Heretics | Andrew Gold - TopPodcast.com

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52: Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Jenny Kleeman May 10, 2021

Show notes

British journalist Jenny Kleeman - a mix of Louis Theroux and Margaret Atwood - talks to the On the Edge with Andrew Gold podcast about the near-future of sex, food, birth and death, with some startling, worrying and fascinating science.
Get the bonus content on my YouTube and Patreon pages (links below).
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Jenny Kleeman Links:

On the Edge with Andrew Gold Links:

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51: Dr. Death & his assisted suicide machines May 03, 2021

Show notes

This episode with Philip Nitschke (Dr. Death) is really controversial, because it's with the first doctor to perform an assisted suicide in Australia. He has some interesting things to say, but listener discretion is advised.
Get the bonus content on my YouTube and Patreon pages (links below).
Thanks to the episode's sponsor, the language-learning app Babbel. Sign up using my promo code of EDGE on http://babbel.co.uk/play.

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Philip Nitschke Links:

Andrew Links:

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50: Return of the Psychopath: ME Thomas Apr 26, 2021

Show notes

I asked self-confessed psychopath M.E. Thomas (Confessions of a Sociopath) to celebrate my 50th episode with me. Things get heated!
Thanks to the episode's sponsor, the language-learning app Babbel. Sign up using my promo code of EDGE on http://babbel.co.uk/play.
ME Thomas Links:

Psychopathy Is YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbzIdxoEI7Y&ab_channel=PsychopathyIs
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sociopathworld
Confessions of a Sociopath: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307956644/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN

Andrew Links:

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49: I forgave the men who gang-raped me at 13: Madeleine Black Apr 19, 2021

Show notes

Madeleine Black told her story in her book Unbroken, which is now also a podcast. At just 13, she was led drunk to a bedroom in a vacant flat in London by two American 17-year-olds, who raped her.
Thanks to the episode's sponsor, the language-learning app Babbel. Sign up using my promo code of EDGE on http://babbel.co.uk/play.
Madeleine Links:

Unbroken Podcast: https://podfollow.com/1534721507
Unbroken Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unbroken-Journey-Shattered-Violence-Survival/dp/1786062763
https://twitter.com/madblack65
https://instagram.com/madblack65

Andrew Links:

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48: My Journey into Incels (Involuntary Celibates): Naama Kates Apr 12, 2021

Show notes

Naama Kates is an actress and musician best known for her work with extremists and incels. An incel is an involuntary celibate: men who feel they're physically or mentally too unattractive for women. While many of these men are depressed or lonely, when they come together through online communities, things can get toxic.
Naama Links:
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incel/id1469915971
https://twitter.com/naamakates
Andrew Links:

http://youtube.com/andrewgold1
http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok
http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok
http://patreon.com/andrewgold
http://andrewgoldpodcast.com
Thanks to the episode's sponsor, the language-learning app Babbel. Sign up using my promo code of EDGE on http://babbel.co.uk/play.

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47: The Undercover Agents Who Slept with Activists: Cara McGoogan Apr 05, 2021

Show notes

Today, I’m talking to Telegraph journalist Cara McGoogan, the host and journalist behind acclaimed podcast Bed of Lies.
[By the way, join me in an old 90's-style chat room Thursday 8pm GMT (it's free, and you don't have to sign up): https://discord.gg/RWH7fs6ygb] The series follows the lives of several fairly innocuous and harmless Left-Wing activists in the 80s, 90s and 2000s who fell in love, married and, on occasion, had children with men they had met on the activist scene. They would then go together to marches and rallies against things like animal cruelty or climate change, and other typically socially Leftist causes. It later emerged that the men they had met were undercover police agents acting as spies. Imagine finding out that the love of your life, the father of your children and the person you trusted more than anyone else in the world – that’s all one person by the way, not three - had been living a lie.
Cara Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cjmcgoogan
Telegraph Page: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/cara-mcgoogan/
Bed of Lies: https://podfollow.com/1537575625
Andrew Links:

