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 bestselling author. Her latest book is High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out. She is the co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. (You can watch their latest story here).

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

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 Canadian Book Publishing.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

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 managing editor of The Hub and a former producer of this podcast.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

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.substack.com

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 essayist and the founder of the Volunteer Literacy Project. With her husband, she runs the Honey Hollow Farm in upstate New York.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

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 Compact Magazine, is The Lost Generation.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

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, and the author of the Substack newsletter Restoring American Adulthood.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

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 Table: Famous Authors and Their Favourite Recipes, inspired by her long-running column at The Paris Review.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com