Lean Out with Tara Henley

Canadians who write books, or cover books, or read books will know that something is wrong with our literary industry. But a new book documents just how far off the rails publishing has gone. Our guest on the program this week is the author of that book, and he says our fundamental problem is an erosion of national identity.

Richard Stursberg is a Canadian author and media executive, and the former head of English services for the CBC. His new book is Lament for a Literature: The Collapse of Canadian Book Publishing.

You can find...

This week on the Lean Out podcast we are taking a look at the chaotic summer of 2020, and the impact of that unrest on mainstream journalism. Our guest on the program this week has a new interview with the former opinion editor at The New York Times, James Bennet, who was famously ousted by a staff revolt. My guest says that now is a good time to think through how that historical moment — and its activists — has shaped our journalism.

Harrison Lowman is a Canadian journalist. He’s the managing editor of The Hub and a former produc...

We live in an age of economic precarity and journalists are not exempt from this. Our guest on the program this week has written a powerful Substack essay about his path from foreign correspondent to Uber driver, and how his troubles have helped him to forge a sense of solidarity with the people he drives to work.

Steven Scherer is an American journalist and a former Canadian bureau chief for Reuters.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Men and women don’t seem very happy these days. They are dissatisfied with dating, polarized politically, trash talking each other online, and both marriage and fertility are on the decline. What is responsible for this rift between men and women? Our guest on the program this week has been mulling this question over, and she says we might want to reconsider some of the assumptions of feminism — starting with the idea that marriage and family are “a trap.”

Larissa Phillips is an American essayist and the founder of the Volunteer Literacy Project. With her husband, she runs the...

The popularity of identity politics, and the subsequent fallout from this ideology, is something that we’ve tried to unpack and understand on the Lean Out podcast. Our guest on the program this week has published a viral essay on the impacts of this moment on Millennial white men. He argues that an entire generation was shut out of certain professions and found themselves in a society that was “deliberately rooting against” them.

Jacob Savage is an American writer. His latest essay, for Compact Magazine, is The Lost Generation.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitte...

With the new year now upon us, we are going to continue our conversation about the state of feminism, and how we might begin to think and talk about women’s lives in ways that are more productive. Our guest on the program this week is a frequent commentator on modern feminism, and she says the central archetypes of our current moment — the girl boss on the left and the trad wife on the right — are both reductive and untenable in today’s world.

Elizabeth Grace Matthew is an American writer, and the author of the Substack newslett...

It’s New Year’s Day and many of us will be at home, contemplating the year ahead. For New Year’s every year, Lean Out brings you an episode that is lighter and more hopeful. This year, we set our sights on food and its ability to bring us together. Our guest on the program today has published a wonderful book about famous writers and their recipes, exploring the restorative power of home cooking.

Valerie Stivers is an American writer and a senior editor at UnHerd. Her new book is The Writer’s Table: Famous Authors and Thei...

It’s Christmas Day and we at Lean Out wanted to bring you a special bonus episode — to celebrate the occasion and to meditate on the meaning of the holiday. Our guest on the program today is the founder of one of the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry programs in the world, and he’s here to share its driving ethos of cherished belonging, and how that might serve as a model for the wider world.

Father Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. Last year, he was aw...

On the Lean Out podcast, one of the topics that we often return to is the media, and the insanity of the media. For the last show of 2025, our guest is a veteran journalist and a savvy media critic, and he has some thoughts on where we are, how we got here — and where we should go from here.

Mike Pesca is an award-winning American journalist. He is the creator and host of the long-running daily news podcast, The Gist. He’s also the author of Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History.

You...

With 2025 winding down, we at Lean Out wanted to take a look back at one of the most controversial stories of the year — and to see if we could have a calm, reasonable conversation about a divisive issue. We're talking about the feminization theory, or the idea that the shifting sex ratios in influential institutions comes with both positive and negative consequences. Our guest on the program today is a scholar who is studying that phenomenon. Her recent paper, for the Journal of Controversial Ideas, is “From Worriers to Warriors: The Cultural Rise of Women.” 

