Pulotu Tupe Solomon-Tanoa'I served four years on the Broadcasting Standards Authority. With the BSA now set to be abolished by the Coalition Government following the Sean Plunket / The Platform jurisdictional decision, she sits down with FSU Council member Dane Giraud for an open exchange on what the BSA actually does, where free speech and protection from harm collide, and whether scrapping the body off the back of a single controversial ruling was good process.

It's a genuinely civil disagreement — and one of the more substantive conversations on broadcasting regulation you'll find in New Zealand right now.

They cover:
- How BSA complaints actually work — and why only ~8% are upheld
- The elasticity of "harm" and who gets to define it
- The Heather du Plessis-Allan ruling and whether counter-speech would have done more
- The Plunket / Platform jurisdictional decision and the cost-of-appeal problem
- Why years of reform consultation were shelved before the BSA was scrapped
- Online pile-ons, platform accountability, and the Mikey Sherman case
- David Harvey's voluntary-standards model — and its gaps
- Vexatious complaints, and the BSA's 2020 decision not to hear complaints about te reo Māori

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"There is a crisis of honesty — and we're seeing the consequences in every sphere of life."

American philosopher Peter Boghossian — author of How to Have Impossible Conversations and the mind behind Spectrum Street Epistemology — joins host Dane Giraud for a wide-ranging conversation on free speech, polarisation, religion, antisemitism, the trans medicalisation scandal, the breakdown of moral consensus, and why honest disagreement has become so rare.

🎟️ SEE PETER LIVE IN AUCKLAND — SATURDAY 16 MAY Peter's final New Zealand appearance. Ellen Melville Centre, Auckland CBD. Doors 4:45pm | Starts 5:30pm | Tickets $10.

Book: https://www.fsu.nz/events/free-speech-union-peter-boghossian-free-speech-hard-conversations-and-whats-at-risk

IN THIS EPISODE

— What Spectrum Street Epistemology actually is, and why Peter uses it with school students

— Why "online is a cesspool" and what in-person disagreement teaches that comments never will

— The atheists who are more religious than the religious

— The breakdown of the dominant moral order and the necessary backlash that follows

— Sacred cows: the topics institutions still refuse to discuss honestly

— The trans medicalisation scandal and the cost of suppressing dissent

— Rising antisemitism in the UK and the institutional unwillingness to name what's happening

— Dane's own recent experience of an antisemitic smear

— and how to respond

— Why the Israel–Palestine conversation collapses, even between people willing to talk

— Reading scripture as literature, and the value of radical self-knowledge

— Why fighting, jiu-jitsu and stand-up comedy share something the cognitive world has lost: a corrective mechanism

— The crisis of honesty

— and why everything downstream of it is breaking

CHAPTERS

(00:00) Welcome & guest introduction

(01:55) Why Peter keeps coming back to New Zealand

(03:48) How Spectrum Street Epistemology works

(05:48) Why online conversation turns toxic

(08:16) Making evidence and doubt fun

(10:02) Religion, identity, and moral certainty

(16:18) When moral orders break down

(22:34) Echo chambers and institutional capture

(27:04) Sacred cows and policy taboo topics

(42:46) A personal smear story unpacked

(46:02) Why some conflicts resist dialogue

(51:42) Reading scripture as self-knowledge

(56:52) Fighting, reality checks, and integrity

(1:00:02) The crisis of honesty

(1:09:12) Final thanks

ABOUT PETER BOGHOSSIAN

American philosopher, author of How to Have Impossible Conversations (with James Lindsay), and founder of the Spectrum Street Epistemology project. Formerly faculty at Portland State University. His work focuses on belief revision, civil discourse, and how people change their minds.

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https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech
https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/
https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

We weigh the push for an under-16 social media ban against what it would take to enforce it and what it would cost in privacy, anonymity, and open debate. We use Australia and the UK as cautionary examples and argue that empowering parents and teaching digital literacy beats outsourcing speech rules to the state.
• Australia’s ban in practice, including high rates of circumvention and account shutdowns
• unintended shift of young people towards riskier platforms and unfiltered browsing
• why age verification undermines anonymous speech and creates data breach exposure
• the case for anonymity, from historical pamphleteers to modern whistleblowers
• parental responsibility, practical tools, and education as alternatives to blanket bans
• moral panic patterns and why correlation is not causation in harms research
• how “design not content” arguments can mask censorship incentives
• why government-defined “harmful speech” becomes political and inconsistent
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and consider sharing the podcast with others.

Support the show

https://www.fsu.nz/
https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech
https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/
https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz