The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

It's a very special "Meghan has Covid" edition of The Unspeakable! With barely any voice, Meghan speaks with Leslie Bienen, a public health expert and author of dozens of op-eds calling for a saner approach to covid safety measures. Unlike most people, including (and especially?) most journalists, Leslie knows how to read and interpret scientific data. She's also a veterinarian who has studied and written about zoonotic diseases that spread from wildlife to humans. In the fall of 2020, her dismay over seemingly nonsensical school closures led her to become outspoken about the growing hysteria around Covid illness and transmission, particularly as it pertained to children. In this conversation, she explains what was and wasn't known about things like masking, vaccines, and transmission at various points during the pandemic. She talks about what the pandemic revealed about people's chronic anxiety, why masking children makes no sense at this point, and how best protect vulnerable populations. Finally, Leslie explains why she told Meghan not to get the second booster shot, even though Meghan got Covid anyway. (Spoiler: that's the exactly the reason.) Paying subscribers to The Unspeakable's Substack page have access to about thirty minutes of bonus content related to a completely different matter — the myths and unnecessary stigmas around fertility treatment. Visit meghandaum.substack.com and join now to hear it. Guest Bio: Leslie Bienen is a veterinarian and professor at the OHSU-Portland State University School of Public Health. She has studied and written about zoonotic diseases that spread from wildlife to humans, including rabies, brucellosis, tuberculosis, hendra virus and others, for many years. She teaches courses on global health, writing, and other topics and has published more than thirty op-eds on Covid policy during the past two years, particularly around children and school closures.

It's another episode about . . . gender! Specifically what's really happening when it comes to medical protocols for young people seeking gender reassignment surgery or medicalized transition. Last month, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, convened for its annual meeting and announced new guidelines for treating gender dysphoric kids, including guidelines about surgery for minors under eighteen. Though the conventional wisdom has long been that actual surgery performed on minors was rare (admittedly, Meghan parroted this line) it's looking increasingly like such surgery is a lot more common than previously thought. In this conversation, Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist who's been writing about the complexities of the new gender wars since 2018, talks with Meghan about the chain of misinformation that results when pediatricians and other clinicians rely on advice from professional medical organizations that have been captured by ideology. He explains what we know about the numbers of kids being medically treated for gender dysphoria and how much data even exists about longterm outcomes. Colin describes—sometimes in graphic detail—what goes into surgeries such as vaginoplasties and phalloplasties and why their high rate of complication seems to be ignored by the medical establishment and the media. He also explains what "intersex" actually means (spoiler: there are not as many intersex people as there are natural redheads) and how the entire concept has been distorted and misused when talking about sex and gender identity. Guest bio: Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist and Founding Editor of Reality's Last Stand a publication and newsletter exploring the biology and sex and gender ideology. He is a contributing editor for Quillette and an academic advisor for the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM). He received his PhD in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara in 2018. Colin has published articles in major news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Quillette, ad The Times, and has been a guest on many popular podcasts including The Joe Rogan Experience.

If you are terrorized by your Fitbit, guilt tripped by half the items in your refrigerator, or broke from trying every new juice cleanse that comes along, this week's guest, Rina Raphael, will make you feel better. Her new book, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop and the Promise of Self-Care, examines the roots and ramifications of America's latest health craze; extreme health.

Rina is perhaps not your typical Unspeakale guest. She's not full of "dangerous" ideas or "unspeakable" opinions. But she had the courage to look not only at the wellness industry but also the validity of now-sacred concepts like self-care and clean eating. Surprise, surprise; many hypocrisies and contradictions lurk within. Rina is a longtime journalist who's covered the health and the fitness industries decades. In this conversation, she talks about how healthy living has become a lifestyle brand, explains what orthorexia means and reflects on her own obsessive patterns when it comes to diet and exercise. (Meghan, in turn, explains why when she eats a donut she always breaks off and discards one piece before finishing the rest.) Rina talks about the meaninglessness of the term "natural," why women turn to self-care partly because they feel let down by the traditional health care system, and how thinking too much about being healthy can sometimes make you quite sick. Rina Raphael is a journalist who specializes in health, wellness, tech, and women's issues. She was a features contributor for Fast Company magazine and has also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CBS, NBC News, and Medium's Elemental, among other publications. Her wellness industry newsletter, Well To Do, covers trends and news and offers market analysis. Raphael has spoken on the wellness industry at national conferences such as the Global Wellness Summit and the Fast Company Innovation Festival. Previously, she served as a senior producer and lifestyle editor at TODAY.com and NBCNews.com.

