Brendan O'Neill: Britain's Greatest Living Heir To Orwell

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.public.newsby Michael ShellenbergerJust a few weeks ago, I was lamenting the absence of any new nonfiction book that I really wanted to read. Many new books of late should have been long articles and were joyless to read.Then I read, in a single sitting, British author Brendan O’Neill’s new collection of essays, A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays On The Unsayable. It offers one of the most important defenses of liberal democratic civilization and truth ever written.People accused me of hyperbole when I called Matt Taibbi the greatest living American heir to George Orwell. But it’s true, he is. I strive for truthful, specific compliments, and that’s what it was.Now, A Heretic’s Manifesto establishes O’Neill as the greatest living British heir to Orwell. For that reason, I was thrilled to interview him for this podcast and to publish two chapters from it, “I’m Afraid We Have To Talk About Her Penis” and “The Infantilism Of Totalitarianism.”I hasten to add that neither reading those two essays nor listening to this podcast is a substitute for reading A Heretic’s Manifesto. I beseech you: stop whatever you’re doing right now and buy his book. As with Orwell, the topic O'Neill is addressing, incipient totalitarianism, is urgent.