Penelope isn’t a fraction as smart as she thinks she is. She doesn’t understand any of the questions, her responses to them are flip, she’s just talking out of her ass. She has no qualifications. How did she ever get this gig? You’ve gotta stop having her on. She’s an arrogant nihilist.
I don’t think she thinks she’s super smart. Her brand is just that she will say the uncomfortable thing that maybe you didn’t want to hear, but needed to address.
To me that’s different than just being a smart person. Certainly it rubs some people the wrong way but there’s no malice in what she says as far as I can tell.
Eh, this stuff gets thrown in the same category as “psychics”, tarot card readings, and a healthy portion of “life coaching”. It’s people who have discovered a decent skill in reading people and now stake their livings on it. Not much more to it than that for me.
Meghan is such a champ for taking those comments in good humor 😂😂.
Penelope is echoing many of my thoughts on marriage here. Too much weight to sex in marriage in general. Also if you’re below “x” income you can’t support a divorce and two households. The choice is to stick out an unpleasant situation or make the whole family economically suffer for your pride(there are obviously situations where divorce needs to happen, I am not referring to those).
Not to be that guy, but what are the odds that both a gay, and a trans kid would occur in the same household? Methinks some nurture over nature is possibly happening here, either inside the house or out.
Mid-century house girl here 🙋♀️ My real underlying question WAS about feeling trapped. I feel a bit silly it took her pointing it out for me to notice but she hit the nail on the head. It’s a feeling I’ve been resisting then embracing in stages since I had my first kid 10 years ago. My entire 20s was a non-committal, fuck-off enterprise and I only changed things because of an accidental pregnancy at 29. I never saw myself married with 3 kids (and counting). Ever. Owning a house definitely feels scary after renting my entire adult life so yeah, big decisions/permanency is scary. Commitment reduces options but also increase happiness in my experience…so I’m reorienting my mindset toward that truth. The whole constraints argument has been absolutely true in my life, hence moving away from a more progressively ideological mindset in the last few years. Also: the soft oppression of having multiple children has been really good for me. I’m sure there are many ways to replicate but I highly recommend!
Of course I love this comment. But I want to say that it takes a lot of bravery to ask a question in public and then follow that up by adjusting your thinking publicly. And it's not silly to see our own situation unclearly -- it's part of being human. Each of us can see other peoples' situations so much more clearly than we see our own.
Just to clarify a few things. I know I’ll always be gay and this idea is pretty unserious tbh, but I have been playing around with it. Honestly I think it’s inspired by this podcast, including and maybe especially previous episodes with penelope.
If I wind up with a husband (which was always the plan) I don’t think I would want to start a family with him. Adopting as a gay guy just seems like kind of a nightmare and surrogacy is a bit of an ethical mess. In general I don’t judge what other gays do to have kids, but for myself I see the option to have kids as being what gay guys have done for thousands of years: marrying a woman (although in my case I’d be very very upfront about the gay part). Yes I’d be sacrificing a little personal satisfaction to achieve that, but that’s kind of an inherent feature of having kids anyway.
This question is less about how to not have sex anymore and more about trading sex (which is nice but not a NEED for me in the way it seems to be for other people) for potentially much deeper meaning in my life. But it’s of course risky because I can’t live both lives and thus can’t know which I’d prefer. Most likely I will just follow my inertia and wind up with a man, and I’m relatively confident that I’ll be fine and happy overall.
Gay dad with twin sons here. Surrogacy allowed me to have a family and more specifically allowed my children to be human beings on this earth. Our surrogate has six of her own children and has also been a surrogate for another gay guy (after me, so doesn't seem she had regrets.). Straight people getting married presents and endless stream of ethical messes but they keep doing it and no one stops them.
I love Penelope. She has a more male mind than most males I know. Succintly and without patience immediately cuts through all the bullshit and pathos to get to the root/heart of the issue(s).
That may be, but I think it may be that these quasi-autistic type women are actually uniquely bad at understanding the male experience, because they’re still ultimately female and they struggle to put themselves in another state of mind.
