The Unspeakable Podcast

The ladies from Ask A Jew are back for their biannual visit. This time for the Jewish New Year! In this episode, we talk about the meaning of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and (since we apparently have to go over it again) why Orthodox Jews have to get their cars detailed before Passover. (It’s true.) We also talk about mikvehs. Because you know you were wondering. If you only ever listen to one conversation about mikvehs, let it be this one. Most importantly, we revisit our evergreen topic: the world’s hottest dictators, despots and garden-variety world leaders. Who was hotter? Stalin or Gadaffi? Is Bibi Netanyahu more your type? Or George H.W. Bush? In the bonus, I do a solocast where I answer AMA questions and share more of my existential crisis about how to pronounce my last name. Paying subscribers who have questions for me can put them in the comments. Guest Bio The Ask a Jew podcast is where Yael Bar Tur, a secular Israeli living in New York, and ChayaLeah Sufrin, a Hasidic mother in Los Angeles, discuss everything from Torah to Tinder, no topics are off-limits. Yael Bar Tur is a digital communications consultant with over 15 years of experience in social media, government, law enforcement and crisis communications. She served as the Director of Social Media and Digital Strategy for the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Born and raised in Israel, Yael served in the Israeli Army as a foreign press liaison in the height of two wars, as well as volunteering for reserve duty at the Israeli field hospital in Haiti immediately following the 2010 earthquake.  She holds a Master's Degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Yael lives in NYC where she has been granted lifetime approval to pet all police K9s. ChayaLeah Sufrin is the Executive Director at Beach Hillel. Prior to Hillel, she spent 15 years teaching high school Jewish history and was the Education Director of Shul by the Shore. ChayaLeah has been married to her husband Boruch for 18 years and together they have 4 sons. Jewish education and building community are ChayaLeah’s two main passions - she also loves the New England Patriots. She was recently named one of Hadassah's 18 American Zionist Women You Should Know. HOUSEKEEPING 🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell. 🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women. 🎉 Can’t make it to the one-day retreat on September 30th in Denver? Join us for a co-ed party that same evening! 🧖‍♀️ Join me at our sanity/real spa retreat in the Poconos with guest speaker Kat Rosenfield.

It seems like everywhere you look, men are struggling to find a sense of meaning and purpose. In fact, men are just getting kind of weird. On the other side of the equation, many women say they can’t find a “good man” who meets their expectations. Enter Christine Emba, Washington Post columnist and author of the 2022 book Rethinking Sex: A Provocation. In a recent WaPo essay, she discusses the crisis of masculinity and where men are looking for models of masculinity, from Jordan Peterson to Andrew Tate and beyond. In this episode, we chat about her article, her book, the past and present mating economy, and the evolution of her own thinking since her college days and the emergence of “the Princeton mom.” (Leave it to her to ask the questions Matt Walsh doesn’t.) In the bonus, we talk about dating apps — everyone’s favorite gripe — in addition to the resurgence of matchmaking and how people got dates and met people in the pre-app world. ————————— WHO IS CHRISTINE EMBA? Christine Emba is a writer for The Washington Post's Opinions section. She is also the author of Rethinking Sex: A Provocation, which challenges the narrative of sex positivity. Prior to joining the staff of The Washington Post, Emba was the Hilton Kramer Fellow in Criticism at the New Criterion and a deputy editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit. She grew up in Virginia and earned an A.B. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. Follow her substack here: https://bit.ly/3Z8nJ49 Read her article, “Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.” here: https://wapo.st/45KoHX4 Get her book “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation” here: https://amzn.to/3EvpU8A ————————— HOUSEKEEPING  Get your ticket to The Free Press debate with Grimes, Sarah Haider, Louise Perry and Anna Khachiyan: https://www.thefp.com/debates  Meet me at The Unspeakeasy Denver Retreat on September 30th: https://bit.ly/3qRWcaz  Join me at our sanity/real spa retreat in the Poconos with guest speaker Kat Rosenfield: https://bit.ly/3R8IKtL  Can’t come to the full, one-day retreat on September 30th? Join us for a co-ed party that same evening! https://bit.ly/45oCp1n  Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v  Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

Comedian Maria Bamford joins Meghan for a conversation about her new book, mental health struggles, and financial survival in the creative economy. They also discuss dating apps for celebrities, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, the stereotype of the 'basic bitch,' and the challenges of buying a house in Los Angeles.

