311. Meghan Daum — The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2022
⏱️ 99 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shermer and Daum discuss: unauthorized autobiography • Feminism (first, second, third wave, and beyond) • Was the sexual revolution good or bad (or both) for women? • badassery, problematica, wokescenti, cognoscenti • Gen Xers • Elders • What is a woman? • Sex and Gender • who you identify as vs. who you're attracted to • Trans • #metoo and #BLM movements • intersectionality • toxic masculinity • wokeness, liberal vs. progressiveness, far left vs. left • cancel culture, and political tribalism.
Meghan Daum is the author of six books, most recently The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars. 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, Meghan has written for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Vogue. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has taught Columbia University in addition to teaching private workshops in personal essay, memoir and opinion writing. Meghan is the host of the weekly interview podcast, The Unspeakable and the cohost, with Sarah Haider, of the weekly podcast A Special Place in Hell. Meghan founded The Unspeakeasy, an intellectual community for freethinking women. Her current writings are on Substack.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Michael Sherman Shower Show. Hello everyone, it's Michael Schmer and it's time for another episode of the Michael |
| 0:18.6 | Sherman Show. |
| 0:19.6 | First, for these last couple of episodes of 2022. I wanted to ask a favor of you if you |
| 0:26.5 | would show your support for the show by making a donation to the Skeptic Society. |
| 0:32.4 | This podcast is primarily supported by the |
| 0:36.7 | 501c3 nonprofit organization that I co-founded with Pat Lindsey 30 years ago. You can see her over my shoulder there who sadly |
| 0:45.7 | passed away last year. We've since been doing a kind of restructuring here moving |
| 0:51.2 | our offices, redesigning the magazine and so forth. |
| 0:54.9 | And the podcast has really taken off. |
| 0:57.0 | It is free and I want to keep it free. |
| 0:59.4 | Open to everybody to listen to on all the different platforms. Same thing with my |
| 1:04.0 | sub-stack skeptic column. It's free for everybody but people are making |
| 1:10.0 | subscriptions, paid subscriptions, five bucks a month fifty dollars a year various different levels and that really all that money goes into the skeptptic Society, not my personal account. And then this show, of course, we do have one advertiser, Wundrium, and then occasionally Wren. Both great companies, but the podcast is primarily supported by you, |
| 1:35.3 | by people that make donations to the Skeptic Society. |
| 1:39.6 | And since we are a 501c3, you can deduct it from your taxes so I'm asking you now between now and |
| 1:46.3 | December 31st 2022 that you show your support anybody who donates a hundred bucks or more gets a signed copy of my book, Science Friction, |
| 1:57.0 | where the known meets the unknown. This is an older volume collection of my articles and essays, |
| 2:02.0 | and we had some cases left over after our move |
| 2:06.3 | that I found in storage and this is so this is a first edition hardback |
| 2:11.1 | signed for anyone that gives 100 bucks or more. |
| 2:15.0 | And of course, the, again, the 100 bucks is deductible after your taxes. |
| 2:19.5 | And so that, they really appreciate your support there. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Shermer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Michael Shermer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.