The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Hadley Freeman is a U.K.-based journalist, Sunday Times columnist, and the author of Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia. She joins the podcast this week to discuss what she calls the "thinness arms race" in the era of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. She and Meghan talk about why extreme thinness is once again being rewarded—if not demanded—of female celebrities, how the current aesthetic differs from 90s heroin chic, and why the language of body positivity is often used to shut down obvious observations. They also talk about the physical and psychological realities of severe undernourishment, the role of status and self-denial in shaping beauty standards, and the broader "cartoonification" of the human body in a culture increasingly mediated by filters, pornography, and screens. Before the episode begins, Meghan has a quick but important message about her April Fool's Day episode with "guest" Amanda Gertz-Hurdy. Guest Bio: Hadley Freeman is a staff writer at The Sunday Times. Her latest book, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, was published in 2023.

This week's guest is Estela Lopez, Executive Director of the LA Downtown Industrial Business Improvement District, which encompasses Los Angeles's Skid Row. With 25 years on the job and a lifetime in the neighborhood, Estela is one of the most clear-eyed, unsparing voices when it comes to what homelessness actually looks like at the ground level. In this conversation, she and Meghan talk about how a thriving industrial district became the nation's most concentrated homeless encampment, why Estela sees this less as a homelessness crisis than a lawlessness crisis, and how the open-air drug economy makes every other intervention nearly impossible. They also talk about the limits—and often the folly—of harm reduction policy, how COVID chaos led to the collapse of enforcement, and what the "housing first" approach gets wrong.

This week, Meghan sits down for an efficient but information-packed conversation with mindset coach Amanda Gertz-Hurdy, author of The Curiosity Workbook. They discuss how Amanda pivoted from a corporate career to a more creative path before building a thriving practice in the mindfulness and curiosity space—and why she believes radical self-acceptance can only come when you're ready to ask the radical questions. This episode is sponsored by Fecalicity. Visit myfecalmatters.biz to start your new gut health journey today. Guest bio: Amanda Gertz-Hurdy is a certified journaling coach, a top-rated curiosity practitioner, a mom to twins, and the author of The Curiosity Workbook: How to Stand in Your Truth, Sit in Your Intention, and Kick Ass by Cultivating Curiosity.

Bestselling novelist and commentator Lionel Shriver returns to the podcast to dicuss what might be her most controversial book yet. A Better Life takes on immigration through the story of a progressive Brooklyn woman who opens her home to a migrant. In this interview, she and Meghan discuss the book's themes and central characters, including the deliciously complicated Nico, a basement-dwelling fan of manospheric podcasts, and the role of the family's sprawling, Queen Anne-style house, which is almost a character in itself. They also talk about demography, population decline, and the cultural shift from seeing children as the default to seeing them as an elective. Lionel was a contributor to Meghan's 2015 book Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers On the Decision Not To Have Kids, and they revisit their respective choices in that regard, what people really mean when they talk about happiness and fulfillment, and why sacrifice may be more central to a meaningful life than our culture likes to admit. Guest Bio: A prolific journalist with a fortnightly column in Britain's The Spectator, Lionel Shriver has written widely for the New York Times, the London Times, the Financial Times, Harper's Magazine, and many other publications. She has written 16 novels, including Mania, Should We Stay or Should We Go, The Mandibles, and We Need to Talk About Kevin, and her work has been translated into 35 languages. Her latest novel is A Better Life.

This week Meghan is joined by actor, humorist, and six-time author Annabelle Gurwitch, who returns to the podcast to discuss her new memoir, The End of My Life Is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker. Annabelle was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer during COVID, entirely out of the blue, after what she assumed was a meaningless cough. Five years later, she remains an outlier on a targeted therapy that has kept her stable. In this conversation, Annabelle talks about how she has resisted the sentimental clichés surrounding illness, why she rejects the idea that cancer is a "battle," and how humor, contrarianism, and facing "the shipwreck of the soul" have shaped the way she lives now. Guest Bio: Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress, activist, and New York Times bestselling author of six books and two-time finalist for the Thurber Prize. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Hadassah Magazine, among other publications. Her six books include the New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist I See You Made an Effort. Annabelle co-hosted the fan favorite Dinner & a Movie on TBS, was a regular commentator for NPR. She is serving in leadership as a patient advocate with the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).

