Welcome to the Quillett Podcast. I'm your host Jonathan Kay, a senior editor at

Quillett. Quillett is where free thought lives. We are an independent

grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

If you'd like to support the podcast, you can do so by going to quilett.com and becoming a paid subscriber.

This subscription will also give you access to all our

articles and early access to Colette social events. And as some of you know, the

Colette Podcast occupies what I think is a unique place in the podcasting sphere.

On one hand, we cover a lot of cultural war issues, usually from what I would call a liberal

but woke skeptical perspective, although I generally don't like to use the word woke for reasons that I've discussed on quilette.com, but we also cover history and science and technology and a whole bunch of other issues.

My boss, Claire Lehman and I, have never wanted to turn this thing into just

another series of weekly rants about the dreary and sanctimonious nature of doctrine air

progressive hashing, although yeah I kind of gave you a little mini rant right there, didn't I?

Anyway, sometimes we really do have to step into the trenches and this week's guest is an example.

Those of you who've been following Heather McDonald's career will know that the Manhattan Institute fellow and City Journal contributing editor is an uncompromising culture warrior, someone who was anti-woke long before that term became popularized. Loyal listeners to this podcast will have heard her hold forth on these themes way back in 2018

when I interviewed her in her Upper East Side apartment for Quilett Podcast Number Five, if you can believe it. That was more than 200

podcasts ago. Heather McDonald's new book is called When Race Trumps Merit, How the Pursuit

of Equity Sacrifices excellence destroys beauty and threatens lives.

It is an unapologetic broadside against race-conscious policies that now serve to impose

quotas, diversity statements, and self-flageulating anti-oppression rituals in pretty much every

sphere of academia, activism, arts and letters, and even medicine and technology.

We talk about all of these issues, but my principal focus is on what I see as Heather's real passion,

opera, classical music, theater, literature, and other areas of so-called high culture.

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