The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

How did we get tangled up in a knot of identity obsession, grievance, and one-upmanship? We can look to philosophers like Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw and, of course, Michel Foucault. And then we can blame it all on Tumblr!

In his new book, The Identity Trap - A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, Yascha Mounk discusses his theory of "the identity synthesis" and traces how the once niche views about race, sexual orientation, and gender identity went from marginal to mainstream.

In the bonus, we talk about Yascha's childhood, his feelings about his age, and his conception of happiness. (He recommends Jonathan Rauch's 2018 book The Happiness Curve.)

GUEST BIO

Yascha Mounk is a writer and academic who focuses on the crisis of democracy and the defense of liberal values. He has a BA in History from Trinity College Cambridge and a PhD in Government from Harvard University. Currently, he is a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University. Yascha also writes for The Atlantic, is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Founder of Persuasion. He has written five books, including The Identity Trap - A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, which explores the influence of new ideas about race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. His work has been published in various major publications, such as The New York Times and Foreign Affairs.

Buy his new book here.

Follow his substack, Persuasion.

Listen to his podcast, The Good Fight.

HOUSEKEEPING

☕️ Read my most recent article about The Free Press' debate.

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

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

The ladies from Ask A Jew are back for their biannual visit. This time for the Jewish New Year! In this episode, we talk about the meaning of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and (since we apparently have to go over it again) why Orthodox Jews have to get their cars detailed before Passover. (It's true.)

We also talk about mikvehs. Because you know you were wondering. If you only ever listen to one conversation about mikvehs, let it be this one.

Most importantly, we revisit our evergreen topic: the world's hottest dictators, despots and garden-variety world leaders. Who was hotter? Stalin or Gadaffi? Is Bibi Netanyahu more your type? Or George H.W. Bush?

In the bonus, I do a solocast where I answer AMA questions and share more of my existential crisis about how to pronounce my last name. Paying subscribers who have questions for me can put them in the comments.

The Ask a Jew podcast is where Yael Bar Tur, a secular Israeli living in New York, and ChayaLeah Sufrin, a Hasidic mother in Los Angeles, discuss everything from Torah to Tinder, no topics are off-limits.

Yael Bar Tur is a digital communications consultant with over 15 years of experience in social media, government, law enforcement and crisis communications. She served as the Director of Social Media and Digital Strategy for the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

Born and raised in Israel, Yael served in the Israeli Army as a foreign press liaison in the height of two wars, as well as volunteering for reserve duty at the Israeli field hospital in Haiti immediately following the 2010 earthquake. She holds a Master's Degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Yael lives in NYC where she has been granted lifetime approval to pet all police K9s.

ChayaLeah Sufrin is the Executive Director at Beach Hillel. 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. She was recently named one of Hadassah's 18 American Zionist Women You Should Know.

HOUSEKEEPING

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

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

🎉 Can't make it to the one-day retreat on September 30th in Denver? Join us for a co-ed party that same evening!

🧖‍♀️ Join me at our sanity/real spa retreat in the Poconos with guest speaker Kat Rosenfield.

It seems like everywhere you look, men are struggling to find a sense of meaning and purpose. In fact, men are just getting kind of weird. On the other side of the equation, many women say they can't find a "good man" who meets their expectations.

Enter Christine Emba, Washington Post columnist and author of the 2022 book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. In a recent WaPo essay, she discusses the crisis of masculinity and where men are looking for models of masculinity, from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate and beyond. In this episode, we chat about her article, her book, the past and present mating economy, and the evolution of her own thinking since her college days and the emergence of "the Princeton mom."

(Leave it to her to ask the questions Matt Walsh doesn't.)

In the bonus, we talk about dating apps — everyone's favorite gripe — in addition to the resurgence of matchmaking and how people got dates and met people in the pre-app world.

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WHO IS CHRISTINE EMBA?

Christine Emba is a writer for The Washington Post's Opinions section. She is also the author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, which challenges the narrative of sex positivity. Prior to joining the staff of The Washington Post, Emba was the Hilton Kramer Fellow in Criticism at the New Criterion and a deputy editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. She grew up in Virginia and earned an A.B. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University.

Follow her substack here: https://bit.ly/3Z8nJ49

Read her article, "Men are lost. Here's a map out of the wilderness." here: https://wapo.st/45KoHX4

Get her book "Rethinking Sex: A Provocation" here: https://amzn.to/3EvpU8A

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Get your ticket to The Free Press debate with Grimes, Sarah Haider, Louise Perry and Anna Khachiyan: https://www.thefp.com/debates

Meet me at The Unspeakeasy Denver Retreat on September 30th: https://bit.ly/3qRWcaz

Join me at our sanity/real spa retreat in the Poconos with guest speaker Kat Rosenfield: https://bit.ly/3R8IKtL

Can't come to the full, one-day retreat on September 30th? Join us for a co-ed party that same evening! https://bit.ly/45oCp1n

Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v

Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

To kick off The Unspeakable's fourth season, comedian Maria Bamford joins Meghan for a conversation about many unspeakable topics. Maria's new book, Sure I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir Of Mental Illness And The Quest To Belong Anywhere is a rollicking homage to the power of groups. From 12-step meetings to game nights to dog parks, Maria loves gatherings of people. But she's also spent a lifetime struggling with mental health issues that make her anxious around people.

