This week, I welcome back Rob Henderson, the social psychologist, author, and commentator who coined the concept of luxury beliefs : ideas that confer status on the upper class while inflicting real costs on lower-income communities. Rob was last here in early 2024 discussing his memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class , which chronicles his journey through California’s foster system to the Air Force, and onward to Yale and Cambridge. In this conversation, we explore ...
Aug 26, 2025•1 hr 6 min
This is the full version of the Aug 4 episode, now available to all subscribers. Author, New York Times columnist, and superstar linguist John McWhorter returns to the pod to catch us up on what’s been on his mind now that the Woke Emergency is over . . . or is it over? We talk about how figures like Robin D’Angelo and Ibram X. Kendi have receded from the spotlight and then move on to more pressing questions topics, such as whether New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s “I vs me” confu...
Aug 19, 2025•1 hr 11 min
This week I’m joined by Alana Newhouse, journalist, cultural critic, and founder/editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazin e. Since launching Tablet in 2009, Alana has carved out a space for nuanced and surprising reporting on Jewish identity and the larger cultural questions shaping those issues, as well as the broader issues of our time. We discuss her 2021 essay, Everything Is Broken , in which she diagnoses systemic failures in medicine, media, education, and culture. Alana traces these breakdowns t...
Aug 18, 2025•23 min
This week, I’m joined by author Kelsey Osgood to discuss her recent book “Godstruck: Seven Women’s Unexpected Journeys To Religious Conversion.” The book, which profiles women who traded secular lives for religious communities such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, evangelical Christianity, Quakerism, Orthodox Judaism, Saudi-based Islam, and even the Amish faith, is fascinating in its own right. But we also discuss Kelsey’s previous book about her struggle with and recovery fro...
Aug 04, 2025•1 hr 16 min
September 3 in NYC at 6 pm, I’ll be in conversation with Lionel live at The Village Underground. Tix available here . Use promo code CATASTROPHE18 at checkout for a discount. Bestselling novelist and beloved (and occasionally be-hated) columnist Lionel Shriver returns to the podcast to talk about several topics, including her most recent novel, Mania . In that novel, she imagines a society under the grip of “mental parity,” a concept arguing that all individuals possess equal intelligence and no...
Jul 30, 2025•1 hr 32 min
This week, I’m joined by author Kelsey Osgood to discuss her recent book “Godstruck: Seven Women’s Unexpected Journeys To Religious Conversion.” The book, which profiles women who traded secular lives for religious communities such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, evangelical Christianity, Quakerism, Orthodox Judaism, Saudi-based Islam, and even the Amish faith, is fascinating in its own right. But we also discuss Kelsey’s previous book about her struggle with and recovery fro...
Jul 22, 2025•35 min
The next meeting of The Catastrophe Hour Book Club is scheduled for Wednesday, July 23, at 3:00 p.m. ET. We will discuss the fifth essay of the collection, Playlist of Tears. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET. The book club is for yearly paid Substack subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription at www.theunspeakablepodcast.com . About The Catastrophe Hour "One of our most important essayists . . . The Catastrophe Hour is proof that w...
Jul 17, 2025•6 min
This episode starts with a Very Special introduction in which I explain what’s been going on with the podcast over the last six months (lots of different offerings, which possibly caused some confusion) and talk about the ongoing challenges of the subscriber model. (Short version, please stick around!) I then have the great pleasure of interviewing evolutionary biologist Dr. Carole Hooven, who’s been a speaker at several Unspeakeasy events but never actually a guest on the podcast. As we approac...
Jul 14, 2025•1 hr 25 min
The next meeting of The Catastrophe Hour Book Club is scheduled for Wednesday, July 16, at 3:00 p.m. ET. We will discuss the fifth essay of the collection, Playlist of Tears. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET. The book club is for yearly paid Substack subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription at www.theunspeakablepodcast.com . About The Catastrophe Hour "One of our most important essayists . . . The Catastrophe Hour is proof that w...
Jul 10, 2025•8 min
In this episode, I speak with filmmaker Rachel Mason about her documentary L ast Take*: Rust and the Story of Halyna*, which explores the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust . On October 21, 20221, Alec Badwin, who starred in the film, pulled the trigger on a gun he thought was not loaded, killing Halyna and injuring director Joel Souza. Through the lens of grief, media spectacle, and justice. Rachel, a close friend of Halyna’s, offers an intimate perspective on the after...
