Hi, and welcome back to The Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio, and welcome to my new time slot. The Carol Markowitz Show now airs Wednesdays and Fridays, so you can get this non political podcast, The Carol Markowitz Show on Wednesdays and Fridays, and then normally my political show that I co host with Mary Katherine Ham every Tuesday and Thursday.
The only day you don't get me is Mondays. Last episode, we talked about the New York Times article that blamed women who wanted to marry more accomplished men and men not accomplishing at the same rate as women for why Trump got elected. Of course, I talked about the stat in the piece that said that men only want women to earn up to forty percent of what they make, and I said that my husband sent me that stat and wrote that he'll set aside his and let me go to two hundred percent.
Ha ha.
But I noted that the real question is what happens if my two hundred percent goes to zero? Like what if my kids hate high school and need more of my time? Can I step away? That's a consideration that women make. I heard from a few listeners about this, and I want to highlight one email that I got. This one is a woman and she writes, Hi, Carol. I broke up with someone last year because he didn't make as much money as I did. But that wasn't
the whole picture. We are both in our early thirties and he is a great guy who just doesn't work that hard. It wasn't the money he was making at the time of our relationship, but that I worried about our future. I do want to take time off when I have children, and if I'm the breadwinner, I can't do that. It does sound unfair when I write it out, but I just couldn't see a life with someone who didn't strive to succeed as much as I tried to. I understand that, and I think that it's a much
bigger problem than an income disparity. The truth is that by your early thirties, you kind of know your earning power sort of. I mean, I say that, but I think a lot of things could change. You know, in the decade into your forties, A lot of things are possible. But if you don't work hard, you kind of know where you're going to go here, and if you're with somebody that you don't think is a hard worker. They're probably going to stay where they are, and maybe they're
happy with that, and maybe you're not. If you're going to stay financially where you are and you want to stay home with the kids, yeah, you kind of have to find somebody who makes a lot more money than you do or who's able to support you. And again, I think this all comes down to telling the truth to yourself. What I hear from women is that it's not that they need to have a man who's very rich.
It's just the vision they have for their future family is that they will be at least somewhat home with the kings. As I've said, in our family, I have a career, I'm very busy, but I'm still the primary caregiver. I'm the one who drops everything when the kid is sick, the one who runs the household and you know, shops and does all the things that you need to do to keep household running. Someone is going to be the person who does that, and it won't be generally the
breadwinner of the couple. It's less about actual salary than it is about time and what you want your family life to look like, I think that's something that couples should be discussing before they get married, or even before they get serious. Conversations about money are always awkward, but I think it's really important to lay out how you want your family life to function before you have that family. It'll save a lot of fights and struggles in the
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Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Megan DOWM. Megan is an author, journalist, host of The Unspeakable podcast, and founder of the Unspeakeasy, the first ever heterodox women's community, sometimes called the women's Shelter for the politically homeless. Hi, Megan, so nice to have you on.
Hi, Carol, it's great to be with you.
So I'm not politically homeless. I am just always been a conservative. I mean I've had times where I oppose the Republican Party, sure, but I have loved following what you're doing, and I think that it's really interesting and unique. Can you tell us a little little bit about the project, the Unspeakeasy.
Yeah, it's been a fascinating journey with this thing. I think I feel like political homelessness is kind of on a spectrum. I think, you know, even even if you don't feel generally homeless, we all have our moments. Sure, so this I often think of this as a as a group for women who hate group think, and that is a group for women who hate groups, hate groups, who sometimes hate other women. No, no, no, it's hilarious because I'm the last person who ever thought they would
start a women's community. I've always been I've been an anti group sort of person. But you know, I've been writing, as you know, about culture war issues for a long time, you know, sort of throughout my career in a lot of ways. No, when my book The Problem with Everything came out in twenty nineteen, I got a lot of pushback from people on the left, but I also had a lot of people coming and saying like, oh, I
really relate to what you're saying. I always thought of myself as this kind of person, but I'm not identifying with a lot of aspects of this movement. Started my podcast The Unspeakable in twenty twenty. You know, the sort of origin story here is that I've always been a writing teacher. So I was teaching just regular writing workshops I always have, and I had people coming into my workshop.
It was not a political class at all, but I had women especially coming in and like not even wanting to write necessarily, they just wanted to have a place where they could talk about the issues that I talk about on my podcast and you know, I'm all about nuance. I was talking about the new gender movement and we were talking about you know, COVID stuff, and you know,
the sort of range of views and experiences there. And it became so clear to me that while everybody obviously experiences the effects of cancel culture, women were having a very particular kind of experience because they were being ostracized by other women, by their own friends, sometimes their closest friends, because they were not in lockstep with certain views. And
it wasn't only it wasn't only like inconvenient. It was heartbreaking, Yeah, And so I realized I needed to start a community for women who were experiencing this in different ways.
