Thinking Class

Auron MacIntyre is the host of The Auron MacIntyre Show on Blaze TV and the author of The Total State. Auron previously taught high school before leaving education to build his media platform, writes the Substack The Total State, and appears across conservative and heterodox media. In this conversation, we think out loud about: Why every Western state is becoming total and why the HR department is the new political commissarHow bureaucracies automatically recognise one another as authoritativ...

Nathan Pinkoski is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, the translator of Eric Zemmour’s The Suicide of France, and author of the forthcoming Silent Revolution: The End of the Liberal West. He writes for First Things and Compact and publishes the Substack Lament for the Nations. In this conversation, we think out loud about: — Why Zemmour’s Suicide of France sold half a million copies and what it tells the English-speaking world — How the 1968 revolution conquered society rather ...

R.R. Reno is the editor of First Things, the most important journal of religion and public life in America. He is the author of Return of the Strong Gods, In the Ruins of the Church, and a forthcoming rock climbing memoir. He has taught theology at Creighton University and has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Commentary. In this conversation, we think out loud about: — What the strong gods look like when they return to a country that no longer has any gods at all ...

Stephen Blackwood is President and Founder of Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia. The Chancellor is Dr Iain McGilchrist. He is on the advisory board for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). This episode is supported by Aquinas Tuition, which provides bespoke academic tutoring for children who deserve to be stretched, not managed. In this conversation, we think out loud about: — What Blackwood saw inside the Western university system at its highest level that made him b...

Tom Ough is Senior Editor at UnHerd and author of The Anti-Catastrophe League. Calum Drysdale is an engineer and writer. Together they host Anglofuturism — a podcast exploring ambitious, outlandish, and remarkably achievable ideas to revitalise Britain from their thatched space station. Robert Jenrick declared himself an Anglofuturist at a 2025 conference. Curtis Yarvin has appeared on their show. In this conversation, we think out loud about: — What Anglofuturism actually is — and whether th...

Ricardo Duchesne is a Puerto Rican-born Canadian historical sociologist. He studied history at McGill University, received his PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University (awarded the Doctoral Prize for best dissertation of the year), and served as professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick until his retirement in 2019. His major works include The Uniqueness of Western Civilisation, and Greatness and Ruin. In this conversation, we think out loud about: — Wha...

Clement Knox is a writer and historian. He is the author of The Scramble for America: How the United States Conquered a Continent (William Collins, 2026), and writes at Past Notes on Substack. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the United States was thirteen coastal colonies clinging to the Atlantic seaboard. Within a single lifetime, it became a continental empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific — and the founding generation openly called it exactly that: an empire. This conversati...

Katharine Birbalsingh is the headmistress and founder of Michaela Community School in Wembley, and a former UK Social Mobility Commissioner. She built the most successful school in Britain from nothing — in one of London's poorest boroughs — by insisting on the things the educational establishment now treats as radical: discipline, gratitude, knowledge, and the belief that every child is capable of excellence. Her results are extraordinary. Almost nobody in the profession will copy her. In t...

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a writer, curator, and researcher working with the multiple politics of the arts. He is the resident art critic for the English magazine The Critic, and his writing has appeared in outlets such as ArtReview, The Spectator, and Compact. *NOTE: If you downloaded this before 11th July, there are sync issues on the audio, therefore please re-download for a better listening experience*. In 2024, he co-founded Verdurin, a space for experimentation in aesthetics, learnin...

Frank is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent and the author of twenty-eight books on the cultural forces shaping Western societies, including his most recent, In Defence of Populism. Frank is also a Senior Fellow at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Brussels. In this conversation Frank and I think out loud about: the spirit of populism, why the credentialized class fears ithow anti-populists restrict democracy while claiming to defend itwhy fascism and populism are...

Max Klinger is a lawyer and political analyst. He writes at Max Klinger's Newsletter on Substack and his work has appeared in The Spectator. Britain's progressive establishment spent a decade re-racialising public life. It racialised Brexit, policing, and every institution in the name of anti-racism. Now the wider British public has adopted the same lens and applied it in the opposite direction, and the establishment is horrified. In this conversation we think out loud about: In what sp...

