Nuanced. - 85. Tara Henley: Woke Culture, Journalism & the CBC

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Tara Henley and Aaron Pete talk about what made her become a journalist, her career, the reasons she left the CBC and becoming an independent voice on Substack. She is the writer of Lean Out with Tara Henley which is a current affairs newsletter focusing on heterodox writers and thinkers. Lean Out publishes essays and interviews, along with a weekly podcast conversation with an author. Paid subscribers also receive roundups of reading recommendations.Tara Henley is a Canadian journalist and the author of the national bestseller Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life. Her 20 year career spans TV, radio, online media, magazines, and newspapers. She has worked as a producer on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight and on current affairs morning and afternoon shows at CBC Radio, in both Vancouver and Toronto. A former books columnist for the Toronto Star, and for Metro Morning, Toronto's top morning radio show, Henley is now a regular contributor to the books section of the Globe and Mail. Her writing has appeared in publications across Canada and around the world, including The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Mail, and The New York Post. Tara was also a finalist for the New York Festivals International Radio Program Awards. Tara Henley publishes a popular Substack newsletter and podcast on heterodox thought. Subscribe to Tara Henley on Substack: https://tarahenley.substack.com/Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Tara, I'm wondering if you could start with a brief introduction of yourself, your name, and a little bit about the work you do. Sure, I'd be happy to. My name is Tara Henley. I'm a journalist, author, and podcaster in Canada, and I do current affairs journalism. Brilliant. Would you mind walking us through your journey of becoming a journalist? I think they play a really important role in our culture and our society in helping us understand. the current issues. And I think your philosophy is really important to understand. So could you give us sort of your journey into becoming a journalist and what that's looked like? Sure. I'd be happy to. And before I do that, let me just say I'm very happy to be here with you today. As you know, I think you're a really thoughtful and perceptive interviewer. And I'm really happy to be on the podcast today. So thank you for inviting me. Thank you for having me. My journey in journalism

started about 20-plus years ago and kind of my accident. So I was at SFU and we had a great student newspaper. It was quite funny and very political. And at a certain point, I would be up. I was a TA at that point. It had just started my master's degree. And I would be sitting up in my office reading the newspaper. And I just thought I need to get involved.

This paper is so good. And I went down to, it was called the P. It is called The Peak. And I went down to the office and said, give me an assignment. I want to get involved. And the first assignment that I was given was a news story. And it was about Disney and sweatshops. And the Hong Kong Christian Association had done an undercover investigation into the affiliated

factories of Disney in that region and had found some concerning things. And at that point, Disney had not. given comment to anyone in Canada. And so for some reason, in the peak's kind of cavernous basement, bizarre sort of offices, late one production night, I got through to the corporate communications officer for Disney America. And he gave me an interview. I said, I'm from the student press. I would really like to get both sides of the story. And he said, okay, dear, and gave me an interview. And he said some very mildly controversial things in that interview, but also that was the first comment that we had known of in Canada. And I went to see my favorite professor and she said,

call up the Georgia Strait and ask them if they want the story. Georgia Strait, of course, the alternative news and arts weekly in Vancouver. And so I did. And the editor there bought the story and worked with me on it and ran it and then said, come down for a cup of coffee. And I went to meet him for coffee and he said, is this something that you would like to do? And of course it was. And so I said, yes. And he said, what are you interested in? And at that point, I was doing my master's thesis on hip-hop.

I know you're a big hip-hop fan as well. So they put me in the music section. And so I started doing concert reviews and album reviews. and started interviewing rappers. And as soon as I started doing journalism, I knew that there was nothing else that I wanted to do. And I think the big turning point came from me in the lead up to the war in Iraq.

And I was in New York interviewing anti-war rappers. And after I left New York, I took a train up to Hamilton for this cultural studies conference that I was supposed to give a paper at. And when I got up to Hamilton, I was so struck by the fact that no one said anything about the war. And I had just come from the center of one of the biggest news stories. And to leave that and to go to an academic setting where you give a paper and maybe 11 people hear it and nobody wanted to talk about the war at all. I just knew that I was going to leave academia.

and give journalism a shot. And so in the first six years of my career, I covered hip-hop and I ended up as a columnist at double-exel in New York, living in Canada still, but writing for double-exel, with just a wonderful, wonderful editor, Elliot Wilson, and someone who cared very deeply about free speech and free expression and allowed us to write and say what we wanted. And I just learned so much at that stage of my career, just so, so much. And after that, I came to Toronto, moved to Toronto. I worked in women's magazines for about seven years as a writer and then an editor.

