This week I’m joined by Broadway star, comedian, and producer PJ Adzima, founder of Stage Time NYC and producer of Slam Frank—a mind-melting new musical that reimagines The Diary of Anne Frank through “an intersectional, multi-ethnic, genderqueer, Afro-Latin hip-hop lens.” (You read that right.)

Slam Frank was conceived by composer and lyricist Andrew Fox, who was stunned and inspired by a Twitter thread in which someone asked, “Did Anne Frank ever examine her white privilege?” (You also read that right.) A play within a play about a progressive theater company twisting itself into knots trying to stay on the right side of history, the show has provoked both walkouts and rave reviews—including in The New York Times. (Again, you read that right.)

PJ and I discuss the transformation of the theater world over the past decade, the legacy of The Book of Mormon (in which he starred for many years), the “Dear White American Theater” manifesto, and why he believes great art cannot be created by checking ideological boxes. We also talk about what happens when artists prioritize pleasing everyone over having a point of view—and why live performance still matters in an era dominated by algorithms and social media.

We’ve recently added PJ as a guest at our Small Gathering for Big Ideas retreat, Oct 19-21 in Kingston, NY. He joins fellow speakers John McWhorter and Lisa Marchiano. Spaces are filling fast. Info here.

Slam Frank opens off-Broadway at New York’s Orpheum Theater in September. Check out its Instagram page here.

Guest Bio

PJ Adzima starred on Broadway in The Book of Mormon and is the founder of Stage Time, an underground-style variety theater company and artist collective in New York City. He is also producer of Slam Frank, a satirical hip-hop musical that tells the story of Anne Frank "through an intersectional, multi-ethnic, genderqueer, Afro-Latin-hiphop lens.”

Housekeeping

🎬 I just released some short videos talking about The Unspeakeasy and what our retreats are like. X/Twitter seems to be throttling them, so please click on over to nudge the algorithm, or check them out on YouTube.

🎏 New format (slightly new, anyway): For the next several months at least, the “official” podcast will publish every other week. (This is one of those.) On the weeks in between, I will do a Substack livestream — exact date and time TBD. The livestream itself is open to all, but the recording will be posted for paying subscribers only. So it’s never been a better time to upgrade your subscription! My most recent livestream was July 21 with Paul Garcia Ryan. Recording here.

📜 For the first time ever—and for a limited time on a limited basis—I’m offering full-length manuscript consultation. Info here.

🚋 We’re going to San Francisco! We’ve just announced a women’s living room weekend retreat in San Fran, Sept 26-27. Info here.

🍁 Spots for our Unspeakeasy coed retreat-a-polooza Oct 19-21, featuring Lisa Marchiano, John McWhorter, and PJ Adzima, are going fast. Grab one while you still can. Info here.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. Our next meeting is Sunday, August 30. If you’re a Founding Member, you will get an email with the link. If you’re not yet a Founding Member, you can upgrade your subscription here.

🎁 Make a one-time donation to the podcast. Everything helps and is deeply appreciated. 🙏

📺 Visit The Unspeakeasy on YouTube.

Really excellent conversation today with psychotherapist Paul Garcia Ryan, president of Therapy First. After getting the important stuff out of the way and talking about where I am with the pronunciation of my name, we d…

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This conversation kept circling back to the kinds of tripwires and trigger points that cause people to tune out ideas before they even hear them—for instance my advocacy for Spencer Pratt in the L.A. mayoral race a few months ago and Jenny’s support of . . . Brexit. (She lives in Belfast in Northern Ireland.) We also talked about how I began my career at the tail end of the golden age of magazine journalism, and what it was like watching that world start to shift around 2012-13.

Finally, in the spirit of the season, we talked about American exceptionalism, generosity of spirit, and her husband’s 1987 trip to the US as part of the “Children of the Troubles” program — the trip that made him fall in love with this country.

Here are my two earlier conversations with Jenny.

Housekeeping

🎏 New format (slightly new, anyway): For the next several months at least, the “official” podcast will publish every other week. (This is one of those.) On the weeks in between, I will do a Substack livestream — exact date and time TBD. The livestream itself is open to all, but the recording will be posted for paying subscribers only. So it’s never been a better time to upgrade your subscription! My most recent livestream was July 8 with Tara Henley. Recording here.

📜 For the first time ever—and for a limited time on a limited basis—I’m offering full-length manuscript consultation. Info here.

🚋 We’re going to San Francisco! We’ve just announced a women’s living room weekend retreat in San Fran, Sept 26-27. Info here.

🍁 Spots for our Unspeakeasy coed retreat-a-polooza Oct 19-21, featuring Lisa Marchiano and John McWhorter, are going fast. Grab one while you still can. Info here.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. We have to skip July, so the next meeting is Sunday, August 30. If you’re a Founding Member, you will get an email with the link. If you’re not yet a Founding Member, you can upgrade your subscription here.

🎁 Make a one-time donation to the podcast. Everything helps and is deeply appreciated. 🙏

📺 Visit The Unspeakeasy on YouTube.

This week’s live stream features journalist and podcaster Tara Henley (Lean Out, former CBC news producer) for a conversation on media trust — using one of the most contested stories in recent Canadian history as our case…

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As you may know, I periodically teach writing workshops and lately have been offering private coaching for essays and shorter-length works. For years, when I’ve been asked whether I work on full-length manuscripts, I’ve always said no and then made referrals to the many capable editors I know who do such things. But since I have a little extra time in my schedule this summer and early fall, I’ve decided to offer this service on a limited basis.

Obviously, every manuscript is different, so no two arrangements will be exactly alike. Also, please keep in mind that I’m only accepting projects where I think I can be truly helpful. This is a matching process as much as anything else.

Here’s what’s included:

• A full read of your manuscript

• A written editorial letter with my thoughts on structure, voice, and next steps

• An hour-long meeting on Zoom (or in person, if geography allows)

Turnaround is about one to two weeks from when I start. This is for full-length manuscripts — 40,000 words minimum. Pricing is as follows:

• 40,000–65,000 words: $7,000

• 65,000–90,000 words: $8,500

• 90,000+ words: $9,500-plus (let’s talk)

If you’re interested, email me at meghan@meghandaum.com with a brief description of your manuscript, its word count, and where it stands (finished draft, near-finished, etc.).

If you’ve forgotten that I’m a writer and not just a podcaster and event planner (sometimes I forget, too), here’s a bona fides refresher.

Subscribe now

I’ve long been intrigued by Carl Jung’s ideas but also found them somewhat elusive. So I asked Lisa to help me understand why Jung resonates so deeply with so many people and why his work feels especially relevant today.

We discuss archetypes, the shadow, synchronicity, Jung’s break with Freud, and how Jungian psychology can help us make sense of political polarization, ideology, loneliness, and our search for meaning in an increasingly fractured culture.

If you enjoyed this conversation, you can continue it in person! Lisa will join us this October at The Unspeakeasy’s second annual Small Gathering for Big Ideas in Kingston, New York (October 19–21), alongside John McWhorter. Learn more at theunspeakeasy.com/retreats.

Guest Bio:

Lisa Marchiano is an award-winning author, certified Jungian analyst, and co-host of the popular depth psychology podcast This Jungian Life, which has garnered more than 10 million downloads. The author of several acclaimed books that draw on the healing wisdom of fairy tales, Lisa holds degrees from Brown University, Columbia University, and New York University, trained at the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and lectures and leads workshops internationally on Jungian psychology and personal growth.

Housekeeping

🚋 We’re going to San Francisco! We’ve just announced a women’s living room weekend retreat in San Fran, Sept 26-27. Info here.

🍁 Spots for our Unspeakeasy coed retreat-a-polooza Oct 19-21, featuring Lisa Marchiano and John McWhorter, are going fast. Grab one while you still can. Info here.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. We have to skip July, so the next meeting is Sunday, August 30. If you’re a Founding Member, you will get an email with the link. If you’re not yet a Founding Member, you can upgrade your subscription here.

🎁 Make a one-time donation to the podcast. Everything helps and is deeply appreciated. 🙏

📺 Visit The Unspeakeasy on YouTube.

Mark Oppenheimer spent decades thinking about Judy Blume before finally writing her biography — and the result is a book that is a serious inquiry into Blume’s books, her personal story, and social and cultural dynamics of the 8…

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It’s been, as people say when they can’t think of what else to say, quite a journey.

Since early this spring, I’ve been publicly supporting reality star Spencer Pratt in his run for L.A. Mayor. Pratt now appears to have come in third in the June 2 primary, taking him out of the running altogether. Overnight, the chatter surrounding him shifted from irrational and sometimes bot-driven exuberance on social media to accusations of a stolen election.

Before I go any further, I will say that I don’t believe there was outright fraud. I’m in favor of reasonable Voter ID laws and I suspect ballot harvesting needs to be seriously reevaluated and probably eliminated. But so far, I see no evidence of a stolen election – only evidence of Los Angeles being Los Angeles.

I have registered my support for Pratt with the same care and nuance I try to bring to everything I do, including squawking about him on X, the care and nuance capital of the internet. In addition to interviewing him for my May 4 podcast, I published an article in The Atlantic on May 15 about his unlikely momentum among Democrat–leaning voters, who, myself included, were willing to take a chance on him despite his general aura of ridiculousness. The response from readers ranged from perplexed to apoplectic. One woman emailed directly to inform me that I was a neo-fascist shill. Many of the 300-plus reader comments chalked me up to be either a MAGA apologist and/or just a standard idiot. There were lots of promises to cancel subscriptions, the ultimate fighting words of educated elites.