I mean, last time they went through questions once with guest and once without, and they completely failed to comprehend what I was asking on both occasions, so I just didn’t bother this time. It’s one thing being insulted or challenged, but to listen to someone else answering the question that they think should have been asked rather than the one that was is just kind of pointless.
can't comment on your experience/issue last time - I didn't listen very carefully to that episode. but listened to this one and I'm not sure I agree with your sentiment. (though I do agree it's very difficult to put a man into a woman's mindframe and vice versa but a "semi autistic" woman would be the best (at least in my opinion, the way my male mind is wired. I don't need pathos, others may be different) (but now given your comment I will listen CAREFULLY to her other appearance/appearances so I can better comment on the lack of comprehension. She isn't some kind of know it all though - because she clearly doesn't understand the Bari Weiss experience for e.g. she has donors because she has her way of doing things/or "being corporate" that her donors SUPPORT. so she doesn't quite get that.. for e.g.
A central argument of mine from the beginning is that from the outside, it seems bizarrely inconsistent that the notoriously nihilistic Sarah Haider is apparently an optimist about romance. When you listen to her personal experience, you can see why that would be.
The issue is whether she can imagine that the feeling she has about the Democratic party or the media or whatever she’s ranting about this week is also the feeling that a lot of men have about the dating market. And what I tried to do is to get them to answer a question from a perspective that was that bleak, which they simply would not do.
so you refering to Sarah and not Penelope? on what basis do you call her "notoriously nihilistic?? re dating market, she offer her own female perspective (which is different from many females, btw.. and though Sarah has left her family/societal religion, I don't think she has quite left the culture outside of the religion overall. To me, that explains many of her thoughts and choices. I completely "get" Sarah
Wait, you're asking me for a citation on Sarah Haider being nihilistic? Uh, have you ever even looked at her Twitter?
And yes I would agree that she hasn't quite left the culture.
I "get" why she's cynical about the government and institutions and why she goes on and on about how rotten they are. But the worst (in terms of accuracy) thing she's said on this show is to claim that "everyone has a tribe". And when you have a family that sticks with you even after you leave their religion, you have swarms of people who want to date you and a husband and a family and friends, well that makes sense. *She* has a tribe.
But in this country, a lot of people are detached from their families and have no strong cultural identity that's like a tribe. Some of them form new and increasingly stupid tribes to compensate for the lack of the old ones, but there are a lot of people who are really alone. And particularly in the early episodes, you hear these two go on and on about loser men who can't get a girlfriend or whatever, and it's an easy dismissive take that many women have. They live in a society where they are valued, so they cannot understand why anyone else would not be, and they assume it must take an astonishing failure of morals or merit to ever be alone. They think that anyone who had their head screwed on straight could just "get married" like Sarah did, as if this was a choice available to everyone. Whereas I've tried to paint them a picture of a life of competence and success juxtaposed against isolation and helplessness.
Of course, that's what most women think, it's just these two that maybe could be talked out of that position. Then again, Sarah herself in her nihilistic way has said she's giving up on the idea of convincing people of anything using reason.
Penelope is always a good guest. I think she nails it in most instances. I agree that we are mostly looking for validation or a way out of a trap. I wanted to ask a question this time but had a hard time coming up with one that didn’t sound silly or that I couldn’t answer myself. Next time.
One thing I think Meghan and Sarah can do to increase revenue is to stop talking about how to make more money or how to gain new listeners. It may be wiser to keep a little mystery around these things. It’s their podcast, and obviously, they are free to speak about whatever they want. I listen to their discussions about increasing listenership and revenue because it’s their reality, and it’s interesting to hear what they’ve tried, how monetization works, and what’s going on in their professional lives. Their willingness to talk about these things in their personal and professional lives is one of the things that makes this podcast good—it feels real and never sterile.