Jul 09, 2025•30 min
The next meeting of The Catastrophe Hour Book Club is scheduled for Wednesday, July 9, at 3:00 p.m. ET. We will discuss the fifth essay of the collection, Playlist of Tears. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET. The book club is for yearly paid Substack subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription at www.theunspeakablepodcast.com . About The Catastrophe Hour "One of our most important essayists . . . The Catastrophe Hour is proof that wr...
Jul 04, 2025•7 min
The next meeting of The Catastrophe Hour Book Club is scheduled for Wednesday, July 2, at 3:00 p.m. ET. We will discuss the fourth essay of the collection, Species Of Grief. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET, beginning June 11. The book club is for yearly paid subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription. Species Of Grief was written in May of 2019 and appeared as one of my columns in Medium’s GEN Magazine. Want to hear the whole reco...
Jun 30, 2025•8 min
The next meeting of The Catastrophe Hour Book Club is scheduled for Wednesday, June 25, at 3:00 p.m. ET. We will discuss the third essay of the collection, Basically Dead. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET. The book club is for yearly paid Substack subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription at www.theunspeakablepodcast.com . How to Join The Book Club Yearly subscribers will receive a reminder email on Tuesdays. If you are only a mon...
Jun 19, 2025•8 min
In his new memoir, An Exercise In Uncertainty , journalist and editor Jonathan Gluck chronicles more than 20 years of living with multiple myeloma, an incurable but treatable cancer. He joined me to talk about how he’s coped with illness, why he chose this moment to write about it, and, most importantly, how he’s learned to deal with a condition all of us face to one degree or another: uncertainty. Jon explains the concept of “predemption”—a mindset that’s helped him find something positive, eve...
Jun 16, 2025•23 min
The next meeting of The Catastrophe Hour Book Club is scheduled for Wednesday, June 18, at 3:00 p.m. ET. We will discuss the second essay of the collection, Same Life, Higher Rent. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET, beginning June 11. The book club is for yearly paid subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription. To learn more about the book club and join, visit https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/p/the-catastrophe-hour-book-club Sam...
Jun 12, 2025•6 min
This week I’m joined by Caroline Fraser, author of Prairie Fires , the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of beloved author Laura Ingalls Wilder. Fraser’s latest book, Murderland : Crime and Bloodlust In The Time Of Serial Killers , is a notable departure from the world of sunbonnets and covered wagons. This time, she explores the proliferation of serial killers—figures like the Green River Killer Gary Ridgeway, I-5 killer Randall Woodfield, and, of course, Ted Bundy—who haunted the Pacific Northw...
Jun 09, 2025•1 hr 10 min
The Catastrophe Hour Book Club begins June 11 with a discussion of the first essay in the book, The Broken-In World , an examination of divorce, loss, and finding unexpected peace and camaraderie in a world that “can no longer support pretense.” The book club runs for 14 consecutive Wednesdays from 3-4 p.m. ET. We will discuss one essay per week To learn more about the book club and join, visit https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/p/the-catastrophe-hour-book-club About The Catastrophe Hour "One...
Jun 05, 2025•5 min
Alma Deutscher, often described as a modern-day Mozart, was a prodigy whose early accomplishments include composing a piano sonata at age six, a short opera at seven, a violin concerto at nine, and her first full-length opera at ten. At twelve, she was profiled on 60 Minutes, and in 2021 began conducting studies in Vienna with Johannes Wildner. Now 20, Alma has just written her first ballet score—a collaboration with Lincoln Jones, founder and director of American Contemporary Ballet (ACB) in Lo...
Jun 02, 2025•1 hr 5 min
This week, I share an essay from The Catastrophe Hour . There’s no audiobook available (yet), so I offer this reading of the final essay in the collection, The End Of The Personal. It’s a meditation on first-person writing in a world that seems to have overdosed on oversharing. The era of the personal is over. The writer sees this now. One day, she just gets it. Everything is personal so nothing is personal. The erosion has been a long time coming. First, the personal became political. Then it b...
May 29, 2025•9 min
✌️Upgrade your subscription if you want to hear the full conversation: http://bit.ly/3OJJRO9 🔔 Did you like this episode? Don’t forget to like, subscribe and leave a comment down below. [DESCRIPTION] You can upgrade your subscription here: http://bit.ly/3OJJRO9 ————————— GUEST BIO Peter Moskos teaches in the Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Moskos, a Princeton and Harvard-trained sociologist, is a fo...
