Greg Allen has spent his career where AI meets national security. He wrote the landmark 2017 report on AI for the US intelligence community, served as Director of Strategy and Policy at the Pentagon's Joint AI Center and now runs Decision Tree Research. He argues we are already past the point of no return: bombing every data centre on earth would not get rid of AI now.

Greg and I discuss the OpenAI model that hacked its way out of its own test environment and then hacked Hugging Face to steal the answers, why Anthropic went back through its logs and found the same thing had happened to them, why nobody can explain how these systems actually work and why the big five AI companies now spend an Apollo moon programme every ten months.

But the hardest part is what comes next. Greg walks through the report that a frontier model autonomously hacked the NSA's most secure servers in hours, why the CIA director calls that a digital nuclear weapon, why America's lead over China is a month rather than a year and why the number of experts you need to build a bioweapon may be heading towards zero.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - It Escaped, Then It Hacked Hugging Face

00:04:50 - The Incident OpenAI Didn't See Coming

00:08:22 - They Know 3% Of Why It Works

00:10:30 - Golden Gate Claude

00:12:19 - Why You Don't Want This Flying Your Plane

00:16:56 - Stuxnet And The Virus That Copied Itself

00:21:15 - The Dark Corners Of The Training Data

00:26:58 - From Blue Origin To The Pentagon

00:28:34 - A 20% Chance, And We Ship It Anyway

00:33:55 - Building A Football Club In Four Weeks

00:36:28 - Ten Times Better Every Two Years

00:44:56 - Nuke Them Today

00:49:28 - It Hacked The NSA In A Matter Of Hours

00:53:09 - What A Cyber First Strike Looks Like

00:58:43 - Why China Gives Its Models Away Free

01:03:11 - America's Lead Is A Month, Not A Year

01:11:56 - From Thousands Of Experts To Zero

01:19:51 - The Cuban Missile Crisis Lesson

01:26:48 - What Happened To 22 Million Horses

01:31:41 - What Do Our Kids Do Now?

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CONNECT WITH GREG ALLEN

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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

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Barry Strauss has spent four decades studying how empires rise and fall. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Ten Caesars and Jews vs Rome, he argues the West is repeating a pattern the ancients would recognise instantly: a rich, comfortable society clipping its own coinage, softening its people and assuming nobody could ever take it away.

Barry and I discuss the inflation crisis that nearly destroyed third-century Rome, why every generation raised in comfort produces a softer one, the cost of immigration without assimilation, why the middle class is the backbone of any republic, and why Russia and China already have plans to break America into pieces.

But Barry is not fatalistic. Rome faced plague, invasion and currency collapse in the third century and reformed its way out of it. He argues that soft lands make soft people, that suffering teaches and that if we want the things that matter to stay the same, almost everything else has to change.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - The Decline Of The West

00:01:13 - How Often Do You Think About Rome?

00:07:04 - Everything Must Change To Stay The Same

00:09:44 - What Actually Makes A Great Leader

00:12:51 - Netanyahu, Trump And Flawed Greatness

00:17:32 - The Immigration Experiment

00:19:04 - Not All Cultures Are Equal

00:21:46 - Ibn Khaldun And The Cycle Of Civilisations

00:23:07 - Soft Children And The Raiders From The Desert

00:25:04 - Has Any Nation Reversed Its Decline?

00:28:34 - Rome Needed A New Religion

00:33:32 - Democracy Has To Be Hard, Not Soft

00:38:13 - El Salvador, The Gangs And The Walls

00:41:27 - Soft Lands Make Soft People

00:42:39 - Why Education Went Soft

00:51:06 - Clipping The Coins: Rome's Inflation

00:57:49 - America Blindsided By Drones

00:59:13 - No Republic Survives Without A Middle Class

01:06:08 - They Have Plans To Break Up America

01:12:39 - Where The Hope Is

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CONNECT WITH BARRY STRAUSS

› Website – https://barrystrauss.com/

› Hoover Institution – https://www.hoover.org/profiles/barry-strauss

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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

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Connor Leahy has spent his career at the frontier of AI, from reverse-engineering GPT-2 as a student and co-founding EleutherAI to building the AI safety company Conjecture. He now leads US policy work at ControlAI, and he returns to the show with a warning that has stopped being theoretical: AI systems are escaping their sandboxes, writing their own zero-days and leaving each other notes on how to break out.

