Megan is an old friend, a journalist, and an OG blogger — starting way back in 2001. We were bloggers at The Atlantic together, and she went on to write for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, and Bloomberg View. She’s now a WaPo columnist, a contributing writer at The Dispatch, and a co-host of the podcasts “Reasonably Optimistic” and “Central Air.” She’s also the author of The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success.
An auto-transcript is available above (just click “Transcript” while logged into Substack). For two clips of the episode — on the appeal of socialism to those under 30, and the secrecy of ailing politicians — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: growing up on the UWS; her prof dad meeting her mom while she TA’d for him; Frank Gannett in her family; peaking at 6’2’’ in 7th grade; an eating disorder to try to counter her height; the heightism of women on dating apps; the coziness of elites in DC; Fauci worship by the Dems; his coziness with Jake Tapper and Hollywood celebs; his diary; Fauci’s lie over masks; masks at the Floyd protests; vaccine mandates; lab leak; Mitch McConnell MIA; Rep. Granger in memory care; Rep. Kean’s depression; Biden’s infirmity; age limits on the presidency; FDR’s overreach; post-Nixon reforms; the constitutional crisis over the Iran War; dwindling Tomahawks; Lindsey Graham’s closeness with Bibi; 9/11 and Islamofascism; nuclear proliferation and the Saudis; whether Vance or Rubio would make a better successor to Trump; Rubio’s designs on Cuba; Vance’s populism and lecturing the Pope; presentism; Jon Ossoff; Rahm Emanuel; the Stonewall myth; misusing rape stats and the UVA hoax; critical theory; the DSA, and its over-educated, downwardly mobile youth.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Ross Barkan on the DSA and Mamdani, John O’Sullivan on conservatism, Emily Eakin on postmodernism, Arianna Huffington on AI, and Azam Ahmed on terrifying new drugs. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
From a fan of last week’s pod with Robby George: “What an interesting and lovely conversation.” Another writes:
Like you, Andrew, I was quite taken with the opening minutes of your conversation with Robby George. Beyond the interesting tales, he’s so articulate and possesses such an absurdly pleasing cadence to his speech. A great chat.
But I can’t say I agree with his conclusions. As has been the case with other arguments for natural law I’ve encountered, his pitch assumes too much about universal human truths — which contradicts the earlier idyllic tale he told of his class discovering the value of the search for truth. The type of interrogative process one generally needs to search for truth — what we see in courtrooms, old-school journalism, the scientific method, and in his very classroom — grinds to a halt in the thick sludge of wordiness he laid before you in response to your prompt, “Just tell me roughly what you mean by natural law.”
According to Robby’s tale, the lesson his class learned is that the process of finding the truth is more crucial than the mistaken proposition that leads you there. I agree. For example, Democritus speculated without real evidence about what we call atoms, and perhaps future technology would have stumbled forward a bit faster had his contemporaries bought in. But ultimately, it would have been dumb luck, and the search for all sorts of truth has been abetted far more by embracing the scientific method.
But when Robby references the is/ought distinction, or things that MLK defined as obviously morally true and worth breaking the law for, he speaks in these universal constructs that only make sense if we take a creator or cosmic plan for granted. There are assumed axioms about human nature that undergird his comments.
Ironically, given Robby’s earlier lessons about the search for truth, if he had a chat with any number of your former guests (Jonathan Haidt, Paige Harden, et al), he’d know that his repeated use of the phrase “human nature” is probably a little outdated. Sure, there are things we more or less all have in common, and no doubt individual cultures mask some universal aspects to our animal instincts. But the myriad genetic factors that tug on the Möbius strip of nature vs nurture can be very individualized — as you essentially observed about your own sexuality, and which apply in some measure to everything from our heights to our work ethics to our cognitive abilities.
Flourishing, as Robby calls it, is the right pursuit. But grand, universal playbooks like religious dogma or natural law will always leave a lot of people ill-considered. Finding the right mix of autonomy, discipline, external constraint, liberty, individualism, communalism, etc — arguably what the Founders meant when they said “the pursuit of happiness” — has been a core piece of the American project since before we had a Constitution.