So is it just like all the canceled people hanging out together.
Or some of them are our normies? I mean, we have so right, So this is I mean, this is for everyone. So how it started is I assembled a group of about ten women that I knew from you know, different they had different kinds of jobs, different walks of life, they lived all over the country, and we went out. We went to Joshua Tree, actually we went out into the desert and just had three days of discussions. We
talked about everything. We talked about censorship and the arts, we talked about public health messaging, we talked about gender, and it was magical. There were no phones, we were not doing social media stuff. We were a range of ages, and it was like, we need to offer these for everyone. We need to have free speech vacations, right basically. So I started leading these and then we built an online community.
So now we have a private membership based online community and we have women of all ages, all backgrounds.
It go.
They start they're in their twenties, all the way up to their range of political views, and really the emphasis is on nuanced, off the record, private, honest, good faith conversations and it's fantastic. Actually, it's been life changing for me, and I think for a lot of our members.
It sounds amazing more with Megan Dome in a moment, but first, protecting our families and homes is essential, but are we truly prepared? Break Ins happen every twenty five seconds. Even with the security system, can it really keep intruders out? Layer your defenses to buy yourself time. Start with Sabers driveway alerts to know when someone's approaching, paired with the
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The thing that I ask people like you, and what I mean by that is people who were on the left, like comfortable maybe, but they decided they had to speak out on any.
Number of issues.
Why, Like what moved you to do that when you could have just been safe and comfortable and not bothered and not canceled and all of that on the left, Like what provoked you?
I just don't like bs. What can I say? I don't like being dishonest. I became a writer and a journalist and an essays because I wanted to explore ideas in an honest way, like that's why I'm in the job. And so just as a writer, it's been really disturbing to me to see people who got into this business because they wanted to think and they wanted to be authentic in their expressions and suddenly like that's the opposite of the job. So I just couldn't keep doing it in the old way.
Did you always want to be a writer?
Yeah? I'm really bad at everything else. I have no other skills. Although now that I've become an event planner in my well through doing the unspeakeasy, I sometimes I feel like I should have gone to hotel management school or something. It's not too late, you know, yeah, no, never too late, but yeah, I mean, just you know, the thing is it kind of is a great It's been a great thing for me because I love ideas, and I love bringing people together and I love to talk.
I mean, you know, and I'm curious if you have thoughts about this too, because as a podcaster and as like a woman, I mean, you're a columnist, you've been a journalist, you were in this world. The kind of heterodoc space, whatever you want to call it, the kind of free thought viewpoint diversity space is very male dominated.
I mean, you have obvious exceptions, women who are succeeding on extraordinary levels like Barry Weiss and people like that, but it's very very broish, right, And so part of the reason I started the Unspeakeasy is I was noticing that, like a lot of the women in the listener communities of these podcasts, they were in the minority. Like you go to a hangout for one of these things, and it would be like all dudes and maybe a few women,
and women really have very specific experiences around this. I meant, a lot of the women that come into the unspeakeasy always say they had a book club incident or something happening on Facebook, or something happening with their parent group. Like, you know, suddenly you're in your book club and it's like, oh wait, guys like I don't want to read, you know, white fragility, and suddenly you're thrown out, and women exercise
control with social exclusion, right. You know, they are sort of the the drivers of cancel culture, right, and it's really devastating. Yeah.
Absolutely. It's interesting about the heterodox movement. You're saying that it's male dominated. I think all politics. You know, when I was in my twenties and my girlfriends would say, like, how do you meet a man, I would say, get into politics. My two hobbies were politics and poker. I was surrounded by men. I was like hoping for more women to get into it. But I was like, yeah, play poker and get into politics and you'll be surrounded by men all the time.
Yeah.
So I think that's common across across all the not just heterodoxy, but in the conservative world, in the liberal world, I think it's just a male dominated sort of feel.
That's true. You should write a dating book. Yeah, that's my two tips. That's all they got, Like, I'm out of ideas never.
But it's interesting also about about dating, like how do these heterodox people find each other in the dating world. It's not quite as easy as marking conservative or liberal on a dating app.
Oh yeah, well apparently if you're on a lot of these apps, if you say that you're conservative, you're going to run out of options fast, right.
But you at least anybody who contacts you knows what they're getting. You know, nobody's going to be surprised, no element of like secrecy. It's all out there in the open, like, yeah, I'm a conservative and that's just what I am.
