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 that the number of daily infections was already levelling off and even coming down in some areas of England at the end of October, prior to the second national lockdown. It painted a very different picture from the apocalyptic scenarios described in the Prime Minister’s briefing.Professor Spector was refreshingly outspoken when I interviewed him yesterday. He saidHad the Government followed data from the ZOE app they would not have gone into a second lockdown, which he believes was unnecessaryThe Government is tilted too much in the direction of caution and has lost a balanced sense of proportionHe is worried that they will use the new vaccine news as a “carrot” to keep us locked down for the next three months, when he believes it will likely take most of the year to get enough people vaccinatedHe understands people’s concerns about such a new vaccine, and ZOE will be tracking any side effects from vaccinated people via its app Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the archive, first published: 29 October 2020Since 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 (1999), through to his most recent book, Identity(2018) — has focused on the inadequacy of bland technocratic globalism. It’s not primarily an economic analysis: he describes how the part of the human soul (thymos) that seeks dignity and recognition of differences was suppressed by the global unanimity and so the populist waves of 2016 and beyond were inevitable.And yet he remains highly critical of the populist governments that challenged that consensus, recently writing how the ejection of Donald Trump from office next week is the most important political event of the past two generations.I wanted explore that tension, and had a fascinating and enjoyable discussion from his home in Stanford, California.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 media and public policy establishment, sad that it has come to this, cynical about their intentions, and angry that lockdown policies have been allowed to go on so long.He won’t be rushing back to Stanford, where his colleagues have rounded on him, if the President loses in November. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the archive, first published 15 October 2020Piers 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 nature of his interviews. No minister has appeared on his show for over 100 days, which has led many to question its efficacy of a style that cannot even attract guests. The Good Morning Britain host makes no apology for this, arguing that government officials deserve to be scrutinised — if they can’t deal with a heated interview, how can they be expected to cope in a global pandemic? Morgan expresses deep misgivings over No10’s handling of the Covid outbreak and even goes so far to suggest that, having voted for the Boris Johnson in the last election, he would now vote for Keir Starmer. But he also admits that he has gone too far in the past. Morgan “totally embraces” his own culpability in inflaming passions on either side of the debate, describing himself as a “work in progress”.We certainly saw a different, softer side to Piers in this interview. Whether his desire to be a “force for good in the world” will result in a wholesale change in his interviews remains to be seen, but it would be fair to say that stranger things have sprouted out of this pandemic. Enjoy.Buy Piers’s latest book ‘Wake Up’ here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 possibilities as well as its challenges to our politics and philosophical assumptions.We start with the basics, and get increasingly abstract – come minute 37 you might think differently about things! Enjoy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 judged “not by the colour of their skin but but the content of their character.”Coleman Hughes is just 24 years old, but as a fellow of the Manhattan Institute and Contributing Editor of City Journal, has already established himself as a brave and distinctly level-headed voice during heated times.It was a pleasure to talk to him, and hear his measured and fair assessment of race relations in America, and the effect of the wider BLM movement. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.