EP 44: Agency

“Men and women exist. Occasionally, we even like each other. We exist because of these two simple truths.” These are the opening lines of a powerful new book that dives into the crisis in contemporary heterosexuality. It’s been called a “feminist defence of masculinity,” and it is a clear-headed and compassionate look at where we’ve gone wrong. Nina Power is a British writer, philosopher, and fellow Substacker. She’s also a senior editor at the new American journal of radical politics, Compac...

8 Kesä 202230min

Some months ago, Tara discovered a podcast that gripped her from its very first episode. That podcast is Banished, from Substack’s Booksmart Studios, and it is a deeply thoughtful and nuanced look at the rising tide of censorship and intolerance. Its host is a remarkable academic who is fiercely committed to open inquiry. Amna Khalid is an historian and a professor at Carleton College. She is a prolific writer of essays, often with her colleague Jeff Snyder, on the big issues of our time — in...

1 Kesä 202232min

Many of us have had the feeling over the last few years that things were just not adding up, that the narratives in the mainstream media simply were not making sense. Well, my guest on the podcast today had that experience earlier than most, years back, with online feminism – and it sowed the seed that became her most recent book. Meghan Daum is an essayist and the author of six books. She’s a former opinion columnist with the Los Angeles Times, and the host of weekly interview podcast, The U...

25 Touko 202231min

How free is Canada as a country? It’s a question that Tara's guest on the podcast today tackled in a book, back in 2020. He concluded that our freedom was actually pretty precarious. Philip Slayton is a Canadian lawyer and a former dean of law at Western University. He’s also a former president of PEN Canada, and a bestselling author. His latest book is Nothing Left To Lose: An Impolite Report on the State of Freedom in Canada. Philip joins Tara today for a lively, state-of-the-nation convers...

19 Touko 202237min

“We’re liberated, and we’re miserable.” That’s a title of a chapter in Chrisine Emba’s new book, Rethinking Sex: A Provocation – and one a lot of people can relate to. The Sexual Revolution held lots of promises of freedom and liberation, but in many ways it just hasn’t delivered. We’re in the midst of a sex recession, marriage is in decline, and a recent Pew survey found that nearly half of American adults say that dating has gotten harder for most people over the last 10 years. Women know t...

11 Touko 202231min

When Antonio Michael Downing set out to write his memoir, he gave himself some written instructions: “Tell it plainly, let the sweet be sweet, let the sour be sour, let the truth ring its own bell.” This led to his critically-acclaimed book Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming. In it, the Canadian author and musician recounts his childhood in Trinidad, and what he learned about humanity adjusting to life in various cities and towns in Ontario, in Brooklyn, New York, and out on tour. An...

4 Touko 202240min

In the fall of 2015, Tara's guest on the podcast today had just arrived at Yale. He was an Air Force veteran, working-class, a former foster child. So, when a massive crisis erupted over emails about Halloween costumes and campus "safety," he was a bit perplexed. Rob Henderson is a PhD student in psychology at Cambridge University, and a rising academic star. He writes a popular newsletter on human nature, psychology, and social class at Substack, and has been published in The New York Times ...

28 Huhti 202236min

Does every human being deserve to have love in their life? The American prison system – through its policies – often answers that question with a “no.” But the human instinct to seek out companionship, affection, and care runs deep. And every year, some of the roughly 2 million people behind bars fall in love with people on the outside. And the way the prisons treat these bonds says a lot about the state of mass incarceration. Brooklyn writer Elizabeth Greenwood spent five years reporting on ...

20 Huhti 202232min