Peter and Connor discuss the OpenAI incident that ended in an attack on Hugging Face sophisticated enough to be mistaken for a state actor, why we understand almost nothing about how these systems work, how reinforcement learning produces models that lie, cheat and manipulate to reach a goal and why the next stage after chatbots and agents is swarms.

But Connor’s argument is that the future is not decided. He believes superintelligence should be treated the way nuclear weapons are treated, banned and verified and deterred and that the real bottleneck is awareness rather than opposition. They discuss what an “aligned” superintelligence would actually mean, why military people understand the threat faster than technologists and what ordinary people can do about it.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - The AI That Escaped Its Sandbox

00:01:52 - Inside The OpenAI Incident

00:05:46 - They Thought It Was China

00:06:43 - We Grow AI, We Don’t Write It

00:11:07 - Trained To Lie, Cheat And Deceive

00:13:48 - Chatbots, Agents, Then Swarms

00:17:57 - The Machines Are Developing Preferences

00:19:30 - The Model Obsessed With Raccoons

00:22:03 - The Agents Left Each Other Notes

00:27:39 - Danger Pumps The Valuation

00:29:41 - Sleeper Agents In Every System

00:32:00 - Recursive Self-Improvement Goes Vertical

00:33:43 - Worse Odds Than Russian Roulette

00:38:14 - Are We Already Too Late?

00:40:02 - Independently Assured Destruction

00:48:02 - The Politicians Have Never Used An Agent

00:50:56 - Superintelligence Should Be Illegal

00:57:08 - You Never Privatise The Military

01:05:00 - An Aligned AI Is A One World Government

01:08:34 - What You Can Actually Do

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CONNECT WITH CONNOR LEAHY

› ControlAI – https://controlai.org/

› Connor’s Profile – https://controlai.org/connor-leahy

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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

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Sebastian Thrun has spent his career working on technologies that once sounded like science fiction, from self-driving cars and flying vehicles to online education and artificial intelligence. He now believes we are living through a technological singularity: an exponential acceleration that makes predicting even the next five years almost impossible.

Peter and Sebastian discuss why a $100 Claude subscription can already challenge work done by $200,000-a-year software engineers, what happens when lawyers, copywriters and drivers lose their jobs, why Europe is falling behind America and China and whether autonomous vehicles could eventually make human driving too dangerous to allow.

But Sebastian’s message is ultimately optimistic. He argues that the right response to technological disruption is to use the tools, become a builder and keep learning. They discuss what children should be taught in the AI era, why grit, curiosity and empathy matter more than memorising information, and why pessimists will never change the world.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - The Future Is Already Here

00:01:07 - Peter’s First Waymo Ride

00:03:43 - The Accident Behind Self-Driving Cars

00:09:37 - When Human Driving Becomes Too Dangerous

00:12:07 - Why Silicon Valley Keeps Winning

00:18:26 - Why AI Hallucinations Can Kill

00:20:53 - Flying Cars Are Already Here

00:24:29 - The Exponential Future

00:26:21 - Claude vs $200K Software Engineers

00:31:39 - We’ve Entered the Singularity

00:33:36 - Opportunity vs Fear

00:40:06 - The Workers AI Leaves Behind

00:46:53 - Why Europe Is Falling Behind

00:51:29 - Technology Democratizes Power

00:57:22 - Stop Blaming, Start Building

01:01:46 - What Happens When Jobs Disappear?

