Ideas Matter

What comes after liberal democracy? In this bold, idea-rich lecture, Kolja Zydatis explores the global political topography of our time – a murky, volatile “interregnum” where the old order is collapsing but the new has not yet arrived. Drawing from his and Mark Feldon’s new book, Zydatis offers a panoramic, polemical tour of what he calls hyper-liberalism – a runaway version of liberalism obsesse...

Is the postwar liberal order finally coming undone? And if so – what comes next? The liberal order is dying – not liberalism as an idea, but the postwar regime of managed decline, elite control, and fake freedom. This talk exposes how that order hollowed out real autonomy, smothered politics, and bred a generation of anxious, atomised subjects. But if it's ending, what replaces it? Populist partie...

This lecture explores the emergence of the American New Right – a diffuse and provocative intellectual tendency gaining visibility in the wake of the populist revolts of 2016. Focusing on figures like Patrick Deneen and Curtis Yarvin, it examines their critiques of liberalism, meritocracy, and democracy, as well as their visions of authority, order, and political renewal. While often dismissed as...

What if the most radical act today is remembering who we are? In this brilliant, rousing address, political strategist and historian-in-spirit Gawain Towler argues that British history is not a relic – it’s a shield, a compass, and the last line of defence against tyranny, technocracy, and cultural amnesia. From Kipling to Alan Macfarlane, from the Glorious Revolution to Brexit, this lecture trace...

Is populism enough? Or is the real crisis deeper – moral, spiritual, civilisational? In this sweeping and provocative lecture, theologian and political philosopher John Milbank argues that post-liberalism is not a reactionary impulse or a right-wing fad, but a serious and British-born intellectual tradition rooted in the thought of Alasdair MacIntyre, John Gray, and religious communitarianism. Mil...

Can a generation obsessed with authenticity even recognise what’s real anymore? This wide-ranging and incisive talk explores Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, a haunting millennial rewrite of Georges Perec’s Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965). What begins as an exercise in literary homage becomes something far deeper: a cultural diagnosis of a generation adrift.

What does it mean to belong – to a country, a culture, a civilisation? In this provocative and wide-ranging talk, we explore the deep tensions between citizenship and belonging in modern Britain and the West. From the strange status of “Britishness” to the hollowing out of national identity under liberal universalism, this talk challenges the idea that citizenship is just a passport or a legal sta...

What happens when everything becomes public – our thoughts, our feelings, even our intimacy? In this sweeping and brilliant talk, we trace the collapse of the boundary between public and private life, showing how an idea once central to Western freedom – the right to a private self – has quietly disintegrated. From 17th-century sermons warning against “doing in private what you’d fear in public,”...

Alienation. Estrangement. A loss of voice. Across the West, millions feel like strangers in the very places they once called home – but are told they're not allowed to say it. Frank Furedi cuts through the noise and exposes the silent war on language, belonging, and common sense. This is not just cultural drift – it's a deliberate attempt by elites to sever our connection to community, tradition,...

The concept of high culture has come under sustained attack. Once understood as a repository of human achievement, high culture is now dismissed as elitist, exclusionary, or worse—merely the expression of dead white European males. The modern academy, far from upholding cultural excellence, now works to deconstruct it. But high culture is not merely a reflection of power. It is a source of intelle...

Words are civilisation’s golden-thread: the durable link from Homer to Orwell that turns tribes into free peoples. Yet our own elites now treat language as toxic waste to be inspected, licensed or burned. This lecture storms through 2,000 years to show why killing words means killing the West itself. Lose the freedom to read and speak, and the West’s hard-won gains – from Shakespeare to the Suffra...

Modern universities have become bureaucratic engines of conformity, hostile to the very civilisation they owe everything to. In this eye-opening lecture, Professor Simon Haines, founding director of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation (Sydney), explains how we can rescue the humanities by reintroducing students to the foundational texts – not as objects of activist deconstruction, but as li...

As Vicky Richardson argues in this talk, cultural institutions today stand at a crossroads. Once dedicated to excellence, artistic achievement, and the preservation of tradition, they are now paralysed by fear. Leadership teams are more concerned with ideological positioning than curatorial expertise, and in their attempts to reframe institutions as platforms for political debate, they risk aliena...

