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!

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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…

Read more

Before the episode begins, I have a quick but important message about my recent guest, Amanda Gertz-Hurdy.

Guest Bio:

Hadley Freeman is a staff writer at The Sunday Times. Her latest book, Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, was published in 2023.

Related articles

I Won’t Stay Silent About The Thinness Arms Race, Sunday Times 2026

It Was Obvious Anorexics Would Abuse Ozempic, Sunday Times 2024

Hadley’s previous visit to the podcast

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

📝 I’m offering three different writing workshops in the coming months. A women’s weekend workshop on a houseboat in Sausalito, CA; an 8-week coed Zoom course, and a three-night women’s writing retreat in the Catskills. Details and application info here and here.

✈️ The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is now waitlist only. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. The fall retreats will be open for registration in mid-April. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ 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 6, 2026 edition

My guest this week is Estela Lopez, Executive Director of the LA Downtown Industrial Business Improvement District, which encompasses Los Angeles’s Skid Row. With 25 years on the job and a lifetime in the neighborhood, Estela is one of the most clear-eyed, unsparing voices I’ve encountered on what homelessness actually looks like at the ground level.

We talk about how a thriving industrial district became the nation’s most concentrated homeless encampment, why Estela sees this less as a homelessness crisis than a lawlessness crisis, and how the open-air drug economy makes every other intervention nearly impossible. We also talk about the limits—and often the folly—of harm reduction policy, how COVID chaos led to the collapse of enforcement, and what the “housing first” approach gets wrong. She also tells me about the activists who have physically attacked her for speaking honestly about what she sees.

If you’re interested in this subject, don’t miss my recent interview with investigative journalist Sam Quinones about how potent new forms of drugs, especially methamphetamine, have entirely reshaped the picture of street homelessness.

Housekeeping

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

📝 I’m offering three different writing workshops in the coming months. A women’s weekend workshop on a houseboat in Sausalito, CA; an 8-week coed Zoom course, and a three-night women’s writing retreat in the Catskills. Details and application info here and here.

✈️ The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is now waitlist only. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. The fall retreats will be open for registration in mid-April. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ 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.

This week, I sit down for an efficient but information-packed conversation with mindset coach Amanda Gertz-Hurdy, author of The Curiosity Workbook. We discuss how Amanda pivoted from a corporate career to a more creative path before building a thriving practice in the mindfulness and curiosity space—and why she believes radical self-acceptance can only come when you’re ready to ask the radical questions.

This episode is sponsored by Fecalicity™.

Guest bio:
Amanda Gertz-Hurdy is a certified journaling coach, a top-rated curiosity practitioner, a mom to twins, and the author of The Curiosity Workbook: How to Stand in Your Truth, Sit in Your Intention, and Kick Ass by Cultivating Curiosity.

Housekeeping

📝 I’m offering three different writing workshops in the coming months. A women’s weekend workshop on a houseboat in Sausalito, CA; an 8-week coed Zoom course, and a three-night women’s writing retreat in the Catskills. Details and application info here and here.

✈️ The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is now waitlist only. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. The fall retreats will be open for registration in mid-April. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ 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.

This is a reminder to Founding Members (that’s you) that our next monthly hangout is tomorrow, Sunday, March 29 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. We’ll talk about the podcast and anything else on your mind.

Unlike the lady and gentleman in this AI-generated rendering, please attach your legs to your torso and please wear a shirt. (If you are able.…

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On the heels of an especially terrific Zoom workshop this winter, I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be teaching three more writing workshops this year. They’re all a little different. One is on a houseboat, another is on 200 acres of farmland, and another is on the island paradise of beautiful Turks and Caicos Zoom.

Below you will find everything you need to know about these workshops, plus some preliminary info about our Unspeakeasy retreats in the fall.

These workshops fall under The Unspeakeasy imprimatur, but are distinct from our “free speech vacation” signature retreats. Though they will be especially supportive of intellectual risk-taking, they are not specifically “heterodox” in nature. Students come because they’re interested in craft and artistry, not politics.

May 16-17
Houseboat Weekend Writing Workshop in Marin County, CA

Two full days in a gorgeous floating home in Sausalito, CA. We’ll workshop your pages (submitted ahead of time) and have general discussions on developing ideas, writing about yourself, writing about other people, and how to navigate the publishing business today.

