The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Jennifer Sey has been an elite gymnast, a high level marketing executive at Levi’s, and an outspoken critic of protracted school closures during the Covid pandemic. That last role led her to become a prominent figure in the new free speech movement, and she fulfilled that role by writing a book and starting a Substack about her conscription into the culture wars. But her real skills are as a business person, so she decided to apply those skills and start a retail brand. XX-XY Athletics, which launched in late March, is an apparel line that sells athletic clothing for men and women but is branded around the idea of standing up for women’s sports Given the fraught politics around this issue,  XX-XY may be the first “gender critical” retail business. But does it make sense to build a brand around a culture war issue? In this wide-ranging conversation, Jennifer talks about the legacy of corporate virtue signaling, the inner turmoil of wealthy executives who want to look like progressives, her attempts to get another job after being designated as problematic,  and the day to day tasks of building a business. She also explains how HR departments gained massive power in corporations and why executives are so afraid of their young staffers. GUEST BIO Jennifer Sey is a corporate marketing executive turned author, activist, documentary filmmaker (we didn’t even talk about that) and now the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics. You can find her on her Substack here. Check out XX-XY here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women: https://bit.ly/44dnw0v 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: https://aspecialplace.substack.com/

FAIR director Monica Harris discusses the evolution of LGBTQ+ movements, the shift in focus from gay rights to trans issues, and the impact of homophobia on gender medicine. She also explores economic forces driving young men to ideological fringes and the challenges of promoting free speech in a polarized environment.

Writer and podcaster Sarah Hepola returns to The Unspeakable to talk about love, sex, #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein’s overturned rape conviction, her new job at The Dallas Morning News, her book in progress, and why she thinks local reporting will lead the way out of the media abyss. GUEST BIO Sarah Hepola is a features staff writer at the Dallas Morning News, the cohost with Nancy Rommelmann of the Smoke ‘Em If You Got Em podcast and author of the 2015 best-selling memoir Blackout. She was also the host and creator of the Texas Monthly podcast "America's Girls," about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Read her work at the Dallas Morning News here. Listen to her podcast about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, “America’s Girls,” here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women: https://bit.ly/44dnw0v 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: http://aspecialplace.substack.com

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Andrew Boryga. The first portion of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here. Who says you can’t write a novel skewing social justice excesses? Andrew Boryga has done just that — to critical acclaim. His debut novel VICTIM tells the story of Javier Perez, an academically gifted kid from The Bronx who lands at an elite college and soon discovers the advantages of playing up his disadvantages. In this conversation, Andrew talks about the decade-long process of writing the book, his similarities to Javier, and how he feels about contemporary fiction and the literary world these days. He also discusses what it was like to shop the book to publishers and explores the question of whether a white author could get away with this kind of satire. GUEST BIO Andrew Boryga is a writer and editor who grew up in Bronx, NY and currently likes in Miami with his wife and two children. His debut novel VICTIM, was published in March by Doubleday. Buy VICTIM here. Follow his Substack here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

Author of 'Excellent Sheep', William Deresiewicz, discusses the flaws of elite education, affirmative action for men, and the value of college vs. working at Denny's. They also touch on gender imbalances in higher education and societal perceptions of Ivy League graduates.

Nellie Bowles discusses her journey from progressive purity police to non-grata by progressives. Topics include Antifa militants, incel movement, and her political evolution. She shares insights on societal battles, DEI, and journalism challenges.

This week’s guest is economist and public intellectual Glenn Loury. Glenn is almost certainly no stranger to Unspeakable listeners, many of whom know him from his long-running podcast The Glenn Show. In addition to opining there about political and social issues, Glenn is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has taught since 2005. He grew up on the south side of Chicago and eventually became the first black professor of economics at Harvard and a prominent conservative thinker and policy expert. The Glenn Show debuted in 2012, and Glenn’s conversations about race with linguist and cultural critic John McWhorter were foundational to the emergence of the independent media sphere sometimes called the “heterodoxy” (at least they were Meghan’s gateway drug). Glenn has published numerous books, but his latest, a memoir, is a major departure. Late Admissions: Confessions of A Black Conservative is not just an account of his professional trajectory but also an unflinching interrogation of his personal choices. This interview is stunningly candid and also utterly delightful. Meghan is grateful to Glenn for his honesty, deep insight, and great humor. GUEST BIO Glenn Loury is a professor of social sciences and economics at Brown University. His new book Late Admissions: Confessions of A Black Conservative is out May 14. You can find him on Substack here. Pre-order or purchase Glenn’s book here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

This episode is with one of our guest speakers at The Unspeakeasy retreat in Chicago. If you’re interested in going, learn more here. This week Meghan welcomes returning guest Erec Smith. He is an academic whose area of scholarship is Rhetoric, but he also writes and speaks frequently about the state of race politics in America, particularly the perils (and uses) of DEI. In this conversation, they talk about the concept of prescriptive racism, which Erec wrote about in a recent Boston Globe column, and ask whether the emergence of the concept of microaggressions has resulted mainly in people steering clear of one another. They also discuss what’s happened on college campuses since Erec was on the podcast a year ago, including the ouster of college presidents like Harvard’s Claudine Gay and U Penn’s Liz Magill over free speech policies. He also discusses what he was like as a college student carrying around a copy of Emerson’s Self-Reliance and how he would have felt if he’d been told that he was living under the thumb of white supremacy. Erec will be a guest speaker at the first-ever Unspeakeasy coed retreat in Chicago on June 4-5. We’ll also be joined by recent Unspeakable guests Nadine Strossen and Lisa Selin Davis. To find out about that go to theunspeakeasy.com.) Make sure you listen all the way to the end, so you can hear an excerpt from Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist from the Tony Award-winning musical Avenue Q. (Probably not coming to a high school theater near you.) GUEST BIO Erec Smith is a professor of rhetoric at York College of PA, a research scholar at the Cato Insitute, and a co-founder and an editor at Free Black Thought. Read Erec’s recent Boston Globe column on prescriptive racism. Listen to the last time he was on the podcast. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

This interview with Benjamin Ryan is a BONUS episode for paying subscribers only. The first few minutes of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here. On April 10th, a big story broke in the gender world: The long-awaited report commissioned by the UK's National Health Service, known as the Cass Review, was released. As soon as the report hit the news cycle, gender-critical activists celebrated it as the final nail in the coffin of harmful practices, while trans-rights activists accused it of faulty methodology. So who was right? This week, I spoke with Benjamin Ryan, a health and science reporter, to help unpack the Cass Review's data. Ben has spent years covering the intersection of health and public policy. He has a remarkably clear head and is a disciplined thinker about the youth gender medicine debate, so he is a great person to explain what is and is not in the Cass Review. GUEST BIO Benjamin Ryan is an independent journalist who focuses on health care and science. He contributes to several major publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and NBC News. He has a particular interest in public health, medicine, and psychology, and has spent years reporting on HIV. His work has received multiple awards from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, including the Excellence in HIV/AIDS Coverage Award. Benjamin is a cancer survivor and enjoys reading, theatre, movies, biking, cooking, and photography in his spare time. Follow him on Twitter here. Follow his Substack here. Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here. HOUSEKEEPING ✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

Legal scholar and free speech advocate Nadine Strossen discusses defending pornography, hate speech, and changes in the ACLU. Topics include generational divides on harmful words, campus speech codes, and the decision to remain child-free. Strossen reflects on her career, historical debates on free speech, defending controversial content, and navigating complexities in education and civil liberties. The conversation delves into internal ACLU conflicts, evolving feminism, and promoting open dialogue and diverse expression.