The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

On podcasts devoted to free speech and so-called heterodox discourse, the 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind is probably mentioned more frequently than any other. Written by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and legal scholar and Greg Lukianoff, who now heads the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), it is effectively the bible of the Heterodox crowd. And now it's a movie. My guests are husband and wife filmmaking team Ted Balaker, who directed the film, and Courtney Moorehead Balaker, who produced it.

In this conversation, they discuss how they took a book about ideas and turned it into an engaging, poignant, and often very funny movie about mental health and how it intersects with higher education and campus life. They relay the stories of many of the young people featured in the movie and talk about the process of finding them. They also discuss how the movie ended up on Substack, where it's making history as the first film to stream on that platform.

You can watch the film here.

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Ted Balaker is an award-winning filmmaker, former think tank scholar and network news producer. He co-founded Korchula Productions, a film production company devoted to making important ideas entertaining, and Free Minds Film, which uses workshops and project-specific consultations to teach independent filmmakers how to reach large audiences. Ted produced the feature film Little Pink House and is the director of The Coddling of the American Mind, based on The New York Times bestselling book by Greg Lukionoff and Jonathan Haidt and the very first feature documentary presented by Substack.

Courtney Moorehead Balaker is an award-winning filmmaker, adjunct professor of acting, and co-founder of Korchula Productions, a film production company devoted to making important ideas entertaining. She also co-founded Free Minds Film, which uses workshops and project-specific consultations to teach independent filmmakers how to reach large audiences. Courtney wrote and directed Little Pink House, which stars Catherine Keener as Susette Kelo, the blue-collar woman whose fight against eminent domain abuse went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Alex Byrne.

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Philosopher Alex Byrne spent most of his career innocently studying subjects like epistemology and metaphysics. But a few years ago, he became interested in — wait for it — gender, and he became a "dissident" scholar just for exploring foundational questions. His book Trouble with Gender, covers a lot of ground. But above all, it wrestles with the linguistic confusion of gender. What does the word even mean? What did the philosopher Judith Butler (whose 1990 book Gender Trouble kicked off decades of debate and cognitive distortions) mean when she said sex was different from gender? What about social scientists like Anne Fausto-Sterling, who came up with the idea that there are five sexes? In this interview, Alex discusses all of that and more, including how the UK acquired the nickname "TERF Island," whether "auto-androphilia" is a real thing, why autogynephilia isn't technically a fetish, and why Oxford University Press changed its mind about publishing the book. (Their loss!)

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Alex Byrne is a professor of philosophy at MIT and the author of Trouble With Gender which you can order here.

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Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Katherine Dee.

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

Katherine Dee is a writer, cultural commentator, and a phenomenally astute observer of online culture. If you want to understand the rise of the "tradcels," the "girl boss" trope (and subsequent backlash), and how identity concepts like "otherkin" become connected to social justice politics, Katherine is the one to explain it.

In this conversation, she talks with Meghan about how ideas on places like Tumblr found their way into our political discourse, academia, and even the retail space and they had a profound impact on young people's psychological development, especially when it comes to dating and relationships.

Katherine herself was so indoctrinated by online manosphere content and it's the scarcity complex it engendered that she ended up marrying someone she met online after knowing him in person for three days. She also discusses why Taylor Swift is just the latest example of a powerful woman reframed as a sad cat lady, why the beauty standards of the 1990s were so destructive, and why New York City arts and media circles are incubators are terrible places to meet heterosexual men. (But very good places to be one.)

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Katherine Dee is an internet culture blogger. Everything else is secondary. You can find her at default.blog.

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📖 🌵Come see Meghan in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about her book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

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Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Rob Henderson.

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

If you listen to this podcast and others like it, you may have heard of the concept of luxury beliefs. It was coined by this week's guest Rob Henderson. Rob holds a PhD in psychology, has written for lots of media outlets, and writes a popular Sustack newsletter about social issues and how they relate to class dynamics, economic forces, and personal psychology. He also has a brand new book, Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class.

Born to a drug addicted mother, Rob spent his early life in the foster care system in California, living in seven different homes before finding a permanent placement. However, his adoptive family was chaotic, and Rob navigated a labyrinth of dysfunction before joining the military and eventually finding his way to the Ivy League. It was there that he noticed that many of his classmates seemed to hold certain ideas about the world at large, often in the name of tolerance, even though they held themselves to a much higher standard. From that emerged the concept of luxury beliefs which he discusses in depth in his memoir.

