Historian Tom Holland, author of bestselling book Dominion, about the impact of Christianity on Western civilisation, sits down with Freddie Sayers for our Christmas special to talk about Christmas, and whether it is still a Christian festival even if it’s been cancelled. Anxiety about Christmas being “cancelled” has been a staple in tabloid newspapers for decades — but according to writer and historian Tom Holland, it’s been around a lot longer than that. “Anxiety about that is in itself a very...
Dec 23, 2020•31 min
The world of Swedish epidemiology is small. Fredrik Elgh is a Professor of Virology at Umeå University in Northern Sweden and a clinical physician, but earlier in his career, heading up a department at the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control in Stockholm, a certain Anders Tegnell was in his staff, and Johan Giesecke was another department head. From our 45-minute conversation, I think we can surmise that they are no longer on speed dial. Professor Elgh has been one of the most outsp...
Dec 18, 2020•41 min
OnlyFans, the self-publishing pornography app, has taken off during the course of 2020 with an average of 200,000 new users signing up each day. The platform allows creators to release photos and videos to paying subscribers; while the content published is entirely the choice of the creator, the most common genre is pornography. In an extraordinarily candid conversation, Aella explains to Freddie Sayers how she rationalises her lifestyle. She believes that while some people get into sex work bec...
Dec 15, 2020•49 min
Freddie Sayers meets David Engelthaler, co-director of the T-Gen Research Institute and former state epidemiologist of Arizona. Earlier this week, Freddie Sayers spoke to David Engelthaler, co-director of the T-Gen Research Institute and former state epidemiologist of Arizona, who has been investigating this idea. His view is that there is now “really compelling evidence” that this strain replicates faster than earlier strains, which "likely" came out of China and through to Europe. "It's really...
Dec 10, 2020•32 min
Over recent years, we’ve learned to pay attention to the intellectual trends and taboos on university campuses — they have a way of spilling out into mainstream corporate and political life. Which is why the vote among the 7,000 faculty at Cambridge on a new 'free speech policy' matters. The results will be announced tomorrow at 5pm and will be an indication of the willingness to resist the increasing threats to free speech and academic enquiry around politically sensitive topics. Cambridge has ...
Dec 07, 2020•22 min
Arguably the most famous Hong Kong dissident alive today, Nathan Law has become one of the most recognisable faces of the pro-democracy movement in his homeland. Having been at the forefront of protests against the controversial Hong Kong national security law over the summer, the democracy activist was subsequently forced to flee Hong Kong over fears for his safety. The departure proved timely: just this week three of his fellow activists (including Joshua Wong) were arrested and sentenced to 1...
Dec 03, 2020•29 min
With less than two months two go until Joe Biden’s inauguration, the President-elect has been busy filling up cabinet posts with various Obama-era appointees. These appointments have been met with some criticism by those on the Left, who argue that — in the face of a global pandemic, a flagging economy and impending climate crisis — they are not nearly bold enough. Freddie Sayers spoke to historian and sociologist of the Left Harvey Kaye, a former advisor and supporter of Bernie Sanders, who has...
Dec 01, 2020•37 min
Suzanne Moore is one of the most famous columnists at the Guardian newspaper — or at least she was until she finally left last week, accused by colleagues of being a 'transphobe'. For the first time, she talks about her experience to Freddie Sayers — what it felt like to be rounded on how she felt couldn't stay. It's a sobering story of an attempt to shut down freedom of speech at one of the world's biggest newspapers. Don't miss her full essay on UnHerd: https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-...
Nov 25, 2020•46 min
One of the most interesting sources of data for the progress of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the ZOE app — downloaded by over 4.3 million people, who input symptoms and test results every day. Its founder is Professor Tim Spector , an epidemiologist from KCL, and the app is now funded by the Government and Number Ten receives daily data from it. He received an OBE for services to fighting the pandemic earlier this year. The ZOE app made headlines recently for demonstrating quite conclusively t...
Nov 14, 2020•30 min
From the archive, first published: 29 October 2020 Since Aris Roussinos’s fantastic essay on UnHerd earlier this month, “ Why Fukuyama was right all along ,” I’ve been getting to know the much-misunderstood thinker’s writing. It turns out that, far from the triumphalist credo of 1990s liberalism, The End of History is a disquieting, and prescient, sketch of what the liberal era would feel like, and how it would eventually go wrong. Much of Fukuyama’s writing since – from The Great Disruption (19...
Nov 12, 2020•43 min
From the archive, first published: 20 October 2020. Freddie Sayers caught up with Scott Atlas, a healthcare policy academic from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, who has become the latest lightning rod for the controversy around Covid-19 policy and his support for a more targeted response. Speaking from inside the White House, where he is now Senior advisor to the President and a member of the Coronavirus task force, he does not hold back. He tells us that he is disgusted and dismayed at the me...
Nov 12, 2020•42 min
From the archive, first published 15 October 2020 Piers Morgan has made a career out of robust, forceful and — at times — abrasive interviews. Since the start of the pandemic, he has found himself an unlikely hero of the ‘pro-lockdowners’ (even being labelled by one columnist as ‘the hero Gotham didn’t know it wanted, but possibly needed’) for this confrontational style, the full force of which was felt by government ministers earlier this year. He has, however, been criticised for the hostile n...
Nov 12, 2020•46 min
From the archive, first published on 10 September 2020. What have fungi got to do with politics, philosophy, Covid-19 or any of the great crises we face? Well, potentially rather a lot. Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and expert on the mysterious world of fungi, and has just published a book on the subject, Entangled Life, that grabbed our attention. He’s a fascinating character and we’ve all found ourselves rather mesmerised with the story he has to tell about the fungal world, its possibilitie...
Nov 12, 2020•37 min
From the archive, first published 2 July 2020. It’s easy to dismiss anyone querying the Black Lives Matter movement as either pointlessly contrarian or — worse — actually racist. After all, who could object to the truism contained within the movement’s name? But there are important questions to ask about what the facts show about the scale of ‘systemic racism’, and whether drawing attention to race in such an intense way ultimately advances or hurts Martin Luther King’s vision of people being ju...
Nov 12, 2020•38 min
Freddie Sayers from online magazine UnHerd seeks out top scientists, writers, politicians and thinkers for in-depth interviews to try and help us work out what’s really going. 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. Due to popular demand here is a podcast version of our YouTube — available to watch, for free here or by searching ‘LockdownTV’. Enjoy! And don't forget to rate, like and subs...
Nov 12, 2020•1 min
