Explore every episode of the podcast Quillette Narrated

False allegations may be employed by either parent, but, given the prevailing winds of culture, the gun is far more often in the hand of a woman.

The story of William Cobbett and the American Revolutionary culture wars.

White Lotus, Red Dragon—China’s History of Millenarian Dissent: When one woman refused and snapped at them to “go away,” they attacked her with a chair and mop handle. By Aaron Sarin. Read by Iona Italia.

'The Death of a Deluded Man' by John Aziz. Read by John Aziz. Yahya Sinwar should be remembered above all as a failure whose fetish for Jewish—and Palestinian—blood turned Gaza into dust and rubble.

'Serfing the Future' by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox. Read by William Laing.

'The Fall of Beirut: Calling Hezbollah merely a terror group is too simplistic, and nothing in Lebanon is ever simple or easy to explain.' by Art Keller. Read by Iona Italia. 

'America's Forgotten Crisis: A terrific new account of America’s social and political turmoil during the 1910s and ’20s provides some much-needed perspective on the problems afflicting the country today.' by Michael J. Totten. Read by Iona Italia.

Have we just lived through one of the best years in human history? As we look at 2023 through the rearview mirror, I think that’s a defensible claim. In fact, the same thing could have been said at the end of pretty much every year since the beginning of the millennium (with the exception of the disastrous pandemic years of 2020 and 2021). Never before have so many people lived in affluence, safety, and good health.

'I Blew Up My Lucrative Public-Service Career (And So Can You): A veteran of British Columbia’s public-sector workforce explains how DEI enforcers forced him to choose between keeping his job and honouring his values.' by Nick Osmond-Jones. Read by Iona Italia

"Towards a Post-Hamas Future: The events of 7 October did not benefit Palestinians in any way." Written by John Aziz. Read by John Aziz.

'The Women of 7 October' by Iona Italia. Read by Iona Italia. 

For a Time, a Pit Bull Gave Me Back My Son: If I couldn’t openly love him, I would love what he loved. By Steve Salerno. Read by William Laing.

Thirty-four years after the massacre of political prisoners in Iran, the conviction of Hamid Noury in Sweden has been a victory for accountability and for the truth.

'A Conspiracy Theory of Connotations: The obsessive policing of language in the name of progress relies on magical thinking.' by Oliver Traldi. Read by William Laing.

'The Return of the Progressive Atrocity: It is the responsibility of Western activists to know who and what they support, and to separate themselves—openly and decisively—from programs and regimes that are predicated on violence and repression.' by Susie Linfield. Read by Iona Italia.

'In Defence of Stoicism' by Iona Italia. Narrated by Iona Italia. Stoicism is a workout that builds emotional strength, a caulking of the timbers to enable us to weather the coming storms—a preparation we make precisely because the ocean voyage is so rewarding.

'Remembering 9 Thermidor, the End of the Terror' by Cathy Young. Read by William Laing.

'The Totalitarian Artist: Politics vs Beauty: After Duchamp, the art world came to view the pursuit of beauty as naïve and gravitated toward political art in their search for meaning. But this is a Faustian bargain: you can have meaning, but you do not get to make it for yourself.' by Megan Gafford. Read by Iona Italia. 

'Tragedy and Half-Truths: A Gaza Diary' by Benny Morris. Published in Quillette.com on 19 September 2024. Narrated by Iona Italia.

'Answers to 12 Bad Anti-Free Speech Arguments: How to effectively counter some perennial arguments against free speech.' Written by Greg Lukianoff. Narrated by Iona Italia. 

Frantz Fanon, Stokely Carmichael, and the roots of the uproar over Zionism.

Race Is a Spectrum. Sex Is Pretty Damn Binary by Richard Dawkins, read by Iona Italia. Male versus female is one of surprisingly few genuine dichotomies.

If we are to fight for liberty for everyone—including Muslims—we must be serious about being ready to stand up to Islamists like Hamas, who seek to revive Islamic imperialism.

The story of how a liberal college promoted and defended an Iranian Islamist and betrayed its own values.

Realists may believe international relations is all about mindless forces balancing and smashing into each other, but it’s actually about ideology, institutions, history, and the personalities of human beings.

Western civilisation has not succeeded because its liberal and secular principles are Christian; it has succeeded because Western Christians have accepted its liberal and secular values, writes Adam Wakeling.

Many German leftists, mindful of the country’s past, still support Israel. But they risk being outnumbered by antisemitic Muslim immigrants and by decolonialist radicals.

The recycling industry—and the world at large—has yet to fully reckon with a bombshell study that dropped last year. Zoe Booth reads 'Recycling Plastic Is a Dangerous Waste of Time' by Frank Celia. Published in Quillette on 17 Jun 2024.

Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, Knife, describes the assassination attempt its author survived and offers a moving contemplation of mortality.

Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained.  Iona Italia reads 'How French Intellectuals Ruined the West' by Helen Pluckrose. First published in Areo Magazine. Republished in Quillette on 7 May 2024.

Benn Steil’s engrossing new biography of Henry A. Wallace is a timely cautionary tale and a masterpiece of 20th-century American history.

A brief five-year period produced nearly all the Godard movies that film aficionados still remember, but even these celebrated works have dated poorly.

The story of how activists and academics exchanged the struggle for universal female improvement for a politics of division and hatred.

The modern feminist response to rape is failing women, and it is failing victims of rape most of all.

A brief five-year period produced nearly all the Godard movies that film aficionados still remember, but even these celebrated works have dated poorly.

A restoration of history, in all its complexity, is critical to escaping the polarized, rigid, and often insane political environment we now inhabit.

New pharmaceuticals appear to offer a genuine solution to the problem of excess appetite, that uncontrollable urge to eat more than we need to that keeps so many of us fat.

A Review of Hannah Barnes’s ‘Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children’

Settling Mars isn’t just about making humanity a multi-planetary species. It is about improving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone on Earth.

Andrew Dominik’s much-maligned film about the life and death of a screen icon claws through the sentimental myth-making in search of terrible truths.

The spread of mass education may have exemplified the promise of liberal civilization. But, without an understanding and appreciation of what allowed it to flourish, it could also accelerate its dissolution.

The Children of the Revolution by James David Banker. Read by William Laing. Mao Zedong activated China’s youth—unblemished and uncorrupted in heart and mind—to lead the struggle for purity.

Why China Is Hiding the Horrors of its Past: While the Chinese government continues to transform Xinjiang through its cultural genocide program aimed at eliminating the distinct identity of the Uyghur population, it is also putting a high priority on controlling the history of the region and its people. By Nick Taber. Read by Iona Italia.

Its ability to churn out such plausible sounding explanations for historical and social phenomena is part of Marxism’s core appeal. But its grand theoretical framework simply does not hold up.

The media’s obsessive focus on the Israel–Palestine conflict obscures the broader picture of the ubiquity of jihadism in the Middle East, and the crucial role it plays in stoking and perpetuating turmoil and strife.

The accepted view is that the scientists of the European Enlightenment got the issue of race badly wrong. In fact, some of them got more right than they are usually given credit for.