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Freddie Sayers seeks out top scientists, writers, politicians and thinkers for in-depth interviews to try and help us work out whatâs really going on. What started as an inquiry into the pandemic has broadened into a fascinating look at free speech, science, meaning and the ideas shaping our world.
Could Keir Starmer exploit the summer riots to curtail civil liberties? From the return of the Counter Disinformation Unit to the start of live facial recognition, Big Brother Watch's Silkie Carlo joins UnHerd to discuss the UK crackdown.
As news breaks of a British general election, Former Director of Communications at 10 Downing Street Lee Cain and Political Editor of UnHerd Tom McTague join Freddie Sayers for an emergency roundtable.
Glenn Greenwald joins UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers to explore the nuances of free speech in todayâs digital world. They discuss the challenges of protecting minority voices while upholding free expression, the dangers of corporate censorship, and the importance of critical thinking in navigating todayâs complex information landscape.
Following an explosive investigation into the Global Disinformation Index, viewed 8 million times on X/Twitter, UnHerd has been contacted by dozens of lawmakers and activists raising concerns about rating agencies like the GDI. In this update podcast, Freddie Sayers addresses government officials on the chilling effect of censorship and makes a case to defund the 'disinformation industry'.
UnHerd's Flo Read meets Jonathan Haidt to discuss the dangers of modern technology for younger generations.
Watch it on the UnHerd website:
Listen to the podcast: https://plnk.to/unherd?to=page
Since 2012, youth mental health across the West has steadily declined. Jonathan Haidt is an American social psychologist, co-author of bestseller The Coddling of the American Mind and author of the new book The Anxious Generation. His theory is simple: the introduction of smartphones to children around 2011 accelerated the crisis of social media addiction. He joins UnHerd's Florence Read to discuss parenting, porn and the age of anxiety.
The verdicts of âratings agenciesâ such as the GDI, within the complex machinery that serves online ads, are a little-understood mechanism for controlling the media conversation. In UnHerdâs case, the GDI verdict means that we only received between 2% and 6% of the ad revenue normally expected for an audience of our size. Meanwhile, neatly demonstrating the arbitrariness and subjectivity of these judgements, Newsguard, a rival ratings agency, gives UnHerd a 92.5% trust rating, just ahead of the New York Times at 87.5%.
So, what are these âratings agenciesâ that could be the difference between life and death for a media company? How does their influence work? And who funds them? The answers are concerning and raise serious questions about the freedom of the press and the viability of a functioning democracy in the internet age.
Since October 7th, old divides between Right and Left on support for Israel were predictably resurfaced. Less expected, however, was a new civil war on the online Right. Compact founder and key figure in the so-called âNew Rightâ Sohrab Ahmari joined UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers to discuss it.
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks to Sohrab Ahmari
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Rob Henderson
Why are the top 1% so politically correct? Rob Henderson coined the term âluxury beliefsâ to explain how affluent people signal high status with âwokeâ ideas. In his new memoir âTroubledâ, Henderson tells the story of a difficult childhood and how it opened his eyes to the hypocrisy of Americaâs elite. He joins UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers to discuss the concept of luxury beliefs and much more.
Freddie Sayers was joined in Washington DC by Ruy Teixeira, Robby Soave and Emily Jashinsky to ask: who will win in 2024?
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Katharine Birbalsingh, 'Britain's strictest headteacher'.
Florence Read and Freddie Sayers took a film crew (and an armed security guard) into the Tenderloin district to find out the truth for themselves. This special report includes remarkable interviews with city supervisor Dean Preston and Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko, as well as drug users, locals and activists across the West.
Visit https://unherd.com/2023/12/the-battle-for-san-francisco/ to watch.
Former Supreme Court judge, and celebrated historian of The Hundred Years War, Jonathan Sumption joins UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers to discuss continental entanglements past and present, and the disrupted civil and international order we face today.
Professor Tim Spector was one of the âwinnersâ of the Covid era: his ZOE symptom tracker app accrued millions of users during the pandemic
Now he has pivoted back to his true passion, gut health, and taken many of his followers with him. Endorsed by celebrities such as Davina McCall and Carrie Johnson, the new version of the ZOE app promises a personalised nutrition plan and comes with a glucose blood monitor usually used by diabetics. It is proving hugely popular, with over 100,000 subscribers paying up to ÂŁ600 in their first year â and a further 300,000 on the waiting list.
It boasts all the hallmarks of a scientific endeavour, with endorsements by world-leading experts and numerous studies. But how convincing are its claims?
Deborah Cohen, Newsnightâs former Health Editor, and Margaret McCartney, a GP, undertook a forensic investigation for UnHerd and found that ZOEâs scientific foundations arenât as strong as they would have you thinkâŚ
Patrick Brown tells Freddie Sayers why he designed his research to sound catastrophic.
Read the post here.
UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers sits down with Mary Harrington to discuss the Russell Brand investigation and accusations.
Read the Post here
UnHerd's Florence Read sits down with Gad Saad to talk about why the Western world is so depressed.
