Thinking Class

David Betz is Professor of War in the Department of War Studies at King's College London where he heads the MA War Studies programme. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Prof. Betz's most recent book, The Guarded Age: Fortification in the 21st Century , is published by Polity. In this episode, David and I think out loud about the role of political institu...

Nina Power is a philosopher, writer, and author of books including What Do Men Want?: Masculinity and Its Discontents . Nina runs philosophy courses with Verdurin and is also the author of the Substack Nina Power and the host of the podcast The Lack. In this episode, Nina and I think out loud about whether the end of liberalism is real, whether post-liberalism is a dead end, why lots of English pe...

Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the UCL, where he researches and teaches on the topics of international order, multinational military intervention, and conflict management. He has 20 years of academic experience, having previously worked as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent and a Temporary Lecturer at the UK’s Joint Services Command and Staff College....

Paul Embery is a firefighter, trade union activist, writer and broadcaster. Paul has been a member of the Labour party since 1994 and active in the wider labour movement for most of his adult life. He has served on the executive council of the Fire Brigades Union and as the national organiser of Trade Unionists Against the EU. Paul has written extensively about working-class politics and culture,...

Lord Nigel Biggar is Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Oxford. He holds a B.A. in Modern History from Oxford and a PhD in Christian Theology and Ethics from the University of Chicago. In 2021, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for 'services to higher education'. Nigel is the...

Andreas Svanlund is Chief Commercial Officer at Safe Clean, a Norwegian hydrocarbons company. Formerly an officer in the Norwegian Armed Forces, Andreas later joined the defence industry as a business developer with a focus on NATO and Europol special forces. He has also supplied combat uniforms and equipment to the Norwegian military, working closely with national counter-terrorism and organised...

Dominic Frisby is a financial writer, broadcaster, and comedian. He is the author of Life After the State , Bitcoin: The Future of Money , and Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future . He writes regularly for MoneyWeek and has performed stand-up comedy in the UK and internationally. In this episode, we think out loud about the long and revealing history of gold — and w...

David Shipley is a writer, campaigner, has worked as a consultant prison inspector, and is the author of the Substack Shipley Writes. David's work has appeared in The Spectator , The Sunday Times and The Telegraph.   In this conversation, we think out loud about the moral and institutional collapse of Britain’s justice system — and what meaningful reform would actually require. David reflects...

Lorenzo Warby , is a writer of the Substack Lorenzo from Oz and a regular contributor to Helen Dale’s Not on Your Team, but Always Fair , a Substack-recommended publication. In this episode, Lorenzo and I think out loud about the idea of institutional capture, how Western institutions have been overtaken by fashionable ideologies, and how this has led to the rise of unaccountable classes within bu...

George Owers is an editor, writer, and author of the newly released The Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain. In this episode, George and I think out loud about the origins of party politics in Britain, tracing how the Whigs and Tories emerged out of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, how the Whigs’ eventual dominance led to the creation of many of Britain’s most enduring institut...

Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist, writer, a former Anglican priest, the host of the YouTube channel Plato's Podcasts and the author of the Substack A Golden String with Mark Vernon . Mark holds a PhD in Ancient Greek philosophy as well as degrees in theology and physics. He is the author of A Secret History of Christianity, Jesus: The Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness , Dante’s...

Reverend Fergus Butler-Gallie is a writer, priest, and current Vicar of Charlbury in Oxfordshire. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, he has ministered in parishes in Liverpool and Central London, and spent time living and working in the Czech Republic and South Africa. Fergus is the author of Touching Cloth —a Times and Mail on Sunday Book of the Year—as well as Priests de la Résistance! (a Spectat...

Nathan Pinkoski is a senior fellow at the Centre for Renewing America. He has written for First Things, Compact, Perspectives on Political Science, and The Claremont Review of Books. His forthcoming book, Actually Existing Post-Liberalism , explores the transformation of the West since 1989 and is due to be published by Basic Books. He is also translating Éric Zemmour’s bestseller The Suicide of t...