Cory Clark is an A...

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the Sexual Revolution — and weighing its benefits and drawbacks, both for women and for men. Today on the show, we are going back to the period that led into that historical moment, to a bohemian movement of art and travel and sexual experimentation, but also of destruction and dysfunction and family tragedies. We're talking about the Beat Generation. Our guest on today’s program has written the introduction to a reissue of an astonishingly good book that explores all of this, written by Jack Kerouac’s daughter Jan. 

Amand...

In Toronto, where I live, you cannot walk a block without seeing a young man in distress — sleeping on the street, or slumped over from drug use, or shouting and screaming. It feels like something has gone very wrong for men in this country and that nobody is talking about it. Our guest on the program today has dedicated his career to men’s health, and he has some important insights to share, both from his professional life and from his personal life.

Zac Seidler is the Global Director of Men’s Health Research at Movember. He’s also a...

In the wake of the #MeToo firing of the University of British Columbia creative writing professor Steven Galloway — which is once again in the news this week — our guest on the program today sat down to write a book of advice for young feminists. But her good friend Margaret Atwood convinced her that nobody likes unsolicited advice, and that she should instead frame her memoir around her unusual height and how it shaped her life. The result is a riveting narrative that also offers up plenty of lessons to the next generation of women.

Susan Swan is a Ca...

Many women in Generation X are now finding themselves overwhelmed. The world is increasingly stressful. But our private lives are not much calmer, as we care for children and aging parents and spouses, stare down middle age, and mull over the legacy of previous generations of women. Our guest on the program today knows something about this — she grappled with all of these things, all at once, during one truly terrible year.

Molly Jong-Fast is an American writer and political commentator. She’s a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Time...

It’s budget day here in Canada. As Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government tables its first federal budget, we will get reaction and hear a lot of different visions for the country. On today’s episode we wanted to bring you one. Our guest on the program says that Canada is in crisis — and that it is now time for "bold adventurism."

Daniel Debow is a Canadian executive, investor, and educator. He is the chair of the board for Build Canada.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenl...

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the many crises that Canada is facing —and where we go from here. Our guest on the program today warns that we are at a breaking point, and in desperate need of a national reckoning. As we face threats from without, he says, we are divided from within, along the lines of gender, class, region, and, crucially, generation.

Darrell Bricker is the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs and a previous director of public opinion research in the Prime Minister’s Office. His latest book, out this week — writte...

Before the Internet, before the literary world was overrun by online politics, before everything you read — and wrote — had to advance an agenda, there was the solitary person, in a room, losing themselves in the words on the page. There was the fan. Our guest on the program today has written a book of essays on fandom and his own obsessions. In the process, he confronts the big cultural forces of our age.

Jason Guriel is a Toronto writer. His latest book is Fan Mail: A Guide to What We Love, Loathe, and Mourn.

You can...

Many of us that are big readers have been scratching our heads for years, trying to figure out why so many books are now so tedious and moralistic. What’s happened to North American literary culture — and why hasn’t it bounced back? Our guest on the program today has some answers. He’s written a book about the decline of literary freedom in publishing, and a dynamic that he describes as “a circular firing squad.”

Adam Szetela is an American author. His new outing is That Book is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars...

If you live in North America, chances are good that you spend a lot of time wondering why things feel so dysfunctional. Why can’t we make any progress on the big issues of our age, like housing? Our guest on the program today has some answers — and he has written a fascinating new book about why nothing works.

Marc J. Dunkelman is an American author and former political staffer. He’s a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs. His latest book is Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring I...

In recent years, we have seen heated debate in this country around the CBC and its future. With the question of defunding no longer looming, it is a good time to pause, to look back at where our national public broadcaster has been, and to talk through where it might go from here. Our guest on today’s program is veteran CBC producer who has written an insightful and well-researched new book about the institution — and where he thinks it went wrong.

David Cayley is a Canadian author and broadcaster. For thirty years, he made documentaries for the...