Professor Andrew Hussey OBE is Dean of the University of London Institute in Paris and Director of the Centre for Post-Colonial Studies at the University of London's School of Advanced Study. Born in Liverpool, educated at the University of Manchester and Jean Moulin University Lyon 3, he is the author of The French Intifada (Faber, 2014), Paris: The Secret History (Penguin, 2006), The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord (Jonathan Cape, 2001), and Fractured France. He was awarded an...

Professor Gregory Clark is a British-born economic historian at the University of California, Davis and holds a DNRF Chair at the Danish National Research Foundation and a professor at the Historical Economics and Development Group (HEDG) at the Department of Economics, SDU. Furthermore, he is a Visiting Professor at London School of Economics (LSE) and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UC Davis. He is the author of A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World and The Son Als...

Dr Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Consultant Emeritus of the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, London, a former research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, and since September 2025 the Chancellor of Ralston College. He lives on the Isle of Skye. He is the author of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making...

William Clouston is the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the United Kingdom and a member of the advisory board for Restore Britain. Firas Modad is an analyst and political economist focused on the Middle East and global geopolitics. He runs his own consultancy, Modad Geopolitics, helping companies and investors understand the commercial impact of political, economic, and security risks they face. Firas Modad is a host on Podcast of the LotusEaters. Britain built its econom...

Lord Tony Sewell CBE is a British educational consultant, author, and life peer. Born in Brixton to Jamaican parents, he trained as a teacher and worked in some of London's most challenging schools, during which time he completed his PhD on black masculinities and schooling at the University of Nottingham. He helped transform education in Hackney as part of the team that established the Learning Trust and the iconic Mossbourne Academy, a flagship of the Academy movement. He is the founder and...

Jonathan Rose is William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University in New Jersey. He edits the journal Book History and was founding president of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. He is the author of several books including The Literary Churchill and The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. For the better part of two centuries, the British working class sustained one of the most remarkable intellectual traditions in any civilisation. Miner...

Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge and the author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order — one of the most clarifying accounts written of how a set of economic assumptions came to dominate Western politics, and how they are now collapsing. He is currently Kluge Chair of American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress, working on his next book, Politics in Our Time: Authoritarian Peril and Democratic Hope in the Twenty...

Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name of Dr. Anthony Daniels — physician, psychiatrist, and social diagnostician. He spent years working in the hospitals and prisons of Birmingham before his essays for City Journal established him as the foremost chronicler of what he called the culture of the British underclass. His writing has also appeared in The British Medical Journal, The Times, New Statesman, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Salisbury Review, National Review, The New ...

Michael Lind is a political theorist, historian, and one of America's most rigorous independent analysts of class, democracy, and political economy. He is a Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, a co-founder of the New America think tank, and a visiting professor at the University of Austin. He has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins and previously served as an assistant to the Director of the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs ...

Dr. Carl R. Trueman is Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania and currently a visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. His most recent books are The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Expressive Individualism, Cultural Amnesia, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, (with Bruce Gordon) The Oxford Handbook to Calvin and, and To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse (B and H). His writing has appeared in ...

Richard IV is a writer, cultural commentator and men's mentor whose work has helped thousands of men in Britain and across the West understand what has gone wrong and what can still be recovered. In this episode of Thinking Class, John Gillam speaks with Richard about the invisible order that once gave men a path through life — the initiatory traditions, the moral codes, the religious inheritance — and what has happened to the men who grew up without it. They discuss why so many young men in ...

Kathleen Stock is a Contributing Editor to UnHerd, a philosopher, author of Material Girls and Do Not Go Gentle, and one of the most forensically precise thinkers in British public life. A bill is moving through the British Parliament right now that would allow doctors to help their patients die. Its proponents call it assisted dying. Its opponents call it assisted suicide. In Canada, five percent of all deaths now occur through the state-sanctioned equivalent. In Belgium, they have extended ...

For decades, the British Empire in India has been reduced to a simple moral claim: that it was an extractive, exploitative system which left only damage behind. But is that really the full story? In this episode of Thinking Class, John Gillam is joined by Lord Nigel Biggar and Professor Tirthankar Roy to examine what the British Empire — and the East India Company before it — actually did in India, and how that history continues to shape the present. One of India's leading economic historians...

