Meghan Daum on career-reinvention, flyover country, nuance, and Gen X

“My pandemic essay was so badly received; I got massively dragged on Twitter for it, practically canceled. And then it ended up in Best American Travel Writing.”  –Meghan Daum

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Meghan discuss what it means to be called “the voice of a generation” (4:00); why Meghan moved to Nebraska early in her career, and what it’s like to live and create in the provinces versus the metropole (9:20); the difficulty of continuing to make a living as a creative person, and mid-life career reinvention (16:00); Meghan’s essay about moving to rural Virginia during the pandemic, how it was poorly received, and her anxieties about living as a “geoarbitrage” outsider (22:30); Meghan’s career pivot into commenting on the culture wars, and how social media algorithms made this cultural rift more of an issue (35:00); and Rolf’s concerns that the politicization and performative certainty of social discourse will make young people less open to the vulnerabilities and uncertainties of travel (44:45).

Meghan Daum (@meghan_daum) is the host of The Unspeakable Podcast and is the author of six books. Her most recent book, The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2019 and is just out in paperback.

Notable Links:

• Girls (HBO TV series)
• Rolf’s Atlantic essay about Girls (2012 article)
• My Misspent Youth, by Meghan Daum (essay collection)
• Sophfronia Scott on Deviate (podcast episode)
• The GenX Reader, by Douglas Rushkoff (essay collection)
• X Saves the World, by Jeff Gordonier (book)
• Quality of Life Report, by Meghan Daum (novel)
• I Left NYC for Greener Pastures, by Meghan Daum (essay)
• Geoarbitrage (lifestyle-design strategy)
• Culture war (values conflict within a society)
• Alexander Kinglake (19th century English author)
• The Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman (book)
• Cultural appropriation
• Michel Foucault (French theorist)
• Quick Studies: The Best of Lingua Franca (criticism anthology)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

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