And then I went to the CBC. So I worked on George Strombolopoulos tonight for the last season of that. And then I went to Current Affairs Radio and spent a number of years in Current Affairs Radio in Toronto. and then Vancouver and then Toronto again. I worked most of the roles in my newsroom, show producer, show director, morning producer, night producer, chase producer. And at that kind of juncture, I also took some time off and wrote a book called Lean Out. And that brings me up to January of this year when I left the CBC pretty publicly and went to a substack where I have been, writing and podcasting there.

That's an incredible story. I'd like to start with conducting interviews. It's something obviously that interests me personally, but what is it, what was it like, I guess, to start with the experience with having a Disney executive, be willing to have that first interview, that opportunity for someone to give you their time, and is there other standout interviews for you? That one was such a surprise because I didn't expect to get it. and I was, of course, very green, very young, very green, didn't know what I was doing.

I think in the 20, 21 years plus since interviewing is really one of the passions of my life. And I think I really love people and I really love hearing people's stories. And I feel like it's an incredible privilege of my life to get to do that. So there's been many, many standout interviews over the years. years. And I think since I went to Sudstack and started a podcast there, probably on my, this week, I'm doing my 52nd episode. And in that time, there's been a number, I think the first episode really stands out with Batya Ungar Sargan. She's the deputy opinion editor at Newsweek. And she had written a book called Bad News about the state of journalism. Journalism is something I cover a lot in my

kind of basket of topics on Substack. But the first interview was so striking for me because it was such an incredible relief to speak freely. I had been in quite a stifled environment for quite a long time. And although I was very open and opinionated behind the scenes, certainly in our story meetings, I had not talked publicly about any of my concerns and was very, very careful in what I said publicly. On Twitter, I often, leading up to going to Substack, I often moderated literary panels and public events, and I was very, very careful in what I said publicly. And so that interview was the first one that I felt like some of the, you know, I felt a little bit freed to ask the kind of questions that I most wanted to ask. So that was

very freeing. Another standout interview, someone whose work is really important to me and who I just think is a really special human being is Shaka Sengor. I don't know if you know about him at all. So he's, he's a criminal justice advocate and he spent, I believe it was 17 years in prison, seven of which were in solitary confinement. And during the course of being in prison, just had this real awakening and changed his life. And when he came out, became this really important writer and thinker and speaker and mentor to people in the community. And I interviewed him in the course of my first from my book. I'm working on another one right now, so I say first. But I flew to L.A. and

sat down with him. And first of all, he's just a very, very talented writer. That's the important thing to stay off the top. But he's also just a really special thinker. And I had this really moving hour with him in his kitchen in L.A. And also there were very many parallels in our story. And I love that about interviewing. He had started writing hip hop as well for his prison newspaper. He had a very similar background to me in some respects in that both of us had had a really difficult time with one of our parents. In my case, my father left when I was about 13 and had huge emotional impacts on my life, also financial impacts. In his case, it was a very difficult strained relationship with his mother. We had both experienced really difficult

things as young adults. He had been shot. Very, very traumatic experience for him when he was 17. He had been shot and he had been sent back out to the same streets immediately after. And, you know, no one had hugged him and no one had told him it was okay. Nobody had given him any counseling. And so that had had huge emotional impacts on him. In my case, very, very different experience. When I was 24, I had colon cancerous polyp in my colon that had to be removed and I had to have serious surgery. And that was a real turning point in my life. In a very similar way, although the circumstances, as you can imagine, radically, radically different, but the emotional impact on both of us was very much the same.

So Shaka is someone I have just great admiration and respect for and feel kind of a deep bond with. And I had him on the podcast when I went to Substack and his latest book, Letters to the Sons of Societies, is about. being a father to sons. It's about masculinity. It's about resilience. And it's also about finding your way through the creative process, through writing, through speaking. So that was another really special, special moment for me. That's an incredible aspect of the interviewing process, because I think that's the way we kind of depoliticize, reconnect with other people is through

more long-form communication where we're able to share not just maybe our political perspectives or religious perspectives, but also who we are, what we've been through, what we've overcome, because that's where the rubber often hits the pavement as to why we think, what we think, where we get our views from. What is your perspective when we're talking about journalism? You have people like to think of philosophy, like it's a separate kind of discipline, but philosophy is sort of what brings your values and perspectives. And reading your articles, you highlight the importance of asking tough questions,

the pursuit of truth in an honest way. Can you explain some of your perspective on what you think journalism is in our culture? This is something obviously I think about all the time. So it's a great question. And journalism has really changed in the time that I've been a journalist. I mean, journalism at one point was a very working class profession, and it is no longer that. It's a very elite profession now.