http://youtube.com/andrewgold1
http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok
http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok
http://patreon.com/andrewgold
http://andrewgoldpodcast.com Cara talks to me about her investigation and how it got started, what it was like for these women to have the rug pulled out from under them, having to start again alone. We look at a few individual stories, and chat about the police officers and their motivations in ruining the lives of these women. They spent years pretending to support Left-Wing causes, but had actually been secretly laughing at their partners’ views for years and reporting back to the police. We look at the nature of secret-keeping and what that can do to a person, and hear about how some agents came down with PTSD. We talk about literature a bit and the kind of books, like Russian literature, where there are so many names and nicknames and it’s hard to keep track of the characters. That happens at times in the podcast too - but Cara is very good at reminding us who is who - and the stories are enough to give us an overall sense of what happened to many different women over a number of years. More Cara facts – she is currently writing a coming of age love story about a couple torn apart by depression and addiction, set in the hedonistic world of music. She also has a new podcast about secrets and corruption set to come out later in the year.

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46: Sadia Hameed: Held Captive in Pakistan (Part 2) Mar 29, 2021

Show notes

Hey, are you ready for part 2 of my super long interview with the glorious Sadia Hameed. If you haven’t yet heard part 1, it was just a couple of weeks ago, when Sadia told us about how social services in the UK actually helped her family to kidnap her when she was 15, and move her to Pakistan, where they starved and tortured her. They suspected her of sleeping with a white man. She later became a spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, although she is no longer involved with them, instead working with cases of domestic abuse.
Join us free in the chat room on Thursday at 8pm UK time. You don't have to sign up or download anything - and can use a fake name if you want, to hurl abuse at me! ;) : https://discord.gg/RWH7fs6ygb
Sadia Links
https://twitter.com/sadia936
http://instagram.com/sadia936
Four Freedoms YouTube
Andrew Links

http://youtube.com/andrewgold1
http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok
http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok
http://patreon.com/andrewgold
http://andrewgoldpodcast.com This second part is very different. She continues talking a little about her personal situation, and the men who demanded their feet be washed by their wives or sisters…and she speaks beautifully about her long-term partner Jack and a woman called Linda who wanted to adopt her as an adult. After the horrors of the previous episode, it’s a relief to be able to discuss the lights of her life. We then go on to chat about a lot of different things. Having discovered who she is outside of her religious upbringing, Sadia has become worn out by some of the identity politics going on today, and speaks passionately about everything from feminism to trans movements…and she’s got some controversial opinions to share, including the notion that Pakistan has a high rate of trans because parents are so scared of having a gay child. When she criticises some trans people, I hope it’s not lost on any listeners that she first makes an impassioned defence of the majority of trans people who have suffered incalculable harm and, as she says, need and deserve all our support. Only after making that point, does she go on to critique what she perceives to be a faction of people who use their attained victimhood attack and silence others.

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45: White Ex-Jihadist: I threatened South Park & 'caused' Boston bomb Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

Today I’ve got one of the smartest and most interesting people I’ve ever met on the podcast in the form of Jesse Morton, a former jihadist who now counters violent extremism with his organisation Parallel Networks. Jesse has done some pretty terrible things – he was a Far-Left extremist who became the most prominent white American Jihadist and a recruiter for al-Qaeda. He was also responsible for threatening the South Park creators and forcing them at the last minute to censor their image of the Prophet.
Jesse Links:
https://twitter.com/_jessemorton
https://twitter.com/lighttuponlight
http://pnetworks.org/
Andrew Gold Links:
http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok
http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok
http://patreon.com/andrewgold
http://andrewgold.me I was going to put this out earlier, but thought it was a perfect follow-up to last week’s episode with David Robson on the The Intelligence Trap, because Jesse is an example of how an incredibly clever person can make huge mistakes. Of course, we are all part the sum of our experiences, and Jesse was abused by his mother as a child. Jesse talks about how a history of childhood trauma and a victim mentality can be a dangerous thing. Jesse earlier spent time in prison and was in solitary confinement for a year, while reading up in the library on all sorts of fundamentalist material that strengthened his convictions. He has such a long and rich story, so at times, I just wanted to sit back and listen, occasionally steering the conversation this way or that. He’s an intense and cerebral man, and talks with absolute honesty about what he did and why he did it. Takes us into the life of a street preacher and a jihadi whose bomb designs were used by terrorists at the Boston Marathon. It may suit our ideology of good and bad to think of terrorists as either stupid or morally bankrupt, but Jesse talks about the far more nuanced and intricate traits and at play. Those who are highly intelligent but very unsuccessful, he says, try to tear down the world as it is, and rebuild it to suit their talents or purposes, a world where ‘everybody recognises my greatness’. His work focuses on getting inside the minds of the top extremists, and denouncing violence to them. To understand everything about Jesse, we’ll start with his early life and family, before moving onto his beliefs and his work.