But is the money talk that interesting, especially if it's discussed too much? I won’t stop listening, but there could be some problems with focusing too much on the business side since it can detract from the “content” or the “conversation.” I could be missing something or being too critical, but it’s just a thought from a longtime listener and subscriber.
At some point Meghan and Sarah will have to answer what I call the Chick-fil-A question.
Are we satisfied with our niche and unwilling to compromise our principles/standards to stay in that niche?
At some point, the Chick-fil-A owners decided: we do not open on Sundays and we do not sell burgers. Thefefore, they made a determination that they will never compete with McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's.
I presume M&S are not relying on podcasting for food, shelter and water. I hope they continue, even if it means combining Special Place with Unspeakable (maybe alternate episodes each week?)
Daum once did an entire episode of her own show about how she isn’t Joe Rogan. Which is inescapably true. That level of charisma and energy and the connections and the name recognition and the street cred…that’s a pretty hard mix to duplicate. Now, I knew who both Meghan and Sarah were before they started doing this particular show, but that puts me in a pretty small club. What is the realistic ceiling for their audience?
I like analogizing them to a stall at a farmer’s market. Sometimes, those things take off and become big businesses. But most of the time they don’t. There’s a certain sort of person who goes to the Dupont Circle farmer’s market (which I’m guessing Sarah is not). I like being that sort of person. But you can’t get to Joe Rogan level (or even Jesse Singal level) with me as your audience.
One of the things I appreciate about this Substack is that the comments section is the right size for a good discussion. The massive threads on the bigger Substacks are too unwieldy in comparison.
Too big and too insane. Meghan might wish she had Bari Weiss’ or Matt Taibbi’s subscriber numbers, but does she actually wish she had those subscribers? I like to think I’m open minded, but I bowed out of those comment sections pretty quickly.
The new “people don’t ask the right questions” refrain is just a fresh cover for the same old Penelope schtick - ignoring the specifics of the question, pivoting to vague platitudes, and hoping people mistake her bombastic certitude for insightfulness. At least in this one she shows some self-awareness about the limitations of offering strangers life advice online (which I would extend to self-help literature in general).
So considering it's been a few weeks, does this mean a) this is just how long it's taken for Sarah to go on her psychedelic spirit journey, b) Sarah's psychedelic spirit journey did indeed reveal to her that podcasting is futile, c) Sarah's psychedelic spirit journey resulted in a prolonged hospital and/or institutional stay, or c) some combination of the above?
I have to admit to feeling intense schadenfreude to find out the podcast is not lucrative. I want you both to succeed but it makes me feel better about my own professional disappointments. It feels like everything is insanely competitive and it just keeps getting worse. I feel like my most valuable asset right now is my plasma.
I mean I was sitting around between jobs, unemployed because the state licensing board takes >6 months to process a license apparently, racking up credit card debt with a huge tax bill and a set of credentialing expenses in front of me, and my subscription renewal popped up.
Thankfully I started a remunerative position soon after.
Yes. I think it behooves people like them to remember that the world is full of people who are less famous than them and make less money than them and work harder than them. This might be the first year I actually make more money than I spend. The grass is always greener on the other side, so when they say things like this I think of all the people I know who would really like to be where they are right now.
But it's also important for them to realize that anyone that did choose to spend money on them had a limited amount of money and could have spent it on something else.
I love you both, Sarah and Meghan. But sorry, I just can’t with Penelope.
Penelope isn’t a fraction as smart as she thinks she is. She doesn’t understand any of the questions, her responses to them are flip, she’s just talking out of her ass. She has no qualifications. How did she ever get this gig? You’ve gotta stop having her on. She’s an arrogant nihilist.
Everybody projects. Me included. But doing it out loud with that level of arrogance is just uninteresting, I agree.
I don’t think she thinks she’s super smart. Her brand is just that she will say the uncomfortable thing that maybe you didn’t want to hear, but needed to address.
To me that’s different than just being a smart person. Certainly it rubs some people the wrong way but there’s no malice in what she says as far as I can tell.
