Savage Minds

Paul Embery is a firefighter, trade unionist, journalist, national organiser of Trade Unionists Against the EU, supporter of Blue Labour and the author of Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class. In this episode, Embery talks with Julian Vigo about the chasm between the working class communities and the wider left to include the abandon of class considerations by the left in favour of a focus on identity politics.

In this episode, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who holds an MD and PhD in economics, discusses his work during the COVID-19 epidemic to include the first seroprevalence study and some of the humanist ideals behind the Great Barrington Declaration which urges a change in COVID-19 infection control policies away from lockdowns and in favour of focused protection of the vulnerable.

Marcus Evans is a former governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation where he also served as Consultant Psychotherapist and Associate Clinical Director of Adult and Adolescent Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. In this episode Evans discusses the 400 percent rise in referrals to the Tavistock Centre in north London, the only National Health Service (NHS) clinic in Britain that treats children with gender-identity developmental issues. Discussing changes within the clinical psychiatric practices treating gender dysphoria, the powerful lobby groups and NGOs pushing “gender affirmative” approaches, the shift in doctor-patient relations and the explosion of cases among adolescent girls, Evans analyses the mutations in theoretical and practical approaches to childhood gender dysphoria in recent decades.

Martin Kulldorff, PhD, a biostatistician, epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is one of the three creators of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) co-authored with fellow scientists Sunetra Gupta (Oxford University) and  Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford University). In his discussion with Julian Vigo, Kulldorff analyses current WHO and media discourses surrounding COVID-19 and “lockdown-induced collateral damage” which has had devastating effects on public health and the economy. If you've been thinking about supporting Savage Minds, but have not yet done so, please consider taking out a subscription, by supporting our work on Patreon or through a one-off donation. We really can't do this without you and we depend on financial support which means that we can cover the news unfettered by corporate pressure.

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, the esteemed Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, joins Julian Vigo to discuss this current global pandemic through the analysis he and Dr. Karina Reiss provide in Corona, False Alarm Facts And Figures (2020). An award-winning researcher, Bhakdi sheds a light on the current era of COVID-19 and offers an analysis of whether radical protective measures—including lockdown, social distancing, and mandatory masking—have been justified, and what the ramifications have been for society, the economy, and public health.

Women's rights campaigner and founder of Standing For Women, Kellie-Jay Keen, discusses the rift among feminists seeking to denigrate right-wing women, free speech and the myth of left-wing compassion with Julian Vigo. Also known by the name Posie Parker, Keen covers her political actions to include the posting of billboards and stickers with the definition of the word “woman” and her recent arrest.

In this episode, Glenn Loury addresses Black Lives Matter, our cultural fixation on slavery, the current debate over police brutality and the uses and abuses of social media with Julian Vigo. Examining the “Karen” incident of Central Park this summer, Loury queries the “counterweight to the unspoken—but much more overpoweringly, empirically resonant reality” of a narrative which plays heavily in the American political and media landscape.

Heather Brunskell-Evans discusses John Stuart Mill, Michel Foucault, identity politics, the current philosophical and legal discourses on sexual violence, and the politics of “kindness” with Julian Vigo. Focussing upon many of the misrepresentations of Foucault’s work in recent years, Brunskell-Evans offers ways in which we might better understand liberalism and how Foucault asks us to consider both the body and our presumed freedoms.

If you've been thinking about supporting Savage Minds, but have not yet done so, please consider taking out a subscription, by supporting our work on Patreon or through a one-off donation. We really can't do this without you and we depend on financial support which means that we can cover the news unfettered by corporate pressure.

Savage Minds presents its launch podcast with Noam Chomsky who speaks with Julian Vigo about the international mitigation efforts for dealing with COVID-19, US politics, ecological catastrophe, internationalism, feminism and identity politics. Chomsky lays bare the situation of politics within and outside the United States and why the left needs to focus on working class issues, public health, and the current ecological disaster.