May 19, 2025•1 hr 18 min
In this much-anticipated interview (at least by me), humorist and journalist Henry Alford joins me to discuss his recent bestselling book I Dream Of Joni: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell in 53 Snapshots . In a Joni nerd-off that may be unrivaled in podcast history, Henry and I talk about his research and reporting for this book, what he learned about Mitchell’s contradictions and complexities, why he thinks she might be on the autism spectrum, and, above all, why Mitchell’s music holds such a profou...
May 09, 2025•1 hr 13 min
Writer and podcaster Louise Perry returns to the pod to discuss her new book, A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, in which she takes ideas from her 2022 book The Case Against The Sexual Revolution and adapts them for teenagers and young adults . In this conversation, we pick up from where we left off in our 2022 interview , catching up on the evolving discourse around the winners and losers of the sexual revolution and trying to parse what’s going with the “online right” and its Little House...
Apr 24, 2025•1 hr 8 min
Journalist and political commentator Emily Jashisnky, host of Undercurrents and co-host of Counterpoints, is a 31-year-old Evangelical Christian from Wisconsin. She’s also (for my money) one of the sanest, smartest, and most principled voices in the information landscape these days. In this conversation, we talk about Emily’s philosophical and political roots, her college years during the height of the woke era, and her thoughts about the state of the Republican party (she considers herself a co...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 7 min
For the last several years, we yelled about the left eating itself. Is the right now feasting on the same poisonous meal? This week Meghan is joined by Free Press reporter River Page, whose February 19 article The Online Right Is Building A Monster , articulated a phenomenon she’d long observed but could never quite parse; the phenomenon of right-wing trolls making antisemitic and misogynist memes as well as other forms of rage bait in order to own the libs. River explains the origins and effect...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr 6 min
Recorded February 13, 2025 On my birthday, with my laryngitis almost gone, I share some audio reflections about my recent New York Times opinion essay about losing my home in the fire, my current housing situation, and my former housing blunders. Most importantly, I offer a sneak preview of my ironically-titled forthcoming book, The Catastrophe Hour. New York Times, Jan 31, 2025: The L.A. Fires Taught Me To Accept Help Earlier fire dispatches. January 9: The First 24 Hours — https://bit.ly/3CgZT...
Feb 18, 2025•17 min
February 10, 2025 edition Recorded December 16, 2024 Chloé Valdary was last on the podcast in May 2021, talking about Theory of Enchantment, an enterprise devoted to more nuanced and art-focussed approaches to DEI. She’s back to discuss what she’s been up to since then. A lot! In this conversation, recorded in December, Chloé talks about her journey from prolific tweeting to long-form writing and the impact of social media on mental health and creativity. She talks about psychosomatic work, the ...
Feb 12, 2025•24 min
It’s been three weeks since my house burned to the ground in the Los Angeles wildfires. Here are some thoughts on rent gouging, couch surfing, and the lifestyles of the rich and unhoused. A note on this photo. I took it from Farnsworth Park in Altadena on New Year’s Day, one week before the fire. That thing in the sky is the Goodyear Blimp hovering over Rose Bowl Stadium during the game. Earlier dispatches. January 9: The First 24 Hours January 16: The Immaterial World How to help? Become a payi...
Jan 28, 2025•18 min
In the hours of January 8, my house burned to the ground in the Eaton Fire in Altadena, CA. Here are some thoughts I recorded on January 15. How to help? Become a paying subscriber to this podcast on Substack. Or leave a donation in any amount in the tip jar. Housekeeping Visit The Unspeakable on YouTube. The Unspeakeasy has new retreats for 2025. Find out where we’re going. Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women....
Jan 21, 2025•15 min
I’ve lost my home. I am safe. HOUSEKEEPING Visit The Unspeakable on YouTube ! Unspeakeasy 2025 retreats . We’re going to Texas, Los Angeles, upstate NY and beyond. See where we'll be! Join The Unspeakeasy , my community for freethinking women.
Jan 09, 2025•12 min
This week, Meghan is joined by filmmaker, YouTuber, and “experience design architect” Topaz Adizes. He is the founder of The Skin Deep, an experience design created to foster connection in human relationships, often through innovative products and curated live events. In this conversation, Topaz discusses the evolution of relationships in the digital age, the importance of asking the right questions, and how he built a sustainable business model around his project, The And, a video series in whi...
Jan 09, 2025•1 hr 12 min