For intermediate to advanced students of memoir and personal essay. This is a women’s workshop. Class not to exceed nine students.

10am to 5pm Saturday/Sunday, includes lunch both days and optional sunset cocktails and dinner Saturday evening.

Fee: $1100, payable by Zelle, Venmo, or personal check

To apply, send a writing sample of no more than 15 pages along with a brief note explaining your creative and professional goals to meghan@meghandaum.com. Write “Houseboat Workshop Application” in the subject heading.

Apply by Monday, April 13. Deadline extended to Monday, April 20.

June 2 - July 21
Zoom Workshop in Memoir and Personal Essay (coed)

An eight-week, once-a-week online workshop, on Zoom, for intermediate to advanced writers of personal essay and memoir.

The class meets once a week for two hours on Zoom. I will lead general conversations about craft and the business of publishing as well as discussions of student work. Each student will have two opportunities to workshop manuscripts up to 15 double-spaced pages, with at least 45 minutes devoted to each workshop discussion.

At some point during the course, each student will have the opportunity to meet with me privately on Zoom for 45 minutes. We can use this time to discuss your pages or any other writing-related issues.

For intermediate to advanced students of memoir and personal essay. Class size to be determined, but will not exceed 12 students.

Eight consecutive Tuesdays 3-5pm ET.

Fee: $1500, payable by Zelle, Venmo, or personal check. Due upon registration.

To apply, send a writing sample of no more than 15 pages along with a brief note explaining your creative and professional goals to meghan@meghandaum.com. Write “Zoom workshop application” in the subject heading.

Apply by Monday, May 11.

September 28 - October 1
Women’s Writing Workshop and Retreat in The Catskills

A four-day/three-night writing workshop and retreat at The Uplands, a retreat and learning center set on 200 acres of farmland, woods, and open landscape in the western Catskill Mountains.

The program will include a combination of classroom workshop sessions of existing material, free writing time, brainstorming sessions, and informal discussions on craft and process. There will also be plenty of unstructured time to walk, think, and work on your own. Each participant will receive a 45-minute private meeting with me.

Yoga, massage, guided nature walks, garden tours, and other services are available upon request.

For intermediate to advanced students of memoir and personal essay. Group size to be determined, but will not exceed 16.

Fee: $3200 for single room, $3000 for shared room.

All rooms have a private bathroom. Includes accommodations and all meals (dinner Monday evening through breakfast Thursday morning).

To apply, send a writing sample of no more than 15 pages along with a brief note explaining your creative and professional goals to meghan@meghandaum.com. Write “Uplands workshop application” in the subject heading.

Apply by Monday, August 3.

Finally . . .

Our two Unspeakeasy retreats in the fall, both in upstate New York, will be open for registration in mid-to-late April. The first is a women’s living room retreat (a more casual version of the signature women’s retreat) in Saratoga Springs, October 10-11. The second is a two-night, coed retreat in the Hudson Valley, October 19-21. The coed retreat will accommodate up to 30 attendees and feature some exciting guest speakers. Stay tuned for more info.

Hi there,

Our next Founding Members hangout is Sunday, March 29 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. We’ll talk about the podcast and anything else on your mind. Providing you are able, please attach your legs to your torso and please wear a shirt, unlike the lady and gentleman in this AI-generated rendering.

Hangouts are on the last Sunday of every month and are for subscribers at the Founding Member level (hence the name). To upgrade your subscription, go here.

This reminder is going out to all paying subscribers. I won’t make a habit of it, since I know you get too many posts and emails. But some of you were upset that you didn’t know about the hangouts, so here is your periodic reminder of how they work.

The meeting link is below the paywall break. Please do me a favor and register in advance so I know who’s coming. Hope to see you there!

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Paying subscribers get early access to this episode. To become a paying member or to upgrade your subscription, go here.

This week I’m joined by the actor, humorist, and six-time author Annabelle Gurwitch, who returns to the podcast to discuss her new memoir, The End of My Life Is Killing Me: The Unexpected Joys of a Cancer Slacker.

