Neuroscience’s challenge to free will misses the point: consciousness and choice emerge from complex systems, not individual neurons.

Populist rhetoric is exceptionally effective for pursuing and gaining power, but it provides no program for the complexities of actual governance.

In this wide-ranging interview, Israeli historian and public intellectual Gadi Taub joins Quillette’s Pamela Paresky to discuss the controversy surrounding the Sde Teiman detention facility, the leaked surveillance footage that went viral worldwide, and the legal and political fallout inside Israel. Taub argues that the release of the footage triggered one of the most damaging international narratives of the war—and that the real story involves internal power struggles, media institutions, and Israel’s legal establishment. Topics include: The Ronen Bergman lawsuit Military censorship in Israel The Sde Teiman detainee case The Advocate General and Attorney General controversy Allegations of selective law enforcement Pegasus spyware and police investigations Social media, truth, and Orwell’s 1984 The rise of alternative media in Israel This is a conversation about media power, democratic accountability, and the battle over narrative during wartime. 🔔 Subscribe to Quillette 📖 Read more from Gadi at Quillette.com: https://quillette.com/author/gadi-taub/ 0:00 — Introduction 0:36 —Interview begins: The Ronen Bergman Lawsuit 3:45 — The ‘Beeper Operation’ Leak 5:38 — How Military Censorship Works in Israel 8:45 — Ali Rosenfeld and Selective Enforcement 10:14 — The Arrest of Force 100 13:19 — The Rape Allegation 15:03 — Who Triggered the Complaint? 19:15 — The Released Detainee 20:17 — A “Show Arrest” and the Riot 22:07 — Channel 12 and the Global Narrative 23:19 — Was It a Frame-Up? 26:46 — The International Court Argument 27:41 — Was the Video Manipulated? 29:36 — Why No Leak Investigation? 31:40 — The Attorney General Intervenes 33:18 — The Shin Bet Shakeup 34:03 — The Lie Detector Revelation 35:32 — The Resignation Letter 37:15 — The Phone in the Sea 39:19 — The Blocked Special Investigator 41:30 — Pegasus and Police Surveillance 43:21 — Public Backlash 45:29 — Israel’s Media Divide 47:08 — “Truth Has Lost Its Monopoly” 49:01 — Orwell and the Ministry of Truth 50:15 — Being Sued and Crowdfunded ------ Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values. Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship. --- Quillette's revenue comes from our readers. We are a grassroots organisation that relies on voluntary subscriptions and community membership as our primary revenue stream. Support Quillette by becoming a subscriber: https://quillette.com/#/portal/signup Or donate send us a one-off tip: https://quillette.com/#/portal/support We made our website using Ghost, a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Try it here: https://ghost.org/?via=claire91

How did Britain end up granting citizenship to radical activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah?⁠ ⁠ In the last days of 2025, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stoked controversy by welcoming activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to the UK after his release from prison in Egypt. Fattah has expressed extreme views, including hatred of white people and support for the killing of police and “Zionists,” including civilians. He became a UK citizen in 2021, while he was still in prison, on the basis of his mother’s UK citizenship.⁠ ⁠ Learn more at the link in bio.⁠ ⁠ #AlaaAbdElFattah #HumanRightsLaw #ECHR #EuropeanCourtOfHumanRights #UKCitizenship #ImmigrationPolicy #RuleOfLaw #ArabSpring #UKPolitics⁠ ⁠ ⁠

Matt Shumer’s viral essay about AI is part of a long history of fear produced by technological change.

In 2024, when a British MP raised the issue of cousin marriage as a public-health concern, he was accused of bigotry. When the #NHS published guidance on the risks, it quietly removed the document under pressure. ⁠ ⁠ Ten percent of the global population today descends from cousin unions. This isn’t a fringe issue. It’s a contemporary human reality.⁠ ⁠ 🔗 Learn more at the link in bio.⁠ ⁠ #Bradford #UKSociety #CousinMarriage #CulturalDebate #SocialPolicy #PublicHealth #ImmigrationDebate #BritishPolitics #CommunityStudies #Sociology #Anthropology #ModernBritain #Inbreeding

