UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers talks to Oxford philosopher Professor Nick Bostrom about the escalating concerns over artificial intelligence, weighing whether catastrophic warnings from industry insiders reflect genuine existential fears or commercial strategy, while analysing technical threats like deceptive alignment and autonomous AI coordination alongside the broader economic, geopolitical, and societal risks of managing superintelligence.

Freddie Sayers talks to UnHerd columnist and co-host of The Econoclasts Wolfgang Munchau about the political earthquake triggered by the hard-Right Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) historic election victory in Saxony-Anhalt, examining why young voters and non-voters are turning away from the centrist consensus, the total failure of Germany’s political ‘firewall’ strategy, the collapse of Friedrich Merz’s leadership within the CDU, and how a rising wave of hard-Right governments across France, Italy, and Germany could ultimately paralyse the European Union.

Jason Arday, the wunderkind sociologist and youngest ever black professor at Cambridge, has an almost unbelievable backstory. Overcoming illiteracy and autism, he became the jewel in the crown of the university’s pivot towards diversity post-2021. He has been lauded by celebrities, raised millions for charity, suffered abuse from detractors and found time to run hundreds of miles. Or has he? Kathleen Stock, former professor at Sussex University, speaks to UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers about her viral investigation into academia’s ‘DEI darling’ and the plagiarism scandal that shocked Britain.

Freddie Sayers is joined by UnHerd columnist and author Ross Barkan - a former campaign colleague of Zohran Mamdani - to discuss the New York Mayor’s rapid political rise and the controversies defining his tenure. They unpack Mamdani's anti-capitalist economic policies, his radical stance on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and assess what his brand of democratic socialism signals for the future trajectory of the Democratic Party and American politics as a whole.

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks with social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt about the global momentum toward banning under-16s from social media, exploring the tension between protecting children from addictive platforms and safeguarding free speech from state censorship, while outlining how device-based age checks offer a viable solution where traditional parental controls fail.

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks to American political scientist, author, and prominent scholar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Norman Finkelstein, about the fracturing of the historically ironclad alliance between the political Right and Israel. They explore how a mixture of 'America First' anti-war sentiment and the financial incentives of the podcast economy have made criticising Israel a lucrative tool for Right-wing influencers, from Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens.