The Catastrophe Hour Book Club, Week One - The Broken-In World
The Unspeakable Podcast
Meghan Daum
4.8 • 784 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Catastrophe Hour Book Club begins June 11 with a discussion of the first essay in the book, The Broken-In World, an examination of divorce, loss, and finding unexpected peace and camaraderie in a world that “can no longer support pretense.”
The book club runs for 14 consecutive Wednesdays from 3-4 p.m. ET. We will discuss one essay per week
To learn more about the book club and join, visit https://www.theunspeakablepodcast.com/p/the-catastrophe-hour-book-club
About The Catastrophe Hour
"One of our most important essayists . . . The Catastrophe Hour is proof that writers and readers can choose to engage with their lives in a manner that is radically disengaged with the pointless noise of the day.” — Washington Examiner
From the acclaimed author of The Unspeakable and The Problem with Everything comes a new collection of unputdownable essays. Written between 2017 and 2024, these essays are classic Meghan Daum, showcasing her wit, her intellect and her uncanny ability to throw new light on even the most ubiquitous of subjects. Arranged in the order that they were written, the essays touch on themes of aging, solitude, creative life, money, the changing media landscape, death, and the meaning of home. Daum’s unflinching honesty and exacting observations secure her reputation as one of our most important and enduring essayists.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, and welcome to this special edition of the podcast. What you're about to hear is an excerpt from an essay in my new book, The Catastrophe Hour, which was published in April. |
| 0:18.0 | I am running a book club this summer where we read an essay each week and talk |
| 0:22.2 | about it on Zoom. Since there are 14 essays in the book, the club will run for 14 consecutive |
| 0:27.9 | weeks every Wednesday from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time, starting on June 11th and ending on September |
| 0:34.7 | 10th. The way it's going to work is each week I will release a short |
| 0:39.1 | audio excerpt of the essay that we're discussing the following week. It's not the whole essay, |
| 0:44.6 | so you should still buy the book, but it should give you a taste. The book club is available |
| 0:49.6 | to paying substack subscribers who are subscribed at the annual level, which is a better bargain |
| 0:54.9 | anyway. If you cannot make the meeting, you will have access to a recording, but only if you're |
| 1:00.3 | a member of the book club. If you are not yet a paying subscriber at the annual level, |
| 1:05.0 | you can upgrade your subscription, and we will make sure that you get a link to the Zoom meeting. If you discover this book club |
| 1:13.4 | at any point during its run, you can still join. This is a book of essays that are arranged in the |
| 1:18.7 | order in which they were written between 2016 and 2024. You will not be lost if you join in the |
| 1:24.9 | middle, though it's nice to read from the beginning. I will say that there is not |
| 1:28.7 | yet an audiobook available for this title. So these audio excerpts are as much listening as you're |
| 1:34.7 | going to get right now. You can buy the book wherever books are sold. You can become a paying subscriber |
| 1:40.7 | or upgrade your subscription. Going to the unspeakablepodcast.com or |
| 1:46.0 | megandown.com. Those go to the same place. Now, please enjoy this week's excerpt from the |
| 1:52.3 | catastrophe hour. Essay number one, the broken-in world, September 2016. |
| 2:03.2 | At the age of 45, I found myself in the surprisingly unsurprising situation of filing for divorce. |
| 2:10.7 | To be accurate, I was the respondent in this filing, a decision based solely upon the fact that my husband was remaining in our home |
| 2:18.3 | state of California while I was taking one of our two giant dogs and driving to New York City |
... |
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