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This week, journalist and legendary feminist activist Julie Bindel talks about her new podcast series, Julie in Genderland, which explores the complexities surrounding gender identity, particularly from the perspective of parents of children whoâve become caught up in gender ideology. Julie discusses the role of social services and educators in shaping children's understanding of gender, the intersection of class and gender issues, and the parallels with social justice movements around the sex trade and surrogacy. She also reflects on her reporting of grooming gangs in the UK, linking it to broader issues of misogyny and systemic failures in protecting vulnerable girls.
GUEST BIO
Julie Bindel is a British journalist, broadcaster, author and a feminist campaigner against male violence towards women and girls. Her latest book, Lesbians: Where Are We Now? will be published by Swift Press in Spring 2025 and her new podcast, Julie In Genderland, premiered in September 2024.
Follow Julie on Substack.
Listen to Julie in Genderland.
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Stephanie Lepp is a video artist and producer whose work focuses on bringing together different viewpoints to arrive at a perspective that goes beyond âcommon groundâ and emerges as a true integration, or synthesis. She was on the podcast in July 2022 to talk about a project called Deep Reckonings. In it, she considered the cases of public figures whoâd responded to personal controversy in less-than-ideal ways and reimagined responses that would have conveyed genuine learning.
Now sheâs back with a new video series, Faces of X, which illustrates an argument using a single performer to act out the three parts of the thesis, antithesis, synthesis schematic. Those performers include Buck Angel, Liv Boeree, Magatte Wade, and herself.
In this conversation, I talk with Stephanie about why itâs so hard to check your confirmation bias (even â and maybe even especially â when you pride yourself on being able to do so), the difference between synthesis and âboth sidesism,â and why sheâs optimistic about the future of public discourse about complicated issues.
GUEST BIO
Stephanie Lepp is the founder of Synthesis Media, a production studio devoted to integrating perspectives into a bigger picture. In 2022, she debuted Reckonings, a narrative podcast that explores how we change our hearts and minds, and Deep Reckonings, a series of explicitly-marked deepfake videos that imagine morally courageous versions of our public figures. Her new project is Faces of X.
Watch Deep Reckonings.
Watch Faces of X.
Listen to Stephanie Leppâs previous interview on The Unspeakable.
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To doomers and nihilists, the whole world is a joke â and itâs not even funny. Writer Neal Pollack may be a natural skeptic, but he thinks thatâs nonsense and he returns to the podcast to talk about better living through laughter (and not in a âlive, love, laughâ kind of way). He discusses his various careers â professional writer, professional poker player, three-time Jeopardy champion â his thoughts on COVID-19 lockdowns, the culture of Austin, and his recent battle with sofa dermatitis.
Most importantly, he talks about his upcoming course for The Unspeakeasy School of Thought, Writing Humor in Humorless Times. Unlike most writing workshops, which limit students to the arduous activity of writing, Neal will also be available to teach students how to be funny on Twitter/X, TikTok, at dinner parties, or even while muttering to themselves while walking down the street.
GUEST BIO
Neal Pollack is the author of 12 semi-bestselling works of fiction and nonfiction, including the memoirs Alternadad, Stretch, and Pothead, the novels Jewball, Keep Mars Weird, Edge of Safety, and Never Mind the Pollacks, and the cult short-fiction classic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature. His âGreatest Living American Writerâ satire pieces have appeared in McSweeneyâs, Salon, The Federalist, The Spectator, and the Jewish Daily Forward/. He is a three-time Jeopardy! champion, a certified yoga instructor, a semi-professional poker player, a Generation X legend, and the editor-in-chief of Book and Film Globe.
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If you have a pet, youâve probably wondered lately what in the world has happened to veterinary medicine. Why is it so expensive? Why is it so hard to get an appointment? And why, despite all of that, do domestic animals seem to have more health problems than ever?
In this conversation, financial reporter Helaine Olen, a longtime dog owner and author of the April 2024 Atlantic article Why Your Vet Bill Is So High, explains how a combination of advancing technologies, private equity, and let's face it, people being really, really attached to their pets have made it costlier and more complicated than ever to own a pet.
