Photo credit: David Belusic
MEGHAN DAUM
Meghan Daum founded The Unspeakeasy in 2022. Her weekly interview podcast, launched in 2020, has featured guests ranging from Sam Harris to Andrew Sullivan, and Maria Bamford to Moon Unit Zappa. The recent winner of the Tom Wolfe Prize for reportage, Meghan is the author of seven books, including The Catastrophe Hour, The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion, and My Misspent Youth.
Meghan has written for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Vogue, and was a Los Angeles Times opinion columnist for more than 12 years. She is the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts grant and has been on the adjunct faculty of the Writing Division at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She also teaches private workshops in personal essay, memoir, and op-ed. You can also visit her author page at meghandaum.com.
FOUNDER
Jen Aldrich
Jen Aldrich worked in publishing in the early 1990s, rode the dot-com wave through Y2K, and spent the 2010s spinning plates as a full-time homemaker. She emerged, in 2020, to a world she did not recognize - a modern Tower of Babel. The Unspeakable podcast was a balm through the pandemic, and attending a retreat confirmed that, yes, other free thinkers were out there. Jen joined the Unspeakeasy team in 2026 to help Meghan streamline operations and strategize about the future.
Todd Sabel
Todd spent more than two decades working in regional theater as a performer, director and producer. In 2012, he began to notice how cultural and political shifts in the arts were stifling conversation and hindering creativity. After decamping to rural Maine during the pandemic, he read Jonathan Haidt’s Coddling of the American Mind and suddenly all the nonsense made sense. He found the good faith camaraderie that had been run out of the arts still existed in the podcast and independent media sphere. In 2022, he moved to New York and became involved in the heterodox community, including coordinating events for The Unspeakeasy and helping with overall strategy.