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Rob Henderson is a Yale and Cambridge University graduate who writes extensively on human nature, psychology, social class, TV shows, movies, political and social divisions, and more on Substack. The term "luxury beliefs" was coined by him, inspired by his experiences at Yale. His book, "Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class," will be published in February 2024 through Simon & Schuster.

Follow him on Substack.

Follow his Twitter/X.

Get his book, "Troubled" here.

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📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

✏️ Apply for Meghan's co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class.

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Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Lori Gottlieb.

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

Psychotherapist and writer Lori Gottlieb visited The Unspeakable in 2021 to talk about her bestselling book Maybe You Should Talk To Someone. She returns for a Valentine's Day episode about finding love, staying in love, and what to make of all the social scientists constantly going on about how marriage and family are essential for mental, physical and even economic well-being. To that, Lori says, "well, obviously!" But she also asks "how are you supposed to find someone when our social systems are so dysfunctional?"

Her own story involves becoming a mother on her own in her 30s (her son Zach is a budding Gen Z thought leader in his own right) and trying to balance her own dating life with childrearing and a busy career. In this conversation, she talks about how she tries to help clients who are struggling to find love, how honest talk about female fertility became taboo sometime in the 2000s, why dating apps are making things so much worse, and why age gaps in romantic relationships seem more prevalent than ever. She also explains why, for older daters, widowed people can make the best partners and, finally, why more singles should seriously consider hiring a matchmaker.

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Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and the New York Times best-selling author of "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" and "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough." She is also a TED Speaker, the co-host of the popular "Dear Therapists" podcast, and the "Dear Therapist" columnist for The Atlantic.

Listen to the last time she was on the podcast.

Check out her website.

Follow her on Twitter here.

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HOUSEKEEPING

📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

✏️ Apply for Meghan's co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class.

✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we're going to be in 2024!

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with John Vervaeke and Shawn Coyne.

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

Meghan has been threatening to do an episode on artificial intelligence, and finally she makes good. This week, she welcomes two guests: the philosopher, neuroscientist, and popular YouTuber John Vervaeke and the editor and publishing entrepreneur Shawn Coyne. They have collaborated on Mentoring The Machines, a series of short books–technically, it's one book in four parts–about artificial intelligence. Their aim is to offer a clear understanding of the implications of AI and to invite readers to think about their own participation in its development and how their own choices can move that development in a positive or negative direction. In this conversation, they explain what drew them to this subject, how they came to work together, and how worried we should be about computers destroying civilization.

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John Vervaeke is an award-winning professor at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series, "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis," "After Socrates" and the host of "Voices with Vervaeke."

Sean Coyne is a writer, editor, and the founder of Story Grid.

Learn about Mentoring The Machines.

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HOUSEKEEPING

📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

✏️ Apply for Meghan's co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class.

✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we're going to be in 2024!

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Kathrine Brodsky.

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

Cultural critic Katherine Brodsky is an example of what Meghan likes to call "Heterodoxy 2.0." She's committed to fighting censorship and groupthink but is also mindful of not becoming an ideologue herself. Born in the Soviet Union, she emigrated with her family to Israel and then Canada and is acutely sensitive to signs of creeping authoritarianism. She now lives in Vancouver and writes about a variety of topics, including the arts, technology, and the recently emerging debates about free speech and censorship.

In her new book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage—Lessons for the Silenced Majority, Katherine recounts her own cancelation event but, more importantly, interviews a range of people—including Katie Herzog, Winston Marshall, Stephen Elliot, and Peter Boghossian, to name a few—who have fallen prey to the online mob. In this conversation, we talk about what can be learned from a cancelation, what has become of the "IDW," and how to move free speech discourse in a more positive direction, less grievance-driven direction. **

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For over a decade, Katherine Brodsky has covered lifestyle and entertainment stories for works like Variety, WIRED, Newsweek, The Guardian, Esquire, The Independent, CNN Travel, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy Magazine, USA Today, Delta Sky, Mashable, and more.

She has interviewed many personalities, including winners and nominees of the Academy Awards, Emmys, Grammys, Pulitzers, Tonys, and even the Nobel Prize.

You can read her work at her Substack here.

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HOUSEKEEPING

📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we're going to be in 2024!

