UnHerd with Freddie Sayers

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers hosts a debate on the internal future of Iran featuring two clashing geopolitical perspectives: Professor Edward Luttwak - a strategist and expert on international diplomacy, who argues that the Trump administration is successfully pursuing a strategy to achieve regime change via surgical airstrikes; and Dr Arta Moeini - international political theorist and a realist thinke...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers and US editor Sohrab Ahmari unpick the ideological fracture within the Republican party following the escalatory US strikes against Iran. From the notable silence of JD Vance to the resurging influence of Lindsey Graham, they explore how Donald Trump’s "Peace Admin" shifted toward a hawk-like interventionism agenda reminiscent of the George W. Bush era, at a decisive moment...

In the wake of Obama's on-air revelation that he believes in aliens and Trump's move to declassify government UFO documents, UnHerd invites two world experts to make the best case for hope and doubt about extraterrestrial life. Michael Shermer, Skeptic magazine founder and author of the new book Truth (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Truth-What-Find-Still-Matters/dp/142145372X), and Harvard astronomer Pr...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks to journalist Michael Tracey about the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and what Tracey describes as a "moral panic" surrounding the Epstein scandal. Tracey challenges the mainstream narrative, arguing that the case against the former Prince relies on fictionalised accounts and inconsistent testimony from the late Virginia Giuffre, and by examining recently surfac...

UnHerd’s Jonny Ball meets historian, academic, and author Anton Jäger to discuss his new book ‘Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences’, charting the pronounced shift in engagement and death of political institutions since the 1980s via analysis of movements like Brexit, BLM, and the rise of the far-Right. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers meets with former Danish Minister for Immigration and Integration, Kaare Dybvad Bek – fresh from his high-profile talk at the Policy Exchange - to explore how his centre-Left Social Democrats party successfully implemented hardline immigration policies to reduce asylum applications to their lowest in 40 years. He argues that by curbing uncontrolled migration, the Danish gov...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks with senior editor at Reason, Robby Soave, about the long-awaited release of the Epstein Files and the fallout following the disclosure. Has the dump of millions of unverified documents sparked a modern-day witch hunt, where gossip is mistaken for evidence and guilt by association replaces due process? They explore how both ends of the political spectrum have weaponis...

UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers explores the upcoming high-stakes by-election of Gorton and Denton with a deep dive into the constituency and its localised microcosm of global populist trends. He is joined by Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester, Rob Ford, founder and editor of the Manchester Mill, Joshi Herrmann, and councillors Allan Hopwood (Reform) and Shahbaz Sarwar (Workers...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks to eminent economist and social scientist Professor Glenn Loury about a troubling new shift in American discourse: the rise of Right-wing identity politics. Traditionally a critic of the woke Left, Loury turns his sights on the world’s wealthiest man, arguing that Elon Musk is making a "category mistake" by importing South African racial anxieties into the American co...

In this exclusive interview, UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers speaks with Professor John Bew - leading historian and chief foreign policy advisor to the last four UK Prime Ministers – about the friction caused by the Trump administration's push to acquire Greenland and the resulting panic within the Western alliance. Set against the backdrop of the 2026 Davos summit, the conversation confronts the 'break g...

Freddie Sayers debates the killing of Renee Good by ICE Agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis with civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes and UnHerd’s US editor Sohrab Ahmari, examining the incident through the lens of the "Rashomon effect" where observers draw diametrically opposite conclusions from the same evidence. Was the shooting a catastrophic violation of civil liberties and potentially an ill...

UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers speaks with author and Cambridge professor Helen Thompson, economist Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl about the Trump administration's escalating rhetoric and strategic moves to acquire Greenland. Covering the historical legal underpinnings of Danish sovereignty while analysing modern geopolitical drivers such as the Monroe Doctrine, Arctic militarisation, and the...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks with Yanis Varoufakis about the unsettling rise of AI-generated deepfakes, using Varoufakis’s own experience as one of the most synthesised figures on YouTube as a chilling case study. The conversation delves into the "techno-feudal" power structures of Big Tech, where algorithms prioritise engagement and "rent-seeking" over truth, allowing misinformation to spread r...