Southeast Asia in World War II, Part One: Japanese Conquests and British Disgrace

A New South Wales government advertisement promised an urban renaissance — denser, greener, more vibrant cities. But that isn’t what happened. Despite decades of planning policies designed to concentrate development in inner urban areas, nearly 80 percent of Australia’s metropolitan population lives in suburban or exurban communities. Meanwhile, more than 75 percent of employment growth in Sydney and Melbourne has taken place outside central business districts. At the same time, house prices have surged far beyond income growth. In Sydney, prices have tripled relative to incomes since restrictive planning regimes were introduced. Two-thirds of Australians now believe the next generation may never afford a home. This trend is not unique to Australia. Across the OECD, house prices have grown three times faster than median household incomes over the past two decades. Economists have linked rising inequality to escalating house values. Matthew Rognlie’s analysis of Thomas Piketty’s work suggests that much of rising wealth inequality stems from real estate appreciation. In the United States, the share of real-estate wealth held by the wealthy has grown significantly, while middle-class ownership has declined. At the same time, institutional capital is moving aggressively into single-family housing markets. Wall Street firms are purchasing homes to rent them back to younger generations priced out of ownership, strengthening what some describe as a new rentier class. Proponents of densification argue that concentrating development reduces prices. Yet many of the most expensive global cities operate under strict growth boundaries and anti-sprawl policies. Urban planner Alain Bertaud warns that such limits impose arbitrary constraints on expansion, predictably driving up costs. This video examines the economic, demographic, and political consequences of these housing trends — and asks whether homeownership, once central to middle-class stability and democratic independence, is becoming structurally out of reach. ------ Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values. Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship. --- Quillette's revenue comes from our readers. We are a grassroots organisation that relies on voluntary subscriptions and community membership as our primary revenue stream. Support Quillette by becoming a subscriber: https://quillette.com/#/portal/signup Or donate send us a one-off tip: https://quillette.com/#/portal/support We made our website using Ghost, a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Try it here: https://ghost.org/?via=claire91

In this clip from a longer podcast episode, Lionel Shriver has a candid conversation about childlessness, responsibility, and the demographic future of the West. Shriver reflects on her own decision not to have children—a choice she once viewed as neutral and rational, even necessary for her writing career. Now, she calls it selfish and ungenerous, arguing that a civilisation unwilling to reproduce itself is a civilisation in decline. The discussion moves beyond personal regret to a broader cultural reckoning: What happens when entire generations opt out of parenthood? Is pro-natalism compatible with liberal individualism? And how does falling birthrates intersect with pro-immigration arguments that demographic decline must be “replaced”? A frank and unsentimental conversation about civilisation, inheritance, and hypocrisy. ----- Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values. Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship. --- Quillette's revenue comes from our readers. We are a grassroots organisation that relies on voluntary subscriptions and community membership as our primary revenue stream. Support Quillette by becoming a subscriber: https://quillette.com/#/portal/signup Or donate send us a one-off tip: https://quillette.com/#/portal/support We made our website using Ghost, a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Try it here: https://ghost.org/?via=claire91

How did Britain end up granting citizenship to radical activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah?⁠ ⁠ In the last days of 2025, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stoked controversy by welcoming activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to the UK after his release from prison in Egypt. Fattah has expressed extreme views, including hatred of white people and support for the killing of police and “Zionists,” including civilians. He became a UK citizen in 2021, while he was still in prison, on the basis of his mother’s UK citizenship.⁠ ⁠ Learn more at the link in bio.⁠ ⁠ #AlaaAbdElFattah #HumanRightsLaw #ECHR #EuropeanCourtOfHumanRights #UKCitizenship #ImmigrationPolicy #RuleOfLaw #ArabSpring #UKPolitics⁠ ⁠ ⁠

Escalating house prices and density rules trap young people in renting, eroding homeownership—a key to democracy.

How a 10th-century warrior-statesman forged a unified England and why his legacy still matters in our identity-obsessed day.   