01:06:43 - Udacity vs the Education System

01:14:44 - What Children Should Learn Now

01:20:25 - Why Optimists Change the World

01:25:46 - Never Make the Same Mistake Twice

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CONTACT PETE

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CONNECT WITH SEBASTIAN THRUN

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› LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-thrun-59a0b273

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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

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Aubrey de Grey believes ageing is accumulated damage in a biological machine and argues that medicine may eventually become capable of repairing that damage faster than it appears. He gives humanity a 50/50 chance of reaching what he calls “longevity escape velocity” within the next 12-15 years.

Peter and Aubrey discuss why the body ages, the seven categories of damage that must be repaired, stem-cell and gene therapies, the mouse experiment that could transform the field, and why Aubrey believes rejuvenation treatment will ultimately be available to everyone rather than reserved for the wealthy.

They also explore what happens to population, work, fertility, relationships, religion and the meaning of life if people stop getting sick from ageing. Aubrey explains why AI cannot replace the missing biological experiments, why longevity research remains so difficult to fund and why he is driven by the 110,000 people he says die from ageing-related causes every day.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Trailer

00:00:48 - Can We Cure Ageing?

00:04:24 - The 12–15 Year Prediction

00:06:17 - The Body Is a Machine

00:15:21 - How Aubrey Entered Longevity

00:18:45 - Would You Want to Live Forever?

00:20:15 - Does Longevity Change Risk?

00:21:53 - Will Population Explode?

00:24:22 - Can You Choose Your Age?

00:30:19 - The Seven Types of Ageing Damage

00:36:54 - What Rejuvenation Treatment Looks Like

00:45:35 - Will It Be Expensive?

00:48:39 - Who Would Refuse It?

00:53:00 - Why Longevity Research Lacks Funding

00:56:02 - The Mouse Experiment

01:00:18 - The Breakthrough That Changes Everything

01:01:35 - Does Death Give Life Meaning?

01:05:22 - Bryan Johnson and AI

01:12:32 - AlphaFold, AGI and AI Risk

01:15:13 - Why Funding Is So Hard

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CONNECT WITH AUBREY DE GREY:

› LEV Foundation – https://www.levf.org/

› Aubrey de Grey – https://www.levf.org/aubreydegrey

› Robust Mouse Rejuvenation – https://www.levf.org/projects/robust-mouse-rejuvenation-study-1

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Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, host of The Michael Shermer Show and author of Truth and Conspiracy. He joins Peter to ask whether we are really living in a post-truth world and how we can distinguish genuine conspiracies from stories that stretch a small element of truth far beyond the evidence.

Michael explains why real conspiracies such as MKUltra and COINTELPRO make institutional distrust harder to dismiss, how political beliefs become tribal packages and why technology may be making the search for truth both easier and more exhausting. They discuss media bias, AI fact-checking, Covid, immigration, climate change, free markets, religion and the point at which people begin acting on unsupported beliefs.

They also explore the stranger questions: simulation theory, DMT, UFOs, unexplained coincidences and the broken radio that suddenly began playing during Michael’s wedding. Michael argues that scepticism should not mean dismissing everything, it should mean demanding evidence while remaining humble enough to admit that some mysteries are still unresolved.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:00:58 - Are We in a War on Truth?

00:05:37 - Truth Versus Political Preference

00:08:52 - Which Conspiracies Are Real?

00:13:06 - Did Technology Break the News?

00:16:24 - Can AI Help Us Find the Truth?

00:19:15 - Fact-Checking Politicians With AI

00:22:06 - Why Political Beliefs Come as a Package

00:28:23 - Why People Believe Weird Things

00:35:18 - Science, Religion and the Need for Meaning

00:42:03 - Are We Living in a Simulation?

00:49:18 - DMT, Lasers and Hidden Code

00:51:26 - The Radio Michael Cannot Explain

00:54:42 - Why UFO Belief Resembles Religion

00:59:02 - Should We Fear Artificial Intelligence?