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Helaine Olen is Managing Editor at the American Economic Liberties Project and a contributing columnist for MSNBC.com. She is the author of Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry and a co-author of The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesnât Have to Be Complicated. A former columnist for The Washington Post opinion page and Slate, her work has also appeared in numerous other publications, including The Atlantic, where Why is Your Vet Bill So High appeared.
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This interview with Kat Timpf is free to all subscribers. To hear bonus conversations and get early access to other episodes, become a paying subscriber here.
Meghan interviews Kat Timpf, Fox News analyst and co-host of Gutfeld, about her new book "I Used to Like You Until... (How Binary Thinking Divides Us)." They discuss Katâs education and early political evolution, her frustrations with ideological tribalism, and her thoughts about red-pilled manosphere discourse regarding dating, mating, and female fertility.
GUEST BIO
Kat Timpf is a writer, comedian, and television personality. Sheâs currently the co-host of âGutfeld!â on Fox News weeknights at 10 p.m. and a Fox News analyst. Sheâs also the author of the New York Times bestsellers "You Canât Joke About That: Why Everything is Funny, Nothing is Sacred, and Weâre All in This Together," and "I Used To Like You Until... (How Binary Thinking Divides Us).â
Follow Kat Timpf on Twitter and Instagram.
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Over the last decade, Planned Parenthood has become one of the countryâs leading providers of gender transition hormones for young adults, according to insurance claim data. In August, journalist Jennifer Block published an article in The Free Press entitled âHow Did Planned Parenthood Become One of the Countryâs Largest Suppliers of Testosterone?â The article follows the story of a teenager who visited her local Planned Parenthood and was fast-tracked into medical transition and then surgery that she almost immediately regretted. In this conversation, Jennifer talks about how this happened, why the public has been slow to realize it, and how to find an intellectual consistency between supporting abortion rights and opposing medicalized gender transition for young people.
GUEST BIO
Jennifer Block is an independent journalist who writes frequently about health, gender, and contested areas of medicine. Her articles and commentary have appeared in The Boston Globe, Romper, The BMJ, The Cut, The New York Times, The Baffler, **and many other outlets. Her 2007 book Pushed, led a wave of attention to the national crisis in maternity care and is a foundational text in university curricula and birth worker training. Sheâs also the author the 2019 book Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution.
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Meghan interviews housing market analyst Melody Wright about why purchasing a home has reached historic levels of unaffordability. A rising star on YouTube, Melody was on the front lines of the mortgage implosion during the Great Financial Crisis and has devoted the last few years to scratching beneath the surface of the affordability crisis in housing. Though low inventory remains a problem in many regions, you might be surprised to learn that in many parts of the country, new construction has saturated the marketplace and countless homes are sitting empty. Melody talks about how this happened, why the media doesnât report more on it, and where she sees similarities to the run-up to the housing market crash in 2008. Plus, fun fact: did you know that the word mortgage is derived from the very old French legal term âdeath pledge?â
ABOUT THE GUEST
Follow Melody on Substack.
Melody on YouTube.
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Writer, performer, and Gen-X legend Moon Unit Zappa joins Meghan for a conversation about her new memoir Earth To Moon. She talks about being the eldest child of iconoclastic musician Frank Zappa, growing up in the chaos of the 1970s and 80s rock-and-roll scene, the cultural phenomenon of the hit single Valley Girl, fissures within the Zappa family, and forging a life and career in the todayâs creative economy.
GUEST BIO
Moon Unit Zappa was born in 1967 to legendary musician Frank Vincent Zappa and his second wife, Gail Zappa. At the age of 14, she appeared in Frank Zappaâs career-defining song, âValley Girl,â which later helped jump-start Moonâs career. Since then, Moon has firmly established herself as a writer, actress, comedian, artist, podcaster, and tea merchant.
Buy the book.