Yeah, I know, well, I always I keep saying there should be some kind of heterodox dating app. Even know, the word heterodocs is so terrible. I can't think of a better one. But yeah, there should be a sort of like unwoke. Yeah, I mean, but this is stuff we talk about in the community. I mean, a lot of our women, you know, we tend to be you know, there's a lot of gen xers, but like I said, we're all ages. So it's you know, the getting together with women, and I should say, like, you know, with
with our retreats. We've gone I think we've done like fifteen now, and they're small, they're captive, about sixteen people, and we go to beautiful places and just to sit in a room with like you have women in their twenties and then you have women who are much much
older and being able to talk about these things. It's like it really it's profound, Like you realize how infrequently we're around people who are like way older than us, for instance, or much younger and something like dating and relationships that I can really be meaningful, Like for like a twenty six year old to sit there and try to talk about what it's like to be on the apps and in this kind of hookup culture world with a woman who's like seventy five and has had a
totally different experience around that stuff, but also feels similarly alienated from the current culture and from her own friends. I mean, we've had women like who live in retirement communities that are so woke they're losing their minds, and women who just graduated from college and their college was so woke they're losing their minds, And there's like an incredible common ground there.
How do they find you well.
Often they find me well. They find me through my podcast, the Unspeakable podcast, which I started. I started in the summer of twenty twenty, summer of all podcasts starting, and a lot of them know me through there, just through my writing. And we have a you know, we have a website, the unspeakeasy dot com. And I mean, it's it's very word of math. I have not done really
any publicity. We have about we have about i'd say, five hundred members and that's just been you know, that has been through through of mouth, and that's starting to change. You know, in the community. We bring in speakers, we have book clubs. We have book clubs that you're not going to get kicked out of. Wow, I mean. And no white fragility, no, I mean. And you know, we often are able to bring in the authors. We've had
Lionel Schreiverer come in and speak with us. We had Carol Hooven, the evolutionary biologists who wrote the book t The Story of Testosterone. She joined us. Julie Bindle, who's a legendary feminist and she's a controversial person but has been very outspoken around the gender movement and youth gender transition transition. She's joining us soon, and it's just I think people hear about it and and they want to come, and you know it is there's there's a little application process.
We need to know who you are because some women are in there and they really feel very vulnerable, Like a lot of them have kids that have gotten caught up and gender stuff, and they feel very vulnerable in their community. They really really need to feel safe in the community. So I need to know who everybody is. And it's just been it's just been great. But yet, no, we don't advertise or anything like that. We're not advertising on the subway well with the dating apps yet.
Right, more with Megan Dome in a moment, But first, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews wishes you a blessed beginning of the holiday season as you gather with your family. Is grateful for the blessings that God has given us all, but let's also remember those who are facing unbelievable hardship in need of food, fellowship, and hope. That includes the people of Israel, who are threatened daily
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It's interesting you say that people who got you know, have kids, have gotten caught up in the gender thing. You know, they're feeling vulnerable and they kind of need you know, I hate to say safe space, but you know, we do all need safe spaces sometimes, because I think that the right has sort of misplayed that part of it with the with the gender stuff, like they're not being supportive enough to parents who are suffering. They assume
like all parents are, like we my kids. Trends I'm so popular are now and a lot of parents, I mean I knew parents in Brooklyn, New York and super left areas who are super struggling with their kid, you know, declaring themselves trands. The school obviously wanting to reinforce that, and there's nobody to kind of guide them or help them or say it's you know, I love your kid,
here's the steps you should take to help them. And so it's really interesting that you mentioned that and that you have that support for these people.
Yeah. Well, the reason that we think that all the parents are going, yay, my kid is trans is because those are the parents that we see on social media by definition, right, Yeah, and there are so many that are really scared. They're they're apprehensive, but they've also been judged, if not downright ostracized by their communities if they don't affirm. Yeah. I mean, that's a huge, huge issue in our community.
It's by no means the only thing we talk about, and we've got plenty of members who like don't care about this issue at all. It is something that brings people in. I mean, interestingly, we have a lot of therapists, we have you know, a lot of our women are therapists, and they are our therapists who are not necessarily like affirmative care, and they are worried about within the therapy
community being ostracized. They're they're really concerned about privacy. You know, we have even that we did internal pulling, you know, in the run up to the election, and you know, our members were actually pretty evenly split Harris Trump. I mean, it shifted around at different points, but it's amazing, like we are, we are divided almost straight down the middle, and we managed to get along. So rare, It's totally rare.
And I mean we we had some tense moments, for sure, but you know, we had this incredible you know, we have a zoom hangout. We have we have a hangout lounge. It's open all the time and people can pop into the Zoom. And we were in there on election night and you know, watching the returns came in and a lot of women were saying, you know, eight years ago, I would have been losing my mind. I would be hysterical,
I was crying, et cetera, et cetera. And now because of this group, I don't actually feel I feel calm, like I feel weirdly calm, like, I understand why people voted the way they did. These are human beings. I get their motivation. I see how much common ground we have and it's gonna be okay. And then they're able to like take this energy and bring it out into their real lives. So that's and that's been huge for people. Amazing.
Can you like take this this on the road and help other people calm down about the election?
