Lean Out with Tara Henley

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. My guest on the program today 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 acti...

We live in an age of economic precarity and journalists are not exempt from this. My guest on the program today 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....

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? My guest on the program today has been mulling this question over, and she says we might want to reconsider some of the assumptions of feminism — starti...

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. My guest on the program today 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 “deliber...

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. My guest on the program today 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...

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. My guest on the program today has published a wonderful book about famous writers and their recipes, exploring the restorative power of home cooking. V...

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. My 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...

On the Lean Out podcast, one of the topics that we often return to is the media, and the insanity of the media. For our last show of 2025, my 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 new...

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. I’m talking about the feminization theory , or the idea that the shifting sex ratios in influential institutions comes with both positive and negative consequences. My guest on the program today...

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. I’m talking about the Beat Generation. My...

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. My guest on the program today has dedicated his career to men’s health, and he has some important insights to share, both...

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 — my 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 he...

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. My guest on the program today knows something about this — she grappled with all of these things, all at once, durin...

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. My 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...

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the many crises that Canada is facing —and where we go from here. My 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 Ips...

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. My 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...

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? My 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...

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? My 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 Br...

In recent years, we have seen heated debate in this country around the CBC and its future. With the question of defunding no longer looming, it is a good time to pause, to look back at where our national public broadcaster has been, and to talk through where it might go from here. My guest on today’s program is a veteran CBC producer who has written an insightful and well-researched new book about...

Today, as we go to air, my guest on the program takes the stage at Toronto Metropolitan University to address the next generation. He is a legendary Canadian journalist and he’ll be reflecting on the highs and lows that he’s experienced in his ringside seat to history, and how to navigate what he calls “the spinning vortex of ever-more complex news” — all of which he covers in his riveting new mem...

Earlier this year at Lean Out, we covered Canada’s federal election. It was a contest not just between candidates and parties but between dominant narratives about the challenges facing this country. Was our biggest problem the decline in material conditions, or was it Donald Trump? My guest on today’s podcast was there, on the campaign trail. He’s just written a book about why this election was o...

In 2021, Canada was rocked by a discovery at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops: what appeared to be the remains of more than 200 Indigenous children. The story went viral globally and was reported by The New York Times and others as a mass grave. But to date, no remains have been exhumed. My guest on the program today is a First Nation chief and a podcaster who has made a new, ho...

September is here and Lean Out is back with a new season of conversations with writers and thinkers from around the world. We could not think of a more important topic to kick off our fall season than the state of Canadian democracy. My guest on the program today has written a new book that serves as a wake-up call — he says that while we observe the rituals of the democratic process, we have lost...

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from April of 2025. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September! For some time now, writers and thinkers outside this country have been asking me: What happened to Canada? My guest on the program today has asked this question himself, in a...

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from November of 2024. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September! With Donald Trump winning the presidency, the popular vote, the Senate, and the House, in what The New York Times has described as a “crushing electoral rebuke” of the Demo...