Here’s one for all you dystopian fiction fans.

I don’t usually send out posts of the interviews I do via email—I just stick them in the Interviews/Press section of my Substack—but I wanted to send this one out, because it’s a lovely reading of a chapter from my dystopian novel Zone 23 by Brent Robison of The Strange Recital podcast. Brent and Tom Newton are writers in upstate New York. They have been doing The Strange Recital, “a podcast about fiction that questions the nature of reality,” for quite a while now. They are a class act.

A brief interview with me follows Brent’s reading.

You can listen to Episode 25081 here …

Episodes page: https://thestrangerecital.com/index.php/episodes/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheStrangeRecital/

Libsyn: https://thestrangerecital.libsyn.com/zone-23

Or on the YouTube …

The new Arcade Publishing edition of Zone 23 is available wherever books are sold.

“Zone 23 is a razor-sharp, painfully hilarious satire on a future society in which authoritarianism rules beneath the mask of peace. It’s full of heart, humanity, humour and riotous defiance. As a warning and provocation it sits alongside the literary sci-fi classics by Vonnegut, Bradbury and Pynchon.”—Ewan Morrison, author of For Emma

"A big, bold novel that's funny and harrowing and funny again . . . an unflinching portrait of a genetically-modified, fact-checked, sensitivity-edited, corporate-controlled future that feels all too familiar—because we're living in it."—Gavin de Becker, bestselling author of The Gift of Fear

“[A] witty, nasty, erudite, Pynchonesque narrative, full of fleshed-out sleazy characters and a hyper-detailed alternative world . . . ZONE 23 has a place on a list of several classic dystopian novels that have taken on similar themes."—V. N. Alexander, Dactyl Review

"Zone 23 reads like one of the mind-bending compounds discovered by the infamous, legendary psychopharmacologist Alexander Shulgin -strangely, the book itself is the antidote for the very depression it induces. It’s also wildly prophetic, scary, and scabrously funny."—Bruce Wagner

A talk with Kim Iversen about freedom of speech in April 2025.

A talk with Jenin Younes and Mel on the Previously Prohibited podcast in April 2025.

This is an interview I did with Aya Velázquez in February. We didn’t talk about my prosecution. Instead, we talked—or, OK, mostly I talked—about global capitalism, Elon Musk, Trump, Israel/Palestine, etc. We talked about all that for several hours.

Aya has edited it all down to just over an hour.

If you’re not already familiar with Aya Velázquez, she’s an independent journalist in Berlin, one of the journalists that broke the Robert Koch Institut Leaks story, which documented how government officials and health authorities deceived the German public during the roll-out of the New Normal in 2020-2022. She also reported on my Thought Crime trials in Berlin. She publishes mostly in German, but also in English occasionally. I highly recommend her work.

I don’t normally send out interviews on Substack. I just post them in the Interviews section of my Substack landing page, which I will also do with this one after it goes out. I’m sending this one out to you because readers often ask me to explain a lot of the stuff I explain in the interview, which doesn’t really lend itself to explanation in my BTL replies or on Substack Notes. If you’re one of those readers, maybe this will help clear up some of your questions.

On the other hand, if you’re one of those readers who get upset when I write or talk about global capitalism, or Israel/Palestine, or God help me, if I criticize Elon Musk, viewer discretion is advised.

OK, here’s the interview.

In-depth piece on my second trial in Berlin Superior Court by Eva Sudholt in Die Zeit, Germany’s largest weekly newspaper.

Archived (non-paywall) version here.

Coverage of my second trial by 1984 Today.

Coverage of my second trial by independent journalist Mathias Broeckers.

Coverage of my second trial by independent journalist Milosz Matuschek.

Coverage of my second trial by The Daily Sceptic.

Coverage of my second trial in Berlin Superior Court by Dr. Clivia von Dewitz, a German judge, in Berliner Zeitung.

Coverage of my second trial by Der Spiegel.

Coverage of my second trial by independent journalist Boris Reitschuster.

Coverage of my second trial by independent journalist Aya Velázquez.

A German judge and expert on the Nazi-symbol ban, Dr. Clivia von Dewitz, published an extensive opinion piece about my case and “political justice,” in the Berliner Zeitung.

I translated it and published the English version here.

Coverage and commentary on my prosecution in Discourse Magazine, a publication of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

An extensive article about my prosecution, the banning of my book, etc., in the Berliner Zeitung. It’s in German, of course.

And FIRE has posted an extensive write-up on their blog.

