The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Mark Oppenheimer spent decades thinking about Judy Blume before finally writing her biography — and the result is a book that is a serious inquiry into Blume's books, her personal story, and social and cultural dynamics of the 80-plus years in which she has lived. In this conversation, we talk about what it meant to be a boy who loved Judy Blume, why realist fiction for young people has largely given way to fantasy, and how Blume's work stirred up controversy even though she never courted it herself. Paying subscribers to The Unspeakeasy on Subtack can hear an extra long version of this conversation. Go to https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/subscribe to join or upgrade your subscription. Guest bio: Mark Oppenheimer is a journalist, academic, and the author of several books including Squirrel Hill, about the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting. His new biography, Judy Blume: A Life, is out now.

Writer and cultural critic Phoebe Maltz Bovy joins Meghan to discuss her new book, The Last Straight Woman, an exploration of how heterosexual women became suspect — if not pitifully uncool — in progressive culture. They talk about everything from Tumblr-era feminism and the post-#MeToo recalibration of gender politics to the television series Sex and the City and Girls, "photogenic feminism," bachelorette parties at gay bars, late-in-life lesbians, hookup culture, and why admitting you're a "boring straight woman" may now qualify as a radical act. We also revisit the "lesbian chic" era of the 1990s (my personal heyday), the discourse around the viral New Yorker short story Cat Person, the appeal (and limits) of sexual fluidity narratives, and the cultural overlap between straight female culture and gay male sensibilities. Bonus: They switched gears in the last 15 minutes and did a Deep Dive™ into the subject of buying secondhand clothing from online marketplaces such as Poshmark. This portion is available to paying subscribers. To upgrade your subscription, go to https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/subscribe. Guest Bio: Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a Toronto-based cultural critic and the author. She is co-host, with Kat Rosenfield, of the Feminine Chaos podcast, Opinion Editor at The Canadian Jewish News, and host of the Canadian Jewish News podcast, The Jewish Angle. She contributes regularly to The Globe and Mail and is the author of The Perils of "Privilege" (St. Martins, 2017). She also runs a Substack called Close-Reading the Reruns with Phoebe Maltz Bovy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.