The Unspeakable Podcast

This week, I’m talking with author Sloane Crosley. Best known for her humorous and existentially probing essays, Sloane’s latest book is a departure of sorts. Grief Is For People, a memoir, covers the year in her life following the death of Russell Perreault, a veteran of book publishing who’d been her boss before becoming her closest friend. A month before Russell’s death, Sloane’s apartment was burglarized by a jewel thief, turning her into an amateur detective as she attempted to retrieve family heirlooms while reckoning with loss across several dimensions. Sloane worked as a book publicist for many years before being an author herself, and in this conversation, she talks about how office culture has changed over the last decade, especially in the wake of #MeToo, and what it was like to work with famous authors like Joan Didion and Sandra Cisneros in the final glory days of publishing. Meghan and Sloane also explore the phenomenon of collective grief over animals that become symbols of something much larger: for instance, the response to the death a few months ago of Flaco, the Eurasian owl that got out of a zoo enclosure and flew around upper Manhattan for more than a year, captivating not just the New Yorkers who saw him in real life but people all over the world following his whereabouts on social media. GUEST BIO Sloane Crosley is the author of two novels and three essay collections, including the bestsellers I Was Told They’re Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number? Her new book is the memoir Grief Is For People. She lives in New York City. You can buy her new book here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

This week, Meghan welcomes Arielle Isaac Norman, an Austin-based comedian who has opened for Louie C.K., Bobcat Goldthwait, Tim Dillon, Joe DeRosa, Eddie Pepitone and Maria Bamford, among others. Arielle, who describes herself as a “politically non-binary lesbian,” has a new YouTube special, Ellen DeGenderless, in which she discusses gender identity, sexuality, pronouns, social issues, and pop culture. This conversation covers all of those topics and more — including Arielle’s friendship with Louis CK and her thoughts about his sexual behaviors and resulting cancelation. GUEST BIO Arielle Isaac Norman is an Austin-based comedian. Her new special, Ellen Degenderless, is now streaming on YouTube. Find her on Instagram at @ellendegenderless and on YouTube or Spotify at Politically Non-binary. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

This week’s guest is journalist Abigail Shrier. In her new book, Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up, she delves into why so many children, teens, and young adults have received mental health diagnoses over the last few decades. Is it because society is finally recognizing emotional suffering? Or is it because society has become irrationally fixated on the idea of suffering? Abigail says it’s the latter, and in this conversation, she talks about how mediocre clinicians, flawed research, overzealous prescribing of medications, and, above all, a cultural obsession with trauma and emotional injury are causing unnecessary misery. GUEST BIO Abigail Shrier’s new book is the best-selling Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up. She is also the author of the best-selling 2020 book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, which was named a “Best Book” by the Economist and the Times of London and has been translated into ten languages. She holds an A.B. from Columbia College, where she received the Euretta J. Kellett Fellowship; a B.Phil. from the University of Oxford; and a J.D. from Yale Law School. You can pick up a copy of Bad Therapy here. Read Abigail’s Substack here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

If you were in middle school or high school in the last couple of decades, there’s a good chance you were assigned Sherman’s classic young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, an epistolary novel with cartoon illustrations about a native teenage boy growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation who decides to attend a nearly all-white high school. The book is semi-autobiographical. Sherman grew up on that reservation in the 1970s and 80s and is a member of the Spokane Tribe. He is also arguably — or perhaps inarguably — the most significant native American writer of the last 30 years. Not only did The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian win the 2007 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, among other prizes, but his 2009 book War Dances won the 2010 Pen/Faulkner award for fiction, and his 1993 story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven was adapted into the popular and highly acclaimed film Smoke Signals. Best of all (for me, anyway), Sherman is teaching a class for the brand-new Unspeakeasy School Of Thought. It’s in a brand new genre: Writing Your Cancelation Story. In this conversation, Sherman talks about his career, his 2018 “cancelation event” (or at least its aftermath) and offers his thoughts on the state of writing and publishing, not least of all the recent incident wherein editors at the journal Guernica retracted an essay when the Twitter mob and its own staffers deemed it harmful, even “genocidal.” GUEST BIO Sherman Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, memoirist, and filmmaker. He’s published two dozen books, including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and was listed by the American Library Association as the Most Banned and Challenged Book from 2010 to 2019. He’s won the PEN-Faulkner and PEN-Malamud awards, and he wrote and co-produced the award-winning film Smoke Signals, which was based on his short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Visit Sherman’s Substack. Check out his upcoming course here. HOUSEKEEPING 📝 The Unspeakeasy now has writing classes! Learn more here. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

