The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

"While 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."

That was the official statement from Hiding Press, the small, independent poetry press that was set to publish writer Emmalea Russo's fourth book of poetry. But when word got out that she had been "collaborating" 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, "seeks a new political center devoted to the common good."

In this conversation, Emmalea talks about the "chain of contamination" that causes panic and public disassociation with anyone even remotely associated with someone designated as "bad." She also discusses her forthcoming novel, Vivienne, which is about a septuagenarian artist who's canceled online over rumor and innuendo.

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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. Vance's "childless cat lady" 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 that's quickly becoming oversaturated.

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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 Magazine's 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.

"What is happening to scores of children . . . is morally and medically appalling." Those were the words of Jamie Reed, a former case manager at a gender clinic in a major American children's 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 it's like to

Testify before state legislatures about restricting access to non-evidence-based gender-affirming care. As a self-described "queer woman who's married to a transgender person and is politically to the left of Bernie Sanders," it's the last thing she ever thought she'd be doing. Now it's her life's work.

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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 bachelor's 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 industry—from actors and writers to photographers, makeup artists, and security personnel—were 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 money—often on trips to Indonesia—under 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 "Harvey" Tahilramani, a genius impersonator who was also trying to make it as an Instagram food influencer. Scott's 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.

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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 Publisher's Weekly and selected as an Amazon editor's 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 — and should be even more so! But do divorcing parents overestimate their kids' resilience to justify their actions? Should "staying together for the children" 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. Bridget's parents, who had five children under 12 when they divorced, followed the logic that parental happiness is better for children than "staying together for the kids." But is that really true? Bridget's 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 that's been haunting her, even though Meghan has no memory of it.

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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 Levi's, 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 women's sports

Given the fraught politics around this issue, XX-XY may be the first "gender critical" 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.

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Jennifer Sey is a corporate marketing executive turned author, activist, documentary filmmaker (we didn't 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.

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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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Writer and podcaster Sarah Hepola returns to The Unspeakable to talk about love, sex, #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein's 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.

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Sarah Hepola is a features staff writer at the Dallas Morning News, the cohost with Nancy Rommelmann of the Smoke 'Em 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, "America's Girls," here.

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Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Andrew Boryga.

The first portion of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here.

Who says you can't write a novel skewing social justice excesses? Andrew Boryga has done just that — to critical acclaim. His debut novel VICTIM tells the story of Javier Perez, an academically gifted kid from The Bronx who lands at an elite college and soon discovers the advantages of playing up his disadvantages.

In this conversation, Andrew talks about the decade-long process of writing the book, his similarities to Javier, and how he feels about contemporary fiction and the literary world these days. He also discusses what it was like to shop the book to publishers and explores the question of whether a white author could get away with this kind of satire.

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Andrew Boryga is a writer and editor who grew up in Bronx, NY and currently likes in Miami with his wife and two children. His debut novel VICTIM, was published in March by Doubleday.

Buy VICTIM here.

Follow his Substack here.

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Is college pointless? Is an "elite education" more about networking than learning? Returning guest William Deresiewicz has been pondering these questions for more than a decade. They were the subject of his bestselling 2014 book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. That book has just been reissued in a 10th anniversary edition and in this episode, William talks with Meghan about what's changed (i.e. what's gotten worse) and what, if anything, can be done to make things better. They also discuss whether we need affirmative action for men, whether it's better to get a job waiting tables than go to college right after high school, and whether childless people have any standing to talk—or even care—about this stuff in the first place.

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William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, which will be published in a 10th-anniversary edition in May 2024. His latest book is The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society.

Find his other conversations with Meghan here, here, and here.

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