A dialogue on the shooting of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath, including Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air.

Nathan Seuili is a former pastor who has worked for several years for the NZ Free Speech Union. He has now left the FSU to found a new organization, PILLAR, which is dedicated to Protecting Individual Life, Liberty And Rights. In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about Nathan's free speech journey; hierarchy, Christianity, and gender in Samoan culture; and how Christians dedicated to individual freedom might think about laws around euthanasia and prostitution. Nathan on X: https://x.c...

David Webb is a lawyer and a spokesperson for The Opportunities Party on their Citizens' Voice policy. We talked to him about the party's plan for citizens' assemblies, the benefits and drawbacks of referenda, and how we could improve MMP. TOP's citizens' voice page: https://www.top.org.nz/citizens-voice James' article with Geoff Neal: Politicians are disconnected from the people they represent - Newsroom

Musa al-Gharbi is an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. He was the Communications Director at Heterodox Academy from 2016 to 2020. I talked to Musa about growing up in a military family, being cancelled by Fox News, who 'symbolic capitalists' are, the extent to which Donald Trump is comparable to an alligator, and what the future holds for universities. Musa's book: https://www.thenile.co.nz/books/musa-al-gharbi/we-have-never-been-...

Doug Elliffe is a professor of psychology at the University of Auckland. We talked to him about whether crows know what's good for them, the Listener letter and its fallout, and how to foster a culture of free inquiry at New Zealand universities.

In this episode we are once again joined by our regular correspondent from the Free Speech Union (and the New Zealand Initiative), Steph Martin. We debrief about the FSU's panel events in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch on institutional neutrality and the draft academic freedom legislation. We also talk about that legislation (part of the Education and Training Amendment Bill No. 2), and more particularly about the response to it in Parliament by two opposition politicians.

Henare Parata is a teacher of te reo and mātauranga Māori. He has also been involved with The Opportunities Party (TOP), and is a well-known presence on X as @TeHenare. We talked to him about mātauranga Māori and science, what pre-colonial Māori society was really like, and where his favourite marae is.

Brandon McMurtrie is a PhD student in psychology at Massey University, where he studies political polarization. He is also a keen Substacker, X-user, and hunter. We talked to him about polarization; whether the way we're currently talking about mental health might have some downsides; psychological research on left- (and right-) wing authoritarianism; and why he goes hunting. Pew Research on polarization in the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/... Costello et al. on the traditional ...

Dr James Lindsay was one of the perpetrators of the 'Sokal Squared' hoax, and is the co-author of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody and of How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide. We asked him who his favourite post-modern thinker is, whether he went crazy on Twitter, and what he means by terms like 'groomer' and 'the woke right.' Cynical Theories: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1634312...

Damien Grant is a Stuff columnist and the Principal of Waterstone Insolvency. We talked to him about occupational licensing, free speech, Trump's likely impact on the Anglosphere, and New Zealand's COVID response. Damien's column about Janet Dickson: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360573233/damien-grant-how-real-estate-agent-lost-her-career-over-90-minute-course about COVID: https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360513485/damien-grant-new-zealand-ashamed-about-what-happened-covid-years and about...

Frances Widdowson was a professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary until 2021, when the university fired her. Frances gives us her account of the circumstances of her dismissal. She also talks to us about ideas such as 'land-based knowledge' (which she has long criticized) and about the controversy over Canada's residential schools. Frances' website: https://wokeacademy.info/ Frances' paper on 'land-based knowledge': https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781802208542/book-part-9781...

The Law Commission recently put out a consultation paper on whether the law relating to 'hate crime' should be changed, and if so how. The Commission considers whether the current 'sentence aggravation' model (in which hatred may be factored into sentencing as an aggravating factor) should be replaced by a new, specific offence of 'hate crime.' But how should 'hate' (of various sorts) factor into how we think about different offences? How broad should our scope be when considering whether a p...

Cody Ellingham is a Kiwi writer, photographer, and Bitcoin enthusiast who's currently based in Kamakura, Japan. We asked him to explain Bitcoin to us and tell us about the Bitcoin scene in New Zealand. Lyn Alden, Broken Money: https://www.amazon.com.au/Broken-Money-Financial-System-Failing/dp/B0CG8985FR Angela Redish, Bimetallism: https://www.cambridge.org/nz/universitypress/subjects/economics/macroeconomics-and-monetary-economics/bimetallism-economic-and-historical-analysis?format=PB&i...

Alan Davison is Academic Lead at the Governance and Public Affairs Centre at the Australian Catholic University, and was until recently Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. He co-founded the Permission to Think series on Josh Szeps' Uncomfortable Conversations podcast. He is also President of the Australian Free Speech Union. We talked to Alan about post-modernism, the evolution of (bad) ideas, and what to do about our universities. Alan's paper 'A Darwinia...

Dr Peter Boghossian is a freelance philosopher and former academic. He was jointly responsible for the 'Sokal squared' hoax, as a result of which he was investigated by his then-employer, Portland State University, for research misconduct. He later left the university and now travels the world engaging bystanders in 'street epistemology' - open, reasonable conversations on a range of topics. We talked to him about whether there are moral facts, what people think about in prison, whethe...

Nigel Biggar is an emeritus professor at Oxford University, where he was Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology. He is also an Anglican priest. His most recent book is Colonialism. A Moral Reckoning (2023). We talked to Prof. Biggar about the how to assess the British Empire and about the roots of our universities' ongoing travails. Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Colonialism-Moral-Reckoning-Nigel-Biggar/dp/0008511632

Only a few days after its Senate voted down the University of Auckland's 'academic freedom' policy, Victoria University of Wellington has come out with a similar policy of its own. Here to discuss VUW's policy with us is Steph Martin from the Free Speech Union. We also discuss Steph's work to help protect New Zealanders' speech rights on a variety of fronts.

Toby Young is the founder of the Free Speech Union and The Daily Sceptic, an associate editor of The Spectator, and a former associate editor at Quillette. We talked to him about the prospects for free speech and academic freedom in the Anglosphere, why he left Quillette and founded The Daily Sceptic, and what his experience of free (or charter) schools has been. https://freespeechunion.org/ https://dailysceptic.org/

Peter Ridd was formerly head of the Physics Programme and the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Queensland. We asked him how and why he was forced out of JCU, as well as about the Great Barrier Reef and climate change in the Pacific. An article by Peter calling for greater quality assurance in 'policy-science': https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

The morning after Victoria University of WELLINGTON's free speech event, Michael and James met to discuss the event, including both its set-up and points made by the speakers.