Annabelle was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer during COVID, entirely out of the blue, after what she assumed was a meaningless cough. Five years later, she remains an outlier on a targeted therapy that has kept her stable. In this conversation, we talk about how she has resisted the sentimental clichés surrounding illness, why she rejects the idea that cancer is a “battle,” and how humor, contrarianism, and facing “the shipwreck of the soul” have shaped the way she lives now.

We also get into her wildly cinematic diagnosis story, the humiliation of having her car repossessed in the middle of the night, the strange romantic opportunities that can apparently arise after a terminal diagnosis, and why trying to adopt kittens during COVID turned into an existential crisis.

Guest Bio

Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress, activist, and New York Times bestselling author of six books and two-time finalist for the Thurber Prize.

Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Hadassah Magazine, among other publications. Her six books include the New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist I See You Made an Effort.

Annabelle co-hosted the fan favorite Dinner & a Movie on TBS, was a regular commentator for NPR. She is serving in leadership as a patient advocate with the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).

The End Of My Life Is Killing Me is out March 17. Pre-order here or wherever you buy books.

Housekeeping

✈️ The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is now waitlist only. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. The fall retreats will be open for registration in mid-April. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, March 29. 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.

Recorded and (inadvertently) livestreamed March 9, 2026.

Another day, another technical misadventure. While recording this interview with novelist and commentator Lionel Shriver, I realized that we…

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This is the recording of our YouTube livestream from last Monday, Feb 23. We don’t agree on everything, but we have a lot in common and I find Jenny uniquely articulate and insightful in ways you don’t hear every day. Enjoy!

Some handy time stamps:
02:06 Personal Awakening and Political Disillusionment
05:04 Generational Perspectives and Cognitive Dissonance
07:52 Cultural Shifts and the Impact of the Sexual Revolution
12:04 Media Landscape and Its Influence on Perception
20:04 The Role of Journalism and Institutional Trust
25:02 Personal Background and Cultural Identity
31:44 The Journey to Journalism
40:10 The Decline of Local Journalism
46:06 Awakening to Woke Culture
52:33 Navigating Family Dynamics and Woke Ideology
56:41 The Shift in Feminism and Legitimacy
59:05 The Influence of Youth Culture on Media
01:01:32 Progressive Values and Cultural Shifts
01:04:38 The Role of Fandom in Activism
01:07:30 The Decline of Quality in Entertainment
01:11:20 The Anatomy of a Karen
01:16:27 Women and Cancel Culture
01:18:14 The Impact of Woke Ideology on Identity

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

✈️ The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is open for registration now. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, March 29. 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.

March 2, 2026 edition

This week, I talk with investigative journalist and bestselling author Sam Quinones (Dreamland, The Least of Us) about the piece of the homelessness crisis we’re often encouraged to treat as secondary: synthetic drugs, especially methamphetamine, and its connection to the rapid rise of street psychosis and encampment life.

Sam explains how today’s meth is fundamentally different from the “tweaker” era of the 1990s and early 2000s: cheaper, purer, more abundant, and more destabilizing. Known as P2P meth, this new form was perfectly suited to mass industrial production and reshaped street homelessness across the country, including places that historically had little visible homelessness at all.

We also talk about the limitations of a single-cause narrative (“it’s all housing costs”), the realities of Housing First, and why many recovery stories begin not with compassion-as-policy, but with the unpopular intervention that removes access to drugs: arrest and incarceration.

And then for something completely different . . . Sam talks about his delightfully unexpected new book, The Perfect Tuba, and why band, discipline, and collective effort may offer a strange but persuasive antidote to a culture increasingly engineered for addiction. (Don’t look at me; I played oboe in the orchestra.)

Guest Bio:

Sam Quinones is an investigative journalist and bestselling author whose work focuses on addiction, drug trafficking, and social breakdown in the United States. He is the author of Dreamland, which examined the origins of the opioid epidemic, and The Least of Us, about fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the transformation of American street life. His latest book, The Perfect Tuba, explores community, discipline, and fulfillment through the unlikely world of band and brass instruments. He writes the Dreamland newsletter on Substack and hosts a podcast on addiction, recovery, and public policy.

Dreamland: A Sam Quinones newsletter

A newsletter for independent journalism – my stories and others', interviews, reporting, writing and more.

Housekeeping

✈️ The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is open for registration now. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, Feb 22. 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.

Here is the link for our next hangout. Please register in advance so I know who’s coming.

This is the image that AI generated when I typed in “Unspeakeasy Founding Members hangout.” You’d better live up to it.

Meeting link below the image.

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February 16, 2026 edition

Time for another reunion! Sarah Haider, my co-host on the late, great A Special Place In Hell, has a lot to say about the Epstein files, so she visited the podca…

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February 16, 2026 edition

Time for another reunion! Sarah Haider, my co-host on the late, great A Special Place In Hell, has a lot to say about the Epstein files, so she visited the podcast to unload.

After opening the episode with an homage to the classic intro from our former podcast, we (as Chat GPT would say) dive right in. We talk about how everyone’s a pedophile now, why Ghislaine Maxwell was drawn to such bad boyfriends, and why Epstein’s favorite muffins (yes, literal muffins) were so delicious they inspired poetry.

Because it’s Sarah, we also discuss the latest in Fertility Crisis Discourse, including new nostalgia about teenage motherhood and Sarah’s idea of a GI Bill for mothers.

Finally, we reveal the only conditions under which we would revive A Special Place In Hell.

Visit Sarah Haider on Substack.

Sarah Haider

More light, less heat.

Visit A Special Place In Hell on Substack (yes, the page is still there).

A Special Place In Hell

Two girls, one pod.

By Meghan Daum & Sarah Haider

Housekeeping

✈️ The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is open for registration now. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, Feb 22. 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.

How did you spend your Sunday? I spent mine having a day of rest and worship, recording some thoughts about a recent media dustup that, for some reason, was making my head explode.

In the wake of the latest Epstein document dump, a smaller, unrelated story emerged that, to me, carried some of the same themes. It involved New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s decision not to air an interview he recorded with journalist Seth Harp for his podcast Interesting Times.

After Harp accused Douthat of spiking the episode out of cowardice, a chorus of online commenters demanded the tape be released anyway—raw, unedited, or handed over to the guest—so “the people” could decide. (Douthat’s reply, which I also share in the monologue, is here.)

What interests me isn’t who won a debate no one heard, but the apparently widespread belief that audiences are entitled to everything that gets recorded, regardless of editorial judgment. To me, this seems bonkers, but a surprising number of people seem not to realize that interviews get scrapped all the time. I’ve done it myself, and here I explain some of the circumstances that led to it and why this is a sign of standards, not censorship.

And in the ultimate gesture of radical vulnerability (I only do this for you, my beloved Substack audience), I also tell a painful personal story about being a guest on Fresh Air with the legendary Terry Gross. Get your hankies out.

Housekeeping

✈️ As you’ve heard me mention, The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is open for registration now. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, Feb 22. 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.

Is it really true that no one—or at least no one under 30—is having sex anymore? In this episode, I talk with neuroscientist, author, and former sex researcher Dr. Debra Soh about her new book Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy, a data-packed look at why millennials and Gen Z are having less sex than any cohort on record despite living in the most sexually permissive culture in history. From declining testosterone and endocrine disruptors to porn, dating apps, kink culture, sex dolls, and the rise of AI boyfriends and girlfriends (she tried a few), Debra argues that technology has become the new contraception—reshaping not just sexual behavior but intimacy itself. We also discuss hypergamy, hookup culture backlash, “sex positivity” overreach, and whether the future holds a rebellion back toward real-life connection and analog pastimes.

Sextinction will be published next Tuesday, February 10.

Guest Bio
Dr. Debra Soh is a neuroscientist who specializes in human sexuality and biological explanations for behavior. Her previous book, The End of Gender, was published in 2020.

Housekeeping

✈️ As you’ve heard me mention, The Unspeakeasy is now officially coed and will focus on in-person events going forward. But don’t worry, we’re offering three women’s retreats this year. The first is in L.A. in April and is open for registration now. The others are on the East Coast in the fall, plus our big coed overnight retreat-a-polooza in October. Visit our retreat page for dates and more info.

🏍️ I am hosting Zoom hangouts for Founding Members on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm ET. The next meeting is Sunday, Feb 22. 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.