A few weeks later, my position didn’t seem quite as outlandish. While I remained one of the few, if not the only, members of the so-called liberal media elite publicly supporting Pratt (I made a few videos under the tongue-in-cheek heading “Liberal Elites For Pratt”), his polling numbers were up and there were murmurings of a growing contingent of “shy voters.” Several educated, Volvo-driving, NPR-listening (yes, still) types I knew had donated money to his campaign and planned to vote for him if they lived in L.A. city limits. A May 2 letter I’d emailed to Los Angeles friends laying out my case for Pratt began to feel slightly less like social suicide with every passing day.

My case, in a nutshell, was this. Spencer Pratt is an inconvenient messenger for an urgent message: that Los Angeles is in the grip of a humanitarian crisis regarding street homelessness. (There are plenty of other problems too, ranging from wildfire response to potholes, but I’ll stick with this one for now.) Pratt is inexperienced, unserious, and, if not actually MAGA at least “MAGA-coded” in a way that makes any attempt to woo a deep blue city not just an uphill battle but a Sisyphean ultra-marathon. Still, he had one major advantage over his competitors; he was willing to open his mouth and state the truth about what his eyes were showing him. Even if he got into office and managed to do nothing but state those truths over and over for four years, I for one believed that would be an improvement over what we have now and what his opponents are offering.

That’s not to say Pratt didn’t have a plan. He had several, some of them fairly substantive, like the plan for addressing street homelessness that he outlined in this 9-minute video. I wish more people had watched that and not the endless AI slopgasms put out by his fans–each declared more of a “banger” than the last. Those videos may have been catnip for angry young men on social media, not to mention a certain breed of Beltway bubble-dwelling political commentator who called them “game changing” and “the future of political campaigns.” But they were almost certainly repellent to actual voters in L.A. At least that’s what I feared, and I said as much repeatedly.

I also said I didn’t like Pratt calling homeless people zombies or calling Mayor Bass “Karen Basura” or calling every Democrat he didn’t like a commie–not just because it was juvenile but because I thought it hurt his chances with the disaffected liberal voters he needed to reach.

Pratt superfans told me I was wrong about that. They said I was behind the times, applying fusty respectability standards to a post-respectability world. Insofar as we don’t yet know exactly what campaign tactics worked in Pratt’s favor and what worked against him, it’s possible I was indeed wrong. I honestly have no idea. But I do know that supporting this candidate these last several months has made me feel like a defense lawyer trying to prove the innocence of someone who might as well have framed himself for murder. I took a certain thrill in the rhetorical challenge.

Trying to separate Pratt’s common-sense policies from his ludicrous persona was like threading a microscopic needle. The eye of that needle was about as narrow as the path to success I imagined Pratt might be able to carve out if he got elected and somehow did everything right – in other words, a very long shot. But at least there was a path and not the permanent blockade of the entrenched ruling party. As I saw it, if Pratt had a five percent chance of implementing a plan that would get sick people off the streets and into appropriate treatment, that was better than the zero percent chance I’d give his competitors, who didn’t seem interested in even trying.

When making my argument to naysayers, I chose words that were nonthreatening and vaguely TED Talk-y. “I know picking the least qualified candidate is counterintuitive,” I’d say. “I know the logic might feel like a heavy lift. He’s a wild card and the prospect of him actually fixing anything in this broken city is a Hail Mary Pass. But given the options before us and given how dire things have become, this is the only glimmer of hope that I see. Can you see what I see?”

A few could, but many could not. (Homeless encampments? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I drove to Erewhon today and it was fine!) Many people, after hearing me explain Pratt’s actual positions, conceded that they agreed with most if not all of them but could not get past the fact that he was a registered Republican. Many more were not able to separate the Pratt phenomenon from the Trump phenomenon and, in the process, were not able to see me as anything but a friend (now former friend, perhaps) who had at best fallen for a grift (everyone’s favorite word was now grift) and at worst was some kind of newly minted quack trying to slip through a side door into MAGA-land.

Not that they didn’t already know me as a holder of controversial opinions. Most were accustomed to me and my edgy takes. But this, somehow, was a bridge too far.

“I think I’ve really done it this time,” I said to a longtime confidant. “Of all the wrong-thinky opinions I’ve had over the years, this is the wrong-thinkiest of all.”

It was a bid for reassurance. I wanted to be told that everything was fine, that no one was saying anything bad about me and, besides, I was right and eventually everyone would see that. What I got back instead was, “yeah, you might have really done it this time.”

But what have I done exactly? Taken an axe to what remained of my liberal elite bona fides? Supplied countless opportunities for my adversaries to say “grift?”-- a term I’m convinced is only in such heavy rotation because the word itself is fun to say in an ASMR trigger kind of way, the verbal equivalent of popping a zit.

Maybe so. But I sense bigger things on the horizon.

As I said in the last line of my Atlantic article, “even if Pratt never becomes mayor, it’s possible that simply saying the truth out loud will make him a bigger force for change than whoever does.” That feels even truer today than it did a few weeks ago. That’s because despite the charges that he was running for mayor for the grift (it seems like a lot of trouble to go to just for that), the Spencer Pratt mayoral campaign was never about Spencer Pratt. It was about citizens coming together over a shared reality.

