Is Everything Terrible? Tablet editor Alana Newhouse on the problem with burning it all down.

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week I’m joined by Alana Newhouse, journalist, cultural critic, and founder/editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine. Since launching Tablet in 2009, Alana has carved out a space for nuanced and surprising reporting on Jewish identity and the larger cultural questions shaping those issues, as well as the broader issues of our time.

We discuss her 2021 essay, Everything Is Broken, in which she diagnoses systemic failures in medicine, media, education, and culture. Alana traces these breakdowns to a pervasive cultural force she calls flatness — the drive toward frictionless interaction, simplified narratives, and ideological conformity.

Drawing from her own story of navigating a medical crisis with her own child, Alana exposes how even privileged, insured families can be failed by institutions. She also offers a blueprint for repair: embracing complexity, friction, unpredictability, and deep creative engagement.

Alana will be a guest speaker at our Unspeakeasy Small Gathering for Big Ideas weekend, October 11-12 in New York City. Programming and ticketing info here.

Are you a fan of what Alana has done at Tablet? Show your love (and get a big discount) by using promo code ALANA1800 at checkout.

GUEST BIO

Alana Newhouse is the founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine.

Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.

HOUSEKEEPING

📖 Order my new book, The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays, on Amazon or directly from the publisher here.

📘 The Catastrophe Hour book club for yearly paying subscribers starts June 11 and will run for 14 consecutive Wednesdays, 3-4 pm ET. We will meet on Zoom. More info here.

🗽 Live event in NYC on Sept 3! Come see me discuss The Catastrophe Hour with bestselling novelist and columnist Lionel Shriver (catch my recent interview with Lionel here). The Village Underground, 6 pm. Tickets and info [here](http://paid%20subscribers%20get%20access%20to%20my%20entire%20interview%20with%20rachel%20mason.%20to%20hear%20the%20entire%20conversation,%20become%20a%20paying%20subscriber%20here./).

Transcript

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0:00.0	It became clear that the problem was endemic and that there was a deep undercurrent of decay
0:11.5	that was eating away at all of those institutions and that it wasn't one isolated story
0:18.7	or two isolated stories. It wasn't about Israel.
0:21.0	It wasn't just about Trump.
0:22.1	It was actually about nearly all of the news that we were getting had, at its heart,
0:30.3	fundamental reporting problems.
0:35.3	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.
0:56.6	I'm your host, Megan Down. Before we get to this week's guest, journalist and editor Alana Newhouse, a couple of announcements. I will be quick about them. The first is that on September 3rd in New York City, I will be in conversation with novelist and columnist Lionel Shriver.
1:05.4	We're going to be talking about my new book, The Catastrophe Hour, and also Lionel's books, her columns in The Spectators, and all of our various ideas.
1:13.2	This is happening at the Village Underground Comedy Club at 6 p.m. And the linked by tickets is in the show notes.
1:20.2	You can also go to Megan Down.com slash events to find out. More. Doors open at 515. We're going to be selling books there. We will be out by 7.30 because the comedy is going to start at 8.
1:26.5	If you purchase your ticket soon,
1:28.6	you will get a discount by using promo code Catastrophe 18 at checkout. It's going to be a great
1:36.0	night. Also in New York City, about a month after that is, of course, our big unspeak-easy
1:43.3	ideas weekend featuring today's guest, Alana Newhouse, among lots of other speakers, including John McWhorter, Carol Hoeven, Mike Pesca of the GIST, policing expert Peter Moskos, Andrew Hartz of the Open Therapy Institute, who will be a guest on the show coming up,
2:02.0	and lots of others that you probably know from the podcast. You can meet all your intellectual
2:07.1	heroes. It's going to be an amazing weekend. You've never experienced anything like it.
2:12.8	You definitely have never experienced anything like it because we've never tried anything like this
2:16.2	and probably no one else has either. You can find out more and register by going to the unspeak easy.com
2:22.6	slash NYC. And again, that's October 11th and 12th. Okay. My guest, Alana Newhouse, is the editor of
2:33.3	Tablet Magazine, which she founded in 2009.
2:37.2	Tablets, roots are in Jewish identity, and it has historically been a platform for Jewish news and ideas.
	...

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