Dr. Sunita Puri, palliative care physician and author, discusses the impact of medical advancements on end-of-life care. She explores the complexities and misconceptions around CPR and the need for better communication about prognosis. Ageism, socioeconomic class, and racial biases in medical decisions are highlighted. The lack of conversation training in medical education and the shortage of palliative care professionals are also discussed.

Even if you don’t recognize Tim Kreider’s name, there’s a good chance you’ve read his work. In addition to his two collections of essays, We Learn Nothing and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You, he’s published many short essays in the New York Times opinion section, nearly all of which seem to go viral. The first such essay was The Busy Trap, published more than 10 years ago, wherein he called out Americans’ perpetual condition of being “crazy busy” as “a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously, your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy.” He’s also famous for an essay about knowing people are talking about you behind your back, which Meghan has mentioned several times on the podcast and which has been immortalized in a famous meme. In this conversation, Tim shares his thoughts about writing about yourself, writing about other people, teaching writing to college students and (unrelatedly) getting stabbed. He also talks about the process of deciding not to have kids, the difficulty of living with another person as you get older, and a phenomenon he describes as the “soul toupee.”    For paying subscribers, Tim stays overtime and talks about (among other things) being 56-years-old, contemplating mortality, coping with a diminished attention span, and dating his fans – although he insists they’re not really fans once you start dating them.  To hear that portion, become a paying subscriber at https://meghandaum.substack.com/.   Guest Bio Tim Kreider is the author of the essay collections  We Learn Nothing and I Wrote This Book Because I Love You. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog, Men’s Journal, The Comics Journal, Film Quarterly, and Fangoria. His cartoon “The Pain–When Will It End?” ran for 12 years in the Baltimore City Paper and other weeklies and is archived at thepaincomics.com. Learn more about him at timkreider.com

Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of five novels and has published essays and short stories in outlets such as The New Yorker, N+1,  and The New York Times Book Review. She visits The Unspeakable this week to talk about "My Adventures In Deconstruction," her essay in the June 9, 2023 edition of The New Yorker. On the surface, the essay recounts a romantic relationship with a college professor 15 years her senior, back in 1990. But the essay goes much deeper than that, mapping the main story onto the landscape of the deconstructive criticism movement in literature, which posited that an author’s intent doesn’t matter and meaning itself is subjective. In this conversation, Lucinda talks about her the process of writing the essay, the 1990s-era trope of the “bad girl,” and the complexity of power dynamics in relationships between very young women and older men. She and Meghan also wander into a surprising conversation about the role that cigarette smoking played in both of their lives when they were in their twenties. Speaking of which, Lucinda stays overtime for paying subscribers to talk about how she feels about being the age that she is, which happens to be the age that Meghan is!   To hear the bonus content, become a paying subscriber at meghandaum.substack.com.    Guest Bio: Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of five novels, including What She Saw and, most recently, Class, which was named a Best Book of 2017 by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her fiction and essays have appeared in N+1, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review.

It’s been exactly a year since the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade, thereby eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion. Last May, shortly after that decision was leaked to the press, bioethicist and legendary abortion rights activist Frances Kissling visited The Unspeakable to talk about the likely implications of this ruling.  Now Frances is back to reflect on what’s transpired since then, whether things are better or worse than many people feared, and what the downstream political effects have been. She talks about organizational efforts on the part of medical providers, activists, and even airplane pilots to get women to places where abortion is legally available and how American women are actually now traveling to Mexico to get safe and legal abortions. Finally, she expands on her comments from last May about how the “abortion on demand” messaging of the pro-choice side contributed to the extreme polarization that has made compromise impossible.    Frances is president of Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy and was president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 until 2007. She worked as an abortion provider in New York State in the early 1970s, before the passage of Roe, which she talked about in her May 8, 2022 interview on The Unspeakable. She just celebrated her 80th birthday and she stays over time for paying subscribers to talk about what it’s like to be 80, how she was once told she’d die unless someone donated a kidney to her, and, finally, what it’s like to grow older without children or a partner (it has its upsides!) To hear that portion, become a paying subscriber at https://meghandaum.substack.com/.   Guest Bio:   Frances Kissling is currently President of the Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy in Washington, DC and a professor of philosophy and ethics. She was the president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 to 2007 and has been working in the abortion rights movement since the very early 1970s.