Meghan talks with investigative journalist and bestselling author Sam Quinones (Dreamland, The Least of Us) about the piece of the homelessness crisis we're often encouraged to treat as secondary: synthetic drugs, especially methamphetamine, and its connection to the rapid rise of street psychosis and encampment life. Sam explains how today's meth is fundamentally different from the "tweaker" era of the 1990s and early 2000s: cheaper, purer, more abundant, and more destabilizing. Known as P2P meth, this new form was perfectly suited to mass industrial production and reshaped street homelessness across the country, including places that historically had little visible homelessness at all. They also talk about the limitations of a single-cause narrative ("it's all housing costs"), the realities of Housing First, and why many recovery stories begin not with compassion-as-policy, but with the unpopular intervention that removes access to drugs: arrest and incarceration. And then for something completely different . . . Sam talks about his delightfully unexpected new book, The Perfect Tuba, and why band, discipline, and collective effort may offer a strange but persuasive antidote to a culture increasingly engineered for addiction. Guest Bio: Sam Quinones is an investigative journalist and bestselling author whose work focuses on addiction, drug trafficking, and social breakdown in the United States. He is the author of Dreamland, which examined the origins of the opioid epidemic, and The Least of Us, about fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the transformation of American street life. His latest book, The Perfect Tuba, explores community, discipline, and fulfillment through the unlikely world of band and brass instruments. He writes the Dreamland newsletter on Substack and hosts a podcast on addiction, recovery, and public policy.

Time for another reunion! Sarah Haider, Meghan's co-host on the late, great A Special Place In Hell, has a lot to say about the Epstein files, so she visited the podcast to unload. After opening the episode with an homage to the classic intro from our former podcast, the ladies talk about how everyone's a pedophile now, why Ghislaine Maxwell was drawn to such bad boyfriends, and why Epstein's favorite muffins (yes, literal muffins) were so delicious they inspired poetry. Because it's Sarah, they also discuss the latest in Fertility Crisis Discourse, including new nostalgia about teenage motherhood and Sarah's idea of a GI Bill for mothers. Finally, they reveal the only conditions under which we would revive A Special Place In Hell. The answer may (not) surprise you.

A special solo episode! Now out from behind the paywall. As a recent bonus episode for subscribers, Meghan recorded some thoughts about a media dustup that was making her head explode. In the wake of the latest Epstein document dump, a smaller, unrelated story emerged a few weeks ago that carried some of the same themes. It involved New York Times columnist Ross Douthat's decision not to air an interview he recorded with journalist Seth Harp for his podcast Interesting Times. After Harp accused Douthat of spiking the episode out of cowardice, a chorus of online commenters demanded the tape be released anyway—raw, unedited, or handed over to the guest—so "the people" could decide. What interested Meghan wasn't who won a debate no one heard, but the apparently widespread belief that audiences are entitled to everything that gets recorded, regardless of editorial judgment. To her, this seems bonkers, but a surprising number of people seem not to realize that interviews get scrapped all the time. She's done it herself, and she explains some of the circumstances that led to it. This episode also contains a painful personal story about Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Get out your hankies.

Is it really true that no one—or at least no one under 30—is having sex anymore? In this episode, Meghan talks with neuroscientist, author, and former sex researcher Dr. Debra Soh about her new book Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy, a data-packed look at why millennials and Gen Z are having less sex than any cohort on record despite living in the most sexually permissive culture in history. From declining testosterone and endocrine disruptors to porn, dating apps, kink culture, sex dolls, and the rise of AI boyfriends and girlfriends (she tried a few), Debra argues that technology has become the new contraception—reshaping not just sexual behavior but intimacy itself. They also discuss hypergamy, hookup culture backlash, "sex positivity" overreach, and whether the future holds a rebellion back toward real-life connection and analog pastimes. Guest Bio Dr. Debra Soh is a neuroscientist who specializes in human sexuality and biological explanations for behavior. Her previous book, The End of Gender, was published in 2020.