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This is a PREVIEW of a PREMIUM episode for paying subscribers, Meghan welcomes back writer and physician Dr. Sunita Puri, a palliative care specialist who writes with exquisite care and candor about end-of-life issues. Sunita was on the podcast a little over a year ago talking about the hidden harms of CPR, which she wrote about for The New Yorker. Sheâs back to discuss two articles she published this summer. One in The Atlantic about how doctors deal with terminal illness in younger patients and another in The Wall Street Journal about dying at home. Weâve been taught to assume that a good death means dying at home, or at least not in a hospital, but Sunita points out that this can be better in theory than in practice. This is another extraordinary conversation with one of listenersâ favorite guests.
GUEST BIO
Dr. Sunita Puri is a palliative care physician and author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a literary memoir recounting her journey to the practice of palliative care and what it means to help people find dignity, purpose, and comfort when facing serious illnesses and the end of life. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles times, Tricycle, The Wall Street Journal and Slate. This fall, she is joining the UC Irvine Medical Center faculty as the director of the inpatient palliative care service and associate professor of medicine. She was recently awarded a one-month Bogliasco fellowship for exceptional artists and has received writing residencies from Yaddo and MacDowell, among other places.
The Atlantic, The Silence Doctors Are Keeping About Millennial Deaths
The Wall Street Journal, Most People Are Dying At Home. Is That A Good Thing?
Sunitaâs previous interview on The Unspeakable.
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The Unspeakable is moving to video! Hereâs the scoop, in case you missed it.
The Unspeakableâs debut video guest is one of Meghanâs favorite people to talk with about our confounding political times: journalist and podcaster Tara Henley. Since visiting the pod back in early 2023, Taraâs podcast and Substack newsletter Lean Out has become a major force in the heterodox space. She is one of the finest interviewers and sharpest thinkers working today.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Meghan and Tara talk about how to avoid the phenomenon of audience capture, how to think about J.D. Vance, how to find the joy (or at least the fun memes) in Kamala Harris, and whatâs behind the mating crisis, the masculinity crisis, the economic crisis, and any number of other crises (not necessarily in that order).
This conversation was recorded on August 15, 2024. The video will appear on The Unspeakableâs YouTube channel soon.
Tara will be a guest speaker at the October 21-24 Unspeakeasy retreat in Woodstock, NY. There still may be spots left. Find out more here.
Follow Tara on Substack.
GUEST BIO
Tara Henley is a Canadian journalist and the author of the national bestseller Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life. Her 22-year career spans TV, radio, online media, magazines, and newspapers. She has worked as a producer on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight and on current affairs morning and afternoon shows at CBC Radio, in both Vancouver and Toronto. Henley's CBC radio documentary "39" was a finalist at the New York Festivals International Radio Program Awards. A former books columnist for The Toronto Star, and for Metro Morning, Toronto's top morning radio show, Henley is a contributor to the books section of The Globe and Mail. Her writing has appeared in outlets across Canada and around the world, and she now publishes a popular current affairs Substack newsletter, Lean Out. Her weekly interview podcast of the same name has listeners in more than 150 countries and 5,000 cities worldwide.
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This week, something a little different: Meghan is the interview subject! In a special end-of-summer episode, The Unspeakable pairs up with Michael Callahan and his podcast Where We Go Next. In a conversation that Michael posted earlier this month, he and Meghan talk about how to avoid audience capture in the âheterodox space,â how the term âcommunityâ got tacked onto nearly everything, and how the concept of the âliterary citizenâ replaced the role of the working writer or even public intellectual. They vent their shared frustration with the marketing demands of algorithms, particularly the YouTube algorithm and its clickbait thumbnail images, and wonder whether Meghanâs Reddit haters are correct that sheâs really just a conservative cosplaying as an old-school liberal. Finally, Meghan discusses the origins and current iteration of The Unspeakeasy and Michael reminds her that in her first visit to his podcast, back in July 2021, she declared that she would never launch a freethought community â oops!
Relevant LinksOriginal Where We Go Next episode
I Wasnât Canceled. I Was Problematized.
Who Killed Creative Writing?
Was Alice Munro An Art Monster?