How can we be happy? This question has preoccupied thinkers from Aristotle to the present day, in various disciplines encompassing philosophy, science and religion. In his latest book, The Saad Truth about Happiness, the Canadian evolutionary behavioural scientist Dr. Gad Saad takes on the subject through a scientific and practical lens. He spoke to UnHerdâs Florence Read about how happiness correlates with our politics, our religious beliefs, and the importance we place on play.
US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are ready to do a deal, according to the historian, military strategist and advisor to the US government Edward Luttwak. The comments were made in a discussion this week with UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers, during which Luttwak argued that âa shift in the overall situationâ has resulted in both leaders being more willing to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war.
The author, who has worked inside and outside of the Pentagon and the US Department of State for decades, believes that channels between the CIA and the Kremlin are sufficiently open for peace talks to develop. Following the aborted Wagner Group uprising at the end of last month, CIA chief William Burns spoke directly to Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russiaâs SVR foreign intelligence service, to reassure him there was no CIA involvement in the rebellion. For Luttwak, this implies âa certain overall attitude and willingness to communicateâ, while Naryshkinâs very presence in the Kremlin is further evidence that the war could be coming to an end.
How can normal people resist the increasingly technocratic and soulless nature of human life? Freddie Sayers sits down with writer Paul Kingsnorth at the UnHerd Club to find out.
Read the Post here
Edward Blum joins us to discuss affirmative action on the grounds of race, particularly with regard to the elite University and Colleges where it is currently a major part of the admission process.
Read the full article here
Freddie Sayers is joined by former French Ambassador GĂŠrard Araud to dive into the topic of whether the Western world is coming to an end and if we are seeing the appearance of a world of great powers.
Read the Post here
Florence Read meets Jaron Lanier to discuss the development of Artificial Intelligence, where it is going, what we can expect and if it's humans or the machines which are the problem.
Read the full article here
Freddie introduces UnHerd's brand new podcast, These Times.
These Times is the history of todayâs politics with Tom McTague and Helen Thompson
Each week Tom and Helen explore the great forces and ideas that led us to where we are right now. Itâs a politics podcast for those who want a deeper, historical understanding of the news, to understand what has really shaped our world and why.
Subscribe today searching 'These Times' in your preferred podcast app, or click here for a direct link to the show on all main podcast providers: https://unherd.com/these-times-with-tom-mctague-and-helen-thompson/
Freddie sayers in conversation with Robert F Kennedy Jr discussing vaccines, the domination of the democratic governments by corporate power, NATO, the CIA and more.
From the left-brain right-brain divide to the metaphysics of magic, Dr Iain McGilchrist addresses the profound questions of living well. The esteemed thinker was in conversation with Freddie Sayers at the UnHerd Club on 20th April 2023.
Read the article here
What the governments and media are saying in public is quite different to what they may be saying in private. Anatol Lieven, former war correspondent joins us to discuss the question of Crimea and how different the discussions in private are compared to what we hear in the public eye.
Read the Post here
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets former CIA Analyst Martin Gurri to discuss Jack Teixeira and the Pentagon leaks.
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Is disinformation a little more than a buzzword? Is it part of a far bigger movement? Freddie Sayers is joined by Jacob Siegel to discuss disinformation and America's new censorship complex.
Read the Post here
UnHerd's Flo Read meets philosopher Susan Neiman to discuss the meaning of the word 'woke' and why we use it.
Read the article here
If offence is against the rules, what hope is there for radical writing? Join world-famous author Lionel Shriver to discuss the decline of in-your-face fiction and the sinister rise of sensitivity readers.
Read the article here
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Matt Stoller to discuss the case against the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.
Read the Post here
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Chris Miller, economic historian and author of Chip War.
Read the article
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers is joined by PayPal co-founder David Sacks to examine the fallout from the collapse of SVB Bank.
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UnHerd's Freddie Sayers sits down with UnHerd contributor Mary Harrington to discuss her new book, Feminism Against Progress.
Read the Post here
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who wrote the minute by minute lockdown discussions.
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Marianne Williamson, the bestselling self-help author and former Democratic primary candidate, is back in the race to become US President. She is due to announce officially tomorrow, which will make her the first Democrat to put their name in the ring for 2024, before even Joe Biden. In 2020, Williamson (a total political unknown at the time) vied for the progressive vote, but lost out to the better-known Senator Bernie Sanders. Yet since then she has grown a loyal following of young voters who call themselves the âOrb Gangâ in reference to her New Age spiritualism. Can a new generation of American voters take her to the White House? UnHerd's Flo Read spoke to her from the UnHerd studio to find out.
Read the Post here
Fiona Hill has been closely involved in matters to do with Russia and Ukraine advising American administrations for many years. We discuss NATO's "open door", negotiation with Putin, what would be different if Trump was still in office and much more.
Read the full article here
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Jeffrey Sachs to debate who really blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
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UnHerd's Freddie Sayers and Louis-Vincent Gave discuss the current COVID situation in China.
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UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Michael Kofman.