And even in Canada, I mean, in the States, they hire from the Ivy League universities. So that's a very, very, very tiny percentage of the population that can afford to go to those Ivy League universities, right? Canada, it's not that, but it is a very sort of elite space. And so I think that is very different now, and that has changed a lot of how. we do journalism and the perspective of journalism. And that's something I push back on a lot. I also think, you know, the slogan when I was coming up with journalism was you afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. And I think we are falling down in that

for sure right now. I also think that the idea when I was coming up was that we are on a fact finding mission, right? And I've done all kinds of journalism. So I've done, you know, news at some points. I've done current affairs, which is this crazy mix of all kinds of stories and is not about investigative reporting. It is not about, you know, reporting the news. It is about putting things in context. What does this all mean? But I've also done arts journalism. And I've, you know, done a lot of writing on books. I mean, I've done a lot of different mediums in my, in my career. But I think what the general kind of thrust used to be is we are on a fact-finding mission. We are trying to understand the world around us and to relay what we see to the public.

And the idea was never about influencing the public and trying to influence their decision-making. It was sort of predicated on a trust of the public, that if the public has good enough information, the public will make choices as it sees fit. it will vote people out or it will demand accountability through processes or or institutional bodies. But the fundamental idea was you trust the public and that our job was just try to get as accurate information to the public as possible. Is it, you know, what is the reality here? That has really changed. And it changed around 2016 with the election of Donald Trump. And you saw the New York Times, for example, a very famous op-ed by, I think it was Jim Ruttenberg, saying that

Trump is testing the norms of journalism. And the idea was that if you have someone like Donald Trump, who was viewed as really testing the norms of democracy, and some people argued moving towards fascism, it was not enough to just give the information, that it had to be much stronger than that. And in order to do that, we had to abandon some of the distance that we, as journalists had had. Unfortunately with that is once you start abandoning norms, it's much harder to bring them back. And you don't necessarily, like once that genie's out of the bottle, you don't necessarily get to see where it goes. And what I've observed since 2016 is a real move in journalism towards trying to influence the public. That it's that we are responsible in

some ways for how the public responds to the information. And that that ends up being sometimes, in some cases, more of a narrative shaping exercise, more of an exercise in activism than it is in just fact-finding. But my view is very much in line with Matt Taibi, famous American journalist, also Substacker, wrote Hate Inc about the trends in journalism right now. And what he says is getting the facts is really hard enough and that is very much the case it's hard enough it's a job in itself enough to figure out what's going on and to try to reflect that accurately without trying to get in there and influence public opinion um and so my view certainly what i aspire to do is to have kind of low um low certainty in my work to know to remind myself all the

time that I could always be wrong and to try all of the time to stick to trying to figure out what's going on and to trust the public and trust the discernment of the public. And, you know, it's a little different now. I'm in opinion writing and whereas current affairs, it was very important for me to keep my opinion out of things. So I do offer opinions sometimes, but I think the general ethos of what I'm trying to do is about trusting the public and trying to reflect reality in the best way that I can and to know that new information can always emerge, new facts can emerge, and that to try to act in humility to know that I don't necessarily always know, that I could always be wrong. I think that that's so important for us to reflect on as much as we can. Where did that separation

happen with you and the CBC, where did you start to see that this value, this philosophy that you hold was somewhat separated from where you were working? And I think that in those circumstances, it can affect like your sense of self. When I've been in jobs, I haven't felt reflected my values and it sort of sucks something out of you. It makes you feel like you're not your best self. What was that journey like? And when did you start to notice that or feel that? Yeah. Values is a really good word because I did start to feel like what we were doing was going against my values. And I have to say I loved the CBC. It was a huge, huge part of my life growing up listening to the CBC. I was very proud to be at the CBC. And there was a lot of really good work being done in that building. And I think to some extent there still is.

there's a lot of really good journalists in that building. I'm thinking of the Toronto Building in particular, who are working really hard to push back on some of the stuff that I have talked about publicly. And I know because I hear from them. So there are really good people in that building. And overall, I think what happened was I had, and I'm going to have to use a term here that I don't like using, which is woke. But I don't know how else to describe.

