Young men drifting to the Right is the half of the story everyone is reporting. The other half — young women radicalising Left at an even faster rate — is barely discussed. And when politics becomes completely gendered, Michael Johnston warns, it spells disaster. In this episode of Free to Speak, Dane Giroud sits down with Michael Johnston — Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative and leader of its work on education — to take apart what's really driving youth radicalisation on both sides.

They get into what "left" and "right" even mean to today's young people (and why, by one definition, Te Pāti Māori is the most right-wing party in Parliament), the housing market as the single biggest threat to liberal democracy, why universalism matters, and the case for free speech as the weapon of the powerless. The conversation then turns to Michael's home turf: education.

How did a 19th century NZ schooling system that was, by the standards of the time, remarkably liberal and knowledge-focused end up where it is now? What did Tomorrow's Schools and the 2007 curriculum actually do? And why — beyond economics — do boys in particular need male mentors and male-only spaces to find out who they are? Dane shares the story of how Raymond Hawthorne opened up Shakespeare for a kid from South Auckland who never expected to read it. 🎙️ Recorded for the Free to Speak podcast — the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union.

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