The Industrial Revolution was supposed to set humanity free. It promised progress—mastery over nature, freedom from suffering, and a future shaped by human reason. It gave us the means to solve problems that once seemed like fate, to subject the world to human ingenuity and build a civilisation of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But something went wrong. Instead of controlling the world, we tur...

In this talk, Ann Furedi argues that Human civilization is built on the distinctiveness of our species—the awareness that we exist in time, with a past, present, and future, and that we are unique in our capacity for rationality, morality, and creativity. But this foundational understanding is being dismantled.   🔹 Posthumanism & Post-Anthropocentrism – The dominant academic and cultural narr...

The Industrial Revolution was the single greatest leap forward in human history. As Nikos Sotirakopoulos argues in this talk, it didn’t just give us more—more wealth, more technology, more life expectancy—it gave us a different kind of life altogether. It unleashed human ingenuity, freed individuals from drudgery, and created a society where innovation and creativity could flourish. But today, the...

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 was supposed to be a triumphant moment for the West. But, as Tim Black argues in this lecture, instead of securing a lasting victory for liberal democracy, it created an existential crisis. For decades, the Cold War had given the West a clear sense of purpose—defeating communism, leading the "Free World," and shaping global history. But with the USSR gone, West...

In this important lecture, Professor Bill Durodie argues that the real threat to Western civilisation isn’t external—it’s internal. We are not in a clash of civilisations but a crisis of culture. 🔹 Loss of Shared Culture – Tradition has been discarded, but nothing has replaced it. Fragmentation replaces continuity. 🔹 From Resilience to Fragility – A society that once rebuilt after the Blitz now...

Lord Frost, the former chief negotiator for the UK's Brexit negotiations, argues in this talk that Western Civilization, the most creative and dynamic force in human history, now stands at a crossroads. The defining elements of its success—intellectual dynamism, economic freedom, individual autonomy, and the ability to absorb and refine ideas—are under sustained attack.   🔹 The erosion of nationa...

Western civilisation faces a two-pronged assault – but are both attackers closer than they appear? In this uncompromising lecture, Professor Frank Furedi exposes the internal collapse of civilisational confidence in the West and its convenient projection onto foreign foes. From the lecture halls of London to the tunnels of Gaza, decolonisation and Islamism reveal a shared contempt for the Western...

Shakespeare isn’t just a relic of the past—he is one of the foundational figures of Western civilisation. Yet today, activists and cultural gatekeepers seek to reduce him to just another “dead white man,” claiming his legacy is nothing more than a product of colonialism and outdated values. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In this talk, Andrew Doyle dismantles these ideological attacks and...

Primo Levi is the modern conscience of Europe. Yet our culture warriors downgrade his searing witness to Auschwitz into just another lesson in victimhood or, worse, try and downplay the significance of the holocaust into one of many. This lecture we restores Levi’s grim brilliance – and expose today’s relativists who would rather talk about “systems” than evil. 📖 Topics Covered • Why Levi, aged 2...

Trigger warnings and microaggression policies have become increasingly familiar on campus. But while we can snigger at ‘de-stressing parties’ with colouring books, are students any different from the rest of society? After all, many people believe we face an unprecedented range of threats. Anxiety allied to yearning for safety is evident in warnings over formula milk and processed foods, panics ov...

Features the discussion ‘The ‘stolen years’: understanding the lockdowns’ recorded at Living Freedom Summer School 2023.   It’s not surprising lockdown was experienced as an era of loneliness, anxiety and fear. In every arena, freedom, autonomy and social life were restricted in favour of Zoom calls, family bubbles, and vaccine passports. Some say we are seeing a permanent shift in the experience...

Features the discussion ‘What does it mean to be human in a world of generative AI?’ recorded at Living Freedom Summer School 2023.   People are fascinated, amused and alarmed – often all three at once, at the generative AI tools that have taken the internet by storm over the last year. Some people welcome the new possibilities that these tools seem to offer for human creativity and flourishing. O...