UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

Freddie Sayers meets Teesside's newly re-elected Conservative mayor, Ben Houchen.There's a stereotype of England's North-Eastern cities as left-behind, backward-facing, clinging to a long-gone industrial past. Some Labour politicians have even tried to play up to this image too, but it could not, says Teeside's newly re-elected mayor Ben Houchen, be further from the truth. According to Houchen, who won 73% of the Teeside vote in last week's by-election, voters in Hartlepool and Teesside aren't nostalgic, they are looking to the future. He plans to turn Teesside into the Silicon Valley of the UK.#RedWall #BorisJohnson #Conservatives Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddie Sayers meets Matthew B. Crawford.‘Following the science’ is a phrase that we have heard a lot of this year, but what does it actually mean? Over the past year, science has shifted from a mode of inquiry to a form of authority that you are not allowed to question in fear of being labelled ‘anti-science’. To understand how and why this has occurred, we spoke to philosopher and writer Matthew B. Crawford, who has a full-length piece in UnHerd on this very subject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When John McWhorter, professor of Linguistics and American Studies at Columbia, described antiracism as America’s ‘new flawed religion’ in 2015, few could have imagined just how prescient that description would prove to be. Just this week, the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi thanked George Floyd for “sacrificing his life for justice” while CEOs, celebrities, and other politicians all made versions of the same promise: the work was not done.McWhorter, author of the upcoming book ‘Nine Nasty Words’ does not count himself as a follower of this new religion. does not count himself as a follower of this new religion. In fact, the professor has become one of its fiercest critics, tirelessly deconstructing the latest example of ‘woke craziness’ to illustrate its incoherence. With that in mind, we thought it was essential to get John’s opinion on the Derek Chauvin verdict and his thoughts on race relations in America more generally. We really enjoyed speaking to John and thank him for his time.On the Derek Chauvin conviction: 'There is a sense in America that what this verdict was about was black people being killed by the cops. I see it as a victory about people being killed by the cops. And if it has to be a black case that galvanises change under that misconception, well, life isn’t perfect. But I am very happy about what happened to that man. And I’m very sad about what happened to George Floyd. But I’m equally sad about what happened to Tony Timpa, which was very similar, and Tony Timpa was very white, and it was only four years ago, and no one heard about it.' Did he get a fair trial?: 'If fairness requires a certain fear of the streets erupting — that’s not the way I would choreograph it — but maybe sometimes you have to break some eggs to make an omelette. The cop problem is real partly for a human, not race, reason….I think it’s a misperception that the cops are uniquely against black people, and that is the main obstacle to getting past race in the United States.' Is antiracism a religion?: 'It’s a religion — any martial anthropologist would recognise it as such. One of the oddest things is to see mathematicians and philosophers who’ve made their way through Plato, Kant and Kierkegaard, and then all of a sudden when they’re reasoning about Black Lives Matter, they exhibit the reasoning power of roughly an orangutan. Suddenly that’s considered sophisticated.' Giving up on the true believers: 'You can’t engage people like that… There is nothing you can do to talk somebody out of a religion. There’s no conversation to be had, it’s worthless. Some of them will say they want to have a conversation with you. But what they want is for you to learn from them. If there’s anything that they have to learn from you, it’s that they want to learn what your mental barriers are to understanding their truth.' His advice to white people: 'A lot of people need to have a little bit more of a backbone, and understand that this person who’s sitting there looking over their copy of “How To Be An Anti-Racist” and telling you that you’re a racist, let them. And then walk on because the world will keep spinning and you will keep existing. I think some white people need to have the courage of their convictions even about this thing called the race thing. And just say, “No, I’m not a racist. Maybe you are. And let’s now talk about football”. That we need more of.'  On the elitism of antiracism: 'If you’re somebody who is more familiar with struggle or you have a kid in a bad school or you know what it’s like to live in a bad neighbourhood. In a way, this sort of thinking [antiracism] is going to be less congenial. And many people would say, “Well, it’s because you’re a racist”. No, it’s it’s not that. It’s that there is a certain luxury in thinking of black people in these abstractions.' On Ta-Nehisi Coates: 'There is a certain kind of person who builds their sense of significance in society on a victim role. A person can do that of any colour. It’s a personality type. With black Americans, one way that you do that is to focus on your victimhood or your people’s victimhood, at the hands of whites. It’s not that there isn’t racism. But the idea that what makes you special is your victimhood status in comparison to whites, that can become who you are. Coates is a good writer, but Coates is that kind of person.' On the n-word: 'I feel that it casts black people as hothouse flowers to a degree that I find condescending. And that’s not to say that people are supposed to run around using the word. But I think America had it about right as recently as about 1995. And since then, we’ve started to treat it in a way that I’m not sure was very productive. But that’s just me.'  