He may have lost the election, but he shifted the Overton Window, which is arguably a bigger feat. For the first time in years, there is a critical mass of citizens who are done pretending that what they see before their eyes isn’t really there. The people in charge will have to answer to those citizens. And if they don’t, the election four years from now may look very different from this one.

Meanwhile, the people not in charge–people like me– must start doing our part, whatever that means. Over the last several months, I’ve been devoting more episodes of my podcast to issues around street homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. I plan to do much more. Hell, maybe the entire show will become about that. Stranger things have happened.

Strange things happen all the time. And Spencer Pratt, the villain from The Hills, kicking off a people’s revolt for common sense, might be the strangest of all.

This Substack relies on paying subscribers, though lately I’ve been making most of the content available to all. If you appreciate what I do here, please consider becoming a paying subscriber. Founding Members get to attend monthly Zoom hangouts with me on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET.

Housekeeping

✈️ Our Unspeakeasy coed retreat-a-polooza is open for registration! Sign up now to get our early bird special. Details below. To register, go to the website.

🤣 Don’t miss my special April Fool’s Day episode with “curiosity coach” Amanda Gertz-Hurdy. It just might change your life.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, June 28. If you’re a Founding Member, you will get an email with the link. If you’re not yet a Founding Member, you can upgrade your subscription here.

🎁 Make a one-time donation to the podcast. Everything helps and is deeply appreciated. 🙏

📺 Visit The Unspeakeasy on YouTube.

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about reducing street homelessness by “just enforcing the law” and mandating treatment for all those drug addicts and mentally ill people camping on the sidewalk.

But it’s not that easy. (W…

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This is a bonus episode that will be available to all next week. Paying subscribers can listen now. To upgrade your subscription, go here.

Here I am with another episode about the Los Angeles mayor’s race.

As I have said, this is not an ordinary election. If it were, I suspect my guest, Adam Miller, who’s one of more than a dozen may…

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Writer and cultural critic Phoebe Maltz Bovy joins me to discuss her new book, The Last Straight Woman, an exploration of how heterosexual women became suspect — if not pitifully uncool — in progressive culture. We talk about everything from Tumblr-era feminism and the post-#MeToo recalibration of gender politics to the television series Sex and the City and Girls, “photogenic feminism,” bachelorette parties at gay bars, late-in-life lesbians, hookup culture, and why admitting you’re a “boring straight woman” may now qualify as a radical act. We also revisit the “lesbian chic” era of the 1990s (my personal heyday), the discourse around the viral New Yorker short story Cat Person, the appeal (and limits) of sexual fluidity narratives, and the cultural overlap between straight female culture and gay male sensibilities.

Bonus: We also switched gears in the last 15 minutes and did a Deep Dive™ into the subject of buying secondhand clothing from online marketplaces such as Poshmark. This portion is available to paying subscribers. To upgrade your subscription, go here.

Guest Bio

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a Toronto-based cultural critic and the author. She is co-host, with Kat Rosenfield, of the Feminine Chaos podcast, Opinion Editor at The Canadian Jewish News, and host of the Canadian Jewish News podcast, The Jewish Angle. She contributes regularly to The Globe and Mail and is the author of The Perils of “Privilege” (St. Martins, 2017). She also runs a Substack called Close-Reading the Reruns with Phoebe Maltz Bovy.

Feminine Chaos

A podcast for problematic faves, dissident feminism, and interrupting poodles.

By Kat Rosenfield

Housekeeping

✈️ Our Unspeakeasy coed retreat-a-polooza is open for registration! Sign up now to get our early bird special. Details below. To register, go to the website.

Also . . .

📝 I’m leading a three-night women’s writing retreat in New York’s Catskill Mountains Sept 28-Oct 1. Application deadine is August 13 for the Catskills retreat.

🤣 Don’t miss my special April Fool’s Day episode with “curiosity coach” Amanda Gertz-Hurdy. It just might change your life.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, May 31. If you’re a Founding Member, you will get an email with the link. If you’re not yet a Founding Member, you can upgrade your subscription here.

🎁 Make a one-time donation to the podcast. Everything helps and is deeply appreciated. 🙏

📺 Visit The Unspeakeasy on YouTube.

That means he’ll take any guest he can get, but I was still honored to be the first official guest after his initial test episodes, which are already collector’s items. We kicked off the conversation with Richard telling me he’d just been to a dinner party where the question was asked, “what’s going on with Meghan Daum?” (As in “is she okay?”) That remains unanswered, but we did have a lively conversation about my current obsession, the mayoral campaign of Spencer Pratt, who went to the same high school as Richard, but otherwise seems eminently qualified to run the city of Los Angeles.

Thanks to all who joined, including possibly LA city councilwoman and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman.

Housekeeping

Don’t miss my interview with Spencer Pratt. The first time (and possibly last time) doing an on-location video shoot.

Here’s my extraordinary conversation with Estela Lopez, who works with business owners on L.A.’s Skid Row.

