Overexamined Life

Me on Me

I was recently invited to appear on The Overexamined Life, an excellent podcast made by Jonah Primo. You can find it “wherever you get your podcasts,” as well as on YouTube.

This is the first time I've really talked at full-length about what happened to me, the aftermath, and what it's taken for me to get to where I am today.

For those who care, I also dipped into the fray regarding the insane plagiarism scandal currently ripping through British academia:

They say August is the silly season for news. Well, during this endless heat wave of 2026, in the hallowed halls of British academia the season is not so much silly as batshit crazy. The headline reason will already be known to readers beyond the Ivory Towers: accusations levelled at Cambridge Professor Jason Arday. But as we will see, there is more to it than that.

Now, you might well think that Arday’s is an open and shut case. After all, the evidence that he has committed extensive plagiarism, in his PhD thesis and at least two published articles, seems overwhelming.

Nonetheless the university’s response has been not only to defend Arday to the hilt, including a blanket dismissal of any claim of wrongdoing, but also to accuse anybody raising questions about him of racism. As of writing, Cambridge seems to be standing by its earlier statement that any questions are part of a “vile smear campaign to undermine his credibility”.

Okay, this much is widely known already. But what non-academics probably don’t know is the flip side of the story. And to understand why this affair has sent British academia into various shades of doolally, it helps to know where this all came from. You need to know about Nathan Cofnas, the man whose blog broke the accusations of plagiarism, unleashing the firestorm.

The rest is at Unherd.