Hearts of Oak Podcast

Greg Swenson, chairman of Republicans Overseas UK, joins Peter to examine the scale of Republican midterm losses, including Democratic gains in Texas statewide offices and the legislature, alongside continued Republican strength in states such as Florida and Tennessee. He identifies the Iran conflict and higher fuel prices as primary drivers of voter backlash, tied to affordability concerns, and argues that President Trump should acknowledge the economic effects, demonstrate empathy, and outline corrective steps. Swenson reviews the administration’s response to the results, including the Senate’s failure to advance the Save America Act, the emphasis on loyalty within the team...

Professor Norman Fenton returns to discuss his book The Capture of Academia, exploring how universities use EDI (DEI) policies, research funding requirements, and peer review to enforce ideological conformity and silence dissent. Drawing on his own career in mathematics and risk assessment, he recounts mandatory DEI statements for grants (even in hard sciences), unconscious bias training, and the dominance of identity politics over merit. He also covers the corruption of peer review—illustrated by his experiences challenging COVID-19 narratives and a high-profile Lancet paper—alongside broader issues of antisemitism, anti-Israel double standards, climate change orthodoxy, and the long-term capture of i...

Brian of London - Israel Election: High Arab Turnout Complicates Netanyahu Coalition Formation Brian of London joins Peter to unpack Israel’s latest election results and the messy path to a new coalition.

He describes the unusually high turnout (including a packed polling station in his local school), the gap between exit polls and the final count that left Likud ahead but without an easy majority, and why the campaign boiled down almost entirely to “Bibi or not Bibi.” Brian covers the surge in Arab turnout, the absence of a clear successor to Netanyahu, ongoing security realities in Gaz...

Callum Smiles joins us once again after filming the recent protests and clashes in Paris. He talks about separating real footage from misleading videos circulating online, what he actually saw on the ground (student-led socialist/communist marches that drew in other groups, organised violence, and targeted shop-smashing), the police response, the heavy rain that eventually shut things down, and the broader mood of tension and anti-Macron feeling. We also cover Marine Le Pen’s rising odds, France’s political and financial pressures, and why Callum thinks similar scenes are unlikely to play out the same way in the UK.

Rikki Doolan joins Peter to share his remarkable journey from teenage drug use and homelessness on the streets of Northern England to becoming a pastor in 2015. He recounts the moment he prayed for help inside Manchester Cathedral, his discovery of gospel music, and how faith transformed his life.

Rikki discusses his involvement with the Unite the Kingdom rallies, leading the crowd in Amazing Grace, and his personal role in Tommy Robinson’s exploration of Christianity, including the prayer of salvation they shared in prison. He also responds to an Observer profile, offers practical advice on finding a ch...

Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch, a Brooklyn-based therapist and author, discusses Viktor Frankl’s ideas on meaning and their relevance to today’s mental health challenges. He then examines what he sees as a growing “red-green alliance” of socialists and Islamists in U.S. politics, focusing on his opposition to Zohran Mamdani in New York and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, along with shifts in Jewish voting patterns and efforts to build broader coalitions.

Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch, LMFT, is a conservative therapist, writer, and podcaster dedicated to strengthening faith, family, and freedom in New York and beyond. He specializes in Viktor F...

➡️ SIGN THE PETITION End the mandatory fortification of white flour with folic acid immediately https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/769589

Dr Clare Craig BM BCh FRCPath studied medicine at Cambridge University moving to Oxford for her final three years of clinical training. After qualifying she practised in the NHS for 15 years specialising as a diagnostic pathologist and becoming a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists. Subsequently she was the day to day lead for pathology and clinical data in the cancer arm of the 100,000 Genomes Project and worked in A.I. cancer diagnostics.
From May 2020, she has...

The interview begins with James Harvey discussing a temporary Twitter ban after he posted screenshots related to an MP, saying his criticism was of unprofessional conduct rather than homophobia. It then moves to the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, where he argues the Labour result reflects demographic change, block voting, and voters’ lack of policy knowledge.
Harvey also comments on identity and immigration, discussing remarks by Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch and saying major parties are responding to pressure from Reform and Restore Britain. He criticises Islam, immigration, and what he describes as restrictions on speech, linking these issues to...

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki returns to Hearts of Oak to discuss rising hostility toward Jews, the meaning of Zion, and the claim that Zionism is racism. He explains Zion as another name for Jerusalem and a biblical marker of what stands at the center of attention, and argues that antisemitism is not a problem Jews can solve. The conversation covers Jewish exile, survival, and return as a historical exception predicted in Scripture, Hamas’s naming of the October 7 attacks the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” and a newer Christian claim that today’s Jews are not the Jews of the Bible. It closes o...

