Savage Minds Podcast

Lisa Marchiano , a writer and Jungian analyst discusses her book  Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself  (Sounds True, 2021). In this episode, Marchiano speaks with Julian Vigo about employing fairytales in Motherhood to recount Jungian psychoanalysis through stories of descent and emergence from the well, the central metaphor of her book. Outlining Jung’s concept of individuation, the lifelong...

Jo Phoenix, Professor at The Open University, discusses being de-platformed from a 2019 talk at the University of Essex after being accused of “hate speech” and “transphobia.” Addressing the points made in the the Reindorf report released earlier this week which details deeper institutional problems where the ideological capture by Stonewall within university policy, Phoenix and Julian Vigo explor...

Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief  and founder of The Grayzone and author of The Management of Savagery (Verso, 2019), discusses the shift in coverage of the Middle East within mainstream media over the past two decades and the need for journalism to pay attention to the voices of the people. Drawing from his work in the West Bank and Gaza, Blumenthal scrutinises the disproportionate attacks by Isra...

Cultural and medical anthropologist Alyshia Gálvez discusses her groundbreaking book on changing food policies, systems and practices in Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States, Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies and the Destruction of Mexico , (UC Press, 2018). Elaborating the ways Mexican are impacted by trade and economic policies and the wider public health and cultural implication...

Jay Lalezari, MD is a physician and the Director of Quest Clinical Research who recently penned “ Hope for Critically Ill Covid-19 Patients Within Reach ” wherein he describes the results of a randomised, double-blind study of a drug called leronlimab (Vyrologix or PRO 140) which demonstrates a 82% reduction in the rate of death at Day 14 for patients on a ventilator who received 2 weekly doses of...

Tim McFeeley, former Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC (1989-1995), elaborates the mandate of the HRC during his tenure and the overwhelming struggle in the face of the AIDS crisis. Detailing the struggles facing gay men in the 1990s, McFeeley discusses the HRC’s mission to secure healthcare for those living with HIV and AIDS seeing through the the passage of the Ry...

In questo nostro primo episodio in lingua italiana, Marina Terragni , giornalista, scrittrice, docente universitaria elabora la situazione in Italia oggi affrontata da donne e ragazze alla proposta del governo del disegno di legge (Ddl) Zan e come questa proposta di legislazione, se fosse convertita in legge, sostituirebbe i diritti delle donne e delle ragazze nei settori dell'assistenza sanitaria...

Tim Newbold, a senior research fellow in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, talks with Julian Vigo about how biodiversity is changing around the world due to climate change and what this means for human societies. Newbold shares his and his team’s latest research to include “ A biodiversity target based on species extinctions ” addressing the declin...

Donna M. Hughes, Ph. D., a professor holding the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island who researches the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Europe, discusses the fallout to her article on 4W, “ Fantasy Worlds on the Political Right and Left: QAnon and Trans-Sex Beliefs .” As...

In this episode, Helen Dale , Senior Writer at  Law & Liberty , elaborates the differences between traditionalism and One Nation Conservatism noting some of the similarities with socialism as she addresses the spectrum of political responses in the face of pandemic mitigation policies. Dale also discusses the refusal of those who voted against Brexit to accept the electoral results, “not giving lo...

Dr David Bell was a consultant psychiatrist in the Adult Department at the Tavistock where he worked in adult services from 1995 until his retirement earlier this year. In his role as Staff Governor at the Tavistock, Bell was approached by a large number of clinicians who were working or had worked on the Tavistock Gender Identity Development service (GIDS). They raised very serious concerns about...

Maya Forstater , a researcher, writer and advisor working on business and sustainable development and co-founder of Sex Matters , talks about having lost her job after tweeting and writing about sex and gender. She is the claimant in a landmark test case on whether the protected characteristic of belief in the Equality Act covers gender critical beliefs. In this episode, Forstater discusses her ca...

Saiph Savage , co-director of the UNAM Civic Innovation Lab, discusses the era of misinformation and the uses and abuses of bots within social media. Considering her Botivist experiment, she emphasises how the use of bots free up humans to work on more creative tasks while bots are delegated to menial chores. Savage also details some of the abuses of bots which, along with trolls, have the capacit...

Gina Rippon , Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre in the UK and author of The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain (2019), discusses the reasons behind the current of “neurotrash,” the populist (mis)use of neuroscience research to (mis)represent our understanding of the brain and to prop up outdated stereotypes. In this...

In this episode Joey Brite discusses her article, “ The Four Horsemen of the Gender-Critical Apocalypse ,” that caused upheaval amongst various women in the “gender-critical” feminist movement. Detailing her grass-roots organising and activism within the jazz music and lesbian communities, Brite expounds on the class apartheid within the contemporary feminist movement where working class women’s v...

Michael Conroy, founder of Men At Work , discusses his training programme for professionals whose aim of is to support those working with boys and young men in understanding the social influences, values and beliefs which lead to sexism, misogyny and a range of harmful behaviours. In this episode, Julian Vigo discusses with Michael the influences that form young boys into men which legitimate cert...

Joti Brar , political activist, editor, deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain and co-author of Identity Politics and the Transgender Trend , discusses the links between imperialist endeavours and worker exploitation while historicising the tradeoffs made by the western political elites who granted temporary advances to workers during the post-war boom, to include free education and council...

Dawn Paley, journalist and author of Drug War Capitalism (2014) and Guerra neoliberal: Desaparición y búsqueda en el norte de México (2020), discusses her research in Latin America drawing parallels between the historical destruction of communities and the present-day environmental and social destruction amassed by Canadian mining companies in Argentina. Noting that the problems within the extract...

Mark Crispin Miller , Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, discusses his current lawsuit against 19 of his academic colleagues for libel and the neoliberal machinery aiming to take down anyone who does not espouse certain political views within media, powerful institutions and universities alike. Detailing the recent history at New York University where he experien...

Author and human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik discusses his soon-to-be-released book  Cancel This Book: The Progressive Case Against Cancel Culture  while addressing the adjacent problems today within the left to include the ostensibly “progressive” policies around virus mitigation that dismiss the needs of survival for the poor and the working class. Citing longstanding problems within American poli...

In this episode, “ex-scientist” Andy Lewis discusses his Quackometer , originally an AI-like experiment to see if a machine could recognise pages on the internet that could differentiate between the uncritical acceptance and evidence-based evaluation. Describing his work in advancing scepticism, Lewis details the “trouble” he has created by examining Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, homeopathy and...

Renée Gerlich is a writer and artist based in New Zealand who discusses her political activism around women’s rights and feminist politics today. Detailing the assimilation of the left by liberalism, Gerlich notes how liberal leftism is fundamentally a political vehicle of men who are not served by the right while underscoring how the rise of pornography is not coincidental to the neoliberal proje...

In this episode, columnist and writer Suzanne Moore discusses female desire, the prescriptive nature of gender today and the way in which we are required to submit to ideology that goes against materialist analyses and reality—to include the materiality of the female body. Moore situates the current ideological trend that requires the subject to abandon reason within the larger and theoretical lan...

Claire Fox, director of the Academy of Ideas and member of the House of Lords as Baroness Fox of Buckley, discusses her participation in the recent debate in the House of Lords regarding the absence of the word “women” in the Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Act addressing the double standards and hypocrisy in contemporary politics which is attempting to “nod through” legislation that er...

Joanna Williams, writer and founder of the think tank Cieo and director of the Freedom, Democracy and Victimhood Project at Civitas , discusses the debate over free speech theorising the roots of the current culture war, the institutional capture of identity politics and the appropriate responses that individuals ought to undertake in pushing back against the present-day bullying atmosphere. Refer...