ChayaLeah and Yael are both Jewish, but in very different ways. ChayaLeah has lived her whole life in an Orthodox Hasidic community in Southern California. Yael is a secular Israeli now living in New York City. In 2020, the two became friends when they met online and began having conversations about Judaism — many of which consisted of Yael asking ChayaLeah questions about orthodox Jews that she would have been afraid or embarrassed to ask someone else. The discussions were so interesting that they began recording them and from there, the ASK A JEW podcast was born. In this conversation, ChayaLeah explains the meaning behind the various Jewish holidays this season, which Meghan mostly associates with parking rules suspensions in New York City. They also talk about the benefits and drawbacks of living in a religious community, marrying early (in an arranged marriage, no less) versus staying single for a long time, and how ChayaLeah will go about looking for wives for her sons. They also cover timelier subjects, including a recent New York Times article about the quality of eduction in yeshivas. This episode offers juicy bonus content! Last time, the ladies compared notes about which famous terrorists and world dictators qualify as "hot" despite being horrible human beings. They reprise that discussion in the bonus content and also reflect on the death of Queen Elizabeth and the hotness of various royals. You can access this by becoming a paid subscriber to Meghan's new Substack at https://meghandaum.substack.com. Guest Bios:

ChayaLeah Sufrin was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Long Beach, CA. After attending university in New York, ChayaLeah moved back to Southern California and spent fifteen years teaching High school Jewish history and as the Education Director at Shul by the Shore. ChayaLeah served as the Senior Jewish Educator at Long Beach Hillel for three years and is now the Executive Director. ChayaLeah, together with her husband Boruch, has four teenage sons.

Yael Bar-tur is a crisis communications and social media consultant who previously served as the director of social media and digital strategy for the New York City Police Department where she developed and implemented the social media and digital communications strategy.

Louise Perry is just thirty-years-old, but she's written a book that's poised to take the wind out of more than half a century of feminist activism. The Case Against The Sexual Revolution: A New Guide To Sex in the 21st Century is a manifesto of sorts. But it's also a carefully researched, deeply considered interrogation into whether the sexual liberation movement was really as good for women as is commonly assumed. In this conversation, Louise explains why she thinks the feminist movement's disregard for certain fundamental differences between men and women—not to mention its glossing over issues around motherhood— led to unintended consequences that few are willing to acknowledge. She also talks about the effects of pornography, the brutal inequities of the dating economy, whether the tech economy has rendered physical strength less valuable in the workplace, and whether being a mother is fundamentally incompatible with being an individual.

Guest Bio: Louise Perry is a writer and activist based in London. This year she co-founded a non-partisan feminist think tank called The Other Half, where she serves as Research Director. Her debut book is The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century.

If you're a fan of The Unspeakable, you're almost certainly a fan of Jon Ronson. When it comes to the subject of ruinous humiliation via mobs (online or otherwise) Jon's 2015 bestselling book So You've Been Publicly Shamed is both a field guide and a sacred text. His 2017 podcast The Butterfly Effect, looked at the downstream effects of the pornogrpahy industry. It also circled around a theme that arises frequently in his work; the way a single moment or seemingly random choice by just one person can result in a massive cultural or political shift. Last year, in collaboration with the BBC, Jon created the podcast Things Fell Apart, an eight-part series telling the origin stories of some of our most contentious cultural battles, including the right to abortion, book banning in schools, and the mania known as the satantic pre-school panic. In this interview, Jon talks with Meghan about that podcast as well as his thoughts about "cancel culture" seven years since the release of So You've Been Publicly Shamed. He reveals what parts of the culture wars he's still afraid to take on, why the Rachel Dolezal story felt like a missed opportunity for a meaningful examination of race, and why he got so burnt out on the whole subject a few years ago and had to take a break.

Paid subscribers to The Unsepakable's new Substack page can hear a bonus version of this episode containing lots of extra content. Visit https://meghandaum.substack.com/ to get in on it! Guest Bio: Jon Ronson is the author of several bestselling nonfiction books, including So You've Been Publicly Shamed, The Psychopath Test, Lost At Sea, and The Men Who Stare At Goats. Most recently, Jon released the BBC podcast Things Fell Apart, named by The Observer as the number one audio show of 201. Before that came two Audible Original audio series, The Butterfly Effect (2017) and The Last Days of August (2019). Both went straight to number one in the U.S. and U.K. audiobook charts and were named by multiple critics as two of the best podcasts of recent years.

Almost two years ago, author William Deresiewicz visited The Unspeakable to talk about his book The Death Of The Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech. It was an insightful and moving conversation about the near-impossibility of surviving as a working artist in a "creator economy." Many listeners wrote to Meghan to express their gratitude as well as their sorrow over the hard truths Bill laid out. Now Bill is back to talk about his new book, a collection of essays entitled The Death Of Solitude. The essays span more than a decade and cover everything from education to technology to friendship. Bill talks about why he wrote them as well as what it was like to revisit the work when the culture has changed so radically in such a short time. He also reflects on the intellectual shifts he's experienced in the last few years as he discovered the world of heterodox podcasts and dissident journalists. A longtime contributor to outlets like The Chronicle of Higher Education and Harper's, he's now begun writing for outlets like Quillette and Unherd. How did that happen? (Meghan may be partly to blame.)

Guest Bio:

William Deresiewicz taught at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer in 2008. He is the author of the best-selling book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. He spoke with Meghan about his previous book The Death of the Artist on the November 9, 2020 edition of this podcast. His new book The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society, was just published by Henry Holt.

