UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

Do we currently enjoy free speech in the arts? In recent years the worlds of publishing, fine art, and music, have been engulfed in controversies over speech and manners. Several high-profile artists have been cancelled — removed from their positions for failing to go along with prevailing political orthodoxies.At a live UnHerd members event this week, Freddie Sayers was joined by musician Winston Marshall, artists Jess de Wahls, and writer Sarah Ditum to ask: what is the state of free speech in the arts? Is there the beginnings of a return of freedom of thought? Each of them has experienced their own version of cancellation, and they shared their experiences and thoughts before a small audience at the Sekforde Arms in Clerkenwell.Don’t miss this highlights video — and make sure to join UnHerd to be invited to our next event!For more read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few people can claim to have as close access to “Trumpworld” — the circle of advisors around ex-President Trump — as Jason Miller. In fact, he spoke to Trump himself just yesterday.Originally the chief campaign spokesman for the 2016 campaign, Miller was drafted back for the final months of the re-election campaign, in June 2020. He co-presented a podcast, The War Room, with Steve Bannon, which was removed from YouTube following the Capitol Hill violence on January 6th and is currently CEO of a new social media platform, Gettr.My first question: how likely is it that Donald Trump will run for President again in 2024?“You know, if you'd asked me when President Trump first left office, what the odds were of him running again in in 2024, I probably would have said 50-50. But I think in recent weeks, seeing him back out on the campaign trail, it's kind of the inverse effect, where the more that the media is attacking him and saying that he's politically finished, I think the more that he wants to go and run for office. I'd probably put it at two to one odds that that he does go and run in 2024. So that's making it more likely, in my estimation that he's going to run in 2024.”Given Miller’s ringside seat on the final months of the Trump Presidency, I asked him about some of the key moments on the inside. As a key advisor to the campaign – why did he lose? When did it all go wrong?#Trump2024 #censorship #USPoliticsFor more, read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chances are, if you’ve ever been on the internet, you’ve visited Wikipedia. It is the world’s fifth largest website, pulling in an estimated 6.1 billion followers per month and serves as a cheat sheet for almost any topic in the world. So great is the online encyclopaedia’s influence is so great that it is the biggest and “most read reference work in history”, with as many as 56 million editions. But the truth about this supposedly neutral purveyor of information is a little more complex. Historically, Wikipedia has been written and monitored by a community of volunteers who collaborated and contested competing claims with one another. In the words of Wikipedia’s co-founder, Larry Sanger who spoke to Freddie Sayers on LockdownTV, these volunteers would “battle it out”. This battle of ideas on Wikipedia’s platform formed a crucial part of the encyclopaedia’s commitment to neutrality, which according to Sanger, was abandoned after 2009. In the years since, on issues ranging from Covid to Joe Biden, it has become increasingly partisan, primarily espousing an establishment viewpoint that increasingly represents “propaganda”. This, says Sanger, is why he left the site in 2007, describing it as “broken beyond repair”.For more, read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The concept of scientism, the quasi-religious belief in science and scientists, has risen in prominence over the past year. It has been a theme in many UnHerd interviews, ranging from Matthew Crawford, who detailed the ways in which science has evolved from a mode of inquiry into a source of authority, to Richard Dawkins, who dismissed scientism as a “dirty word”. To author and biologist Rupert Sheldrake, it means something different: “It is the idea that science can solve all the problems of the world,” he tells Freddie Sayers in today’s LockdownTV. “Where science becomes a religion and that it’s humanity’s salvation. The scientists are the saviours of the world.”The religious fervour with which phrases like ‘following the science’ and ‘trust the experts’ have been uttered and adhered to over the course of the pandemic would seem to underscore Sheldrake’s point. But according to Sheldrake, who has spent his entire career researching controversial or ‘fringe’ areas of science, the phenomenon is “nothing new”. As he himself has experienced, the scientific community does not like entertaining radical or dissent opinion, and goes out of its way to snuff it out...For more, read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SPI-M (the “Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling) is the government committee in charge of producing forecasts for the future direction of the pandemic in different circumstances. It was their report in early June, combining mathematical models from Imperial, Warwick