How did we get tangled up in a knot of identity obsession, grievance, and one-upmanship? We can look to philosophers like Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw and, of course, Michel Foucault. And then we can blame it all on Tumblr! In his new book, The Identity Trap - A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time , Yascha Mounk discusses his theory of “the identity synthesis” and traces how the once niche views about race, sexual orientation, and gender identity went from margin...
Sep 25, 2023•1 hr 18 min
The ladies from Ask A Jew are back for their biannual visit. This time for the Jewish New Year! In this episode, we talk about the meaning of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and (since we apparently have to go over it again) why Orthodox Jews have to get their cars detailed before Passover. (It’s true.) We also talk about mikvehs. Because you know you were wondering. If you only ever listen to one conversation about mikvehs, let it be this one. Most importantly, we revisit our evergreen topic: the wor...
Sep 18, 2023•1 hr 19 min
It seems like everywhere you look, men are struggling to find a sense of meaning and purpose. In fact, men are just getting kind of weird. On the other side of the equation, many women say they can’t find a “good man” who meets their expectations. Enter Christine Emba, Washington Post columnist and author of the 2022 book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation . In a recent WaPo essay , she discusses the crisis of masculinity and where men are looking for models of masculinity, from Jordan Peterson to An...
Sep 11, 2023•1 hr 10 min
To kick off The Unspeakable’s fourth season, comedian Maria Bamford joins Meghan for a conversation about many unspeakable topics. Maria’s new book, Sure I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir Of Mental Illness And The Quest To Belong Anywhere is a rollicking homage to the power of groups. From 12-step meetings to game nights to dog parks, Maria loves gatherings of people. But she’s also spent a lifetime struggling with mental health issues that make her anxious around people. In this conversation, Maria...
Aug 31, 2023•1 hr 16 min
In the latest installment of her unofficial series about death and dying, Meghan talks with writer and palliative care physician Dr. Sunita Puri. Sunita is the author of That Good Night, Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour and has written about end-of-life issues in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, and elsewhere. In this conversation, Sunita discusses the ways that medical advancements can cloud the vision of doctors and patients alike when it comes to being realistic –and even humane...
Jul 26, 2023•1 hr 28 min
Even if you don’t recognize Tim Kreider’s name, there’s a good chance you’ve read his work. In addition to his two collections of essays, We Learn Nothing and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You , he’s published many short essays in the New York Times opinion section, nearly all of which seem to go viral. The first such essay was The Busy Trap, published more than 10 years ago, wherein he called out Americans’ perpetual condition of being “crazy busy” as “a kind of existential reassurance, a he...
Jul 17, 2023•1 hr 21 min
Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of five novels and has published essays and short stories in outlets such as The New Yorker, N+1, and The New York Times Book Review. She visits The Unspeakable this week to talk about "My Adventures In Deconstruction," her essay in the June 9, 2023 edition of The New Yorker. On the surface, the essay recounts a romantic relationship with a college professor 15 years her senior, back in 1990. But the essay goes much deeper than that, mapping the main story onto th...
Jul 10, 2023•1 hr 3 min
It’s been exactly a year since the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade, thereby eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion. Last May, shortly after that decision was leaked to the press, bioethicist and legendary abortion rights activist Frances Kissling visited The Unspeakable to talk about the likely implications of this ruling. Now Frances is back to reflect on what’s transpired since then, whether things are better or worse than many people feared, and what the down...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 22 min
This week, Meghan welcomes evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman. Diana’s areas of research include human sexuality, the effect of hormones on behavior, and how “disgust” (the condition of being disgusted) is an evolutionary adaptation, especially for women. In this conversation, Diana talks about why the field of evolutionary psychology is subject to such much bad-faith misapplication but why uncomfortable truths about human mating patterns can nonetheless offer important lessons. She and ...
