New Feature: Dreams of Heterodox Podcasters

Do your favorite heterodox figures show up in your dreams? Share them here!

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Installment One: Glenn Loury Dinner

Dreamer: Meghan (your author!)

Key elements: restaurant, dog, car, parking, lateness, anxiety, rebuke, self-rebuke

Recently I had a dream featuring Glenn Loury, the Brown University economist and podcaster who is a beloved figure in the eco-system known as the “heterodox space.” (He also has a Substack page.) If you don’t know what “heterodox space” means you can probably skip this whole post and give yourself a few pats on the back having a real life.

In the dream I had somehow convinced Glenn to have dinner with me. Our relationship in the dream felt approximate to our relationship in real life, which is that Glenn vaguely knew who I was because I’d written both to him and about him enough times to briefly draw his notice. Despite being eager to impress, I’d decided to bring my dog to the restaurant. Upon arrival, I was told by the maître d that dogs were not allowed inside. This meant putting the dog back in the car, but the car was parked far away and by the time I walked there and back a mortifying hour or more had passed. As I approached the restaurant, I could see Glenn through the glass, sitting alone at a table. He looked, if not visibly annoyed, thoroughly unimpressed. I thought to myself, “WTF is wrong with you, you f*cking idiot.” That was the end of the dream. 

I shared this dream on Twitter (obviously) and several people mentioned that they, too, had had dreams about their favorite podcasters, YouTubers and various online public intellectuals. Someone even wrote to me describing a dream featuring Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal from the Blocked and Reported podcast in which I made a cameo appearance. A few people, who may or may not have been trained psychoanalysts, offered their interpretations of my Glenn dream.

Dreams about celebrities are nothing new. But parasocial relationships involving podcasters can offer an extra layer of “intimacy,” since many of those podcasters are pretty much regular schlubs who happen to have developed a niche fan base. Not me, since I have always lived a very glamorous life. But Katie and Jesse for sure.

So I thought I’d try out a new feature here: Dreams of Heterodox Podcasters. It’s a place where you can share your dreams of podcasters and, best of all, get all kinds of highly informed interpretations in the comment section. (I’d originally borrowed from Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying’s DarkHorse podcast and called it DarkHorse Dreams, since I liked the alliteration and I bet Bret and Heather appear in people’s dreams a lot. But I think maybe simpler is better.)

I kicked off the first installment with my Glenn dream. Next time I’ll feature the aforementioned dream about Katie and Jesse. If you’d like to share your dream about you favorite podcaster, radical centrist intellectual or even non-podcasting (maybe pseudonymous) Substacker, email me at meghandaum@substack.com and maybe I’ll include it here. Anonymously, of course. I won’t even paywall it. 

Never stop dreaming!