Between 2013 and 2020, hundreds of people who worked in the entertainment industry—from actors and writers to photographers, makeup artists, and security personnel—were targeted by brilliant and bizarre scammer who came to be known as the Con Queen of Hollywood. The Con Queen impersonated famous female studio executives and convinced many of her marks to spend huge sums of money—often on trips to Indonesia—under the pretext of doing research for film projects that would be their big break.

Journalist Scott Johnson covered the case for The Hollywood Reporter, eventually reporting that the Con Queen was actually a man named Hargobind “Harvey” Tahilramani, a genius impersonator who was also trying to make it as an Instagram food influencer. Scott’s book about the case, The Con Queen of Hollywood: The Hunt for an Evil Genius, was published last year and a three-part documentary series based on his book premiered on Apple TV this past May. Scott joined me for a conversation about his years reporting the case and how he finally tracked Hargobind down in England in the early months of the Covid pandemic. He also talks about how reporting from wars and being the son of a CIA officer informed his reporting.

GUEST BIO

Scott C. Johnson is the author of two highly acclaimed books. The Wolf and the Watchman (W.W. Norton, 2013) was long-listed for the National Book Award, the PEN USA award and was named a Washington Post Notable Book. His second book, The Hollywood Con Queen (Harper, 2023) was given a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly and selected as an Amazon editor’s pick. Scott was a consulting producer of Hollywood Con Queen, a 3-part documentary series to air on Apple TV+ in the spring of 2024. He now lives in France with his wife and two children.

Buy the book

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: https://aspecialplace.substack.com

We hear all the time that children are resilient — and should be even more so! But do divorcing parents overestimate their kids’ resilience to justify their actions? Should “staying together for the children” come back into style? Returning guest Bridget Phetasy talks about her recent article for The Spectator about an aspect of divorce that rarely gets discussed: the ripple effects over decades as adult children and grandchildren are spread thin among multiple families and step-families. Bridget’s parents, who had five children under 12 when they divorced, followed the logic that parental happiness is better for children than “staying together for the kids.” But is that really true? Bridget’s essay kicked off a huge conversation online and touched a lot of nerves (and ruffled a lot of feathers) and she and Meghan continue that conversation here.

They also talk about their shared desire to quit the content creator hustle and move to the woods. Also, Bridget apologizes to Meghan for a microaggression that’s been haunting her, even though Meghan has no memory of it.

GUEST BIO

Bridget Phetasy is a Spectator columnist and contributing editor. She is also the host of the Weekly Dumpster Fire on YouTube and the Walk-Ins Welcome podcast. Follow her on Twitter, Rumble and YouTube, or join her community at phetasy.com.

You can read her article for The Spectator here: https://bit.ly/465I5yv

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: https://aspecialplace.substack.com/

Jennifer Sey has been an elite gymnast, a high level marketing executive at Levi’s, and an outspoken critic of protracted school closures during the Covid pandemic. That last role led her to become a prominent figure in the new free speech movement, and she fulfilled that role by writing a book and starting a Substack about her conscription into the culture wars. But her real skills are as a business person, so she decided to apply those skills and start a retail brand. XX-XY Athletics, which launched in late March, is an apparel line that sells athletic clothing for men and women but is branded around the idea of standing up for women’s sports

Given the fraught politics around this issue, XX-XY may be the first “gender critical” retail business. But does it make sense to build a brand around a culture war issue? In this wide-ranging conversation, Jennifer talks about the legacy of corporate virtue signaling, the inner turmoil of wealthy executives who want to look like progressives, her attempts to get another job after being designated as problematic, and the day to day tasks of building a business. She also explains how HR departments gained massive power in corporations and why executives are so afraid of their young staffers.

GUEST BIO

Jennifer Sey is a corporate marketing executive turned author, activist, documentary filmmaker (we didn’t even talk about that) and now the founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics.

You can find her on her Substack here.

Check out XX-XY here.

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: https://aspecialplace.substack.com/

Are you relieved that Gay Pride month is over? Monica Harris, an author, attorney, activist, and the executive director of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) fought for LGBT civil rights in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, she finds herself dismayed by the current state of that movement.