And here’s my conversation about the homelessness crisis and the new “super meth,” with investigative journalist Sam Quinones.

Get more from Meghan Daum in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Last weekend, I emailed the letter below to a wide swath of friends in Los Angeles. I wanted to explain my unlikely support for Spencer Pratt for mayor and invite them to examine their skepticism (or disbelief) about this candidate and consider what is really needed to bring our city to a better place.

The response was about what I expected. A few people wrote back right away to tell me how much they appreciated what I had to say. A few offered some respectful pushback. Most didn’t reply, which is fine and normal. People are busy, and the email was long.

Now that my friends have had their time alone with my letter, I thought I’d post it here. Remember, it was written last week, so polling numbers are out of date, and of course, the May 6 debate hadn’t happened yet.

Over on X, I’m afraid I’ve appointed myself the chief representative of Liberal Elites for Pratt. I can’t post videos here, but you can access a few of my short dispatches here and here if you have the misfortune to be on that unholy platform.

May 2, 2026

Dear Los Angeles Friends,

I think you know I’m not the kind of person to send emails about political candidates, or politics at all. But I’m doing something I never imagined; urging those of you who vote in the city of L.A. to consider a mayoral candidate that arguably sounds like the biggest joke in recent political history — and that is a high bar. That would be Spencer Pratt, a former reality show star who is running for mayor.

Pratt is my guest on this week’s podcast. More importantly, though, this letter is for you, my friends and neighbors in L.A., who probably can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. I can’t either. But after a great deal of initial skepticism, I now want this guy to win.

Am I saying that the producer-crafted “villain” from The Hills who later blew his fortune on Birkin bags and moldavite crystals is the best person to be the mayor of the second largest city in America? Uh, no. Am I saying that given the options currently before us, I believe Spencer Pratt is L.A.’s best hope for reversing course on a path towards a crisis that, in my view, grows more heartbreaking by the day? Yes, to my astonishment, I am saying this.

If our media and attention economy was even halfway functional, I would vote for Adam Miller, a more conventional candidate. But, as it is, that economy is broken and Miller, currently polling at around 3%, is not a contender for the primary on June 2.

So here we are. Pratt is currently polling in second place, narrowly ahead of Nithya Raman, the city council representative for District 4. I still think he’s a longshot candidate, partly because of the liability of being a registered Republican with some MAGA-adjacent endorsers.

But Pratt’s actual platform has nothing to do with the national Republican agenda. He’s running on L.A. issues: why the reservoirs were empty when the Palisades Fire started, why billions spent on homelessness has left our streets more dangerous and degraded than ever, why horrific animal abuse on the streets is ignored, why a federal audit found that $2.4 billion in homeless services funding simply couldn’t be accounted for.

I surely don’t need to tell you that it is commonplace to drive around the city and see trash-strewn rows of tents, piles of hoarded metal and associated junk, dogs chained to abandoned shopping carts, and half-naked human beings smoking pipes, shooting up, vomiting, defecating, passed out or in some cases dead on the sidewalk.

Where I now live, I pass the same cast of characters along my running route every day, including a man almost certainly selling drugs out of a filthy, junk-packed garage across from the metro rail station. One Sunday afternoon, I saw a father and his two young kids leaving the garage and heading back to the station. The kids had their bikes with them, as if out on a normal family excursion. The father stared at the ground as they walked, shoulders slumped as if clouded by shame.

A few hundred feet later, I passed a man so strung-out he was throwing violent punches at the brush and shrubbery along the road. With him was a battered-looking dog on a short leash. I had to look away; not just for my own safety but to make it through the rest of the day.

This is a regular occurrence. It’s also a regular occurrence to hear our elected officials deny the existence of what we’re seeing before our eyes. The term “gaslighting” is woefully overused, but I can think of no better word. As a friend put it, living in Los Angeles today feels like being in an abusive relationship with our own leaders.

Again and again, they fail us, ignore us, and put self-interest above civic duty and even basic logic. Raman, who chairs the city council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, represents some of the most devastated blocks in the city and routinely scoffs at constituents concerned about encampments near schools. Yet we continue to elect these officials, either because we’re so distracted by national politics that we forget to pay attention or because voting for a familiar party confers comfort in distinctly uncomfortable times.

But this is not a normal election. These are not normal times anywhere in the world, and that includes Los Angeles. A fire destroyed nearly 7,000 structures because of city mismanagement*. An estimated seven people die on the sidewalks every day. Dogs on Skid Row are being tortured, mutilated, sold for drugs, used for fentanyl testing, and bred again and again to keep the cycle going.

Here’s the thing about the Spencer Pratt case: even if Pratt got into office and did nothing for four years but repeatedly state the obvious, I have to believe it would be an improvement over what we have now. Moreover, I have to believe that whoever came next would have no choice but to govern from a place of shared reality with their constituents.

