Abir Ballan, Vaccine mandates, the inch we must not yield

11/01/21 • 52 min

Today I talk to Abir Ballan regarding the ethical principles of public health and the reasons why vaccines should never be mandatory. This is the inch we must not yield if we want to live in a free society. I believe this is one of the most important conversations I have ever had.
Abir has a Masters in Public Health and a background in psychology, and education. She is a member of the Executive Committee at PANDA who are a group of multi-disciplinary professionals, who perceived the global reaction to Covid, and lockdown in particular, as overwrought and damaging to the point of causing a great tear in the fabric of society. As a politically and economically independent organisation. PANDA stands for open science and rational debate, for replacing flawed science with good science and for retrieving liberty and prosperity from the clutches of a dystopian “new normal”.

Previous Episode

Mattias Desmet- The Covid narrative and mass formation

In today's episode I talk to Mattias Desmet who is a professor of psychology at Ghent University in Belgium specializing in mass crowd formation, mass hypnosis and totalitarianism. His work has helped me understand how Western societies provide the necessary conditions for masses to form, historical moments of mass formation and totalitarianism and how we face a precarious moment in history which is forcing us to question what it is to be human.

Next Episode

Kim Rosen, Saved by a Poem

I have always been a poetry lover and yet Kim Rosen's book, 'Saved by a Poem,' has dramatically deepened my relationship to poetry. This touching conversation with Kim echoed within me for days after.

Kim describes poetry as, 'the power of the word meeting the language of the soul.' In an uncertain world, 'Saved by a poem' is an emphatic call to cultivate the ever renewable resources of the heart. Through poetry Kim believes, the unspeakable can be spoken, the unendurable endured, and the miraculous shared. I encourage you to find a comfortable and quiet place to listen to this conversation where we share poetry from Rumi, Mary Oliver, Leonard Cohen, Stanley Kunitz, Marie Howe, Emily Dickenson and Jason Shinder. Enjoy the heart opening ride!