Giant Ideas

In this episode of Giant Ideas , former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern returns to explore the person behind the public role. Invited to choose three photographs that define her life, Jacinda reflects on a childhood shaped by New Zealand, parents who modelled service and fairness, and the early experiences that forged her lifelong commitment to tackling inequality and child poverty. She...

Today on the podcast we are joined by Jacinda Ardern - former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and the world's youngest female head of government. This is a conversation for anyone who wants to lead with kindness, and learn how to deal with high pressure situations. As PM, Jacinda became famous worldwide for her unique leadership style: leading with compassion and empathy. A ' different ki...

Former UK Deputy Prime Minister and ex‑President of Global Affairs at Meta Nick Clegg returns for a deeply personal conversation. Nick reflects on the three “photographs” that define his life: a chaotic, international childhood; the unexpected joy of being locked down with his wife Miriam and their three sons on a remote ranch in Montana; and the searing public failures of losing power and his par...

Nick Clegg is the former UK Deputy Prime Minister and former President, Global Affairs at Meta. He has had a front seat to two of the biggest power structures globally: Westminster and Silicon Valley.  At Meta, he became the company’s chief policy decision-maker, meeting with world leaders, governments and policymakers around the globe. He has written two best-selling books, Politics: Between the...

Andrew Yang joins the Giant Ideas podcast again, this time offering a deeper dive behind the person behind his giant ideas. Andrew ran for president in 2020, and is the founder of a nonprofit called Humanity Forward , and the Forward Party , a new political party in America aiming to bridge partisan divides. Today his focus is on his new company - launched in late 2025. With Noble Mobile , aiming...

Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we are joined by Andrew Yang. When Andrew Yang, a political outsider, ran for US President in 2020 his campaign hinged on a warning: he predicted that a huge number of jobs would be lost by automation. His solution was a monthly universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000, designed to offset the job losses. Now, six years later, it appears Yang might have been onto some...

We welcome back Jeremy O'Brien, co-founder and CEO of PsiQuantum, a quantum computing company on a mission to deliver the first commercially useful quantum computers to tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. O’Brien has dedicated 25 years to this mission and was previously a Professor of Physics & Electrical Engineering at Stanford and Bristol University. This is an episode for a...

Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we welcome Jeremy O'Brien, co-founder and CEO of PsiQuantum, a quantum computing company on a mission to deliver the first commercially useful quantum computers to tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. O’Brien has dedicated 25 years to this mission and was previously a Professor of Physics & Electrical Engineering at Stanford and Bristol Universi...

Welcome back to Giant Ideas! Happy new year. We return to normal scheduling next week, but this week we are sharing an exclusive conversation with some of the best television writers in the world right now: Succession writer Lucy Prebble, and the creators of the HBO hit Industry, Micky Down and Konrad Kay. This was conversation was recorded last year - chaired by the legendary Henry Mance, the FT&...

Immad Akhund is the Co-founder & CEO at Mercury - one of the most widely used business banking platforms globally. He is also an active investor in Silicon Valley - as an active investor in 350 startups at their earliest stages including Airtable, Substack, and Rappi.  In this episode we talk about the three photographs that define Immad's life so far, the fateful weekend of the Silicon V...

Immad Akhund is the Co-founder and CEO at Mercury - one of the most widely used business banking platforms globally. He is also an active investor in Silicon Valley - as an active investor in 350 startups at their earliest stages including Airtable, Substack, and Rappi.  This year he announced that Mercury raised $300 million at $3.5 billion valuation. He also announced his $26 million fund to bac...

Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we welcome back visionary architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of  @BIGSOLUTIONS (Bjarke Ingels Group), whose work includes Google’s Silicon Valley campus, the Danish Maritime Museum, and 2 World Trade Center.  In this episode, Bjarke shares his philosophy on how your home should be a portrait of who you are. He also reflects on the three photographs that have defined...

Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we welcome visionary architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), whose work includes Google’s Silicon Valley campus, the Danish Maritime Museum, and 2 World Trade Center.  In this episode, Bjarke shares his philosophy of “utopian pragmatism,” the inseparable link between form and function in architecture, and his thoughts on why architecture matt...

