Lean Out with Tara Henley

Canada recently reached a grim milestone — the lowest fertility rate in recorded history. We are now well below population replacement, at 1.33 births per woman. Our guest on the show today has studied this crisis in family formation in the West. And he says we need to take a look at our culture.

Tim Carney is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a columnist for The Washington Examiner. His new book is Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs To Be.

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

On the Lean Out podcast, we’ve spent much of the past year investigating the collapse of the news media and the decline in public trust. Tara's guest this week argues that the industry is at a crossroads, but media bosses are unwilling to meet the moment, and seem determined to continue on the same trajectory — even if it means the death of their institutions.

Ryan Zickgraf is an American journalist and a columnist at Compact Magazine. His new essay is “Journalism’s Slow Death Threatens Democracy.”

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

In March of 2020, much of the world was in lockdown. The unprecedented pandemic response closed schools, shuttered businesses, and paused public events. My guest on today’s program says it is time to evaluate the measures that were taken and consider whether the harms outweighed the benefits. The UK charity that he leads research for has now launched working groups to examine Covid policies in a number of different countries. Including his own, Canada.

Kevin Bardosh is director and head of research at Collateral Global, and an affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington.

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

When it comes to race relations, many of us were raised with the ethos expressed in the famed Martin Luther King Jr. quote calling on society to judge people by the content of their character instead of the colour of their skin. Western society has moved away from that ideal — and my guest on today’s program says it’s time we get back to it.

Coleman Hughes is an American writer, commentator, and podcaster, and an analyst for CNN. His new book is The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.

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

Canada is embroiled in a number of high-profile political scandals, and it’s a dispiriting moment for the country. This week, we’re taking a break from the news cycle, and instead contemplating the contributions of a famed Canadian — the late philosopher Marshall McLuhan — who, my guest on today’s program says, understood our time better than many currently living through it. 

Benjamin Carlson is an American writer, and media strategist, and the author of the Substack newsletter, Carlson Letter. His latest essay, on Marshall McLuhan, is part of a series at The Free Press titled “The Prophets.” 

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

It’s not unusual for well-heeled people to try to imagine what it might be like to grow up without money. But my guest on today’s program says it is uncommon for them to try to imagine what it might be like to grow up without a family. And his new book chronicles exactly that life — his childhood in foster care — but also, his journey from a working-class town in California to the military, Yale University and beyond.

Rob Henderson is the American writer who coined the term “luxury beliefs.” His debut book is Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.

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

We hear a lot of grim predictions about the future of local news, both in the United States and in Canada. But my guests on today’s program are feeling optimistic. For their new book, the pair did a deep dive into innovative local and regional news startups across America, and they say these startups are changing the media landscape, one outlet at a time. 

Ellen Clegg spent more than three decades at The Boston Globe. She’s co-founder of a non-profit local news outlet in Massachusetts, Brookline.News. Dan Kennedy is a journalism professor at Northeastern University and a media commentator. Their podcast is What Works: The Future of Local News. And together, they are the authors of What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate. 

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

On the Lean Out podcast, we’ve talked a lot about plummeting birth rates in the West, about high rates of unhappiness among modern women, about the loneliness epidemic in our society, and about the crisis unfolding among men, with large numbers of suicides and overdoses. 

Our guest on the program today says there’s a factor we should consider with each of these issues — and that is low marriage rates. And he thinks it’s time to have a conversation about the state of our unions. 

Brad Wilcox is a professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. He’s also the author of Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization. 

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

What does it take to speak out against orthodoxies in an age of outrage? This is something that our guest on today’s program has spent years contemplating, interviewing people from all walks of life who have managed to stick to their principles in the face of an online mobbing, and not back down.

Katherine Brodsky is a Canadian writer and commentator, and the author of No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage — Lessons for the Silenced Majority.

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

Canada has, once again, made international headlines. The Federal Court has ruled the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, in response to the trucker protests, was illegal. My guest on today’s program argued during the crisis that the government had done something that it had no constitutional power to do — and he joins me on the program today to talk through this historic court decision.  

Ryan Alford is a constitutional law expert, a law professor at Lakehead University, and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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