The Unspeakable Podcast

In 2015, journalist Carla Power published If The Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and Journey Into the Heart of the Quran, which chronicled her friendship with a madrasa­-trained sheikh who lead her through a deep reading of the Koran. That book was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In her new book, Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism, Carla confronts some of the questions she hadn’t engaged with in the last book, namely what draws ordinary Muslims into violent extremist groups like Isis and Al Qaeda and how reliable are the roads back? Through dozens of interviews with ex-jihadis, their family members, and those who seek to rehabilitate them, Carla connects the dots of a constellation of reasons and motivations to join extremist groups. The patterns that emerge are both surprising (in one case an entire extended family was lured by the promise of a better life in the Islamic State) and all too familiar (social media plays a role, no surprise). Carla, an American who spent much of her youth in the middle east, spoke with Meghan about what her reporting taught her about human loneliness, cultural isolation, and youthful impressionability. Moreover, she explained how what’s commonly referred to as the “Islamic world” is in fact many worlds, each with its own characteristics and complications. Guest Bio: Carla Power is a journalist and the author of both Home, Land, Security and If The Oceans Were Ink, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She was raised in St. Louis, with years in Iran, India, Afghanistan, Egypt and Italy. She began her career as a writer and foreign correspondent at Newsweek, and subsequently contributed essays and reportage to a wide range of publications, including Time, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, Vogue, Vanity Fair and The Guardian. She lives with her family in East Sussex, England.

Part three of Gender Nuance, a three-part series for the week of October 4, 2021 In the third and final part of the podcast’s weeklong “Gender Nuance” series, Meghan talks with journalist Lisa Selin Davis about the cultural and political forces that have factored into the current gender movement and why the media has failed to cover the whole story. The author of a book about the evolution of gender stereotypes and herself the mother of a gender nonconforming child, Lisa explains how the movement was galvanized by shifts in journalistic norms during the Trump administration and how institutions like schools, the nonprofit sector and the medical establishment got caught up in a worldview and treatment protocol that’s backed up by very little reliable data. She traces some of the history of gender nonconformity and explains what the concept of a “third gender” means in indigenous, nonwestern populations in places like India and Samoa. Mostly, Lisa talks about what she’s learned as a journalist covering gender issues in recent years and why it’s so difficult to publish anything that deviates from the accepted narrative. Ultimately, she says, we have to accept that talking honestly about the subject entails dealing with "a giant mess” and that “we have to get comfortable with the fact that are some things we simply can’t know.” Guest Bio: Lisa Selin Davis is the author of Tomboy: The Surprising History of Girls Who Dare to Be Different, and the forthcoming Housewife: Exploding the Myths of Motherhood, Women’s Work and the Modern Family. She has written articles, essays and op-eds for The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and many other outlets, and has published two novels, Belly and Lost Stars. She writes a regular Substack newsletter about gender issues called Broadview.

Part two of Gender Nuance, a three-part series for the week of October 4, 2021 In part two of this week’s three-part “Gender Nuance” series, Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper returns to answer questions from “Jolene and Marie,” two pseudonymous moms of gender-dysphoric kids who were originally interviewed on The Unspeakable last July. Dr. Edwards-Leeper, who talked alone with Meghan in part one of this series, speaks about what is involved in a comprehensive assessment of a young person seeking medicalized treatment for gender dysphoria, how such dysphoria can exist independently of being transgender, and how and why an ideological rift has emerged within her field and, in her view, shut down crucial and lifesaving dialogue within the medical establishment. She also explains how the cohort of patients who are over eighteen but younger than mid-twenties can be especially vulnerable to the inadequacies of a system that often does not coordinate psychological care with medical intervention. Guest Bio: Dr. Edwards-Leeper is an Associate Professor in the School of Graduate Psychology at Pacific University in Hillsboro, Oregon. She also works with clients through her private practice in Beaverton, Oregon. Dr. Edwards-Leeper was a member of the American Psychological Association Task Force that developed practice guidelines for working with transgender individuals. She is currently the Chair of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and is involved in the WPATH Standards of Care (SOC) 8 revision. She is an ally to the LGBTQ community and is considered an international expert in this field.