This week on the podcast, author and podcaster Sarah Hepola is back! On her last visit to The Unspeakable, back in March, Sarah and Meghan talked about Sarah's bombshell Atlantic Magazine article, The Things I'm Afraid To Write. But they got a little sidetracked by some other subjects, including the barely-known details of the Stanford swimmer rape case, which Sarah has researched in depth. In this conversation, which was recorded exactly a week after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Sarah talks about the immediate aftermath of that decision in Texas, where she lives, and why the alarm bells on social media don't necessarily correspond to the actual mood on the ground. She reflects on her own choices and wonders if those who will now be forced to become parents will find their positions change—in both directions—as the result of their circumstances. Finally, she and Meghan reflect on being called "neocons" by someone on Twitter and wonder what happened around 2014 that caused some of the freest and most privileged women in the world to reimagine their lives as a chronic struggle. Note: The Unspeakable Podcast will be on summer hiatus until Labor Day. In the meantime, you can check out Meghan's new podcast with Sarah Haider, A Special Place In Hell, at aspecialplace.substack.com or wherever you get your podcast. You can also learn about The Unspeakeasy, Meghan's community-in-progress for freethinking women at theunspeakeasy.com Guest Bio: Sarah Hepola is the author of the memoir Blackout, the host of the Texas Monthly-produced documentary podcast America's Girls and the co-host, with Nancy Rommelmann of the podcast Smoke 'em If You Got Em. She lives in Dallas, Texas.

This week's episode is the second of a two part series about guns in America, a conversation between two people with very different feelings about the issue. Melanie Jeffcoat is an actor, filmmaker and gun control activist who lives in Alabama. Jon Godfrey is a retired law enforcement officer who's a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and lives in upstate New York. In 2018 they were part of Guns: An American Conversation, a collaboration between TIME Magazine and a consortium of local media outlets that brought together 21 people with wide ranging views on gun control for a two-day discussion. Despite their opposing views, Jon and Melanie developed a friendship that has transcended their differences, though they still do plenty of arguing. In this final half of this interivew, Jon explains what those who aren't "gun people" don't understand about guns and Melanie and Meghan both admit there's a lot they don't understand. He and Melanie also talk about their overall sense of personal safety in the world and how they handle concerns like home invasion. Jon explains why he often carries a firearm and what he sees as the uses of owning assault style guns. Melanie reflects on a shooting that occurred at her high school when she was a student and wonders how much worse things would have been if the shooter had used an AR-15 instead of a pistol. Finally, Jon and Melanie talk about what sorts of legislative compromises might be possible on guns and what they think lawmakers could learn from them if they only asked. Guest Bios: Melanie Jeffcoat received her MFA in Acting from the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Washington in Seattle and has worked around the country in theater and film. Her acting credits include "All My Children," "Ordinary Joe" and "The Wonder Years." Her producing, directing and writing credits include "Man in the Glass: The Dale Brown Story," "Gip," and Open Secret," which won the Audience Choice Award at the 2010 Politics on Film Festival in Washington, D.C. Melanie is co-founder of Chaotic Good Improv in Birmingham, Alabama and is a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. She lives near Birmingham, Alabama Jon Godfrey worked in law enforcement for several decades, serving as Deputy County Sheriff in Pottawatomie County, Kansas, a criminal investigator in Kansas and Chief of Police for the US Dept. Of Veterans Affairs Police Service in Syracuse, New York. A retired army veteran, he lives in a rural area outside Syracuse, New York.

This week's episode is the first of a two part series about guns in America. It's a conversation between Meghan and two people with very different feelings about the issue. Melanie Jeffcoat is an actor, filmmaker and gun control activist who lives in Alabama. Jon Godfrey is a retired law enforcement officer who's a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and lives in upstate New York. In this part of this conversation, Jon and Melanie talk about how their backgrounds shaped their feelings about guns and compare and contrast their reactions to the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde,Texas. While Melanie is perplexed as to why anyone would need something like an AR-15, Jon explains why he owns such weapons and why he advocates for proper training and better mental health screenings rather than restrictions on the guns themselves. Above all, they talk about how they came to know one another. In 2018 they were part of Guns: An American Conversation, a collaboration between TIME Magazine and a consortium of local media outlets that brought together 21 people with wide ranging views on gun control for a two-day discussion. Despite their opposing views, Jon and Melanie developed a friendship that has transcended their differences, though they still do plenty of arguing.

Guest Bios:

Melanie Jeffcoat received her MFA in Acting from the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Washington in Seattle and has worked around the country in theater and film. Her acting credits include "All My Children," "Ordinary Joe" and "The Wonder Years." Her producing, directing and writing credits include "Man in the Glass: The Dale Brown Story," "Gip," and Open Secret," which won the Audience Choice Award at the 2010 Politics on Film Festival in Washington, D.C. Melanie is co-founder of Chaotic Good Improv in Birmingham, Alabama and is a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. She lives near Birmingham, Alabama Jon Godfrey worked in law enforcement for several decades, serving as Deputy County Sheriff in Pottawatomie County, Kansas, a criminal investigator in Kansas and Chief of Police for the US Dept. Of Veterans Affairs Police Service in Syracuse, New York. A retired army veteran, he lives in a rural area outside Syracuse, New York.