Michael Kofman is the Director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses and a Fellow of the Center for a New American Security. He joined UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers to give an update on the situation on the ground in Ukraine and debate the risks and benefits of pursuing an âall-outâ victory against Russia.
The military analyst on the risks and rewards of Western intervention
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks to journalist Peter Hitchens about a disturbing new Big Brother Watch report into UK government spying and censorship.
Read the Post here
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers chats with American philosopher Matthew B. Crawford in the UnHerd studio.
Check out Matthew's Substack here
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UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Dr. Margery Smelkinson and Dr. Leslie Bienen to discuss the efficacy of facemasks.
Read the full Post article here:
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers and Flo Read sit down with founder of The Idler magazine, Tom Hodgkinson, to discuss the fraught history of the winter festival and the moral good in having a merry Christmas.
Read the Post here
Freddie Sayers catches up with Dr Jay Bhattacharya about his recent meeting with Elon Musk at Twitter HQ, and what he discovered about the Twitter Files.
Read the full article here
UnHerd's Florence Read meets American author Freddie deBoer to discuss the curious case of Kanye West.
In the space of a few months Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has gone from world-famous rapper to appearing on Alex Jonesâs InfoWars praising Hitler. Itâs not clear if he will ever recover reputationally from the stigma of this episode.
What lessons can we take from the public's treatment of the rapper?
Read the Post here
Freddie Sayers meets political scientist John Mearsheimer, the world-famous proponent of realism in international relations.
Read the full article here
Qatar, a previously small and little-known country in the Middle East, has come to much wider public attention as the host of this year's World Cup. Its critics have focused on human rights abuses and the treatment of migrant workers in the construction of tournament stadiums. Less talked about, but something much closer to home, is Qatarâs hand in promoting Islamist ideas in Western countries. A new report by think tank Policy Exchange investigates this very issue, and has come to some quite extraordinary conclusions. The lead author of the study, Sir John Jenkins, a former ambassador with a 35-year diplomatic career in the Middle East, joined Freddie Sayers in the studio to explain.
Read the Post here
Freddie Sayers meets David Sacks.
When Elon Musk unveiled his notorious Ukraine peace proposal on Twitter last month, it caused quite the stir. For simply outlining the potential contours of a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, the new Twitter CEO was derided as a dangerous Putin apologist (despite his company Starlink providing internet to Ukraine at a cost of $20 million a month). It happens that Musk is not the only Silicon Valley mogul who has come under fire for taking a realist line on the conflict.
In fact, a friend of Muskâs, David Sacks, wrote an article in which he alleged the West had entered into âWoke War IIIâ. Over the course of the war, the woke Left and the neoconservative Right have been marching in lockstep, and using âwoke cancellation tacticsâ to suppress any dissenting opinions.
Sacks, a multimillionaire venture capitalist and host of the hit podcast âAll-Inâ expands on his thinking in UnHerdTVâs latest interview, recorded 26th October 2022.
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Freddie Sayers meets John Gray in part two of a two-part interview.
Watch Part I: https://youtu.be/BvWczz1q0jU
Read the accompanying Part I article
Freddie Sayers meets philosopher John Gray.
John Gray was the prophet of the postliberal age, describing global capitalism as a false utopia as early as 1998. In his most recent writing, he has returned to geopolitics, and has described the populist moment, the pandemic, and the growing threat of superpower conflict as existential threats to the liberal, technocratic order.
Amid this chaos, Rishi Sunak â former Goldman Sachs banker â has become Britainâs new prime minister. Has the technocratic order of the 2010s returned? Or has the modern world moved beyond its reach?
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UnHerd's Flo Read meets Gary Nichols, whose brother, Alan Nichols, requested euthanasia and died by lethal injection in Canada in June 2019.
Read the article here
Freddie Sayers live in Birmingham with Michael Gove.
Freddie Sayers sat down with Michael Gove in Birmingham during the Conservative Party Conference for a special UnHerd Live event, asking: Whatâs the big idea? âŚdo Conservatives have a philosophy?
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Freddie Sayers discusses Jay Bhattacharya and Jenin Younes' lawsuit against the US federal government.
In October 2020, the Great Barrington Declaration was published by three academics - Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta and Martin Kulldorff - who appeared on UnHerd to break the story. It marked a watershed moment in the pandemic, but the authors found their criticisms of COVID policy were increasingly censored on social media.
Now, Bhattacharya is taking his case to the courts to prove collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech to silence skeptics like the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration. Talking to UnHerd's Freddie Sayers, he lays out the evidence that social media companies were instructed to quell scientific views which opposed government lockdown measures. Who was responsible for this infringement? According to the legal case, the conspiracy extends to the highest levels of power in Washington, and primarily at fault is the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, Anthony Fauci.
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Freddie Sayers meets Ralph Schoellhammer.
The rise of the Christian, ultra-conservative candidate Giorgia Meloni in Italy marks a strange split in European politics. Post-Brexit Britain is now in the minority of countries that have not seen a recent Rightward populist uprising.
UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers sat down with Ralph Schoellhammer, Assistant Professor of Economics at Webster University, Vienna.
Read the Post here
Florence Read meets cancelled street artist, Peter Seaton.
Earlier this month, a mural of two soldiers embracing, one Ukrainian and one Russian, appeared on the side of a building in Melbourne. It was the work of Peter Seaton, an Australian street artist known for large-scale graffiti. The title he gave the work was âPeace before Piecesâ. He describes it as a âmeditation on the dehumanisation of warâ.
He joined UnHerd in the studio to answer the question: is pro-peace art the next victim of tribal thinking?
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers is joined by Stuart McDonald to discuss the curious case of the UK's excess deaths.
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Freddie Sayers meets Thomas Fazi.
Faced with post-pandemic economic collapse, war in Ukraine and an unprecedented energy crisis, citizens of the UK and Europe are voicing their discontent. Via anti-government campaigns like âDonât Payâ and âEnough is Enoughâ, people previously unmotivated by radical politics are becoming more and more rebellious.
As a challenging winter approaches, is Europe about to see a mass movement of civil disobedience?
Writer and activist Thomas Fazi thinks so. He joined Freddie Sayers in the UnHerd studio to discuss citizen uprisings and how he would cure the Westâs poly-crises.
Read the Post here
Read Thomas Faziâs article on the rise in civil disobedience here
UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks to economic historian Prof. Wolfgang Streeck about the crisis in Germany and its implications for the future of Europe.
Read the Post here
Freddie Sayers meets Lionel Shriver.
When Lionel Shriverâs story of a troubled teenager, We Need to Talk About Kevin, was adapted for screen in 2011 it launched the career of young actor Ezra Miller.
In 2012 Miller came out as queer, saying âI donât identify as a man, I donât identify as a woman, I barely identify as a human.â And in the ensuing years, outlandish and expressive clothing came to typify the actor, who became somewhat of a standard bearer for queer identity.
But recently, Millerâs life has taken a strange turn. Throughout 2022 a string of bizarre allegations have hit the headlines, and last month the actor was arrested twice for assault and then only a few weeks ago for felony burglary. What went wrong for the promising young actor?
Millerâs troubles may just be another predictable story about the price of early fame, but it could also speak to something more troubling about contemporary culture. Shriverâs award winning novel asks how society and parenting shapes the minds of young people. It seems prescient now. Have our permissive mores and hyper-liberal culture driven young people to distraction?
Shriver joined Freddie Sayers to discuss these questions.
Read The Post here
Freddie Sayers meets Stella Moris, lawyer and wife of Julian Assange.
The case of Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who published huge troves of sensitive government documents and classified military logs, has been going on for over a decade. During that time Assange has been under house arrest, hidden from extradition inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London and since 2019 has been held in Belmarsh prison. During that time, he has married and had two children with a lawyer called Stella Moris. Moris first met Assange as a young lawyer working on his case, but is now a campaigner for his acquittal and an activist for press freedom.
Will Assange be remembered as a pioneer of the free internet or as one of its victims? With his extradition case looming, UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers met Stella Moris to hear her case for her husband, Julian Assange.
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Florence Read meets Slavoj ŽiŞek.
In his new book 'Surplus Enjoyment: A Guide for the Non-Perplexed', psychoanalyst and Marxist philosopher Slavoj ŽiŞek argues that Western decadence has reached a point of no return. When it comes to the simultaneous crises of climate change, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, he asserts, only a cooperative global effort will steer us away from catastrophe. But have the culture wars weakened the West too much to regain order in disordered times? Slavoj ŽiŞek joined UnHerd's Florence Read, live from his home in Slovenia, to discuss the cure for chaos.
Read The Post here:
Freddie Sayers meets David Fuller.
Followers of the clinical psychologist and now world-famous member of the âIntellectual Dark Webâ, Jordan Peterson, have noted a radical change in his video style in recent weeks. For David Fuller, founder of Rebel Wisdom, these videos âsignalled a watershed momentâ for Peterson, from truth-seeker and mediator between Left and Right to a blinkered tribalist. UnHerdâs Freddie Sayers sat down in the studio with Fuller to dig a little deeper into his reservations about Jordan Peterson and alternative mediaâs part in this story.
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Freddie Sayers speaks to financial analyst Louis Gave about the West's self-made economic crisis.
After the resignation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and with a leadership election looming, UnHerd convened some regular contributors for an emergency roundtable.
Has the populist experiment run its course in the UK, or is it only just beginning?
Joining Freddie Sayers to see beyond the Westminster speculation and get to grips with this historical moment were non-affiliated life peer of the House of Lords Baroness Claire Fox and UnHerd writers Will Lloyd and Aris Roussinos.
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When the COVID-19 pandemic began and most of the world went into lockdown, Scandinavia bucked the status-quo by keeping their society almost completely open. At the time, there was a sense that Sweden, Denmark and Norway would pay a dire price for their decision. But looking back now, with all the data on Covid deaths at hand, it seems that their pandemic policy was a success. Why did rest of the world get it so wrong?