This week, Meghan welcomes evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman. Diana’s areas of research include human sexuality, the effect of hormones on behavior, and how “disgust” (the condition of being disgusted) is an evolutionary adaptation, especially for women. In this conversation, Diana talks about why the field of evolutionary psychology is subject to such much bad-faith misapplication but why uncomfortable truths about human mating patterns can nonetheless offer important lessons. She and Meghan explore the relationship between female social hierarchies and cancel culture (for instance, do women control cancel culture?) and then get into a deep discussion about polyamory. What does it really mean? What does it take to make it work? And how come most people just don’t have the emotional discipline to succeed at it.   For the bonus portion for paying subscribers, Diana talks about how her younger self would feel about her current self, why she’s a transhumanist, what’s stopping the world from embracing “clean meat," why she donated her eggs several years ago and wrote letters to her future genetic offspring, and whether she’d pick herself out of a genetic lineup of embryos. If you’re not yet a paying subscriber, go to meghandaum.substack.com to hear this part of the conversation. Guest Bio: Diana Fleischman is an evolutionary psychologist and writer.

This week, The Unspeakable welcomes back William Deresiewicz, who enters the pantheon of three-time guest! Bill was first on the pod in the fall of 2020 talking about his book The Death of the Artist and he came back last year to talk about his book of collected works The End of Solitude. He returns now to discuss some articles he published recently about the state of human creativity and the future of creative output. In an article for Tablet called We’re All Bored Of Culture, Bill explores how and why the arts have seemingly become so lackluster in the last several decades and why audiences appear to be so bored. In an article for Persuasion, Bill writes about artificial intelligence and why he thinks that, despite all the fuss, AI, will never be a substitute for human creativity.    As with all of his visits to The Unspeakable, Bill and Meghan talk about why it might be more difficult than ever to be an artist–-not just in terms of making a living but in terms of “making meaning” (whatever that means). Are artists afraid to take risks for fear of public rebuke and the financial penalties that can result? Or does the machinery of the marketplace disincentivize originality in any form? They also talk about Bill’s early career as a dance critic and Meghan’s recent experience revisiting some films that were important to her when she was younger.    For paying subscribers, Bill stays over time to reflect on the aging process and some of his feelings about friendship, masculinity, regret, and (of course) the new gender movement.    Guest Bio: William Deresiewicz is the author of Excellent Sheep, The Death of the Artist, and The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society. Find him at www.billderesiewicz.com.

Sandra Martin is an award-winning journalist, literary critic, former obituary writer, and the author of A Good Death: Making the Most of Our Final Choices. In that book, which she describes as a social history of the right-to-die movement, Sandra writes about how law, religion, medicine, and social norms can affect people’s bodily autonomy and end-of-life choices in unpredictable and sometimes devastating ways; she also tells some amazing stories. In this conversation, she talks with Meghan about why it’s so difficult to maintain autonomy over our deaths, even if we think we’re making proper arrangements. She explains the difference between physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, what these practices meant in past centuries versus what they mean today, and why we’re kidding ourselves if we think we’ll keep a stash of heavy drugs on hand for when the time comes. She also talks about Canada’s Medical Assistant In Dying Act, better known as MAID. When it was first passed in 2016, MAID allowed adults to obtain medically-assisted death if they were experiencing terrible suffering and their death was "reasonably foreseeable." Since then, MAID has been expanded in ways that have led to some alarming news coverage, including allegations that it’s being offered to people simply because they were chronically ill and couldn’t afford their own care. While Sandra is not an expert on MAID, her familiarity with right-to-die laws in Canada allows her to put those reports in some context and she offers her perspective on how far is too far and, moreover, how overreach by activists could threaten the whole movement.    In the bonus portion for paying subscribers, Sandra stays overtime to talk about how she feels about being the age that she is and what she wants (or thinks she wants) for her own death.   Guest Bio: Sandra Martin, an award-winning long-form journalist, literary critic, and public policy specialist, is a contributing writer for The Globe and Mail and the author of several books including A Good Death: Making the Most of Our Final Choices, a social history of the right to die movement in Canada and around the world. Winner of the B.C. National Non-Fiction Award and a finalist for both the Dafoe Prize and the Donner Prize in Public Policy, A Good Death was named one of the best books of 2016 by The Globe and Mail, the CBC and several other media outlets. Find her at http://www.sandramartinwrites.com.