Part one of Gender Nuance, a three-part series for the week of October 4, 2021 Clinical psychologist Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper has worked with transgender and gender questioning youth since 2007 and has helped facilitate many successful medical transitions in young people. She has also, in the last year or so, begun to publicly voice concerns that some clinicians in her field have adopted a philosophy that overlooks, even eschews, the importance of proper patient assessment. In this conversation, the first of a three-part series this week, Dr. Leeper talks with Meghan about the concept of “gender affirming care” and how lack of access to specialized care can lead young patients to providers who follow protocols for adult patients, which may or may not be appropriate. She describes how she works with her own patients and talks about why something as fundamental as proper assessment has become so controversial in her field. Guest Bio: Dr. Edwards-Leeper is an Associate Professor in the School of Graduate Psychology at Pacific University in Hillsboro, Oregon. She also works with clients through her private practice in Beaverton, Oregon. Dr. Edwards-Leeper was a member of the American Psychological Association Task Force that developed practice guidelines for working with transgender individuals. She is currently the Chair of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and is involved in the WPATH Standards of Care (SOC) 8 revision. She is an ally to the LGBTQ community and is considered an international expert in this field.

Meghan’s guests this week are father and daughter Dr. Drew Pinsky and Paulina Pinsky, who are coauthors of the new book, It Doesn’t Have To Be Awkward: Dealing With Relationships, Consent and Other Hard-To-Talk-About Stuff. In the book, they address issues around relationships, boundaries and sexual consent and seek to bridge the generation gap between baby boomers like Drew and millennials like Paulina 28. (Gen-Xers are once again excused from the table.) In this interview, Drew and Paulina talk about why this particular generation gap seems more pronounced than previous ones, especially with regard to young people wanting to leave the nest. They also talk about how the oft-cited concept of “boundaries” is much broader and more complex than we often assume, which Paulina learned when she started college and compulsively introduced herself to everyone she met. (Meghan did this, too, and was affectionately deemed by one friend “a conversational slut” —a totally okay thing to say back then!) As a longtime devotee of Loveline, the no-holds-barred syndicated radio call-in program that Drew co-hosted with Adam Carolla for three decades, Meghan is especially keen to parse generational differences as they apply to cultural sensitivities and comic sensibilities. As such, they revisit a classic Loveline clip from long ago featuring David Alan Grier riffing off the names of birth control pills as hypothetical names for his children. Paulina, who writes comedy herself, explains what she thinks of that bit while Drew talks about how much he misses those days. Guest Bios: Dr. Drew Pinsky is a practicing internist and addiction medicine specialist, a New York Times bestselling author and prolific television, radio and podcasting host. In addition to his thirty-plus years hosting the iconic radio show Loveline, he has hosted numerous award-winning television shows including Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew on VH1 and DrDrew on HLN. His digital platforms include The Dr. Drew Podcast, the Adam and Dr. Drew Show, and Dr. Drew After Dark, and his two streaming shows, #AskDrDrew and Dose of Dr. Drew. Paulina Pinsky teaches comedy writing to high schoolers at Columbia University and writes about female sexuality and feminism. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Gen Xers and young Baby Boomers can be nostalgic about the freedoms of growing up in the 1970s. But there was a darker side to that era, too, especially for girls. Feminism was on the ascent, but the sexual revolution was moving even faster, bringing profound changes to behavioral norms and assumptions about pleasure and consent. In her new memoir, The Big Hurt, Erika Schickel recalls a childhood that was both magical and ruinous, one in which she played freely on the streets of her Manhattan neighborhood but, at the same time, attended a private school where (with the blessing of the headmaster) Hollywood casting agents scouted for girls to audition for the role of a child prostitute in the film Pretty Baby (incidentally, Jeffrey Epstein was teaching math at this school at the time). As a teen at boarding school, Erika was seduced by a male teacher and asked by the administration to leave before graduation. Her mother, meanwhile, applauded the relationship and Erika even briefly lived with the teacher before heading off to college. Decades later, while living the life of a conventional married mom in Los Angeles, Erika found herself embroiled in an obsessive affair with the legendary crime writer James Ellroy, a man who was himself damaged by the violence and tragedy of his youth. Erika spoke to Meghan about the book and the revelations that came to her over the more than ten years it took her to write it. During those years, the #MeToo movement came along, further complicating Erika’s story while making it all the more relevant. Guest Bio: Erika Schickel is the author the memoir The Big Hurt (Hachette Books, 2021) and You’re Not the Boss of Me: Adventures of a Modern Mom (Kensington Books, 2007). She has taught memoir and essay writing at UCLA and privately. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, LA City Beat, Salon, Ravishly, Tin House, Bust Magazine, and The LA Review of Books, among others.