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Seth Kaplan has worked in developing nations throughout the world, studying how corrupt governments, crumbling infrastructure, and a lack of public trust can add up to what's known as a "fragile state." In his new book "Fragile Neighborhoods," he explores how these same dynamics can play out on a regional level in the United States.

Reporting from struggling rural areas as well as poor urban neighborhoods across America, Seth discovered that people separated by even just a few miles can have not only dramatically different life experiences but vastly different life expectancies. The culmination of these factors is captured by the concept of "social fabric."

In this conversation, Seth explains how he defines social fabric and describes what kinds of initiatives have the most success at bringing communities together and lifting people out of poverty and why gentrification, when done thoughtfully, can be integral to positive change. He also addresses the question of why cities on the West Coast seem far more prone to unrest, concentrated homelessness, and distrust of institutions than their East Coast counterparts. Finally, Seth shares his personal talks about what he looked for in a neighborhood when he moved his own family from New York City to another state.

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Seth D. Kaplan is a leading expert on fragile states. He is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), and consultant to multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and OECD as well as developing country governments and NGOs.

Visit his website.

Get his book here.

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HOUSEKEEPING

📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

✏️ Apply for Meghan's co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class.

✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we're going to be in 2024!

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

**Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Ezzedine Fishere and Bernard Avishai, Dartmouth professors who teach a joint course on Israeli/Palestinian politics.**

**The first hour and five minutes of this episode is available to all listeners. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.**

As university campuses have become sharply divided in the wake of the October Hamas attack and the ensuing war between Israel and Gaza, Dartmouth has emerged as a model for productive dialogue among students and faculty alike. This is due largely to the efforts of Bernard and Ezzedine, who lead by example in and out of the classroom and have recently been featured on Sixty Minutes, PBS, and elsewhere.

In this conversation, they talk about their approaches to teaching, the professional paths that led them to the classroom, and how to honor personal feelings while encouraging intellectual humility over reflexive emotional reaction. Ezzedine also discusses the limits of viewing political history through a colonial/anti-colonial framework and Bernard reflects on the complexities of Zionism and why he was so excited about the Zionist project back in 1968.

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Bernard Avishai, a Visiting Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, has taught at Hebrew University, MIT, and Duke. He's a Guggenheim fellow and author of four books. A regular contributor to The New Yorker on political economy and Israeli affairs, he has also written for Harper's, The New York Review, The Nation, and New York Times Magazine. Formerly an editor of Harvard Business Review and KPMG's International Director of Intellectual Capital, his upcoming Harper's cover story on Israel's culture wars will be released on January 15.

Ezzedine C. Fishere, a renowned Egyptian writer and academic, is currently a visiting professor at Dartmouth College, teaching Middle East politics and cultures. His vast diplomatic experience includes roles in the Egyptian Foreign Service; UN missions in the Middle East and East Africa; policy advising for the Egyptian foreign minister; and senior political advising in Sudan under Kofi Annan; a senior political advisor to the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) in Jerusalem; and heading the political section at the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv.

ALSO:

What Is Real? Eli Lake on Disinformation, Despair and Dead Ends in the Israel-Hamas War

Travel Notes From A War

Our Keffiyehs, Ourselves

**HOUSEKEEPING**

📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on **February 29** at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

✏️ Apply for Meghan's co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class.

✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we're going to be in 2024!

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

In a last-minute, new year's special, Unspeakable regular ChayaLeah Sufrin stops by the pod to report on her recent trip to Israel with her family. Even though she's been to Israel countless times, this trip was different in both expected and unexpected ways. ChayaLeah talks about the desperation of the families of hostages, the morale of Israeli soldiers, what Israelis think about America these days, and about visiting the site of the Supernovo Music Festival. She also explains (sort of) how the Iron Dome defense system works. Spoiler: it's not Jewish space lasers. She also recounts a recent family trip to Kansas and reflects on how warmly her Orthodox family was greeted by locals.

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ChayaLeah Sufrin is the co-host, with Yael Bar-tur, of the podcast Ask A Jew and Executive Director at the Hillel at California State University, Long Beach. Prior to Hillel, she spent 15 years teaching high school Jewish history and was the Education Director of Shul by the Shore.

ChayaLeah has been married to her husband Boruch for 18 years and together they have 4 sons. Jewish education and building community are ChayaLeah's two main passions - she also loves the New England Patriots.

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HOUSEKEEPING

✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we're going to be in 2024!

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.