You Need to Shut Up is a podcast created by me, Dr Jacqui Hoepner. I’m a researcher, writer, science communicator and policy analyst from Canberra, Australia.

YNTSU came out of my PhD research, in which I interviewed academics whose work had been attacked, silenced or constrained in some way. I wanted to know why their work was considered so dangerous, particularly as they thought they’d done ‘all the right things.’ They’d ticked all the boxes: ethics clearance, funding applications, peer review. But their work pushed the envelope/ jerked knees/ pissed the wrong kind of people off.

We like to think academic freedom is sacred—that society needs academics who are fearless and unfettered in pursuing the ‘truth’. But my research revealed it’s a little more complicated than that.

There are limits to academic freedom we don’t know about—it’s only when the envelope pushers get punished we realise they were there all along.

I’m talking beyond peer review: this isn’t about critique or analysis. It’s ‘I don’t like what you’re saying and you need to shut up.'