The Unspeakable Podcast

Aaron Kimberly is a mental health clinician with longtime experience providing care to transgender and gender questioning patients. He is also a trans man who made his transition fifteen years ago. In recent years, he has been speaking out against what has become the prevailing wisdom and standard protocol in transgender medicine: that people identifying as transgender, even adolescents and sometimes children, effectively “know who they are” and have a right to begin hormone therapy without comprehensive psychological assessment. Known as the affirmative care model, this approach has been promoted by activists and largely embraced by the medical establishment and the mainstream media. In many cases, the alliance with that approach comes from a fear of being labeled transphobic or of “gatekeeping.” But as listeners of The Unspeakable know, the issue is far more layered and complex than the many people in general public—and even many well-meaning health care providers—realize. On the heels of a January 13, 2022 New York Times story, which for the first time gave credence to the idea that the affirmative care model might not be the best approach for young people (and which featured two time Unspeakable guest Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper), Meghan returns to the topic to speak with Aaron about what’s gone awry in gender medicine and why so few people have been willing to talk about it. Guest Bio: Aaron Kimberly is (by his own terms) a transsexual man, born female with a rare ovotesticular intersex condition. He’s worked as a mental health clinician since 2008 in hospital and community settings. In 2021 he founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance to educate about different types of gender dysphoria from an evidence base, without the lens of political ideology. He is also co-host of the Transparency podcast.

Chris Kavanagh is cognitive anthropologist and one-half of the team behind Decoding The Gurus, a podcast that bills itself as “an anthropologist and a psychologist listening to the greatest minds the world has to offer and trying their best to understand what they’re talking about.” By “greatest minds” Chris and his co-host, the Australian psychologist Matthew Browne, are talking mainly about aspiring or established public intellectuals who’ve gained large followings on YouTube, often for questioning mainstream media narratives and challenging liberal pieties. (Listeners of The Unspeakable are no doubt familiar with at least some of these figures, a few of whom have appeared on the show.) They’ve also done deep dives into figures like Joe Rogan, Russel Brand, Brené Brown and Gwyneth Paltrow. Chris and Matt are sympathetic to some of what these folks have to say, but skeptical of the overall phenomenon of intellectuals as internet influencers and they spend a lot of time laughing at the self-seriousness of their subjects. That said, anyone they discuss has a standing offer to come on show and defend themselves. In this conversation, Chris and Meghan talk about why these figures can be at once fascinating and maddening, what happened when YouTuber Chris Williamson joined the show to defend himself, and why Chris, who’s originally from Northern Ireland and currently lives in Japan, thinks Americans are especially receptive to guru logic.   Guest Bio: Chris Kavanagh is a Specially appointed Associate Professor at the College of Contemporary Psychology and a Researcher at the Center for Studies of Social Cohesion at Oxford University. His research interests include East Asian religions, ritual behavior, and the bonding effects of shared dysphoria. Currently he is based in Japan.   The episode of The Unspeakable is sponsored by Better Help online therapy. Visit Betterhelp.com/Unspeakable for a special offer.

Journalist Michael Wolff is best known for his juicy and deeply reported dispatches from various corridors of power. His many books include the 2008 Rupert Murdoch biography, The Man Who Owns The News, and the 2018 sensation Fire and Fury: Inside The Trump White House, which was easily the most talked about political book of the Trump era. His two other books about the Trump years are Siege: Trump Under Fire and Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency. Michael's most recent book, Too Famous: The Powerful, The Wishful, The Damned, The Notorious, collects selected works of biographical journalism over the last two decades, including lengthy treatises on Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and Jared Kushner. The word perhaps most often associated with Michael is “access.” He has a way of achieving astonishingly close constant with sources who seem willing to carry on as if he’s not there at all, knowing full well he’s writing everything down. This has made him famous in his own right, and prone to his own controversies. But Meghan invited him onto the podcast mostly to talk about writing itself: the craft of it, the business of it, the psychological toll it can take on author and subject alike. They cover a lot of ground in this conversation, including how Michael’s first big break came from a tip form his mother, how his second published piece was for Ms. Magazine, and why he thinks “controversy" isn’t so controversial anymore. They also get into one of Meghan’s (irrationally?) favorite subjects, the improbable lionization of Ronan Farrow, which Michael covers in Too Famous but that no magazine would give him an assignment to write about.     Guest Bio: Michael Wolff is the author of ten books including, most recently, Too Famous, a collection of essays, and three best-selling books about the Trump presidency. Over the past twenty years he has been a regular columnist for New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, British GQ, The Guardian, and The Hollywood Reporter. He has won numerous awards in the U.S. and U.K., including two National Magazine Awards. He lives in New York City and has five children. 