Rising housing costs, restrictive land-use regulations, and the growing role of institutional investors are reshaping the foundations of democratic society. In this video essay, Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox argue that the steady erosion of homeownership—especially among younger generations—is producing a new form of dependency, with far-reaching economic, demographic, and political consequences. Drawing on historical comparisons, economic data, and urban-planning research, the essay examines how policies favouring density and housing consolidation have driven prices beyond the reach of middle-income earners. As ownership declines, more people are confined to long-term renting, weakening financial independence, reducing family formation, and intensifying inequality between asset holders and non-owners. The video also explores the links between housing affordability, declining birthrates, suburbanisation, and the rise of remote work, challenging prevailing assumptions about urban density, environmental sustainability, and the future of cities. The authors argue that dispersed property ownership has long been central to democratic self-government—and that its disappearance risks undermining social stability in advanced democracies. 00:00 Land ownership, consolidation, and democratic risk 02:04 Density planning and rising housing prices 04:35 Institutional investors and the rentier economy 07:23 California, regulation, and suburban growth 10:05 Remote work and the decline of central business districts 13:22 Housing costs and falling fertility rates 16:31 Property ownership and the foundations of democracy 📖 Read the original essay on Quillette: https://quillette.com/2022/04/21/serfing-the-future/ 🎧 Narrated by William Laing 📺 Subscribe for more Quillette video essays on politics, culture, and public policy --------- Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values. Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship. --- Quillette's revenue comes from our readers. We are a grassroots organisation that relies on voluntary subscriptions and community membership as our primary revenue stream. Support Quillette by becoming a subscriber: https://quillette.com/#/portal/signup Or donate send us a one-off tip: https://quillette.com/#/portal/support We made our website using Ghost, a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Try it here: https://ghost.org/?via=claire91

Letters to the Editor: Friday 6 February – Friday 13 February

Stanley Kubrick’s comic masterpiece ‘Dr Strangelove’ remains a potent allegory for our times.   

Stanley Kubrick’s comic masterpiece ‘Dr Strangelove’ remains a potent allegory for our times.   

Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values. Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship. --- Quillette's revenue comes from our readers. We are a grassroots organisation that relies on voluntary subscriptions and community membership as our primary revenue stream. Support Quillette by becoming a subscriber: https://quillette.com/#/portal/signup Or donate send us a one-off tip: https://quillette.com/#/portal/support We made our website using Ghost, a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Try it here: https://ghost.org/?via=claire91

Managing Editor Iona Italia talks to writer Lionel Shriver about her new novel, A Better Life, which tackles the theme of immigration.

Lionel Shriver joins Quillette editor Iona Italia to discuss her new novel A Better Life, a provocative and darkly comic exploration of immigration, incentives, and the uneasy moral psychology of the modern West. Set during the Biden administration’s de facto open border period, the novel follows a progressive New York mother who takes in a Honduran migrant — and her politically radicalised, unemployed Gen Z son who sees the situation very differently. What unfolds is a sharp examination of territory, responsibility, birthrates, human nature, and the contradictions of liberal idealism. In this wide-ranging conversation, Shriver discusses: Why she chose a Honduran migrant as her protagonist Immigration as a question of incentives rather than ideology The psychology of territory and national identity Falling Western birthrates and civilisational decline The role of doubt in fiction Her 2016 “cultural appropriation” controversy in Brisbane Cancel culture and the moral inversion following 7 October Why modern literary fiction has abandoned plot Shriver also reflects on her own decision not to have children, the limits of political conversion narratives, and the responsibility of fiction to complicate rather than moralise. This is a conversation about immigration — but also about courage, civilisation, and what happens when a society stops believing in itself. ------ Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values. Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship. --- Quillette's revenue comes from our readers. We are a grassroots organisation that relies on voluntary subscriptions and community membership as our primary revenue stream. Support Quillette by becoming a subscriber: https://quillette.com/#/portal/signup Or donate send us a one-off tip: https://quillette.com/#/portal/support We made our website using Ghost, a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Try it here: https://ghost.org/?via=claire91

