All episodes

Episode 57

We are not in the King Charles III Space Station this week. We are in Harriet Green’s sister station, which is a less reliable bit of lore but a more useful studio. Into it comes Mat Dryhurst: English conceptual artist, Berlin resident, collaborator with...

6 Jun 20261h 31m
Listen to episode
Episode 56

From the thatched-roofed orbital pub of the King Charles III Space Station — a structure Nicholas Boys Smith gamely declines to call a pastiche — Tom and Calum welcome the campaigner for architectural beauty, founder of Create Streets, and former co-chair,...

24 May 20261h 10m
Listen to episode
Episode 54

Part two begins, as promised, with Louis pulling down his trousers. The underpants in question — a toile de joie printed with pastoral scenes labelled Seductio, Commiditas, Protectio — turn out to be the origin story of the entire British Cræft Prize. What...

1 May 202652m
Listen to episode
Episode 53

From the King Charles III Space Station — whose thatch is in a worrying state of disrepair — Tom and Calum welcome Louis Elton, founder of the Cræft Prize, a new £60,000 national award for maverick craftsmen, makers and technologists who fuse heritage crafts...

28 Apr 20261h 01m
Listen to episode
Episode 52

From the King Charles III Space Station, Tom and Calum welcome Louise Perry — reactionary feminist, space romantic, and descendant of Second Fleet convicts — to discuss Artemis II, the furthest humans have ever travelled from Earth.Louise makes the case that...

9 Apr 20261h 29m
Listen to episode
Episode 51

Back from the break and fuelled by Diet Coke, Tom and Calum push Josh on the harder questions. If HomeDAO is selecting for a new elite — relentless, agentic, indifferent to the rules of polite society — what kind of elite is it? The aristocrat as leader, or...

2 Apr 202650m
Listen to episode
Episode

From a hand-dug allotment in Stroud, Tom and Calum announce a fundamental change of direction for the podcast. After eighteen months of speaking to founders, technologists, and policy thinkers, they have come to an uncomfortable conclusion: it was all wrong....

1 Apr 20262m
Listen to episode
Episode 48

Katie Lam came to Westminster via Goldman Sachs, Number 10, the AI company Faculty, and the Home Office. She has seen the British state from the outside and the inside and her verdict is the same both times: it is less than the sum of its parts. Bright...

22 Mar 20261h 01m
Listen to episode
Episode 47

Ben Judah spent time as a special adviser to David Lammy at the Foreign Office, which means he worked on the Chagos deal, knows what Diego Garcia actually does, and cannot tell you. What he can tell you is that the deal was initiated by David Cameron, pushed...

13 Mar 20261h 10m
Listen to episode
Episode 46

Part two of our conversation with Will Orr-Ewing gets into the harder questions: whether a genuinely meritocratic elite is more dangerous than an aristocratic one, why AI tutoring has solved the wrong problem, and what it would take to build an Odyssean...

8 Mar 20261h 06m
Listen to episode
Episode 45

Will Orr-Ewing has spent 20 years tutoring and founded Keystone Tutors, but he’s not here to tell you to hire a maths tutor for your nine-year-old. His argument is bigger: that Britain once had a culture of self-directed intellectual growth that state...

4 Mar 202648m
Listen to episode
Episode 44

In part one, we explored why drug development costs are exploding and how better software could fix it. In part two, we get practical: what’s actually stopping Britain from becoming a biotech superpower, and what would it take to get there?Meri pulls no...

19 Feb 202645m
Listen to episode
Episode 41

The pharmaceutical industry has a dirty secret: it takes $2 billion and a decade to approve the average drug, and these numbers are getting exponentially worse. While computing power doubles every few years, drug development costs double every decade—a...

13 Feb 202643m
Listen to episode
Episode 37

The scientific mission of Lovelace Labs

James Phillips and Laura Ryan

In part two of our conversation with James W. Phillips and Laura Ryan, things get weirder and more ambitious. We move from the structural problems of academia into the actual scientific missions these labs could pursue—from cells-as-agents to neuromorphic AI...