David Erb joins Peter to explain how a college heart crisis led him into chiropractic care. 
Told he needed immediate surgery and lifelong medication, he says structural correction of a spinal misalignment resolved his symptoms and redirected his life. He describes his practice’s focus on cause rather than symptoms through the five essentials—nutrition, mindset and hope, detoxification, exercise and oxygen, and nervous-system function—and discusses exams, x-rays, thermography, and soft wave therapy. The conversation also covers his book Chemical Religion, his Christian faith, opening a clinic in Zimbabwe, pastoring, and how COVID changed some people’s view of h...

Dr Robert Malone joins Peter to discuss Homesteading for Health, the book he and his wife Jill developed over roughly two and a half years from farm essays, memoir, and policy writing. Robert describes recording the audiobook himself and credits Jill as the primary author and illustrator. 

The conversation covers the couple’s history of buying and rebuilding distressed properties, the equity they lost in the Great Recession, and the deed in lieu of foreclosure that followed. He uses that experience to argue that debt constrains choices and that younger people should avoid unnecessary borrowing. The dis...

Dr Harry Benson, research director of the Marriage Foundation, joins Peter to make the case that marriage still matters. He explains why two-parent families tend to produce better outcomes for children and less pressure on the state, and why marriage itself — not just background factors like income or education — helps couples stay together.

Harry discusses the founding of the Marriage Foundation, the limits of earlier research that downplayed marriage, and the psychological mechanisms that make a public, binding commitment different from cohabitation: it removes ambiguity, signals sacrifice, and creates social accountability. 
He also talks about his b...

Lee Harris returns to look over a tense week in politics and media. We discuss the reported deletion of submissions to Angela Rayner’s working group on an Islamophobia / “anti-Muslim hostility” definition, questions over data protection excuses, and concerns that the proposed definition could be used to restrict speech.

We also cover the announced National Centre for Information Defence — branded by many as a “Ministry of Truth” — and whether it is a response to the government losing control of the narrative. The conversation then turns to sentencing and policing: contrasting cases that critics call two-tier justice, the arrest and cha...

Oklahoma State Senator Shane David Jett joins Peter to talk about his Cherokee heritage, Christian upbringing, and path into public service. He describes growing up in Tecumseh, the books and preachers that shaped him, his time as the first Republican elected to his House seat (2004–2010), and later service in the Navy as an intelligence officer. Shane discusses Oklahoma’s mix of tribal, state, and local politics, gaming revenue, and how tribal governments interact with the legislature. He explains how COVID-era restrictions sharpened his focus on constitutional limits and emergency powers, and how that led him to chair the Oklahoma Free...

American-German journalist Collin McMahon joins Hearts of Oak to unpack the AfD’s recent state election gains in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin. He links the results to public anger over immigration, a slumping economy, high energy prices, climate policy and what he calls woke politics, and argues the party is now growing beyond the east.
Collin discusses Friedrich Merz’s “firewall” against the AfD, the CDU’s collapse below the 5% threshold in Mecklenburg, Germany’s proportional system and why other parties keep forming coalitions to keep the AfD out. He also covers AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, r...

The discussion covers comments on EU expansion, including suggestions that Ukraine could join the EU, which David Vance rejects as unrealistic. It also addresses criticism of the Archbishop of Canterbury over a photograph with a cleric described as having praised Osama bin Laden, which is presented as poor judgment.
A large part of the episode focuses on culture and media, including Greta Thunberg, protests at Ed Sheeran concerts, and what the speakers describe as pressure on public figures to adopt political messaging. They also criticize media language around a child sexual abuse case in Wiltshire, arguing that it obscures...

Bill Walton returns to Hearts of Oak to discuss the AI safety debate after Anthropic’s leadership warned that advanced systems could pose a serious risk to humanity within a decade. He argues that heavy federal regulation would entrench the biggest players, squeeze open-source development, and slow innovation, while the U.S.–China race makes a simple pause unrealistic because AI is dual-use. Bill then turns to what he sees as the more immediate threat: rising long-term Treasury yields, global government debt, and the limits of taxing, borrowing, or inflating the problem away. The conversation closes on crypto, quantum comp...

Kevin Freeman returns to discuss his new book, The Four Horsemen of the American Apocalypse. He maps four forces he says are working together against the United States and the wider West: communism, political Islam, globalism, and the “yellow” horse of traitors, cowards, and fools.