In my interview with Pratt, you’ll hear us share our stories of losing our homes in the wildfires last year. I did not get a chance to share another story that goes back much farther than that. Fifteen years ago, as some of you might remember, I spent several days in a medically induced coma with multiple organ failure, sepsis, meningoencephalitis, and a platelet count tantamount to a death rattle. (I know some of you will remember, because you were by my side.)

That illness was flea-borne typhus, the same disease that is now surging at epidemic levels throughout the region – mostly because of inhumanely unsanitary conditions in homelessness encampments. L.A. County reported a record 220 cases in 2025, with 90% requiring hospitalization. If it takes a reality show villain to use existing laws to force people off the sidewalks and into treatment–not to mention arrest drug dealers, human traffickers and people committing shocking atrocities against dogs and cats on Skid Row and elsewhere–I’ll gratefully accept the cosmic irony of it all.

To be honest, just saving the animals would be enough. (And by enforcing laws and allowing LAPD and Animal Services to do their jobs, that is something a mayor can do.) If you don’t believe these abuses are really happening, I can assure you they are well-documented and for years have been reported by citizens to city officials, who do nothing. I won’t include links because they’re too upsetting, though the impulse to look away is part of the reason this issue goes largely ignored.

If you have a chance to watch or listen to the podcast episode, I hope you’ll access the Substack version. I also hope you’ll watch it on video, since it’s easier to digest that way. It’s unpaywalled and includes an expanded introduction that talks about why I took the unprecedented step of interviewing a political candidate. I also hope you’ll share this email with fellow Angelenos who vote for L.A. mayor. At the very least, it might strike up an interesting conversation.

Ballots should be hitting your mailboxes now, and the primary is June 2. I have some thoughts about the governor’s race, too, but they’re a lot less interesting.

It should go without saying that if you vote for Karen Bass or Nithya Raman, we’ll still be friends. I have friends who voted for Jill Stein in 2016, and I forgive them – sort of.

Yours,

Meghan

*In my aim for brevity, this sentence came out a little hamfisted. The causes of the Palisades Fire are too complex to go into here—and more is being discovered all the time— but it would have been more accurate to say that “city failures made a catastrophic situation significantly worse than it needed to be.”

I recorded this last week, when incumbent mayor Karen Bass was polling in the lead. Things have been shifting since then, depending on what polling you follow — or believe. (Please don’t follow the Polymarket posts!)

In the nearly six years I’ve been doing this podcast, I’ve never interviewed a political candidate. I’ve never really focused on local issues, since my audience is all over the place — and hearing about local politics in cities you don’t live in is kind of like hearing people describe their dreams. But this election is different. I’m going to spend a few minutes talking to you, my Substack audience, about why I think that is.

If you were to ask me what the city of Los Angeles feels like these days, I might say it’s like a critically ill patient lying on a gurney in an emergency room for hours — maybe days — waiting for medical attention. Maybe an orderly comes by, maybe a nurse’s assistant, maybe there’s a tangle of IVs hanging from a pole that someone has rigged up as a stopgap until an assessment can be made. There are a lot of excuses about procedure and backlog, and how this is just the way it is in a big city hospital. But there’s no doctor, no coordination, no acknowledgment that this patient is very, very sick and needs to be seen now.

That’s what the relationship between Los Angeles residents and our elected officials feels like.

Now, Spencer Pratt — if you’re not familiar with him, and I wasn’t — starred on a reality show called The Hills. It ran for six seasons starting about twenty years ago. He played himself, along with his girlfriend-turned-wife, Heidi Montag. The show was heavily scripted by producers, and the two of them were crafted essentially as the villains. After the show, and after blowing a fortune on Birkin bags and a six-figure crystal collection — he spells all of this out in his book, by the way — Spencer launched a surprisingly lucrative online business selling crystals and settled into a relatively quiet family life in Pacific Palisades, where he’d grown up.

He had a political science degree from USC, but zero political ambitions until last year, when his house burned down in the wildfire and his frustrations with the recovery process — and the political negligence that had contributed to the fire in the first place — sent him down the rabbit hole of LA city politics. On January 8th of this year, one day after the first anniversary of the fire, he announced he was running for mayor.

The leading candidate is incumbent Karen Bass, and I’ll say a few things about her so you understand why he talks about her the way he does — fairly or unfairly. Bass is a career politician with a background in progressive activism. Her detractors like to call her a communist, partly because back in the 1970s she traveled to Cuba repeatedly and expressed solidarity with the revolution there, which is something you did if you were a young Black progressive activist at the time, which she was. When Castro died in 2016, Bass called it a great loss for the people of Cuba. She walked that remark back in 2020. Do with that what you will.

On February 7th of this year, hours before the filing deadline, another candidate entered the race: democratic socialist Nithya Raman, who sits on the city council, chairs the Housing and Homelessness Committee, and represents areas stretching from the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood and beyond — areas that have some of the worst homeless encampments in the city outside of Skid Row.

That was a lot of detail, but I’m including it because these names come up in the conversation. Honestly, a lot of people in LA don’t even know who’s running in these local elections, let alone people in the rest of the country. There are several other candidates in this primary, but these are the top three contenders.

