John Bew: The Davos world is over

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 glass' moment facing Western leaders and explores the uncomfortable reality of our current era: Will the UK shift from economic dependency toward restoring its own national power to navigate a scary new era of ‘bully powers’? Is the Western alliance truly over, or can a nuanced and multi-layered approach preserve the core security frameworks that have defined the last 80 years? How should middle powers respond when the United States - the traditional guarantor of global norms - begins to operate under a pre-1945 logic of annexation and unilateral tariffs? And could a new Northern European alliance provide the necessary leverage to protect sovereign interests in an increasingly bipolar world? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 illegal execution, or does the responsibility lie with Good for obstructing a lawful federal operation and “weaponising" her vehicle, a view echoed by the Trump administration's branding of the event as an act of domestic terrorism. The discussion concludes with YouGov’s David Montgomery, who reveals how the broader American public view the use of force, and what significant long-term political risks the incident may yield for the Republican project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 essential role of the region in a new space race for strategic security dominance, they explore how the Greenland situation is symptomatic of a profound breakdown in trust between Washington and Western Europe, with the administration increasingly viewing European leadership as obstructive political rivals in a shifting global order. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 rapidly while the victims struggle to reclaim their own digital identities.Moving beyond the personal, they explore an imminent future in which audiovisual evidence can no longer be trusted, debating whether this will lead to a new era where arguments are judged solely on their merits, or a return to a medieval-like state where high-quality information becomes a luxury for the elite while the masses are left to navigate a sea of fabricated content. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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/1641773995UnHerd'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 through a 2,500-year narrative arc from the ancient Greek invention of reason to the modern-day "cult of innovation," Hankins warns that elite institutions are suffering from a dangerous cultural amnesia. But, despite the degradation of the canon, offers a defiant hope rooted in history, arguing that Western civilisation has survived near-extinction before and remains ripe for a new Renaissance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 political right has adopted the very cancel culture tactics it once decried, led by government officials who are now directly intervening to investigate, defund, and even deport students for controversial speech. From the fallout of the Charlie Kirk assassination to the use of executive orders to ban student groups, they explore why the new wave of state-sponsored retaliation is creating a chilling effect across American universities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 conversation delves deeper into the complex reality of rehabilitation and the growing threat of organised Islamist terror networks—or "the Brotherhood"—who are gaining authority and converting other inmates within the UK's high-security prisons. Gallant offers an urgent warning on the failures of the system to challenge radical ideology and reflects on the difficult question of whether true change is possible for long-term prisoners. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 fundamentally upends how the media and public understand the entire politics of immigration? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 dismantles the modelling behind the headline and ask the questions the inquiry refused to: Why was the clear counter-evidence of Sweden ignored? And did the scientific establishment betray its own duties by choosing the certain harm of lockdown over the uncertain control of a virus? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 civilisational error that the state is now too afraid to admit? And is the inquiry an establishment whitewash that sets the stage for future authoritarianism? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.