UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers is joined by Stuart McDonald to discuss the curious case of the UK's excess deaths.Read the Post here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ‘Don’t Pay’ and ‘Enough is Enough’, 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 West’s poly-crises.Read the Post hereRead Thomas Fazi’s article on the rise in civil disobedience here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddie Sayers meets Lionel Shriver.When Lionel Shriver’s 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 “I don’t identify as a man, I don’t identify as a woman, I barely identify as a human.” 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, Miller’s 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?Miller’s 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. Shriver’s 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers met Stella Moris to hear her case for her husband, Julian Assange.Read the Post here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Florence Read meets Slavoj Žižek.In his new book 'Surplus Enjoyment: A Guide for the Non-Perplexed', psychoanalyst and Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek 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 Žižek joined UnHerd's Florence Read, live from his home in Slovenia, to discuss the cure for chaos.Read The Post here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddie Sayers meets David Fuller.Followers of the clinical psychologist and now world-famous member of the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’, Jordan Peterson, have noted a radical change in his video style in recent weeks. For David Fuller, founder of Rebel Wisdom, these videos ‘signalled a watershed moment’ for Peterson, from truth-seeker and mediator between Left and Right to a blinkered tribalist. UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers sat down in the studio with Fuller to dig a little deeper into his reservations about Jordan Peterson and alternative media’s part in this story.Read the Post here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Was the sexual revolution a mistake? Did unfettered freedom help or harm women? Florence Read is joined by OnlyFans star Aella and the author of 'The Case Against the Sexual Revolution', Louise Perry, to find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Boris Johnson's former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost has put his support behind Liz Truss. He sat down with Freddie Sayers to explain that decision, and whether today's Conservatives add up to a philosophy of government... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Florence Read meets with documentary filmmaker Alex Lee Moyer Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddie Sayers speaks to financial analyst Louis Gave about the West's self-made economic crisis.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Read the Post here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Sweden’s pandemic legacy.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddie Sayers speaks to UnHerd’s Aris Roussinos, reporting from the frontline of the war in Ukraine.Read the article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Read the post article Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 world’s 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.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 “mirror moves” would be made by the Kremlin if NATO expanded, as we heard in last week’s 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 world’s premier website dedicated to analysing Putin’s 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: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddie Sayers discusses the backlash against Western values with Douglas MurrayWhen 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 Putin’s ‘woke West’ 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-t…fallen-for-putin/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 warmongering’ 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.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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?Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 — 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 “Zero Covid” regime in the world is hard to come by, owing to the Chinese Communist Party’s 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 — a routine occurrence as her office is currently testing every two days. The next day she was contacted to say that the results were “abnormal,” and an emergency health vehicle appeared at her block of flats to pick her up. There was no paperwork and she didn’t know where she was going. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid came into the UnHerd studio to talk to Freddie Sayers and look back at lessons learned from the Covid era.Read the full post here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Read the full article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 what’s 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.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Read the post article here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine it was under the guise of ‘denazifying’ 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 Ukraine’s far-Right factions.Read the article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ‘Putin’s brain’. Professor Marlene Laruelle, the world’s 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, Russia’s 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.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Russia’s 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 Putin’s mysterious motivations and what the possible outcomes are for the war in Ukraine.Read the Post here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Read the full article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Read the full article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 city’s 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.Read the Post piece here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Russia’s 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.Read the Post article here: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 ‘silver bullet’ 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.Read The Post here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddie Sayers meets Glenn Loury.To get a handle on some of the race related news stories coming out of America, from Biden’s Supreme Court nomination to Joe Rogan’s 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.Read the full article here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Featuring: Mary Harrington, Julie Bindel, Hadley Freeman and Sally Chatterton.It wasn’t 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 women’s 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 Workers’ 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?Read The Post article here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddie Sayers meets Dr Camilla Holten-Møller, chair of the Expert Group for Mathematical Modelling at Denmark’s public health agency ‘Statens Serum Institut’.Holten-Møller was in charge of producing the models before Christmas that informed Danish policy, and her group’s 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.Read the Post article here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 “unequivocal care and support for us… as poets and as people”. They said they wanted to push back against suggestions that they “may be victims in some capacity.” They said Clanchy’s 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 — of teaching, writing, and cancel culture — for the first time with Freddie Sayers.For more read The Post from UnHerd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 – he apologised for that- Widespread infection is now an inevitable part of future immunity — otherwise known as herd immunity- Omicron has accelerated the pandemic into the endemic phase, in which Covid will be “like flu”For more read The Post from UnHerd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve James is a critical care consultant at King’s 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 hadn’t 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 ‘anti-vax’ (he dislikes the label), he argues that there’s 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. “Undoubtedly the vaccines have made a big difference,” 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 doesn’t know when, but tests positive for antibodies). But he admits he hadn’t 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

UnHerd's contributors look back at a tumultuous year.The year began with riots in Capitol Hill in Washington and the removal of Donald Trump from social media; in March Meghan and Harry gave their interview to Oprah from a Los Angeles mansion, and in April Prince Phillip passed away; Western troops departed Afghanistan, leaving chaotic scenes in the capital Kabul; Maya Forstater was judged by the courts to be legally entitled to her gender critical viewpoints — and Kathleen Stock was forced out of Sussex University; bitcoin became formal tender in its first nation state; and Covid dominated public policy for the second year running.Freddie Sayers is joined by Aris Roussinos and Mary Harrington to look back on a tumultuous and consequential year.For the full story check out The Post from UnHerd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As new data about the Omicron variant is interpreted (and perhaps predictably, misinterpreted) by experts worldwide, South Africa has become a coronavirus case-study under global surveillance. Last week, UnHerd spoke to Pieter Streicher about the data coming out of Gauteng, but we now wanted to look at the bigger picture in that country.To get a snapshot into the cultural and political reality on the ground, Freddie Sayers sat down with Brian Pottinger, former Editor of the South African Sunday Times. He joined UnHerd from his home on the KwaZulu Natal North Coast.For the full story check out The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.