In a solo episode to wrap up the season, Meghan reflects on how the The Unspeakable Podcast is doing since launching fifteen months ago and how she’s feeling about the venture overall. With radical honesty and perhaps a touch of self-sabotage, she lays out the download numbers and explains why they’re as indicative of a failed show as a successful one. She lists the things she’s done to try to earn money from the podcast and ruminates on what changes she might make to increase her numbers — and why she’s not making them. With stunning bravery, Meghan confesses to struggling with professional envy toward other podcasters, so much so that her phone sometimes feels like a hot stove when their episodes drop. Finally, after much soul searching, she realizes that The Unspeakable Podcast isn’t fueled by the culture wars as much as guided by the spirit of the book after which it was named. (Warning: this episode contain a SHOCKING REVEAL about Roxane Gay.)

Writer Stephen Elliott was once a bonafide member of the independent literary scene. In 2009 he founded the literary site The Rumpus, which helped launch the careers of writers like Roxane Gay and Cheryl Strayed. His eight books include the memoir The Adderall Diaries and the novel Happy Baby, which draws from his experiences in the child welfare system as a teenager and his subsequent involvement in the BDSM community. Both of those books were adapted into films, one of which he directed. He also wrote and directed the film “After Cherry” and made a web series. In 2017, Stephen was among more than 70 men whose names appeared on the so-called “Shitty Media Men List," an anonymously sourced Google document that accused the men of various levels of sexual misconduct. Stephen was among those accused of rape. He eventually decided to sue the list’s creator because, he says, he was in the “unique position of knowing not only that I didn't rape anyone, but that there was no one out in the world who believed I had raped them.” In this conversation, Stephen explained what he means by that and what he hopes to accomplish with the lawsuit. But the interview is not really about the lawsuit or the list. It’s about Meghan’s favorite subject, the mid-career pivot, and how Stephen put his life back together after being about as cancelled as it’s possible to be. They talked about how Stephen managed to become a real estate investor with very little startup money and about his “Self Help” newsletter, which he’s dubbed “financial advice for poets.” Stephen shared his belief that literary writers are especially likely to participate in social media mobs and also offered his biggest piece of advice for anyone: buy a house. This interview was originally recorded on video for the podcast’s Unspeakeasy video series. A partial version can be seen on the Unspeakable YouTube channel. The full version is available to Patreon supporters of the podcast at Patrreon.com/theunspeakable. Guest Bio: Stephen Elliott is the author of The Adderall Diaries and the novel Happy Baby, which draws from his experiences in the child welfare system as a teenager and his subsequent involvement in the BDSM community. Both of those books were adapted into films, one of which he directed. He also wrote and directed the film “After Cherry” and made a web series.

Leigh Stein first came on the show in the summer of 2020 to talk about her novel, Self-Care, which spoofs corporate feminism and the cult of the girl boss. Now she’s back to share her observations about the publishing industry and what she’s learned as a book coach, independent editor and consultant for other writers. She thinks that authors (and aspiring authors) need to be realistic about building social media platforms and crafting a personal brand. She also has a pet theory that MFA writing programs are tantamount to multi-level marketing schemes in that they don’t prepare students to actually publish books as much as teach them to teach writing to yet more writing students. In 2016 Leigh cofounded the feminist literary nonprofit Out of the Binders and organized BinderCon, a conference that brought in more than 2,000 attendees. She wrote about that experience in an article out this week in LitHub and spoke with Meghan about how she went broke while leading an organization designed to empower writers. Meghan also shared her own thoughts about the changing literary landscape and why she’s not as excited about publishing her work as she used to be. A video version of this conversion is up on the podcast’s YouTube Channel, The Unspeakable channel. Guest Bio: Leigh Stein is a writer interested in what the internet is doing to our identities, relationships, and politics. She is the author of five books, including the critically acclaimed satirical novel Self Care (Penguin, 2020) and the poetry collection What to Miss When (Soft Skull Press, 2021). She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Allure, ELLE, and The Cut.