the ideology that I'm talking about. It is an ideology that is very much an elite political ideology. It is quite unpopular in both the Canadian and the American public. It is very, very far left on cultural issues, but quite right on economic issues. It is much more concerned with symbolic gestures than it is with the material. conditions of people's lives. And in my view, has a lot to do with virtue signaling. And so that's sort of like a snapshot of what I'm trying to talk about. I apologize for using the word woke. I know people find it very upsetting, but I don't know what else to call it. And so

until we know a word for this movement, I have to just use that one. Anyways, that, that, that ethos had always been in the room at CBC. But my experience leading up to the pandemic was it was just one voice in the room. And I have no problem with it being a voice in the room. But in the kind of extreme climate of the pandemic that we found ourselves in, I began to feel like that was the only voice in the room. And I began to feel like it was harder and harder to get perspectives on the air that disagreed with that kind of set. that cluster of opinions on, you know, a number of topics, race, gender, COVID. And knowing what I know, because I've looked at the data quite a bit, I know that this is not a public, a popular opinion with the public, that there are many, many people of all races and all genders and all backgrounds who don't like this ideology or parts of this ideology.

There are many, many views on the big issues of our day throughout campus. Canada. And I felt we were doing a disservice not reflecting more viewpoints. And particularly after George Floyd, there was a real swift and decisive move towards this ideology after what happened with George Floyd, which was horrific and, you know, triggered a racial reckoning that I think was long overdue and also represented a really sort of extreme turn within the organization from my perspective. And there were a number turning points. I certainly argued about this in story meetings every day for probably two years, close to two years. And in the end, I mean, I felt like I could not do my job properly anymore. And I felt I was getting a,

a lot of complaints from the public about this stuff, and I felt like it was time to have a more public conversation about these issues, given that it was the national broadcaster, given that it's an incredibly important institution in our country, and given that it was publicly funded, which I believe it should continue to be publicly funded, just for the record. And so the main kind of thrust of my resignation letter, which I made public, I was at that time on contract as a full-time current affairs producer. My contract was until December 22, and I was assigned to a small regional show called Ontario Morning, and I was also a once-a-month books colonist on air for the region. And the arguments that I made in my resignation letter were about

trends and coverage. They're about our COVID coverage, and I did not feel we had been sufficiently critical. I felt we'd been overly credulous of government and public health. And it was about describing this stifling atmosphere that I had experienced, this real sense of group think and a kind of widespread self-censorship that I observed. It was not to say that I was silenced or censored. That is not anything that I've argued. I, argued in story meetings every day. I did not feel silenced. Um, but I felt that as an organization, the direction we were going was not good. And this also included top down policies. So a couple that I highlighted the examples in the, in the letter where we were, um, we were, at least in my

newsroom doing race-based booking forms. And this was not something that was made public. And so, So it was a form that you filled out after you booked someone, and it would break down sort of identity categories for that person. What race were they, that type of thing? And the idea was they wanted to increase racial representation on air. And the problem was it was not a public project. And so when you were booking someone, you couldn't ask them. what race they were, you had to go on social media and start digging around and trying to guess, which to me felt, I felt deeply, deeply uncomfortable with that and I expressed that discomfort, not the least of which, because when you are talking about guests and you're viewing them through that very narrow lens, you're not talking about intellectual or ideological diversity.

you can still end up with the majority of your guests being highly educated, very high earners from a certain class economically and all of the same ideological mindset, just different racial backgrounds. And also, I felt uncomfortable with, I had seen leading up to this, there's a great filmmaker in the States, Eli Steele. And he had done this wonderful documentary called How Jack Became Black. So it's about his multiracial son, Jack, and how the LA school board forced him to check a box for which race his son was. And he is reflecting in the documentary about racialized thinking and the impact that it has had on his life. So his one side of his family are the descendants of slaves and the other side of his family are Holocaust survivors. to horrible examples of what happens when we start thinking, that kind of racialized thinking.

And the documentary had a really big impact on me, and I've since interviewed him for my substack. But I felt like once you open that Pandora's box and you start dividing everyone up racially, I just think that it's a really dangerous and destructive way to go. and that we have seen the impacts of that throughout history. Humanity has tried this many times. It does not work out well.

