Podcast Episode Details
Back to Podcast Episodes
The Things Women Aren't Allowed to Talk About in Public (With Meghan Daum)
In this episode, we are delighted to have Megan Daum, a prolific author, journalist, and podcast host. The discussion dives into Megan's extensive work, including her podcasts 'The Unspeakable' and 'A Special Place in Hell,' as well as her new series of retreats called 'The Unspeakeasy.' These retreats, mostly for women, offer a unique space to discuss topics like gender issues, COVID-19 policies, and the impact of feminism across generations. We explore the motivations behind these retreats and the valuable conversations they foster. Additionally, Megan talks about her thoughts on anti-natalism and her book 'Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed,' which presents various perspectives on the decision not to have children.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. I am so excited today because we're joined by Megan Dom, someone who I admire on so many different fronts. She is a prolific author. She's written six books or written or edited six books. She is been also prolific journalist, very respected by many of our friends.
She now is on Substack. Plus she hosts a special place in hell with Sarah Hader, also a friend of the podcast. And before that she had the Unspeakeasy podcast, which I listened to with really great interviews with heterodox. She's kind of like the Alex Kishida of like a different sort of segment of the internet.
And more recently Megan has launched a series of retreats, which I kind of wanted to dig into now. They're it's called the unspeak easy, kind of inspired by one of her books, which is titled unspeakable. And it is a place they're mostly, sometimes they're mixed gender, but they're mostly. Female only retreats pretty small, like very, like, sort of, you, you can have a real conversation with everyone who goes, maybe 16 people or fewer negative, maybe sometimes 20, right?
Yeah. And behind closed doors, these, [00:01:00] you know, mostly all women finally get to sort of discuss what they. Want whatever that's what we want to get to is what do professional educated, you know, probably more affluent women in the United States think and say and worry about and discuss behind closed doors because I think there's this, this perception that the educated women of America are largely this progressive monolith.
They all kind of think the same thing. Like they're not very interesting. You know, then you have some like far right, you know, crazy women and like, you know, whatever, like cam girls and cat girls or whatever. Like, but then there's like just this. There's nothing, a big question mark. So we, we wanted to, you know, we might, we might get into a little bit of a, an anti natalist discussion at the end of this, but we wanted to get into what's going on behind closed doors with all these women.
Meghan Daum: Well, if I, I couldn't tell you, right. If it was really behind closed doors, I wouldn't be able to tell you. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I love talking about all these. All these topics. And I will just say I, [00:02:00] I've got my hand in so many things that it gets confusing what I'm doing. So I still host the unspeakable podcast.
So I actually have two podcasts. I do a special place in hell with Sarah Hader. And I know you've, you've been on our podcast and she's been here. I, I do the unspeakable podcast, which is Sort of my flagship podcast. And that's an interview, it's a weekly interview show started it four years ago, summer of 2020 when all, when every podcast started and so, right.
So I've been doing that and yeah, so the speakeasy is it's an enterprise that has sort of, you know, arisen out of a lot of my work including. the podcast, my books, my teaching as well. I've been a teacher of writing for a really long time. So yeah, I guess, well, I guess the easiest way to kind of launch into what the unspeak easy is about is to tell you the origins of it.
And you know, that is, I've been, I
Published on 1 year, 1 month ago