If you’re not already familiar with FIRE … well, this is from their website:

“The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them.”

It means a lot to me that FIRE is helping focus attention on my case, despite the fact that it is happening here in Germany. Yes, I’m an American, but I’m a long way from home, in more ways than one.

One more thing, and then I’ll let you watch the video.

Ironically, as I prepare for my second thoughtcrime trial on August 15, the “Robert Koch-Institute Leak” story is exposing how the German authorities, including Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s Health Minister and the subject of one of my thoughtcrime Tweets, deceived the German public and manipulated “The Science” during the so-called “Covid pandemic.”

I’m not sure whether the shit is actually hitting the fan yet in Germany, but, if it isn’t, it is at least in the general vicinity of the fan. The mainstream media are covering the story, and at least one member of parliament is calling on Lauterbach to step down. I tweeted about that.

I’ll translate for you.

“In Germany, it’s OK for the authorities to lie to the public, and, if you criticize them for lying, they will prosecute you, ban your books, etc., because Germany is a country that operates under the rule of law. Am I understanding that right?”

OK, so it works a better in German. The Federal Republic of Germany prides itself on being a “Rechtsstaat,” a “constitutional state,” which is totally democratic and follows the rule of law, i.e., not the arbitrary orders of psychopathic liars and barking lunatics like … well, you know who.

Anyway, I tagged Karl Lauterbach and the Minister of Justice, Marco Buschmann, on that Tweet. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear back from them.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the FIRE video. If you do, please share it as widely as you can. Focusing attention on the criminalization of dissent, i.e., on how the legal system is being instrumentalized, not just here in Germany, but throughout the West, to punish dissidents and intimidate the masses into silence, is really the only weapon we have to fight back with.

An article on my second thoughtcrime trial in Berlin, and the broader criminalization of dissent throughout the West, by John Mac Ghlionn, in Sky News Australia.

So, I had a long conversation with Jay Bhattacharya recently, about my prosecution for thoughtcrime Tweets, and the roll-out of the new global censorship apparatus, and all that kind of stuff. I went into some of the details of how the system works in Germany, and we talked about the role corporations like Twitter/X, Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc., play in that system. (Please note the “advisory” that YouTube has pasted onto the video in the image above.)

That system — i.e., that global censorship apparatus — is still very much in operation, despite concerted efforts to convince us otherwise. In fact, it is just getting started. If you value freedom of speech and the press, and your other democratic rights, and you are not yet paying close attention to the crackdown on dissent that is being rolled out throughout the Western world … well, you should be.

I assume you are familiar with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, and one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. Jay, along with his Great Barrington co-authors (Martin Kulldorff, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, until he was fired for refusing to submit to COVID “vaccination,” and Sunetra Gupta, a Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford University), were demonized by the corporate media, government officials, and public health “authorities” for refusing to conform to the official COVID narrative in the early days of the roll-out of the New Normal. Jay was denounced as “a fringe epidemiologist,” and was censored by Twitter, and other corporate entities. His blacklisting was featured in the early “Twitter Files” reporting.

I have a lot of respect for Jay. It’s one thing to speak out and oppose an overwhelming force like the roll-out of the New Normal when you’re a literary outlaw like me, but it is a whole other thing to do that when you’re a professor at Stanford University. Also, on a personal note, the way this interview came about was, I snarked at Jay on Twitter about Musk — Jay mentioned his support of a Canadian dissident, and I have taken to snarking at prominent personages praising Musk for his “free-speech heroics” — and, instead of snarking back, Jay invited me onto his show.

It was an absolute pleasure talking to him.

The video is here on The Illusion of Consensus, the podcast Jay runs with Rav Arora. I think they just rebooted it recently. If you have a moment to help spread the word, I’m sure Jay and Rav will appreciate it. They’ve got some interesting guests lined up. No, I am not a fan of all of them, but a lot of other people are, so please spare me the replies accusing me of “shilling” for Jordan Peterson, or whatever.

OK, that’s it. I hope you enjoy the interview. If you do, I hope you will share it widely. What happened during 2020 to 2023 — what I have been calling The Rise of the New Normal Reich — is what delivered us to where we are today, and it is being memory-holed in classic Orwellian fashion. Some of us are trying to stop that from happening, or at least marginally interfere with the process.

Thanks to all of you who are doing likewise!

An in-depth piece (in German) on my criminal prosecution and the banning of my book by Ralf Hutter for Multipolar Magazine.