01:02:01 - Britain, Immigration and Shared Truth

01:12:22 - Climate Change, Consensus and the Media

01:22:18 - The UAP Cases Shermer Cannot Explain

01:25:04 - What Will Future Generations Think of Us?

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CONTACT PETE

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CONNECT WITH MICHAEL SHERMER

› Website – https://michaelshermer.com/

› Michael’s Books – https://michaelshermer.com/books/

› The Michael Shermer Show – https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer-show/

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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

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Brian Keating joins me to explore one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only appear to move in one direction? Brian argues that time may not exist as a fundamental feature of reality and explains why understanding space, matter and energy does not mean we understand the universe itself.

We discuss what may have existed before the Big Bang, why something cannot truly come from nothing and how Brian’s work with the Simons Observatory could detect gravitational waves produced during the universe’s earliest moments. Brian also explains the limits of scientific proof, what dark matter really means and why films such as Interstellar remain scientifically implausible despite their attention to detail.

The conversation then turns from cosmic time to the human experience of it: mortality, family, meaning and attention. We discuss UFO disclosure, collapsing trust in institutions and whether artificial intelligence can ever reproduce the embodied human insight that allowed Einstein to transform physics. Brian argues that AI remains a tool built to serve humanity and that we must stop apologising for humanity’s greatness.

The first 100 people in the U.K. to join Brian Keating’s Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message newsletter here BrianKeating.com/peter are entered to win a 4.3-billion-year-old fragment of the early solar system— older than Earth itself, delivered to your door. Winners must live in the U.K. only due to shipping restrictions.

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00:00 - Time Doesn’t Exist

00:00:52 - Looking Outward—and Inward

00:01:41 - Why Physics Cannot Explain Time

00:04:59 - What Happened Before the Big Bang?

00:07:46 - Why Interstellar Is Scientifically Implausible

00:10:06 - Why Time Only Moves Forward

00:18:10 - Something Cannot Come From Nothing

00:21:27 - Where Does the Universe Exist?

00:23:03 - Reaching the First Trillionth of a Second

00:29:21 - Science Can Disprove, Not Prove

00:32:09 - What Dark Matter Really Means

00:38:30 - The Experiment Brian May Never Finish

00:42:03 - Detecting the Birth of the Universe

00:48:14 - Looking Inward for Meaning

00:52:15 - Why Mortality Makes Life Precious

00:54:29 - If Life Had a Forward Button

01:01:26 - UFOs, Belief and the Evidence Problem

01:12:24 - We Are Wasting a Civilisational Opportunity

01:21:03 - Why AI Couldn’t Recreate Einstein

01:32:44 - Holding a Piece of the Early Solar System

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CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

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Sam Bowman joins me to discuss why Britain is approaching two lost decades of stagnant median wages and why the country is now far poorer than it should be. Sam argues that Britain does not lack talented people, capital or ideas; it has created a centralised political and regulatory system that makes building, investing, hiring and experimentation increasingly difficult.

At the centre of Sam’s argument is his “housing theory of everything”. Britain’s refusal to build enough homes in its most productive cities has made housing unaffordable, delayed family formation, reduced social mobility, weakened productivity and transformed property from somewhere to live into a scarce financial asset. We discuss why stamp duty locks people in place, how planning applications can cost hundreds of millions of pounds and why almost everyone has been given the power to veto growth.

We also discuss why inflation destroys social trust, how zero growth turns politics into a fight over a shrinking pie, why the civil service rewards legislation and risk avoidance, and how Britain’s “vetocracy” prevents almost anything from being built. Finally, we explore whether AI could release a new wave of productivity—or expose Britain’s inability to build the energy, infrastructure and institutions the technology requires.