Jun 19, 2023•1 hr 35 min
This week, The Unspeakable welcomes back William Deresiewicz, who enters the pantheon of three-time guest! Bill was first on the pod in the fall of 2020 talking about his book The Death of the Artist and he came back last year to talk about his book of collected works The End of Solitude. He returns now to discuss some articles he published recently about the state of human creativity and the future of creative output. In an article for Tablet called We’re All Bored Of Culture, Bill explores how...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 18 min
Sandra Martin is an award-winning journalist, literary critic, former obituary writer, and the author of A Good Death: Making the Most of Our Final Choices. In that book, which she describes as a social history of the right-to-die movement, Sandra writes about how law, religion, medicine, and social norms can affect people’s bodily autonomy and end-of-life choices in unpredictable and sometimes devastating ways; she also tells some amazing stories. In this conversation, she talks with Meghan abo...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 12 min
Fan favorite Sarah Hepola is back! Sarah has visited The Unspeakable to talk about everything from alcoholism to #MeToo to the changes in the media landscape and literary world. Today she returns to discuss a recent solo episode she recorded for Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em, the podcast she co-hosts with journalist Nancy Rommelmann. In that episode, Sarah reflected on a semester spent teaching literature and writing to college undergraduates in Dallas, Texas, where she lives. Contrary to public assu...
May 24, 2023•2 hr 8 min
Ever since it was introduced in the early 1960s, the birth control pill has been inextricable from the concept of women’s liberation, body autonomy, and just about everyone’s sense of personal freedom and their own life choices. Holly Grigg-Spall, author of Sweetening The Pill: Or How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control, is in favor of all of those things. But she is also among a growing chorus of activists who believe that the sacrosanct nature of the pill discourages honest conversations a...
May 15, 2023•1 hr 10 min
This week on the podcast, returning guest Lionel Shriver talks about her latest book, Abominations: Selected Essays From A Career Of Courting Self-Destruction. A collection of her writings from outlets like The Spectator, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal, the book also contains some previously unpublished pieces a well as speeches and other public addresses, including a eulogy for her brother. Lionel is perhaps the consummate “thought criminal,” and in this conversation, she talks with M...
May 08, 2023•1 hr 10 min
We sometimes think of anorexia as an “old school” disease, now eclipsed by disorders such as cutting and similar forms of self-harm. But as journalist Hadley Freeman reports in her new book, the illness has been around for centuries and is still very much with us. In Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, Hadley tells the story of her battle with severe anorexia as a teenager and also investigates the causes, treatments, social factors, and lasting effects of the disease. In this conversatio...
May 01, 2023•1 hr 14 min
For more than 30 years, Jean Twenge has been studying how generational differences affect the workplace, family life, public policy, interpersonal relationships, and individual identity. Her research has been foundational in many of the current culture war discussions, including in Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s seminal book The Coddling of the American Mind . Jean is the author of seven books, including Generation Me and iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious...
Apr 24, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Stella O’Malley is a psychotherapist in Ireland who works with adolescents and their families. She’s also an author, documentarian, and speaker, but many Unspeakable listeners may know her from her podcast Gender A Wider Lens, which she co-hosts with therapist (and early Unspeakable guest) Sasha Ayad. This conversation covers aspects of the gender debates, but the main occasion for Stella’s visit is her new book, What Your Teen Is Trying To Tell You: Surviving, Thriving and Reconnecting Through ...
Apr 17, 2023•1 hr 12 min
ChayaLeah Sufrin and Yael Bar-tur hardly need an introduction, since this is their third visit to The Unspeakable! Last fall, the hosts of the acclaimed podcast Ask A Jew explained the meaning of Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Sukkot (or the “autumn holidays,” as Meghan calls them). Now, it’s the spring holiday, and Yael gives her version of the Passover story before ChayaLeah steps in and sets the record straight. ChayaLeah also explains some of the more unusual customs of Orthodox Jews during ...
Apr 03, 2023•1 hr 15 min
Ruby Warrington has staked out ground in a number of areas. She is the founder of the self-publishing platform The Numinous and also a leading figure in the “sober curious” movement; she coined the term and is also the author of the 2018 book of the same name. She visited The Unspeakable to talk about a subject very close to Meghan’s heart; the decision not to have kids. In her new book Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood, Ruby examines the rise in women (and men) ...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr 12 min
Stephen Marche is the author of six books, has been a columnist at Esquire, has taught Shakespeare at the college level and has contributed to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other publications. By any reasonable measure, his career is an unmitigated success. But seen through a different lens (for instance his own) it can also look a lot like failure. That’s true of just about every writer who ever lived and Stephen grapples with this dichotomy in new book, On Writing ...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr 12 min
Lincoln Jones is the director of the American Contemporary Ballet Company in Los Angeles, which he co-founded in 2011. Lincoln took an unusual path to dance and has an approach to performance and stage production that is worth discussing in its own right. But he came across Meghan’s radar because of his unlikely involvement in the new free speech debates. In this conversation, Lincoln explains how that happened (spoiler alert: he didn’t want to perfunctorily post a black square on his company’s ...