John Waters is an Irish journalist, author, and columnist known for his work with Hot Press, The Irish Times, and The Irish Independent. He has written on social and political issues, specialising in father's rights and cultural critiques. Ireland changed faster than almost any country in the West. The question now is whether the Irish still recognise the nation they live in. In this episode of Thinking Class, we discuss the moral, cultural and demographic transformation of Ireland over...

Michael Reiners is a writer, lawyer, and architectural historian. Michael is the founder of the Reiners Project, which publishes essays, draft legislation and commentary on English constitutional law and the art and architectural landscape. Britain’s constitutional settlement has changed more in the last few decades than most people realise — and the consequences now reach into identity, speech, governance, and the question of who the country is for. This episode forms part of Thinking ...

Lord Nigel Biggar is an Anglican priest, theologian, and moral philosopher, a member of the House of Lords, and Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford. His most recent books are The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win The Culture War, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023), What’s Wrong with Rights?, In Defence of War, and Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation. In the press he has written articles for the Financial Times, the (London) Times, the Dai...

Lionel Shriver is a novelist and columnist at The Spectator, and the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Mania, and A Better Life among many other books. Lionel Shriver returns to Thinking Class to discuss mass immigration in the West—not as an abstract moral debate, but as a lived experience reshaping belonging, institutions, and politics. We start with Lionel’s new novel A Better Life, which tackles immigration through fiction from the host-country’s point of view. We explore why the “na...

Lord Jonathan Sumption is a British judge and historian, who served as a Supreme Court Justice from 2012 – 2018. He is the author of The Challenges of Democracy And The Rule Of Law, the Sunday Times bestseller Trials of the State, Law in a Time of Crisis, and Divided Houses, which won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize. Across Britain and the wider West democratic decision-making is increasingly being hollowed out by courts, by bureaucracies, by delayed elections, by restrictions on speech, and b...

Dr Carrie Gress has a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and is the editor at the online women’s magazine Theology of Home. Carrie’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, First Things, Newsweek, The American Spectator, The Catholic Thing, The Federalist, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Examiner. She is a frequent radio and podcast guest and has appeared on Fox, BBC, CBC, EWTN, OAN, and Russia T...

Dr. Bijan Omrani is a classicist, historian, and Oxford-educated barrister. His research explores questions of religious history and cultural identity, spanning from ancient Roman Greece to Afghanistan and the Silk Road. He has taught Classics at Eton College and Westminster School, is a former editor of Asian Affairs, and currently serves as a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. He is also a churchwarden. Dr. Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert is the director of the organisation Don't Divide Us. ...

Firas Modad is an analyst and political economist focused on the Middle East and global geopolitics. He runs his own consultancy, Modad Geopolitics, helping companies and investors understand the commercial impact of political, economic, and security risks they face. Firas Modad is a host on Podcast of the LotusEaters. Firas examines how Britain’s security is being quietly undermined at home and abroad, and why so few in the political class are willing to confront the scale of the problem. In...

Professor Azar Gat, one of the world’s leading scholars of nationalism, war, and political identity. Professor Gat is Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the author of several major works on conflict and political order, including War in Human Civilization and, most notably for this conversation, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. In that book — and in our discussion today — Gat challenges one of the most dominant assumptions of modern p...

Renaud Camus, writer, painter, photographer, was born in 1946. He is now the author of more than one hundred and sixty works. His works are marked by the question of meaning and the fight against the industrialisation of man and the massacre of landscapes. In this episode of Thinking Class, John Gillam and essayist Renaud Camus engage in a wide-ranging conversation about what Camus has long described as “the disaster” — the civilisational, cultural, and demographic transformations resha...

William Clouston is the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the United Kingdom and a member of the advisory board for Restore Britain. In this conversation, William Clouston and I think out loud about the current state of British politics, focusing on the disconnect between government promises and actual governance. We explore: The need for a cultural and civilisational vision beyond economicsThe challenges posed by mass immigration for social democracy and defining remigrati...

