How Not To Go Insane: Chloé Valdary on leaving Twitter, the new Puritanism, and the virtues of reading aloud.

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

February 10, 2025 edition

Recorded December 16, 2024

Chloé Valdary was last on the podcast in May 2021, talking about Theory of Enchantment, an enterprise devoted to more nuanced and art-focussed approaches to DEI. She’s back to discuss what she’s been up to since then. A lot!

In this conversation, recorded in December, Chloé talks about her journey from prolific tweeting to long-form writing and the impact of social media on mental health and creativity. She talks about psychosomatic work, the influence of Elon Musk on Twitter, and the cultural response to Luigi Mangione's killing of a health insurance executive. In her view, Luigi fandom connects to themes of Puritan heritage, as she discusses in her (then) recent piece Luigi Mangione and the Puritans.

GUEST BIO

Chloé Valdary, educator, artist, and founder of the Theory of Enchantment, is on a mission to address the shortcomings of DEI by teaching love and harmony. Chloé received her bachelor’s in international studies with a concentration in conflict and diplomacy from the University of New Orleans. She has been published in the WSJ, the New York Times and the Atlantic Magazine, and she spends her days helping schools and businesses build trust in their organizations. In her spare time, she enjoys bird watching, reading, and DJing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Megan with laryngitis. Really quick note about this episode. As many of you know,
0:05.8	the regularly scheduled podcast was disrupted about a month ago after I lost my home in the Los Angeles
0:11.2	wildfires. I've been doing audio dispatches about that event and will continue to do so. But now
0:17.8	I am going to pick up from where we left off with the guest interviews.
0:22.4	Obviously, a lot has happened in the last month.
0:25.5	I think we might have a new president.
0:27.6	I'm not sure.
0:28.2	I've been a little distracted.
0:30.2	But the episodes for the next couple of weeks are going to be interviews I recorded back in December.
0:36.2	So if you are already tired of the news cycle
0:38.7	and political talk, this is the podcast for you. Obviously, I cannot speak, but I will let the
0:44.8	introduction speak for itself. And here is an interview. Enjoy. I am hopeful that what will come out
0:52.2	of this is a return to civics and a return to civic dialogue
0:59.2	and a return to civic discourse, which cannot happen on Twitter, by the way.
1:02.3	That's the other thing I said in my piece.
1:06.2	So that I am hopeful for because I think people are hungry for it.
1:12.1	And so, yeah, I do think these are momentous times we're living through.
1:19.8	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.
1:21.9	I'm your host, Megan Dome.
1:23.7	I have been having a lot of conversations lately about, for lack of a better way of putting it,
1:30.1	how not to go insane.
1:33.1	How not to go insane amid the onslaught of information, misinformation, entertainment, quasi-entertainment,
	...

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