And I felt really uncomfortable with that. Also, I highlighted in my letter the way that hiring works at the CBC. So for even a contract, you have to sit for a board. And those boards do not take into account, like how much experience. you have in the newsroom, what shows you've worked on, you know, how successful you've been in the building so far. It really is about answering questions, and each question is scored, and the one who gets the highest score wins the board and gets the contract, or some cases,

the full-time permanent job. But a lot of these questions are overtly ideological, and the answers that get the high scores are overtly ideological. And that does that disturbed me as well. So those were the sort of things that I was highlighting in my letter. And I think, you know, there were many instances that led up to the decision. It was not an easy decision to make, as you can imagine. It was not an easy decision to make to break ranks. And I loved my work there and I loved that building. But in the end, I felt compelled to have a more public conversation about these things. That's really interesting.

You highlighted the value that progressive individuals who sort of fit that woke ideology have on symbology over substance. And it's something I've been thinking a lot about because I'm not a fan of land acknowledgments as they're currently done. I don't see a fruitful. I see it is a little bit divisive, like just the terminology of unseeded. There's a good comedian I just saw who kind of related it to, like, someone breaks into your house, takes your house, and then says, like, I see you out there. I acknowledge that it must be cold outside, but, like, it's not helpful.

And the argument, the original reason for it was that it would change sort of our dialogues around reserve land. And in BC, we're sort of an interesting, kind of separated from treaties. And so the argument was it would bring governments to the table. And from my understanding, it was the provincial government that helped bring them in and then realized, wait, is this an admission of guilt? And then they removed doing any land acknowledgments out of fear that it could actually mean something. It could result in something. And so I'm just interested in your thoughts on this symbology over substance. Is that something you've seen increase?

Yes. And I find it troubling. And I think it's indicative of the fact that these are elite politics. As you say, the land acknowledgments are very, very popular, but in my view, they don't mean much. I would like to see concrete action on the material conditions for indigenous people in this country. I would like to see concrete action. And I think that what's happening, and this has taken me a long time to get to this, I've been very influenced by a thinker called Rob Henderson, who's at Cambridge.

And he talks a lot about luxury beliefs. And there are views that get promoted in the elite class. And I'm talking about economically elite that make the elite class feel very good about themselves, but do a disservice to everyone else. And I think you see a lot of examples of that. One of the most famous that Rob Henderson points to is the defense. fund the police movement. Now, there are many things to criticize about policing and the criminal justice system. And I have done so throughout my career. Of course, I started in hip hop. I sat with people

interviewing people who had had their lives absolutely shaped by the criminal justice system in the states. However, if you look at the data, people in marginalized neighborhoods in the states do not want less policing. And the people who are most for abolishing the police are people who live in neighborhoods where crime is not an issue. And so you have this huge divide in terms of what elite politics promotes

and what big other portions of the population favor. And so my senses, and this is just my thinking, is I think we are, you know, as you know, we are in this age of huge income inequality. In Canada, billionaires increased their wealth during the pandemic. I think it was 68%. I'd have to check that, but it was somewhere around there.

We have massive, massive gaps between the rich and the poor. And if you are economically privileged, I think any human being would feel some guilt over that. It doesn't feel right to have a lot and to see people with so little. You know something's not right. Now, if you displace that on symbolic gestures, if you displace that on luxury beliefs, you don't have to actually confront the material conditions. My view is all of that energy that's being spent on the symbolic stuff diffuses the urgency

of us all to find a more materially equal society for everyone. I think it's a cop-out. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it's, I'd like you're to understand who are we talking about when we say the elite? Because it feels like right now we're starting to see inflation, a recession. We're starting to feel maybe less elite even in our own lives. And it's something, it's a sobering circumstance to look at your grocery store list and say, maybe not this month.

Maybe we won't get the Dunkeroo's or the snacks or the treats. it almost recalibrates. And I'm just curious, who are we talking about when we think the elite are? Is it the billionaires? Is it people who make over $70,000 a year? Who are we thinking of? Such a good question. And I think about this all the time, too.

So, I mean, the traditional formulation is the 1%, right, that own all the wealth and have a lot of power and influence. There's another set of thinking on this that is more the 20% at the top. And I'm talking about strictly income, that that is, often referred to as the professional managerial class. This is the people who are managing the assets and wealth and managing society, the top bureaucrats, the top HR people, the, you know, the top journalists, the top academics, the sort of top of society in terms of influence, power, but money as well, that top 20% of earners. So I struggle sometimes to think about how we define it.

