Damien Grant is a Stuff columnist and the Principal of Waterstone Insolvency. We talked to him about occupational licensing, free speech, Trump's likely impact on the Anglosphere, and New Zealand's COVID response.

Damien's column about Janet Dickson: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360573233/damien-grant-how-real-estate-agent-lost-her-career-over-90-minute-course
about COVID: https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360513485/damien-grant-new-zealand-ashamed-about-what-happened-covid-years
and about National, ACT, and Trump: https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360581859/damien-grant-acts-clarity-sticking-point-luxon-his-apparent-struggle-explain-why

John Stuart Mill on liberty: https://gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
Jacob Mchangama's book about free speech history: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1541600495
Pew Research report on polarization in the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/
Self-censorship now and in the McCarthy era: https://www.persuasion.community/p/americans-are-self-censoring-at-record
James' report on academic freedom: https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/reports/unpopular-opinions-academic-freedom-in-new-zealand/
Noah Carl on border closures in countries with few entry-points: https://quillette.com/2021/02/15/do-lockdowns-work-only-if-you-lock-the-borders-down-too/
John Gibson's article about COVID mortality:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00779954.2024.2314770

Frances Widdowson was a professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary until 2021, when the university fired her. Frances gives us her account of the circumstances of her dismissal. She also talks to us about ideas such as 'land-based knowledge' (which she has long criticized) and about the controversy over Canada's residential schools.

Frances' website: https://wokeacademy.info/

Frances' paper on 'land-based knowledge': https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781802208542/book-part-9781802208542-47.xml

Ian Gentles' long-read on residential schools: https://quillette.com/2023/08/02/not-a-genocide/

The Law Commission recently put out a consultation paper on whether the law relating to 'hate crime' should be changed, and if so how. The Commission considers whether the current 'sentence aggravation' model (in which hatred may be factored into sentencing as an aggravating factor) should be replaced by a new, specific offence of 'hate crime.' But how should 'hate' (of various sorts) factor into how we think about different offences? How broad should our scope be when considering whether a particular act (or a particular person) has been 'hateful'? And is there a risk that the changes will erode expressive rights, including speech rights?

We are joined by Steph Martin of the Free Speech Union (and also Adjunct Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative) to discuss all of this, as well as Victoria University of Wellington's latest version of their academic freedom policy.

The Law Commission's 'hate crime' consultation paper: https://www.lawcom.govt.nz/our-work/hate-crime/tab/consultation-paper

Cody Ellingham is a Kiwi writer, photographer, and Bitcoin enthusiast who's currently based in Kamakura, Japan.

We asked him to explain Bitcoin to us and tell us about the Bitcoin scene in New Zealand.

Lyn Alden, Broken Money: https://www.amazon.com.au/Broken-Money-Financial-System-Failing/dp/B0CG8985FR
Angela Redish, Bimetallism: https://www.cambridge.org/nz/universitypress/subjects/economics/macroeconomics-and-monetary-economics/bimetallism-economic-and-historical-analysis?format=PB&isbn=9780521028936

Cody's 2024 Bitcoin briefing for NZ: https://www.thetransformationofvalue.com/articles/bitcoin-briefing-for-new-zealand-2024
Cody's podcast: https://www.thetransformationofvalue.com
Cody's website: https://codyellingham.com/#home 

James on The Transformation of Value: https://www.thetransformationofvalue.com/episodes/ancient-economies-declining-universities-and-free-speech-with-dr-james-kierstead

Alan Davison is Academic Lead at the Governance and Public Affairs Centre at the Australian Catholic University, and was until recently Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. He co-founded the Permission to Think series on Josh Szeps' Uncomfortable Conversations podcast. He is also President of the Australian Free Speech Union. We talked to Alan about post-modernism, the evolution of (bad) ideas, and what to do about our universities. Alan's paper 'A Darwinian Approach to Post-Modern Critical Theory': https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper...

Dr Peter Boghossian is a freelance philosopher and former academic. He was jointly responsible for the 'Sokal squared' hoax, as a result of which he was investigated by his then-employer, Portland State University, for research misconduct. He later left the university and now travels the world engaging bystanders in 'street epistemology' - open, reasonable conversations on a range of topics. 

We talked to him about whether there are moral facts, what people think about in prison, whether universities should get state funding, and how to create a post-university educational and intellectual world. 

The 'Sokal squared' hoax: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/
'Street epistemology' on Peter's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYNjnJFU-62t25_8aD9loEqZL9J4p-82p

Nigel Biggar is an emeritus professor at Oxford University, where he was Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology. He is also an Anglican priest. His most recent book is Colonialism. A Moral Reckoning (2023). We talked to Prof. Biggar about the how to assess the British Empire and about the roots of our universities' ongoing travails. 

Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Colonialism-Moral-Reckoning-Nigel-Biggar/dp/0008511632

Only a few days after its Senate voted down the University of Auckland's 'academic freedom' policy, Victoria University of Wellington has come out with a similar policy of its own. Here to discuss VUW's policy with us is Steph Martin from the Free Speech Union. We also discuss Steph's work to help protect New Zealanders' speech rights on a variety of fronts. 

Toby Young is the founder of the Free Speech Union and The Daily Sceptic, an associate editor of The Spectator, and a former associate editor at Quillette. We talked to him about the prospects for free speech and academic freedom in the Anglosphere, why he left Quillette and founded The Daily Sceptic, and what his experience of free (or charter) schools has been.

https://freespeechunion.org/
https://dailysceptic.org/

Peter Ridd was formerly head of the Physics Programme and the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Queensland. We asked him how and why he was forced out of JCU, as well as about the Great Barrier Reef and climate change in the Pacific. An article by Peter calling for greater quality assurance in 'policy-science': https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...