The power of speech, conscience and testimony

by Dr. Julie Ponesse | Oct 5, 2022

Dr. Julie Ponesse interviews award-winning journalist Trish Wood (of Trish Wood is Critical) to understand how we got to where we are today and why moral conscience, questioning and speech are key to reclaiming our fundamental freedoms.

[dopcap]I[/dropcap]t has been two and a half years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic and almost two years since the first person received one of the mRNA vaccines. We’ve been through lockdowns and masking orders, vaccine mandates for employment and school, travel restrictions and the unfathomable invocation of the Emergencies Act during the Freedom Convoy.

Through it all, we’ve seen the worst side of government, the implosion of our institutions, and the exposure of an ineffective, unquestioning mainstream media machine that turns a blind eye to government corruption and regulatory capture. And, perhaps most horrifying of all, we are left trying to understand and manage the effects of all of this on our children, on our broken relationships, and on the trust in people and institutions we thought we could count on.

It’s time to take stock, to pull back a bit, and figure out how we got here and where we can go in the future.

I can’t think of a better person to do this with than Trish Wood. Trish is an award-winning investigative journalist, having covered everything from crime bosses in Tokyo to war-torn Burundi. She spent ten years as one of the hosts of the Emmy Award-winning series, The Fifth Estate, is the author of the critically acclaimed What Was Asked of Us, a book about the heartbreaking stories of Iraq War soldiers, and the creator of I Didn’t Do It, believed to be the first-ever wrongful conviction series.

She is also a former award-winning science journalist, having covered the AIDS crisis in-depth and, in particular, the whitewashing of Anthony Fauci’s mismanagement of the epidemic that led to denying available treatment options to young gay men.

But what I think of most when I think of Trish is her unwavering curiosity, her self-professed non-partisan commentary, and her unconquerable defence of those she calls the “downtrodden.”

I recently had the opportunity to turn the tables and interview the consummate interviewer. We had a casual and meandering but deeply meaningful chat about everything from moral injury, PTSD and gaslighting to whether the truth always comes out to Fauci’s history of medical corruption and the promise of Poilievre. She also has much to say about how and why the media has failed us.

Trish has one of the most comprehensive understandings of the losses of personal liberty we are all experiencing today, how we got here and what we can do to become freer as individuals and as a nation once again. One of the most powerful ways we can exercise freedom of speech is to keep talking with one another, keep asking questions, keep reflecting and engaging. That’s why conversations like this are so important.

I hope you will enjoy this conversation with someone I consider to be one of the best journalists of our time, and one of the smartest and irreverently honest people I know, Trish Wood.

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