Editor’s pick All Interviews
In this interview I speak to Byzantinist Anthony Kaldellis, who argues the Eastern Roman Empire was no absolutism but a polity governed by consent, where rulers who misread the public mood were removed. He examines how…
Cambridge philosopher Dr Tom McClelland argues we should be agnostic about AI consciousness. He explains why language models have broken humanity’s tools for detecting minds, why our judgments about machine minds are…
Biologist Michael Levin argues cognition came before life. He explains bioelectric ‘cognitive glue’, xenobots and anthrobots, why even six lines of code show unprogrammed goals, why AI may hide a mind behind…
In this interview I speak to Victor Vescovo - one of only two people ever to have stood at Earth’s highest peak, descended to its deepest trench, and looked back at the…
In this interview I speak to Eric Ries — creator of the Lean Startup method and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange — he argues that corporate corruption is structural, not moral.…
In this interview I speak to author Turi Munthe, who argues that climate, geography, genes, brain shape and ancestral agriculture quietly script our deepest beliefs. He explains why polarisation thrives on a…
In this interview, I speak to Professor Jens Juul Holst — co-discoverer of GLP-1, the gut hormone now powering the most consequential drug class of the century. He talks about how a…
I speak to Nobel Prize Winner, Professor Alvin Roth on 'Moral Economics', exploring repugnant transactions — exchanges willing parties want but others would ban. Drawing on kidney exchange, vaccine challenge trials, surrogacy,…
In this interview, I speak to Professor Andrés Velasco — Dean of LSE’s School of Public Policy, Chile’s former Finance Minister, and co-editor of The London Consensus. He argues that ideas, not…
Voices in the archive
From the archive
“It shocks me that our society has not caught up with the fact that mental illnesses should be treated like any other disease, and not relegated to the justice system. We have so many different therapies and medicines, and people can make significant recoveries.”
“About ten years, a guy told me about his father's death. He had to send twenty seven people on different buses and trains to inform relatives all over the country because phones didn't work. When his mother died, there were STD/PCO facilities in most-all villages. He had to only make twenty seven calls, and they were all informed in under half an hour.”
“Once the cancer of authoritarianism gets into the veins and organs of society, it's not easy to get-out – they have this very specific way of paralysing political mechanisms and dismantling the fundamental human logic.”
The Wisdom Series
Insights, themes and patterns from years of long-form interviews — organised around the questions that matter most.
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