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the weekend, over 1,200 church leaders from a range of denominations sent an open letter to the Prime Minister. It warned that vaccine passports raised serious ethical concerns and risked creating a ‘surveillance state’ that would ‘bring about the end of liberal democracy as we know it’. Earlier today, we spoke to two of the original signatories Dr. William Philip, of the Tron church in Glasgow, and Dr. Jamie Franklin, who is curator of St. George in the meadow in Nottingham. Both offered a scathing assessment of the vaccine passport plan and explained why they could not support it:'When you say that there is a possibility that the government may try and force us to exclude people from churches on the basis of whether or not they’ve had a certain medical treatment, that crosses a line for lots and lots of sincere people.' - JAMIE FRANKLIN'It’s impossible theologically for the Christian church to close its doors to those who have been branded by society as socially undesirable. It is absolutely anathema to the Christian gospel. It would be like the Lord Jesus Christ standing up and saying, ‘Well come to me all you who labour and are heavy laden, except those of you who are sick, blind, tax collectors and sinners — you’ve got to produce your passport’' - WILLIAM PHILIPOn the failures of the church:'Many of us have been frustrated, both in the church and in society, with what we see is a considerable lack of Christian Leadership over the last 12 months. We feel that senior church leaders across all denominations have given an imprimatur to the dictates of the government and of the secular, unelected technocrats who appear to be running things at the moment. People are extremely frustrated with this.I’m a curate at the bottom of the food chain. I’ve only been ordained for less than two years. But there’s such a dearth of leadership that I felt like it was necessary for me to do something' - JAMIE FRANKLIN'A Christian would never argue that physical health and protection is the ultimate thing. A Christian must say that eternal health is infinitely more important…And this is the problem: the message of the church collapsed into one of merely health and safety in a temporal way. It has entirely omitted speaking about hope and salvation. That is a catastrophic failure of the institutional church' - WILLIAM PHILIPOn the church’s hypocrisy:'The Church of England bishops had absolutely no problem with denouncing Brexit in a very enthusiastic manner. So there is a justification for this, but it’s just an inconsistent justification…we’re not a thermometer simply telling the temperature of the culture but we’re a thermostat. We’re supposed to have an influence on the culture, not simply to follow the culture' - JAMIE FRANKLINOn unvaccinated churchgoers:'The crucial issue as far as Christian churches are concerned is: am I supposed to say no to somebody who doesn’t want a vaccine? Someone who is in obedience to their conscience? And, as they see it, in obedience to the commander, Jesus Christ? Am I to say to them, ‘Well, then you cannot come into the church of Jesus Christ, your obedience to Jesus prevents you from coming into worship?' - WILLIAM PHILIP'As ministers of the gospel, our message is to not stay at home and stay safe. It is that the only salvation is Christ — he’s the only one who can save us from death. So if people want to take a vaccine because it will protect them and they feel it’s right for them, that’s great. But as ministers of the gospel, our message is that ultimately Jesus is our Saviour, and not a vaccine or indeed any medical treatment' - JAMIE FRANKLIN  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hear Jesse Singal discuss his latest book with Freddie SayersFurther reading: The empty promise of pop psychology Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This time a year ago, something extraordinary happened. Johan Giesecke, advisor to the Director General of the WHO, former Chief Scientist of the EU Centre for Disease Control, and former state epidemiologist of Sweden came out forcefully against lockdowns. The world was shutting down and he was the first voice to speak out so bluntly early in the pandemic.He contended that the difference in infection and death rates between countries would “come out in the wash”, regardless of their lockdown policies and promised to return in a year’s time to review the evidence.With typical Swedish punctuality, he returns to UnHerd — a day early. He is similarly gruff, but notably more cautious this time around, after a year-long fight which had become, in Sweden, just as political and personal as it had in the UK and