So back to Spencer Pratt. Like a lot of people, I at first thought he was a joke. I thought: we elected a reality star president and look how that turned out. But then, through the urging of a few friends, I started paying attention. I especially paid attention to the way Pratt was talking about the apocalyptic state of street homelessness in this city — an issue I’ve become rather obsessed with over the past year, and not least because of something that almost nobody talks about, because frankly it’s so upsetting: the horrific abuse of animals, mostly dogs, at the hands of drug addicts, drug dealers, and various other people on the street who have no business being in possession of a helpless animal.

Spencer Pratt is talking about that. He’s talking about the utterly inhumane and depraved conditions on many of our streets in a way that no public official has been willing to do. He’s talking about the labyrinth of NGOs and nonprofits that have contributed to this situation.

He sometimes speaks hyperbolically. His word for fentanyl- and meth-addicted people on the street who refuse treatment is “zombies.” It’s not the word I would choose if I were running for office — but if you live in a city like this, you know exactly what he means. At one point in the interview, Pratt mentions body brokers. These are paid recruiters who funnel homeless and addicted people into treatment facilities as a vehicle for Medicaid billing fraud. The patients are literally the product. If you don’t believe me, look it up. It’s a real thing. It’s not a conspiracy theory.

If I had my journalist hat on, I would not be running an interview with a political candidate I’m also actively supporting. That would be unethical. But this is not a news podcast. It’s my show.

If you live in Los Angeles and vote in the mayor’s race, I hope you’ll hear him out. But even if you don’t live here, I want you to hear what’s going on in this city — and in so many cities like it. Because here’s the thing: even if Spencer Pratt loses this election, or even if he wins and can’t get nearly as much accomplished as he’d like to think he can, I believe he will have done a monumentally important thing, which is to describe out loud what everyone can see with their own eyes and yet is consistently denied or diminished by our public officials. I think that would be profoundly unifying. A little surreal, yes — but also an experiment in being citizens together in a new way.

As I was driving up to Spencer’s lot in the Palisades, I passed a homemade sign attached to a fence along the road of scorched properties. It said: “No More BS. Spencer Pratt for Mayor.” And I think that says it all. This is not about Democrat versus Republican, left versus right. It’s about stopping the bullshit. I think that’s what most people want. We’re ready for a no-bullshit era. And to think that this era might be ushered in by a guy that everyone loved to hate on an MTV reality show — well, that’s kind of the perfect Hollywood story.

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Related epsidoes

I have also posted a transcript of the introduction here.

Anyway . . .

This one is big, guys. My guest this week is the man of the hour in politics (or, as Hannah Horvath might say, a man of an hour): candidate for Los Angeles mayor Spencer Pratt.

If you’re thinking “wait . . . the Spencer Pratt from the MTV reality show The Hills who later blew a fortune on moldavite crystals and Birkin bags before settling down into a quieter life raising a family and tending to hummingbirds in his yard?” — yes, that’s the one I mean.

I’m about to introduce you to a very different version of Pratt. This is the version who became politically active after losing his house in the Palisades Fire in 2025 and decided to do something few, if any, public officials in L.A. have done in the last decade: state the truth out loud about just how bad things have become.

As you know, I have an interest in the issue of street homelessness in Los Angeles. Recent interviews with investigative reporter Sam Quinones and with Estela Lopez, who represents business owners on Skid Row, talked about the shocking humanitarian crisis on the streets, particularly the role of fentanyl and new forms of methamphetamine. The Pratt interview is both a natural continuation of those conversations and a surprising turn for the podcast. It’s the first time I’ve done an on-site video interview and the first time I’ve interviewed a political candidate.

This version of the episode (the one you’re about to watch or listen to if you’re reading these words) is just for you, my Substack audience. It contains a 10-minute introduction that fills in some missing context (Spencer talks fast) and explains why I did this interview and what I think of the prospect of Pratt becoming mayor.

I’m sure you’re eager to get to the main event, but I urge you to listen to the introduction first. I’ll also post a transcript of the introduction here on Substack soon.

Enjoy!

Housekeeping

✈️

Also . . .

📝 I’ve got Personal Essay and Memoir workshops coming up! An 8-week coed Zoom course in June-July and a three-night women’s writing retreat in the Catskills Sept 28-Oct 1. Application deadlines are May 11 for the Zoom course and August 13 for the Catskills retreat. Would love to hear from you.

🤣 Don’t miss my special April Fool’s Day episode with “curiosity coach” Amanda Gertz-Hurdy. It just might change your life.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, April 26. If you’re a Founding Member, you will get an email with the link. If you’re not yet a Founding Member, you can upgrade your subscription here.

🎁 Make a one-time donation to the podcast. Everything helps and is deeply appreciated. 🙏

📺 Visit The Unspeakeasy on YouTube.

Housekeeping

✈️

Also . . .

