Lean Out with Tara Henley

If you follow the news in this country, you know that Canada is currently grappling with a number of crises, from housing to mental health. And yet much of our attention is focused on the United States and on Donald Trump. Our guest on the podcast this week has just published an essay about this. She argues that, much like in a dysfunctional family, the media’s fixation on Trump is a distraction from looking at deeper issues. Amanda Ripley is an American journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. Her latest book is High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out. She is the co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. (You can watch their latest story here). You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Canadians who write books, or cover books, or read books will know that something is wrong with our literary industry. But a new book documents just how far off the rails publishing has gone. Our guest on the program this week is the author of that book, and he says our fundamental problem is an erosion of national identity. Richard Stursberg is a Canadian author and media executive, and the former head of English services for the CBC. His new book is Lament for a Literature: The Collapse of Canadian Book Publishing. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

This week on the Lean Out podcast we are taking a look at the chaotic summer of 2020, and the impact of that unrest on mainstream journalism. Our guest on the program this week has a new interview with the former opinion editor at The New York Times, James Bennet, who was famously ousted by a staff revolt. My guest says that now is a good time to think through how that historical moment — and its activists — has shaped our journalism. Harrison Lowman is a Canadian journalist. He’s the managing editor of The Hub and a former producer of this podcast. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

We live in an age of economic precarity and journalists are not exempt from this. Our guest on the program this week has written a powerful Substack essay about his path from foreign correspondent to Uber driver, and how his troubles have helped him to forge a sense of solidarity with the people he drives to work. Steven Scherer is an American journalist and a former Canadian bureau chief for Reuters. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Men and women don’t seem very happy these days. They are dissatisfied with dating, polarized politically, trash talking each other online, and both marriage and fertility are on the decline. What is responsible for this rift between men and women? Our guest on the program this week has been mulling this question over, and she says we might want to reconsider some of the assumptions of feminism — starting with the idea that marriage and family are “a trap.” Larissa Phillips is an American essayist and the founder of the Volunteer Literacy Project. With her husband, she runs the Honey Hollow Farm in upstate New York. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

The popularity of identity politics, and the subsequent fallout from this ideology, is something that we’ve tried to unpack and understand on the Lean Out podcast. Our guest on the program this week has published a viral essay on the impacts of this moment on Millennial white men. He argues that an entire generation was shut out of certain professions and found themselves in a society that was “deliberately rooting against” them. Jacob Savage is an American writer. His latest essay, for Compact Magazine, is The Lost Generation. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

With the new year now upon us, we are going to continue our conversation about the state of feminism, and how we might begin to think and talk about women’s lives in ways that are more productive. Our guest on the program this week is a frequent commentator on modern feminism, and she says the central archetypes of our current moment — the girl boss on the left and the trad wife on the right — are both reductive and untenable in today’s world. Elizabeth Grace Matthew is an American writer, and the author of the Substack newsletter Restoring American Adulthood. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

It’s New Year’s Day and many of us will be at home, contemplating the year ahead. For New Year’s every year, Lean Out brings you an episode that is lighter and more hopeful. This year, we set our sights on food and its ability to bring us together. Our guest on the program today has published a wonderful book about famous writers and their recipes, exploring the restorative power of home cooking. Valerie Stivers is an American writer and a senior editor at UnHerd. Her new book is The Writer’s Table: Famous Authors and Their Favourite Recipes, inspired by her long-running column at The Paris Review. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

It’s Christmas Day and we at Lean Out wanted to bring you a special bonus episode — to celebrate the occasion and to meditate on the meaning of the holiday. Our guest on the program today is the founder of one of the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry programs in the world, and he’s here to share its driving ethos of cherished belonging, and how that might serve as a model for the wider world. Father Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. Last year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His latest book is Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. This interview was taped December 18. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

On the Lean Out podcast, one of the topics that we often return to is the media, and the insanity of the media. For the last show of 2025, our guest is a veteran journalist and a savvy media critic, and he has some thoughts on where we are, how we got here — and where we should go from here. Mike Pesca is an award-winning American journalist. He is the creator and host of the long-running daily news podcast, The Gist. He’s also the author of Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