Freddie Sayers sat down with Swedish biostatistician and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration Martin Kulldorff at the Frontline Club, to discuss the lessons the world should take from Swedenâs pandemic legacy.
Read the Post article here:
Freddie Sayers meets Jesse Powell.
Jesse Powell is the CEO of Kraken, one of the largest crypto currency exchanges in the world.
He has been in the headlines this week for publishing a decidedly libertarian memo about his company's working culture that challenged any workers claiming offence on topics such as pronoun policies or racial diversity targets to find work elsewhere.
Kraken's list of values includes the right to bear arms, bodily autonomy on vaccines and a moratorium on enquiring about or advertising gender pronouns in the workplace, amongst other 'anti-woke' measures.
He spoke exclusively to Freddie Sayers from San Francisco.
Read the Post here:
Freddie Sayers speaks to UnHerdâs Aris Roussinos, reporting from the frontline of the war in Ukraine.
Florence Read meets Silkie Carlo.
There are six million security cameras in use in the UK, one for every 11 people, and the majority are Chinese surveillance systems. London, where UnHerd has its offices, is the most surveilled city outside of China, and has more cameras per person than Beijing. So it has to be asked, are we being watched?
That is one claim made by a new report from Big Brother Watch on surveillance cameras made by Chinese companies. Silkie Carlo, one of the editors of the report, and the director of Big Brother Watch, joined Florence Read to investigate.
Freddie Sayers meets Ilya Shapiro.
Ilya Shapiro was due to start his new job as senior lecturer and executive director of Georgetown's Law Centre for the Constitution. But this week, he quit. All because of a single Tweet.
Freddie Sayers invited Shapiro to the studio to understand how censorship under the guise of 'diversity and inclusion' at Georgetown had played a part in his resignation.
Read the Post article here:
Freddie Sayers sits down to discuss the pandemic response with Biologist, Bret Weinstein.
Before the pandemic, evolutionary biologist and former Evergreen professor Bret Weinstein was lauded by both sides of the political divide for his insights into the crisis on American campuses. As a member of the so-called 'intellectual dark web', Weinstein was expanding his audience and being profiled by legacy media like the New York Times.
Then the pandemic began and his heterodox perspective suddenly fell out of favour, even with many of his erstwhile allies.
Advocating for alternative treatments for Covid, questioning the efficacy of the global vaccine programme and challenging narratives of the pandemic came at a cost. Without warning, the Dark Horse podcast was demonetised on YouTube and Weinstein was forced to split from the views of his former friends and supporters.
So, how can we seek truth in such divided times? Freddie Sayers invited Bret into the UnHerd studio in London to try to understand what his views really are.
UnHerd's Florence Read meets Elena Ledneva.
Elena Ledneva, a woman living with her husband and young child in the UK, applied for a Master's course in hospitality at the University of West London. Elena had years of experience in running events, including welcoming international delegates to the Sochi Winter Olympics, so on paper, she would seem to be the ideal candidate. But last week she was rejected due to 'the situation in Ukraine'. Was she really rejected for being Russian?
Elena joined Florence Read in the UnHerd studio to share her story.
Freddie Sayers meets David Heymann.
Will monkeypox be the next pandemic after COVID? To try to find an answer, Freddie Sayers invited Professor David Heymann to the UnHerd studio. Currently based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Professor Heymann is one of the worldâs most senior infectious disease epidemiologists. For 22 years he worked at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, as chief of the AIDS research programme and Assistant Director for Health Security. Before that he was in Africa for 13 years investigating the spread of monkeypox.
Freddie Sayers meets Pavel Podvig.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, the outcome that nobody has wanted to contemplate is that of Russian nuclear escalation. Threats that âmirror movesâ would be made by the Kremlin if NATO expanded, as we heard in last weekâs interview with UN representative for Russia Dmitry Polyanskiy, suggest that a strike might not be out of the question. With Finland and Sweden seeking to join NATO, is nuclear war more likely now that it was three months ago? By trying to push Vladimir Putin to the brink, is the West actually increasing the chance of a nuclear incident? What actually is the sequence of events that would lead to nuclear conflict?
To help us think through this difficult topic, UnHerd invited Dr. Pavel Podvig to the studio. Podvig is a senior researcher in the WMD programme at the Institute for Disarmament Research and a researcher with the programme on science and global security at Princeton University. He runs the worldâs premier website dedicated to analysing Putinâs nuclear capability and edited the definitive encyclopedia of Russian nuclear forces. Dr. Podvig joined Freddie Sayers live from his office in Geneva.
Read the Post article:
Freddie Sayers meets Michael Sandel.
Do we deserve what we have? Are the elites any better than the rest of us? Do the right people get to run the world?
One political philosopher who attempts to tackle these big questions is Professor Michael Sandel. A Harvard professor since the 1980s and world famous author of many bestselling books, including 'What Money Can't Buy', and most recently, 'The Tyranny of Merit', Sandel has made the case for overhauling Western neoliberalism. The alternative society Sandel suggests is more forgiving of failure and confers cultural status onto building community rather than capital.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Freddie Sayers, Sandel explores how elite institutions from the Ivy League to Wall Street have given us the wrong idea about who deserves power.
