About Meghan and The Unspeakable
Who Am I? What Is This?
If you’ve gotten this far, chances are you know me at least a little. (Scroll to the bottom of this page for a brief biography.) I’m a writer, a podcaster, a teacher, and, most recently, founder of an enterprise called The Unspeakeasy. This Substack will bring all of these efforts under (mostly) one umbrella and allow you to keep up with what I’m doing.
Here’s a rundown.
The Unspeakable Podcast is the interview show I launched in the summer of 2020 — otherwise known as the Summer of Podcasts. (Scroll to the bottom of this page to see some listener ratings and reviews.). It features free-ranging, candid, Nuanced AF™ conversations with all kinds of fascinating people.
The podcast was audio only for the first four years. As of September 2024, it will be on video, with full episodes available on the YouTube channel as well as here on Substack for all subscribers. Paying subscribers will get two extra episodes per month (usually audio, but sometimes video) plus access to my writing. Paying subscribers also get early access to each podcast episode and the ability to leave comments.
A Special Place In Hell, my podcast with Sarah Haider, launched in June of 2022, looks at culture and society through the lens of our twenty-year age difference. It’s been likened to an “after party for The Unspeakable” but it’s very much its own thing. A Special Place In Hell has its own Substack page, which is wholly separate from this one, as well as a YouTube channel.
The Unspeakeasy is a community for freethinking women that offers in-person retreats as well as an online community. Since the fall of 2022, we’ve done more than 15 retreats in different regions of the U.S. and at least five more are in the works for 2025, including a coed retreat. The Unspeakeasy’s educational wing, The Unspeakeasy School Of Thought, offers writing courses on Zoom for everyone (not just women) taught by celebrated authors and industry professionals.
The Unspeakeasy has its own online space and mailing list and is wholly separate from Substack. But I’ll keep you updated about it here as much as possible.
Finally, you will find here my own writing, including new personal essays. If you’ve only discovered me in the last few years you might not realize that all the opining, podcasting, teaching, and, lately, bellyaching about free speech only came about because I built a career on personal essays. I haven’t done that kind of writing in a while, but it’s time I got back to it. Sharing such work requires a lot of vulnerability and trust on my part, and you’ll have the chance to become one of my early readers.
Want to get in on all of this? Here are the ways you can do that by supporting this Substack.
Free Subscriber
As a free subscriber you will receive periodic updates about what I’m doing. That includes writing classes, public events, the latest about The Unspeakeasy and links to things I publish here and elsewhere. Periodically I will publish a piece of new writing on the page for free and, as a subscriber, you’ll know about it before it goes mega-viral on Twitter. You’ll also be able to access the entire catalog of Unspeakable episodes right here on the Substack page, though you won’t have access to premium content such as the bonus portions of the conversations or, as of January 2024, the paywalled portions of episodes.
Monthly Subscriber $7/month
You get two entire extra podcast episodes per month. Free subscribers and those listening to the public feed hear a few minutes of preview of these episodes, but then it fades out and they need to become paying subscribers to hear the rest. Since you’ll already be a paying subscriber, that won’t happen to you! You’ll also receive the episode early—usually the Friday or Saturday before the main version drops—on a private RSS feed.
Up until 2024, most episodes included a bonus portion for paying subscribers, where the guest stayed overtime and we talked a little more informally (this was often the best part). As a paying subscriber, your back catalog access will include those bonus portions.
Commenting privileges. As a paid subscriber, you can participate in comment threads about the podcast or anything else I post. This is fun because the commenters are exceptionally smart and interesting. (Although maybe a little more subdued than the commenters on A Special Place In Hell.)
All sorts of Unspeakable extras, including discounts on Nuanced AF merchandise, access to premium versions of the podcast, and the ability to leave comments.
You’ll get everything mentioned above, plus new writing from me. This is big. And we’re not talking about hot takes or quirky jeremiads about the culture wars. I’ve been going to go back to my roots and writing personal essays. I write about what my life is like at this particular moment, how I feel about the past, and what I hope for and fear for the future. Maybe this will become part of a book someday and maybe it won’t. But they will amount to early drafts of the next phase of my writing life, and you’ll be the first to read it.
Founding Member $200/year
For this, you mainly get my undying and awestruck gratitude. Aside from that, you get all the regular paid podcast perks plus the chance to join quarterly Zoom hangouts with me. I’ll meet with all of you for at least an hour and we’ll discuss recent episodes of the Unspeakable podcast. You’ll also get cameo appearances and/or barkerruptions from my Newfoundland dog, Hugo.
By the way . . .
If you are a paid subscriber to A Special Place In Hell, new podcast with Sarah Haider and are thinking “but I just paid for a whole new podcast why do I have to pay for this one, too?” I hear you. Substack is working on some bundling options to address this very scenario, but they’re just not there yet. Complain to them!
Here’s a little about me (in the third person).
Meghan Daum is the creator and host of The Unspeakable Podcast and the author of six books, most recently The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars, a New York Times Notable Book for 2019. Her collection of original essays, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion, won the 2015 Pen Center USA Award for creative nonfiction. A Los Angeles Times opinion columnist from 2005 to 2016, she has written for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Vogue. Meghan is the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts grant. She has taught graduate writing students at Columbia University and The University of Iowa and now teaches private workshops in personal essay, memoir and op-ed. In 2022, she founded The Unspeakeasy, an intellectual community for freethinking women (and occasionally men). She also co-hosts, with Sarah Haider, the podcast, A Special Place In Hell. Her next book, a collection of essays entitled The Catastrophe Hour, will be published in April 2025.
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