Mar 13, 2023•55 min
Freddie deBoer has a very popular Substack newsletter and is the author of the 2020 book, The Cult of Smart. He writes about culture and social politics and is known for his trenchant insights into mental health issues as well as his Marxist politics. He visited The Unspeakable to talk about a number of subjects, including a recent Unspeakable conversation about involuntary psychiatric treatment. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was 20, Freddie makes the case that it’s actually quite diff...
Mar 06, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Peter Moskos is a criminologist and sociologist who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He is also a former Baltimore City Cop, which was the subject of his award-winning 2008 book, Cop In The Hood. Peter was one of the very first guests on The Unspeakable, back in August of 2020, when he talked about the unrest following the death of George Floyd and the mainstreaming of police abolition messaging. A lot has happened since then and Meghan invited him back to reflec...
Feb 27, 2023•1 hr 12 min
Most people associate forcible detentions in psychiatric wards with barbaric practices of the past. But as Canadian investigative journalist Rob Wipond reports in his new book, involuntary psychiatric treatment is all too common today. In Your Consent Is Not Required, Rob shows just how little agency patients often have in their own care and, moreover, how the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry benefit from as many people as possible being classified as “mental patients.” In this ...
Feb 20, 2023•1 hr 10 min
This week Meghan welcomes back journalist Jamie Kirchick. Jamie was on The Unspeakable last fall with Mike Pesca and Virginia Heffernan, his co-hosts on the political analysis podcast Not Even Mad, which is currently on hiatus. Now, he’s here for a very different reason. On February 4, Jamie published an extraordinarily long and quite remarkable–even shocking– article about the case of the film actor Armie Hammer, whose reputation was annihilated in early 2021 when he was accused by a series of ...
Feb 13, 2023•1 hr
Richie Hardcore is an educator and public speaker based in New Zealand, where his work explores mental health and wellness, masculinity, and issues around domestic and sexual violence as well as addiction. He is also a former champion fighter, competing in professional kickboxing as well as the Thai combat sport Muay Thai. Richie visited The Unspeakable to talk about his work with young people about understanding their sexuality in relation to sexual messaging in the culture, particularly when i...
Feb 06, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Comedian Paul Gilmartin is the host of the long running podcast The Mental Illness Happy Hour, where he interviews all kinds of people–from celebrities to friends from his own support groups–about issues related to mental health, addiction, and personal struggles of all varieties. Meghan (despite being 100 percent sane) was a guest on The Mental Illness Happy Hour back in 2011 and she and Paul catch up on what’s transpired since then and how the podcast has evolved. Paul talks about what he’s le...
Jan 30, 2023•1 hr 14 min
Erec Smith is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania and a prominent voice in the effort to bring greater nuance to conversations about anti-racism and identity movements. Erec was on The Unspeakable back in July of 2021 talking about Critical Race Theory, specifically what it means and where it began. Now he’s back for a more free-ranging conversation about the state of racial discussions on campuses, in the workplace and in the culture more broadly. In this episode,...
Jan 23, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Tara Henley is a journalist and podcaster based in Canada who has become one of the most celebrated figures in the heterodox space there. She is the author of the 2020 book Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life, and was a longtime producer of television and radio for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She left the CBC in late 2021 and made a splash last January with the very first installment of her new Substack newsletter: a post about ideological conformity at the CBC and ho...
Jan 16, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Bridget Phetasy is a prominent podcaster, YouTuber and writer in the heterodox (or, as she likes to call it, politically homeless) space. Jeren Montgomery is a family therapist and also Bridget’s husband. As if Bridget didn’t already have enough projects, last year the two started Factory Settings, a podcast that explores how built-in biases affect the way people consume information and form opinions. They visited The Unspeakable to talk about how their own settings affect their relationship and...
Jan 09, 2023•1 hr 24 min
