September is here and Lean Out is back with a new season of conversations with writers and thinkers from around the world. We could not think of a more important topic to kick off our fall season than the state of Canadian democracy. Our guest on the program today has written a new book that serves as a wake-up call — he says that while we observe the rituals of the democratic process, we have lost its spirit and its substance. 

Andrew Coyne is a columnist for The Globe and Mail and a weekly panelist on CBC’s The National. His debut book is The Crisis of Canadian Democracy.

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

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from April of 2025. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September!

For some time now, writers and thinkers outside this country have been asking me: What happened to Canada? Our guest on the program today has asked this question himself, in a new book that takes a deep dive into our decline.

Tristin Hopper is a columnist and reporter for The National Post, based in Victoria, B.C. His new book is Don’t Be Canada: How One Country Did Everything Wrong All At Once.

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

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from November of 2024. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September!

With Donald Trump winning the presidency, the popular vote, the Senate, and the House, in what The New York Times has described as a “crushing electoral rebuke” of the Democrats, there is a lot of soul-searching going on in the party. Our guest on the program today tried to warn the Democrats in his previous book. He says the progressive moment in American politics is now over — and the Democrats are going to have to face that fact if they want to win again.

Ruy Teixeira is a cofounder and politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter on Substack and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, with John B. Judis, is Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes.

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

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from May of 2024. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September!

2020 was a turbulent year in American politics, and in the America media. The editor of The New York Times has 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 media company and for her debut book.

Nellie Bowles is an American journalist and co-founder of The Free Press. Her 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

The summer of 2020 was one of the most explosive periods of recent memory — with pandemic lockdowns, the death of George Floyd, nationwide protests and riots, and workplace purges and online mobbings. And yet, so much of what went on has now been forgotten. In his new book, our guest on the program today encourages us to take a good, hard look at the insanity of those months, and how they shaped the era we’re now living through.

Thomas Chatterton Williams is a staff writer at The Atlantic. His latest book, out this week, is Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse.

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

In the United States right now, we are witnessing the decline of what has often been called the woke left — and a backlash from an increasingly woke right that is now seeking to impose its own beliefs on society in similar ways. Our guest on the program this week has been an outspoken critic of illiberalism, wherever it originates on the political spectrum, and he believes that defending liberal values has never been more important.

Andrew Doyle is a UK broadcaster, commentator, and comedian. His latest book is The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution.

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

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the ongoing tensions between men and women. This past week saw a shot fired on that front: a piece published in The New York Times Magazine, titled “The Trouble With Wanting Men.” For this special joint episode, we unpack this essay with podcaster Meghan Daum and a Gen Z guest.

Meghan Daum is an American author and essayist, and the host of the Unspeakable podcast, soon to be renamed the Unspeakeasy. Lily Isaacs is a British writer, and an editorial assistant for UnHerd.

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

The working poor in Canada are often largely invisible. The struggle to make ends meet in an explosively expensive era tends to be a private matter. But our guest on the show today has taken the step to make her own battle public, with a new cover story for Maclean’s that’s sparking discussion across the country.

Jeni Gunn is a gig worker in Victoria, B.C. Her new essay for Maclean’s is “Confessions of the Working Poor.”

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

In recent weeks and months, a number of you have reached out to Tara about the debate on gender medicine for minors — and a lack of media coverage about it, particularly in this country. 

This is a topic that she recently covered on her other podcast, Full Press. And The Hub has been kind enough to let us bring you the free version of that episode today, where you can hear her entire conversation on gender medicine and the media, with co-hosts Harrison Lowman and Peter Menzies. 

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

In recent years, we’ve read a lot of memoirs from women who feel stuck in specific ways: single, childless, consumed by work, and disillusioned with hook-up culture. Our guest on today’s program is the author of the first memoir we have read about breaking free from that pattern — and the story of how it happened is as moving as it is surprising.

Beth Kaplan is a Canadian writer, and the author of Loose Woman: My Odyssey From Lost to Found.

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