UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

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 because they are already on the outskirts of society and it is the only choice they have to survive, others join the business because they “realise this is the best way to earn money for the least amount of work and are doing it strategically. A surprisingly high number of women in the rationality community have tried sex work.”Aella puts herself in both categories; on the one hand, she got into porn when she was desperate, but now believes that her highly analytical, high de-coupling mind meant that she was well-suited to this her line of work: “I think that my brain is different. I’ve noticed that since I was a kid, I’m just different in the way I process things”. Perhaps Aella’s success (she is among the top 0.3% of earners) can be at least partially attributed to her data-driven approach. She regularly conducts polls among her viewers and analyses the data to inform her content and grow her audience.She grew up in a ‘fundamentalist Christian’ household, and says that, rather than a rebellion against her upbringing, she believes it was oddly good training for belonging to a group that is very little understood by wider society.Does she not feel sex is sacred at all? Does she not worry that an example is being set for hundreds of thousands of girls for whom it would be very harmful? What about the men – what sort of men is a society with unlimited porn producing?She offers answers to all these difficult questions, and many more. Thanks to Aella for giving her time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 quickly dominated all of the other strains that were seen in Europe at the time, it became the predominant strain that came into the Americas, spread throughout the United States and is now spread to pretty much every corner of the planet".In his own state, Engelthaler witnessed several of the early introductions to Arizona, coming from the Pacific coast straight from China, but fizzled out quickly, with less effective transmission. “And then all of a sudden we started having explosive outbreaks. When we go back and look genomically, the vast majority of those cases where we had very large outbreaks were being driven by the strains that were coming from the East Coast out of Europe, which all seemed to have this particular mutation in the spike protein.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 been in the news all year in this regard —rescinding the invitation of a visiting fellowship to Canadian academic Jordan Peterson, removing academic Noah Carl after his controversial study into race and intelligence and subjecting a college porter to a campaign to be removed after he voted a certain way on a trans issue as a Labour local councillor.Freddie Sayers spoke to Dr Arif Ahmed, a Philosophy tutor and fellow on Gonville and Caius college, who has raised concerns that the inclusion of a requirement to be ‘respectful’ of people’s opinions and identities, included in the proposed free speech policy, risks legitimising future censorship. He thinks it could have been used to justify excluding Jordan Peterson, on the grounds that he has not been sufficiently respectful of certain religions, or forbidding the inclusion of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a course about free speech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 10-13 months in prison.Nathan now lives in the UK, which took the unprecedented step earlier this year of offering residency to any holder of a British National overseas passport in Hong Kong. Up to three million Hongkongers are eligible for this residency, and according to Nathan, as many as 100,000 people could arrive in the first year. That is a substantial figure, and one that will present Boris Johnson’s government with a potentially difficult question on how to accommodate for such an influx.Nathan speaks fondly of his adopted home, and is hopeful that his presence here is not a sign of failure but a signal for change. He told Freddie Sayers that the West must be more aware of the threat from China and hold them accountable for human rights violations in Xinjiang and foreign interference in states like his own. He also spoke about his blue collar upbringing and his experience in moving from China to join his family in Hong Kong at a young age, which gave him a valuable insight into events today.We hope you enjoy the interview and thank you to Nathan for giving us the time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 subsequently become more critical. As a professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, he lives in one of America’s most politically competitive states, offering a front row seat at the rise of Donald Trump. His warning in this interview is clear: that it was exactly the kind of neoliberal policies that Biden seems likely to return to that got the billionaire into power.According to Professor Kaye, the only way for Biden to meet the challenges of today is by returning to the Rooseveltian tradition in the party. He argues that the last 45 years has seen a steady decline in the relationship between the Democrat Party and the American working class, which was perfectly encapsulated by the uninspiring cast of candidates in the Democratic primaries. Even Bernie Sanders drifted too close to the centre and should have done more to challenge his rivals on issues like free healthcare.It’s not often that you hear about Bernie Sanders not being radical enough, and it was interesting getting a different perspective from such a distinguished historian on the Left. We hope you agree! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-leave-the-guardian/Watch the full interview on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSVd36xEplY&feature=youtu.be Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.