The Peter McCormack Show
by Peter McCormack
Latest episode
#229 - Harrison Pitt - Is Britain Still a Nation?
#229 - Harrison Pitt - Is Britain Still a Nation?
About this podcast
The Peter McCormack Show - politics, macro, Bitcoin and AI, long-form interviews. Twice-weekly conversations about money, power, and the shifts reshaping the next decade.
Peter McCormack interviews politicians, economists, investors, journalists, founders and Bitcoiners. Past guests include Liz Truss, Lyn Alden, Curtis Yarvin, Matt Goodwin, Mike Green, Balaji Srinivasan, Rupert Lowe, Firas Modad, Scott Horton, Jeff Booth, Connor Leahy, Andrea Miotti, Neema Parvini, Dr Tim Gregory and Simon Dixon.
Recurring threads: the debt and inflation endgame, UK political collapse and what comes after, Reform and the populist wave, the Middle East and the American war machine, AI safety and the race for superintelligence, energy and net zero, Bitcoin adoption and policy, and the slow-motion decline of Western institutions.
Long-form - most episodes run 60 to 120 minutes. New episodes 2 to 3 times per week. Video on YouTube and Spotify.
Host: Peter McCormack, a retired rapper from Bedford, UK, trying to understand this crazy world.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 1,107 episodes
- #229 - Harrison Pitt - Is Britain Still a Nation? · 1 h 50 minHarrison Pitt is a writer specialising in philosophy and intellectual history, a senior policy fellow at Restore Britain, a contributing editor at The European Conservative and a…
- #228 - Rupert Lowe - Is Britain Going Bankrupt? · 59 minRupert Lowe is the MP for Great Yarmouth and the leader of Restore Britain, the party he launched after leaving Reform UK. He returns with a blunt diagnosis: Britain is bankrupt…
- #227 - Gideon Rachman - How World War 3 Could Start by Accident · 1 h 16 minWhy does the world feel more dangerous at a time of extraordinary technological progress? Gideon Rachman joins me to discuss his book, War Is Interested in You, and the return of…
- #226 - Karl Friston - Top Neuroscientist: "AI Is Stunting the Human Brain" · 1 h 28 minIs human consciousness a biological necessity, or merely a controlled hallucination designed to help us coordinate and survive? In this episode of The Peter McCormack Show, I sit…
- #225 - Baroness Susan Greenfield - A Neuroscientist's Warning About AI & Children · 1 h 32 minHave smartphones been a terrible mistake? Are social media and artificial intelligence changing the way our children think, learn and develop? And what happens to humanity when…
- #224 - Frank Wright - The Debt Trap: Inflation, Falling Living Standards & Our Children’s Future · 2 h 2 minWhy does working harder no longer feel like getting ahead? Frank Wright returns to discuss Britain’s debt-driven economy, inflation and the squeeze on living standards. We…
- #223 - Sir David Spiegelhalter - "I Immediately Distrust Every Number In The News" · 1 h 25 minSir David Spiegelhalter is one of the world’s leading statisticians, Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University and author of The Art…
- #222 - David Wood - We are The Last Generation Of Normal Humans · 1 h 17 minDave Wood is a pioneer of the smartphone industry, former senior executive at PPsion and Symbian and Chair of London Futurists. Having predicted the smartphone revolution in the…
- #221 - Prof Lewis Dartnell - How To Rebuild Human Society After An Apocalypse · 1 h 20 minLewis Dartnell is an astro-biologist, Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster and the author of The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch…
- #220 - Roko Mijic - We’re Training AI to be More Dangerous Than Nuclear Weapons · 1 h 29 minRoko Mijic is the man behind Roko's Basilisk, the thought experiment he posted on LessWrong in 2010 that was so unsettling the forum's founder banned discussion of it for five…
- #219 - Paul Morland - Why The Next Global Financial Crisis Is Mathematically Inevitable · 1 h 23 minPaul Morland, one of the world's leading demographers, joins me to explain the economic mechanics behind global population collapse and why our modern welfare system is…
- #218 - Narinder Kaur - Divided & Looted: How the Political System Plays Us · 2 h 7 minThe political system is designed to keep us angry and divided, but who actually profits from the culture war? Broadcaster and political commentator Narinder Kaur returns to the…
- #217 - Lee Cronin - AI Will Never Be Conscious. This Is How We Create Real Life. · 1 h 35 minChemist and University of Glasgow professor Lee Cronin argues that the current tech narrative is a "massive AI delusion," dismissing modern artificial intelligence as an advanced…
