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 hard by the Biden administration, and that the Americans were genuinely considering cutting Britain out entirely and handing the islands directly to Mauritius. Once you understand that, the deal looks rather different. It also turned Ben fro...
Mar 13, 2026•1 hr 10 min
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 education for Britain’s most talented kids. Tom, Calum, and Will discuss: * The internet should have produced a generation of Einsteins — it didn’t: Eric Hoel’s provocation that the most naked conclusion you can draw from the internet, and now AI...
Mar 08, 2026•1 hr 6 min
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 schooling quietly strangled, that the billion-pound tutoring industry is almost entirely pointed at the wrong goals, and that the GCSE system is simultaneously boring the top of the cognitive distribution and failing the bottom. Tom and Calum rece...
Mar 04, 2026•48 min
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 punches. The single hardest thing about building Lindus Health in the UK? Three-month notice periods. Want to staff up for new trials? Wait three months for people to work out their notice—during which they’re not exactly doing their best work. ...
Feb 19, 2026•46 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.anglofuturism.co It’s Valentine’s Day morning and Calum woke up with Rupert Lowe promising to restore Britain. Tom made bacon sandwiches and tea with plenty of sugar. And Britain’s vertical launch dreams just died—Orbex, the country’s great hope for homegrown rockets, has collapsed into administration. Is this a tragedy or were they building the wrong rockets all along? What follows is a sprawling argument about whether Britain sh...
Feb 17, 2026•40 min•Ep. 42
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 phenomenon called Eroom’s Law (Moore’s Law backwards). Lindus Health was founded to fix this crisis. Named after James Lind, the Royal Navy surgeon who ran the first randomized controlled trial in 1747 (discovering that citrus prevents scurvy and ...
Feb 13, 2026•44 min•Ep. 41
In our first episode of 2026, we’re back aboard the King Charles III Space Station to review the year that was and set our ambitions for the year ahead. What follows is two hours of sprawling conversation about dinner party politics, whether culture can emerge from hinge, the declining willingness to fight wars, Chinese peptides, home counties baby girls, and why Britain’s irrelevance might actually be our greatest strategic advantage. Plus: would any of us actually sign up to fight? What define...
Jan 16, 2026•2 hr 26 min•Ep. 40
In the second half of our Christmas special aboard Theatreship, Tom and Calum welcome Benedict Springbett (the railway man working to give London a better network than Paris) and Aeron Laffere (our producer, who’s raising Britain’s birth rate one child at a time while building coordination technology). What follows is a deep dive into Coasian economics, the decline of English composers, and why Aeron believes Brian Eno is one of Britain’s greatest artists for composing the Windows 95 startup sou...
Dec 29, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 39
Tom and Calum recorded this Christmas special aboard Theatre Ship on the Thames with two guests whose bosses have already graced the podcast: Andrew Kramer from Isembard (the manufacturer re-industrializing the West) and Rebecca Wray from Looking for Growth (the grassroots movement fighting Britain’s decline). What follows is a chaotic celebration of British manufacturing, temperate rainforests, and the extended Anglofuturism universe—complete with a disastrous “Just a Minute” game about life in...
Dec 24, 2025•38 min•Ep. 38
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 to using brain organoids as compute. James reveals his plans to spend January investigating whether Zen meditation practices can tap into healing mechanisms through the gut-brain axis, and Laura makes the case for massive automation in biol...
Dec 17, 2025•54 min•Ep. 37
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 quit academia—not because they failed, but because they succeeded and realised the game is rigged. The incentive structure rewards safe, incremental research that gets published quickly rather than ambitious, years-long projects that might actu...
Dec 15, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 36
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.anglofuturism.co Tom and Calum dissect John Fingleton’s damning nuclear regulatory review, play Sacred Cow with the greenbelt and Zone 1 council housing, and explain why Shabana Mahmood’s “tough on immigration” reforms are actually quite soft. Plus: nuclear policy specialist Robert Boswall drops by fresh from the pub to explain why the ONR reports to the Department for Work and Pensions, and why Birmingham City FC’s new chimney-ad...
Dec 05, 2025•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 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 chest-beating boomers—but almost no millennials showed up. Was it that they saw housing as a personal failure rather than a systemic one? That complaining about rent wasn’t intellectual enough for degree-educated people who’d read theory? Or has social ...
Nov 27, 2025•1 hr 24 min
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 enough infrastructure that NIMBYs might actually be won over by three new hospitals and 300 schools appearing on their doorstep. In the first of this two-part conversation, Shiv, Tom, and Calum discuss: * The vision: a pedestrianised city ce...
Nov 22, 2025•53 min
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 havens draining the exchequer—they’re innovation labs pumping foreign capital into British banks and employing British lawyers to service Chinese deals. James, Tom, and Calum on: * Why the narrative that CDOTs are a “shadow empire for British fi...
Nov 12, 2025•1 hr 7 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.anglofuturism.co Don’t forget to sign up for November’s Anglofuturism meet-up in London. Check the blog for more information. After being featured in both a Hope Not Hate hatchet job and a New Statesman meditation on “British hüzün,” Tom and Calum defend their vision against critics who keep mistaking them for nostalgic romantics when they just want Britain to build factories again. Plus: why the first castle built in Britain for ...
Nov 09, 2025•45 min
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 massive solar arrays in geostationary orbit and beaming the power down as microwaves. No new physics required—just the unglamorous work of becoming the Toyota of space infrastructure. In the episode: * Why space-based solar delivers 13 times more...
Nov 04, 2025•1 hr 5 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.anglofuturism.co After being featured in a Hope Not Hate report linking Robert Jenrick to Anglofuturism, Tom and Calum reflect on their newfound infamy while developing their theory that Pingu represents English settler colonialism, discussing plans to rebuild Britain’s castles, and making the case for British domination of space. Tom and Calum on: * Their appearance in a Hope Not Hate exposé as “the most intellectual vision” of A...
Oct 15, 2025•35 min•Ep. 30
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 path that runs through Oxbridge, extraterritorial Chinese Oakland, and possibly some Ayahuasca for Elon Musk. Tom, Calum, and Curtis on: * Why the Deliveroo economy is more dehumanizing than Victorian servitude - with social distance replacing ...
Sep 29, 2025•1 hr 55 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.anglofuturism.co 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 guests while using enamelware the rest of the time, * The taxonomy of abundance politics: from Ezra Klein's soft progressivism to "dark abundance", which posi...
Sep 22, 2025•46 min
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 base. Tom, Calum, and Rian on: * Why 1999 represented a high-water mark for British industry - the fourth-largest manufacturing base globally with functioning steel, chemicals, and automotive sectors, before China's rise blindsided everyone includin...
Sep 04, 2025•1 hr 5 min
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 the UK Space Agency's absorption into DSIT represents Britain "quitting before it started" - losing budget autonomy and direct ministerial access just when space is becoming strategically crucial, * The historical pattern of British space...
Aug 24, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 26
Tom and Calum reflect on 25 episodes of the podcast that allegedly influenced Robert Jenrick to declare himself an Anglofuturist, while grappling with accusations of dangerous nostalgia from Southampton academics. Tom and Calum on: * How Robert Jenrick's declaration that he's “what you would call an Anglo-futurist” at a Westminster nationalism conference proves their growing influence * Defending themselves against Francesca Melhuish's academic paper attacking the “nostalgic politics of Anglofut...
Aug 14, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 25
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 response to Viking invasion mirrors today's AI challenge–using crisis as the moment to forge new order when "the metal is hot," creating institutions that lasted centuries, * Why the collapse of Roman Britain offers hope for our post-imperia...
Jul 29, 2025•1 hr 14 min
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 globalist political structures that layered transnational governance over democratic nation states, * How ruling elites from the 1980s onwards deliberately fragmented political power to escape working-class demands, creating the regulatory ...
Jul 15, 2025•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 22
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 and bold" things like the Apollo missions, trapped by endless processes, consultations, and judicial reviews that would make a modern space program impossible, * Testing Labour's growth priorities against various "sacred cows" - from build...
Jul 03, 2025•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 21
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 about big factories closing - it's about the hidden supply chain of small family-owned machine shops that actually make the parts for everything from F-35 jets to AirPods. With 95% of CNC machines owned by small businesses, and those busine...
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 20
In this solo episode recorded from the King Charles III Space Station, Tom and Calum eat humble pie after their confident predictions about the Chagos Islands deal being shelved proved spectacularly wrong. Within days of the last Britannia dispatch, Keir Starmer confirmed the handover to Mauritius would proceed, decisively answering the question "Is Keir Starmer an Anglofuturist?" with a resounding no. This giveaway fits into a broader pattern of Britain's political elite prioritizing abstract i...
Jun 13, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 19
Santi Ruiz is a policy researcher at the Institute for Progress and host of the Statecraft newsletter and podcast. He's one of the editors of the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook, a comprehensive strategy document produced by three American think tanks to help the US compete with China's manufacturing dominance. The playbook outlines concrete policy proposals across frontier science, energy abundance, and national security—from creating special compute zones to reforming naval shipbuilding and ...
May 28, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 18
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 of Isembard. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anglofuturism.co/subscribe...
May 19, 2025•45 min
