The Unspeakable Podcast Meghan Daum

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

Fan favorite Sarah Hepola is back! Sarah has visited The Unspeakable to talk about everything from alcoholism to #MeToo to the changes in the media landscape and literary world. Today she returns to discuss a recent solo episode she recorded for Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em, the podcast she co-hosts with journalist Nancy Rommelmann. In that episode, Sarah reflected on a semester spent teaching literature and writing to college undergraduates in Dallas, Texas, where she lives. Contrary to public assumptions, the students turned out to be relatively open to new ideas and not hell-bent on canceling their teacher. In this conversation, Sarah talks about what literature the students responded most positively to, what assignments they didn’t like (spoiler: Joan Didion) and what they taught her about the ever-changing English language. Sarah and Meghan also talk about writing memoir, the contradictory social codes of dating, and why little girls touch each other’s hair so much—and why Meghan hated it!
 
Sarah stayed overtime for bonus content that was so good that Meghan decided to release it along with the main episode. In that portion, they talk about motherhood, non-motherhood, aging, dating, sex and pornography and why older women are so popular with young men on dating apps. 
 
Guest Bio:
 
Sarah Hepola is the co-host, with Nancy Rommelmann, of the podcast Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em. She is the author of the bestselling memoir Blackout and her essays have appeared in the New York Times magazine, the Atlantic, Elle, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian,  Salon, and Texas Monthly. Find her at https://sarahhepola.com.
 
Relevant links:
https://smokeempodcast.substack.com/p/smoking-diary-16-college-kids-today#details
 
https://smokeempodcast.substack.com/p/on-not-being-a-mother
 

Ever since it was introduced in the early 1960s, the birth control pill has been inextricable from the concept of women’s liberation, body autonomy, and just about everyone’s sense of personal freedom and their own life choices. Holly Grigg-Spall, author of Sweetening The Pill: Or How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control, is in favor of all of those things. But she is also among a growing chorus of activists who believe that the sacrosanct nature of the pill discourages honest conversations about the mental and physical health risks posed by hormonal birth control. Instead of taking it for limited spans of time to prevent pregnancy, many women are often on the pill for the bulk of their reproductive lives, which technically is not the way it was designed to be used. In this conversation, Holly talks about how pharmaceutical companies began marketing birth control pills as “lifestyle drugs” and how artificial disruptions to the reproductive system can cause medical problems to go unnoticed and untreated. She also explains how tech-assisted fertility tracking differs from the old-fashioned “rhythm method” and explores the ways in which “infertility as a default setting for women” has affected mating and dating patterns – and not always for the better.
 
In the bonus portion for paying subscribers, Holly sticks around and talks about the process of developing Teena, a fertility tracking app for teenagers, and also the documentary The Business of Birth Control, which was inspired by her book (and criticized by Meghan on A Special Place In Hell.) 
 
Guest Bio: 
Holly Grigg-Spall is the author of Sweetening The Pill: Or How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control. Released in 2013, the book will mark its ten-year anniversary later this year and was the inspiration for the 2021 documentary The Business Of Birth Control, Holly recently launched Teena, a free education-forward app supporting body literacy for tweens and teens.

This week on the podcast, returning guest Lionel Shriver talks about her latest book, Abominations: Selected Essays From A Career Of Courting Self-Destruction. A collection of her writings from outlets like The Spectator, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal, the book also contains some previously unpublished pieces a well as speeches and other public addresses, including a eulogy for her brother. Lionel is perhaps the consummate “thought criminal,” and in this conversation, she talks with Meghan about how she came to assume this mantle (hint: she supported Brexit) and what frustrates her most about culture war discourse. They discuss the Covid lockdown policies, the state of the literary arts, the new gender movement, and the differences between America and the U.K. when it comes to fears about nuanced positions being “weaponized by the other side.” They also consider the “am I canceled or am I just paranoid?” conundrum and wonder how much longer the culture wars can really go on.  Finally, Lionel reflects on how perceptions of our own happiness change over time and how, if she could send a message to her younger self, it would be, “you’re not as miserable as you think.” 
 
