The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

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...

Novelist and screenwriter Bruce Wagner returns to discuss his exceptionally timely new novel Amputation—a strange, exuberant, and ultra meta work set against a topic I've talked about a lot this year, the January LA wildfires. Bruce, an L.A. native and prominent literary figure in the city, explains how the book came together in less than two months, why he resists "political novels" even when wri...

Katie Herzog, co-host of the Blocked and Reported podcast (BarPod), is best known as an anthropologist of, as she puts it, "internet bullshit." But she's swerved far out of her lane for her latest project. In her brand new book, Drink Your Way Sober, Katie combines personal history with deep reporting to chronicle a lifetime of drinking and explain how a little-known drug called naltrexone, combin...

Photojournalist Jeremy Lee Quinn has spent years documenting protests, rallies, and moments of public unrest that often look very different on the ground than they do on the evening news. In this conversation, he talks with Meghan about what really happens when a "mostly peaceful protest" turns chaotic, how viral clips can erase context, and why the incentives of freelance journalism can skew cove...

After years of institutional groupthink and policy whiplash, what have we actually learned—and what are we still not allowed to ask? Lisa Selin Davis returns to discuss the evidence (and non-evidence) around youth gender medicine, talk about the ongoing taboo and confusion around AGP (autogynephilia), and consider how to hold two truths at once: some people report thriving post-transition while ot...

Dr. Andrew Hartz is a practicing clinical psychologist and the founder of the Open Therapy Institute, an organization dedicated to overcoming sociopolitical bias in the mental health field. He was last here in 2023 and returns now to talk about what's changed—and what hasn't—in the mental-health landscape since then. We discuss the rise of "everyday dissociation," how screens and Zoom relationship...

Novelist, essayist, and publishing coach Leigh Stein returns to the show to discuss her new gothic-inspired novel,  If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You . Set in a Los Angeles "hype house," the book follows a 39-year-old woman managing a mansion full of TikTok influencers—and confronting the realities of aging out of digital media. Leigh talks about the inspirations behind the novel, from a F...

This week, I welcome back Rob Henderson, the social psychologist, author, and commentator who coined the concept of luxury beliefs : ideas that confer status on the upper class while inflicting real costs on lower-income communities. Rob was last here in early 2024 discussing his memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class , which chronicles his journey through California's...

This is the full version of the Aug 4 episode, now available to all subscribers.  Author, New York Times columnist, and superstar linguist John McWhorter returns to the pod to catch us up on what's been on his mind now that the Woke Emergency is over . . . or is it over? We talk about how figures like Robin D'Angelo and Ibram X. Kendi have receded from the spotlight and then move on to more pressi...

This week I'm joined by Alana Newhouse, journalist, cultural critic, and founder/editor-in-chief of  Tablet Magazin e. Since launching  Tablet  in 2009, Alana has carved out a space for nuanced and surprising reporting on Jewish identity and the larger cultural questions shaping those issues, as well as the broader issues of our time. We discuss her 2021 essay, Everything Is Broken , in which she...

This week, I'm joined by author Kelsey Osgood to discuss her recent book "Godstruck: Seven Women's Unexpected Journeys To Religious Conversion." The book, which profiles women who traded secular lives for religious communities such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, evangelical Christianity, Quakerism, Orthodox Judaism, Saudi-based Islam, and even the Amish faith, is fascinating i...

September 3 in NYC at 6 pm,  I'll be in conversation with Lionel live at The Village Underground. Tix available  here . Use promo code CATASTROPHE18 at checkout for a discount. Bestselling novelist and beloved (and occasionally be-hated) columnist Lionel Shriver returns to the podcast to talk about several topics, including her most recent novel,  Mania . In that novel, she imagines a society unde...

This week, I'm joined by author Kelsey Osgood to discuss her recent book "Godstruck: Seven Women's Unexpected Journeys To Religious Conversion." The book, which profiles women who traded secular lives for religious communities such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, evangelical Christianity, Quakerism, Orthodox Judaism, Saudi-based Islam, and even the Amish faith, is fascinating i...