I know exactly. I mean we are on the road because we have these retreats, and I will say, I mean, this is a women's community, and you know, I sort of explained some of the reasons for that, but we are starting to have events for men. We had our
first co ed retreat last summer in Chicago. It was great, although you know what was so funny the men were like weirdly reserved, like they were I think they were so afraid of being man's plainers or something that they were like they were really respectful, and I was like, men, you know, speak up, you can talk a little more. How often does that happen?
Were they mostly like on the left or right or I would say both.
I mean, really, you know, I will say that our members the vast majority of our members wanted neither Trump nor Harris, and so that's a lot of discussion. But we certainly had people who probably voted for Trump last time and voted for him this time, and we had people who shifted over. And it's really the thing is, it's like somebody can feel very much on the left with one issue and much more conservative on another issue.
I mean, that's what heterod actually means. It's like it's an a la carte kind of kind of a way of looking at things that I just think most people are, like they just hate they hate this bifurcation. It's so toxic. Fit doesn't them right, It doesn't fit like a lot of people like it's not really the way humans are supposed to organize their brains, you know what I mean, what do you worry about? I worry about people just staying so much in their echo chambers that they have
no grip on reality. I mean, it's already happening to see our friends melting down on TikTok and like these women shaving their heads, if anyone's even actually doing this, like I have yet to know if like these people falling apart on TikTok are actually real. Yeah, I'm really worried about like the mental health of people who don't actually know what's happening. Yeah, in the world, like they
really they have like this weird fantasy version. They're like as if we're all going to be rounded up and taken to Handmaid's tail land.
Yeahs if government could do anything that efficient, yeah, exactly would that they could?
No, I mean, I just there's there's a kind of like cosplay element to a lot of this, and it's very performative, and but it's that's what the algorithm favors. I mean, you know, as an independent media person that it's a lot easier to get clicks if you are hysterical. Absolutely, and that has never been my way. So I'm just worried about that dynamic reinforcing itself. So, yeah, that is what I worry about.
What advice would you give your sixteen year old self?
Okay, this is the advice I would give my sixteen year old self. I would I would change my name. I would change my last name. So there has been all this confusion about how to pronounce my last name, and I caused it, but I haven't I haven't Yeah, it was a dom as a down and that's a conversation for another time. Yeah, I wish I had just, well maybe when I was eighteen, just have a professional name, you know. Would also I would tell myself that I'm not nearly as fat as as I think.
I that's every since it's not fat at all.
We knew God were we domb? Oh? My god?
So what would you? What name?
Would you choose? Anything? I have thought of so many names, just you know, some some family name that's just easier. There's there's plenty of normal uh Irish family names in there.
So I mean somebody who's always had to spell my first and last name. Even when I had made a name, it was also unspellable.
I get it.
But then on the other hand, I'm like, it's interesting, it's not Smith. It's you know, not that there's anything wrong with Smith's me. Yeah, but yeah, I don't know. I feel like I would talk that sixteen year old Magan Dowmn out of changing her name.
Okay, all right, well that would be a good that'd be a good exercise. Yeah, I guess I would just uh, you know, I would just say to myself, you're not as messed up as you think you are, and I wasn't even you know.
Yeah, do all teenagers think they're messed up?
Or did you?
Well?
Especially now? I mean we felt that way and we didn't even have social media, right, we were wrong, we were Oh my god? Yeah yeah yeah.
So I've loved this. I love your group. It sounds amazing the Unspeakeasy and I encourage everybody listening to check out Unspeakable. It's your podcast, She's so fantastic. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Howkay they can improve their lives? This is so banal. I feel like I've given you the most projectic tips. Okay, the best ones. This is the best one here.
Like, the best tip I think that I've heard the most about is the very first, my very first episode, Buck Sexton said, read before bed, Read before bed, and everybody writes in like, oh you know that reading before bed really changed my life.
Okay, that's a good one. I'm going to say this. Get your car detailed. Get your car detailed, you know how like sometimes you feel like I'm want a new car, I'm sick in my car. No, no, no, all you have to do once a year, pay three hundred dollars. I don't know where you live, two hundred dollars, take
it in for three or four hours. They will basically give you a new car car that you take out will It will smell like a new car, it will be gleaming, you won't even recognize your own car, and you will have paid hardly anything compared to even thinking about buying a new car. And you'll be happy.
This is such a great tip. I'm actually gonna do this because my car is a mess. I've been needing a car wash.
I may as well just take it for detailing. Do it. It will change your life.
I'm ready to have my life changed. Thank you so much, Megan. This has been such a fun conversation. Check out her podcast, check out her events. I think this is such a cool idea that you're doing, and I encourage everybody to check it out The Unspeakable podcast. The events are called on Speakeasy. Thank you so much, Hagan, Thank you Carol, thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Market which show subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.