In this conversation, Maria talks with Meghan about financial survival in the creative economy (she made her first appearance on The Tonight Show while working as a receptionist at NBC), her love for Debtor's Anonymous and her fascination with money in general, what it's like to use dating apps when you're a celebrity, and much much much more.

Paying susbcribers to The Unspeakable With Meghn Daum on Substack get to hear Maria staying overtime to talk about being 53 years old, which is also how old Meghan is. They also talk about Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, "sexual anorexia," regular anorexia, eating rice cakes, and choosing not to have kids. Become a paying subscribers at https://meghandaum.substack.com/.

GUEST BIO

Awarded Best Club Comic at the American Comedy Awards and Breakout Comedy Star at the Montreal Comedy Festival, Maria Bamford's critically acclaimed work includes her web series The Maria Bamford Show, Ask My Mom, and her Netflix series Lady Dynamite. Maria's writing has been featured in The New York Times, LA Weekly and The Onion. She played Debrie Bardeaux on Season 4 of Arrested Development and has contributed comedic voiceovers for such animations as Netflix's Big Mouth and BoJack Horseman, Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, PBS's Emmy-winning series Word Girl, Nickelodeon's Kung Fu Panda and Legend of Korra, and the international hit Talking Tom and Friends.

In the latest installment of her unofficial series about death and dying, Meghan talks with writer and palliative care physician Dr. Sunita Puri. Sunita is the author of That Good Night, Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour and has written about end-of-life issues in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, and elsewhere. In this conversation, Sunita discusses the ways that medical advancements can cloud the vision of doctors and patients alike when it comes to being realistic –and even humane –about how we die. She describes how terminally ill patients can get treated differently–and often receive different information–depending on a variety of factors, including their age. Sunita also discusses her forthcoming New Yorker article about the complexities and misconceptions around CPR, a practice that turns out to be not nearly as effective as many people think. CPR's origins also contain some fascinating trivia. For instance, did you know that the expression "blowing smoke up your ass" is said to come from an 18th-century life-saving procedure involving bellows and tobacco smoke?

For paying Substack subscribers, Sunita stays overtime to share personal thoughts about the struggle to overcome a hyper-critical inner voice, whether doctors' inner voices are extra critical, and why it's so hard to get into medical school even though there seems to be a shortage of doctors. To hear that portion, visit meghandaum.substack.com and join the listener community.

Guest Bio:

Dr. Sunita Puri is currently the Program Director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship at the University of Massachusetts, where she is also an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine. She completed medical school and residency training in internal medicine at the University of California San Francisco followed by a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at Stanford. She is the author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a critically acclaimed literary memoir examining her journey to the practice of palliative medicine, and her quest to help patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness.

Even if you don't recognize Tim Kreider's name, there's a good chance you've read his work. In addition to his two collections of essays, We Learn Nothing and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You, he's published many short essays in the New York Times opinion section, nearly all of which seem to go viral. The first such essay was The Busy Trap, published more than 10 years ago, wherein he called out Americans' perpetual condition of being "crazy busy" as "a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously, your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy." He's also famous for an essay about knowing people are talking about you behind your back, which Meghan has mentioned several times on the podcast and which has been immortalized in a famous meme. In this conversation, Tim shares his thoughts about writing about yourself, writing about other people, teaching writing to college students and (unrelatedly) getting stabbed. He also talks about the process of deciding not to have kids, the difficulty of living with another person as you get older, and a phenomenon he describes as the "soul toupee."

For paying subscribers, Tim stays overtime and talks about (among other things) being 56-years-old, contemplating mortality, coping with a diminished attention span, and dating his fans – although he insists they're not really fans once you start dating them. To hear that portion, become a paying subscriber at https://meghandaum.substack.com/.