Freddie Sayers meets Dmitriy Polyanskiy.
First Deputy Representative of Russia to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy joins Freddie Sayers to discuss the nuclear threat against NATO members and possible conclusions to the conflict in Ukraine.
Former computer programmer and political theorist Curtis Yarvin is considered by many to be a dangerous thinker. He has been named in the New York Times and Vanity Fair as a founding member of the burgeoning 'New Right' and caused a stir on Tucker Carlson.
His theories of power seem to have made their way from the fringe blogosphere into the mainstream media. Now, people are trying to make sense of some of what Yarvin wants for the Western nations he criticises and where his thinking might go next.
One particularly bold claim made by Yarvin is that America would be better run as a monarchy, rather than a democracy.
To dig deeper into this esoteric political philosophy, Freddie Sayers invited Curtis Yarvin to the UnHerd studio.
Freddie Sayers meets Professor Christine Stabell Benn.
A new Danish study reveals disparities in all-cause mortality between mRNA and adenovirus vaccines. The results raise some difficult questions about the unexpected effects of the most popular COVID vaccines. Freddie Sayers speaks to the study's author Prof. Christine Stabell-Benn, from the University of Southern Denmark, to find out more.
Read the full Post article here:
Freddie Sayers discusses the backlash against Western values with Douglas Murray
When Douglas Murray was writing his new book The War on the West, Putin had not yet launched an actual war on the edge of Europe. Now, two months after the invasion of Ukraine, has the battle of ideas he writes about been put into perspective?
Freddie Sayers speaks to Douglas Murray about the factions of the Right who have been fooled by Putinâs âwoke Westâ propaganda and why the war in Ukraine is not the wake-up call we might have expected.
Thanks to Douglas for returning to the channel. His new book, The War on the West, is out now.
Read the post article here: https://unherd.com/thepost/douglas-murray-tâŚfallen-for-putin/
Freddie Sayers meets Michael Tracey.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Western media has been overwhelmed with support for Zelensky's resistance and condemnation of Putin's invasion. Intervention from the US and Europe has now extended to supplying arms and sanctioning Russia. Some are demanding this support goes even further, suggesting 'no fly zones' or boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Journalist, Substacker and Twitter provocateur Michael Tracey takes a very different view. Despite initially condemning the invasion in February, he has since committed his time to exposing what he calls the 'proxy warmongeringâ of Western powers.
Michael Tracey joins Freddie Sayers in the UnHerd studio to discuss why he is so critical of Western intervention in Ukraine and why he refuses to be labelled a Putin apologist.
Freddie Sayers meets Sergej Sumlenny.
As the war in Ukraine has become more entrenched, there has been much discussion of the small Eastern European states which might be annexed into the Russian Federation.
One political scientist and journalist has taken a different view. Sergej Sumlenny is Russian-born, but lives in Berlin. On Twitter he predicted that rather than expanding, Russia was due to dramatically contract. Might he be right? In principle, Sumlenny argues, Russia's many ethnic states are perfectly poised for secession, some with long histories of agitation and others with a newfound resentment of Moscow in light of the war.
To understand how this split could play out in practice Freddie Sayers invited him to talk UnHerd through the end of the Russian Federation and asks - what happens next?
The biggest city in China is in complete lockdown, with no end date in sight. Cases are rising and the 26 million residents of Shanghai are not permitted to leave their homes at all â not even to buy groceries or walk the dog. Footage has emerged of eerily deserted streets, but reliable information about what is really going on inside the strictest âZero Covidâ regime in the world is hard to come by, owing to the Chinese Communist Partyâs control of the media.
Now for the first time, UnHerd can reveal the reality of life inside the vast mandatory quarantine facility in Shanghai, erected within the Expo conference centre, to which infected individuals are sent.
Jane Polubotko is a Ukrainian national who has lived in Shanghai for 9 years, working for a Chinese music technology company as a marketing manager. On March 26th she felt slightly unwell, so went for a Covid test â a routine occurrence as her office is currently testing every two days. The next day she was contacted to say that the results were âabnormal,â and an emergency health vehicle appeared at her block of flats to pick her up. There was no paperwork and she didnât know where she was going.
Commentators on the war in Ukraine seem to have come to a consensus: public figures have a moral responsibility not to challenge anything other than the Russian narrative.
This rejection of balance in favour of propaganda poses a problem for political thinkers like Yanis Varoufakis, who has been accused of 'Westsplaining' and being a Putin apologist in the last week alone.
To give this controversial conversation a chance, Varoufakis joined Freddie Sayers for a wide-ranging discussion about Western pressure on Russia and finding a space for debate in what feels like a binary moment.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid came into the UnHerd studio to talk to Freddie Sayers and look back at lessons learned from the Covid era.
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Freddie Sayers meets Francis Fukuyama.
