Fire at Will

One of the most important academic papers of modern times was published in 2017. It was titled, ‘The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct’. Thankfully, it wasn’t the content of the paper that started a global discussion, but rather the circumstances that surrounded it and the light that it shone on the current state of academia, woke ideology and notions of truth and freedom of expression.

This week, host Will Kingston is joined by one of the pseudonymous authors of the paper, philosopher, writer, and one of the most interesting thinkers of our age, Dr Peter Boghossian.

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In some respects, the Romans feel strangely familiar. In the great men (and yes, they were almost always men) of the Roman Empire, we can glimpse human motivations, desires and flaws that we share today. At the same time, the Romans inhabited a world replete with some (thankfully) not so familiar features: eunuchs, prophecy, incest and barbarism.

What lessons can we draw from a civilisation that is at once familiar to us, and yet so alien? To answer that question, host Will Kingston is joined by the preeminent Roman historian of our generation, Tom Holland. The third book in Tom’s series on Ancient Rome, ‘Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age’, is out now.

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Drugs in the White House... Presidential court cases... Geriatric party leaders… Eight hour hunger strikes… And the odd attempted ‘insurrection.’ It’s fair to say that we’ve become desensitised to just how strange American politics has become. To help make sense of the madness, host Will Kingston is joined by Texas’ #1 radio host, the ‘Czar of Talk’, Michael Berry.

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We live in an age where the lines between entertainment and political activism are so blurred as to be almost non-existent. Barbie is less a movie about a doll than a lecture about the patriarchy. The ‘Welcome to Country’ at most footy games will soon be longer than the game itself. And many stand-up comedians are less interested in telling jokes than they are about making political statements.

Monty Franklin is not one of those comedians. Instead he’s become one of Australia’s most successful US-based comedians by poking fun at the things that make Aussies great. In the words of John Cleese, who co-wrote with Monty the upcoming film, ‘The Great Emu War’, ‘silliness always wins’.

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Society's approach to mental health is, well, healthier than it was in the past. The stiff upper lip, suck it up, ‘be a man’ mentality has been replaced by a more open and accepting conversation around depression, anxiety and trauma. 

However, this evolution has also brought with it some troubling consequences: an unhealthy ennoblement of victimhood, difficulty instilling resilience in young people and a fear of uncomfortable truth’s that need to be spoken. It raises the question, has Australia become a fragile nation? To answer the question, Will is joined by psychiatrist, journalist and author of ‘Fragile Nation: Vulnerability, Resilience and Victimhood’, Tanveer Ahmed.

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It isn't hard to find a right-wing critique of woke ideology. It is much more difficult to find left-leaning thinkers coming out in opposition to the woke dogma that has superseded traditional, social democratic principles in most western centre-left political parties. This is why Susan Neiman’s new book, ‘Left is not Woke’ is such an important contribution to the public debate. 

Susan is one of the world’s most renowned and respected living philosophers. She currently resides in Germany where she is the Director of the Einstein Forum. She’s also a self-described socialist, and she’s set out to separate 'wokeism' from the historic principles of the left.

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Adam Creighton is an Australian economist and journalist. He is currently the Washington correspondent for The Australian newspaper. In this interview with host Will Kingston, Adam takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the burning economic issues of the day, including cost-of-living, productivity and innovation. 

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Brendan O'Neill is the chief political writer for Spiked and a regular contributor to The Spectator. His new book, 'A Heretic's Manifesto', is a rallying cry to stand up against the woke orthodoxy of our age. 

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Sall Grover was a Hollywood screenwriter for a decade before returning to Australia to start 'Giggle' - a social media app for women. After a barely believable series of events (that could only have happened in the strange times in which we live), the app is at the centre of one of the most significant legal cases in modern Australian history. The outcome will have very real repercussions for girls and women across the country.

Note: We had some minor sound issues (and a host with a nasty cold). Stick with it. It's worth it.

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Miranda Devine is an Australian journalist and bestselling author. Whilst working in Australia, her opinion pieces for, among others, The Daily Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald more often than not made their way to the forefront of the national conversation. She currently resides in New York, where she writes for The New York Post.

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