Guest Bio

Tim Kreider is the author of the essay collections We Learn Nothing and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, Men's Journal, The Comics Journal, Film Quarterly, and Fangoria. His cartoon "The Pain–When Will It End?" ran for 12 years in the Baltimore City Paper and other weeklies and is archived at thepaincomics.com. Learn more about him at timkreider.com

Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of five novels and has published essays and short stories in outlets such as The New Yorker, N+1, and The New York Times Book Review. She visits The Unspeakable this week to talk about "My Adventures In Deconstruction," her essay in the June 9, 2023 edition of The New Yorker. On the surface, the essay recounts a romantic relationship with a college professor 15 years her senior, back in 1990. But the essay goes much deeper than that, mapping the main story onto the landscape of the deconstructive criticism movement in literature, which posited that an author's intent doesn't matter and meaning itself is subjective. In this conversation, Lucinda talks about her the process of writing the essay, the 1990s-era trope of the "bad girl," and the complexity of power dynamics in relationships between very young women and older men. She and Meghan also wander into a surprising conversation about the role that cigarette smoking played in both of their lives when they were in their twenties. Speaking of which, Lucinda stays overtime for paying subscribers to talk about how she feels about being the age that she is, which happens to be the age that Meghan is!

To hear the bonus content, become a paying subscriber at meghandaum.substack.com.

Guest Bio:

Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of five novels, including What She Saw and, most recently, Class, which was named a Best Book of 2017 by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her fiction and essays have appeared in N+1, Harper's, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review.

It's been exactly a year since the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade, thereby eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion. Last May, shortly after that decision was leaked to the press, bioethicist and legendary abortion rights activist Frances Kissling visited The Unspeakable to talk about the likely implications of this ruling. Now Frances is back to reflect on what's transpired since then, whether things are better or worse than many people feared, and what the downstream political effects have been. She talks about organizational efforts on the part of medical providers, activists, and even airplane pilots to get women to places where abortion is legally available and how American women are actually now traveling to Mexico to get safe and legal abortions. Finally, she expands on her comments from last May about how the "abortion on demand" messaging of the pro-choice side contributed to the extreme polarization that has made compromise impossible.

Frances is president of Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy and was president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 until 2007. She worked as an abortion provider in New York State in the early 1970s, before the passage of Roe, which she talked about in her May 8, 2022 interview on The Unspeakable. She just celebrated her 80th birthday and she stays over time for paying subscribers to talk about what it's like to be 80, how she was once told she'd die unless someone donated a kidney to her, and, finally, what it's like to grow older without children or a partner (it has its upsides!) To hear that portion, become a paying subscriber at https://meghandaum.substack.com/.

Guest Bio:

Frances Kissling is currently President of the Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy in Washington, DC and a professor of philosophy and ethics. She was the president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 to 2007 and has been working in the abortion rights movement since the very early 1970s.

This week, Meghan welcomes evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman. Diana's areas of research include human sexuality, the effect of hormones on behavior, and how "disgust" (the condition of being disgusted) is an evolutionary adaptation, especially for women. In this conversation, Diana talks about why the field of evolutionary psychology is subject to such much bad-faith misapplication but why uncomfortable truths about human mating patterns can nonetheless offer important lessons. She and Meghan explore the relationship between female social hierarchies and cancel culture (for instance, do women control cancel culture?) and then get into a deep discussion about polyamory. What does it really mean? What does it take to make it work? And how come most people just don't have the emotional discipline to succeed at it.

For the bonus portion for paying subscribers, Diana talks about how her younger self would feel about her current self, why she's a transhumanist, what's stopping the world from embracing "clean meat," why she donated her eggs several years ago and wrote letters to her future genetic offspring, and whether she'd pick herself out of a genetic lineup of embryos. If you're not yet a paying subscriber, go to meghandaum.substack.com to hear this part of the conversation.

Guest Bio:

Diana Fleischman is an evolutionary psychologist and writer.

This week, The Unspeakable welcomes back William Deresiewicz, who enters the pantheon of three-time guest! Bill was first on the pod in the fall of 2020 talking about his book The Death of the Artist and he came back last year to talk about his book of collected works The End of Solitude. He returns now to discuss some articles he published recently about the state of human creativity and the future of creative output. In an article for Tablet called We're All Bored Of Culture, Bill explores how and why the arts have seemingly become so lackluster in the last several decades and why audiences appear to be so bored. In an article for Persuasion, Bill writes about artificial intelligence and why he thinks that, despite all the fuss, AI, will never be a substitute for human creativity.

As with all of his visits to The Unspeakable, Bill and Meghan talk about why it might be more difficult than ever to be an artist–-not just in terms of making a living but in terms of "making meaning" (whatever that means). Are artists afraid to take risks for fear of public rebuke and the financial penalties that can result? Or does the machinery of the marketplace disincentivize originality in any form? They also talk about Bill's early career as a dance critic and Meghan's recent experience revisiting some films that were important to her when she was younger.

For paying subscribers, Bill stays over time to reflect on the aging process and some of his feelings about friendship, masculinity, regret, and (of course) the new gender movement.

Guest Bio:

William Deresiewicz is the author of Excellent Sheep, The Death of the Artist, and The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society. Find him at www.billderesiewicz.com.