In this conversation, Monica talks about how we went from Ellen DeGeneres to drag queen story hours, why gay rights organizations turned their attention to trans issues, and why she believes homophobia lies at the root of much of gender medicine. She also talks about the economic forces driving ordinary people to the ideological fringes, particularly young men who find themselves without job or relationship prospects.

GUEST BIO

Monica Harris is the executive director of FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She spent over a decade as a business and legal affairs executive at Walt Disney Television, NBCUniversal Media, and Viacom Media Networks. In 2011, she abandoned corporate life and moved with her family to Montana, where she serves entertainment clients remotely through her firm, Big Sky. Monica is a TEDx speaker, author, and blogger who advocates for balanced, common-sense solutions to systemic problems based on our shared values and goals. Her book, The Illusion of Division, is available on Amazon.

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: https://aspecialplace.substack.com

Writer and podcaster Sarah Hepola returns to The Unspeakable to talk about love, sex, #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein’s overturned rape conviction, her new job at The Dallas Morning News, her book in progress, and why she thinks local reporting will lead the way out of the media abyss.

GUEST BIO

Sarah Hepola is a features staff writer at the Dallas Morning News, the cohost with Nancy Rommelmann of the Smoke ‘Em If You Got Em podcast and author of the 2015 best-selling memoir Blackout. She was also the host and creator of the Texas Monthly podcast "America's Girls," about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

Read her work at the Dallas Morning News here.

Listen to her podcast about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, “America’s Girls,” here.

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: http://aspecialplace.substack.com

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Andrew Boryga.

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

Who says you can’t write a novel skewing social justice excesses? Andrew Boryga has done just that — to critical acclaim. His debut novel VICTIM tells the story of Javier Perez, an academically gifted kid from The Bronx who lands at an elite college and soon discovers the advantages of playing up his disadvantages.

In this conversation, Andrew talks about the decade-long process of writing the book, his similarities to Javier, and how he feels about contemporary fiction and the literary world these days. He also discusses what it was like to shop the book to publishers and explores the question of whether a white author could get away with this kind of satire.

GUEST BIO

Andrew Boryga is a writer and editor who grew up in Bronx, NY and currently likes in Miami with his wife and two children. His debut novel VICTIM, was published in March by Doubleday.

Buy VICTIM here.

Follow his Substack here.

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

Is college pointless? Is an “elite education” more about networking than learning? Returning guest William Deresiewicz has been pondering these questions for more than a decade. They were the subject of his bestselling 2014 book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. That book has just been reissued in a 10th anniversary edition and in this episode, William talks with Meghan about what’s changed (i.e. what’s gotten worse) and what, if anything, can be done to make things better. They also discuss whether we need affirmative action for men, whether it’s better to get a job waiting tables than go to college right after high school, and whether childless people have any standing to talk—or even care—about this stuff in the first place.

GUEST BIO

William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, which will be published in a 10th-anniversary edition in May 2024. His latest book is The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society.

Find his other conversations with Meghan here, here, and here.

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

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with Nellie Bowles.

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

You may know Nellie Bowles from TGIF, her popular news roundup in The Free Press. Before that, she reported on Silicon Valley for The New York Times.

Now she’s out with her first book, Morning After The Revolution: Dispatches From The Wrong Side Of History. Filled with keenly observed details about the cultural and political battles of the last couple of years, it’s also an honest appraisal of her own political evolution. A self-described “lesbian from San Francisco lesbian who held all the values associated with that,” Nellie is now among those considered non-grata by progressives—her marriage to Bari Weiss would attest to that—and in this conversation, she talks about coming to terms with that as well as her reporting on everything from Antifa militants to the incel movement. She also talks about her own past life as a member of the progressive purity police.

GUEST BIO

Nellie Bowles is a writer living in Los Angeles. Previously, she was a correspondent at The New York Times where, as part of a team, she won the Gerald Loeb Award in Investigations and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award. Now she is working with her wife to build The Free Press, a new media company.

Get a copy of her book here.

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