On podcasts devoted to free speech and so-called heterodox discourse, the 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind is probably mentioned more frequently than any other. Written by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and legal scholar and Greg Lukianoff, who now heads the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), it is effectively the bible of the Heterodox crowd. And now it’s a movie. My guests are husband and wife filmmaking team Ted Balaker, who directed the film, and Courtney Moorehead Balaker, who produced it. In this conversation, they discuss how they took a book about ideas and turned it into an engaging, poignant, and often very funny movie about mental health and how it intersects with higher education and campus life. They relay the stories of many of the young people featured in the movie and talk about the process of finding them. They also discuss how the movie ended up on Substack, where it’s making history as the first film to stream on that platform. You can watch the film here. GUEST BIO Ted Balaker is an award-winning filmmaker, former think tank scholar and network news producer.  He co-founded Korchula Productions, a film production company devoted to making important ideas entertaining, and Free Minds Film, which uses workshops and project-specific consultations to teach independent filmmakers how to reach large audiences. Ted produced the feature film Little Pink House and is the director of The Coddling of the American Mind, based on The New York Times bestselling book by Greg Lukionoff and Jonathan Haidt and the very first feature documentary presented by Substack. Courtney Moorehead Balaker is an award-winning filmmaker, adjunct professor of acting, and co-founder of Korchula Productions, a film production company devoted to making important ideas entertaining.  She also co-founded Free Minds Film, which uses workshops and project-specific consultations to teach independent filmmakers how to reach large audiences. Courtney wrote and directed Little Pink House, which stars Catherine Keener as Susette Kelo, the blue-collar woman whose fight against eminent domain abuse went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING 📝 The Unspeakeasy now has writing classes! Learn more here. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Alex Byrne. The first half of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here. Philosopher Alex Byrne spent most of his career innocently studying subjects like epistemology and metaphysics. But a few years ago, he became interested in — wait for it —  gender, and he became a “dissident” scholar just for exploring foundational questions. His book Trouble with Gender, covers a lot of ground. But above all, it wrestles with the linguistic confusion of gender. What does the word even mean? What did the philosopher Judith Butler (whose 1990 book Gender Trouble kicked off decades of debate and cognitive distortions) mean when she said sex was different from gender? What about social scientists like Anne Fausto-Sterling, who came up with the idea that there are five sexes? In this interview, Alex discusses all of that and more, including how the UK acquired the nickname "TERF Island,” whether “auto-androphilia” is a real thing, why autogynephilia isn’t technically a fetish, and why Oxford University Press changed its mind about publishing the book. (Their loss!) GUEST BIO Alex Byrne is a professor of philosophy at MIT and the author of Trouble With Gender which you can order here. Know someone who would love this podcast? Give a gift subscription. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Katherine Dee. The first half of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here. Katherine Dee is a writer, cultural commentator, and a phenomenally astute observer of online culture. If you want to understand the rise of the “tradcels,” the “girl boss” trope (and subsequent backlash), and how identity concepts like “otherkin” become connected to social justice politics, Katherine is the one to explain it. In this conversation, she talks with Meghan about how ideas on places like Tumblr found their way into our political discourse, academia, and even the retail space and they had a profound impact on young people’s psychological development, especially when it comes to dating and relationships. Katherine herself was so indoctrinated by online manosphere content and it’s the scarcity complex it engendered that she ended up marrying someone she met online after knowing him in person for three days. She also discusses why Taylor Swift is just the latest example of a powerful woman reframed as a sad cat lady, why the beauty standards of the 1990s were so destructive, and why New York City arts and media circles are incubators are terrible places to meet heterosexual men. (But very good places to be one.) GUEST BIO Katherine Dee is an internet culture blogger. Everything else is secondary. You can find her at default.blog. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING 📖 🌵Come see Meghan in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about her book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, her community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Rob Henderson. The first half of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here. If you listen to this podcast and others like it, you may have heard of the concept of luxury beliefs. It was coined by this week’s guest Rob Henderson. Rob holds a PhD in psychology, has written for lots of media outlets, and writes a popular Sustack newsletter about social issues and how they relate to class dynamics, economic forces, and personal psychology. He also has a brand new book, Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class. Born to a drug addicted mother, Rob spent his early life in the foster care system in California, living in seven different homes before finding a permanent placement. However, his adoptive family was chaotic, and Rob navigated a labyrinth of dysfunction before joining the military and eventually finding his way to the Ivy League. It was there that he noticed that many of his classmates seemed to hold certain ideas about the world at large, often in the name of tolerance, even though they held themselves to a much higher standard. From that emerged the concept of luxury beliefs which he discusses in depth in his memoir. GUEST BIO Rob Henderson is a Yale and Cambridge University graduate who writes extensively on human nature, psychology, social class, TV shows, movies, political and social divisions, and more on Substack. The term "luxury beliefs" was coined by him, inspired by his experiences at Yale. His book, "Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class," will be published in February 2024 through Simon & Schuster. Follow him on Substack. Follow his Twitter/X. Get his book, “Troubled” here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING 📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters. ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Lori Gottlieb. The first half of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here. Psychotherapist and writer Lori Gottlieb visited The Unspeakable in 2021 to talk about her bestselling book Maybe You Should Talk To Someone. She returns for a Valentine’s Day episode about finding love, staying in love, and what to make of all the social scientists constantly going on about how marriage and family are essential for mental, physical and even economic well-being. To that, Lori says, “well, obviously!” But she also asks “how are you supposed to find someone when our social systems are so dysfunctional?” Her own story involves becoming a mother on her own in her 30s (her son Zach is a budding Gen Z thought leader in his own right) and trying to balance her own dating life with childrearing and a busy career. In this conversation, she talks about how she tries to help clients who are struggling to find love, how honest talk about female fertility became taboo sometime in the 2000s, why dating apps are making things so much worse, and why age gaps in romantic relationships seem more prevalent than ever. She also explains why, for older daters, widowed people can make the best partners and, finally, why more singles should seriously consider hiring a matchmaker. GUEST BIO Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and the New York Times best-selling author of “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” and “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.” She is also a TED Speaker, the co-host of the popular "Dear Therapists" podcast, and the “Dear Therapist” columnist for The Atlantic. Listen to the last time she was on the podcast. Check out her website. Follow her on Twitter here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING 📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters. ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with John Vervaeke and Shawn Coyne. The first half of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here. Meghan has been threatening to do an episode on artificial intelligence, and finally she makes good. This week, she welcomes two guests: the philosopher, neuroscientist, and popular YouTuber John Vervaeke and the editor and publishing entrepreneur Shawn Coyne. They have collaborated on Mentoring The Machines,  a series of short books–technically, it’s one book in four parts–about artificial intelligence. Their aim is to offer a clear understanding of the implications of AI and to invite readers to think about their own participation in its development and how their own choices can move that development in a positive or negative direction. In this conversation, they explain what drew them to this subject, how they came to work together, and how worried we should be about computers destroying civilization. GUEST BIOS John Vervaeke is an award-winning professor at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series, “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis,” “After Socrates” and the host of “Voices with Vervaeke.” Sean Coyne is a writer, editor, and the founder of Story Grid. Learn about Mentoring The Machines. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING 📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters. ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Kathrine Brodsky. The first half of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here. Cultural critic Katherine Brodsky is an example of what Meghan likes to call “Heterodoxy 2.0.” She’s committed to fighting censorship and groupthink but is also mindful of not becoming an ideologue herself. Born in the Soviet Union, she emigrated with her family to Israel and then Canada and is acutely sensitive to signs of creeping authoritarianism. She now lives in Vancouver and writes about a variety of topics, including the arts, technology, and the recently emerging debates about free speech and censorship. In her new book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage—Lessons for the Silenced Majority, Katherine recounts her own cancelation event but, more importantly, interviews a range of people—including Katie Herzog, Winston Marshall, Stephen Elliot, and Peter Boghossian, to name a few—who have fallen prey to the online mob. In this conversation, we talk about what can be learned from a cancelation, what has become of the “IDW,” and how to move free speech discourse in a more positive direction, less grievance-driven direction. ** GUEST BIO For over a decade, Katherine Brodsky has covered lifestyle and entertainment stories for works like Variety, WIRED, Newsweek, The Guardian, Esquire, The Independent, CNN Travel, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy Magazine, USA Today, Delta Sky, Mashable, and more. She has interviewed many personalities, including winners and nominees of the Academy Awards, Emmys, Grammys, Pulitzers, Tonys, and even the Nobel Prize. You can read her work at her Substack here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING 📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Seth Kaplan has worked in developing nations throughout the world, studying how corrupt governments, crumbling infrastructure, and a lack of public trust can add up to what’s known as a “fragile state.” In his new book "Fragile Neighborhoods," he explores how these same dynamics can play out on a regional level in the United States. Reporting from struggling rural areas as well as poor urban neighborhoods across America, Seth discovered that people separated by even just a few miles can have not only dramatically different life experiences but vastly different life expectancies. The culmination of these factors is captured by the concept of "social fabric." In this conversation, Seth explains how he defines social fabric and describes what kinds of initiatives have the most success at bringing communities together and lifting people out of poverty and why gentrification, when done thoughtfully, can be integral to positive change. He also addresses the question of why cities on the West Coast seem far more prone to unrest, concentrated homelessness, and distrust of institutions than their East Coast counterparts. Finally, Seth shares his personal talks about what he looked for in a neighborhood when he moved his own family from New York City to another state. GUEST BIO Seth D. Kaplan is a leading expert on fragile states. He is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), and consultant to multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and OECD as well as developing country governments and NGOs. Visit his website. Get his book here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING 📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters. ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

**Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Ezzedine Fishere and Bernard Avishai, Dartmouth professors who teach a joint course on Israeli/Palestinian politics.** **The first hour and five minutes of this episode is available to all listeners. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.**  As university campuses have become sharply divided in the wake of the October Hamas attack and the ensuing war between Israel and Gaza, Dartmouth has emerged as a model for productive dialogue among students and faculty alike. This is due largely to the efforts of Bernard and Ezzedine, who lead by example in and out of the classroom and have recently been featured on Sixty Minutes, PBS, and elsewhere.  In this conversation, they talk about their approaches to teaching, the professional paths that led them to the classroom, and how to honor personal feelings while encouraging intellectual humility over reflexive emotional reaction. Ezzedine also discusses the limits of viewing political history through a colonial/anti-colonial framework and Bernard reflects on the complexities of Zionism and why he was so excited about the Zionist project back in 1968. GUEST BIOS: Bernard Avishai, a Visiting Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, has taught at Hebrew University, MIT, and Duke. He's a Guggenheim fellow and author of four books. A regular contributor to The New Yorker on political economy and Israeli affairs, he has also written for Harper's, The New York Review, The Nation, and New York Times Magazine. Formerly an editor of Harvard Business Review and KPMG's International Director of Intellectual Capital, his upcoming Harper’s cover story on Israel’s culture wars will be released on January 15. Ezzedine C. Fishere, a renowned Egyptian writer and academic, is currently a visiting professor at Dartmouth College, teaching Middle East politics and cultures. His vast diplomatic experience includes roles in the Egyptian Foreign Service; UN missions in the Middle East and East Africa; policy advising for the Egyptian foreign minister; and senior political advising in Sudan under Kofi Annan; a senior political advisor to the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) in Jerusalem; and heading the political section at the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv. ALSO: What Is Real? Eli Lake on Disinformation, Despair and Dead Ends in the Israel-Hamas War Travel Notes From A War Our Keffiyehs, Ourselves **HOUSEKEEPING** 📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on **February 29** at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters. ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