Buy the Four Horsemen https://4horsemenbook.com/

Kevin Freeman is considered one of the world’s leading experts on the issues of Economic Warfare and Financial Terrorism. He has consulted for and briefed members of both the U.S. House and Senate, present and past CIA, DIA, FBI, SEC, Homeland Securi...

Join us for another episode of Hearts of Oak Podcast, where we're honoured to have the return of Petr Bystron, a Member of the European Parliament representing the Alternative for Germany (AfD), as our guest.

In this episode, Petr Bystron gives the background to the AfD’s result in Saxony-Anhalt — a win so large, he says, yet the old parties still refuse to govern with them. He walks through the vote, the so-called firewall, Friedrich Merz’s deal with the Social Democrats, and why he thinks the CDU has left the ground it held under Helmut Kohl. He als...

Ernst J. van Zyl - AfriForum, Afrikaner identity and South Africa’s State Decay Ernst J. van Zyl, head of public relations at AfriForum, joins Hearts of Oak to discuss South Africa’s political and social crisis. He explains AfriForum’s work as a large, member-funded civil-rights and community organisation: court challenges, local problem-solving where the state has failed, and a nationwide safety network. The conversation covers layered identity — why many South Africans, including Afrikaners, put culture and language before national identity — and why a highly centralised state struggles to manage deep diversity.   Ernst describes three decades of state-capacity decay: collapsing...

Journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Sacerdoti joins Peter to talk about Jewish identity in Britain, rising antisemitism, and his two Oxford Union debates. 

He describes growing up in London as a British Jew whose father survived the Holocaust in hiding, and why he no longer sees Jewish concerns as separate from wider threats to Western society.

Jonathon recounts the 2024 Israel debate, where students abused him on camera and the Union later edited the footage, and the more recent motion that “the West is right to be suspicious of Islam” in which he was on the p...

Dr. Gavin Ashenden joins Peter to explore Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17 and why the Catholic Church uniquely preserves the one Church Christ founded through apostolic authority, the Mass, and Petrine headship. 

He contrasts this with Protestantism’s proliferation of denominations and reflects on his own journey into Catholicism in 2019.  

The conversation turns to the upcoming March for Life UK, the Catholic Church’s unbroken opposition to abortion from the earliest Christian writings, and Gavin's personal awakening to the scale of terminations in Britain. 
They also discuss righteous anger, the muted Christian public witness i...

We are delighted to have Nick Freitas join us to discuss his move to Blaze TV, the Christian faith that shapes all his work, and why he is fighting for Christendom rather than a secular vision of Western civilization. He shares insights from his book The Man Book on manhood, fatherhood, marriage, generational stewardship, and building lasting family legacy, along with practical thoughts on public speaking and reflections from his time in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Nick Freitas is a former U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) combat veteran, conservative leader, author, and media host...

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce joins us to discuss the upcoming March for Life UK on 5 September in Westminster. 
She details the morning Life Fest programme, including the pro-life family summit on the theme “abortion hurts the family,” a new youth summit for 18–35s, age-appropriate sessions for children and teens, and a hall of pro-life organisations. 
Isabel and Peter cover abortion’s wider impact on mothers, fathers, siblings and relationships, the importance of church involvement, UK abortion law (pills by post and the recent decriminalisation vote), the power of careful language, and an update on her ongoing legal case over silent pra...

Grant Stinchfield joins Peter to discuss his investigative reporting background, accountability for Anthony Fauci over COVID-era decisions and private communications, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and efforts to address institutional challenges in Washington, the Jones Act waiver and its impact on American shipping, the conflict with Iran, prediction markets versus traditional polling in the context of Texas politics and the midterms, and the question of fairness in women’s sports.

Grant Stinchfield is a four-time Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, conservative radio/TV host, podcaster, NRA Life Member, and small-business owner based in the Dallas area.
He spent ro...

Alex Phillips - Faith, Farage and Division on the Right

Alex Phillips discusses how her Christian faith continues to shape her life and public work, including prayer, recent experiences of recommitment and confirmation, and the personal events she sees as evidence of God’s involvement. 
The conversation then turns to politics, covering the Clacton by-election, Nigel Farage and Reform, tensions with figures such as Rupert Lowe, immigration policy, and the risks of division on the right.

Alex Phillips is a broadcaster, former and future politician, champion of women, speaker of truths, would-be 21st century Bou...

