Podcast Launch: Forbidden Science

A new podcast about truth, power, and the institutions that broke.

This first episode is just me, a laptop camera, and a short introduction. The production will sharpen as we go.

I’m Kevin Bass: scientist, writer, and the guy you might know from Forbidden Science and The Kevin Bass Show.

A couple of years ago, I argued that science and public health had to admit where we got COVID wrong and rebuild trust the hard way: through honesty, humility, and stronger institutions.

I still believe that—more than ever.

This relaunch has a simple mission: medicine, public health, and science—under pressure.

We’ll map where politicization bent and destroyed the truth, how today’s headlines keep revealing the same fractures, and what it would take to make our institutions strong, independent, worthy of confidence, and capable of genuine progress again.

We’ll do two kinds of work here.

First, the old-school debunks: the clear, sourced takedowns I did before 2023 on nutrition and health claims: evidence vs. marketing, mechanisms vs. outcomes, and what the data really say.

Second, we’ll zoom out to the big picture.

If you don’t understand why institutions have become dysfunctional, you keep treating symptoms.

To understand why institutions fail, we’ll draw from history, sociology, and political theory: thinkers who study how societies rise and fragment, how elites and institutions lose legitimacy, and how power disguises itself as truth.

That might mean Peter Turchin one week, René Girard or Curtis Yarvin the next.

We’ll also talk political theology: how authority actually works in emergencies, and how America’s own religious inheritance, our civil religion, shapes what we treat as sacred in public life.

Understanding that helps explain both the overreach and the backlash—and points to reforms that the American people can trust.

Each week brings two episodes:

– A solo deep dive, part article and part investigation—each one fusing debunking and theory-building.
– An interview, a serious conversation with a critic or collaborator.

This isn’t just a show.

It’s my working process for writing my book: an ongoing inquiry into what broke our institutions and how to rebuild them.

I’ll keep publishing, every week, until that work is done.

Listen to the first episode on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

All updates and materials: kevinnbass.com | @kevinnbass