Today, as we go to air, our guest on the program takes the stage at Toronto Metropolitan University to address the next generation. He is a legendary Canadian journalist and he’ll be reflecting on the highs and lows that he’s experienced in his ringside seat to history, and how to navigate what he calls “the spinning vortex of ever-more complex news” — all of which he covers in his riveting new memoir.

Brian Stewart is a former foreign correspondent for the CBC. His new book is On the Ground: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent.

You can...

Earlier this year at Lean Out, we covered Canada’s federal election. It was a contest not just between candidates and parties but between dominant narratives about the challenges facing this country. Was our biggest problem the decline in material conditions, or was it Donald Trump? Our guest on today’s podcast was there, on the campaign trail. He’s just written a book about why this election was one of the most consequential in recent memory.

Justin Ling is a Canadian journalist and author. His Substack newsletter is Bug-eyed and Shameless, and his new book is The 51...

In 2021, Canada was rocked by a discovery at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops: what appeared to be the remains of more than 200 Indigenous children. The story went viral globally and was reported by The New York Times and others as a mass grave. But to date, no remains have been exhumed. Our guest on the program today is a First Nation chief and a podcaster who has made a new, hour-long video breaking down the controversy. He says it’s time for the media to grapple with its reporting errors — and the fallout for the count...

September is here and Lean Out is back with a new season of conversations with writers and thinkers from around the world. We could not think of a more important topic to kick off our fall season than the state of Canadian democracy. Our guest on the program today has written a new book that serves as a wake-up call — he says that while we observe the rituals of the democratic process, we have lost its spirit and its substance. 

Andrew Coyne is a columnist for The Globe and Mail and a weekly panelist on CBC’s The N...

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from April of 2025. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September!

For some time now, writers and thinkers outside this country have been asking me: What happened to Canada? Our guest on the program today has asked this question himself, in a new book that takes a deep dive into our decline.

Tristin Hopper is a columnist and reporter for The National Post, ba...

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from November of 2024. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September!

With Donald Trump winning the presidency, the popular vote, the Senate, and the House, in what The New York Times has described as a “crushing electoral rebuke” of the Democrats, there is a lot of soul-searching going on in the party. Our guest on the program today tried to warn the Democrats in his previous...

Lean Out is now on our annual summer hiatus. But we while we’re away, we wanted to bring you some popular encore episodes from our archives, including today’s show — from May of 2024. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in September!

2020 was a turbulent year in American politics, and in the America media. The editor of The New York Times has conceded that the paper went “too far” during that time and said that it is now working to pull itself back from such “excesses.” Our guest on the program today was at the paper during that...

The summer of 2020 was one of the most explosive periods of recent memory — with pandemic lockdowns, the death of George Floyd, nationwide protests and riots, and workplace purges and online mobbings. And yet, so much of what went on has now been forgotten. In his new book, our guest on the program today encourages us to take a good, hard look at the insanity of those months, and how they shaped the era we’re now living through.

Thomas Chatterton Williams is a staff writer at The Atlantic. His latest book, out this week, is Summer of Our...

In the United States right now, we are witnessing the decline of what has often been called the woke left — and a backlash from an increasingly woke right that is now seeking to impose its own beliefs on society in similar ways. Our guest on the program this week has been an outspoken critic of illiberalism, wherever it originates on the political spectrum, and he believes that defending liberal values has never been more important.

Andrew Doyle is a UK broadcaster, commentator, and comedian. His latest book is The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went To...

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the ongoing tensions between men and women. This past week saw a shot fired on that front: a piece published in The New York Times Magazine, titled “The Trouble With Wanting Men.” For this special joint episode, we unpack this essay with podcaster Meghan Daum and a Gen Z guest.

Meghan Daum is an American author and essayist, and the host of the Unspeakable podcast, soon to be renamed the Unspeakeasy. Lily Isaacs is a British writer, and an editorial assistant for UnHerd.

You can find...