That is indeed her brand, but if you look beneath the branding there’s really no there there
Eh, this stuff gets thrown in the same category as “psychics”, tarot card readings, and a healthy portion of “life coaching”. It’s people who have discovered a decent skill in reading people and now stake their livings on it. Not much more to it than that for me.
Meghan is such a champ for taking those comments in good humor 😂😂.
Penelope is echoing many of my thoughts on marriage here. Too much weight to sex in marriage in general. Also if you’re below “x” income you can’t support a divorce and two households. The choice is to stick out an unpleasant situation or make the whole family economically suffer for your pride(there are obviously situations where divorce needs to happen, I am not referring to those).
Not to be that guy, but what are the odds that both a gay, and a trans kid would occur in the same household? Methinks some nurture over nature is possibly happening here, either inside the house or out.
There's a whole bunch of autism which is often related to being trans, or thinking you're trans, at least.
Mid-century house girl here 🙋♀️ My real underlying question WAS about feeling trapped. I feel a bit silly it took her pointing it out for me to notice but she hit the nail on the head. It’s a feeling I’ve been resisting then embracing in stages since I had my first kid 10 years ago. My entire 20s was a non-committal, fuck-off enterprise and I only changed things because of an accidental pregnancy at 29. I never saw myself married with 3 kids (and counting). Ever. Owning a house definitely feels scary after renting my entire adult life so yeah, big decisions/permanency is scary. Commitment reduces options but also increase happiness in my experience…so I’m reorienting my mindset toward that truth. The whole constraints argument has been absolutely true in my life, hence moving away from a more progressively ideological mindset in the last few years. Also: the soft oppression of having multiple children has been really good for me. I’m sure there are many ways to replicate but I highly recommend!
Of course I love this comment. But I want to say that it takes a lot of bravery to ask a question in public and then follow that up by adjusting your thinking publicly. And it's not silly to see our own situation unclearly -- it's part of being human. Each of us can see other peoples' situations so much more clearly than we see our own.
Penelope episodes are elite. The haters are crazy
PT: "Adult life is about having nothing or trapping yourself with what you have."
MD: "I feel so much less trapped as an adult than I did as a child, though..."
PT: "But you don't have anything. We get to this every time."
Absolutely brutal.
This was so funny 😆🙈
Just to clarify a few things. I know I’ll always be gay and this idea is pretty unserious tbh, but I have been playing around with it. Honestly I think it’s inspired by this podcast, including and maybe especially previous episodes with penelope.
If I wind up with a husband (which was always the plan) I don’t think I would want to start a family with him. Adopting as a gay guy just seems like kind of a nightmare and surrogacy is a bit of an ethical mess. In general I don’t judge what other gays do to have kids, but for myself I see the option to have kids as being what gay guys have done for thousands of years: marrying a woman (although in my case I’d be very very upfront about the gay part). Yes I’d be sacrificing a little personal satisfaction to achieve that, but that’s kind of an inherent feature of having kids anyway.
This question is less about how to not have sex anymore and more about trading sex (which is nice but not a NEED for me in the way it seems to be for other people) for potentially much deeper meaning in my life. But it’s of course risky because I can’t live both lives and thus can’t know which I’d prefer. Most likely I will just follow my inertia and wind up with a man, and I’m relatively confident that I’ll be fine and happy overall.
Gay dad with twin sons here. Surrogacy allowed me to have a family and more specifically allowed my children to be human beings on this earth. Our surrogate has six of her own children and has also been a surrogate for another gay guy (after me, so doesn't seem she had regrets.). Straight people getting married presents and endless stream of ethical messes but they keep doing it and no one stops them.
Do you follow Dan Savage? He pushes the idea “monogamish” and he suggests gay men are better at it than heterosexuals and lesbians.
I would not be very good at monogamish. I’d be a great lesbian though
Let’s pull out the great shears of womanhood. One snip down low and a high five from your doctor is all you’ll need.
Hahahaha
I would like a quarterly Trunk update. This is a release valve of disagreement.
