Giant Ideas

Today on the Giant Ideas podcast we are joined by Azeem Azhar : author, futurist and founder of the Exponential View newsletter and podcast which explains how society and the political economy are changing under the force of technology. Azeem’s first book Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology studied how technology’s rapid pace of development is impacting the world. Aze...

🎄 Today is our last podcast before the holidays! We will be back on 9 January with a conversation on AI - follow the show to get a notification when it's live! On the show today we are joined by one of the world’s leading designers: Thomas Heatherwick . Thomas has created many of the world’s most striking new public spaces and buildings.  Heatherwick Studio is behind culture-defining project...

Today on the podcast we are joined by Alistair Brownlee , Double Olympic Triathlon Champion - to talk about his incredible career and the extreme mental discipline that got him to the very top of athletics. It’s his first in depth interview since he announced his retirement. Alistair Brownlee is the only athlete in history to hold two Olympic titles in the individual triathlon event, having won go...

Today on the podcast we have Ali Parsa - founder of two unicorn health businesses - Babylon Health and Circle Health. Ali was born in Iran, but left when he was 16, in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution.  Amazingly, he taught himself UK high school, and went on to study civil and environmental engineering at University College London. He sold a media company he started during university, and...

Today on Giant Ideas we bring you a conversation with a titan of American business and society, Arianna Huffington. Arianna is the co-founder of The Huffington Post , which built an audience of 200 million, and the founder and CEO of Thrive Global . She also sat on the board of Uber during its succession drama.  Arianna is also the author of an astonishing fifteen books - on everything from Sleep...

In 1975, in a two bedroom apartment in New York City, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm. Over forty years later, this firm - Bridgewater Associates - has grown into not just the world's largest hedge fund, but also what Fortune has called the “fifth most important private company in the United States”. Ray Dalio himself appears on Time Magazine's list of the world’s top 100 most influ...

Today on the podcast we have Michael Lynton , one of America’s leading CEOs. Michael led Sony Entertainment as CEO, overseeing Sony’s global entertainment businesses during a period of great success. But it also had its challenges - notably when North Korean hackers released private emails and unreleased films.  Michael had previously worked for Time Warner as CEO of AOL Europe, and was  Chairman...

This talk was recorded live at our Giant Ideas event at the Tate Modern earlier this year. Jim McKelvey , best known for co-founding multi-billion dollar company Square , joined the stage at Giant Ideas to talk about moving the needle of drug discovery. McKelvey co-founded Square with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2009, and it became a revolutionary payment processing company, allowing small b...

Today on the podcast we have June Sarpong - internationally renowned broadcaster, writer and diversity expert. June started her career presenting for shows on MTV and Channel 4's T4. It would be fair to say that June is considered a ‘British Icon’ and has broad cultural influence. Not everyone can claim that Elton John has performed a special edition of the hit "Your Song" with the...

Today joining the podcast is Susanna Campbell - co-founder of Syre, and a board member of Northvolt and H2 Green Steel - all companies incubated by Vargas.  Based in Sweden, Vargas has systematically created a succession of climate juggernauts from scratch. Their portfolio includes unicorns like Polarium and H2 Green Steel, and Northvolt, a climate decacorn - so worth over 10 billion dollars - whi...

Today on the podcast we bring you a conversation with Toni Petersson, former CEO of Oatly. This was recorded live at our Giant Ideas summit in June of this year. Toni Petersson was the CEO of oat milk giant, Oatly, for a decade. He transformed an unknown Swedish eco food company into a global consumer giant, with just shy of $1BN in sales. On its first day on the NASDAQ in 2021 it traded at $13 bi...

After 14 years of Conservative rule, Britain voted on Thursday for change. But what should the world expect from a Labour government?  2024 is the year of democracy. More people than ever in history will go to the polls - 2 billion in over 60 countries. But it’s also a year of rising nationalism.  With Europe at war, Trump possibly returning and Labour winning by a landslide, today we bring you an...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. This episode was recorded live at an event we hosted with McKinsey for Europe’s top 100 climate leaders. Asking the questions for us here is Pilita Clark, an editor and columnist at The Financial Times.  Today on the show, we are joined by Greg Jackson, founder and CEO of Octopus Energy. You might think o...

Today on the podcast we have Tom Blomfield - founder of not one but two UK unicorns - Monzo and GoCardless.  We asked Tom on the show to give the inside story on what it takes to found a multi-billion dollar business - the character traits but also the sacrifices. Are there consistent characteristics that unite leading founders, and ultimately is the struggle worth it? To say scaling Monzo has bee...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.  Today we bring you an interview with the fo...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.  Today on the podcast we have a conversation...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.  Today we bring you John Delaney - former Congr...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.  Today we bring you an interview with Nathan Bl...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.  Today we bring you an interview with John Brow...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good. Today we bring you Ida Tin on the future of fem...

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.  Today we bring you our interview with Mustafa...