The world could end before you finish listening to this podcast. That's the reality of a nuclear-armed world. If a sense of complacency had crept in about the threat of nuclear weapons, Annie Jacobsen's stunning new book is a wake up call. 'Nuclear War: A Scenario' imagines the 72 minutes after the 'button is pushed', and it doesn't end well. It's shockingly realistic, due to Annie’s meticulous research, which reflects her status as a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author...
Jun 05, 2024•44 min•Ep. 69
Heresy is defined as opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted. It has rarely been more dangerous to be a heretic, which is why it's rarely been more important to champion them. There is no bigger heretic than Andrew Gold. Andrew is a journalist, author, and TV presenter who produces documentaries on bizarre and controversial subcultures. He has battled an abusive exorcist, dueled with the Crazy Baby Lady, hunted UFOs, and spoken to a teen school captain, who also happened to be...
May 29, 2024•58 min•Ep. 68
Note: We had some minor sound issues in the first 10 minutes, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to edit out anything that Victor said. Stick with it. It’s worth it! In some respects, the West is exhibiting similar symptoms to past civilizations that decayed, declined, or were completely wiped off the map. At the same time, there are green shoots that may point to a rebirth of the United States, and Western civilization more broadly. To put our moment in a historical context, Will is joined by the ...
May 22, 2024•57 min•Ep. 67
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Why is Africa poor? There’s a series of trendy answers to that question, that are almost taken as read amongst the progressive elite that dominate our institutions. Racism, slavery, and colonialism. Magatte Wade has called BS on this narrative, and she is uniquely qualified to do so, being widely regarded as the world’s leading African prosperity activist. She is an entrepreneur, speaker, and author. Her latest book i...
May 15, 2024•53 min•Ep. 66
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Across the western world, cosplay protests are ongoing in some of the most elite academic institutions. They point to a deeper malaise in places of higher education. That's a real problem. The illiberal dogmas that have infiltrated our social institutions have their roots in the cultural rot in western education systems. To discuss how this happened, and what can be done, Will is joined by Eric Kaufmann. Eric is Profe...
May 08, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 65
Introducing your safe space for dangerous conversations. Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here . Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.
May 06, 2024•2 min
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Western liberal democratic capitalism has created more prosperity, and enabled more human flourishing, than any other social system. It is something we should be proud of. And yet, Jonah Goldberg argues it is under attack, both from illiberal progressive identity politics, and right-wing populism. Jonah is one of America's most esteemed political pundits. He was the first editor of National Review Online, before found...
May 01, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 64
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. There’s a common refrain when it comes to housing in Australia today: ‘it’s never been harder to enter the housing market’. Housing affordability has been labelled by politicians, the media, and aspiring homeowners as a historic crisis. What if that’s just not the case? What if we’ve seen the same story countless times before? What the markets are doing what they have always done, and what they should be doing? Perhap...
Apr 24, 2024•49 min•Ep. 63
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. It’s easy to forget that journalists were once invested with immense trust by citizens. This is no longer the case. Journalists are amongst the least trusted members of society, and it has been largely self-inflicted. The rise of activist journalism over objective journalism, the rush for online clicks, and the narcissistic desire of too many to transition from being journalists to media personalities has blighted the...
Apr 17, 2024•51 min•Ep. 62
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Gen Z has developed quite a reputation. Lazy. Difficult to work with. Technology-addicted. And of course, insufferably woke. What if that reputation is ill-founded? What if, in fact, Gen Z is the most culturally conservative generation since World War Two? What if Gen Z are the saviours-in-waiting of western civilisation? That’s the opinion of content creator, author and Gen Z-er, Isabel Brown. Isabel’s new book is ti...
Apr 10, 2024•54 min•Ep. 61
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Sometimes it feels like the tidal wave of ‘wokeness’ (or identity politics) washed over the western world almost overnight. It has captured more or less every societal institution in a remarkably short period of time. However, the intellectual roots of the movement can be traced back over fifty years. The best analysis on how it has achieved such incredible influence comes from the German-American political scientist,...
