These days, wars aren’t merely fought on battlefields. The battle is also for public sentiment and perception. Whether we’re talking about government propaganda, or the massive spread of lies on an unprecedented scale due to speed of transmission—it is not something to be dismissed lightly.

My guest, Gurwinder Bhogal, is a writer examining the intersection of psychology and technology. On this episode of Forbidden Conversations, we explore some of the ideas central to his work—namely—ways in which we tend to get fooled in the digital age. Why have we seemingly abandoned reason? Is the Internet really rotting our brain, or do we share that responsibility? We have more data available to us than ever before, but it isn’t necessarily making us more knowledgeable. And there’s few of us that have been able to avoid the Kruger-Dunning effect. Why is it that smart people believe false things? And why is it so difficult for many of us to change our minds?

Most importantly, what is the antidote?

After working in web development on projects like Microsoft Bing, Gurwinder left the tech industry to pursue a career as a freelance writer. His work has featured in UnHerd, Quillette, Areo, The Humanist, The Sunday Express, and on the blog of the counter-terrorism think-tank Quilliam. He also writes at 

Gurwinder gurwinder.substack.com and you can find him on Twitter.

Is freedom of speech really under attack? Are things getting worse? What is causing many people to be worried about too much free speech? Why are these issues of particular concern on campuses? Is cancel culture literally claiming lives?

My guest is on this episode of Forbidden Conversations is Adam B. Coleman. We speak about the increased radicalization in the world, hypocrisy, the state of journalism, how "culture wars" affect regular people, boycotts, the laptop class vs the working class, and more. Join us for a random conversation.

Adam is the author of Black Victim To Black Victor, op-ed writer, public speaker, and the founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. He is a columnist for Human Events, a frequent contributor for The New York Post & The Publica, and has articles published in Newsweek, The Federalist, The Epoch Times, Daily Mail, The Post Millennial, Unherd, ScoonTV, Free Black Thought, Life News HQ & Human Defense Initiative.

You can find him on Twitter & Instagram: @wrong_speak or on Facebook. You can read his musings on his own Substack.

Carol Roth explains how much control the WEF might actually have on society or whether it’s a conspiracy. Are we really on the precipice of a ‘new financial world order’? Is the social credit system just something that’s restricted to China? What’s the role of ‘Big Tech’? Will we all “own nothing” and “be happy”? Why are companies really adapting ESG? What’s happened to the American Dream, is it dead? And what can we do to empower ourselves? Or is it too late?

Carol has worked in a variety of capacities across industries, including currently as an outsourced chief customer officer (CCO), as a director on public and private company boards, and as a strategic advisor and C-level consigliere. Carol connects the dots on financial, business, and economic issues for novice and pro audiences alike. She is also the creator of the Future File legacy planning system and software (FutureFile.com). Carol advocates for small business, small government, and big hair. Coming from a blue-collar family, Carol has worked hard to seize the American Dream, and is fighting to preserve that opportunity for all Americans. For more information or to connect with Carol, visit CarolRoth.com.

Freely Ashley is a former leftist turned independent conservative that shares political and cultural commentary on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter. With a refreshingly healthy dose of common sense.

I’ve always found it rather interesting to learn about what it is that causes people to change their beliefs—whatever they might be. How does someone become entrenched in one belief and what allows them to challenge their own point of view? As you’ll hear in our conversation, Ashley’s beliefs were rather entrenched.

We also get into some topics that were more “unscheduled,” like abortion. A contentious subject, and yet, despite our differing views, we are able to hold a civil discourse around it—unlike so many of our peers. Which brings us to another subject: Why is it so difficult to have conversations with those around us who disagree? What happens when people resort to personal attacks? And what happens when people on each “side” take extreme positions?

Sure, our views might not exactly align on a number of topics, but what Ashley and me share is a willingness to not view our ideological opposites as “enemies” or “evil” and to try and understand how other people’s views are shaped, as well as to try and find some common ground.

There’s unfortunately a level of concern that comes from having a conversation about vaccine injury in the current climate. On the one hand, one worries that a group would use such a case to spread radical claims and conspiracy theories to fully discredit vaccines in the service of sensationalized narratives. On the other, there is always those perfectly willing to dismiss and gaslight someone’s personal experience as something that’s just made up or exaggerated. Something that often happens with those dealing with the consequences of long COVID as well.

But we must be able to have these conversations openly and with nuance, or else we’d never be able to confront the reality of things.

And the reality is that with any medical intervention there is always a risk—something that has always been the case with any vaccine/treatment. Why should pharma’s answer to COVID—the mRNA technology—be any different? In fact, in this case, it has had much less time to be tested, studied, and examined. The question is, what’s the extent of this impact?

