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 expanded to video, with full episodes available on the YouTube channel as well as here on Substack for all subscribers. These days, about half of the episodes are paywalled, meaning free subscribers will hear a portion (sometimes half, sometimes less) before the conversation cuts out and asks you to upgrade your subscription. Paying subscribers get full access to every episode, early access (usually the Friday before the official release date) as well as the ability to leave comments.
Note: my recent audio essays about the Los Angeles wildfires are free to all listeners.
The Unspeakeasy is a community for freethinking women (and sometimes we have stuff that includes the guys) offering in-person retreats as well as a private, membership-based online community. Since the fall of 2022, we’ve done more than 15 retreats in different regions of the U.S. and several more are in the works for 2025. 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 website 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 bellyaching about free speech only came about because I built a career on personal essays. A new collection, The Catastrophe Hour, is forthcoming from Notting Hill Editions on April 15, 2025.
In case there’s any confusion . . .
A Special Place In Hell, my podcast with Sarah Haider, launched in June of 2022 and wrapped up at the end of 2024 (and not because Sarah did ayahuasca and decided there were more important things in life than podcasting). It was likened to an “after party for The Unspeakable.” Even though the party is over, you can still visit A Special Place In Hell’s Substack page, which is wholly separate from this one, as well as its YouTube channel.
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.
Monthly Subscriber $7/month
You get complete access to every episode. Free subscribers and those listening to the public feed hear a portion of the paywalled episodes, but then they fade 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 in The Nuance Store, access to premium versions of the podcast, and the ability to leave comments. (Just so you know, The Nuance Store can currently be accessed on The Unspeakeasy website, which I know is confusing. We’re working to streamline things.)
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.
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 seven books, including The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays, forthcoming in April 2025. Her previous book The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars, was a 2019 New York Times Notable Bookand 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) for which she leads “free speech vacation” retreats across the U.S. From 2022 to 2024 she co-hosted, with Sarah Haider, the podcast, A Special Place In Hell. She lives in the Los Angeles area, most recently in Altadena.
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