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This episode is about Shattered Glass, the 2003 movie portraying former New Republic writer Stephen Glass's fall from the heights of magazine journalism after he was exposed as a serial fabulist who routinely made up quotes, sources, key details, and more in his stories. We've both loved this movie for years, and thought discussing it would serve as a companion of sorts to our interview with Jason Zengerle about Tucker Carlson—and, of course, as a chance for us to geek out about it. After describing the basics of the plot and introducing the main characters, we explore the history of the New Republic under its then-owner and editor in chief Marty Peretz; its string of young, Harvard educated editors during the Peretz Era, who often had short, turbulent stints in that role; fact-checking and the mythos of objective journalism; the relationship between elite magazine writing and celebrity culture during "the end of history"; and more.
Sources:
Shattered Glass (2003)
Buzz Bissinger, "Shattered Glass," Vanity Fair, Sept 1998
Howard Kurtz, "Stranger Than Fiction: The Cautionary Tale of Magazine Writer Stephen Glass," Washington Post, May 12, 1998
Jonathan Last, "Stopping Stephen Glass," Weekly Standard, Oct 30, 2003
Pete Croatto, "Why ‘Shattered Glass’ Endures," Poynter, Jan 24, 2024
Martin Peretz, The Controversialist: Arguments with Everyone, Left Right and Center (2023)
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "Peretz in Exile," New York, Dec 23, 2010
John Cook, "Why Won't Anyone Tell You That Marty Peretz Is Gay?" Gawker, Jan 25, 2011
David Klion, "Everybody Hates Marty," The Baffler, Sept 13, 2023
Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (1996)
— "The Tao of Marty," The Weekly Dish, July 21, 2023
Alex Shultz, "Nobody Wants To Talk About John Fetterman And Buzz Bissinger’s Pricey Memoir Project," Defector, June 23, 2025
