Lean Out with Tara Henley

In recent weeks and months, a number of you have reached out to Tara about the debate on gender medicine for minors — and a lack of media coverage about it, particularly in this country. This is a topic that she recently covered on her other podcast, Full Press. And The Hub has been kind enough to let us bring you the free version of that episode today, where you can hear her entire conversation on gender medicine and the media, with co-hosts Harrison Lowman and Peter Menzies. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In recent years, we’ve read a lot of memoirs from women who feel stuck in specific ways: single, childless, consumed by work, and disillusioned with hook-up culture. Our guest on today’s program is the author of the first memoir we have read about breaking free from that pattern — and the story of how it happened is as moving as it is surprising.Beth Kaplan is a Canadian writer, and the author of Loose Woman: My Odyssey From Lost to Found.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

With the excesses of 2020 now being examined in mainstream outlets like The New York Times, we are witnessing a moment of introspection on the American left. To unpack this development, we're joined by a writer who has studied the history of the left. And in this week's conversation, we wrestle with our own complicated — and at times conflicted — relationships to these politics.Daniel Oppenheimer is an American writer and podcaster. He runs the Substack newsletter Eminent Americans and hosts a podcast of the same name. He’s the author of Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century, and his latest essay for Persuasion is “How the Left Loses its People.”You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

It’s common knowledge these days that the left has lost the working class. But there is little curiosity about how, and why, and what that means for our politics. Our guest on this week's program has written a deeply researched book on the subject — and she has some ideas on where the left should go from here.Joan C. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Law (Emerita) and Founding Director of the Equality Action Center at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. Her latest book is Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back. (You can find the class bubble quiz at www.classbubblequiz.com.)You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Three and a half years ago, during the pandemic era, we launched Lean Out to explore some basic questions about illiberalism in our response to the crisis — and in our culture, our politics, and our newsrooms. Today, for our 200th episode of the show, we're thrilled to be joined by two academics who have written a deeply researched book that provides some answers.Stephen Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. And Frances Lee is professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. Their new book is In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In polarized times, our tolerance for different perspectives decreases. Groupthink becomes common, and we can often find ourselves either censored, or self-censoring. Our guest on the program today has done a deep dive into this topic, and she has some thoughts on how we can begin to speak up — while still seeing our ideological opponents as human.Jenara Nerenberg is an American author, and the founder of The Neurodiversity Project and The Interracial Project. Her latest book is Trust Your Mind: Embracing Nuance in a World of Self-Silencing.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Tonight, in London, England, a group of writers and thinkers will gather to debate a key cultural question: “Is woke dead?” And tomorrow, the inaugural conference of a new centre for social science kicks off. Academics will gather to talk through the intellectual origins of this movement and its politics, psychology, and driving interests, to establish it as a field of study, and to delve into overlooked topics and perspectives. Our guest on the program is the man behind both of these events, and he joins us to share his thinking on the post-progressive era — and what it might mean for Canada going forward.Eric Kaufmann is a Canadian academic and author. He’s a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, and director of its Centre of Heterodox Social Science.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

As Tara puts the finishing touches on her next book, on declining trust in the media, we wanted to bring you a few encore interviews that have helped shaped her thinking on the media — including today’s episode.Since the election win for Donald Trump, we are seeing a renewed sense of scorn for Republican voters in parts of the mainstream media. The Guardian’s Rebecca Solnit, for example, writes in her column that “our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do.” Our guest on today’s program doesn’t see it that way. She’s a lefty Democrat who moved from Park Slope, Brooklyn, to Trump country — and she writes that the gift of living in a rural county is that “I keep finding reasons to see my political adversaries as human.”Larissa Phillips runs the Honey Hollow farm in upstate New York. She’s the founder of the Volunteer Literacy Project, and her essay for The Free Press is, “Whatever Happens, Love Thy Neighbor.”You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

As Tara puts the finishing touches on her next book, on declining trust in the media, we wanted to bring you a few encore interviews that have helped shaped her thinking on the media — including today’s episode.The period often referred to as The Great Awokening is winding down now, and we’re starting to get a better understanding of what happened. My guest on today’s program argues that we have seen these kinds of social justice-styled movements before in American history — and that they are in fact driven by, as he puts it, “frustrated erstwhile elites condemning the social order that failed them and jockeying to secure the position they feel they deserve.”Musa al-Gharbi is an American sociologist and an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His book is We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In this turbulent era, for many of us there is a moment in every day when anxiety steals over us. We pause, and in that rare period of stillness, the fears surface — but sometimes, if we’re lucky, so too do the reflections and the insights. Our guest on today’s program has called this interlude “the catastrophe hour,” and she’s just published a book of essays that beautifully captures it.Meghan Daum is an American essayist and the host of the Unspeakable Podcast. Her latest book is The Catastrophe Hour.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com