Sage & Jester Presents

Louis Theroux on the cult of the online

In conversation with Robin Clyfan

How The Light Gets In Festival, Hampstead Heath
Sat 19 September 2026

Sage & Jester present Louis Theroux in conversation with Robin Clyfan on radicalisation, the absence of thinking and whether an entire era can be indoctrinated without noticing.

Louis Theroux is a genre-defining documentary filmmaker and presenter best known for his immersive and empathetic programmes exploring the intricate and often contentious facets of human experience.

He’s spent thirty years trying to understand the kinds of extremists others would easily write off – always responding with curiosity rather than judgement. Few people have studied so closely how people get pulled in, and what it takes to get out.

In this discussion presented by Sage & Jester and hosted by Robin Clyfan, we’ll be asking him to turn that same eye on all of us, to ask, with trademark Louis curiosity: have we all been collectively groomed into the cult of the online? Which cult-like behaviours are we already exhibiting ourselves in how we scroll, argue, believe, belong? And how do we think our way out of them?

Expect the same scrutiny turned on the cult of productivity – the pressure to optimise everything, and what that quietly costs us in reflection, empathy, and the freedom to simply not know. And on staying sane inside the noise: how to protect your attention from a media landscape built to farm it.

Join us for a conversation grounded in philosophy, insight and anecdotes drawn from a career spent observing radicalisation up close, made for anyone trying to stay curious in an age built to make us certain.