Francis Fukuyama is a political scientist and public intellectual, most famous for his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man which has helped to define how we understand contemporary history. His new book is called Liberalism and its Discontents.
Freddie Sayers spoke to Dr. Fukuyama about the war in Ukraine, current trends in Western democracy, and how liberalism can better understand aspects of the human condition it has historically neglected.
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Getting an accurate picture of who is winning the war in Ukraine has become increasingly difficult in the information age. Log onto Twitter and there are images of burnt out Russian tanks being towed away by Ukrainian farmers and hostage-style videos featuring Russians POWs expressing regret over the invasion; meanwhile, Western news outlets are littered with tales of doughty Ukrainian protesters sending the Russian enemy into retreat and Kyivans discovering a newfound unity in the face of war.
But is this a fair depiction of whatâs really occurring on the ground? Freddie Sayers sat down with Bill Roggio, a leading military analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, to discuss.
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Freddie Sayers meets with Samo Burja.
With Western powers increasingly united against Russia, we seem to be witnessing the end of the unipolar world. Financially, culturally and spiritually we have never been so bifurcated. Could this be the end of civilisation as we know it?
To find a way through the big issues at stake, Freddie Sayers sat down with Samo Burja, a sociologist and the founder of Bismarck Analysis.
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When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine it was under the guise of âdenazifyingâ the country. But are there really any Nazis in Ukraine? Or is this just a story spun by the Kremlin? Aris Roussinos joins Freddie Sayers to unpick this contentious topic and seek some insight into Ukraineâs far-Right factions.
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Freddie Sayers meets Marlene Laruelle.
Aleksandr Dugin, the ultra-nationalist Russian philosopher and erstwhile organiser of the National Bolshevik Party, has been referred to as âPutinâs brainâ. Professor Marlene Laruelle, the worldâs leading expert on Dugin, says his influence is no longer direct. Dugin stated mission is to preserve the "Russian soul" and expand the Eurasian empire in defiance of the West. Today, Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine and increasingly isolated global position feels like some of these visions have become a dark reality. Freddie Sayers sat down with Laruelle to seek a deeper understanding of the oft-quoted concept of the "Russian soul", what Dugin wants and how Putin might be able to help him get it.
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Freddie Sayers meets Leonid Ragozin.
Leonid Ragozin was reporting in Siberia when Putin began to send troops to the Ukrainian border at Belarus. Despite the menacing signs, he was quick to voice his skepticism about Russiaâs intentions to invade. But when tanks rolled into Ukraine over a week ago, Ragozin was left, like many, wondering: why had he got it so wrong?
To try to answer this question Freddie Sayers met Ragozin to discuss Putinâs mysterious motivations and what the possible outcomes are for the war in Ukraine.
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Freddie Sayers meets Justin Bronk.
It has been a week since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and one of many unanswered questions is why Russia has yet to launch the vast majority of its combat aircraft, despite having an advantage over the comparatively small Ukrainian air force. Could Putin be holding back the full might of his army for tactical or political reasons? Or is this failure to launch a symptom of poor planning by the Kremlin?
To seek out some technical expertise on this topic, Freddie Sayers spoke to Justin Bronk, Research Fellow for Military Airpower at the Royal United Services Institute.
Freddie Sayers meets Andreas Umland.
This week we are being inundated with information about what is going on in Ukraine. And the challenge just to get above the noise and find out what exactly is going on and where it might go next. To dig into some of these questions, Freddie Sayers sat down with Dr. Andreas Umland, an analyst for the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European studies and expert in contemporary Russian and Ukrainian politics.
Flo Read meets Siva, Autumn, and Ann.
Public schools in San Francisco sent their students home for 18 months during the COVID pandemic, the longest school closure in the country. While children were falling behind at home, the cityâs elected school board was tasked with handling the re-opening. But, it seemed, they were too busy trying to pander to progressive demands to get children back in the classroom. A group of parents, angry with the extended shutdown and dithering meetings, launched a campaign to recall three members of the school board. Last week, they won. Florence Read sat down with three parents involved in the recall, Autumn, Siva and Ann, to discuss why COVID has been such a disaster for San Francisco's schools.
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Freddie Sayers meets Konstantin Kisin.
Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, pundits from mainstream and alternative media platforms across the political spectrum have been left eating humble pie. Predictions of Russiaâs next move as troops built up on the border have ranged from blaming hawkish Americans for hyping up a non-existent threat, to claims that Putin was using the standoff to make himself an international talking point. Now that it is clear that Putin is done with talking and intends to take action, we are left wondering: who can we trust on Ukraine? To puzzle out this question, Freddie Sayers sat down for an emergency episode with Konstantin Kisin, host of the Triggernometry podcast and YouTube channel.
Freddie Sayers meets Louis-Vincent Gave.
Since the end of November 2021, Moderna's share price has been falling dramatically, from $368 to $147 at the time of writing.
Why might this be? And what does it tell us about the vaccines more generally?