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44: David Robson and the Intelligence Trap Mar 15, 2021

Show notes

Science writer David Robson talks about his book, The Intelligence Trap. It’s a brilliantly written and researched book about how the cleverest people in the world…are often the ones who make the biggest mistakes. Which is why I never make any errors!
Join me on at 8pm GMT Thursday 18th March 2021 in a free chat room (no sign up etc needed!): https://discord.gg/RWH7fs6ygb
David Robson Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-robson-5761791b
twitter.com/d_a_robson
Buy The Intelligence Trap https://davidrobson.me/

Andrew Gold Links:
http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok
http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok
http://patreon.com/andrewgold
http://andrewgold.me
I really learned a lot from the book. It seems that the more intelligent among us – if we define intelligence by IQ and proficiency in certain subjects – are so smart that they’re able to create convincing arguments as to why their beliefs must be correct. It's why some clever people are proponents of flat earth theory, astrology or just basic religious beliefs. David tells some fascinating stories about Einstein and Sherlock writer Arthur Conan Doyle, and talks about how we can focus more on things like wisdom and curiosity to prevent the intelligence trap. We speak about how to argue with someone who has opposing views to us without getting heated or emotional. We look at examining our own cognitive biases, chat about the grisly end to the life of Socrates and think about the pictures of fairies with drawing pins in their navels that Arthur Conan Doyle mistook – using his famed powers of deduction – for belly buttons – showing fairies are born and give birth. David studied maths at Cambridge University, and has written for the BBC, New Scientist, The Atlantic and many other top publications. His book has been acclaimed, and when I mentioned it on Twitter the other day, one of my favourite writers, Will Storr, tweeted his own admiration for it.

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43: Sadia Hameed: Held Captive in Pakistan (Part 1) Mar 08, 2021

Show notes

Join us at 7pm on Thursday March 11th 2021 here (it's free, and you don't have to sign up): https://discord.gg/RWH7fs6ygb
Today, I’m speaking with Sadia Hameed, a former spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain who has a quite remarkable story to tell. She holds some strong and damning views, and has a knack for getting them across in a way that is both persuasive and, often, comical. Having grown up in England, Sadia was tricked in her teens into moving to Pakistan, where she was abused, starved and tortured, while her family out there tried to work out whether she had slept with a white man.
Sadia Links
https://twitter.com/sadia936
http://instagram.com/sadia936
Four Freedoms YouTube
Andrew Links

http://youtube.com/andrewgold1
http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok
http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok
http://patreon.com/andrewgold
http://andrewgoldpodcast.com

Sadia isn’t just the sum of her experiences. She’s also outspoken on issues such as women’s rights and human rights, while, as you might expect, damning of religious extremism, with a particular focus on Islam. She can’t talk too much about the work she does, but it involves domestic abuse that is often hidden in religion’s guise of righteousness. She talks about what it was actually like to be so hungry that she thought she might die, and gives us an insight into the last few decades in the history of the UK’s south Asian immigration. It appears that what angers her more than anything is a recurring theme on this podcast - the refusal of social justice warriors to look in some of the most obvious places.
Like Yasmine Mohammed, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago, Sadia shakes with rage at so-called progressives who appear to move heaven and earth to help a young white girl in trouble; but who think it’s fine for a young brown girl to be tortured, raped and forced to marry. Most shockingly, she tells of a social services translator who actually warned her parents they should lock her up and send her away before she’s of age. We got on so well in fact, that we ended up speaking for hours. So, I’ve done something I’ve never done on the show which is to split this into two parts, this being the first. And the bonus content for Patrons will be at the end of the second one, which will come out in a couple of weeks.

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