What makes us fat? It’s a contentious debate in the world of health science. Is obesity caused by energy imbalance — consuming too many calories — as has long been conventional thought? Or is obesity caused by the effects of carbohydrates on insulin? My guest on today’s program attended an invite-only global gathering of obesity experts. The resulting paper in Nature Metabolism, co-authored with fifteen other researchers and published this fall, compares the two competing hypotheses side-by-side, as equals. Which, my guest writes, “has never before happened in the century-plus history of meaningful research on the cause of obesity.”

Gary Taubes is an award-winning investigative science and health journalist. His latest book is Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments. With the journalist Nina Teicholz, he writes the Substack newsletter Unsettled Science.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

This past summer was the summer of the divorce memoir. Books glamorizing marital breakdown were everywhere, depicting the act of walking away from a marriage as radical self-empowerment. But I could not find a single memoir about the opposite perspective: staying and working things out and rediscovering love. My guest on today’s program has written the book I’ve been wanting to read, and he’s here to tell us how a dead marriage can live again.

Harrison Scott Key is an American writer. His latest book is How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

There has been a story on the progressive left for some time now that individual actions are largely futile. That for society to change, we must instead focus on systems. Our guest on the program today belongs to a generation that was raised on this message. But now she’s written a powerful piece about the costs that come with such a worldview — and how volunteering in her community helped her to rethink it.

Rachel Cohen is a reporter for vox.com, covering American social policy. Her essay is “Why I Changed My Mind About Volunteering.”

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

The period often referred to as The Great Awokening is winding down now, and we’re starting to get a better understanding of what happened. Our guest on today’s program argues that we have seen these kinds of social justice-styled movements before in American history — and that they are in fact driven by, as he puts it, “frustrated erstwhile elites condemning the social order that failed them and jockeying to secure the position they feel they deserve.”

Musa al-Gharbi is an American sociologist and an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His new book — out this week — is We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Statistics Canada released new data last week, showing that in 2023, the fertility rate in Canada reached a record low — just 1.26 births per woman — making us one of the “lowest low” fertility countries in the world. It’s true that material conditions, like the housing crisis, have play a role. But there is something else going on, all across the West. Our guest on today’s program has published a fascinating book about that something else: a profound ambivalence towards childbearing.

Anastasia Berg is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, and an editor of The Point magazine. With Rachel Wiseman, she is also the author of What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

The activist left in America has been very visible in recent years, often dominating the public conversation online and in prominent institutions. But our guest on today’s program says that the modern left is curious in that it is “largely leaderless” — that no one in particular is “speaking directly for it, or to it” — making this “a singular moment” in the country’s history.

Ross Barkan is an American journalist, novelist, and Substacker, and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. His recent piece for that magazine is, “The Activist Left Doesn’t Want a Hero. But Does it Need One?”

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

This week saw the arrest of an armed man in Florida, in the wake of an apparent assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump — the second in roughly two months. Our guest on the program today is a reporter who’s been covering the rise of political extremism in America for The Washington Post. In this episode, which was taped in late August, she shares the insights she gained reporting on a man who went to prison for uttering threats against Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Ruby Cramer is a national political enterprise reporter at The Washington Post.

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

The social and economic crises that we are experiencing in Canada are frequent topics of conversation in this country, with many Canadians expressing the belief that we have seen a decline in quality of life. Our guest on the program this week is a former foreign policy advisor to Justin Trudeau’s government — but today he’s on the show to talk domestic policy, and what he sees as “a betrayal of the Canadian dream.”

Omer Aziz is a former Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and a contributing writer to The Boston Globe. He’s also the author of Brown Boy: A Memoir. His recent essay for The Globe and Mail is titled, “The Canadian dream is on life support.”

You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com