Meghan Daum and Lionel Shriver in conversation

PROMO: Get your tickets before August 1, 2025, for $18 with code CATASTROPHE18. After that, they go up to $25.

Author and podcaster Meghan Daum talks with bestselling novelist and columnist Lionel Shriver about her new book The Catastrophe Hour. Topics will include (but are not limited to) death, sex, real estate, dogs, beauty, grief, aging, cancelation, incels, femcels, self-destruction, natural disasters, pronatalism, anti-natalism, human intelligence, and cultural stupidity.

Meghan Daum has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Vogue, and is the author of seven books, most recently The Catastrophe Hour. Her previous book, The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars, was a New York Times Notable Book and her 2014 book, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion, won the 2015 PEN Center USA Award for creative nonfiction. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA and is the creator and host of The Unspeakable Podcast, a weekly long-form interview podcast. In 2022, Meghan founded The Unspeakeasy, a multi-faceted platform devoted to free speech and open dialogue.

Lionel Shriver writes a biweekly column in Britain’s The Spectator and has written widely for the New York Times, the London Times, the Financial Times, Harper’s Magazine, and many other publications. Her first nonfiction book, Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-destruction, was published in 2022. It joins a story collection and fifteen novels, including Mania, Should We Stay or Should We Go, The Mandibles, and We Need to Talk About Kevin (a 2011 film starring Tilda Swinton). Her work has been translated into 35 languages. Her latest novel A Better Life, focused on immigration, will be out in early 2026.

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