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Crisis! Anxiety! Liberty!

Dr Ashley Frawley joins me for a conversation about what she calls “the tendency to communicate social problems as emotional problems,” and how that degrades the power and autonomy of the individual while ignoring complex structural social issues.

Ashley is a sociologist at the University of Kent in the UK, a columnist at Compact Magazine, a regular contributor to Unherd, the COO of Sublation Media, and a Research Fellow at MCC Brussels. She is the author of the books Significant Emotions: Rhetoric and Social Problems in a Vulnerable Age, and Semiotics of Happiness.

She argues that people, rather than clamouring for solutions to unhappiness, lack of self-esteem, and poor mental health, have been taught to constantly monitor themselves, critique their position in life, and seek intervention by authorities and experts.

The result, she says, is “the politics of the void”: A society in constant crisis, obsessed with fixing people it assumes are broken, rushing from one wellness fad to another, placing on the shoulders of individual citizens the blame for social problems that have complicated external causes which conveniently remain unaddressed.

The increasingly widespread legalisation of assisted dying is a further sign of this trend, “a policy that reflects the fatalistic mindset of those who rule over us, leaders who can no longer promise a good life so instead offer a ‘good death’.”

We had a fascinating discussion, one that left me with much food for thought. I hope you enjoy it.

Find Ashley on X, YouTube, and Patreon as @AshleyAFrawley.

Visit our website at https://www.1984.today or find us on X as @1984todaypod.

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Communists! Assassination! Romance!

Carol Cohn is an exceptional man with an incredible story.

Born in Romania during World War Two, he survived the deportation of the country’s Jews, returned and grew up under the Communists, escaped to the West, and became a journalist married to the girl of his dreams.

In this very special episode, he shares his experiences of mid-century European Jewish life, Communist indoctrination, Cold War politics, Western liberalism, Israel’s kibbutz collectivism, a Soviet hit squad, and, most touchingly, true love.

For those of us who have grown up in countries that never knew the repression and stultification of true totalitarianism, it is easy to be seduced by or indifferent to an idealised, sanitised version of a system we never experienced or suffered under. Our own social and political failings and shortcomings are notable, and worth commenting on and correcting, but they do not excuse or make more attractive the horrors visited on the millions of people who lived with the tyranny of Communism as it was, and in some places, still is. To wish it had been otherwise or to assume it could be different if tried again is to ignore the one thing we can know for certain: What actually happened to the people who had to live with it.

It was humbling and inspiring to hear Carol’s story, and to receive such an impression of his inner strength, good humour, and faith. I hope you feel the same.

Find us on X: @1984todaypod

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Live facial recognition! “Legal but harmful” speech! Spycoin!

In this episode, I’m joined by Mark Johnson, the Advocacy Manager for Big Brother Watch, a UK civil liberties campaign group dedicated to reclaiming privacy, defending freedoms, and rolling back the surveillance state. You can find them at BigBrotherWatch.org.uk, where you can download their reports on the various dystopian issues facing the British public, and find out how you can support them.

Mark Johnson was previously a Parliamentary Assistant working on domestic and international human rights issues including opposition to the death penalty and freedom of religion. He is also active in campaigning against the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China.

We get into the (unfortunately many) issues facing Britain, from the deployment of live facial recognition by law enforcement to the crackdown on free speech and the push to get rid of physical cash. All in a day’s work for Big Brother Watch, but quite a lot to fit into one discussion!

Mark has an admirable grasp of the myriad angles from which civil rights in the UK are being undermined, and an obvious passion for a free society. Speaking with him was as energising as it was concerning. I hope you feel the same!

You can find Big Brother Watch on X: @BigBrotherWatch

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De-ageing in dogs! Genetic scanning in dating apps! The Singularity!

All this and much more came up in this fascinating conversation with Professor George Church, the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Professor Church is a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and the Director of PersonalGenomes.org, the world’s only open-access information on human genetic, environmental, and trait data.

His work was instrumental in laying the foundations for the Human Genome Project, the first successful global initiative to sequence the human genome. He has co-founded around fifty biotech companies, and in various surveys and lists has been counted among “The 100 Most Influential People in the World” and “The Top 8 Famous Geneticists of All Time.”

