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PODCAST

Lean Out with Tara Henley

Tara Henley is a Canadian journalist and bestselling author. On the Lean Out podcast, she interviews heterodox writers and thinkers from around the world, in an attempt to widen the Overton window of acceptable thought in society. You can learn more about her work at tarahenley.substack.com

society & culture books

All Episodes

25:21

EP 231: 'Enough White Guys Already': Jacob Savage on...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/01/14

The popularity of identity politics, and the subsequent fallout from this ideology, is something that we’ve tried to unpack and understand on the Lean Out podcast. Our guest on the program this week has published a viral essay on the impacts of this moment on Millennial white men. He argues that an entire generation was shut out of certain professions and found themselves in a society that was “deliberately rooting against” them. Jacob Savage is an American writer. His latest essay, for Compa...

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40:04

EP 230: Elizabeth Grace Matthew: We Need to Move On...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/01/07

With the new year now upon us, we are going to continue our conversation about the state of feminism, and how we might begin to think and talk about women’s lives in ways that are more productive. Our guest on the program this week is a frequent commentator on modern feminism, and she says the central archetypes of our current moment — the girl boss on the left and the trad wife on the right — are both reductive and untenable in today’s world. Elizabeth Grace Matthew is an American writer, an...

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25:31

EP 229: Valerie Stivers on the Joys of Home Cooking

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/01/01

It’s New Year’s Day and many of us will be at home, contemplating the year ahead. For New Year’s every year, Lean Out brings you an episode that is lighter and more hopeful. This year, we set our sights on food and its ability to bring us together. Our guest on the program today has published a wonderful book about famous writers and their recipes, exploring the restorative power of home cooking. Valerie Stivers is an American writer and a senior editor at UnHerd. Her new book is The Writer’s...

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24:19

EP 228: Merry Christmas from Lean Out: Father Gregory...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/12/25

It’s Christmas Day and we at Lean Out wanted to bring you a special bonus episode — to celebrate the occasion and to meditate on the meaning of the holiday. Our guest on the program today is the founder of one of the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry programs in the world, and he’s here to share its driving ethos of cherished belonging, and how that might serve as a model for the wider world. Father Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy In...

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40:49

EP 227: Mike Pesca on Media Insanity

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/12/17

On the Lean Out podcast, one of the topics that we often return to is the media, and the insanity of the media. For the last show of 2025, our guest is a veteran journalist and a savvy media critic, and he has some thoughts on where we are, how we got here — and where we should go from here. Mike Pesca is an award-winning American journalist. He is the creator and host of the long-running daily news podcast, The Gist. He’s also the author of Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sport...

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44:19

EP 226: Cory Clark on the 'Great Feminization' Theory

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/12/10

With 2025 winding down, we at Lean Out wanted to take a look back at one of the most controversial stories of the year — and to see if we could have a calm, reasonable conversation about a divisive issue. We're talking about the feminization theory, or the idea that the shifting sex ratios in influential institutions comes with both positive and negative consequences. Our guest on the program today is a scholar who is studying that phenomenon. Her recent paper, for the Journal of Controversia...

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39:04

EP 225: Amanda Fortini on Jan Kerouac and the legacy...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/12/03

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the Sexual Revolution — and weighing its benefits and drawbacks, both for women and for men. Today on the show, we are going back to the period that led into that historical moment, to a bohemian movement of art and travel and sexual experimentation, but also of destruction and dysfunction and family tragedies. We're talking about the Beat Generation. Our guest on today’s program has written the introduction to a reissue of an astonishingly good bo...

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43:31

EP 224: Zac Seidler: We Need to Talk About Men's...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/11/26

In Toronto, where I live, you cannot walk a block without seeing a young man in distress — sleeping on the street, or slumped over from drug use, or shouting and screaming. It feels like something has gone very wrong for men in this country and that nobody is talking about it. Our guest on the program today has dedicated his career to men’s health, and he has some important insights to share, both from his professional life and from his personal life. Zac Seidler is the Global Director of Men...

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54:44

EP 223: Susan Swan on Modern Feminism

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/11/19

In the wake of the #MeToo firing of the University of British Columbia creative writing professor Steven Galloway — which is once again in the news this week — our guest on the program today sat down to write a book of advice for young feminists. But her good friend Margaret Atwood convinced her that nobody likes unsolicited advice, and that she should instead frame her memoir around her unusual height and how it shaped her life. The result is a riveting narrative that also offers up plenty o...

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25:55

EP 222: Molly Jong-Fast on Gen X Overwhelm

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/11/12

Many women in Generation X are now finding themselves overwhelmed. The world is increasingly stressful. But our private lives are not much calmer, as we care for children and aging parents and spouses, stare down middle age, and mull over the legacy of previous generations of women. Our guest on the program today knows something about this — she grappled with all of these things, all at once, during one truly terrible year. Molly Jong-Fast is an American writer and political commentator. She’...