With 2025 winding down, we at Lean Out wanted to take a look back at one of the most controversial stories of the year — and to see if we could have a calm, reasonable conversation about a divisive issue. We're talking about the feminization theory, or the idea that the shifting sex ratios in influential institutions comes with both positive and negative consequences. Our guest on the program today is a scholar who is studying that phenomenon. Her recent paper, for the Journal of Controversial Ideas, is “From Worriers to Warriors: The Cultural Rise of Women.” Cory Clark is an American behavioural scientist. She’s an associate professor of psychology at New College of Florida and director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the Sexual Revolution — and weighing its benefits and drawbacks, both for women and for men. Today on the show, we are going back to the period that led into that historical moment, to a bohemian movement of art and travel and sexual experimentation, but also of destruction and dysfunction and family tragedies. We're talking about the Beat Generation. Our guest on today’s program has written the introduction to a reissue of an astonishingly good book that explores all of this, written by Jack Kerouac’s daughter Jan. Amanda Fortini is an American magazine writer and Substacker. She’s a columnist at County Highway and a frequent contributor to T: The New York Times Style Magazine. She’s joins me to talk about the 1981 novel Baby Driver by Jan Kerouac. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In Toronto, where I live, you cannot walk a block without seeing a young man in distress — sleeping on the street, or slumped over from drug use, or shouting and screaming. It feels like something has gone very wrong for men in this country and that nobody is talking about it. Our guest on the program today has dedicated his career to men’s health, and he has some important insights to share, both from his professional life and from his personal life. Zac Seidler is the Global Director of Men’s Health Research at Movember. He’s also an associate professor at Orygen centre for youth mental health at the University of Melbourne, and a member of the advisory council for the American Institute for Boys and Men. He recently joined Prince Harry for a Movember event in New York City. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In the wake of the #MeToo firing of the University of British Columbia creative writing professor Steven Galloway — which is once again in the news this week — our guest on the program today sat down to write a book of advice for young feminists. But her good friend Margaret Atwood convinced her that nobody likes unsolicited advice, and that she should instead frame her memoir around her unusual height and how it shaped her life. The result is a riveting narrative that also offers up plenty of lessons to the next generation of women. Susan Swan is a Canadian novelist, non-fiction writer, professor emerita at York University, and a recipient of the Order of Canada. Her latest book is Big Girls Don’t Cry: A Memoir About Taking Up Space. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Many women in Generation X are now finding themselves overwhelmed. The world is increasingly stressful. But our private lives are not much calmer, as we care for children and aging parents and spouses, stare down middle age, and mull over the legacy of previous generations of women. Our guest on the program today knows something about this — she grappled with all of these things, all at once, during one truly terrible year. Molly Jong-Fast is an American writer and political commentator. She’s a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and the host of the podcast Fast Politics. Her latest book is How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

It’s budget day here in Canada. As Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government tables its first federal budget, we will get reaction and hear a lot of different visions for the country. On today’s episode we wanted to bring you one. Our guest on the program says that Canada is in crisis — and that it is now time for "bold adventurism." Daniel Debow is a Canadian executive, investor, and educator. He is the chair of the board for Build Canada. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the many crises that Canada is facing —and where we go from here. Our guest on the program today warns that we are at a breaking point, and in desperate need of a national reckoning. As we face threats from without, he says, we are divided from within, along the lines of gender, class, region, and, crucially, generation. Darrell Bricker is the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs and a previous director of public opinion research in the Prime Minister’s Office. His latest book, out this week — written with veteran journalist John Ibbitson — is Breaking Point: The New Big Shifts Putting Canada at Risk. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Before the Internet, before the literary world was overrun by online politics, before everything you read — and wrote — had to advance an agenda, there was the solitary person, in a room, losing themselves in the words on the page. There was the fan. Our guest on the program today has written a book of essays on fandom and his own obsessions. In the process, he confronts the big cultural forces of our age. Jason Guriel is a Toronto writer. His latest book is Fan Mail: A Guide to What We Love, Loathe, and Mourn. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Many of us that are big readers have been scratching our heads for years, trying to figure out why so many books are now so tedious and moralistic. What’s happened to North American literary culture — and why hasn’t it bounced back? Our guest on the program today has some answers. He’s written a book about the decline of literary freedom in publishing, and a dynamic that he describes as “a circular firing squad.” Adam Szetela is an American author. His new outing is That Book is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

If you live in North America, chances are good that you spend a lot of time wondering why things feel so dysfunctional. Why can’t we make any progress on the big issues of our age, like housing? Our guest on the program today has some answers — and he has written a fascinating new book about why nothing works. Marc J. Dunkelman is an American author and former political staffer. He’s a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs. His latest book is Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com