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00:00 - Britain Has Stopped Building

00:00:53 - Britain’s Centralised State

00:05:20 - How Post-War Centralisation Broke Growth

00:08:25 - Two Lost Decades of Wage Stagnation

00:20:15 - Inflation Destroys Trust

00:22:03 - Zero Growth Makes Politics Zero-Sum

00:26:56 - The Housing Theory of Everything

00:30:30 - London’s Housing Misallocation

00:34:31 - Housing and Falling Birth Rates

00:38:05 - Why Homes Became Financial Assets

00:45:30 - Stamp Duty Is Britain’s Worst Tax

00:51:42 - Britain’s Broken Planning System

00:55:30 - The £297 Million Planning Application

01:00:00 - Give Local Government the Upside

01:04:23 - Can Britain Still Recover?

01:11:33 - How Quickly the Energy Debate Changed

01:29:37 - Government Rewards Risk Avoidance

01:37:03 - The Vetocracy

01:54:44 - Growth Unlocks Everything Else

01:56:02 - AI and Britain’s Future

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CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

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CONNECT WITH SAM BOWMAN

› Works in Progress – https://worksinprogress.co/

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› Substack – https://substack.com/@sambowman

SPONSORS

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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/

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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Britain did not simply leave its working class behind. Sociologist Lisa McKenzie and historian and former coal miner Keith Gildart argue that political and economic decisions deliberately dismantled the jobs, institutions, culture and communities that once gave working-class life security, identity and meaning.

They trace the destruction of Britain’s industrial economy, the decline of trade unions, Labour’s abandonment of its traditional voters and the disappearance of secure work, affordable housing and genuine social mobility. They also examine immigration and low wages, class prejudice, education, the rise of Reform and why so many people no longer believe Westminster represents them.

I question Lisa and Keith on private education, workers’ rights, taxation, inequality and whether any political party can reverse Britain’s decline. It leads to the central question of the episode: who is Britain actually for now?

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00:00 - Who Is Britain For Now?

00:00:39 - What Is the Working Class Today?

00:07:12 - Britain Deliberately Dismantled Its Working Class

00:09:42 - The End of Britain’s Industrial Economy

00:12:43 - Keith’s Life as a Coal Miner

00:16:11 - What Happens When a Pit Town Dies?

00:19:51 - The Loss of Working-Class Identity

00:23:20 - Why Labour Stopped Saying “Working Class”

00:24:20 - Class Is About More Than Income

00:28:12 - Education, Opportunity and the Working Class

00:34:13 - The Left Has Forgotten Its Purpose

00:38:16 - Has Britain Created a Dependency Class?

00:46:33 - What Working-Class Teenagers Want

00:56:37 - Britain’s Deep Class Prejudice

01:01:18 - Immigration, Low Wages and the Working Class

01:17:44 - Why Working-Class Voters Moved to Reform

01:34:30 - Britain’s Crisis of Social Democracy

01:41:00 - The Working and Middle Classes Are Being Destroyed

01:59:37 - Who Is Britain Really For?

02:05:08 - What Is Britain’s Recovery Story?

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CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

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CONNECT WITH LISA MCKENZIE

› University of Bedfordshire – https://www.beds.ac.uk/howtoapply/departments/school-of-society-community-and-health/staff/lisa-mckenzie/

› Research Portal – https://researchportal.beds.ac.uk/en/persons/lisa-mckenzie/

› Getting By – https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/getting-by

CONNECT WITH KEITH GILDART

› University of Wolverhampton – https://researchers.wlv.ac.uk/Keith.Gildart

› Keeping The Faith – https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719097102/

SPONSORS

› IREN – https://www.iren.com/

› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter

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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/

› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Charles Goodhart joins me to discuss why Britain’s decline did not start in 2008, why the post-war economic boom may have been a temporary lucky era and why the next 30 to 40 years could be far harder than people expect.