- #216 - Ross Clark - Britain is Bust & The Coming Sovereign Debt Crisis · 1 h 9 minThe UK has accumulated £3.4 trillion in debt, and the interest payments alone now dwarf the national defence budget. Author and journalist Ross Clark argues that the nation is…
- #215 - Nick Bostrom - "We Are Creating Superintelligence": The Existential Risk is Real · 1 h 6 minNick Bostrom is a world-renowned philosopher, founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers…
- #214 - Prof. Richard Werner - "They Are Traitors": How Central Banks Sabotage Wealth & Create Crises · 1 h 6 minProf. Richard Werner is a world-renowned economist, professor of banking, and author of Princes of the Yen. Famous for coining the term "Quantitative Easing" (QE) and publishing…
- #213 - Russell Napier - "They Are Stealth-Stealing Your Money”: Financial Repression is Here · 1 h 14 minRussell Napier is a renowned financial historian, author of The Solid Ground newsletter, and co-founder of the Library of Mistakes. Having advised global institutional investors…
- #212 - Callum Smiles - "They Are Stealing The Country": Border Gangs, Fake Deliveroo Accounts & The Civil War · 1 h 35 minCallum Smiles is an investigative reporter and Associate at the Wyvern Fellowship. Having spent years conducting on-the-ground reporting across Calais, Dunkirk, and the Spanish…
- #211 - Jim Al-Khalili - Reality Is An Illusion: Quantum Entanglement, Time & Dark Energy · 1 h 13 minProf. Jim Al-Khalili is a theoretical physicist, author, and public broadcaster who holds a chair in physics at the University of Surrey. Known for his BBC documentaries and…
- #210 - Simon Dixon - "They're Coming For Everything": $40T Debt, AI Job Collapse & The CBDC Grid · 1 h 28 minSimon Dixon is an author, early Bitcoin investor, and co-founder of Bank To The Future, with over two decades of experience across stockbroking, market making, and investment…
- #209 - Johann Hari - We Built A World Humans Can’t Survive · 2 h 33 minJohann Hari is an internationally bestselling author and journalist whose work - including Stolen Focus, Lost Connections, and Chasing the Scream - delves into the structural and…
- #208 - Ann Pettifor - "A $40 Trillion Debt Crash Is Coming” · 1 h 19 minAnn Pettifor is a world-renowned political economist, author of The Production of Money, and former director of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which successfully mobilised millions…
- #207 - Eric Kaufmann - How 'Cultural Socialism' Destroyed Our Universities · 1 h 32 minEric Kaufmann spent over two decades as a professor of politics studying demography, identity, and voting behaviour before leaving Birkbeck College to launch the Centre for…
- #206 - Emad Mostaque - "Your Job's Economic Life Expectancy Ends In 2 Years" · 1 h 45 minEmad Mostaque founded Stability AI, built Stable Diffusion, and helped kick off the open-source generative AI explosion - before stepping down to build a new blueprint for human…
- #205 - Prof. Moran Cerf - "Did We Accidentally Build A Conscious AI?" · 1 h 10 minMoran Cerf spent twenty years recording single neurons inside the brains of conscious human beings and he still can't tell you what consciousness is. A former hacker turned…
- #204 - Dmitri Alperovitch - China's Cyber Sleeper Cells, Taiwan & The Second Cold War · 1 h 20 minDmitri Alperovitch co-founded CrowdStrike, ran the investigation that first exposed Chinese state hacking to the world and predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine months before it…
- #203 - Gregory Allen - Ex-DoD Official: "AI Is Now A Digital Nuclear Weapon" · 1 h 34 minGreg Allen has spent his career where AI meets national security. He wrote the landmark 2017 report on AI for the US intelligence community, served as Director of Strategy and…
- #202 - Barry S. Strauss - "We Are In The Final Stages Of Western Collapse" · 1 h 15 minBarry Strauss has spent four decades studying how empires rise and fall. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Ten Caesars and Jews vs Rome, he argues the…
- #201 - Connor Leahy - The AI That Escaped: Inside OpenAI's Rogue Agent Incident · 1 h 9 minConnor Leahy has spent his career at the frontier of AI, from reverse-engineering GPT-2 as a student and co-founding EleutherAI to building the AI safety company Conjecture. He…
- #200 - Sebastian Thrun - The Singularity Is Here & We Are Completely Unprepared · 1 h 34 minSebastian Thrun has spent his career working on technologies that once sounded like science fiction, from self-driving cars and flying vehicles to online education and artificial…
- #199 - Aubrey de Grey - The Man Who Says Ageing Can Be Cured · 1 h 17 minAubrey de Grey believes ageing is accumulated damage in a biological machine and argues that medicine may eventually become capable of repairing that damage faster than it…
