Where We Go Next (Meghan interviewed!) - Podcaster Michael Callahan turns the tables on your host
The Unspeakable Podcast
Meghan Daum
4.8 • 784 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2024
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, something a little different: Meghan is the interview subject! In a special end-of-summer episode, The Unspeakable pairs up with Michael Callahan and his podcast Where We Go Next. In a conversation that Michael posted earlier this month, he and Meghan talk about how to avoid audience capture in the “heterodox space,” how the term “community” got tacked onto nearly everything, and how the concept of the “literary citizen” replaced the role of the working writer or even public intellectual. They vent their shared frustration with the marketing demands of algorithms, particularly the YouTube algorithm and its clickbait thumbnail images, and wonder whether Meghan’s Reddit haters are correct that she’s really just a conservative cosplaying as an old-school liberal. Finally, Meghan discusses the origins and current iteration of The Unspeakeasy and Michael reminds her that in her first visit to his podcast, back in July 2021, she declared that she would never launch a freethought community — oops!
Relevant Links
Original Where We Go Next episode
I Wasn’t Canceled. I Was Problematized.
Was Alice Munro An Art Monster?
About Michael Callahan
Michael Callahan is an award-winning commercial director and the host of Where We Go Next, where he has deep-dive conversations with accomplished people doing fascinating things. He enjoys vacationing in the Pacific Northwest, hanging out with his awesome wife, and taking far too many photos of their 3 dogs.
Instagram: @wwgnpodcast
Follow WWGN on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts or Audible.
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Housekeeping
✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: 2025 retreats will be announced soon. Last call for our October retreat in Woodstock, NY!
🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | once a majority of people within the scientific community decided that there was a right and wrong |
| 0:07.3 | answer for where COVID-19 came from. Everyone who did not have the correct opinion was demonized, |
| 0:12.7 | was problematized. It just seems to be something that is infecting all spaces in terms of, |
| 0:17.5 | oh, you're not just someone who has a different opinion from me. You're a bad person. Well, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head, right? Like instead of, oh, you're not just someone who has a different opinion for me. You're a bad person. |
| 0:21.4 | Well, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head, right? Like instead of areas of study or |
| 0:26.7 | expertise, we have communities. So instead of science, we have the scientific community. |
| 0:32.0 | Instead of literature, we have the literary community. Instead of black people in all their multitudes of politics and diversity |
| 0:40.2 | of thought. There's the black community. What does that mean? Nothing. Welcome to the unspeakable |
| 0:48.8 | podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dowm. We have reached the end of the summer. Labor Day is upon us. To mark the occasion, |
| 0:56.7 | I'm going to shift slightly the nature of my labors and bring you a different kind of episode. |
| 1:02.0 | This time, I'm the one being interviewed. This is a conversation with someone I think is one of the |
| 1:07.7 | best podcast interviewers out there. Michael Callahan is the host of where we go next. |
| 1:13.6 | A weekly interview show, he describes as deep dive conversations with visionary founders, |
| 1:19.4 | award-winning journalists, pioneering scientists, celebrated artists, and anyone else changing |
| 1:25.1 | the ways we think, create, and live. I think it's fair to describe Michael |
| 1:29.2 | as being in the free-thinking heterodox space. He's interviewed many of the same people I have, |
| 1:35.6 | people like Lenore Skenezy, Chloe Baldry, Sarah Heppala, Alina Chan, and many I have not. People |
| 1:41.5 | like Tim Urban, Jay Shapiro, Ayesha Akonbi. And one of the things I like |
| 1:46.5 | most about Michael's approach is that instead of dwelling on what's wrong with everything and what |
| 1:51.7 | fools are ideological enemies are making of themselves, he tries to chart a path forward. |
| 1:57.4 | He is a superb interviewer and hands down the most prepared host I have ever encountered. That's why I |
| 2:04.5 | always enjoy being his guest and why I wanted to share our recent interview with you here. In it, |
... |
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