The school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia—where 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed eight people, including his mother and stepbrother, before taking his own life—has reignited debate about a small but unsettling subset of recent attacks involving trans-identified perpetrators. At Quillette, we have examined this pattern cautiously and empirically—not to stigmatise, but to insist on serious inquiry. Is there a connection between gender dysphoria, ideological radicalisation, and violent crime — and why is it so difficult to discuss? Despite growing public debates around gender identity and “gender-affirming care,” there has been no systematic study examining whether — and to what extent — violent crime is associated with gender dysphoria, trans ideation, or the increasingly militant rhetoric surrounding some activist movements. At the same time, journalists and institutions often treat the identities of trans-identified perpetrators differently from other criminals — sometimes downplaying biological sex or avoiding relevant details under the banner of “anti-deadnaming” policies. This video examines: • The media treatment of trans-identified killers • The clinical model of gender-affirming care • The concept of diagnostic overshadowing • Revelations from the 2024 WPATH Files • The ideological capture of therapeutic institutions • The risks of collapsing differential diagnosis • Mental health comorbidities commonly associated with gender dysphoria • Why exploratory therapy is increasingly discouraged • And why evidence-based reform may now be possible This is not an attack on trans-identified individuals. Most people struggling with gender identity do not commit violence. But mental-health professionals have a responsibility to confront uncomfortable data — and resist ideological pressures that interfere with patient care. Subscribe for long-form analysis exploring psychology, culture, politics, and the ideas shaping our institutions. ---- Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values. Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship. --- Quillette's revenue comes from our readers. We are a grassroots organisation that relies on voluntary subscriptions and community membership as our primary revenue stream. Support Quillette by becoming a subscriber: https://quillette.com/#/portal/signup Or donate send us a one-off tip: https://quillette.com/#/portal/support We made our website using Ghost, a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Try it here: https://ghost.org/?via=claire91

Why prosperity breeds guilt, how status incentives reward critique, and what happens when function is replaced by moral performance.

It appears that people now find comfort in the idea that the life of even the greatest of writers is no more satisfying than their own.

Radley Metzger’s 1975 hardcore adaptation of a celebrated literary hoax is a vast improvement on the cynical source material.

Historian #TiffanyJenkins discusses how #MeToo reflected deeper cultural shifts—blurring lines between misconduct and awkwardness, replacing private resolution with public outrage, and revealing a growing suspicion of intimate life.⁠ ⁠ Watch more at the #Linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ #history #privacy #feminism ⁠

British Columbia has become one of the most politically radical jurisdictions in the Western world—but how did it get there? In this episode of the Quillette Podcast, host Jonathan Kay speaks with BC MLA Dallas Brodie about the province’s entrenched progressive politics under Premier David Eby—from drug decriminalisation and education activism to the enduring myth of “215 unmarked graves” at the Kamloops residential school. Four years after the claim first triggered a national moral panic, no bodies have been found—yet the story remains politically untouchable in British Columbia, repeated by institutions, regulators, and professional bodies. Brodie explains how questioning the narrative cost her party backing, led to her expulsion from caucus, and pushed her to form a new political movement. They also discuss British Columbia’s post-industrial shift from blue-collar labour to activist bureaucracy, the collapse of centre-right opposition in the 2024 election, and why ideological loyalty now matters more than evidence in Canadian public life. This is a revealing case study in how moral panics harden into political orthodoxy—and how dissent is punished even when the facts are uncontested. 00:00 — Introduction: BC as Canada’s political outlier 07:15 — Interview begins 08:38 — From harm reduction to hard-drug normalisation 10:33 — Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and policy failure 13:07 — SOGI 123, decolonisation, and education politics 16:48 — The 2024 election and Conservative Party implosion 22:03 — Caucus chaos, land acknowledgements, ideological tests 27:35 — Kamloops “215 graves”: claims vs evidence 30:24 — The tweet that changed Brodie’s career 39:32 — Expulsion, smears, and political exile 47:54 — The “woke right” and OneBC 56:03 — Media silence, burned churches, and unanswered questions 01:02:19 — Death threats, property rights, and why Brodie persists --- Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values. Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology. Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship. --- Quillette's revenue comes from our readers. We are a grassroots organisation that relies on voluntary subscriptions and community membership as our primary revenue stream. Support Quillette by becoming a subscriber: https://quillette.com/#/portal/signup Or donate send us a one-off tip: https://quillette.com/#/portal/support We made our website using Ghost, a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Try it here: https://ghost.org/?via=claire91