In a last-minute, new year’s special, Unspeakable regular ChayaLeah Sufrin stops by the pod to report on her recent trip to Israel with her family. Even though she’s been to Israel countless times, this trip was different in both expected and unexpected ways. ChayaLeah talks about the desperation of the families of hostages, the morale of Israeli soldiers, what Israelis think about America these days, and about visiting the site of the Supernovo Music Festival. She also explains (sort of) how the Iron Dome defense system works. Spoiler: it’s not Jewish space lasers. She also recounts a recent family trip to Kansas and reflects on how warmly her Orthodox family was greeted by locals. GUEST BIO ChayaLeah Sufrin is the co-host, with Yael Bar-tur, of the podcast Ask A Jew and Executive Director at the Hillel at California State University, Long Beach. Prior to Hillel, she spent 15 years teaching high school Jewish history and was the Education Director of Shul by the Shore. ChayaLeah has been married to her husband Boruch for 18 years and together they have 4 sons. Jewish education and building community are ChayaLeah’s two main passions - she also loves the New England Patriots. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Therapist Sasha Ayad was one of the earliest guests on The Unspeakable. Her interview with Meghan in August of 2020 was revelatory for many listeners and she has become a leading figure in the effort to discuss gender through a non-ideological lens. In this wide-ranging conversation, Sasha shares what she’s learned since then, what kind of data has emerged about youth gender medicine, and why medical protocols in Europe have changed even as the U.S. and Canada hold on to the “affirmative care” model.  Sasha gives some background on how highly theoretical concepts like the “gendered soul” got absorbed into medicine, why kids with gender dysphoria are likely to struggle with multiple mental health issues, and how parents can set limits while also supporting their kids. **GUEST BIO** Sasha is a Licensed Professional Counselor who works in private practice with teens, young adults, and families impacted by gender issues. Sasha is a well-known advocate for individualized, least-invasive-first approaches to treating gender dysphoria. She has developed a gentle but effective way of working psychologically with rigid beliefs, identity, and social influence.  In her private coaching work, she helps parents to feel better informed and more confident so they can navigate their child’s identity distress with more compassion, discernment and wisdom. Sasha is also the co-host of Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast and played a role in founding several organizations including the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, and The Gender Exploratory Therapy Association. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.  **HOUSEKEEPING** ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