Order 'The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition' by Professor James Hankins here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Thread-Ancient-World-Christendom/dp/1641773995 UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks with Professor James Hankins, a forty-year veteran of Harvard University, about the precarious state of the Western tradition and the burgeoning resistance movement in classical education. Moving...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks to Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), about a new report revealing that 2025 has officially surpassed 2020 as the worst year on record for campus censorship and scholar sanctions. Despite the Trump administration’s campaign promises to restore free expression, Lukianoff details a disturbing shift where the politica...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks with Steve Gallant, a convicted murderer who served 16 years in prison and became known as a hero during the 2019 London Bridge terror attack, where he famously helped subdue the attacker, Usman Khan, with a narwhal tusk on his first-ever day release. Gallant recounts the dramatic events of that day, which led to a royal pardon and an early release, but the conversat...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks with migration expert Dr. Madeleine Sumption to dissect the latest ONS figures which reveal a dramatic crash in UK net migration. Is this truly caused by an alarming "exodus of fed-up Brits," as some headlines suggest, or is the surge in people leaving the country, in fact, the long-overdue re-migration of earlier non-EU and EU immigrants—a data-driven truth that fun...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks with Oxford epidemiologist Professor Sunetra Gupta - one of the three primary authors of the Great Barrington Declaration - to uncover why the UK’s massive £200 million COVID inquiry has produced a conclusion she calls an "insult" to the public intelligence. With the report claiming that locking down just one week earlier would have saved 23,000 lives, Gupta dismantl...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers gives his reaction to the UK’s £200 million COVID inquiry and the official narrative. After 800 pages, the report reaches the conclusion that Britain’s only mistake was not locking down sooner - but at what cost? From the missing chapter on Sweden’s success to the ignored collateral damage inflicted on a generation of children, was the lockdown experiment actually a civilis...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks with writer and philosopher Matthew Crawford about the creeping tyranny of the "Smart City"—a vision of the future where urban life is optimised by data, and human unpredictability is treated as a "bug" to be fixed. But what is the spiritual cost of a "frictionless" existence? As tech giants begin to govern like nation-states and cars become subscription services that...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers dives into the legal and political firestorm surrounding President Trump's threatened lawsuit against the BBC. He is joined by three expert guests to unpack the case from every angle: Professor Burt Neuborne, founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, analyses the US legal arguments and whether Trump can actually win; Joshua Rozenberg, l...

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks with Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, Sir Dieter Helm, about the great climate "self-delusion." As global leaders, royals, and celebrities jet into Rio for the 30th UN Climate Summit (COP 30), Helm - one of the world's most respected climate economists - argues the entire Net Zero project, championed by the very elites at the summit, is built...

In the wake of the Huntingdon train stabbing and ensuing online reaction, UnHerd's Freddie Sayers sits down with journalist for The Times Fraser Nelson to analyse the growing perception of a violent, migrant-driven crimewave in the UK. Responding to disputed data from the Ministry of Justice that foreigners are convicted of up to 23% of sex crimes, as well the rise in low-level crime and isolated...

If the polls are to be believed, Zohran Mamdani—a self-described democratic socialist—is poised to become the next mayor of New York City. His history as a police abolitionist, calls for wealth redistribution, and fierce criticisms of Israel have rankled the Big Apple’s old guard, while galvanizing many young Gothamites, including a majority of young Jews. So: should we fear Mayor Mamdani? Join Un...

In this first episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau debunk two failed economic orthodoxies shaping our world. First, they dismantle the narrative that Europe is helping Ukraine - and striking a powerful blow against Russia - by raiding Russia’s frozen assets. More than this being legally questionable, is it also economically and geopolitically self-defeating? Next, they...