America. The Swedish media has not spared the retired professor any criticism...To read the rest of the article and to see the accompanying graphs click here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Around the world, California is romanticised as a glamorous haven of luxury and sunshine. But the reality, as we have been finding out, is quite different: rubbish stacked in the streets, a homelessness crisis, and an exodus of disillusioned residents. One of these disillusioned residents is Bridget Phetasy, a comedian, writer, podcaster and YouTuber based in Los Angeles, who has grown increasingly frustrated with her home state. California is in a ‘premageddon’, she fears, and that’s not just because of Gavin Newsom’s (the California governor who is up for recall) poor Covid response:It’s a process that’s been happening for some time and it’s been accelerated by the pandemic and the lockdowns. I’ve been describing it as ‘premageddon’…It’s a little bit pre-apocalyptic or dystopian: you’re seeing increasing homelessness, which is tragic. And it’s also filthy because there’s garbage everywhere. It’s definitely not the Los Angeles I moved to in 2007 when I came back. On her vulnerability to Big Tech: 'I would rather be free than have to silo who I am, privately and publicly. But my biggest fear is when you see things like, for instance, what happened in the wake of the president being de-platformed from social media. He basically disappeared, almost like a technical mob hit…. That would be detrimental to me. I always joke that I’m just gonna keep talking until I can’t because I feel like you’re constantly avoiding like the Eye of Sauron.' On identity: 'I don’t think it’s great that everybody is so invested in making their entire identity about these immutable characteristics, or, in some cases, mutable characteristics, which I can’t get my mind around. Your sex, your gender, your ethnicity — this is what you build your entire world around instead of what gives you meaning beyond the traits that you were just born with. It just feels like we’re going backwards.' On the Left: 'The Left feels much more insidious to me than the Right, because it seems social… When I talk to people about why they’re self censoring, it’s because they feel like they can’t say certain things. And that’s not being enforced by the government yet, although we are headed in that direction in California. But it is being enforced socially…And then people are petrified of saying anything at work, and are being made to go to these kind of diversity and inclusion trainings, and they can’t say anything about whether or not they agree with the stuff.' On vaccine passports: 'What’s so shocking to me is how many people are okay with this. I can’t figure out if it’s just because people like being told what to do, or need to be told what to do. And then there’s a sense of self righteousness that goes along with that. So you’re basically following the lead and then you get to be arrogant and take the moral high ground.'  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are few families in Britain closer to the royal family than the family of wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill. His grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, knew Prince Philip very well over a 60-year period and shared his thoughts on his passing in a special edition of LockdownTV.“It’s a strange day, a day of reflection, and I hope people get him right," he told me. "The press, with that attention span for which they are famous, always talks about his ‘gaffes’ — his gaffes were that what you saw was what you got. He was an absolutely ram rod straight former naval officer, who didn’t have much time for sycophancy or bloody fools or anyone else, and spoke as he found. But he was essentially a man of great humour, he had tremendous wit and charm … and he held very strong views. This is not a mere figure.”Sir Nicholas reflected on the values of the generation that the Duke of Edinburgh belonged to:"One of the saddest things about Prince Philip dying — and about a lot of people who die of his generation — is that they are the last of a generation who people talk about slightly glibly, but they were the wartime generation. He did see active service, he knew what it was like to command in great difficulty and at hours of great danger... The values of his generation now feel quite far away. He wasn’t a sentimentalist, Prince Philip, but he was a tough egg... He was the epitome of the stiff upper lip. I mean that in the best sense of the word. It wasn’t that he didn’t share emotion in any way, but he was a great believer in picking yourself up and getting on with it.I’ll tell you what I think we have lost, that his generation had — we’ve lost any sense of proportion about what goes on. Everything is bulled up into an enormous drama, but if you’ve lived in that generation you’ve lived through an era of profound upheaval. And you learned to distinguish between what was important and what wasn’t important. I think we’ve lost that now."Sir Nicholas stressed that, as evidenced by Prince Philip's founding of St George's House centre for spiritual reflection at the chapel at Windsor Castle, "he was a thinker, and he was interested in the spiritual side of life."But the reputation for straight talking was well-earned:"He