17 Dec 202553m
Listen to episode
Episode 36

How to cultivate outlier scientific talent

James Phillips and Laura Ryan

James W. Phillips and Laura Ryan are former neuroscientists who’ve written a proposal to save British science by basically blowing up the university system. Or at least building an alternative to it. Their diagnosis? The best scientists they know have all...

15 Dec 20251h 01m
Listen to episode
Episode 35

In the second part of this conversation, Shiv Malik goes deeper on why millennials never organised around housing despite it being the defining material issue of their generation. His book tour for Jilted Generation in 2010 drew audiences full of...

27 Nov 20251h 23m
Listen to episode
Episode 34

Shiv Malik is the would-be founder of Britain’s first new city in over 50 years. He and Joe Reeve from LFG have identified 45,000 acres east of Cambridge for a million-person city, complete with cross-laminated timber skyscrapers, trams, proper sewerage, and...

22 Nov 202553m
Listen to episode
Episode 33

James Kingston works in the digital asset industry and is the author of Profitable Peripherals: Maximising the potential of British CDOTs. He came aboard the KC3 to explain why the Cayman Islands, Jersey, and Britain’s 17 overseas territories aren’t tax...

12 Nov 20251h 07m
Listen to episode
Episode 31

Don’t forget to sign up for November’s Anglofuturism meet-up in London. Check the blog for more information.Tom and Calum visit Space Solar at Harwell to meet co-founder and co-CEO Sam Adlen, who’s attempting to solve Britain’s energy crisis by putting...

4 Nov 20251h 05m
Listen to episode
Episode 29

Curtis Yarvin steps aboard the KC-3 to argue that Britain should exploit America’s imperial exhaustion to become the new leader of the West, starting with dismantling the cathedral of unaccountable bureaucrats that has replaced genuine sovereignty. It’s a...

29 Sept 20251h 54m
Listen to episode
Episode 28

Tom and Calum explore "dark abundance": a more muscular approach to progress that combines deregulation with decisive state action against disorder and dysfunction.* Why Trump's state visit was peak "museum Britain" - bringing out the fine china for foreign...

22 Sept 20251h 22m
Listen to episode
Episode 27

Industrial policy researcher Rian Chad Whitton makes his second appearance to dissect Britain's manufacturing decline, arguing that energy costs and economic orthodoxy have systematically dismantled what was once the world's fourth-largest industrial...

4 Sept 20251h 04m
Listen to episode
Episode 26

Space policy expert Peter Hague joins from his emergency shuttle to discuss Labour's decision to fold the UK Space Agency into a larger department, effectively ending Britain's independent space ambitions just as the new space age begins.In this episode:* Why...

24 Aug 20251h 01m
Listen to episode
Episode 24

Inside i.ai

Alex Burghart

A subscriber-only bonus episode diving deeper into Alex Burghart's experience creating Britain's first government AI unit, from spotting benefit fraud to the bureaucratic battles that nearly killed innovation.Calum and Tom with Alex on:* The surprisingly...

31 Jul 202531m
Listen to episode
Episode 23

Britain's Anglo-Saxon AI revolution

Alex Burghart and Laura Gilbert

Conservative MP Alex Burghart and AI expert Dr Laura Gilbert argue that Britain's mediaeval past holds the key to mastering its technological future–from Alfred's burghs to sovereign data centres.Calum, Tom, Alex, and Laura explore:* How Alfred the Great's...

29 Jul 20251h 14m
Listen to episode
Episode 22

Political theorist Philip Cunliffe argues that globalism is dying and Britain has a rare chance to lead the world into whatever comes next - but only if it rediscovers what sovereignty actually means.Philip Cunliffe on:* Why we're witnessing the collapse of...

15 Jul 20251h 32m
Listen to episode
Episode 21

Dan Tomlinson MP, Labour's official growth mission champion, boards the KC-3 to discuss what Britain needs to sacrifice for economic growth and whether we're still a country capable of big things.Dan Tomlinson on:* Why Britain has lost the ability to do "big...

