When Wokeness Stops Working: Brendan O'Neill's VIBE SHIFT signals a new era
The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum
Meghan Daum
4.7 • 855 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Meghan's guest this week is British journalist and author Brendan O'Neill, chief political writer at Spiked and author of Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy. Brendan talks about what he sees as a growing "vibe shift" away from elite consensus and toward something like common sense—though not without its own distortions. He and Meghan discuss the UK's role in pushing back on gender ideology (aka "TERF Island"), the uneasy state of free speech on both sides of the Atlantic, and why ordinary people seemed to tolerate cultural excesses until they suddenly didn't. They also touch on the rise of unserious, meme-driven politics, the infantilization of public discourse (with Greta Thunberg as an emblematic if also profoundly dysfunctional figure), and the strange convergence of hectoring moralism on one side and gleeful nihilism on the other. Finally, Brendan reflects on his own journey from revolutionary communist to free speech absolutist, and why he thinks we may be inching slowly back toward a politics grounded less in identity and more in reality.
Guest Bio;
Brendan O'Neill is the chief political writer at Spiked and host of The Brendan O'Neill Show. He's also the author of several books, including Anti-Woke, A Duty to
Offend, A Heretic's Manifesto, and most recently, Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism and Technocracy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The interesting thing about the vibe shift for me is that it feels like the silent majority is |
| 0:05.6 | rediscovering its voice. It feels like that well of common sense that exists in both of our societies |
| 0:12.6 | is starting to bubble up a bit, to start to make itself heard again. And I find that incredibly |
| 0:17.9 | exciting. |
| 0:27.7 | Welcome to the unspeakiesie podcast. |
| 0:30.8 | I'm your host, Megan Dawn, or down. |
| 0:32.2 | Pronunciation's up to you. |
| 0:37.4 | My guest is British journalist Brendan O'Neill, who is here to talk about his most recent book, |
| 0:38.4 | Vib Shift. It presents a case for the waning of wokeness. For lack of a better term, we still don't |
| 0:44.6 | have a better term than woke. Before the interview, though, I am ecstatic to tell you that registration |
| 0:50.4 | for our big co-ed unspeakeasy retreat this fall is now open. Finally, this is our second |
| 0:56.9 | annual small gathering for big ideas and the first time we're making it an overnight. It is two nights, |
| 1:04.1 | October 19th through 21st, at a gorgeous spot in New York's Hudson Valley and our guest speakers. Are you ready? |
| 1:12.3 | Our writer, linguist, New York Times columnist John McWhorter, and Lisa Marciano, who's a Jungian analyst, author, |
| 1:19.9 | and co-host of the podcast, This Jungian Life. This is going to be so amazing. Our guest speakers |
| 1:26.6 | do not just stand at a podium. |
| 1:28.6 | We don't even have podiums. |
| 1:30.4 | They are in conversation with all of us. |
| 1:33.7 | We get to interact with them. |
| 1:36.9 | I start talking. |
| 1:37.8 | I kind of interview them. |
| 1:38.9 | And then suddenly the conversation breaks out. |
... |
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