But I think once you look at the economics, once you look at who's earning and who's not, and the distribution of income throughout our society, it becomes more clear. Yeah, fair enough. Substack, how did it come onto your radar? Chris Best, one of the co-founders, as actually Canadian, which is something to be very proud of. How did you make this decision? What did you see in the platform? It's obviously added podcasts in as an option. I think the recommendation system is fascinating

and gives me a lot of hope that we've maybe found a pathway out of these algorithms. What did you see in the platform and why did you choose to create one? So during my last year at CBCs, I also wrote for the Globe of Mail very regularly and still do sometimes. And the substack thing began to really fascinate me because I was feeling so stifled in the newsroom because I wasn't hearing alternative perspectives. And I began to look at a lot of places to try to find alternative perspectives, to just think through what are some other ways of thinking about these big issues of our time. And I found myself more and more going to substack.

And I found really, really exciting writers and journalists on substack. And of course, there were a lot of, in 2020, there were a lot of people who left mainstream media, went to Substack quite publicly. And so I reported out a very long piece for the Globe of Mail on Substack. And I spent a couple of months researching and interviewing. And in the course of that, interviewed Barry Weiss, who famously left the New York Times and eventually started to Substack. And I also interviewed Hamish McKenzie, who is another one of the founders at Substack.

And then the piece held for, I think it was probably about. six months after I had filed it, which happens sometimes, right? And during that time, as things I were finding things more and more challenging at CBC. And I found more and more alternate voices on Substack and began to think, this is one of the most exciting things that has happened to journalism in a really long time, that it is making it possible for writers to go independent and actually make a living. And it's so necessary and so needed right now. So after the piece was finally published, I spent some time really thinking about what I wanted to do next. And I eventually, after much deliberation, decided to go to Substack. And I'm very, very glad that I did.

It's incredibly, it's incredibly, incredibly liberating to be able to follow my curiosity to not feel hemmed in in terms of who I book to feel like I can ask the questions I think most need to be asked and also to develop a really wide readership. I get a lot of mail. And that is incredibly interesting after 20 years of being out all the time soliciting views to suddenly have this wave of views coming to me all the time. It's a really interesting experience and I'm learning so much from it. So I'm very happy at Substack. And yes, Chris, I know Chris a little bit. I've met him and I'm very proud of the Substack founders because they have resisted a lot of pressure. They are very staunch free speech advocates, which is a value I believe in very strongly.

I think it's the foundation of our democracy. And so I'm quite proud to be at Substack and I'm very happy there. And it's working very well for me. How did you go about developing a plan for the media? because the medium is great, but you have to figure out how you're going to communicate into it, how you're going to book guests, how long you want the conversations to be, how long you want the articles to be, how many photos, how did you go about thinking about starting substack, creating a plan to kind of implement your voice into the medium? Yeah, so I didn't really have a plan.

I've really developed it as I went. I knew I wanted to do a podcast. The first episode was 30 minutes. I chose 30 minutes because people are so busy, but also because it's quite easy to book a 30 minute guest. Most authors, most journalists, most people have half an hour. And I also feel like in the audience, most people have half an hour. That's like a typical drive. It's a typical walk to work.

It's a typical clean-up your kitchen after work kind of amount of time. And I also, in terms of the articles I've really learned that, and I learned this from reading other kind of op-ed personalities, that you want to try to develop one idea at a time, that you don't want it too long. And that I never, the written pieces in particular, I never rush those. I always sit with them for quite a bit of time. I also go back to them and look, and where have I been, is there any hyperbole here? Is there anything that I couldn't back up? Is there anything that is unkind or uncharitable that I could take out?

Is there anything that is unnecessarily divisive? I try to really think that through and think about, I still have friends that I would say are quite, again, this terrible word woke. I think about them reading it and think about what arguments they might have. And so I really spend a lot of time on the articles. The podcasts are much easier for me because I come from radio. I've written radio scripts for many years. A cue line is quite easy for me. And the actual interviewing process is very easy. It's easy to find and book guests. I feel like I could do three a week if I had more resources. But yeah, it is different mediums. And I think My goal, once the substack grows more, is to hire an editor.

I have a friend who's a newspaper editor who helped me during the first three months or so, maybe even a little longer of the substack. And that is invaluable. Of course, you need someone. The important thing is to pit bias against bias, is to have someone poking holes in your work and challenging you. And that is, you know, I've been edited my whole career. I everybody is better with an editor and I am much better with an editor fascinating let's start with the

podcast how do you go about choosing guests is it you're reading their book already are you going through newspapers just personally I'm always looking for potential guests and trying to think about what the conversation might look like so it's fascinating to me to talk to someone who's interviewed such a wide array of people over their career? So I think I'm a huge reader. I probably read two, three books a week every week. And I get sent a lot of books. And so that's a really good starting point.

