Nancy and Sarah discuss the killing of Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Talking Points USA. He was a husband and the father of two young children, and he was shot yesterday while engaging with college students at a Utah College. There is no version of the world that makes his murder anything but a horror.

We talk about political violence, radical movements, violence versus microaggressions, bloodlust in the human animal, ideology as a leverage for murder, and how politics became religion. We also discuss the case of Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death on a Charlotte, NC subway. What stories make the news? What do we want our news to tell us? These are deep/complicated questions, and whether this moment pushes us closer or farther from the light, Nancy and Sarah are in it together.

Also, here we are again, at September 11.

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Nancy and Sarah go deep on Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, whose new memoir has been excerpted in New York magazine. We have thoughts! Does Gilbert have her finger on the tender heart of what women want? Is she a serial grifter who makes millions off women’s low rattle of unhappiness?

We talk about Gilbert’s long career — which has shifted from magazine profile writer to memoirist to social media something-something, plus novelist — and it’s hard not to see a woman caught in her own spin cycle. Sarah is a memoir writer; she lives in this glass house, so she is loath to throw stones. But some truths need to be said. What part of her success is narcissism, what part marketing savvy, what part is con? Plus, we put our hands on a third rail: Gilbert never had kids.

Also discussed:

* Nancy’s hair looks … okay

* Sarah and Nancy sing on-camera; lose subscribers

* Nancy will die in any ditch

* Malcolm Gladwell comes correct, Nancy skeptical

* Sarah says love addiction is maybe not a thing?

* The divorce memoir, unpacked

* Men’s magazines of the ‘90s

* Grape Nuts: “It’s like bullets in milk”

* Yoga in Indiana!

* Sarah wants an Eat Pray Love pilgrimage. Nancy says, nope!

* “You’re just Harold.”

* Nancy cannot get past the scenery-chewing in Tombstone

* Some love for author Jennifer Egan

NEW FEATURE! Today in Everyday Heroism. This MAN did something remarkable this week. When notified of his new title, inspired by his comment about the ubiquity of the term “survivor,” he replied, “It’s insane, and everyone knows it!”

Plus, that time Terry McMillan wrote a book about falling for a younger man who turned out to be gay, affection for Oprah’s weight loss/gain/loss/gain journey, Sarah’s new documentary obsession, and much more!

We have a letters episode coming up so send ‘em in! smokeempodcast@gmail.com

REMINDER: It’s first Sunday Zoom. Sunday, September 7, at 5pm PT/8pm ET. Link goes to paid subscribers day-of. Show us your animals! Come hang. Discuss a possible group read! It’s not scary, unless you want it to be, and then it’s soooo scary.

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Nancy and Sarah chat with Bryan Burrough, author of Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild. Bloody history is something of a specialty for Burrough, a former Vanity Fair scribe whose other (great) books include Days of Rage, about violent radical movements of the ‘70s, Public Enemies, about the ‘30s crime wave, and Forget the Alamo, about, well, trying to remember that famous Texas showdown in a more accurate light.

Their conversation takes place several days after a shooter opened fire at a Minneapolis church, killing two children and injuring many more. Online discourse has yo-yo’ed from gun control to trans issues to the problem of marijuana, but America’s history of violence goes much deeper than culture-war issues. We’re a country forged in guns, whether we like it or not.

Burrough talks about the psychopaths, swindlers, and survivors who shaped the frontier and went down in pop-culture history: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp. We also talk Westerns: What’s his take on Tombstone? Deadwood? And which critically acclaimed Western movie made Bryan and Sarah bored out of their skulls? (Hint: It stars Brad Pitt.)

For a conversation ostensibly about the Old West, there’s an awful lot of talk about modern movies, books, and the craft of writing.

Also discussed:

* Sarah says: The Old West = BORING!

* Sam Colt’s pistol was initially a flop

* Honor culture, explained

* Why did Bob Dylan add a “g” to John Wesley Hardin?

* Doc Holliday was a … dentist in Dallas?

* “A man with that great equalizer: a gun.”

* Billy the Kid, the “most ambivalent” of the Old West gunfighters

* “Texans. We have a lot to answer for.”

* Lawlessness can be thrilling

* Wild Bill Hickok, the greatest fraud of the Old West

* Unforgiven is the ultimate anti-Western

* Comanches were not messing around

* When “whore” was a job description

* Jesse James, the first celebrity criminal

* Lonesome Dove is Texans’ War and Peace

* A big gush of love for author Beverly Lowry

* Sarah vs. Nancy on the movie Tree of Life: Pistols at dawn!

* The postpartum aimlessness that comes with finishing a book

* Remembering actor Graham Greene

Also, Nancy, Sarah and Bryan choose the Old West characters they’d most like to be (guess who chose “whore”?), the frontier’s go-to slur, and much more!

REMINDER! First Sunday Zoom hang this week! Sunday, September 7, 5pm PT / 8pm ET, link sent day-of.

OTHER REMINDER: Need advice? Have a story to share? Thoughts/feelings/playful recriminations? email us: smokeempodcast@gmail.com

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Didn’t happen this way, but great nonetheless: