Inspire Us Podcast

Find out more about Nostr: https://nostr.orgWouter Constant is a writer, researcher and programmer focused on the development of Nostr, a decentralised system designed to offer an alternative to the monopolies of social media platforms. His expertise lies in distributed computing and decentralised networks, including Bitcoin. We had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Wouter about the future of...

Alex Dryden previously spent over a decade as a Global Investment Strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management and is now pursuing a PhD at SOAS as a macroeconomist and Research Fellow at the SOAS university in the Centre for Sustainable Finance, specialising in sovereign debt, financial markets and climate finance. He is a CFA charterholder and his research has been featured in the Financial Times,...

Adam Habib is Director and Vice Chancellor of SOAS University of London. Born and raised in South Africa, he previously served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he led the university through the Fees Must Fall protests. He is the author of Rebels and Rage, which recounts that period, and a former political activist who was arrested during apartheid's 1986 state o...

Christopher Cramer is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at SOAS University of London, where he has taught for over twenty years. He is the author of Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing, joint winner of the Edgar Graham Prize, and co-launched the Development Leadership Dialogue at SOAS in 2023. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a former Vice-Chair of the Royal African...

Mark Drakeford served as First Minister of Wales and Leader of Welsh Labour from 2018 to 2024. Before entering politics he worked as a probation officer and social worker in Cardiff, went on to become Professor of Social Policy at Cardiff University, and served as health and social policy adviser to Welsh Ministers. He is currently Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Welsh Language. In this episode...

Sir Vince Cable is the former Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in the Coalition Government under David Cameron from 2010 to 2015, one of the most senior Liberal Democrat figures in modern British political history. He began his career as an economics adviser to the Kenyan government, went on to become Chief Economist at Shell International,...

Colin Smith coordinates the United Nations team that monitors global terrorism for the Security Council - the only UN body with an explicit mandate to work directly with the world's intelligence agencies. Every six months he reports on the threat from al-Qaeda and ISIS, which means part of his job is understanding what these groups are planning before the rest of us ever hear about it. We had...

Deirdre McCloskey is an economic historian, philosopher, and Distinguished Scholar and chair holder at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. She did her education at Harvard and taught at the University of Chicago — where Milton Friedman was her colleague — and produced a body of work that fundamentally challenges how economists think about language, ethics, and what actually made the modern world...

Robert B. Talisse is a Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and one of America's leading thinkers on democracy, political polarisation, and public reason. He has authored over fifteen books including Overdoing Democracy, Sustaining Democracy, and A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy — exploring how democracies can thrive amid deep disagreement, belief polarisation, and public ignor...

Ehireme Alexis Uddin is a PhD researcher at SOAS University of London whose work sits at the intersection of climate finance, climate governance and development policy. Her research focuses specifically on Nigeria, examining the state of climate finance, the role of institutions in ensuring the green transition is effective and equitable, and what it actually takes to finance an energy transition...

John Hasnas is a Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and the McDonough School of Business, and the author of Common Law Liberalism, a bold and original contribution to political and legal philosophy that challenges how we think about law, order, and the role of government in society. This episode is a full breakdown of common law, what it is, where it came from, and why it may be the mos...

Michael Peskin is a theoretical physicist and Professor at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, one of the world's leading centres for particle physics research. He is the co-author of An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, widely considered the definitive graduate-level textbook in the field and used by physicists across the globe. This episode is a full breakdow...

Bharat Ratra is a distinguished Physicist and Professor of Physics at Kansas State University and a leading cosmologist. He is best known for co-proposing the first dynamical dark energy model in 1988, a foundational idea that helps explain the accelerating expansion of the universe. In this conversation we explore the biggest mysteries in modern cosmology: dark energy, the nature of the universe’...

Ramla Ali is a Somali-British Olympian, boxer, model, humanitarian, and filmmaker whose journey from refugee to representing Somalia on the world stage is nothing short of extraordinary. In this conversation, she reflects on sacrifice, identity, fame, social media, and the bold transition from elite sport into filmmaking. It was an absolute pleasure to speak with Ramla, she's an absolutely lov...

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher, cultural theorist and Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is also the author of the popular “The Ethicist” column in The New York Times, where he explores everyday moral dilemmas through philosophy. In this conversation we explore identity, culture, class and authenticity. We discuss whether modern identity categories like race, gender and nati...

Graham Priest is one of the world’s leading philosophers of logic. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center and also holds positions at the University of Melbourne and University of St Andrews. Priest is best known for developing dialetheism, the controversial philosophical view that some contradictions can actually be true. His work has had a major influence on mode...

Jonathan Wolff is a leading political philosopher at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. He has advised governments, shaped public policy debates, and written extensively on inequality, justice, and democracy, and social reform. It was an absolute pleasure to speak with Jonathan Wolff, he's a lovely man. In this episode, we explore the philosophy of inequality, the tension bet...

David Betz is a Canadian academic and Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London. He specialises in civil war, insurgency, information warfare, and the changing character of conflict. His research has advised policymakers and military institutions, and his recent academic papers have gained significant media attention for warning that North America, Western Europe, and the UK ma...

Abdullahi Shafi Mohamed is an emerging leader in international development and humanitarian work, with experience across Kenya, Niger, Somalia and beyond. A Chevening scholar and SOAS Development Studies graduate, he has worked with the United Nations in Somalia supporting government systems and community delivery in one of the world’s most complex operating environments. In this episode, Abdullah...

Mourad Mkinsi is a Moroccan academic whose work sits at the intersection of cultural studies and socio-political analysis. His research and teaching engage with questions of gender and politics, civil society, social movements, and postcolonial dynamics, with a particular focus on multiculturalism in contemporary Morocco. In this episode, we discuss whether Morocco’s recent momentum reflects real...

Nick Pelletier is an ultra-endurance athlete and host of the Comforts Breed Complacency podcast. He has run some of the world’s hardest ultra races, including the Moab 240, and completed extreme human-powered expeditions, from cycling across the United States to cycling the entire length of Africa solo. In this episode, Nick breaks down what ultra-endurance really teaches you about life, suffering...

In this episode of the Inspire Us Podcast, Professor Fabrice Cavarretta (ESSEC Business School, author of Gérer, c’est jardiner) dismantles the global myths around entrepreneurship, risk, and innovation. He argues that the real entrepreneur isn’t in Silicon Valley — it’s the woman running a food stand in Lagos, or the small business owner adapting daily to complex realities. Cavarretta explains wh...

Economist Michael Hudson joins the Inspire Us Podcast to discuss the rise of financialization, the dominance of the rentier class, and the decline of industrial capitalism in Britain and beyond. Hudson explains how Thatcherism and Blairism turned the UK into a rentier economy, why GDP measures are misleading, and how financialization fuels inequality, debt, and deindustrialization across the West....

In this episode of the Inspire Us Podcast, we speak with Professor John L. Esposito, one of the world’s leading scholars on Islam, religious pluralism, and contemporary geopolitics. Today’s UK political climate has sparked Tommy Robinson marches, anxieties over Sharia, and debates about blasphemy and the weaponisation of scripture. We brought our questions, and John delivered—offering historical c...

In this episode of the Inspire Us Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Hillary Briffa, Lecturer in National Security Studies at King’s College London, whose research focuses on the security strategies of small states, neutrality, and the intersection of defense and climate change. We discuss:Why “peace” since WWII is a myth for many regions The hidden power and vulnerabilities of small statesNATO, neutra...