- #198 - Michael Shermer - Truth, Conspiracies & The Things We Can't Explain · 1 h 27 minMichael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, host of The Michael Shermer Show and author of Truth and Conspiracy. He joins Peter to ask whether we are really…
- #197 - Brian Keating - What Came Before the Big Bang & Does Time Exist? · 1 h 39 minBrian Keating joins me to explore one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only appear to move in one direction? Brian argues that time…
- #196 - Sam Bowman - The U.K. Is Becoming a Poor Country · 2 h 9 minSam Bowman joins me to discuss why Britain is approaching two lost decades of stagnant median wages and why the country is now far poorer than it should be. Sam argues that…
- #195 - Lisa McKenzie & Keith Gildart - Who Is Britain For? The Destruction of the Working Class · 2 h 13 minBritain did not simply leave its working class behind. Sociologist Lisa McKenzie and historian and former coal miner Keith Gildart argue that political and economic decisions…
- #194 - Charles Goodhart: The Money Endgame - Debt, Inflation & Central Bank Failure · 1 h 0 minCharles Goodhart joins me to discuss why Britain’s decline did not start in 2008, why the post-war economic boom may have been a temporary lucky era and why the next 30 to 40…
- #193 - David Goodhart - AI Is Coming For The Graduate Elite · 1 h 39 minDavid Goodhart joins me to discuss whether AI is about to do to the graduate class what globalisation did to factory workers, and why Britain’s political settlement may be…
- #192 - Amy Webb - The Future of Work, AI & Human Labor · 1 h 34 minAmy Webb joins me to discuss why artificial intelligence is not just another technology shift, but a civilisation-level reordering of work, power, wealth, biology and society…
- #191 - Thomas Pacchia - AI Will Expose The Fake World · 1 h 11 minThomas Pacchia joins me to discuss why the world feels fake, why trust in institutions is collapsing and why AI may make the crisis far worse before it helps solve it. Thomas…
- #190 - Sam Lyman - China’s Secret War on American AI · 1 h 1 minSam Lyman joins me to discuss how China is allegedly targeting America’s AI buildout, the activist networks fighting data centres and why the race for AI infrastructure has…
- #189 - Nate Soares - Why Superintelligent AI Could Kill Us All · 1 h 39 minNate Soares joins me to discuss the race to superintelligent AI, why alignment remains unsolved and why he believes building machines smarter than humanity could end in…
- #188 - Rizwan Virk - Simulation Theory, Quantum Physics & The Impact Of AI · 1 h 36 minRizwan Virk joins me to discuss simulation theory, AI, consciousness and why reality may work more like a video game than a physical universe. Rizwan explains how his experience…
- #187 - Danny Goler - DMT, Consciousness & Proof of the Simulation · 1 h 38 minDanny Goler doesn't just argue we're living in a simulation - he claims he's found a way to interact with whoever is running it and that we are the AI they're training before…
- #186 - Rupert Russell - The Global Game of Money & Power · 1 h 59 minRupert Russell joins me to discuss the hidden power of prices, the chaos of financial markets and whether the economy is really just a global game of Monopoly. Rupert explains…
- #185 - Fernando Nikolić - AI, One-Person Companies & The New Economic Elite · 1 h 27 minFernando Nikolic joins me to discuss the AI productivity explosion, one-person companies and what happens when software becomes something anyone can build. Fernando explains how…
- #184 - Helen Pluckrose - Liberalism, Free Speech & the Authoritarian Turn · 1 h 26 minHelen Pluckrose joins me to discuss how liberalism was lost and why free speech, individual liberty and viewpoint diversity need to be defended from both the authoritarian left…
- #183 - Chris Summerfield - AI, Memory & the Race to Superintelligence · 1 h 16 minI talk to Chris Summerfield about what artificial intelligence reveals about the human mind, and what the brain still does better than today’s AI systems. We discuss why LLMs…
- #182 - Julian Jessop - Big Government Broke the Growth Model · 1 h 6 minJulian Jessop joins me to discuss what has gone wrong with the British economy and whether the country can still turn things around. Julian argues that Britain’s problems are…
- #181 - Tom Bilyeu - AI, Bitcoin & the Rigged Economy · 1 h 25 minTom Bilyeu joins me to discuss debt, money printing, broken politics, AI, Bitcoin and why the economy feels rigged against ordinary people. Tom argues that every empire…
- #180 - Frank Wright - Reality Is Radicalising People · 2 h 35 minFrank Wright joins me after going viral for saying that reality, not extremism, is radicalising people. We discuss Britain’s decline, Restore, Reform, immigration, national…