The working poor in Canada are often largely invisible. The struggle to make ends meet in an explosively expensive era tends to be a private matter. But our guest on the show today has taken the step to make her own battle public, with a new cover story for Maclean’s that’s sparking discussion across the country.

Jeni Gunn is a gig worker in Victoria, B.C. Her new essay for Maclean’s is “Confessions of the Working Poor.”

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

In recent weeks and months, a number of you have reached out to Tara about the debate on gender medicine for minors — and a lack of media coverage about it, particularly in this country. 

This is a topic that she recently covered on her other podcast, Full Press. And The Hub has been kind enough to let us bring you the free version of that episode today, where you can hear her entire conversation on gender medicine and the media, with co-hosts Harrison Lowman and Peter Menzies. 

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @Tara...

In recent years, we’ve read a lot of memoirs from women who feel stuck in specific ways: single, childless, consumed by work, and disillusioned with hook-up culture. Our guest on today’s program is the author of the first memoir we have read about breaking free from that pattern — and the story of how it happened is as moving as it is surprising.

Beth Kaplan is a Canadian writer, and the author of Loose Woman: My Odyssey From Lost to Found.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahe...

With the excesses of 2020 now being examined in mainstream outlets like The New York Times, we are witnessing a moment of introspection on the American left. To unpack this development, we're joined by a writer who has studied the history of the left. And in this week's conversation, we wrestle with our own complicated — and at times conflicted — relationships to these politics.

Daniel Oppenheimer is an American writer and podcaster. He runs the Substack newsletter Eminent Americans and hosts a podcast of the same name. He’s the author of Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left a...

It’s common knowledge these days that the left has lost the working class. But there is little curiosity about how, and why, and what that means for our politics. Our guest on this week's program has written a deeply researched book on the subject — and she has some ideas on where the left should go from here.

Joan C. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Law (Emerita) and Founding Director of the Equality Action Center at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. Her latest book is Outclassed: How the Left Lost the...

Three and a half years ago, during the pandemic era, we launched Lean Out to explore some basic questions about illiberalism in our response to the crisis — and in our culture, our politics, and our newsrooms. Today, for our 200th episode of the show, we're thrilled to be joined by two academics who have written a deeply researched book that provides some answers.

Stephen Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. And Frances Lee is professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. Their ne...

In polarized times, our tolerance for different perspectives decreases. Groupthink becomes common, and we can often find ourselves either censored, or self-censoring. Our guest on the program today has done a deep dive into this topic, and she has some thoughts on how we can begin to speak up — while still seeing our ideological opponents as human.

Jenara Nerenberg is an American author, and the founder of The Neurodiversity Project and The Interracial Project. Her latest book is Trust Your Mind: Embracing Nuance in a World of Self-Silencing.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at...

Tonight, in London, England, a group of writers and thinkers will gather to debate a key cultural question: “Is woke dead?” And tomorrow, the inaugural conference of a new centre for social science kicks off. Academics will gather to talk through the intellectual origins of this movement and its politics, psychology, and driving interests, to establish it as a field of study, and to delve into overlooked topics and perspectives. Our guest on the program is the man behind both of these events, and he joins us to share his thinking on the post-progressive era — and what it might mean fo...

As Tara puts the finishing touches on her next book, on declining trust in the media, we wanted to bring you a few encore interviews that have helped shaped her thinking on the media — including today’s episode.

Since the election win for Donald Trump, we are seeing a renewed sense of scorn for Republican voters in parts of the mainstream media. The Guardian’s Rebecca Solnit, for example, writes in her column that “our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do.” Our guest on today’s program doesn’t see it that way. S...

As Tara puts the finishing touches on her next book, on declining trust in the media, we wanted to bring you a few encore interviews that have helped shaped her thinking on the media — including today’s episode.

The period often referred to as The Great Awokening is winding down now, and we’re starting to get a better understanding of what happened. My guest on today’s program argues that we have seen these kinds of social justice-styled movements before in American history — and that they are in fact driven by, as he puts it, “frustrated erstwhile el...