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Matthew has recently faced homelessness. If you’re able to help, you can support Matthew via PayPal (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/MatthewJSteeples). Sharing this episode and leaving a supportive comment would also mean a great de…

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Comedian and podcaster Adam Carolla joins Andrew Gold on Heretics to discuss the private dissent behind Hollywood’s public politics. From sitcom and late-night writers’ rooms to conversations on set, Carolla explains why he b…

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Mariana van Zeller, the Peabody and Emmy-winning investigative journalist behind National Geographic’s Trafficked, joins Andrew Gold on Heretics to discuss organ trafficking, murder for hire and the hidden networks profiting from hu…

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Andrew Doyle joins Andrew Gold on Heretics to explore the fall of Rome, the future of Western civilisation, and the warning signs Britain and America could be missing.

Get Andrew’s book The End of Woke: https://www.amazon.co.uk/END-WOKE-Culture-Expect-Counter-Revolution/…

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Sorry I’ve not been posting on here as often. We’ve got news: we have a child on the way at the end of this year. A daughter. I can’t wait. But it means my time will be (and has lately been) even more tied up than usual! Thank you for all your support.

Now, to today’s episode:

Dr. Ammon Hillman studied Ancient Greek and has gone viral online for claiming that Jesus was a trafficker who did drugs with children. He also claims the Jews are traffickers because that is what Hebrew means.

I don’t know Ancient Greek, but challenged him throughout. Still, he gave one of the most bizarre and fascinating interviews I’ve ever witnessed. So don’t miss this.

Watch on YouTube

Watch on Spotify

Three things I learned:

1. Ammon says crucial references to drugs and medicine were sanitised when the Bible was translated from Greek.

2. There’s a mysterious naked young man in the Garden of Gethsemane - and Ammon thinks the passage reveals a very different Jesus.

3. His Catholic university investigated him for “demon possession” and “opening portals.”

Follow Ammon: https://www.youtube.com/@ladybabylon666

Following his viral appearances on the Danny Jones podcast, Dr Ammon Hillman joins Andrew Gold on Heretics to explain his extraordinary claims about Jesus Christ, ancient Greek and biblical translation. I wanted to understand…

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International bestselling Orphan X author Gregg Hurwitz joins Andrew Gold on Heretics to explore mind control, social media manipulation and the hidden forces shaping what you believe.

Follow Greg here: https://x.com/GreggHurwitz

From his startling claims abou…

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Get Mark’s books:

- The Secret History of the World: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Illustrated-Secret-History-World/dp/1468315668/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

- The Secret History of the Universe: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-History-Universe-Ancient-Wisdom/dp/1918107017/ref=tmm_hrd_swa…

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Subscribe to Jeremy’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@jeremyboreing

Watch The Pendragon Cycle on Amazon Prime:

UK (Amazon Prime): https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.b57932f9-02b2-4d82-a34d-d6754269c3ec?ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb

US (D…

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Check out Drea’s brilliant show: https://www.youtube.com/@TheULTRAFREEPodcast

The Sopranos star Drea de Matteo joins Andrew Gold on Heretics for an unfiltered interview about Hollywood, cancel culture, vaccine mandates and the cost of refusing to play along.

Best known as Adrian…

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Follow Milo: https://x.com/Nero

Milo Yiannopoulos joins Andrew Gold on Heretics for a heated, often hilarious interview about his claims on his own preferences, his changing views on Islam, and why he regrets helping Donald Trump…

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The Darkness frontman sits down with Andrew Gold on Heretics for a conversation that gets deeply personal, uncomfortable and intense. You know the voice behind “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”—but there’s a wild story behind the rock star.

In this full Justin Hawkins inter…

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Warren Smith became known for questioning a student’s beliefs about J.K. Rowling. In this interview, I turn that same scrutiny on his own beliefs about God, Christianity and what happens when we die.

Follow Warren Smith’s brilliant channel: https://www.youtube.com…

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Documentary maker Keaton Stone joins Andrew Gold on Heretics to discuss his investigation into Mohamed Al-Fayed, the former Harrods owner who holidayed with Princess Diana. What began with his wife’s CV became a years-long search for the truth, pursued from his …

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Known for his Islam debates on https://www.youtube.com/@apologeticsroadshow, Dr David Wood joins Andrew Gold on Heretics to discuss the life behind his public reputation: attempted murder, prison, manipulation, Christianity and radical Islamism.

“You’re all pu…

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With Robert Pattinson playing Hansen in A24’s upcoming film Primetime, hear from the real man behind “Have a seat”.

From the original Dateline NBC investigations to Takedown …

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We laughed at them. Then they took over. Gavin’s theory begins with the outsiders who became powerful—and ends with a society where he believes the wrong people are making the rules.