Apr 03, 2024•56 min•Ep. 60
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Politics is downstream from culture. To change politics, one must first change culture. The left intrinsically understands this in a way that the right simply does not. The arts have been captured by a toxic mixture of identity politics, social justice ideology, and cancel culture. Matthew Marsden has seen this ideological takeover firsthand. He rose to fame from his role on the iconic British TV series Coronation Str...
Mar 27, 2024•54 min•Ep. 59
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. There are two ways to look at American politics in 2024. There’s the prevailing pessimistic view. Many people think democracy is under threat, the economy is structurally vulnerable, the military is stretched, and for many, the looming election represents a choice between two geriatric evils. There is another perspective. What incredible fun! American politics has never been so entertaining. And as we look forward to ...
Mar 20, 2024•53 min•Ep. 58
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. It is now in vogue to celebrate non-Western cultures and disparage Western ones. Many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. It’s not just dishonest scholars who benefit from this intellectual fraud but hostile nations and human rights abusers hoping to distract from their own ongoing villainy. If the West is to survive, it must be defended. In this very special episo...
Mar 13, 2024•41 min•Ep. 57
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. We as a society are self-censoring at record rates. Say the wrong thing at the wrong moment to the wrong person and the consequences can be dire. When the truth is no defense and nuance is seen as an attack, self-censorship is a rational choice. Yet, our silence comes with a price. When we are too fearful to speak openly and honestly, we deprive ourselves of the ability to build genuine relationships, we yield all cul...
Mar 06, 2024•50 min•Ep. 56
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Australia is facing serious domestic and international challenges, all at a time when the political class has arguably never been so ill-equipped to address them. In fact, perhaps the only thing that nearly all Australians can agree on is that our leaders are not a patch on what they were in times gone by. At the same time, ‘she’ll be right, mate’ has served Australia well enough so far, and may yet still. To help us ...
Feb 28, 2024•43 min•Ep. 55
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Bill Clinton's strategist James Carville memorably said, "It's the economy, stupid". Times have changed. The great political battles of our time are not waged over economics, but cultural issues. Today, "It's the culture, stupid". No one understands this better than Matt Goodwin. Matt is an academic and bestselling author, known for his work on political volatility, risk, populism, British politics, and Brexit. His bo...
Feb 21, 2024•56 min•Ep. 54
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. Journalist. Contrarian. Iconoclast. Intellectual. Provocateur... And one of the most successful novelists of the 21st century. Lionel Shriver has, in her own words, spent a career courting self-destruction. But she's still standing. In this no-holds barred conversation with Will, Lionel gives her inimitable take on identity politics, the trans debate, and the manias that continue to afflict society in 2024. Note: Lion...
Feb 14, 2024•50 min•Ep. 53
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. We all comfort ourselves by believing in cause and effect. According to Dr Brian Klaas, we wilfully ignore a bewildering truth: but for a few small changes, our lives and our societies could be profoundly different. When given the choice between complex uncertainty and comforting – but wrong – certainty, we too often choose comfort. In other words, we ignore the flukes. Brian is an associate professor of global politi...
Feb 07, 2024•50 min•Ep. 52
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. 2024 is the biggest election year in history. Countries with more than half the world’s population – over four billion people – will go to the polls. You’d think the more elections the better, right? Dr Nic Cheeseman would urge caution. In fact, he argues that the greatest political paradox of our time is that there are more elections than ever before, and yet the world is becoming less democratic. Nic is the Professo...
Jan 31, 2024•58 min•Ep. 51
The most astute social commentators on the present are the people who have the deepest understanding of the past. As Mark Twain famously said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Historians are best placed to hear the rhymes of history in the news of the day. There are few historians who have demonstrated such an aptitude and insight for understanding modern politics and culture as Dr Victor Davis Hanson. Victor is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Insti...
