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UnHerd with Freddie Sayers
Bridget Phetasy: the power of Big Tech is chilling
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.'
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The truth about net immigration
32:25|UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks with migration expert Dr. Madeleine Sumption to dissect the latest ONS figures which reveal a dramatic crash in UK net migration. Is this truly caused by an alarming "exodus of fed-up Brits," as some headlines suggest, or is the surge in people leaving the country, in fact, the long-overdue re-migration of earlier non-EU and EU immigrants—a data-driven truth that fundamentally upends how the media and public understand the entire politics of immigration?
Prof. Sunetra Gupta: The lost lessons of lockdown
35:41|UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks with Oxford epidemiologist Professor Sunetra Gupta - one of the three primary authors of the Great Barrington Declaration - to uncover why the UK’s massive £200 million COVID inquiry has produced a conclusion she calls an "insult" to the public intelligence. With the report claiming that locking down just one week earlier would have saved 23,000 lives, Gupta dismantles the modelling behind the headline and ask the questions the inquiry refused to: Why was the clear counter-evidence of Sweden ignored? And did the scientific establishment betray its own duties by choosing the certain harm of lockdown over the uncertain control of a virus?
Freddie Sayers: The Covid inquiry is a disgrace
42:24|UnHerd's Freddie Sayers gives his reaction to the UK’s £200 million COVID inquiry and the official narrative. After 800 pages, the report reaches the conclusion that Britain’s only mistake was not locking down sooner - but at what cost? From the missing chapter on Sweden’s success to the ignored collateral damage inflicted on a generation of children, was the lockdown experiment actually a civilisational error that the state is now too afraid to admit? And is the inquiry an establishment whitewash that sets the stage for future authoritarianism?
Matthew Crawford: The truth about 'Smart Cities'
40:16|UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks with writer and philosopher Matthew Crawford about the creeping tyranny of the "Smart City"—a vision of the future where urban life is optimised by data, and human unpredictability is treated as a "bug" to be fixed. But what is the spiritual cost of a "frictionless" existence? As tech giants begin to govern like nation-states and cars become subscription services that can be throttled from afar, Crawford asks the question: are we building paradise, or a "glorious, collisionless" prison? From the defiance of skateboarders to the ULEZ "Blade Runners" destroying cameras in London, they discuss the fight to reclaim the "unruly felicities" of a life truly worth living.
Will Trump destroy the BBC?
38:34|UnHerd's Freddie Sayers dives into the legal and political firestorm surrounding President Trump's threatened lawsuit against the BBC. He is joined by three expert guests to unpack the case from every angle: Professor Burt Neuborne, founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, analyses the US legal arguments and whether Trump can actually win; Joshua Rozenberg, legal journalist and the BBC's former legal correspondent, discusses the internal crisis at the BBC and its "perceived liberal bias"; and Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, explores the wider "chilling effect" of such lawsuits on press freedom.
Prof. Dieter Helm: The madness of our climate policy
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Debate: Is there a migrant crimewave?
50:41|In the wake of the Huntingdon train stabbing and ensuing online reaction, UnHerd's Freddie Sayers sits down with journalist for The Times Fraser Nelson to analyse the growing perception of a violent, migrant-driven crimewave in the UK. Responding to disputed data from the Ministry of Justice that foreigners are convicted of up to 23% of sex crimes, as well the rise in low-level crime and isolated atrocities, Nelson argues against the narrative and details how violent crime, including knife attacks and murder, has actually been in a steep decline, reaching multi-decade lows even as immigration has doubled. Is the migrant crimewave real or is there a stark disconnect between the statistical reality and the public's fear?
The Zohran Mamdani debate
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Should Europe seize Russian assets? Is a crypto crisis looming?
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