Most of your conservative and post-liberal guests are right to note that some of the constraints and norms that American society has cast aside have been detrimental to flourishing for far too many. But the solution isn’t embracing unfalsifiable first principles and natural law; it’s continuing the ongoing experiment, noting the successes and failures, perpetually seeking better answers — ironically, perhaps, the exact advice Robby gave his class.
What a wonderful email — perfectly, exquisitely put. Agree with it all.
Here’s a TV recommendation:
Your fascinating discussion with Robert George over same-sex marriage makes this the perfect time to pose a question I’ve thought about asking you for a while: Have you seen — or are you even aware of — the six-part Thai serial Ticket to Heaven?
The show is an example of the genre known as Boys Love, or “BL” — which started off in Japan as a species of manga written by women for girls involving fantasy tales of impossibly beautiful boys with the hots for each other. But particularly after the Thais globalized it, Asian BL became a huge phenomenon with viewership in the tens of millions straddling continents, cultures, and — dare I say it? — genders and orientations. (Why the genre has been almost entirely ignored by Anglophone critics is itself a very interesting question.)
The show is set in a strict Catholic boys school in which a strait-laced honor student headed for the priesthood has his equanimity shattered by the arrival of a quasi-delinquent transfer student who intuits his repressed feelings and proceeds to, well, unrepress them — leading to a crisis of faith and vocation. The show is superbly acted, and while it pulls punches at times, it directly addresses the questions you and Robert George were discussing. It avoids the temptation of casting the Church as a hotbed of homophobic fanatics.
The director (known affectionately as P'Aof) is himself a practicing Catholic, but he also an advocate for gay rights and has been together with his husband for over 20 years. SSM is legal in Thailand, and the popularity of the BL genre there surely played a role in legalization. Thailand is an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, but the Catholic imprint in Thailand is larger than the number of active believers one would expect.
Please watch the show if you can. I think you would find it very moving, particularly given your own life story.
I will now. Thanks for the rec. Here’s the South Park treatment of the BL genre:
Staying on the topic of SSM, here’s a reader:
I just read the trans dissenter who went another round with you. With respect to same-sex marriage, I would like someone to explain to me how exactly Alan L. Hart (born a woman, Lucille) was legally able to marry a woman not once, but twice, more than a century ago? I get that identification schemes may have been more primitive then, but surely when you divorce, it should be grounds for annulment, no? Yet Alan married another woman. (Ironically, the author Jonathan Ned Katz described this person as a lesbian — something he acknowledges he would not do today.)
There were also court cases dealing with transsexual marriage long before same-sex marriage was even talked about (see Corbett v Corbett, a British case). Courts had to decide whether someone is the new sex or one’s birth sex — therefore, you can marry the opposite of what the court decided. Yet Alan Hart’s marriages were never challenged.
Fascinating and true. On another Dishcast:
I liked your interview with David Thomson, and it’s the first one I’ve listened to. I recommend his tome, The New Biographical Dictionary of American Film, which will take you down its own rabbit holes.
I’m a partly unwavering supporter of the Dish and disagree with almost everything you say, but I’ll keep subscribing. At least for now. You are spending way too much time on trans issues. I absolutely believe that the people directly involved need to be supported, but compared to the complete surrender of Republicans to money and only money, it’s way down the list. If they aren’t reined in somehow, the future is very bleak indeed.
I’m supremely grateful to subscribers who stick with us despite my dogged peregrinations into areas they may find icky or overdone or obsessive. I don’t want fans or haters. Just readers — autonomous, independent readers able to make up their own minds when they think I’m off base. Thank you. Thank all of you. And if you haven’t yet subscribed — please do!
A reader remarks on “Graham Platner’s self-immolation”:
I’m surprised you haven’t had much to say about the revelations of alleged drunk rapist in Maine.