Jan 24, 2024•57 min•Ep. 50
It’s perhaps never been harder to speak the truth than it is in the West today. In fact, many people now implicitly question the value of the truth itself. That’s why it’s so important to recognise and champion people with the intellectual capacity and moral courage to speak the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. Few people in the public discourse can speak deep truths with such simplicity and power as Zuby. Zuby is a rapper, author, podcast host, public speaker and creative entrepren...
Jan 17, 2024•52 min•Ep. 49
Few people called for sanity as the world lost its collective mind during the COVID pandemic, but Jay Bhattacharya was certainly one of them. Jay is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and one of the three authors of The Great Barrington Declaration. In this wide-ranging conversation with Will, Jay discusses the litany of institutional failures that marred the pandemic response, and what we must do to avoid ...
Jan 10, 2024•49 min•Ep. 48
The overwhelming majority of academic articles come and go with little fanfare. There may be the odd admiring nod from a professor, or a few lively debates in university tutorial rooms. But that’s normally about it. Unless you are Professor Bruce Gilley. In 2017, Bruce authored a watershed paper titled, ‘The Case for Colonialism.’ It sparked a global furore. Far from cowered, Bruce has just released a new book, also titled ‘The Case for Colonialism’, that doubles down on his argument: colonialis...
Jan 03, 2024•52 min•Ep. 47
It’s that time of the year when many of us will sit down and write. It could be resolutions. It could be reflections. It could be that book that everyone has inside them. There's just one problem. It's really hard. To crack the code of writing, Will is joined by one of the most successful crime fiction authors of all time, Jeffery Deaver. Jeffery has sold over 50 million novels in 25 languages, won numerous awards and counts Ian Rankin, Harlan Coben and Lee Child among his fans. His latest novel...
Dec 27, 2023•51 min•Ep. 46
It's hard not to see America as a country in decline. Foreign policy attention is stretched, political debate is toxic, the national debt is eye-watering, and the institutions have been ideologically captured. However, America has been written off before. It's geographic, demographic, economic and military advantages remain the envy of the world. To discuss American politics as we enter a defining year in the country's history, Will is joined by best-selling author, host of The Gorka Reality Che...
Dec 20, 2023•53 min•Ep. 45
As we approach the end of 2023, it’s easy to become despondent about the fate of the West. War rages in Ukraine and the Middle East, as China eyes off Taiwan. The cost of living crisis is becoming unbearable for average families. Illiberal ‘wokeism’ continues to infect our institutions. And the Anglosphere leaders elected to guide us out of this mess appear woefully ill-equipped to do so. To discuss the state of the world, and the small matter of the future of western civilisation, Will is joine...
Dec 13, 2023•50 min•Ep. 44
Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations. For over 30 years, Naomi Wolf was lauded as a feminist icon, a bestselling author and a darling of liberal America. Her investigative journalism during the COVID pandemic led to those labels being replaced overnight with pejoratives like 'conspiracy theorist' and 'anti-vaxxer'. Unbowed and unbroken, Naomi continues to stand against tyranny in the finest tradition of classical liberalism. Her new book is titled 'Facing...
Dec 06, 2023•52 min•Ep. 43
Satire is one of the most important ingredients of a healthy public discourse. But it is under threat across the west. Comedy, once the most subversive of artforms, has caved to the woke mob. Misinformation laws threaten to curtail free speech even further. And perhaps some of us have lost the ability to laugh at the irreverent and the politically incorrect. Joel Berry is not one of those people. Joel is the Managing Editor of the Babylon Bee, one of (if not the) most popular satirical websites ...
Nov 29, 2023•48 min•Ep. 42
Who was the most influential person in history? Why do empires fall? What is the biggest misconception about WWI? Napoleon or Alexander the Great? And why are men so obsessed with the Roman Empire? All these questions (and more) are answered by the host of Hardcore History, Dan Carlin. Hardcore History is widely recognised as one of the greatest podcasts of all-time. It reimagined the telling of history for the modern media age. Follow Australiana on social media here. Subscribe to The Spectator...
Nov 22, 2023•54 min•Ep. 41