About Michael CallahanMichael Callahan is an award-winning commercial director and the host of Where We Go Next, where he has deep-dive conversations with accomplished people doing fascinating things. He enjoys vacationing in the Pacific Northwest, hanging out with his awesome wife, and taking far too many photos of their 3 dogs.
Instagram: @wwgnpodcast
Follow WWGN on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts or Audible.
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In the latest installment of Casual August, writer and educator Larissa Phillips joins the pod to respond to the August 2 interview with Vanessa Grigoriadis, who theorized that childless cat ladies were secretly happier than moms, especially moms raising young children while caring for aging parents. Larissa related to much of what Vanessa said, but she had several things to add, including her later-in-life recognition that early motherhood makes more sense than later-in-life motherhood â and, whatâs more, single motherhood might not be as cool and easy as 1980s media made it out to be.
A GenXer who grew up steeped in second-wave feminism, Larissa now advises her 20-something daughter to marry and start a family early, which is pretty much the opposite of what her own mom advised. In this conversation, Larissa (who was a guest on A Special Place In Hell back in March) explores how her thinking evolved, why her friends were shocked when she got pregnant at 29 (practically a teen mom!), how divorce rates in the 1970s and 80s made an entire generation wary of the nuclear family, and why she invokes Jordan Peterson when she explains to her daughter that being âhigh valueâ has a lot to do with being young. She and Meghan also wrestle with whether the hyper-professional, hyper-independent feminist ethos internalized by Gen Xers and millennials will end up being something of a blip in time in the history of civilization.
Larissa also talks about joining The Unspeakeasy at its upcoming retreat in Woodstock, NY this October.
GUEST BIO
Larissa Phillips is the founder and director of the Volunteer Literacy Project, a NPO that teaches reading to adults using a phonics-based curriculum. She also runs an educational program on her family farm in Upstate New York. She can be found on X (@larissaphillip) and Instagram (@honeyhollowfarmstay) and Substack, where she writes about farming, animals, and life as a lapsed Progressive living in Trumpland.
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âWhile some might argue that collaboration with fascists, TERFs, and racist edgelords does not constitute endorsement of violent and anti-liberation views, we disagree. There can be no innocent collaboration with such people.â
That was the official statement from Hiding Press, the small, independent poetry press that was set to publish writer Emmalea Russoâs fourth book of poetry. But when word got out that she had been âcollaboratingâ with the wrong people, they canceled the book. By collaborations, they meant writing for certain journals and appearing as a guest on certain podcasts. By alt-right or fascist-adjacent they were talking about magazines like Compact, a publication that, according to its mission statement, âseeks a new political center devoted to the common good.â
In this conversation, Emmalea talks about the âchain of contaminationâ that causes panic and public disassociation with anyone even remotely associated with someone designated as âbad.â She also discusses her forthcoming novel, Vivienne, which is about a septuagenarian artist whoâs canceled online over rumor and innuendo.
GUEST BIO
Emmalea Russo is a writer and astrologer. Her books of poetry are G, Wave Archive, Confetti, and Magenta. Recent work has appeared in Artforum, BOMB, Spike Art Magazine, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Her first novel, Vivienne, is forthcoming in September.
Read her piece in Compact Magazine, Purity Policing Is Poison To Poetry.
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Meghan, a childless dog lady, had a whole other episode cued up for this week when her friend Vanessa Grigoriadis called her with a surprising observation. According to Vanessa, moms today are so stressed out (even miserable) that childless women are getting the last laugh. This is especially true for women in midlife who started families in their late 30s to early 40s and are now saddled with elder care for aging parents while also having school-aged children. Does she have a point?
In this conversation, Meghan gloats over her utterly carefree lifestyle while Vanessa lays out what the public discourse around J.D. Vanceâs âchildless cat ladyâ comment is getting wrong. An award winning magazine journalist who has done deeply reported features on subjects like the NXIVM cult and whose countless celebrity profiles have included Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift, Vanessa also talks about charting a new professional path (podcasts, naturally) in an economy thatâs quickly becoming oversaturated.