Doug Bernauer, founder of Radiant (one of Giant’s most exciting growth investments) joins us again on the Giant Ideas podcast. We backed Radiant in their Series C round to mass produce portable nuclear reactors. The founder, Doug, worked with Elon Musk for 12 years at SpaceX - including their reusable rocket prototype and the Mars Colonisation project. In this episode, he shares the 3 photographs...

Today we are joined by Doug Bernauer, founder of Radiant – one of Giant’s most exciting growth investments. We backed Radiant in their Series C round. Their vision is to mass produce portable nuclear reactors. But their vision goes far beyond that. They want to first manufacture nuclear reactors for Earth - giving clean energy to remote areas. And they then want to use this profit to develop a rea...

What are the moments that defined you? Last week we had an in depth conversation with star investor Halle Tecco about creating massively better healthcare in the US. Today, she joins us to talk about the 3 moments that defined her and the wisdom gained so far in life. From choosing a life partner, to deciding whether to have children, to choosing to leave your home town and prioritise adventure. A...

Today on the podcast, we are excited to be joined by Halle Tecco - an entrepreneur and investor passionate about fixing the healthcare system. Halle is the co-founder of Co-fertility - a company rewriting the egg freezing and egg donation experience. She is also the founder of Natalist and Rock Health, one of the pioneering digital health early-stage venture funds. Now, as Course Director at Harva...

Today on the podcast we have Narayana Murthy - Founder and former CEO of Infosys - a giant which reached $100BN, one of the largest companies in history, and transformed India’s economy. Infosys - founded in 1981 - offers consulting, IT, and outsourcing services across the globe. Starting with a small loan, 18 years later it became the first ever Indian company to be listed on NASDAQ.  Murthy has...

Today on the podcast we welcome Jeremy Chan. Jeremy is a British-Canadian chef who grew up between London and Hong Kong, and is the Co-founder of Ikoyi restaurant. In 2017, Chan joined forces with Iré Hassan-Odukale – a friend who had just left a career in insurance - and together they decided to build Ikoyi. Ikoyi is now a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in London, and it has recently been voted...

Today on the podcast we are joined by Sebastian Thrun - the “Godfather of self-driving cars”. He invented Google’s autonomous vehicle, now known as Waymo, which is doing a quarter of all rideshare journeys in SF. Sebastian’s life has been full of moonshot ideas. He co-founded Google X, the moonshot factory at Google, and co-founded the flying taxi startup Kitty Hawk and Udacity, which democratised...

Today on the podcast we have Synthesia Co-founder and COO Steffen Tjerrild. Synthesia is an AI company that allows you to create professional videos with just a few lines of text. It’s now used by over 1 million customers, including +80% of Fortune 100 companies. Synthesia is a UK unicorn, recently valued at $2 billion. At the heart of Synthesia's exponential growth is Steffen. As the company...

Today on the podcast we are joined by Floyd Steadman OBE. Floyd Steadman’s journey began in North-West London as a 10-year-old runaway, surviving alone after escaping an abusive home. Rejected by his own father and placed into care, Floyd's early life was marked by hardship, racism, and resilience. After discovering rugby, Floyd became the first Black captain of Saracens rugby club, rising th...

Today on Giant Ideas we’re joined by General David Petraeus — arguably one of the most influential generals in American history. From leading coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to running the CIA, General Petraeus has shaped the world on and off the battlefield. We explore his insights on global security, technological warfare, leadership under pressure, and what the future holds for geopoli...

Welcome back to Giant Ideas! Today we are joined by Trip Adler , the Co-founder of Scribd - a company he co-founded with Jared Friedman , now Partner at Y Combinator. Scribd is a digital document library that hosts over 195 million documents, with billions of views a year. Today we talk about Trip’s next act: Created By Humans, where he is Co-Founder and CEO, on a huge mission to champion AI right...

Today on the podcast we are joined by tech titan ​Reid Hoffman. As the founder of LinkedIn, which Microsoft acquired for $26 billion, Reid is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history. He broke through as a founding board member of PayPal, one of the so-called PayPal mafia alongside Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Reid went on to become a legendary investor both as an angel and partner at Gre...