🔔 Did you like this episode? Don’t forget to like, subscribe and leave a comment down below. ✌️This is a free preview. Upgrade your subscription if you want to hear the whole conversation: https://bit.ly/3LgpZ3A Is Civility Better Than Kindness? This week, author Alexandra Hudson visits the podcast to talk about her new book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves. Civility is one of those concepts onto which people project their own biases and even fears. On the surface, you’d think civility could only be a good thing. But it can also come with a lot of baggage. Those who call for greater civility are sometimes accused of diminishing the suffering of others, glossing over reasons for real anger, or practicing respectability politics. On the other hand, what’s so bad about respectability politics – or plain old respectability? In this conversation, Alexandra talks about her mother’s career as an etiquette expert, the meaning of classical liberalism, the difference between civility and politeness,why she loves Erasmus of Rotterdam, and why she thinks Larry David is the foremost defender of civilization today. You can upgrade your subscription here: https://bit.ly/3LgpZ3A ————————— GUEST BIO Alexandra Hudson is an award-winning journalist, author, and speaker, as well as the founder of Civic Renaissance, a newsletter and intellectual community dedicated to moral and cultural renewal. Her book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, was recently published by St Martin’s Press. You can read her Substack here: https://bit.ly/48huPXH ————————— HOUSEKEEPING ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class: https://bit.ly/3u9KBoF ✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats: https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

