Quillette Podcast
Long-form conversations with scientists, writers, historians, and public intellectuals on the ideas shaping — and dividing — the Western world.
Mostly hosted by Jonathan Kay — Canadian journalist, author, and Quillette editor whose books include Among the Truthers, a landmark investigation into conspiracy culture. Kay brings a rare combination of intellectual range, genuine curiosity, and willingness to push back, whether the subject is evolutionary biology, cancel culture, geopolitics, or the philosophy of free speech.
Non-dogmatic, evidence-driven, and unafraid of controversy.
76
The Canadian Episode: Trump’s Tariffs and Trude...
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with The Line editor Jen Gerson about how U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats have affected Canada’s already fractured political landscape.
40 min
77
‘The Politics of the Academy Have Been Defeated’
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with Yale English professor-turned-essayist William Deresiewicz, who argues that Americans—many Democrats included—are fed up with campus-style progressive radicalism.
15 min
78
'The Power of Nuclear'
Quillette podcast host Iona Italia speaks with Dutch writer Marco Visscher, author of “The Power of Nuclear: The Rise, Fall and Return of Our Mightiest Energy Source”
17 min
79
The Tragedy of California’s Wildfires
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with University of Southern California scholar William Deverell about the enormous fires that have destroyed large swathes of the Los Angeles area.
17 min
80
Reading and Writing Science
With Richard Dawkins.
44 min
81
Did Oliver Cromwell Really Kill Christmas?
In a special yuletide episode, Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with David Crowther about seventeenth-century puritan attitudes toward yuletide debauchery—and about his acclaimed History of England podcast.
17 min
82
'A Theory of Everyone'
With Michael Muthukrishna
17 min
83
In Defence of Julia the Elder
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with Joan Smith, whose new book critically examines the 2,000-year-old propaganda campaign against imperial Rome’s leading women.
19 min
84
'Interintellect and the Modern-Day Salon'
With Anna Gat
18 min
85
Lessons from a Teachers-College Battle Over Fre...
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay discusses recent events at the University of Western Ontario, where instructors spent months denouncing an outspoken education student who’d asked awkward questions about Indigenous reconciliation—until a tribunal concluded they’d violated her rights.
16 min
86
'Making Britain Great Again'
'Making Britain Great Again' with Sam Bowman
20 min
87
The Campaign Against 'Settler Colonialism’
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay talks to author Adam Kirsch about the growing corps of academics and activists seeking to demonize ‘settler colonialists’ in North America, Australia—and especially Israel.
29 min
88
Canadian Bureaucracy and Its Discontents
Canadian Bureaucracy and Its Discontents, with Nick Osmond-Jones.
21 min
89
How Universities Should Regulate Contentious Sp...
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with prolific Harvard University legal scholar Cass Sunstein about his new book, Campus Free Speech: A Pocket Guide
13 min
90
Unreliable Sources
Iona Italia talks to Jack Despain Zhou (aka "Tracing Woodgrains") about the decline of standards at Wikipedia as a result of the obsessive efforts of ideologically motivated editors.
20 min
91
We Have Never Been Woke
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with scholar Musa al-Gharbi, whose acclaimed new book analyses the rise of progressive ideological orthodoxy as a means for elites to signal status and accumulate ‘cultural capital.’
12 min
92
In Defence of Beauty with Megan Gafford
In Defence of Beauty with Megan Gafford
19 min
93
A Brief History of Communism with Sean McMeekin
A Brief History of Communism with Sean McMeekin
18 min
94
'Trans Rights, Israel and the Progressive Circu...
'Trans Rights, Israel and the Progressive Circus' with Brianna Wu
92 min
95
Tracing the Rise of Radicalized Anti-Zionism on...
43 min
96
'Israel: Germany's Reason of State'
Podcast host Iona Italia talks to Gerfried Ambrosch about pro-Israel feeling on the German Left, antisemitism among Muslim immigrants and why Israel’s safety is “Germany’s reason of state.”
59 min
97
The (Other) Scandal at Oberlin College
Jonathan Kay speaks with Roya Hakakian about the rise and fall of Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, a former Iranian official who’d presented himself to Oberlin as an agent of peace and ‘forgiveness.’
38 min
98
Bridging Divides Between Democrats and Republicans
Podcast host Iona Italia talks to John Wood, Jr. of Braver Angels about building a stronger democratic consensus in America.
51 min
99
Should Imane Khelif be allowed to box against w...
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with University of Manchester Developmental Biologist Emma Hilton about Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who won the gold medal in the women's welterweight event at the 2024 Summer Olympics, despite widely reported indications that Khelif may be biologically male.
24 min
100
How Gender Activists Took Over a Scottish Rape-...
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay talks to writer Joan Smith about the scandals that unfolded at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre under the leadership of its male trans-identified CEO, Mridul Wadhwa
35 min