In this episode, Meghan talks with science writer and professional skeptic Michael Shermer about his new book Truth: What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters, and about why agreeing on basic facts has become so difficult, even when everyone is looking at the same video. They discuss Minneapolis, ICE raids, viral "exposé" culture, the transgender movement, the lab leak theory, the Jeffrey Epstein case, the way activism distorts institutions that are supposed to care about evidence, and why humans are much better at defending beliefs than revising them. Note that this episode was recorded on January 20, four days before the killing of Alex Pretti during ICE protests in Minneapolis. We discuss the killing of Renee Good. Guest Bio Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show. For 30 years he taught college and university courses in critical thinking, and for 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, Heavens on Earth, Giving the Devil His Due, and Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational. His new book is Truth: What it is, How to Find it, Why it Still Matters. Follow him on X @michaelshermer.

Jacob Savage, author of the ultra-viral Compact essay "The Lost Generation," was digital media's man of the month in December. Meghan interviewed him on December 26 for a special episode for paying subscribers, and here it is now from behind the paywall. Jacob's argument in a nutshell, is this: Starting around 2014, the push to diversify hiring in elite institutions, particularly academia, journalism/book publishing and entertainment, hit millennial white men hardest. Despite talent, hardwork, and even privileged connections, many were denied professional opportunities solely because of identity. Many were left stuck, sidelined, or quietly drifting. Jacob describes his path after graduating from Princeton in 2006 and sampling a few different fields before trying to become a television writer in Hollywood. Spoiler: it didn't work out well. Was his mistake his insistence that, as he writes, "the world treat me fairly, when the world was loudly telling me it had no intention of doing so"? Or were the systemic forces that conspired against him part of a larger movement that will have negative downstream consequences for generations to come? Guest Bio: Jacob Savage writes from Los Angeles.

We're back from the holiday break! (Sort of.) This interview with the inimitable Mike Pesca was recorded on Boxing Day and released right away to paying subscribers. Now it's available to everyone. Host of The Gist and author of the newsletters Pesca Profundities and The Gist List, Mike has turned the humble "bonus segment" into a multi-level rmarketing scheme multi-tiered pricing philosophy. How does he do it? We'll find out! We also talk about the hardest part of the creator economy (discovery), the incentives that reward martyrdom and outrage, and, most of all, Mike's December 26 Substack post No One's Nice To Bari Weiss. The CBS News editor-in-chief has been all over the headlines this past week after spiking delaying a 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, the notorious El Salvador terrorist prison, that was on the cusp of airing. Is it because the segment needed to "move beyond the forty-yard lines?" Or is something else going on? Also: a discussion on a mega-viral Compact article about systemic discrimination against white millennial men, a cry against Hamilton erasure, and why my lack of grip strength is more than made up for by my alarmingly hyperextensive fingers.

This week, I talk with author Lili Anolik about her book on two writers whose lives overlapped in ways that were both unlikely and (in retrospect) inevitable. One is Eve Babitz, the exuberant chronicler of 1970s Hollywood. The other is Joan Didion, whose notoriously "cool," exacting style defined a particular vision of Los Angeles and helped make her one of the most influential writers of the last century. The two writers are often framed as opposites, but in Didion & Babitz, Lili explores how they shared similar burdens of the times–burdens around creativity, ambition, and modern womanhood. If you enjoy literary gossip, this interview is for you. Our conversation includes some surprising and, at times, uncomfortable details about Didion's marriage, her relationship with her daughter, and her lingering feelings from an early romance with Noel Parmentel, a roguish figure who helped her start her career and introduced her to her husband, John Gregory Dunne. If you're among the devoted Didion faithful, you may hear things you didn't expect. If you're new to Eve Babitz, consider this your introduction to one of the great hidden figures of American literary life. Guest Bio: Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a writer at large for Air Mail. Her work has also appeared in Harper's, Esquire, and The Paris Review, among other publications. She is the creator of the podcast Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College. Her latest book is Didion & Babitz, published by Scribner.