The next meeting of  The Catastrophe Hour  Book Club is scheduled for  Wednesday ,  July 23, at 3:00 p.m. ET.  We will discuss the fifth essay of the collection, Playlist of Tears. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET.  The book club is for yearly paid Substack subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription at  www.theunspeakablepodcast. com...

This episode starts with a Very Special introduction in which I explain what's been going on with the podcast over the last six months (lots of different offerings, which possibly caused some confusion) and talk about the ongoing challenges of the subscriber model. (Short version, please stick around!) I then have the great pleasure of interviewing evolutionary biologist Dr. Carole Hooven, who's b...

The next meeting of  The Catastrophe Hour  Book Club is scheduled for  Wednesday ,  July 16, at 3:00 p.m. ET.  We will discuss the fifth essay of the collection, Playlist of Tears. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET.  The book club is for yearly paid Substack subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription at  www.theunspeakablepodcast. com...

In this episode, I speak with filmmaker Rachel Mason about her documentary L ast Take*: Rust and the Story of Halyna*, which explores the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust . On October 21, 20221, Alec Badwin, who starred in the film, pulled the trigger on a gun he thought was not loaded, killing Halyna and injuring director Joel Souza. Through the lens of grief, media spe...

The next meeting of  The Catastrophe Hour  Book Club is scheduled for  Wednesday ,  July 9, at 3:00 p.m. ET.  We will discuss the fifth essay of the collection, Playlist of Tears. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET.  The book club is for yearly paid Substack subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription at  www.theunspeakablepodcast. com...

The next meeting of  The Catastrophe Hour  Book Club is scheduled for  Wednesday ,  July 2, at 3:00 p.m. ET.  We will discuss the fourth essay of the collection, Species Of Grief. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET, beginning June 11.  The book club is for yearly paid subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription. Species Of Grief was wri...

The next meeting of  The Catastrophe Hour  Book Club is scheduled for  Wednesday ,  June 25, at 3:00 p.m. ET.  We will discuss the third essay of the collection, Basically Dead. The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET.  The book club is for yearly paid Substack subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription at  www.theunspeakablepodcast.com .  ...

In his new memoir, An Exercise In Uncertainty , journalist and editor Jonathan Gluck chronicles more than 20 years of living with multiple myeloma, an incurable but treatable cancer. He joined me to talk about how he's coped with illness, why he chose this moment to write about it, and, most importantly, how he's learned to deal with a condition all of us face to one degree or another: uncertainty...

The next meeting of  The Catastrophe Hour  Book Club is scheduled for  Wednesda y,  June 18, at 3:00 p.m. ET.  We will discuss the second essay of the collection, Same Life, Higher Rent.  The book club meets for 14 consecutive Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. ET, beginning June 11.  The book club is for yearly paid subscribers only, so if you want to join, please upgrade your subscription. To learn more ab...

This week I'm joined by Caroline Fraser, author of Prairie Fires , the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of beloved author Laura Ingalls Wilder. Fraser's latest book, Murderland : Crime and Bloodlust In The Time Of Serial Killers , is a notable departure from the world of sunbonnets and covered wagons. This time, she explores the proliferation of serial killers—figures like the Green River Killer G...

The Catastrophe Hour Book Club begins June 11 with a discussion of the first essay in the book,  The Broken-In World , an examination of divorce, loss, and finding unexpected peace and camaraderie in a world that "can no longer support pretense." The book club runs for 14 consecutive Wednesdays from 3-4 p.m. ET. We will discuss one essay per week To learn more about the book club and join, visit ...

Alma Deutscher, often described as a modern-day Mozart, was a prodigy whose early accomplishments include composing a piano sonata at age six, a short opera at seven, a violin concerto at nine, and her first full-length opera at ten. At twelve, she was profiled on 60 Minutes, and in 2021 began conducting studies in Vienna with Johannes Wildner. Now 20, Alma has just written her first ballet score—...