I get sent a lot of books and I get pitched a lot of guests, which is helpful. I also spend a lot of time reading other substacks and listening to other podcasts. And I'm always trying to find, because my podcast is about heterodox thought, it's about challenging the orthodoxies of the day. I try to find thinkers who are going to say something that you wouldn't hear in the mainstream, you know, represent a viewpoint that is interesting and novel and on this growing list of subjects that we're not supposed to talk about. I also do try really hard to not just cover one thing. I think this is important for audience capture is to make sure that you're covering a huge

array of topics. And so there are many topics that I'm really interested in. I'm really interested in feminism. I'm really interested in the opioid crisis. I'm interested in the COVID policy and where that has all gone. I'm interested in freedom of speech. I do a lot of media criticism. So I try to really make sure that the guest base is quite diverse. And I also try to make sure, like I choose based on ideological diversity. I want to make sure that I'm covering a lot of viewpoints. I want to make sure that, you know, someone who is conservative listening to the podcast,

someone who is socialist listening to the podcast, that there are representative views across the ideological spectrum. That's really important to me. But I also want there to be an element of surprise of something that you wouldn't expect to hear. So those are some of the kind of guideposts for me in terms of how I choose. Yeah, I think that that's really important because one of my questions was around audience capture. I've seen other journalists start to see what gets clicks, what gets views, what gets reposts, what elicits an emotion from a person.

And then to follow that. And even doing this, it's like I can see what's doing well, but I can also see what interests. me, and that might not be what does really well on social media or reaches a lot of people, but nonetheless, it interests me and I feel an obligation to chase that, to continue, despite maybe it's not the most popular, to stay true to why I started this and my personality still coming through in the communication. Has that been a challenge? Was that on your radar when you started this? I know about audience capture, so I'm very aware, and I do as, as, as, you say, we have analytics. We can see what does really well and what doesn't. And I agree with you

that it's really, really important to resist audience capture. And I do that in a number of ways. I do it through exposure to different views. And so there are a lot of people I follow on Twitter who I don't agree with. There are a lot of authors whose books I read that are not natural alignment with my own views. And I invite people on the podcast who I may disagree with on certain topics. I think exposure piece is very, very important. But also to resist the expectations of the audience, I think it's very important. And I'm prepared to lose subscribers over that because I think it's such an important principle. And so, for example, I know that my audience doesn't always love it when I have mainstream media journalists on.

But I think it's really important to sometimes have mainstream media journalists on, particularly the ones that are doing really interesting and important work in a particular area. I also think there's a, you know, John Kay in Toronto just did a Colette podcast. He was interviewed on the podcast, and he talked about audience capture. And one of the strategies he talks about is what you and I were just discussing, this idea of making sure that you are covering a range of, different topics. You know, the culture wars does the best. We know that. But I don't want to just be about the culture wars. I think it's important to talk about those issues. I think they're really

important and have a huge impact. And I want to cover other topics as well. And that I think that's a good safeguard to make sure that you're not just doing one thing all the time. And to, you know, to also to try to challenge the audience a little bit. And I, I find it really rewarding when I do something, when I take a chance and book a guest where I think maybe it is going to go a little bit against the grain. And then I see it get huge numbers. Like sometimes we're wrong about the audience capture too. And I love that.

I love being wrong. Yeah. Absolutely. And I couldn't agree with you more. There's been ones where I was like, I'm doing this because it interests me. Then it interests everyone else. And that's like, thank goodness, I didn't, like, I didn't change my perspective on it. you're in a circumstance when you're in a newsroom that maybe you don't get the actual feedback from a human being

you put something out there and you walk away and you have no idea whether it resonated and even you get like a smaller outliers of people because it's only people who are furious or very happy with the piece that speak you might not get that middle ground looking at the common section of substack on yours it's so thoughtful you you to me i'm humbled by the critical perspectives people bring such nuanced viewpoints that we might not expect. It was one of the hard things when we talk about truckers is you think they have a perspective, but they don't. They're human beings.

They have lived experiences. They live in your communities. They commute across Canada. They are integrated in different areas. And we're not just one thing. And so seeing your substack inspires me because it shows that people are complex, multifaceted, fascinating individuals. And I'm just curious as to what that's meant for you, because perhaps most of your career,

you don't get a lot of direct comments to what you just said. And now you're getting more and more feedback. And it's like it's paragraphs. It's filled with information of like people sharing their thoughts on an issue almost vulnerably to me. You're right. The comments are very thoughtful. And I think it's been huge.