Writer and editor Thomas Beller joins me to discuss his new essay collection Degas at the Gas Station. The essays trace his experience of fatherhood through the landscapes of his own childhood, including the early death of his psychoanalyst father and Tom's later return—wife and children in tow—to the very Manhattan apartment where he was raised. We talk about some of the fundamental conflicts of personal writing, including the ethics of writing about your children and even your ambivalence about parenthood. We also discuss why some writers feel trapped inside the genres that come most naturally to them, how the literary sensibility of The New Yorker shaped the styles of generations of writers, and how Tom is feeling about New York City these days. The episode was recorded on the morning of November 4, Election Day, and Tom talks about why he's voting for Zohran Mamdani—and why he thinks some of my early writing relates directly to Mamdani's platform. Guest Bio: Thomas Beller is a long time contributor to the New Yorker and the author of several books including Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball, also published by Duke University Press; J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist; and The Sleep-Over Artist. A 2024-25 Guggenheim fellow, he is a founding editor of Open City Magazine and Books and Mrbellersneighborhood.com, and Professor and Director of creative writing at Tulane University.

Thanksgiving has come early! A year after bidding farewell to our much-loved/occasionally-despised podcast A Special Place In Hell, Sarah Haider joins me for a catch-up. A lot has happened in the last few weeks, not to mention the last year. We discuss the killing of Charlie Kirk, the wave of anti-Indian hate on X, the phenomenon of South Asian troll farming, the uses and abuses of AI, and, of course, the discourse around "the great feminization," which was the entire premise of A Special Place In Hell. (Did someone steal our idea?) We also discuss Sarah's new baby and whether her pregnancy was worse than my house burning down. This version of our conversation is free to all. To hear a longer version, become a paying subscriber at Substack at https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/ or join The Unspeakeasy on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnspeakeasyPodcast

Why is it so difficult to find meaningful help for the severely mentally ill, including those exhibiting patterns of violence? And why has this question become politicized? Policy expert and practicing psychiatrist Dr. Sally Satel is not typically a fan of Donald Trump, but she agrees with the president's recent executive order on mental health policy. That order called for "shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment to restore public order." This issue, she says, should not be about politics but about getting both parties to grapple with the full dimensions of serious mental illness as it relates to public health. In this episode, we talk about what drew Sally to this field, why "harm reduction" can be a flimsy approach, and why we so desperately need more beds in psychiatric units. We also discuss last summer's horrific case in Charlotte, N.C., where a young woman was stabbed to death by a man whose mother had tried to have him committed for psychosis. Guest Bio: Sally Satel, M.D., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a practicing psychiatrist and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine, examines mental health policy as well as political trends in medicine. Become a paying subscriber to The Unspeakeasy and get lots of perks, including access to monthly hangouts for Founding Members. https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/ I'm teaching a Zoom writing workshop in Memoir and Personal Essay, Jan 6 through Feb 24, 2026. Apply by Dec 5. https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/p/next-writing-course-starts-jan-6 The Unspeakeasy 2026 retreat schedule has been announced! https://theunspeakeasy.com/retreats Order my book, The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays, on Amazon or directly from the publisher https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-catastrophe-hour.