Regular listeners of this podcast are no strangers to the subject of political bias in the news media - especially the left wing, elite-driven bias that’s in heavy rotation in the opinion and culture sections of big news organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR. But as much as we talk about the social movements driving this trend, we think less often about the practical reasons and bottom line root causes. That’s exactly Batya Ungar-Sargon explores in her new book Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy. In this conversation, Batya explains how journalism underwent a “status revolution,” with the job of reporter going from an almost blue collar profession to something on a par (at least socially) with lawyers and bankers. She also explains how the digital era forced a reframing of the business model of media organizations. The bills were no longer paid by advertisers but by subscribers who demanded fealty to their political values. Batya, who was formerly the opinion editor of The Forward and currently deputy opinion editor of Newsweek, considers herself not just on the left, but something of a socialist. As such, she worries that the much of the social justice posturing that dominates mainstream discourse today is distracting from the real emergency of economic inequality. Guest Bio: Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek. Before that, she was the opinion editor of the Forward, the largest Jewish media outlet in America. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, the New York Review of Books Daily, and other publications. She has appeared numerous times on MSNBC, NBC, the Brian Lehrer Show, NPR, and at other media outlets. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

This week Meghan welcomes comedian Jamie Kilstein. This is the audio version of a video interview they recorded for The Unspeakeasy, the new video feature of the podcast available to Patreon supporters. Meghan decided to make the conversation available as a regular podcast because in addition to talking about comedy and what Jamie’s been up to recently, they got pretty deep into some topics that are near and dear to the show, including Meghan’s signature issue, “nuance.” They ask whether trying to uphold nuance in the face of relentless group signaling and rage bait is a lost cause, not to mention a career killer. Jamie, who considers himself among the “canceled," talks about how that came to pass and about the ideological whiplash that ensued. They open the conversation by talking about how they manage professional stress: Jamie by contemplating trading in his car and Meghan by purchasing domain names for projects she’ll probably never start let alone finish. Guest Bio: Jamie Kilstein hosts the podcasts Rear Naked Radio and A Fuckup's Guide To The Universe. He has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and Late Night With Conan O’Brien.

This week Meghan welcomes guests Larry Clarke and Fielding Edlow. They are actors/writers/producers and also the married couple behind the YouTube series Bitter Homes and Gardens, a comedy, doled in out short episodes, about a married couple named . . Larry and Fielding. This edition of The Unspeakable is a bit of an experiment in that it’s the audio version of a conversation recorded for The Unspeakeasy, the video series that lives on the podcast’s new YouTube channel. Even though Larry and Fielding have solid industry careers going decades, they are emblematic of the way working actors have had to shift gears to accommodate a new creative economy, all the while remaining in nonstop hustle mode. In this conversation, they talk about their show, their marriage, their health insurance struggles, and the tension between loving their work and being frustrated with the turn their industry has taken. They also reveal that Larry and Meghan were roommates in New York City back in the 1990s. Moreover, the other roommate was a struggling actor and comedian named Stephanie Courtney who is now (wait for it . . . ) Flo from Progressive. They talk about Stephanie’s guest appearances on Bitter Homes and Gardens and reminisce about the old days when Larry and Stephanie worked as cater waiters and Meghan slept in the dining room of the grimy New York apartment that’s now a co-op they could never afford. Guest Bios: Fielding Edlow is a writer/comedian/actress who is the creator and star of Bitter Homes and Gardens with her real life husband Larry Clarke. Her debut special “Can’t Say Slut” is now streaming on Amazon Prime and she voiced the character “Roxie” on the Netflix series Bojack Horseman. Larry Clarke has been a steadily working character actor for the last thirty years. He has frequently collaborated with Steven Soderbergh and most recently played Meryl Streep’s lawyer in The Laundromat. He’s currently shooting a recurring on the new Starz series HEELS and also played a “Fusco brother” in the latest Twin Peaks.

Lara Bazelon has a decades-long career as a public defender. She worked as a trial attorney in the office of the public defender in Los Angeles for many years and is currently a law professor at the University of San Francisco, where she directs programs focusing on juvenile criminal justice and racial justice. But she’s also a journalist and novelist. This year she published A Good Mother, a legal thriller about a tireless public defender who cuts short her maternity leave to return to work to defend a client. That client, a 19-year-old mother with a baby roughly the same age, has been accused of killing her husband. For all the novel’s twists and turns, the real tension is in the subtext, which wrestles with questions like why motherhood can feel exponentially more demanding than fatherhood, whether being a “good mother” is compatible with extreme professional ambition and, most unsettling of all, what makes a “bad mother.” Lara spoke with Meghan about how these questions have embedded themselves in her own career and why romantic notions of perfect motherhood can actually hurt families.They also talked about a complicated defense case she worked on with her sister, the journalist Emily Bazelon, Lara’s controversial work defending men accused of sexual assault on college campuses, and their shared feelings about idealized depictions of the work-life balance of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Guest Bio: Lara Bazelon is professor of law and the director of the Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She has taught law at Loyola Law School, where she directed the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent. She was a trial attorney in the federal Public Defender’s office in Los Angeles for seven years and has published journalism in Slate, Politico, The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere. Her forthcoming book, Ambitious Like A Mother, will be published in April of 2022.