✌️This is just a free preview. Upgrade your subscription if you want to hear the full conversation: https://bit.ly/3LgpZ3A This week, Wall Street Journal Erich Schwartzel joins Meghan for a conversation about his December 2 article about social media super-influencers Rachel and Dave Hollis. After building a multi-million by branding their own happiness and authenticity, tragedy struck when their marriage ended in bitter divorce and Dave died suddenly of a substance overdose. Erich talks about his months of research into the story and reflects on why so many people want to be influencers — and why even more people want to be influenced. You can upgrade your subscription here: https://bit.ly/3LgpZ3A RELEVANT LINKS “Behind the Tragic, Instagram-Perfect Life of an Ex-Disney Executive” by Schwartzel for The Wall Street Journal (🔒): https://on.wsj.com/484qarW ————————— GUEST BIO Erich Schwartzel, a film industry reporter at The Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau, wrote “Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy.” Published in February 2022, the book explores China's growing influence on the American entertainment industry. It received accolades from New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Esquire. Prior to joining the Journal, Schwartzel reported on energy for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His journalism career began at a local paper in his hometown, Latrobe, Penn. ————————— HOUSEKEEPING ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class: https://bit.ly/3u9KBoF ✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats: https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

New York Times opinion columnist Pamela Paul joins The Unspeakable for a conversation about problematic opinions, obvious truths, the state of book reviewing, the problem with publishing, “feeling French” despite being an American, and much more. You can upgrade your subscription here: https://bit.ly/3LgpZ3A GUEST BIO Pamela Paul became an Opinion columnist for The New York Times in 2022. She was previously the editor of The New York Times Book Review for nine years, where she oversaw book coverage and hosted the Book Review podcast. She is the author of eight books, most recently, 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

This week, Andrew Sullivan joins The Unspeakable to discuss the evolution of LGBTQ rights and debates. He and Meghan explore how the trans rights movement intersects (and sometimes conflicts) with the goals Sullivan advocated for gay men like himself in the 80s/90s, such as marriage equality. They also discuss his views on the physical realities of transitioning and how the language surrounding “trans kids” and “conversion therapy” are being co-opted in potentially dangerous ways Andrew and Meghan also revisit messages from the AIDS crisis that inaccurately claimed everyone was at equal risk. Despite criticism, Andrew believes that moderation and reason will ultimately triumph over the impassioned, ideological discourse surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation. GUEST BIO Andrew Sullivan is a political commentator, a former editor of The New Republic, and the author or editor of six books. You can find his Weekly Dish newsletter here. 📰 Meghan’s 2012 Believer article about her 1996 New York Time Magazine article about HIV/AIDS public health messaging. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class. ✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024! 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

This week, I had a discussion with Eli Lake regarding the recent tragic attack in Israel and its repercussions. I haven't closely followed this topic over the years, so Eli's insights were invaluable and he politely tolerated some of my more goyishly clueless questions. He has worked as a national security correspondent and possesses extensive knowledge on the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict. We talked about the present surge of activism and the near-illiterate responses to Israel's attack on Gaza. We also touched on the irony of campus activists demanding safe spaces while condoning violence against Jews. In addition, we dissected the "decolonization framework" that is currently dominating the narrative and discussed how the social justice left is losing credibility due to anti-Semitic rhetoric. Guest Bio Eli Lake is the former senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast and Newsweek. Currently, he is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and a columnist for The Free Press columnist and host of The Re-Education podcast. Want to hear this and bonus conversations? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell. 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. ✈️ Join me on an Unspeakeasy Retreat.