Lean Out with Tara Henley

This week in New York City, a longtime defender of free speech was honoured by her peers. My guest on today’s program accepted the Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Coalition Against Censorship benefit . She returns to the podcast to mark that occasion — and to talk through the big issues of our current moment, including rising antisemitism. Nadine Strossen is the former presid...

“ Be it resolved, liberalism gets the big questions right.” That was the resolution posed at Friday’s Munk Debate in Toronto, to a group of public intellectuals from across the globe. The starting point for the debate was that liberalism is in crisis. That tensions have reached a boiling point. That its critics believe “liberalism has become an impediment to the goal of progress” — and that “human...

For some time now, there have been calls for Canada to launch an independent public inquiry into its handling of the Covid pandemic — including from the British Medical Journal . But this past week, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter , Liberal MPs rejected an inquiry, opting for a closed-door review by advisors to the Minister of Health. My guest on today’s program says that it is essential that...

There are still people who believe that cancel culture does not exist. But it’s about to get a whole lot harder to make that argument publicly. My guest on today’s program has a new book out that provides irrefutable evidence that cancel culture is a serious phenomenon — that it is now a common tactic on the right and the left, that it is a threat to individuals and institutions, and that it is ul...

Crime in Canada is on the rise. According to recent Statistics Canada data , violent crime is at its most severe since 2007, and the murder rate is the highest it’s been since 1992. My guest on today’s program says our criminal justice system is not working — that it is expensive and ineffective and inhumane, and that the time has come to transform it.  Benjamin Perrin is a professor at the Peter...

Earlier this month, a prominent Canadian academic made headlines when he announced his departure from the University of London. “Progressive conformity and cancel culture are distorting the teaching and research mission of universities,” he wrote on Twitter. “Between the extremely controversial and the progressive-controlled monoculture of academia is a vast and growing zone of unspoken truth.” Er...

Is cancel culture controlled by women? It’s a question that my guest on today’s program has been asking for some time. Her conclusion is that, yes, the phenomenon is driven by women — and only women can stop it. She’s founded a community that, online and in person, has begun actively pushing back.  Meghan Daum is the author of six books, including The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through th...

In 2019, in the magazine Current Affairs, a former McKinsey consultant wrote , “There is no secret society shaping every major decision and determining the direction of human history. There is, however, McKinsey & Company.” My guest on the program today has spent years doing a deep-dive into the prestigious consulting company — and he’s here to talk about what he’s learned about its influence arou...

Schools across the country are back in session — and this fall, the spotlight is on trans issues in the classroom. Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have come out with new policies for parental consent on student pronoun changes, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has launched a lawsuit , saying this violates the Charter and human rights. Add to that, today, some parents will be marching in...

Between the years of 2010 and 2020, a new way of thinking about identity travelled from elite universities, to Internet subcultures, to social media, and to mainstream media, finally landing at many of our most important social, cultural, and governmental institutions, transforming longstanding rules and norms. My guest on today’s program is among the first to take a comprehensive look at the root...

For the past few months on Lean Out, we’ve been doing a deep-dive into the crisis in Canadian media , speaking to critics of the status quo — and asking what’s gone wrong and where we go from here. My guest on today’s program, the last episode in our summer media series, has a unique perspective on our media’s collapse. And he says government and Big Tech subsidies are compromising the vitality an...

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, America’s streets filled with protesters — in some of the largest demonstrations in the country’s history. But three years later, very little concrete change has been achieved. My guest on the podcast today asks: What happened? Why did this mass movement achieve so little? Freddie deBoer is an American journalist. His new book is How Elites Ate the Social...

One of the most important tasks for a seasoned journalist is to pass on what you know. Journalism is something that’s learned by doing, usually alongside someone who’s done it longer. I enjoyed this process while at CBC, and I am pleased to now be at a point with Lean Out that I can expand the operation to include working with up-and-coming journalists. Late last year, I had the pleasure of appear...

This week, the friends and family of a school principal in Toronto gathered to celebrate his life . Richard Bilkszto, sadly, took his life last month, at the age of 60, and much of the reporting on his death has focused on a DEI training and the lawsuit that he launched about it . A reminder to listeners that the claims you will hear have not been proven in court. My guest today is a reporter whos...

This summer at Lean Out, we’ve been doing a deep dive into the collapse of the Canadian media — and the role that new legislation, Bill C-18, has played in exacerbating the crisis. My guest on the program today is someone who has thought a lot about the media and digital policy and public broadcasting, and she has a lot to say about where our media is at, and where we go from here.   Sue Gardner i...

In the past few decades, something has gone wrong in American life, leaving its citizens subject to increasing levels of coercion. That’s the thesis of a new book, and its author, my guest on today’s program, argues that what’s gone wrong is a form of private tyranny, with corporations exercising more and more control over ordinary people’s lives — eroding our freedoms and generating uncertainty,...

What does it mean to be a heretic? Why is dissent from the dominant orthodoxies of our age so important? It’s a topic my guest on today’s program has thought a lot about, as a progressive who frequently questions the thinking on his side of the aisle. And he says that, in fact, we owe much of human progress to the heretics throughout history who have dared to dissent. Brendan O’Neill is the chief...

This week, in the wake of controversial new legislation, Bill C-18, Meta has announced that it will be ending news sharing on its platforms in Canada . So, for a special bonus episode of the podcast, we reached out to a Canadian academic who’s been following this story closely , to get his reaction to the development — and to hear his analysis on what it might mean for our news sector going forwar...

“Once you question the food, you question everything.” That’s a quote from Rory Feek, a farmer and filmmaker in the growing homesteading movement, which is seeing numbers of Americans turn away from processed foods and rediscover how to grow what’s on their plates, sustaining their communities in the process. Feek made this comment at the inaugural Modern Homesteading Conference in Idaho — and my...

In 2019, a white woman in Austin, Texas signed up for a diversity training seminar, in the hopes of better understanding growing polarization in America. But that workshop, in her view, was itself divisive. She went on to publish an essay about it, ending with a call for others to reach out to her with their own experiences — and soon got a letter from a Black man across the country that resulted...

Last week on Lean Out, we heard from Canadian journalist Jen Gerson . The response from listeners was overwhelming. You asked for more coverage of the collapse of our media, including, of course, controversial new legislation . Bill C-18 aims to save journalism in this country — but my guest on today’s program argues that it has instead “ accidentally pushed the news industry into the abyss .” Pet...

If you listen to this podcast, you know that the Canadian media is in serious trouble. But in recent weeks, that crisis has intensified, with wave after wave of bad news for the industry. Bell Canada laid off 1300 staff . And, when this was episode was recorded, merger talks between the two biggest newspaper publishers were ongoing — negotiations have since broken down . Add to that, in the wake o...

Earlier this spring, student protesters at the University of Cambridge successfully cancelled an event on campus, a screening of a documentary on fertility. Students accused the film of being misogynistic , despite the fact that, as student event organizer Charlie Bentley-Astor put it in The Critic magazine , this was a film “made primarily by women, with women, for women.” And, as you’ll hear on...

This week Lean Out is back from our annual summer hiatus, and I am recharged and ready to get back to tackling the big issues of the day. One of the things that I did while I was away was attend Plebity’s inaugural virtual conference, Free Speech and the Left, a timely and important gathering that brought together many prominent writers and thinkers on the left . I was honoured to moderate a panel...

In recent years, we have seen the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry explode in popularity and prevalence. But my guest on today’s program says that at its worst, DEI runs from useless to counterproductive. And he thinks companies would be better off giving the lavish DEI consulting fees directly to the poor. Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic , and the founding editor of...