Freddie Sayers sat down with Louis Gave, a financial analyst and co-founder of Gavekal, a financial services firm based in Hong Kong. Gave noted that the markets had been ahead of politicians and even epidemiologists on the Omicron variant in terms of its lethality, but also evidently they had determined that vaccines were not the âsilver bulletâ solution they were initially sold as. What may be taboo to say in political circles is more bluntly put when people are betting their money on the outcome.
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Freddie Sayers meets Glenn Loury.
To get a handle on some of the race related news stories coming out of America, from Bidenâs Supreme Court nomination to Joe Roganâs cancellation, Freddie Sayers spoke to Glenn Loury, an economist and cultural critic. Loury was the first African American tenured professor of economics in the history of Harvard University and has set himself apart from his contemporaries by taking a sceptical view of the racialised rhetoric of American academia. In this wide-ranging conversation he discusses model minorities, Black Lives Matter and Whoopi Goldberg's alleged anti-semitism.
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Featuring: Mary Harrington, Julie Bindel, Hadley Freeman and Sally Chatterton.
It wasnât long ago that feminism was a united movement resisting the patriarchal systems of old. Now, disputes between factions of feminists take up as much time as the fight for womenâs liberation.
To dig a little deeper into the points of schism and solidarity in fourth wave feminism, UnHerd invited activist and author Julie Bindel and columnists Hadley Freeman and Mary Harrington to an evening at the Art Workersâ Guild.
The panel, chaired by UnHerd Editor Sally Chatterton, discussed their alliances and conflicts on the subjects of gender identity, sex work, surrogacy, motherhood and sexuality.
In our divided times, where does feminism go next?
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Freddie Sayers meets Dr Camilla Holten-Møller, chair of the Expert Group for Mathematical Modelling at Denmarkâs public health agency âStatens Serum Institutâ.
Holten-Møller was in charge of producing the models before Christmas that informed Danish policy, and her groupâs updated advice in January led to the cancellation of all Danish Covid restrictions (even as case numbers continue to climb to all-time highs). She joins UnHerd to discuss Denmark's radical new policy, data modelling and why Omicron might be the end of the pandemic.
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Freddie Sayers meets Kate Clanchy.
Kate Clanchy is a writer, teacher, and editor. She has been a qualified and practicing teacher since she was 22. Her writing includes three prize-winning collections of poetry, the Costa First Novel Prize-shortlisted Meeting the English, and the Orwell Prize-winning memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me.
Last summer her work came under sustained criticism for its purportedly insensitive depictions of her students. Picador, her publisher until last week, did not come to her defence. Instead her students, who feature in her memoir, and in collections of their wiring like England Poem from A School, that Clanchy edited, supported her alone.
Last September, at least 20 of them wrote an open letter to The Bookseller defending her. They said their personal experiences of Clanchy were of âunequivocal care and support for us⌠as poets and as peopleâ. They said they wanted to push back against suggestions that they âmay be victims in some capacity.â They said Clanchyâs support gave them confidence as poets.
The furore around Clanchy made headlines across the UK last summer. She came to the UnHerd studio to discuss her experiences â of teaching, writing, and cancel culture â for the first time with Freddie Sayers.
For more read The Post from UnHerd.
In a wide-ranging and forthright interview with Freddie Sayers, Professor Cyrille Cohen, head of Immunology at Bar Ilan University and a member of the advisory committee for vaccines for the Israeli Government said:
- The Green Pass / vaccine passport concept was no longer relevant in the Omicron era and should be phased out (he expected it to be in short order in Israel)
- He and his colleagues were surprised and disappointed that the vaccines did not prevent transmission, as they had originally hoped
- The biggest mistake of the pandemic in Israel was closing schools and education â he apologised for that
- Widespread infection is now an inevitable part of future immunity â otherwise known as herd immunity
- Omicron has accelerated the pandemic into the endemic phase, in which Covid will be âlike fluâ
For more read The Post from UnHerd.
Steve James is a critical care consultant at Kingâs College Hospital in London. When Health Secretary Sajid Javid visited last Friday, he asked the NHS staff about what they thought of the forthcoming mandates that will make Covid vaccination a condition of deployment for NHS staff. Dr James spoke out, saying why he was against the mandate and why he hadnât taken the vaccine himself.
It made headlines across the UK media, in particular coming from a Cambridge-educated NHS frontline doctor. Dr James came in to the UnHerd studio to explain his position in more detail to Freddie Sayers.
While he does not think of himself as âanti-vaxâ (he dislikes the label), he argues that thereâs nothing wrong with individuals preferring not to take vaccines if they so choose. Nevertheless, he accepts that vaccines have had an important effect on Covid hospitalisation rates. âUndoubtedly the vaccines have made a big difference,â he says.
But he objects to the simplistic messaging around vaccination, saying that because Covid is so much more dangerous to older people and vulnerable groups, the insistence on universal vaccination (including making examples of people who refuse) is inappropriate.
Dr James has had Covid (he doesnât know when, but tests positive for antibodies). But he admits he hadnât taken the vaccine even for the period of months before he tested for antibodies, because he preferred to wait a period to fully understand the extent of any side effects.
For more read The Post from UnHerd