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40:54

EP 221: Daniel Debow: It's Time for 'Bold Adventurism'

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/11/04

It’s budget day here in Canada. As Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government tables its first federal budget, we will get reaction and hear a lot of different visions for the country. On today’s episode we wanted to bring you one. Our guest on the program says that Canada is in crisis — and that it is now time for "bold adventurism." Daniel Debow is a Canadian executive, investor, and educator. He is the chair of the board for Build Canada. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, a...

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36:18

EP 220: Darrell Bricker on Canada's Breaking Point

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/10/29

One of the themes of the Lean Out podcast is the many crises that Canada is facing —and where we go from here. Our guest on the program today warns that we are at a breaking point, and in desperate need of a national reckoning. As we face threats from without, he says, we are divided from within, along the lines of gender, class, region, and, crucially, generation. Darrell Bricker is the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs and a previous director of public opinion research in the Prime Minister’s Off...

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36:25

EP 219: Jason Guriel on Fandom

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/10/22

Before the Internet, before the literary world was overrun by online politics, before everything you read — and wrote — had to advance an agenda, there was the solitary person, in a room, losing themselves in the words on the page. There was the fan. Our guest on the program today has written a book of essays on fandom and his own obsessions. In the process, he confronts the big cultural forces of our age. Jason Guriel is a Toronto writer. His latest book is Fan Mail: A Guide to What We Love,...

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45:55

EP 218: Adam Szetela on the Publishing Industry's...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/10/15

Many of us that are big readers have been scratching our heads for years, trying to figure out why so many books are now so tedious and moralistic. What’s happened to North American literary culture — and why hasn’t it bounced back? Our guest on the program today has some answers. He’s written a book about the decline of literary freedom in publishing, and a dynamic that he describes as “a circular firing squad.” Adam Szetela is an American author. His new outing is That Book is Dangerous! Ho...

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39:57

EP 217: Marc Dunkelman on Why Nothing Works

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/10/08

If you live in North America, chances are good that you spend a lot of time wondering why things feel so dysfunctional. Why can’t we make any progress on the big issues of our age, like housing? Our guest on the program today has some answers — and he has written a fascinating new book about why nothing works. Marc J. Dunkelman is an American author and former political staffer. He’s a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs. His latest book is Why No...

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53:06

EP 216: David Cayley on the CBC's Populist Era

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/10/01

In recent years, we have seen heated debate in this country around the CBC and its future. With the question of defunding no longer looming, it is a good time to pause, to look back at where our national public broadcaster has been, and to talk through where it might go from here. Our guest on today’s program is veteran CBC producer who has written an insightful and well-researched new book about the institution — and where he thinks it went wrong. David Cayley is a Canadian author and broadc...

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51:40

EP 215: Brian Stewart on the 'Spinning Vortex' of News

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/09/24

Today, as we go to air, our guest on the program takes the stage at Toronto Metropolitan University to address the next generation. He is a legendary Canadian journalist and he’ll be reflecting on the highs and lows that he’s experienced in his ringside seat to history, and how to navigate what he calls “the spinning vortex of ever-more complex news” — all of which he covers in his riveting new memoir. Brian Stewart is a former foreign correspondent for the CBC. His new book is On the Ground:...

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59:01

EP 214: Justin Ling on Canada's 'Existential' Election

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/09/17

Earlier this year at Lean Out, we covered Canada’s federal election. It was a contest not just between candidates and parties but between dominant narratives about the challenges facing this country. Was our biggest problem the decline in material conditions, or was it Donald Trump? Our guest on today’s podcast was there, on the campaign trail. He’s just written a book about why this election was one of the most consequential in recent memory. Justin Ling is a Canadian journalist and author. ...

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36:58

EP 213: Aaron Pete on the Unmarked Graves Controversy

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/09/10

In 2021, Canada was rocked by a discovery at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops: what appeared to be the remains of more than 200 Indigenous children. The story went viral globally and was reported by The New York Times and others as a mass grave. But to date, no remains have been exhumed. Our guest on the program today is a First Nation chief and a podcaster who has made a new, hour-long video breaking down the controversy. He says it’s time for the media to grapple wit...

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46:06

EP 212: Andrew Coyne on Canada's Dysfunctional Democracy

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2025/09/03

September is here and Lean Out is back with a new season of conversations with writers and thinkers from around the world. We could not think of a more important topic to kick off our fall season than the state of Canadian democracy. Our guest on the program today has written a new book that serves as a wake-up call — he says that while we observe the rituals of the democratic process, we have lost its spirit and its substance. Andrew Coyne is a columnist for The Globe and Mail and a we...

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231 results

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