GUEST BIO
Vanessa Grigoriadis is a veteran longform journalist and a co-founder of Campside Media. She is the co-creator of the Chameleon and Fallen Angel podcasts, and hosted New York Magazineâs Tabloid series on Ivanka Trump. She is a National Magazine Award winner, and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair. Her book, Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus, was published in 2017.
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This is a premium episode with Jamie Reed.This episode is available to paid listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here.
Jamie will be in The Unspeakeasy as part of our Unspeakers Series on Aug. 7, 2024. Apply to join The Unspeakeasy now if you want the chance to meet her in a private, off-the-record hangout.
âWhat is happening to scores of children . . . is morally and medically appalling.â Those were the words of Jamie Reed, a former case manager at a gender clinic in a major American childrenâs hospital, when she burst on the scene via a Free Press article in February 2023. Since then, she has become known as the most prominent whistleblower in the effort to put the brakes on medicalized gender transition for kids.
In this conversation, Jamie talks about what the last year and a half has been like for her, what the public still needs to understand about this issue, and why doctors and other medical providers are continuing to misrepresent their treatment protocols. She discusses how institutions serving the most vulnerable kids, including foster care systems (where large numbers of kids now identify as trans), have adopted affirmative care models and explains what itâs like to
Testify before state legislatures about restricting access to non-evidence-based gender-affirming care. As a self-described âqueer woman whoâs married to a transgender person and is politically to the left of Bernie Sanders,â itâs the last thing she ever thought sheâd be doing. Now itâs her lifeâs work.
GUEST BIO
Jamie Reed is one of the first public whistleblowers from a pediatric gender clinic in the United States and is now the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the LGBT Courage Coalition, an American-based non-profit of LGBT adults seeking to reform youth gender medicine. She has spoken at numerous conferences including Genspect: The Bigger Picture in Colorado, at the International Perspectives on Evidence- Based Treatment for Gender-Dysphoric Youth in New York, and Psychotherapeutic Process with Young People Experiencing Gender Dysphoria in Tampere, Finland.
Jamie is a gay woman and foster and adoptive parent of five boys. She holds a Master of Science in Clinical Research from Washington University in St. Louis and a bachelorâs degree in Cultural Anthropology.
Read the original story in The Free Press here.
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Between 2013 and 2020, hundreds of people who worked in the entertainment industryâfrom actors and writers to photographers, makeup artists, and security personnelâwere targeted by brilliant and bizarre scammer who came to be known as the Con Queen of Hollywood. The Con Queen impersonated famous female studio executives and convinced many of her marks to spend huge sums of moneyâoften on trips to Indonesiaâunder the pretext of doing research for film projects that would be their big break.
Journalist Scott Johnson covered the case for The Hollywood Reporter, eventually reporting that the Con Queen was actually a man named Hargobind âHarveyâ Tahilramani, a genius impersonator who was also trying to make it as an Instagram food influencer. Scottâs book about the case, The Con Queen of Hollywood: The Hunt for an Evil Genius, was published last year and a three-part documentary series based on his book premiered on Apple TV this past May. Scott joined me for a conversation about his years reporting the case and how he finally tracked Hargobind down in England in the early months of the Covid pandemic. He also talks about how reporting from wars and being the son of a CIA officer informed his reporting.
GUEST BIO
Scott C. Johnson is the author of two highly acclaimed books. The Wolf and the Watchman (W.W. Norton, 2013) was long-listed for the National Book Award, the PEN USA award and was named a Washington Post Notable Book. His second book, The Hollywood Con Queen (Harper, 2023) was given a starred review by Publisherâs Weekly and selected as an Amazon editorâs pick. Scott was a consulting producer of Hollywood Con Queen, a 3-part documentary series to air on Apple TV+ in the spring of 2024. He now lives in France with his wife and two children.
