Beyond The Black Pill: How our obsession with national has broken our lives -- with Alana Newhouse

Recorded August 5, 2025

This week I’m joined by Alana Newhouse, journalist, cultural critic, and founder/editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine. Since launching Tablet in 2009, Alana has carved out a space for nuanced and surprising reporting on Jewish identity and the larger cultural questions shaping those issues, as well as the broader issues of our time.

We discuss her 2021 essay, Everything Is Broken*, in which she diagnoses systemic failures in medicine, media, education, and culture. Alana traces these breakdowns to a pervasive cultural force she calls *flatness — the drive toward frictionless interaction, simplified narratives, and ideological conformity.

GUEST BIO
Alana Newhouse is the founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine.

This is the full version of the August 18, 2025 episode of The Unspeakable Podcast. To hear the full episodes as soon as they're out, become a paying subscriber here: https://bit.ly/3FIq8xj

Alana will be a guest speaker at our Unspeakeasy Small Gathering for Big Ideas* weekend, October 11-12 in New York City. Programming and ticketing info here: https://bit.ly/40WMKle

Are you a fan of what Alana has done at Tablet? Show your love (and get a big discount) by using promo code ALANA1800 at checkout.

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HOUSEKEEPING

📖 Order my new book, “The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays here”: https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-cat...

✈️ Join The Unspeakeasy October 11-12 in New York City. Programming and ticketing info here: https://theunspeakeasy.com/nyc WAITLIST ONLY