and LSHTM, than persuaded Boris Johnson to delay the planned re-opening of society on 21st June to its current scheduled date of 19th July.In the weeks since that report, two things have become clear: the raw case numbers have been rising very rapidly, but the hospital admissions have been much lower than predicted when the PM made his decision. As of today, 1st July, just over 250 people per day are being admitted into hospital with Covid, compared to over 600 by now as forecast by SPI-M.Freddie Sayers spoke to Dr Mike Tildesley, an infectious disease modeller from the University of Warwick who sits on the committee and works on the models himself, about how his forecasts have performed against reality, and whether, knowing what we know now, the PM made the right decision.For more, read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is Britain a racist country? This is a question that sharply divides most Brits, but for one Government minister, the answer is an emphatic ‘no’. In an interview with UnHerd’s LockdownTV, Kemi Badenoch, exchequer secretary for the treasury and an Equalities Minister, tells Freddie Sayers that Britain is the “best place in the world to be black” and that an excessive focus on race alone can end up obscuring the debate.Her comments follow on from an education report that came out last week which found that white working-class pupils had been failed by decades of neglect in England’s education system. It is examples like these, argues Badenoch, that highlight how phrases like ‘white privilege’ are not only divisive, but inaccurate too.For more, read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is difficult to capture just how transformative an impact lockdown has had on us as individuals and as a society. For 15 months, we have been unable to gather in large groups, walk into a shop without a mask or even go to your local pub without having to scan a code from your phone. On a societal level, it is the first time in living memory that a western nations have locked down their populations and managed to do so with very little resistance. So as we go forth into our brave new world, what does this all mean? With less than a month to go until all restrictions are lifted (in theory), how has lockdown changed us — if at all? At UnHerd’s inaugural in-person event of the year, Freddie Sayers spoke to a panel of UnHerd contributors, who shared their thoughts.For more, read The Post from UnHerd hereMake sure to join UnHerd to be invited to our next event! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It all started with an Instagram post. Over the weekend, the Royal Academy thanked those “for bringing an item in the RA shop by an artist [Jess de Wahls] expressing transphobic views to our attention.” The item in question? A collection of floral embroidered patches that can be attached to clothing. Her crime? Writing a blog in 2019 in which she stated that “humans cannot change sex”.Shortly thereafter came the now-familiar cycle of organisations bowing to social media pressure and seeking forgiveness. On the basis of eight complaints, RA decided to remove all of Jess’s work from its shop without prior warning to the artist. But then came something less predictable: just a few hours ago, the RA took an unprecedented step and apologised to de Wahls for “the way we have treated her”. The institution said that it had betrayed “our most important core value”, namely freedom of speech, and would re-open discussions about re-stocking her work. Shortly before this apology, we spoke to Jess about what it was like to be in the eye of the social media storm.For more read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were really delighted that Richard Dawkins agreed to come on LockdownTV to discuss “Scientism” and his new anthology of writing about science literature, Books do furnish a Life.It turns out that Mr Dawkins’ view of “Scientism” is that it is a “dirty word used by people who are critical of scientists” — so that was a relatively brief part of the conversation.On Covid, he is not especially worried about the boundaries of politics and science becoming blurred, but feels that “science is the way to discover the right answer to anything about the real world — and that, of course, includes how to deal with a serious epidemic.” Vaccination and mask-wearing is “not a matter of a set of self interest” it is a “moral responsibility.”Our thanks to Richard Dawkins for sharing his thoughts.For more read The Post from UnHerd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Susan Michie, a behavioural psychologist who sits on the all-important Sage committee, made headlines last week by appearing to suggest that social distancing and wearing facemasks should remain in place “forever”.The Professor of Health Psychology has been an outspoken advocate of strict lockdown measures, both serving on Sage’s Scientific Pandemic Insights group on Behaviour (SPI-B) and advising the World Health Organisation on Covid-19.She spoke to UnHerd about whether lockdown will ever be lifted, why people are no longer obeying the restrictions, and she addresses criticism of her Communist politics.Read the full article from UnHerd here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.