This week’s guest is economist and public intellectual Glenn Loury. Glenn is almost certainly no stranger to Unspeakable listeners, many of whom know him from his long-running podcast The Glenn Show.

In addition to opining there about political and social issues, Glenn is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has taught since 2005.

He grew up on the south side of Chicago and eventually became the first black professor of economics at Harvard and a prominent conservative thinker and policy expert. The Glenn Show debuted in 2012, and Glenn’s conversations about race with linguist and cultural critic John McWhorter were foundational to the emergence of the independent media sphere sometimes called the “heterodoxy” (at least they were Meghan’s gateway drug).

Glenn has published numerous books, but his latest, a memoir, is a major departure. Late Admissions: Confessions of A Black Conservative is not just an account of his professional trajectory but also an unflinching interrogation of his personal choices.

This interview is stunningly candid and also utterly delightful. Meghan is grateful to Glenn for his honesty, deep insight, and great humor.

GUEST BIO

Glenn Loury is a professor of social sciences and economics at Brown University. His new book Late Admissions: Confessions of A Black Conservative is out May 14. You can find him on Substack here.

Pre-order or purchase Glenn’s book here.

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This episode is with one of our guest speakers at The Unspeakeasy retreat in Chicago. If you’re interested in going, learn more here.

This week Meghan welcomes returning guest Erec Smith. He is an academic whose area of scholarship is Rhetoric, but he also writes and speaks frequently about the state of race politics in America, particularly the perils (and uses) of DEI. In this conversation, they talk about the concept of prescriptive racism, which Erec wrote about in a recent Boston Globe column, and ask whether the emergence of the concept of microaggressions has resulted mainly in people steering clear of one another.

They also discuss what’s happened on college campuses since Erec was on the podcast a year ago, including the ouster of college presidents like Harvard’s Claudine Gay and U Penn’s Liz Magill over free speech policies. He also discusses what he was like as a college student carrying around a copy of Emerson’s Self-Reliance and how he would have felt if he’d been told that he was living under the thumb of white supremacy.

Erec will be a guest speaker at the first-ever Unspeakeasy coed retreat in Chicago on June 4-5. We’ll also be joined by recent Unspeakable guests Nadine Strossen and Lisa Selin Davis. To find out about that go to theunspeakeasy.com.)

Make sure you listen all the way to the end, so you can hear an excerpt from Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist from the Tony Award-winning musical Avenue Q. (Probably not coming to a high school theater near you.)

GUEST BIO

Erec Smith is a professor of rhetoric at York College of PA, a research scholar at the Cato Insitute, and a co-founder and an editor at Free Black Thought.

Read Erec’s recent Boston Globe column on prescriptive racism.

Listen to the last time he was on the podcast.

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

HOUSEKEEPING

✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com

This interview with Benjamin Ryan is a BONUS episode for paying subscribers only.

The first few minutes of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here.

On April 10th, a big story broke in the gender world: The long-awaited report commissioned by the UK's National Health Service, known as the Cass Review, was released. As soon as the report hit the news cycle, gender-critical activists celebrated it as the final nail in the coffin of harmful practices, while trans-rights activists accused it of faulty methodology.

So who was right? This week, I spoke with Benjamin Ryan, a health and science reporter, to help unpack the Cass Review's data. Ben has spent years covering the intersection of health and public policy. He has a remarkably clear head and is a disciplined thinker about the youth gender medicine debate, so he is a great person to explain what is and is not in the Cass Review.

GUEST BIO

Benjamin Ryan is an independent journalist who focuses on health care and science. He contributes to several major publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and NBC News. He has a particular interest in public health, medicine, and psychology, and has spent years reporting on HIV.

His work has received multiple awards from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, including the Excellence in HIV/AIDS Coverage Award. Benjamin is a cancer survivor and enjoys reading, theatre, movies, biking, cooking, and photography in his spare time.

Follow him on Twitter here.

Follow his Substack here.

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HOUSEKEEPING

✈️ 2024 Unspeakeasy Retreats — See where we’ll be in 2024! https://bit.ly/3Qnk92n

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women:https://bit.ly/44dnw0v

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell: aspecialplace.substack.com