I’ve just put out two new films on the scammer Brian Rose, in addition to a longer written piece for Unherd, on his new attempt to become London Mayor. For those unaware of the backstory, I recommend starting with the Unherd article. On Wednesday I recorded a video covering most of the points in that story, but with an extra layer of humour and contempt, with the scambuster Coffeezilla, and on Friday I released the interview that everyone has wanted to hear since Brian gained worldwide internet notoriety, with Nic Gabriel, the co-founder of London Real. …

This is a piece about the bounds of Sensemaking, the key distinction between censorship and moderation/curation, and the responsibilities that any and all of us have in this new media environment where all of us are effectively creators, curators and broadcasters.

These are topics that I’ve been wrestling with for a long time, as a refugee journalist from traditional media who’s now set up an outpost in the alternative ecosystem. I strongly believe that if *we* cannot solve this problem ourselves, then the solutions will be imposed clumsily and badly by the big tech companies.

These concerns have been brought…

Clubhouse is the new voice only social media network that’s only existed for a year, but is already valued at over $1bn, and has rivals scrambling to create competitors.

The audio only social network has been described as a continual podcast that you drop in on, and can take part in. After access was tightly controlled over the last year, it’s now in its explosive growth phase and breaking through to mainstream awareness, with a flurry of articles in the media, some obligatory moral panic over ‘gatekeeping’, and a whole load of hype.

Is the hype justified? What are…

Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a huge upsurge in conspiracy thinking everywhere, but especially in spiritual communities. What is going on? And what is the mainstream narrative failing to understand about both conspiracy and spirituality?

On May 4th, a new documentary trailer hit Facebook. Professionally cut and awash with slick Hollywood edits, Mikki Willis’ conspiratorial Plandemic came as the coronavirus was reaching a fever pitch.

Plandemic’s influence knew no political bounds. That the film was resisted and debunked by credentialed disease experts seemed to do little in slowing the spread.

But there was an unexpected…

Can our shared reality survive the onslaught of big tech?

At a time when existential threats loom large — and the need for a reasoned, pragmatic consensus arguably never greater — the tech firms carrying the conversation are profiting from our division. Through careful iteration and deliberate commercial policy, their business models have made us addicts of our newsfeeds and pawns in a game of polarisation. Yet these outcomes can only be self-terminating.

Tristan Harris has been called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience.” After three years at Google as a Design Ethicist, he co-founded the…

The pandemic has ramped up the intensity of our experience, as it stress tests individuals and societies. What began as a question of disease and quarantine, has since become a truly generational shock to the system. Major institutions and social structures are under question. Complacency and ‘normality’ are in the dock. Amid all the chaos of this altered state, how can we best emerge with our societies — and our minds — intact?

Stanislav Grof, a Czech psychiatrist and early pioneer of psychedelic therapy, suggests that drugs like LSD act as ‘non-specific amplifiers’ of experience…

It’s an extraordinary record of spiritual transformation in music, hidden in plain sight.

More than once, while in the middle of a deep meditation or transformational process, I would find myself singing songs I hadn’t heard in decades, dredged up from deep memories of adolescence. I’d often find that the words were exactly appropriate for the moment, a perfect guide from the subconscious. Invariably those songs would be from the band James.

I delved back into the music, and listened with new ears to songs that outlined the process of personal growth and awakening. …

This is a story of conspiracy, money and free speech that cuts to the heart of our current crisis. All the questions of how we make sense of the world, how we find truth and who we trust are being magnified in the midst of a global health crisis. Meanwhile dubious actors are cashing in on the confusion.

After years of saying they are not publishers, but platforms, the big tech companies are finally starting to take editorial responsibility for the content published on them, but are making heavy handed censorship decisions (the latest being to ban David Icke…