Ha ha, just heard the "libby-do" part. Stuff like this makes it easy to spot the readers. So many words out there we've seen but never heard.
Definitely a tell-tale sign.
I love Penelope. She has a more male mind than most males I know. Succintly and without patience immediately cuts through all the bullshit and pathos to get to the root/heart of the issue(s).
That may be, but I think it may be that these quasi-autistic type women are actually uniquely bad at understanding the male experience, because they’re still ultimately female and they struggle to put themselves in another state of mind.
I mean, last time they went through questions once with guest and once without, and they completely failed to comprehend what I was asking on both occasions, so I just didn’t bother this time. It’s one thing being insulted or challenged, but to listen to someone else answering the question that they think should have been asked rather than the one that was is just kind of pointless.
can't comment on your experience/issue last time - I didn't listen very carefully to that episode. but listened to this one and I'm not sure I agree with your sentiment. (though I do agree it's very difficult to put a man into a woman's mindframe and vice versa but a "semi autistic" woman would be the best (at least in my opinion, the way my male mind is wired. I don't need pathos, others may be different) (but now given your comment I will listen CAREFULLY to her other appearance/appearances so I can better comment on the lack of comprehension. She isn't some kind of know it all though - because she clearly doesn't understand the Bari Weiss experience for e.g. she has donors because she has her way of doing things/or "being corporate" that her donors SUPPORT. so she doesn't quite get that.. for e.g.
A central argument of mine from the beginning is that from the outside, it seems bizarrely inconsistent that the notoriously nihilistic Sarah Haider is apparently an optimist about romance. When you listen to her personal experience, you can see why that would be.
The issue is whether she can imagine that the feeling she has about the Democratic party or the media or whatever she’s ranting about this week is also the feeling that a lot of men have about the dating market. And what I tried to do is to get them to answer a question from a perspective that was that bleak, which they simply would not do.
so you refering to Sarah and not Penelope? on what basis do you call her "notoriously nihilistic?? re dating market, she offer her own female perspective (which is different from many females, btw.. and though Sarah has left her family/societal religion, I don't think she has quite left the culture outside of the religion overall. To me, that explains many of her thoughts and choices. I completely "get" Sarah
Wait, you're asking me for a citation on Sarah Haider being nihilistic? Uh, have you ever even looked at her Twitter?
And yes I would agree that she hasn't quite left the culture.
I "get" why she's cynical about the government and institutions and why she goes on and on about how rotten they are. But the worst (in terms of accuracy) thing she's said on this show is to claim that "everyone has a tribe". And when you have a family that sticks with you even after you leave their religion, you have swarms of people who want to date you and a husband and a family and friends, well that makes sense. *She* has a tribe.
But in this country, a lot of people are detached from their families and have no strong cultural identity that's like a tribe. Some of them form new and increasingly stupid tribes to compensate for the lack of the old ones, but there are a lot of people who are really alone. And particularly in the early episodes, you hear these two go on and on about loser men who can't get a girlfriend or whatever, and it's an easy dismissive take that many women have. They live in a society where they are valued, so they cannot understand why anyone else would not be, and they assume it must take an astonishing failure of morals or merit to ever be alone. They think that anyone who had their head screwed on straight could just "get married" like Sarah did, as if this was a choice available to everyone. Whereas I've tried to paint them a picture of a life of competence and success juxtaposed against isolation and helplessness.
Of course, that's what most women think, it's just these two that maybe could be talked out of that position. Then again, Sarah herself in her nihilistic way has said she's giving up on the idea of convincing people of anything using reason.
What is Bari Weiss for $300, Alex?
Penelope is always a good guest. I think she nails it in most instances. I agree that we are mostly looking for validation or a way out of a trap. I wanted to ask a question this time but had a hard time coming up with one that didn’t sound silly or that I couldn’t answer myself. Next time.