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Follow…

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Investigative journalist Nate Friedman followed the money behind what looked like grassroots activism. He says he uncovered repeat organisers, nonprofit pass-throughs, more than $20 million connected to one little-known billionaire—and the same network a…

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The KISS co-founder and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer explains why he believes the public should igno…

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“They are sanitising you and pasteurising you and trying to make sure you don’t say anything that’s really controversial.”

So begins Vanessa Feltz on my latest interview on Heretics.

Yet, within minutes, Vanessa takes exception when I make a joke she deems unacceptable.

Click here to watch on YT

Click here to watch on Spotify

“This is where I screw you to the wall,” she says.

“Are you sorry? And are you ashamed of yourself?”

If you get value from these open conversations, please subscribe to support the show:

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So what was the offensive joke I made?

To my shame, I had forgotten the name of my brilliant former guest Carol McGiffin. This always happens, as I hardly remember my own name. When Vanessa asked me what Carol looked like, I replied: “Like all the Loose Women.”

Admittedly, I wouldn’t open with it.

I’m not even sure what I was trying to say. Vanessa’s analysis of my joke was far more sophisticated than the joke itself. She said it suggested that I believed there was a type of woman of a certain age who had become, in my mind, an “amorphous blob”.

Fair enough. It was a flippant, mildly ageist and sexist remark.

But it wasn’t exactly an Andrew Tate manifesto!

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Vanessa didn’t simply tell me it was a rubbish joke. She wanted an apology. She wanted to know if I was sorry and, more importantly, if I was ashamed.

Was she trying to cancel me?

Only slightly.

She wasn’t trying to take away my livelihood. She didn’t summon a mob or demand that YouTube remove my channel. But she did reach instinctively for the first stage of the cancellation ritual. The offender must admit that he has done wrong, express the appropriate amount of shame and reassure everyone watching that the moral order has been restored.

It is the classic television sequence: offence, confrontation, apology, advert break.

Except this wasn’t television.

There was no nervous producer talking into my earpiece. Nobody was waiting behind the camera with an approved form of words. There was no boss for someone to pressure into sacking me.

So I didn’t perform a hostage-video apology.

Vanessa called me nasty. I told her why I thought that was unfair. We argued about it and then carried on talking.

Nothing happened.

The ceiling didn’t collapse. Nobody lost a job. Ofcom did not smash through the windows. Two adults disagreed, sometimes quite fiercely.

The Loose Women joke was only the opening skirmish. We later clash over Katie Hopkins, biology and whether kindness means affirming what somebody says or being prepared to tell them something they don’t want to hear.

At one point, Vanessa announces that she has lost the will to live.

I find her fascinating. She is intelligent, funny, ludicrously quick and capable of turning a passing remark into a full Old Bailey prosecution within seconds.

In other words, she is exceptionally well-suited to podcasting and YouTube.

But you can take Vanessa out of daytime TV. It may take a little longer to get daytime TV out of Vanessa.

Decades in broadcasting teach certain habits. You anticipate the complaint before it arrives. You qualify the controversial sentence before you finish it. You protect the channel, the producer and the advertisers. You don’t even notice you’re doing it.

The great irony is that the entertainment world spent decades congratulating themselves for defeating Mary Whitehouse and the old censors. Actors, comedians and broadcasters fought valiantly for the right to depict sex, violence and blasphemy without being told that vulnerable members of the public might be corrupted by it.

Now, many of their cultural descendants make the same arguments about offensive opinions.

They don’t see the connection because their taboos are about “compassion”. The old censors were protecting “decency”. Both claimed to protect vulnerable people from harm.

Those concerns are sincere. But every censor in history has thought their particular forbidden subject was different.

The vocabulary changes. The urge to say “you can’t say that” survives. But something has changed:

Why this feels different on YouTube

The YouTube audience tends to resist this sort of sanitisation.

Not always nobly. YouTube has mobs, orthodoxies, advertisers and algorithms of its own. Creators can become terrified of upsetting their subscribers.

But the relationship is more direct. A viewer chooses to watch. If they dislike what they see, they can argue in the comments, unsubscribe or go somewhere else. There are fewer people standing between the conversation and the audience, trying to remove anything that might cause trouble.

That is why, when Vanessa asked whether I was ashamed, I didn’t have to pretend that I was.

There was no struggle session and no PR statement. We simply had the argument.

For once, the people on the screen spoke like people in normal homes. One person made a bad joke. Another person was offended. They disagreed about how serious it was and continued with their afternoon.

Television used to be full of moments like this.

Vanessa’s YouTube problem

Vanessa’s Channel 5 programme has now ended, and she has launched a new YouTube show called At Home with Vanessa.

I think it has real potential. She interviews famous guests on her bed, harking back to her wonderfully bonkers 1990s show.

It is a strong idea because it immediately looks different from the thousands of podcasts featuring…well, chairs and tables and people. There’s a bed, for crying out loud.

Chicken Shop Date has its chicken shop. Hot Ones has its increasingly violent chicken wings. Vanessa has a bed.

But the show currently has a problem.

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