Husband and wife evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein are the authors of the new book A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide To the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life. Former professors at Washington’s Evergreen State College, their involvement in a 2017 controversy that became a touchstone “campus culture war” event led them to become major figures in the so-called “heterodox” intellectual space. They now cohost livestreams of Bret’s popular Dark Horse Podcast, where they talk about social, political, scientific (and sometimes medical) issues through an evolutionary lens. In this conversation, Bret and Heather talk with Meghan about their new book, which is premised on the idea that society has become “hypernovel,” meaning that the rate of change is so rapid that “our brains, bodies, and social systems are perpetually out sync.” They define what they mean by the “WEIRD" world (Western, Educated, Industrialized, (relatively) Rich, and Democrat) and explain why human mating and reproductive strategies— and the community structures that are designed to support them — evolved the way they did. They also untangle mysteries such as why appendicitis is almost unknown in the non-industrialized world, why hunter-gatherer civilizations didn’t need orthodonture, and why monogamy is still the best bet for the survival of the human species, despite some rumors to the contrary. Finally, they discuss recent controversial statements they’ve made about the COVID-19 vaccine and the drug Ivermectin. Guest Bios: Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein are evolutionary biologists who have been invited to address the US Congress, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education, and have spoken before audiences across the globe. They both earned PhDs in Biology from the University of Michigan, were professors at the Evergreen State College for fifteen years, and have more recently been visiting professors at Princeton University. They cohost the weekly livestreams of Bret’s podcast the DarkHorse podcast. Heather is the author of the 2002 book Antipode: Seasons With the Extraordinary Wildlife and Culture of Madagascar and writes the Substack newsletter, Natural Selections.

Naama Kates, host of the podcast Incel, debunks the media narrative that incels are a hate group or terrorists. She explores the forces shaping them, such as mental health struggles and changing social norms. The podcast challenges assumptions about male ideologues and discusses the prevalence of autism among incels. They also explore the media's portrayal of incels and the demographics of the incel community. The podcast also delves into the potential similarities between incels and jihadis and explores the phenomenon of unrequited love and romanticized loneliness. They even touch on the potential benefits and societal implications of AI relationships and sex dolls.

Meghan met actor/author/comedian Chelsea Handler several years ago when they attempted to develop Meghan’s 2014 book, The Unspeakable (no direct connection to this podcast) into a television series. In fine Hollywood tradition, the project failed to launch, but the two remained friendly and Chelsea agreed to come on Meghan’s podcast to talk about her own podcast, Dear Chelsea, which offers advice to lovelorn or otherwise tormented or confused listeners. Chelsea talked about the advice she’s both given and received (and often ignored) over the years, her foray into psychotherapy, her interrogation of her own privilege, and the effect of Trumpism on her political consciousness and mental health. Along the way, she argued a bit with Meghan about progressive activism and challenged Meghan’s assertion that seeing everything through the lens of race is itself a form of racism. Chelsea also discussed her views on parthogenesis, a form of natural asexual reproduction that’s seen in certain reptiles and that might have surprising benefits in humans. Guest Bio: Chelsea Handler is a comedian, television host, and bestselling author. For seven years, she was the host of E!’s top-rated late night show Chelsea Lately and the only female late night talk show host on the air. She then launched a documentary series, Chelsea Does, followed by her talk show Chelsea on Netflix in 2016. Five of her six bestselling books have reached number one on the New York Times Bestseller list, including 2019’s Life Will Be The Death of Me. Most recently, she released her first stand-up special in over six years, the critically acclaimed Chelsea Handler: Evolution on HBO Max, and launched her iHeart Radio advice-based podcast, Dear Chelsea. She is currently on tour with a new standup show, Vaccinated and Horny.

Sam Harris is a giant in the world of podcasting. His podcast, Making Sense, which began in 2013 under the name Waking Up, averages more than a million downloads per episode. He is also a philosopher and neuroscientist, a meditation expert, the author of several bestselling books, and a prominent voice in both the “new atheist movement” and in “heterodox” intellectual circles, which has led him to have public debates and disagreements with other high profile thinkers. Meghan and Sam cover lots of ground in this long conversation, including the perils of confusing messaging around vaccines, the cowardice of institutional leadership in the face of social media mobs, and why the debate format can be, as Sam puts it, “a commercial for the limitations of conversation.” Most of all, they talk about what Meghan calls the question of “how not to ruin the dinner party,” which can happen when people who think too much about all of this stuff (like they do) engage in intellectual nitpicking and ruin everyone’s fun. Guest Bio Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, and author of five New York Times best sellers, include The End of Faith, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. Sam hosts the popular Making Sense podcast and is also the creator of the Waking Up app, which offers a modern, rational approach to the practice of meditation and an ongoing exploration of what it means to live a good life. Sam has practiced meditation for over 30 years and has studied with many Tibetan, Indian, Burmese, and Western meditation teachers, both in the United States and abroad. He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.