Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where free thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself, associate editor Toby Young,

and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

You can support our podcast by visiting... Toby Young and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

You can support our podcast by visiting Patreon.com forward slash Quilett and becoming a monthly patron.

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Welcome to the Quillett Podcast.

I'm Jonathan Kay.

My guest this week needs no introduction,

because you just heard him described by my boss in the generic podcast intro. He's Toby Young,

a host of the Colette Podcast, an author and editor at Colette, and the founder of the UK-based

free speech union, a UK-based organization that Young describes as a

nonpartisan mass membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of

its members. Now as you'll hear I was kind of skeptical about the

free speech union in part because I thought that in this age of cancel culture a

lot of people would get canceled just for joining it. But not only has the free speech union thrived,

it's chocked up some impressive victories. This week Toby spoke to me by Skype from his home in the UK.

About the free speech union, the State of Intellectual Freedom,

and our predictions for how the tide will turn against the censors in 2021.

Here are excerpts from our conversation.

Toby, I'm not going to pretend to be objective here because everybody listening knows that you and I share at least some beliefs when it comes to free speech and civil liberties and such.

...