This is a compilation episode about the state of boys and families in Britain, the ideological crusades that have undermined them, why the loss of faith and hyper-liberalism are to blame for this, and what may be required to save our individual and collective souls. You can expect to hear from Ed Davies of the Centre for Social Justice , Lois McClatchie Miller from the Alliance for Defending Freed...

Momus Najmi is a writer, cultural commentator, and history enthusiast. He writes The World of Momus on Substack and runs a YouTube channel exploring Britain’s cultural, political, and civilisational predicament. In this conversation, we think out loud about a question many sense but struggle to articulate: has Britain lost its way and if so, what would genuine reform actually require? We explore:...

Father Benedict Kiely is a priest of the Anglican Ordinariate of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the founder of nasarean.org , a charity that supports and advocates for persecuted Christians across the Middle East and beyond, offering practical aid to displaced families and small businesses. Christian persecution is one of the world’s most underreported realities—and its neglect tells us somethin...

Tom Jones is a writer and a councillor for Scotton and Lower Wensleydale, North Yorkshire. He is the author of the Substack, The Potemkin Village Idiot and has written for The Spectator, The Critic, Conservative, Home, CapX, UnHerd and The Guardian. In this conversation, Tom and I think out loud about the dramatic shift in British political discourse since 2024, why public trust in institutions is...

Ryszard Legutko is a Polish scientist and politician, professor of philosophy, publicist, author of over twenty books on socio-political topics, translator and commentator of Plato’s works. He specializes in political and social philosophy, ancient philosophy and the history of philosophy. Ryszard has served as a member of the European Parliament since 2009 and is Chairman of the European Conserva...

Mark Walsh is a teacher of embodiment, trauma, education, and resilience. He is the author of Embodiment: Working with the Body in Training and Coaching   and Embodied Meditation . Mark also hosts the Embodiment Podcast , which has been downloaded over two million times, and was the founder of the Embodiment Conference, which brought together over 1,000 teachers and half a million participants. In...

Ed Davies is Policy Director of the Centre of Social Justice . A veteran of health policy, he has a storied career as a journalist, editor, and policy wonk and has worked for several UK government cabinet ministers during his career. His work has focused on the role of relationships in making us truly happy and healthy. In this conversation, Ed and I think out loud about the issues surrounding fam...

Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and investment professional. He is the author of a book on economic theory, The Reformation in Economics and his most recent book is The Collapse Of Global Liberalism: And The Emergence Of A Post-Liberal World Order . Philip also runs the Macrocosm substack. Philip regularly writes for a variety of outlets, including Unherd, The Spectator, The Telegraph, The N...

Lois McLatchie-Miller is a Senior Legal Communications Officer for the Alliance For Defending Freedom International . Lois is a writer, speaker, and thinker on issues of bioethics, faith, family and freedom. In this conversation, Lois and I think out loud about abortion, how prevalent it is and how it became so prevalent, the methods used, changing cultural perceptions, why the emotional impacts o...

Alan Macfarlane is a historian and anthropologist who taught at the University of Cambridge for 34 years. He is now Professor Emeritus of Anthropological Science and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. His comparative work spans England, Nepal, Japan, and China, with a particular focus on the origins and nature of the modern world. In this conversation, Alan and I think out loud about the...

Ben Cobley is a journalist, former Labour Party activist, and author of The Tribe: The Liberal-Left and the System of Diversity and T he Progress Trap: The Modern Left and the False Authority of History . He has written for The Spectator , UnHerd , The Critic , Quillette , and The New Statesman , and appears regularly on Sky News. You can find him on X @BenCobley and on Substack at Existential Pol...

Adam Williams is the Leader of the youth wing of the Social Democratic Party, the SDP, in the UK. In this conversation, Adam and I think out loud about what motivated his journey into politics, why decline is all he's ever known and why he wants to change this, his experiences knocking on doors in local elections, the challenges of political branding for the SDP, how the public know very litt...