We discuss the current state of genetic research, look at how DNA innovations could help or intrude upon us, and compare dystopian ideas on where genetic science is headed.

It’s a dizzying time to be alive, and the future is rich with worries and wonders!

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In this episode, I sit down in the studio with Andy Agathangelou, the founder of the Transparency Task Force, “a certified social enterprise for people who have been shortchanged by the financial sector.” Andy is also the Chair of the Secretariat Committee to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Personal Banking and Fairer Financial Services as well as a Fellow of the RSA and the founder of its Financial Services Network.

He is a dedicated advocate for financial system reform and a kind, compassionate man who has committed himself to supporting people harmed by financial malpractice and fixing the problems that permitted it to happen.

We discuss the ways in which so-called regulators are not fit for purpose or asleep at the wheel, and get into the details on some terrible examples of the harm done to people by banks. It was a moving conversation, even difficult at times, and Andy makes it clear how deeply he feels and shares the pain of the people he is campaigning with and for.

Andy has a strong idea of how the system in the UK can be fixed, and lays out his proposals for reining in the rapacity of the financial sector.

I hope you enjoy meeting him as much as I did.

You can find out more about the Transparency Task Force by visiting their website at https://transparencytaskforce.org or following them on X (@TransparencyTF).

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I’m joined in this episode by Emily Finley, author of The Ideology of Democratism.

Emily is a senior fellow from the Albertus Magnus Institute and an instructor at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy.

In her book, Emily argues that political leaders in many democratic countries differ from their citizens in their understanding of what democracy actually means in practice.

The phrase “a threat to democracy” is used frequently by politicians, often in reference to things many of us consider a part of democracy, like the outcome of an election. On its face this seems contradictory, even incomprehensible, but by introducing the idea of “democratism,” Emily brings things into focus.

Going back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and The Social Contract, she traces an intellectual and philosophical framework in which the ‘general will’ is seen as fundamentally different to the will of the people as expressed in democratic processes such as elections. Only a chosen few are considered qualified to interpret this ‘general will’, elite leaders who know what the populace ‘really’ wants and needs even if the people themselves say otherwise. These are the “democratists,” individuals with an entirely different attitude to what government is and should be.

This framing is a stark contrast to how we are usually encouraged to think of democracy and the politicians who claim to believe in and practice it, as a manifestation of the popular will, measured by votes cast.

Emily has come up with a brilliant way of examining our current confusing and crucial political moment, and speaking with her helped me understand something about politics that had been nagging at me like something stuck between my teeth.

We go deep into her ideas about the distinction between democracy and democratism, the ways these differences show in our political culture, and what that gap between what the people want and what the leaders want them to want means for the future.

I hope you enjoy the episode, and as always, let me know what you think.

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All eyes on Argentina in this episode, as I’m joined by Beatriz Busaniche, an Argentinian activist and academic focused on free culture and human rights in the digital environment.

Beatriz is the co-founder of the Argentine chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, a member of Creative Commons Argentina, and the President of the Fundación Vía Libre. She is also a Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, and her books include Artificial Monopolies Over Intangible Assets, and Intellectual Property and Human Rights.

We discuss the Milei administration and its impact on freedom of assembly, Beatriz’s leading of the fight against electronic voting in Argentina, the implementation of a sweeping surveillance network in the capital of Buenos Aires, and the danger that the database state poses to civil liberties and personal freedom. We even found some time to talk about copyright and intellectual property in the AI age.

Beatriz was the perfect person to walk me through the situation in Argentina right now, and we had a very enjoyable conversation which I hope you find interesting.

I also recommend reading a Wired article called The Twisted Eye in the Sky Over Buenos Aires, which goes into more detail on the surveillance system in Buenos Aires and its flaws.

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Sergei Loznitsa is an award-winning director of feature films and documentaries, a Ukrainian born in the Soviet Union, and a compassionate interrogator of the human condition.