In the bonus portion for paying subscribers, Lionel stays overtime to talk about Meghan’s second favorite subject: end-of-life options. Her last novel, Should We Stay Or Should We Go, took a darkly funny look at this subject by considering a dozen parallel universes for a couple who planned to kill themselves when they turned 80.  Lionel and Meghan pick up on where their conversation left off from Lionel’s last visit to the podcast and talk about their feelings about their own deaths and what it means to enter old age without children or close family. Uplifting stuff! 
 
Guest Bio:

 
Lionel Shriver is a columnist for The Specator and the author, most recently, of Abominations: Selected Essays From A Career Of Courting Self-Destruction. Her  fiction includes The Mandibles, Property, So Much for That, the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World, and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin. Her journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harper's, and the London Times, and she currently writes a regular column for The Spectator in the UK. She lives in London and Brooklyn, NY.

We sometimes think of anorexia as an “old school” disease, now eclipsed by disorders such as cutting and similar forms of self-harm. But as journalist Hadley Freeman reports in her new book, the illness has been around for centuries and is still very much with us. In Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, Hadley tells the story of her battle with severe anorexia as a teenager and also investigates the causes, treatments, social factors, and lasting effects of the disease. In this conversation, Hadley explains how even though there’s been a greater focus on self-harm practices such as cutting in recent years, anorexia rose sharply during and after the pandemic and has never been more relevant. She describes how at age 14 she suddenly stopped eating and, within months, lost a third of her body weight and landed in a hospital. It would take three years and nine hospitalizations before she began to get well. It’s often said that anorexia isn’t about being thin as much as it is about retaining control, but Hadley describes her own compulsion as a competitive desire to look ill, with the ultimate success being death itself. Other subjects covered include the connection between anorexia and gender dysphoria, including Meghan’s theory that social media star Dylan Mulvaney is less a gender influencer than an anorexia exhibitionist. 
 
If that’s not unspeakable enough, Hadley stays overtime to talk about Meghan’s favorite third rail, Woody Allen, whom she’s interviewed and written about. They also discuss a recent interview Hadley conducted with author Judy Blume, whose expression of support for JK Rowling got her in trouble on Twitter. To hear that portion, become a paying subscriber at https://meghandaum.substack.com/.
 
 
Guest Bio:
Hadley Freeman grew up in New York and London. She is a staff writer for The Sunday Times and previously spent 22 years at The Guardian. Her last book, House of Glass, was an international bestseller. Her new book is Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia.

For more than 30 years, Jean Twenge has been studying how generational differences affect the workplace, family life, public policy, interpersonal relationships, and individual identity. Her research has been foundational in many of the current culture war discussions, including in Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s seminal book The Coddling of the American Mind. Jean is the author of seven books, including Generation Me and iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood. Her new book is Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents and What they Mean for America’s Future. In this conversation, she talks with Meghan about what she’s learned from working with a dataset of 39 million people born between 1925 and 2012. She dispels some of the most common myths about certain generations (for instance that millennials are broke) and talks about the concept of “fast” versus “slow” life strategies. She also talks about how the 1950s got codified as a symbol of traditional values when in fact it was an anonymous case in many ways. For instance, more women were enrolled in college in the 1930s than in the 1950s. 
 
Jean stays overtime for paying Substack subscribers to share her feelings about her own age generation. That happens to be Generation X, which is one of Meghan’s favorite topics. Meghan asks why Gen X is the real "greatest generation." To hear that portion, become a paying subscriber at https://meghandaum.substack.com/.
 
Guest Bio:
Jean Twenge is a professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and the author of several books, including Generation Me, iGen, and The Narcissism Epidemic. Her new book is Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents and What they Mean for America’s Future. She lives in San Diego with her husband and three daughters.