3 Jul 20251h 33m
Listen to episode
Episode 20

From the King Charles III Space Station, Tom and Calum welcome Alex Fitzgerald, founder of Isembard - a micro-factory startup that's building Britain's manufacturing future one CNC machine at a time.Alex explains how Britain's manufacturing crisis isn't just...

19 Jun 20251h 17m
Listen to episode
Episode 17

A break from our regular schedule to bring you urgent news on the Chagos Islands and a sudden change for Britain’s immigration policy.We’re back with the regular podcast on May 28th when we’ll be talking to Alexander Fitzgerald, industrialist and Founder/CEO...

19 May 202545m
Listen to episode
Episode 15

Marc Warner is CEO and co-founder of Faculty, a British AI company that partners with organisations to deploy artificial intelligence in the real world. After beginning his career in quantum physics research at UCL and Harvard, Marc shifted his focus to AI,...

30 Apr 20251h 46m
Listen to episode
Episode 14

Josef Chen is the founder of KAIKAKU, a London-based company developing automation technology for restaurants. A former Imperial College student, Chen created his first Bitcoin faucet at age 13 and previously worked as the first intern at Bitpanda (Austria's...

16 Apr 20251h 01m
Listen to episode
Episode 13

Douglas Carswell is a British politician who served as a Member of Parliament from 2005 to 2017, first as a Conservative before defecting to UKIP in 2014. A prominent Brexit campaigner and co-founder of Vote Leave, he now runs the Mississippi Center for...

2 Apr 20251h 48m
Listen to episode
Episode 11

The government is attempting to seal its giveaway of the Chagos Islands: a crucial archipelago in the Indian Ocean that was uninhabited when the Portuguese found them, but to which Mauritius – thousands of miles away – has made a specious claim....

11 Mar 20251h 04m
Listen to episode
Episode 10

Calum and Tom on:- The history of British Antarctic exploration, from Captain Cook's mission to find Terra Australis to Shackleton's heroic survival after the Endurance was trapped in ice,- The geopolitical status of Antarctica, including Britain's...

20 Feb 20251h 04m
Listen to episode
Episode 9

Today we welcome Lawrence Newport, darling of the British progress movement and bane of vicious dogs.Lawrence discusses:- His successful campaign to ban XL Bully dogs after identifying their disproportionate role in fatal attacks and overcoming resistance...

28 Jan 20251h 06m
Listen to episode
Episode 8

Samo Burja is the founder and president of Bismarck Analysis, an industrial analysis and consulting firm studying failing organizations, and the author of "Great Founder Theory" which explores how exceptional individuals shape history by creating innovative...

28 Nov 20241h 28m
Listen to episode
Episode 7

Rian Chad Whitton is a research analyst specialising in automation, industrial policy, and energy markets at Bismarck Analysis who writes on Substack under the name Doctor Syn and won the TXP Progress Prize for his essay on British energy policy.Rian...

20 Nov 20241h 00m
Listen to episode
Episode 5

Aria Babu is a researcher who has turned her attention to falling birth rates and pronatalism, offering fresh perspectives on how technological innovations like artificial wombs might address demographic challenges facing developed nations. She is @Aria_Babu...

10 Oct 20241h 14m
Listen to episode
Episode 4

The Victorians carpeted Britain in rail, went on majestic sprees of housebuilding, pioneered underground rail and coal power stations, and built magnificent subterranean sewerage. Their ancestors cancelled most of HS2, haven't built a reservoir for thirty...

16 Sept 20241h 29m
Listen to episode
Episode 2

The cost of getting mass into space is tumbling. The economic opportunities of being in space are multiplying. Where does this leave Britain?Alas, our country holds the ignominious record of being the only country to get rid of a vertical-launch space...

11 Jun 202452m
Listen to episode
Episode 1

In this episode, we are visited in our thatched space station by a wunderkind economist who wants to turn a portion of the North Sea into a Wales-sized island. Duncan McClements is that economist, and you can find his blog, co-authored with Jason Hausenloy,...

8 May 202433m
Listen to episode