didn’t like bloody fools, and if he thought you were talking rubbish he told you… What you saw with Prince Philip was what you got. He was completely authentic as a human being. I think it must have been a great challenge when he first started as the Queen’s consort not to allow his own character to dominate. He was always in the Queen’s wake, and he supported her through thick and thin, through some terribly difficult times."Sir Nicholas shared that Prince Philip would not have wanted a state funeral, even if Covid had not prevented one:"I think people would have wanted in great numbers to come and show their respects to Prince Philip, and I think it’s very sad — and entirely correct and understandable — that there are going to have to be very special arrangements for the funeral, because after all the royal family will want to behave the same as anyone else. I understand the body will lie in state at Windsor before his burial and it is not going to be a great do… I know for a fact that Prince Philip did not want a state funeral, but there would have been an opportunity for the public to pay their respects, because he was greatly admired." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The group of thinkers now known as the “Intellectual Dark Web” — Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Bret and Eric Weinstein, Ben Shapiro — were convened in Dave Rubin’s garage and on his YouTube channel, The Rubin Report. And yet he has always suffered the accusation that he wasn’t a ‘real’ intellectual.“What I thought and believe now that I am good at is that I can sit with these people and take a lot of that stuff and distil it into something that the average person can understand enough of. I love that space,” he told Freddie Sayers in a wide-ranging and philosophical discussion on LockdownTV.He sees the old IDW gang as divided now along a crucial ideological split. There are those who believe the tools of liberalism can still be deployed to persuade the Woke Left to change their mind (he includes Bari Weiss, Sam Harris, Bret Weinstein in this group); and then there are those, like him, who have decided that it simply isn’t possible, and they’re better off building bridges with the Right: 'They’ve made what to me seems to be a very obvious fatal mistake, that you can use any of the tools of Liberalism — of open inquiry, freedom of speech, respect for your fellow human beings, individual rights — that you can use any of these things to rationalise with the monster that is coming to burn your house down. And that’s why we’ve seen in effect the liberals have no defence over this, which is why all the liberal institutions are crumbling.What I’m seeing, and I would say this is more me, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, is that there’s all sorts of bridges to be built the other way. If you would have told me five years ago that I would consider Dennis Prager and Glenn Beck and Larry Elder and many other conservatives not only friends but the type of intellectual that I want to be — I would be shocked.'His hope is on the Right, and the long-term vision is of building parallel institutions to those controlled by the liberal Left: 'Maybe we’re just going to build parallel societies. I think that that may start to be — woke culture will have its own TV, apps and all their institutions, and then the rest of us will have a whole bunch of other stuff. But my money is on those guys building the right thing.' This vision of two parallel societies may come across as rather dispiriting for early fans of Rubin. After all, this was the host who brought together people of all different political stripes, namely the IDW, to talk things out on his show. Now he is advocating for the opposite. There was something genuinely counter-cultural about the way in which figures from the Reaganite Right all the way through to the progressive Left gathered under Dave’s roof to exchange and debate ideas, and it is a pity to see that disappear. Though Dave insists that there are “bridges to be built in the other way”, the gradual disintegration of the IDW feels like the end of an (albeit short-lived) era. Let’s hope the next one can provide us with something similar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the past year, the culture wars have been raging and one of the places where they have been fought most fiercely is on American college campuses. Efforts to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ and censor professors and students found to be deviating from progressive orthodoxy on identity issues have intensified, particularly on liberal college campuses.Last week, another target was found, this time at the University of Vermont. After claiming to see ‘anti-whiteness’ spreading around campus, Professor Aaron Kindsvatter published a video denouncing the anti-racist agenda that reduced and discriminated against people on account of their skin colour. As a professor of counselling, Kindsvatter was especially concerned about the implementation of policy based on the work of Ibram X. Kendi, the author of ‘How to be an Antiracist’, into the counselling programme. Given that these students were training to be psycho-therapists, Kindsvatter notes, this “rigid” ideology would inform the basis of their work: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.