Callum Smiles joins Hearts of Oak to report from his recent trip to Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the North African coast, where he was filming with Fox Populi. Fresh from Gibraltar, he describes a migration situation far larger than expected: thousands of arrivals after the major influx on 31 July, with Moroccan migrants concentrated in the south and sub-Saharan migrants in the north. The Spanish-majority enclave effectively saw its population double in a short period. From above it looked attractive; at street level it was chaotic and unstable. Callum details the military response, overcrowding and fights at facilities built...

In this episode, Dr Joel Bohemier discusses his upbringing in a multi-generational chiropractic family, the principles of spinal care as a means of supporting overall neurological function, and the historical challenges faced by the profession. He explains how adjustments address more than musculoskeletal symptoms and shares insights from nearly 30 years in practice. The conversation also covers the founding of Stand for Health Freedom, efforts around informed consent and parental rights, and current developments in health policy, including support for initiatives associated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

One of 46 chiropractors in his family, Dr. Joel Bohemier is passionate...

Alan Miller joins us to discuss how public pushback helped stop the proposed digital ID scheme and why current expansions — One Login, the Gov.uk app, digital driving licences and wider digitisation — still risk building a biometric surveillance state. He covers the campaign tools that worked (petitions, protests, letters to MPs), the push of company directors and the self-employed into digital systems, the need to protect analog options, links to banking, cash and central bank digital currency, and why continued campaigning, free speech defence and signing the Together Declaration pledge remain essential.

Alan Miller started his care...

Gary Rabine discusses his early work in tree service and driveway paving in northern Illinois and how he developed that into the Rabine Group of companies. 

He describes expanding into parking lot paving, trucking, and other construction and facilities services, while incorporating technologies such as AI, robotics, and drones. 
Gary explains his method of identifying capable people and building businesses around them, along with his views on leadership and long-term planning. 

He also talks about the role of his Catholic faith in his personal and professional life, the work of the Cheryl Rabine Fou...

David Bozell discusses his family’s conservative political background in Washington, D.C., and how his father helped launch the Media Research Center after earlier work with NCPAC. He describes the MRC’s early years as resource-poor but focused on documenting media bias, including work at the 1988 conventions and support from donors and figures in conservative media.
He also talks about the organization’s relationship with Rush Limbaugh, saying MRC supplied clips and documentation that supported Limbaugh’s on-air commentary. Bozell reflects on Limbaugh’s influence and on how conservative media grew through talk radio and strong messaging.
Bozell the...

Del Bigtree, founder and CEO of the Informed Consent Action Network and host of The HighWire, joins Hearts of Oak. He shares with us how The HighWire was created as an experiment in media that presents conversations without heavy pre-interview preparation or editing. 

Del discusses his background as a television producer and the process of building ICAN, which reviews vaccine trial data and has filed numerous lawsuits against U.S. government agencies. He reflects on interviews with Andrew Wakefield and attorney Aaron Siri, and addresses the difference between reporting and taking direct action when needed. The conv...

Billboard Chris at ARC:6 Years Fighting the Child Abuse of Puberty Blockers for Kids across the world

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David Bozell at ARC London: Why Media Bias Still Distorts America – And How MRC Fights Back

Glen Scrivener at ARC: Bold Faith in a Shifting Culture – Why Christians Should No Longer Hold Back.

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Acclaimed sculptor Sabin Howard returns to Hearts of Oak to discuss his ambitious new project, the Grand Liberty Arch — the monumental follow-up to his National World War I Memorial, which was unveiled in Washington, D.C. in September 2024.
Sabin shares how the Grand Liberty Arch, designed for America’s 250th anniversary and slated for unveiling before the 2034 Winter Olympics in Utah, celebrates freedom, liberty, personal agency, and self-responsibility. 

He explains why he chose to create the work independently in Utah after being granted land at the state capitol, and how raising over $2.3 million through a chari...

Jan Jekielek at ARC: Killed to Order – The CCP’s Organ Harvesting Machine and the Urgent Defense of Western Civilization

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We are delighted to welcome back Alex Newman to discuss the 250th anniversary of American independence and the principles set out in the Declaration of Independence. 

He explains the historical sources of those principles, including earlier English legal traditions and biblical ideas about equality, rights, and the proper role of government. 

Alex addresses the current level of public knowledge about these events, particularly among students, and the influence of government schools, media, and museums on historical understanding. 
The conversation also covers recent political developments, including congressional funding decisions and divisions within the Rep...

Simon Lennox at ARC: Equiping Christians to share Christ in everyday conversations

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Kevin Sorbo at ARC: A Candid Conversation on Faith, Hollywood Exile, and Reclaiming Hope in a Fear-Driven World.

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