Charles explains how ageing populations, falling birth rates, rising dependency ratios, public debt, defence spending, climate costs and political short-termism are creating a fiscal crisis that governments do not want to admit. We discuss why central banks may struggle to keep inflation under control, why politicians cannot win elections by telling voters the truth, and why democracy itself may block the long-term planning the country needs.

We also get into immigration, housing, land tax, AI, the forgotten working class, white-collar job risk, the triple lock, why GDP does not equal welfare or happiness, why Britain struggles to build, and why the Western world may never return to the conditions that made the years from 1950 to 2020 so unusually prosperous.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Massive Inflation Is Coming

00:00:54 - Britain’s Decline

00:03:57 - The Post-War Boom

00:05:09 - Decades Of Decline

00:07:14 - What Keeps Britain Afloat?

00:09:11 - Immigration And Dependency

00:11:55 - The Fiscal Trap

00:13:34 - Government Does Too Much

00:14:28 - Why Politicians Can’t Tell The Truth

00:16:39 - Are We Heading For Bankruptcy?

00:20:05 - Higher Inflation Is Coming

00:22:39 - The Temporary Lucky Era

00:25:39 - Tax Land, Not Work

00:28:08 - Housing And Fertility

00:31:30 - The Forgotten Working Class

00:32:41 - AI And White-Collar Jobs

00:36:01 - The Middle Ground Failed?

00:44:08 - Democracy Blocks The Fix

00:50:49 - GDP Is Not Happiness

00:56:35 - We Didn’t Know How Lucky We Were

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CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

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CONNECT WITH CHARLES GOODHART

› LSE / Financial Markets Group – https://www.fmg.ac.uk/people/charles-goodhart

› The Unanchored Central Banker – https://unanchoredcentralbanker.com/

› The Great Demographic Reversal – https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6

SPONSORS

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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/

› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

› https://x.com/ConorM04

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David Goodhart joins me to discuss whether AI is about to do to the graduate class what globalisation did to factory workers, and why Britain’s political settlement may be breaking apart.

David explains why Britain has overproduced people with generalist academic skills, how the “anywheres” came to dominate politics, culture and the economy, and why the “somewheres” have increasingly turned to Brexit, populism, Reform and Restore as a reaction against a country they no longer feel represents them.

We also discuss whether anything has actually got better in Britain over the last 15 years, why the state seems unable to get things done, immigration, multiculturalism, deindustrialisation, care work, the collapse of trust in politicians, and why David still believes Britain has the ingredients to recover.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - Graduates Are Next

00:00:50 - AI and the Graduate Class

00:05:42 - A New Class System

00:07:45 - Anywheres and Somewheres

00:10:20 - Why Populism Appeals

00:15:03 - Brexit and Anywhere Dominance

00:16:05 - Britain’s Political Confusion

00:22:28 - Did Populism Fail?

00:27:19 - Bridging Britain’s Divide

00:31:54 - Losing Trust in Politicians

00:34:07 - Britain’s Tax Burden

00:35:39 - Why Business Feels Impossible

00:38:42 - Two Experiences of Multiculturalism

00:40:41 - The Care Dilemma

00:49:53 - Has Anything Got Better?

00:53:30 - Free Speech and Online Safety

00:55:45 - Productive vs Unproductive Wealth

01:00:33 - Why The State Can’t Act

01:07:21 - The Graduate Elite Is Crumbling

01:10:40 - Britain’s Good Ingredients

01:15:31 - Politics Needs More Than Economics

01:20:36 - Can Britain Still Recover?

01:34:06 - David’s Books

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CONTACT PETE

› Website – http://petermccormack.com

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CONNECT WITH DAVID GOODHART

› Website – https://davidgoodhart.com/

› Substack – https://davidgoodhart.substack.com/

› Policy Exchange – https://policyexchange.org.uk/

SPONSORS

› IREN - https://www.iren.com/

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› OneSkin - https://www.oneskin.co/mccormack

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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR

› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/

› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK

› https://x.com/ConorM04

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