing up in rural South Carolina. “It gave me a front row seat on working class people”. Now he’s putting politicians on both sides of the aisle on blast – from Trump (“he’s wiping...
Jen Psaki is on a mission to show us how the Democratic party can use this political moment to fight and win again. On Season 2 of her podcast, “The Blueprint,” she interviews the people reshaping the party, starting with Texas Congressman Greg Casar, Chair of the Progressive Caucus. The first two episodes of “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki” are available now, and will continue to drop every Wednesday, from now through mid-November. Stay right here to listen to a special preview. And for the full ...
Martin Sheen has been playing iconic leading men for nearly 70 years from "Badlands" to "Apocalypse Now" and of course as President Jed Bartlet in "The West Wing." But the Emmy and Golden Globe winner says that while acting is his profession, activism keeps him alive. The son of immigrants, social justice is at the center of his life; Sheen's decades of non-violent civil disobedience has earned him the dubious distinction of being the most arrested celebrity in Hollywood. At MSNBC's annual live ...
Anthony Scaramucci, known as “The Mooch” to friends and foes alike, holds a unique place in American politics. A baseball fanatic and Goldman Sachs alum, he was once a Donald Trump supporter, campaign advisor, and held an 11-day stint as Trump’s White House Communications Director in 2017. After Trump called him a “deep-stater” and fired him, Scaramucci did a lot of soul searching. And in 2019, he came to own what he openly calls his “mistake” of supporting the president, urging voters to learn ...
Rosie O’Donnell has never shied away from a microphone. And while her decades-long public feud with Donald Trump has at times been fodder for tabloids, she is quite clear that her decision to move to Ireland, her ancestral home, was all about her family and her own self-preservation. Rosie and Nicolle first met as co-hosts thrown together to debate on “The View”, but they developed a friendship that continues today. This episode shows the breadth of that connection, as Rosie reflects on the cont...
Legendary singer and activist Joan Baez still marches in protests; but she also performs in a circus, dances with drag queens and does whatever else she can to maintain a sense of joy and laughter. Baez has spent her career equally at home on the political frontlines as behind a guitar. But as the world has changed, so has how she calculates risk. She thinks if she were to be arrested now – as opposed to 58 years ago – it would be “scary in a way that I was not scared back then.” But, she tells ...
Jess Michaels, a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse, shares her harrowing experience and the long journey of healing from trauma, including the neurological impact. She details the manipulative recruitment tactics and the chilling realization of Epstein's widespread, predatory network. Joined by her lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, Jess highlights the ongoing fight for accountability, the failures of institutions like the FBI, and the powerful community formed by survivors determined to achieve justice and inspire policy change.
She’s a voting rights activist, a prominent voice in the Democratic party and a three-time New York Times best-selling novelist; but more than anything else, Stacey Abrams is a bonafide badass. As Democratic leaders struggle to unify around a message to counter Trump’s relentless attacks on democracy, Abrams envisions a future where having a moral backbone is an asset, not a weakness. She calls out the political cowardice that’s taken hold of Trump’s MAGA Republicans and calls on Democrats to fi...
Ken Burns is America’s documentarian: From the Civil War to Vietnam, baseball to the Brooklyn Bridge, his films are gospel for generations of Americans curious about the world and our history. This November, in a new six part, 12-hour documentary series Burns turns his attention to the American Revolution – and the counterintuitive revelation that democracy was *not* on the table when the fighting first broke out. Burns says what this film showed him is that the tension we feel today in 2025 arc...
Life can take some pretty unexpected turns. Just ask Phil Rosenthal. The man who brought us “Everybody Loves Raymond” is now a global star in his own right thanks to “Somebody Feed Phil” – Netflix’s longest running unscripted original series, a show Phil says boils down to one simple sentence: “I’m just like Anthony Bourdain if Bourdain was afraid of everything”. The result is a profound, at times goofy, and utterly relatable exploration of humanity through food. Phil tells Nicolle about his “he...
Pod Save America and Crooked Media founding member Jon Lovett isn’t just a podcasting legend or Barack Obama’s speechwriting secret weapon. He's a quick study of our political discourse and a cultural vanguard. Now he’s spilling the tea on everything from the “vandalism” Trump is unleashing on American institutions, the Hollywood heavy-hitter who had a hand in THAT Trump joke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and what it was really like working with Hillary Clinton. Lovett also offers so...
When systems are failing, what do you triage first? That's a question that keeps constitutional law superstar Melissa Murray awake at night. As a law professor at New York University, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and co-host of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast, Melissa is well-versed in examining our legal system at the intersection of the social and political, and she knows that what is being broken will take a long time to rebuild. In this episode, Melissa joins Nicoll...
From the war in Ukraine to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, Jacob Soboroff is no stranger to covering tragedy. His first-hand account of family separations along the Southern border during Trump’s first term became a bestselling book and later the critically acclaimed documentary “Separated” by Academy Award winning director Errol Morris. Now, Soboroff is back chronicling the human toll and devastating impact of Trump’s new immigration crackdown, including an exclusive interview for “Th...
There is no pre-political Tim Miller. From a fifth-grade bet on Bill Clinton, to becoming a Republican strategist for Jeb Bush, to finally saying “Goodbye to All That” and leaving the party in 2020, and now hosting the Bulwark podcast as a ‘Never Trumper,’ Miller has been immersed in politics his whole life. In this episode, Tim joins Nicolle to discuss finding (and losing) community within the Republican party, the manosphere, and what he’s learned about breaking down the Trump coalition as a l...
Very few actors have the range to pull off “Dumb and Dumber’s” slack jawed Harry Dunne, while mastering the arc of moral giants like Atticus Finch on stage or Ronald Reagan in the upcoming film “Reykjavík.” Jeff Daniels is that actor. He’s played iconic character driven roles like “The Newsroom’s” Will McAvoy and delivered countless monologues that embrace the better angels of our nature. And now, he’s playing guitar and writing songs that hold up a mirror to the human experience. He joins Nicol...
BONUS: In his two decades of coaching youth baseball, Youman Wilder never expected ICE agents to show up at his practice. But recently, that's exactly what happened. On New York's Upper West Side, Coach Wilder claims to have witnessed armed ICE agents questioning his players—and that’s when he knew he had to step in. On “Deadline White House” Nicolle interviewed Wilder on the experience and what is asked of all of us in this moment. Listen to the conversation here. Editors’ Note: since the inter...
Five-time Grammy Award winner, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, and more Billboard No. 1 hits than any other production team in history – these are just a handful of the accolades amassed by Jimmy Jam. The mastermind behind a seemingly endless list of iconic songs like “Control” and “Rhythm Nation” and the legendary producer has long been a venerated fixture of the music industry, alongside his partner Terry Lewis. From serving as the Chairman of the Grammys, to songwriting for Janet Jackson, to g...
Sarah Jessica Parker is the ultimate New Yorker. Andy Cohen says walking around with her is like “walking around with the Empire State Building.” SJP, as Parker is affectionately known to her fans, is best known for playing the iconic Carrie Bradshaw on HBO’s “Sex and The City” and its revival “And Just Like That,” currently in its third season. But more than men or fashion, the show is about friendship, community, and what it means to show up for one another. And in this interview with “The Bes...
The names Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach speak for themselves. Glennon, a bestselling author, activist, and podcaster. Abby, an American soccer legend and World Cup champion. Together, the married couple is a force for good. In this episode, they join Nicolle to talk about how putting our bodies into uncomfortable places is the antidote to the dehumanization of immigrants, and why fighting for democracy needs to be a team sport. Want to listen to this show early and without ads? Sign up for MSNB...