📝 I’ve got Personal Essay and Memoir workshops coming up! An 8-week coed Zoom course in June-July and a three-night women’s writing retreat in the Catskills Sept 28-Oct 1. Application deadlines are May 11 for the Zoom course and August 13 for the Catskills retreat. Would love to hear from you.

🤣 Don’t miss my special April Fool’s Day episode with “curiosity coach” Amanda Gertz-Hurdy. It just might change your life.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, April 26. If you’re a Founding Member, you will get an email with the link. If you’re not yet a Founding Member, you can upgrade your subscription here.

🎁 Make a one-time donation to the podcast. Everything helps and is deeply appreciated. 🙏

📺 Visit The Unspeakeasy on YouTube.

April 27, 2026 edition

My guest this week is British journalist and author Brendan O'Neill, chief political writer at Spiked and author of Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy. We talk about what he sees as a growing “vibe shift” away from elite consensus and toward something like common sense—though not without its own distortions. We discuss the UK’s role in pushing back on gender ideology (aka “TERF Island”), the uneasy state of free speech on both sides of the Atlantic, and why ordinary people seemed to tolerate cultural excesses until they suddenly didn’t. We also touch on the rise of unserious, meme-driven politics, the infantilization of public discourse (with Greta Thunberg as an emblematic if also profoundly dysfunctional figure), and the strange convergence of hectoring moralism on one side and gleeful nihilism on the other. Finally, Brendan reflects on his own journey from revolutionary communist to free speech absolutist, and why he thinks we may be inching slowly back toward a politics grounded less in identity and more in reality.

Guest Bio:

Brendan O'Neill is the chief political writer at Spiked and host of The Brendan O'Neill Show. He's also the author of several books, including Anti-Woke, A Duty to Offend, A Heretic's Manifesto, and most recently, Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy.

Housekeeping

✈️

Also . . .

📝 I’ve got Personal Essay and Memoir workshops coming up! An 8-week coed Zoom course in June-July and a three-night women’s writing retreat in the Catskills Sept 28-Oct 1. Application deadlines are May 11 for the Zoom course and August 13 for the Catskills retreat. Would love to hear from you.

🤣 Don’t miss my special April Fool’s Day episode with “curiosity coach” Amanda Gertz-Hurdy. It just might change your life.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, April 26. If you’re a Founding Member, you will get an email with the link. If you’re not yet a Founding Member, you can upgrade your subscription here.

🎁 Make a one-time donation to the podcast. Everything helps and is deeply appreciated. 🙏

📺 Visit The Unspeakeasy on YouTube.

The Unspeakeasy presents the second annual

Small Gathering for Big Ideas

Three days and two nights of conversation and connection. Off the record. In real life.

Join a small, curated group for a three-day, coed retreat on the Hudson River at Hutton Brickyards. Participants of varied ages, backgrounds, and perspectives come together for sustained, in-person dialogue. Critical thinking is valued. Humor is encouraged. Nothing is recorded.

Featured guests

John McWhorter

John McWhorter is a linguist at Columbia University and a widely read writer on language, culture, and race. He is the author of numerous books, including Nine Nasty Words and Woke Racism, both New York Times bestsellers. He writes regularly for The New York Times.

Lisa Marchiano

Lisa Marchiano is a Jungian analyst, author, and cohost of the podcast This Jungian Life. She has written widely on psychology, identity, and meaning, and is the author of Motherhood and The Vital Spark. She serves on the faculty of the C. G. Jung Institute of Philadelphia.

What kind of event is this?

Think of it as a kind of mini-vacation for the mind, a series of curated, off-the-record conversations with intellectually curious people about complex and often unexpected subjects. It’s like the best dinner party you’ve ever attended — where you walk into the room and know you’ve found your people.

Retreats include guest speakers, shared meals, beautiful surroundings, and enough free time for conversations to continue and new friendships to be forged.

This retreat is limited to 30 participants.

DETAILS

WHEN: Oct. 19–21, 2026.

LOCATION: Kingston, NY

GUEST SPEAKERS: John McWhorter, Lisa Marchiano

PRICING: Standard placement: $4,500
Includes two nights’ accommodations in a private cabin and all meals.

A limited number of early placements are offered at a reduced rate of $4,250.

Some participants have been able to use professional development or continuing education funds through their employers to cover all or part of the cost.

To register, go to the website page. (You can’t register from this page.)

Would love to see you there!

Founding Members, meet me Sunday, April 26 at 8pm ET/5pm PT on Zoom. Link below.

Lots to discuss. Trying to bring in Amanda Gertz-Hurdy as a guest speaker but she’s a tough get.

Please register ahead of time, so I know who’s coming. Hope to see you!

Read more

So much fun to talk with about our favorite girl, Lena Dunham! We discussed Lena’s new memoir FAMESICK and our enduring love for GIRLS. This is a truly great conversation. Thanks to Jenny and all who joined us.

Saving Culture (from itself)

Personal politics for the politically homeless. Writing on life, love and the toxic culture that's driving us all mad.

By Jenny Holland

Housekeeping

📝 I’ve got Personal Essay and Memo…

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