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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

39:40

EP 243: John Fraser on Canada's Most Misunderstood Job

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/04/08

We are at a pivotal moment in Canada, as we reflect on our past and try to forge a more unified future in the face of tensions with the United States. Our guest on the program says now is a good time to reexamine our key institutions. This week, he has published an entertaining new book about the office of Governor General, just as speculation abounds that we may be about to get a new one. John Fraser is a veteran Canadian journalist, an author, and an academic. He is a former Master of Masse...

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27:14

EP 242: Leah Libresco Sargeant: Rethinking Feminism

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/04/01

In the United States right now, a group of feminists is taking stock of the movement — where it is at and where it’s gone wrong. Our guest on the program this week is one of those feminists. Her new book argues that our problem is we’ve bought into an idea of radical autonomy, which is not possible for human beings. It is, in fact, disconnected from physical reality. Leah Libresco Sargeant is an American writer. She runs the Substack newsletter Other Feminisms and her latest book is The Digni...

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37:42

EP 241: Laurie Woolever on Addiction, Recovery - and...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/03/25

This week on the Lean Out podcast we are shifting our focus from the political to the personal. Our guest on the program has written a remarkable memoir about her time in the food world, her story of addiction and recovery — and what she learned from her years collaborating with the late Anthony Bourdain. Laurie Woolever is an American writer and editor. Her latest book, a New York Times bestseller, is Care and Feeding: A Memoir. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Sub...

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30:18

EP 240: Jason Mangone: Inside Trump's America

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/03/18

As tensions mount within the United States — and between the United States and Canada — it has never been more important to understand each other. Our guest on the program this week is the head of a depolarization non-profit and his latest research paints a nuanced and complex portrait of Trump voters and the cultural attitudes and policy positions that energize them. Jason Mangone is the executive director of More in Common U.S. Its latest report is Beyond MAGA: A Profile of the Trump Coalit...

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36:06

EP 239: Mark Oppenheimer on the Life and Times of...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/03/11

Many of us grew up reading classics from the great Judy Blume, from Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret to Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Blume, now in her eighties, is famous for writing about childhood and adolescence with humour and heart. This week, our guest on the program has published a remarkable book documenting her life story. Mark Oppenheimer is an American journalist and author. He’s the editor of the online religion and politics magazine ARC. His latest book is Judy Blume: A ...

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25:50

EP 238: Eddie Sheppard on Canada's Precarity Mindset

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/03/04

In recent years, the world has become an increasingly unstable place. Our guest on the program this week says that Canadians have adopted a “precarity mindset.” And now, roughly nine out of ten Canadians believe this uncertainty is here to stay — that it is, in fact, the new normal. Eddie Sheppard is executive vice president at Abacus Data. His analysis for Abacus is From Crisis to Condition: The Psychology of Canadian Uncertainty. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on S...

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24:20

EP 237: Ryan Zickgraf on the Politicization of Charity

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/02/25

One of the problems with increased polarization is that everything gets politicized, including simple acts of charity. Our guest on the program this week is an American journalist who’s been tracking this trend in liberal and leftist circles and he’s published an essay making the argument that helping your neighbour is an affirmation of our shared humanity — not a “radical act of resistance.” Ryan Zickgraf is an American journalist and a columnist at UnHerd. His Substack newsletter is The Thi...

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42:02

EP 236: Amanda Ripley on the Media's Trump Fixation

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/02/20

If you follow the news in this country, you know that Canada is currently grappling with a number of crises, from housing to mental health. And yet much of our attention is focused on the United States and on Donald Trump. Our guest on the podcast this week has just published an essay about this. She argues that, much like in a dysfunctional family, the media’s fixation on Trump is a distraction from looking at deeper issues. Amanda Ripley is an American journalist and a New York Times bestse...

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36:20

EP 235: Richard Stursberg: Who Killed CanLit?

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/02/11

Canadians who write books, or cover books, or read books will know that something is wrong with our literary industry. But a new book documents just how far off the rails publishing has gone. Our guest on the program this week is the author of that book, and he says our fundamental problem is an erosion of national identity. Richard Stursberg is a Canadian author and media executive, and the former head of English services for the CBC. His new book is Lament for a Literature: The Collapse of ...

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28:17

EP 234: Harrison Lowman on James Bennet, The New York...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/02/04

This week on the Lean Out podcast we are taking a look at the chaotic summer of 2020, and the impact of that unrest on mainstream journalism. Our guest on the program this week has a new interview with the former opinion editor at The New York Times, James Bennet, who was famously ousted by a staff revolt. My guest says that now is a good time to think through how that historical moment — and its activists — has shaped our journalism. Harrison Lowman is a Canadian journalist. He’s the managin...

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35:13

EP 233: Steven Scherer: The Road From Foreign...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/01/28

We live in an age of economic precarity and journalists are not exempt from this. Our guest on the program this week has written a powerful Substack essay about his path from foreign correspondent to Uber driver, and how his troubles have helped him to forge a sense of solidarity with the people he drives to work. Steven Scherer is an American journalist and a former Canadian bureau chief for Reuters. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.subs...

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31:56

EP 232: Larissa Phillips on the Rift Between Men and...

Lean Out with Tara Henley ·

2026/01/21

Men and women don’t seem very happy these days. They are dissatisfied with dating, polarized politically, trash talking each other online, and both marriage and fertility are on the decline. What is responsible for this rift between men and women? Our guest on the program this week has been mulling this question over, and she says we might want to reconsider some of the assumptions of feminism — starting with the idea that marriage and family are “a trap.” Larissa Phillips is an American essa...

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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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243 results

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