There are more qualified people to answer that particular question than me, so I’ll leave it to them.

My discourse on this episode of the Forbidden Conversations podcast focuses on just one case and the personal experience of one person. That someone happens to be one of Australia’s most revered music photographers, Michelle Grace Hunder. She's photographed the likes of Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Shawn Mendes, Drake, Lauryn Hill, Mark Ronson, Kendrick Lamar, and Ruel.

What makes her case particularly noteworthy is that it’s more than a mere claim based on conjecture—it is documented and her unfortunate injury has been officially diagnosed as caused by the vaccine.

In our far-ranging conversation, we discuss Australia’s strict lockdown laws, the mandates, her dealings with the medical system, her injury, how her experiences ultimately profoundly changed her views, and whether she’d be able to trust institutions again.

As photographer Michelle has two separate portrait series in the National Sound and Film Archive of Australia, has published “RISE,” a photographic book detailing her personal journey into the world of Australian Hip-Hop after shooting with literally every major player in the Australian Hip-Hip scene. She also spent four years on a major personal project called "Her Sound, Her Story" celebrating Women in Australian Music, across all genres, with her project partner, Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore. 

Her unique style captures the raw energy and emotion of live performances, and her photographs have been featured in numerous publications and exhibitions.

Find her on her official website, Instagram and Twitter.

Many of us only hear about opioids from one perspective—generally that of doctors over-prescribing them and patients getting addicted. Or worse, some of them ending up on the black market. I’ve heard many such stories myself, including directly from those who were affected by these addictions and struggled to get out from under them.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in the United States alone, an estimated 2.1 million people had an opioid use disorder in 2019 and opioid overdoses accounted for over 47,000 deaths in 2018.  According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in 2020, 1.7 million people in the US had a substance use disorder involving prescription pain relievers.

Such statistics have led to what my guest on this episode of the Forbidden Conversations podcast refers to as the “opioid prohibition” and it affects him personally.

Peter Pischke has been disabled since age 18, starting with chronic pancreatitis, further developing diabetes, severe eyesight problems with photophobia (extreme light sensitivity) and autoimmune issues. His health condition is very painful, but the current state of medicine and regulations around opioids have made him unable to get effective pain treatment.

What make his alternative perspective valuable is that not only does he have personal experience dealing with the lack of access to opioids for his pain management, but also because he is a disabled journalist who investigates health and disability issues, especially the opioid crisis and its devastating impact.

He challenges the myths and stigma of opioid prohibition while promoting evidence-based policies. His work has appeared in publications such as Reason, Newsweek, NY Daily News, and USA Today. He is a member of Young Voices. You can find him on Twitter @happywarriorp or tune in to his podcast with Baen Books, CultureScape, where he interviews the geek creators who shaped nerd culture.

When Peter Santenello was 24 years old, he took his $20,000 in saving, left the U.S. for the first time and spent the next two years travelling around 50 countries, debunking for himself the fear-based narratives that he was taught in his youth and learning about the world around him.

Today, he does much of the same for his 1.6M YouTube subscribers who tune in to his videos to help them discover cultures, places and stories that the media so often fails to capture. Whether it’s the Hasidic Jewish community in New York, Chicano culture in East LA, the Amish, Skid Row, Compton, a Native American reservation, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or the U.S./Mexico border—what distinguishes Santenello from most is his tremendous openness and curiosity when it comes to capturing these stories and unique communities. And he’s often willing to go places where much of the mainstream has more often tended to ignore.

In this episode, we discuss why some cultures tend to be more widely misunderstood, why his work has resonated so much with audiences, how he keeps his own views and biases from tainting his coverage, how he decides what topics and cultures to cover, how he’s able to gain the trust of the people featured in his stories, the increasing polarization in our media coverage, and whether he’s found any universal truths throughout his many adventures and conversations.

As of late, I’ve become increasingly aware of how specific words have been infecting our consciousness.  How the oversimplification of language and, hence, concepts has been doing harm to our society and discourse.  I call that: Word misappropriation.

This phenomenon occurs when groups of people pillage a particular word or term, declare their own definition of it and then insist that the rest of us accept that very definition and all the beliefs systems that follow it. 

These are often the beliefs, and definitions, of very specific and aggressively vocal groups of people and often have little in common with objective reality.  In this way, at worst, words become weaponized. At best:  Objects of mass confusion.   If we can’t even agree on the definitions of words and discuss them openly, how could we possibly begin to approach discussing what it is that they really mean for us? What happens when words are robbed of their true meaning?