One thing I think Meghan and Sarah can do to increase revenue is to stop talking about how to make more money or how to gain new listeners. It may be wiser to keep a little mystery around these things. It’s their podcast, and obviously, they are free to speak about whatever they want. I listen to their discussions about increasing listenership and revenue because it’s their reality, and it’s interesting to hear what they’ve tried, how monetization works, and what’s going on in their professional lives. Their willingness to talk about these things in their personal and professional lives is one of the things that makes this podcast good—it feels real and never sterile.
But is the money talk that interesting, especially if it's discussed too much? I won’t stop listening, but there could be some problems with focusing too much on the business side since it can detract from the “content” or the “conversation.” I could be missing something or being too critical, but it’s just a thought from a longtime listener and subscriber.
Well said.
At some point Meghan and Sarah will have to answer what I call the Chick-fil-A question.
Are we satisfied with our niche and unwilling to compromise our principles/standards to stay in that niche?
At some point, the Chick-fil-A owners decided: we do not open on Sundays and we do not sell burgers. Thefefore, they made a determination that they will never compete with McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's.
I presume M&S are not relying on podcasting for food, shelter and water. I hope they continue, even if it means combining Special Place with Unspeakable (maybe alternate episodes each week?)
Daum once did an entire episode of her own show about how she isn’t Joe Rogan. Which is inescapably true. That level of charisma and energy and the connections and the name recognition and the street cred…that’s a pretty hard mix to duplicate. Now, I knew who both Meghan and Sarah were before they started doing this particular show, but that puts me in a pretty small club. What is the realistic ceiling for their audience?
I like analogizing them to a stall at a farmer’s market. Sometimes, those things take off and become big businesses. But most of the time they don’t. There’s a certain sort of person who goes to the Dupont Circle farmer’s market (which I’m guessing Sarah is not). I like being that sort of person. But you can’t get to Joe Rogan level (or even Jesse Singal level) with me as your audience.
One of the things I appreciate about this Substack is that the comments section is the right size for a good discussion. The massive threads on the bigger Substacks are too unwieldy in comparison.
Too big and too insane. Meghan might wish she had Bari Weiss’ or Matt Taibbi’s subscriber numbers, but does she actually wish she had those subscribers? I like to think I’m open minded, but I bowed out of those comment sections pretty quickly.
Has Sarah been plugging the pod on her twitter enough? I think that’s the best avenue to gain listeners for now
The new “people don’t ask the right questions” refrain is just a fresh cover for the same old Penelope schtick - ignoring the specifics of the question, pivoting to vague platitudes, and hoping people mistake her bombastic certitude for insightfulness. At least in this one she shows some self-awareness about the limitations of offering strangers life advice online (which I would extend to self-help literature in general).
It’s quite telling that the one question where she actually had something to say was Meghan and Sarah’s about how to make it as a media personality
So considering it's been a few weeks, does this mean a) this is just how long it's taken for Sarah to go on her psychedelic spirit journey, b) Sarah's psychedelic spirit journey did indeed reveal to her that podcasting is futile, c) Sarah's psychedelic spirit journey resulted in a prolonged hospital and/or institutional stay, or c) some combination of the above?
I have to admit to feeling intense schadenfreude to find out the podcast is not lucrative. I want you both to succeed but it makes me feel better about my own professional disappointments. It feels like everything is insanely competitive and it just keeps getting worse. I feel like my most valuable asset right now is my plasma.
I mean I was sitting around between jobs, unemployed because the state licensing board takes >6 months to process a license apparently, racking up credit card debt with a huge tax bill and a set of credentialing expenses in front of me, and my subscription renewal popped up.
Thankfully I started a remunerative position soon after.
I don't understand your point at all. Doctors have financial blips?
Yes. I think it behooves people like them to remember that the world is full of people who are less famous than them and make less money than them and work harder than them. This might be the first year I actually make more money than I spend. The grass is always greener on the other side, so when they say things like this I think of all the people I know who would really like to be where they are right now.
But it's also important for them to realize that anyone that did choose to spend money on them had a limited amount of money and could have spent it on something else.