I mean, I spent a lot of years as a rank and file journalist behind the scenes, right? I mean, I had some profile. I had a book out. I moderated events, but mainly I was very rank and file. I was very much behind the scenes. And so to have this relationship with readers now is incredible. And I think that there has been a lot of times in the last year where I have been challenged by readers and have had to really think through my positions, which is so useful.

And I've also found that the kind of variety of perspectives has been really interesting as well to see how many different ways people react to the same piece. And also, what you don't see is the mail that I get. And the mail is like those comments times 100 people telling me their very personal stories, and particularly got a lot of mail from unvaccinated Canadians. and to hear, as you say, everyone are such individuals. I mean, people have such unique circumstances and unique reasons for making the choices that they make and unique life experiences and circumstances. And I found it very moving and I continue to find it really moving that people want to communicate in that way.

I would really like to get to a point where I have more help on the substack because the volume of mail that I get, it can't respond to every person. And I think that's so sad. because if people take the time to write you, you really want to write them back. But it means a lot to me. It really means a lot to me. I am so happy to hear that. I think what you're doing and what substacks created the opportunity for people to do is so inspiring

because it gives you the freedom to share your voice. And the challenge we've always had is getting into the newsroom, getting into a position where you could share your perspective. and you start to realize that people have vast, complex perspectives, they don't fit into one category like we often like them to do. Just going back to one point that I'm curious on is you talked about what Canadians think and polling and stuff. I'm just interested, do you think that that's a reflection of what Canada does think,

or do you think it's challenging to get actually what people end up sending you information about their lives, the real thoughts, not just from one. to five, what is your perspective on this? What is your actual thought through perspectives? It seems like there might be more truth than that than some of the polling that we often do to try and understand human beings. I think you're right. I think it's very difficult to get an accurate perception on where the public is at. I think Twitter is the worst possible way of gauging that because you have really such a small percentage of the population that's on Twitter and even a smaller percentage than that that are active on Twitter. So Twitter is not the way to go. I think

you're right, that polling can be very flawed. The problem with mail is it's anecdotal, so it's very difficult to get a sort of broader big picture. But you can, I mean, there are things that you can notice. I mean, I noticed that Pierre Polyev just won the conservative leadership in a landslide. That is a clear signal from the public. The fact that the conservative party has now, in the lead up to that race, signed up just this massive tsunami of new members. That is, I think, an important signal for us to be watching. So you can get senses like that. I mean, I think the other way is, and this is getting back to your question earlier about journalism. I mean, when I started journalism, you were out all the time. You were out.

You were out on the streets, right? And if you talk to 100 people in a day about the same issue, you do have a better handle on it than if you've been on Twitter for 20 minutes. So we went from being out all the time, to then being on the phone all the time, which is still better, but certainly not as good as being out, to then being on Zoom all the time. And again, back to this idea of elitism, I mean, you're going to get a very different perspective if you're standing on a street corner doing streeters and you talk to tons of people from all different walks of life than if you talk to someone with a laptop and a Zoom connection. It's just very different, right? And I very much want to try to talk to as many people as I possibly can.

And I think that's one of the big challenges of the media environment that we're in right now, particularly that working class perspectives are just not represented at all. And I find that really troubling. I couldn't agree with you more. Can you tell people how they can connect with you on Twitter, substack, and on any other social media platforms, how they can stay up to date on all the amazing work you're doing because I think you bring such a balanced perspective

and are working to always improve and self-reflect. And I just think that the voices like yours are so important. Thank you so much. People can come to my substack at tarahenly.substack.com. They can also find my podcast, lean out with Tara Henley, on any podcast platform and on Twitter, I'm Tara R. Henley. And thank you so much for this interview. You ask really thoughtful questions,

and it's just a real pleasure to get to speak with you. This has been such a milestone for me personally because I've been following you since you wrote that original piece in the National Post. And to see the success you've had, to see you keep such a balanced perspective, it's enlightening. It gives me such hope for where we can go that there are platforms that create the space for such important voices. And hopefully we can create that middle ground again for our communities, for our culture. And I just, I think you're a really important voice in Canada right now. So thank you so much for being willing to do this. It's been such an honor and a privilege.

Thank you for having me. Wonderful to be with you.