Lean Out with Tara Henley

With J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, the economic populism that’s ascendent in the Republican Party is in the spotlight. To understand this set of policy concerns, there is no better person to speak to than my guest on today’s program, who has been influential in driving this agenda — and in challenging the economic orthodoxy on the right.

Oren Cass is the founder and chief economist of American Compass, and the author of The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

J.D. Vance was once a liberal media darling. But in recent weeks, since Donald Trump selected him as his running mate, the Ohio senator has been the subject of almost wall-to-wall negative coverage — in both the liberal press, and on left-leaning social media. But our guest on today’s program says that Vance is a complex figure, and one we should take a closer look at.

Zaid Jilani is the freelance American journalist behind the Substack newsletter The American Saga. His recent essay for Compact Magazine is “Why the Left Gets J.D. Vance Wrong.”

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Given the state of our politics right now, it is easy to feel hopeless. But our guest on this week’s program says things are not as bleak as they seem, that people want to heal our deep societal divisions, and that the answer to bridging these divides lies in rebuilding civic life — one conversation at a time.

John Wood, Jr. is a former nominee for congress, a columnist for USA Today, and a national ambassador for Braver Angels. Its new campaign is called American Hope.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

America is in the grips of polarization, and the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump has underlined the potential for an escalation in political violence. It has never been more important for the media to complicate dominant narratives and resist oversimplification. Today, a journalist I admire returns to the program to model what that looks like in practice, bringing us a nuanced story about tensions within the conservative movement over school vouchers.

Alec MacGillis is an award-winning American journalist, and a reporter for ProPublica. He’s also the author of Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

This summer, the glamorization of divorce has reached its apex. There are divorce rings, divorce parties, divorce albums, and divorce memoirs — all portraying the act of walking away from a marriage as inherently empowering for women. But our guest on today’s program argues that so much of the current divorce discourse is just narcissism disguised as feminism. 

Kat Rosenfield is an American novelist, cultural critic, and podcaster – and a columnist for The Free Press. Today, we discuss her essay for the online outlet, titled “Does Divorce Make You Hotter?”

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

It’s an election year in the United States. And so far, the media’s focus has not been on working people and what policies they want to see from their leadership. But our guest on today’s program has travelled across America interviewing working class voters — and she shares her insights on what the media is missing. 

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the opinion editor of Newsweek. Her latest book is Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. The audiobook is out this month. Batya Ungar-Sargon returns to the show, in an episode recorded in April.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Lean Out is back from our annual summer hiatus — and we have a special episode for you today. Many of you know that Tara wrote “The Trust Spiral,” the 2024 Massey Essay on the state of the media, a partnership between Massey College at the University of Toronto and the Literary Review of Canada. Before Lean Out went on summer break, Massey College hosted a public discussion about this essay, and Tara was lucky enough to be interviewed by someone she greatly admires.

Rudyard Griffiths is co-founder and chair of the Munk Debates. He’s also a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and the executive director of The Hub.

Special thanks for today’s episode go to Emily Mockler and Jonathan Rose and everyone at Massey College, to Kyle Wyatt and the team at the Literary Review of Canada, and of course to Rudyard Griffiths.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

If you follow Canadian politics, you know that Justin Trudeau’s political career is now looking uncertain. He’s been polling badly for months, as a series of crises have rocked the country, including the cost of living, the opioid crisis, the housing crisis, healthcare, runaway immigration, and foreign interference. Our guest on today’s program has written a comprehensive biography of Trudeau as Prime Minister, based on interviews with more than 200 insiders, and the man himself — and today, he walks us through Trudeau’s journey from being a global media darling to becoming one of the most divisive figures in the country. 

Stephen Maher is an investigative journalist and political writer. His new book is The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. 

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In times of war, civilians run from combat. But war reporters have the opposite reaction — they run toward it, putting themselves in danger to bear witness to these armed conflicts, and to try to make sense of our broken world. Our guest on today’s program spent years going to the frontlines, until one day, in June of 2020, the frontlines came to him. The near death experience that followed, he says, changed him forever. 

Sebastian Junger is an American journalist, the bestselling author of Tribe, Freedom, and The Perfect Storm, and an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. His latest book is In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face With the Idea of An Afterlife — and it’s out this week.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

2020 was a turbulent year in American politics, and in the America media. The editor of The New York Times recently conceded that the paper went “too far” during that time and said that it is now working to pull itself back from such “excesses.” Our guest on the program today was at the paper during that period — and left to report critically on what she calls “the revolution,” both for her new media company and for her new book, which is out this week. 

Nellie Bowles is an American journalist and co-founder of The Free Press. Her new book is Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History. 

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com