This week, Ben Appel joins me to talk about his new book, Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic, a memoir about leaving one kind of cult only to stumble into another. Raised in a rigid Christian community, Ben found refuge in the gay rights movement and, later, the Ivy League—until "allyship" started to look less like solidarity and more like a loyalty oath. We discuss • Why he chose the deliberately provocative title Cis, White, Gay — and what reactions revealed about current identity politics. • How queer "community" has become increasingly moralized, hierarchical, and policed — and what gets lost when dissent is framed as betrayal. • The difference between taste and taboo — and how aesthetic preferences are now treated as political statements. • Why "representation" has replaced excellence as the highest cultural virtue. • How literary gatekeeping operates today — from publishers and prize committees to informal online watchdogs. • The loneliness of ideological nonconformity in queer and creative circles. • The professional and social costs of questioning orthodoxy — including lost friendships, lost opportunities, and subtle blacklisting. Guest Bio: Ben Appel is a writer and commentator whose memoir, Cis White Gay, traces his path from a strict Christian sect to progressive activism—and his break with movement orthodoxy; he's written for outlets like Newsweek, UnHerd, and more, and publishes on Substack. Become a paying subscriber to The Unspeakeasy and get lots of perks, including access to monthly hangouts for Founding Members. https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/ I'm teaching a Zoom writing workshop in Memoir and Personal Essay, Jan 6 through Feb 24, 2026. Apply by Dec 5. https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/p/next-writing-course-starts-jan-6 The Unspeakeasy 2026 retreat schedule has been announced! https://theunspeakeasy.com/retreats Order my book, The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays, on Amazon or directly from the publisher https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-catastrophe-hour.

My guest is Dr. Sunita Puri, a palliative-care physician and author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour. We talk about what it really means to care for patients when cure is no longer the goal, why our medical system resists honest conversations about death, and how clarity and compassion can coexist at the end of life. Topics we cover: • What palliative care really provides (beyond hospice) • Why "more treatment" ≠ "more life" • Prognosis, probabilities, and telling the truth kindly • How families can ask the right questions • Documentation that matters (and what to avoid) • The moral distress of clinicians • Cultural/faith factors that shape decisions • Dignity, autonomy, and realistic hope Guest Bio: Dr. Sunita Puri is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, where she is the Director of the Inpatient Palliative Care Service. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, among other publications. 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.

Less than 24 hours after her Compact essay, “The Great Feminization,” set off a thousand group texts, writer Helen Andrews joined to talk about what she means by “feminization,” why the 2020 moral fervor looked the way it did, and how workplace culture shifts when women become the numerical majority. We also compare “agreeableness” with the kind of conflict that actually moves ideas forward (and where each belongs). In this episode we discuss: How Helen defines “the great feminization” and why she thinks it explains contemporary “wokeness” What changes when institutions tip female—journalism, academia, law, nonprofits HR-ification, hostile-environment law, and why managers vs. judges should handle culture Agreeableness as a social virtue—and a professional liability in truth-seeking fields Innovation, risk tolerance, and the gendered vibes around tech, nuclear power, and exploration Whether “women in STEM” initiatives help, hurt, or just rebrand office politics About the guest: Helen Andrews is a senior editor at The American Conservative and author of Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. Her new Compact essay is “The Great Feminization.”

This week I interview journalist and author Olga Khazan about her new book on personality change, Me, But Better. We talk about the Big Five traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion/introversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—and how they play out in ordinary life rather than in personality quizzes. Olga explains what research actually shows about how much you can change, how anxiety and depression tie into neuroticism, and why introversion can quietly turn into isolation. We also discuss everyone’s favorite personality expert, Carl Jung, the politics of “openness,” what’s happened to our social lives since the pandemic, and how the culture of “self-care” has blurred into hiding from the world. Other threads include: • The science behind gradual, behavioral change instead of “life hacks” • How “fake it till you make it” can work without faking yourself entirely • Gender differences in agreeableness and the social cost of being direct • Why liberals often score higher on neuroticism—and what that might really mean • The relationship between personality, motherhood, and the urge to optimize everything Guest Bio: Olga Khazan is a staff writer for The Atlantic and the author, previously, of Weird. She is a two-time recipient of journalism fellowships from the International Reporting Project and the winner of the 2017 National Headliner Award for Magazine Online Writing.