His 2018 film Donbass, “a darkly satirical omnibus of scathing vignettes” about life in Eastern Ukraine, won him Best Director in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.

His description of the film connects it with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four:

In the Donbass, war is called peace, propaganda is uttered as truth and hatred is declared to be love…It is about a world, lost in post-truth and fake identities.

His documentary work, often composed entirely of archive material without voiceover or other commentary, includes The Natural History of Destruction, The Trial, and State Funeral.

On MUBI’s website, where several of his films are available to watch, he makes the following statement:

I want my films to urge the viewers to move towards self-knowledge, self-awareness, and awareness of certain important things that they never considered before. This is of the greatest importance to me.

I met with Sergei to discuss his films, his run-ins with the European and Ukrainian Film Academies, the possibility of truth in cinema, the way language is degraded in wartime, the imprisonment of Vladimir Kara-Murza, and more.

We sat knee to knee in a small studio. It was an intimate setting for what turned out to be a wide-ranging, touching, and resonant discussion. In the recording of our conversation, you can sometimes hear Sergei’s suit jacket rustling when he gestures to make a point or emphasise a statement.

His refusal to fall back on easy answers, and his determination to see the real human questions undergirding political issues, made it an honour and a pleasure to speak with him.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

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NB: I owe thanks to The Fifth Column (A Podcast) for bringing Sergei’s work to my attention. Thank you, gentlemen.

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Allow me to introduce This Is How We Do It, our new occasional sidebar exploring love in the age of dystopia.

Aleksandr, a tech-savvy young man from Russia, used AI to automate his Tinder profile, but what started as a wild experiment in modern dating turned into a love story for the digital age.

Aleksandr and his fiancée Karina join me for a chat about their courtship and relationship, a fascinating and heart-warming story perfect for sharing on Valentine’s Day.

You can find an English language ‘how’ of Aleksandr’s AI odyssey on X. I was drawn to the story more from the angle of wondering how such a technical approach could still allow love to flower and grow between two people, and I was keen to hear Karina’s thoughts and feelings about the way Aleksandr ‘found’ her.

In our conversation, Aleksandr describes how he went about optimising his Tinder account with AI to speed up the initial stages of finding matches, Karina talks about how it feels knowing that she was “more perfect” than over 5,000 other women, and they open up about their life together in the AI era.

Even though I brought my own pre-conceptions to the table, speaking with them was warm and uplifting, and in a way the technology ended up taking a back seat to an exploration of what in the end are universal human needs and desires.

As you’ll hear, I also suggested that they reach out to OpenAI to pay for their wedding, since their story is probably the nicest use of ChatGPT that I’ve heard of so far. Maybe our community has the means to make that happen for them, who knows?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the episode.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

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Substack has been in the news recently, due to accusations of and/or objections to extreme/racist/Nazi writers who have newsletters on the platform, and the refusal of Substack’s management to remove or throttle the content in question to the satisfaction of critics.

If we tried to pinpoint when exactly the presence of that content became a foreground issue, it would most likely be the publication in The Atlantic of a piece called Substack Has A Nazi Problem by Jonathan M. Katz. The article has drawn a lot of heat (and support), with notable responses from Elle Griffin,Glenn Loury, Matt Taibbi, and Jesse Singal, among others.

In Episode 104 I spoke with Elle Griffin about her work, which included an open letter in support of Substack’s ‘walled garden’ approach to content moderation. Jonathan listened to the podcast and tagged me in a post to his subscribers about it, so I invited him on to give his perspective.

Jonathan is an author and journalist who started out reporting for Associated Press on the Pentagon, the Middle East, the Dominican Republic, and the Haitian earthquake of 2010. He’s a contributor to The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Republic, and The New Yorker, and is the winner of the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism and a National Headliners Award.

You can find and subscribe to his writing at The Racket, and his most recent book is Gangsters of Capitalism, about the life of General Smedley Butler of “War is a racket” fame.

In our conversation, Jonathan and I get into the genesis of his Atlantic piece, the resulting response and backlash, his experience and development as a journalist over the past two decades, and the issues around free speech that underpin the current debate.

Enjoy!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1984today.substack.com