Lean Out with Tara Henley

The realignment of left and right is something we talk about a lot on this podcast, as we try to make sense of the current moment. This political shakeup is producing new politics, new alliances, and new conversations. To keep up with the pace of such shifts, Lean Out is now expanding to two episodes a week, to better document these developments in real time. Tara will still be interviewing an author every week, but now she'll also be interviewing a journalist — about a newly-pub...

28 Jun 202217min

Last week, amid growing pressure, the Canadian government suspended vaccine mandates for domestic and outbound international air and rail travel — as well as for the federal civil service and the federally regulated transportation sectors. But this debate is far from over, as the government stated that it will not hesitate to reimplement vaccine mandates in the future. The question is: Is such a policy backed by science? A recent peer-reviewed paper in the BMJ Global Health medical journal ar...

22 Jun 202234min

There was big news out of the United States last week for those who follow the ongoing debate over the state of free speech. FIRE, the preeminent free speech organization for higher education, is expanding beyond campus. And the organization has been renamed the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Tara's guest on the podcast today says its expanded mandate is a result of 2020, the worst year for free speech in his entire career. And he wants us all to think deeply about why ...

17 Jun 202233min

The pandemic, as we know, has been a different experience for different people. Some of us, the laptop class, isolated and worked from home. But others of us, the essential workers, were out there every day doing the work that it took to keep society from collapsing. The stories of the working class have often gone untold, but Tara's guest on the podcast today has dedicated himself to interviewing working people — on his podcast, in his reporting, and in his new book. And he believes their ex...

15 Jun 202236min

“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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Mai 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 Mai 202237min