Buy the book
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We hear all the time that children are resilient â and should be even more so! But do divorcing parents overestimate their kidsâ resilience to justify their actions? Should âstaying together for the childrenâ come back into style? Returning guest Bridget Phetasy talks about her recent article for The Spectator about an aspect of divorce that rarely gets discussed: the ripple effects over decades as adult children and grandchildren are spread thin among multiple families and step-families. Bridgetâs parents, who had five children under 12 when they divorced, followed the logic that parental happiness is better for children than âstaying together for the kids.â But is that really true? Bridgetâs essay kicked off a huge conversation online and touched a lot of nerves (and ruffled a lot of feathers) and she and Meghan continue that conversation here.
They also talk about their shared desire to quit the content creator hustle and move to the woods. Also, Bridget apologizes to Meghan for a microaggression thatâs been haunting her, even though Meghan has no memory of it.
GUEST BIO
Bridget Phetasy is a Spectator columnist and contributing editor. She is also the host of the Weekly Dumpster Fire on YouTube and the Walk-Ins Welcome podcast. Follow her on Twitter, Rumble and YouTube, or join her community at phetasy.com.
You can read her article for The Spectator here: https://bit.ly/465I5yv
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Jennifer Sey has been an elite gymnast, a high level marketing executive at Leviâs, and an outspoken critic of protracted school closures during the Covid pandemic. That last role led her to become a prominent figure in the new free speech movement, and she fulfilled that role by writing a book and starting a Substack about her conscription into the culture wars. But her real skills are as a business person, so she decided to apply those skills and start a retail brand. XX-XY Athletics, which launched in late March, is an apparel line that sells athletic clothing for men and women but is branded around the idea of standing up for womenâs sports
Given the fraught politics around this issue, XX-XY may be the first âgender criticalâ retail business. But does it make sense to build a brand around a culture war issue? In this wide-ranging conversation, Jennifer talks about the legacy of corporate virtue signaling, the inner turmoil of wealthy executives who want to look like progressives, her attempts to get another job after being designated as problematic, and the day to day tasks of building a business. She also explains how HR departments gained massive power in corporations and why executives are so afraid of their young staffers.
GUEST BIO
Jennifer Sey is a corporate marketing executive turned author, activist, documentary filmmaker (we didnât even talk about that) and now the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics.
You can find her on her Substack here.
Check out XX-XY here.
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Are you relieved that Gay Pride month is over? Monica Harris, an author, attorney, activist, and the executive director of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) fought for LGBT civil rights in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, she finds herself dismayed by the current state of that movement.
In this conversation, Monica talks about how we went from Ellen DeGeneres to drag queen story hours, why gay rights organizations turned their attention to trans issues, and why she believes homophobia lies at the root of much of gender medicine. She also talks about the economic forces driving ordinary people to the ideological fringes, particularly young men who find themselves without job or relationship prospects.
GUEST BIO
Monica Harris is the executive director of FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She spent over a decade as a business and legal affairs executive at Walt Disney Television, NBCUniversal Media, and Viacom Media Networks. In 2011, she abandoned corporate life and moved with her family to Montana, where she serves entertainment clients remotely through her firm, Big Sky. Monica is a TEDx speaker, author, and blogger who advocates for balanced, common-sense solutions to systemic problems based on our shared values and goals. Her book, The Illusion of Division, is available on Amazon.
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âïž 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats â See where weâll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n
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Writer and podcaster Sarah Hepola returns to The Unspeakable to talk about love, sex, #MeToo, Harvey Weinsteinâs overturned rape conviction, her new job at The Dallas Morning News, her book in progress, and why she thinks local reporting will lead the way out of the media abyss.
GUEST BIO
Sarah Hepola is a features staff writer at the Dallas Morning News, the cohost with Nancy Rommelmann of the Smoke âEm If You Got Em podcast and author of the 2015 best-selling memoir Blackout. She was also the host and creator of the Texas Monthly podcast "America's Girls," about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Read her work at the Dallas Morning News here.
Listen to her podcast about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, âAmericaâs Girls,â here.
Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.
HOUSEKEEPING
âïž 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats â See where weâll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n
đ„ Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women: https://bit.ly/44dnw0v
đ„ Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: http://aspecialplace.substack.com
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