About this episode

Meghan Daum interviews Brendan O'Neill about the shift away from wokeness and the implications for free speech and public discourse.

Meghan's guest this week is British journalist and author Brendan O'Neill, chief political writer at Spiked and author of Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy. Brendan talks about what he sees as a growing "vibe shift" away from elite consensus and toward something like common sense—though not without its own distortions. He and Meghan discuss the UK's role in pushing back on gender ideology (aka "TERF Island"), the uneasy state of free speech on both sides of the Atlantic, and why ordinary people seemed to tolerate cultural excesses until they suddenly didn't. They also touch on the rise of unserious, meme-driven politics, the infantilization of public discourse (with Greta Thunberg as an emblematic if also profoundly dysfunctional figure), and the strange convergence of hectoring moralism on one side and gleeful nihilism on the other. Finally, Brendan reflects on his own journey from revolutionary communist to free speech absolutist, and why he thinks we may be inching slowly back toward a politics grounded less in identity and more in reality. Guest Bio; Brendan O'Neill is the chief political writer at Spiked and host of The Brendan O'Neill Show…

People in this episode

Host: Meghan Daum

Guest: Brendan O'Neill

Topics covered

• wokeness
• free speech
• gender ideology
• cultural excesses
• politics
• public discourse

Keywords

• wokeness
• free speech
• gender ideology
• cultural excess
• politics
• Brendan O'Neill

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Spiked

Books & works: Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy

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