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at The University of Buckingham and Director of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science. He directs Buckingham’s new MA in the Politics of Cultural Conflict and PhD in Cultural Politics as well as its open online course on Woke: the Origins, Dynamics and Implications of an Elite Ideology. He is the author of Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution, Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities, Shall the Religi...

Stephen Balogh is the Chairperson for the Social Democratic Party. Stephen is also active in non-profit and public policy organisations that promote the flourishing of society through the thoughtful application of socially responsible, small-c conservative politics. Following a 30-year business career, he now devotes his time to initiatives aimed at community building from local neighbourhood to international levels, whether by means of social, political or commercial exchange. Stephen has al...

Driss Ghali is a political author and speaker. Driss was born in Morocco and educated in Europe. He graduated from prestigious French universities and spent a lot of time in a corporate career focused on high-tech companies. Driss is an intellectual and observer of human nature as it is: ugly and splendid at the same time. Since 2017, he has written books about violence and identity. Driss frequently appears in French media to talk about immigration, diversity, the Middle East and French poli...

Neema Parvini is the author of nine books including Applied Elite Theory, The Prophets of Doom, The Populist Delusion, The Defenders of Liberty, Shakespeare's Moral Compass. He has also written dozens of chapters and articles in scholarly publications and the media. Neema is the Director of Academic Agency, which he set up to focus on core academic skills and knowledge areas which can help students and learners of all ages to achieve both academic excellence and improve communication and rese...

Alexander Chula is a medical doctor and writer working in London. His first book, Goodbye. Dr Banda was published 2023. In this episode, Alexander and I think out loud about what an African dictator can teach the West about itself, how multiculturalism impacts conceptions of personal and national identity, the perceived cultural openness of modern society compared to the past and why engagement by middle-class Westerners on with foreign cultures on their travels are superficial in their natu...

Martin Sellner is an Austrian activist, author and political organiser and his "goal is to save the identity and soul of [his] nation & Europe". He is author of several books in the German language, one of which, "Regime Change From The Right", is now published in English, while another, "Remigration", will be published in English early 2026. Martin Sellner joins John Gillam to address the sensitive topic of remigration and national identity in contemporary Europe. Placing demographic sh...

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 institutions in civil conflict, the impact of demographics on politics & how the election of Zohran Mamdani for...

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 people keep invoking Tolkien and the scouring of the Shire, whether there's an England left to be sa...

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. He obtained his PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. He has also worked as a contribut...

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, including for UnHerd, The Huffington Post, The Spectator, Spiked and Compact. His first book is ...

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 author of several acclaimed works, including Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Guilt, Colonialism: A ...

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 crime units. In this episode, Andreas and I think out loud about the critical importance of energ...

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 what humanity’s relationship with money tells us about power, honesty, and civilisation itself. We di...

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 on his extraordinary life journey: from a career in corporate finance, to imprisonment for fraud,...

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 bureaucracies. We discuss how these unaccountable elites influence policy and norms across both polit...

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 institutions, shaping political life up to the present day, how the parties’ contrasting relationships ...

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 Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps, and most recent...

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 Spectator Book of the Year) and, most recently, Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings tha...

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 the French into English for Encounter Books. In this episode, Nathan and I think out loud about Nat...

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 Freedom, Connor Tomlinson of Courage Media, Neema Parvini a.k.a. Academic Agent, the philosophers Carl ...

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: why Britain’s problems are not merely economic or political, but cultural and spiritual;&nb...

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 something about Western moral attention. Fr Benedict Kiely describes the realities facing Christians abroa...

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 at an all-time low, and what it means to say Britain is now operating under an “anarcho-tyranny”...

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 Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament. In this conversation, Ryszard and I think...

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 this conversation, Mark and I think out loud about the importance of embodiment, connection, a...

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 family dynamics and breakdown in the UK, the alarming statistics regarding family structures, the ris...

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 New York Post, Moneyweek, First Things, American Affairs, The Critic, and Postliberal Order. He is ...

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 on women are so high, how men can think about it, the political landscape surrounding abortion, ho...

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 history of the English people's relationship with money, how this compares with China, the cycli...

Ben Cobley is a journalist, former Labour Party activist, and author of The Tribe: The Liberal-Left and the System of Diversity and The 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 Politics. In this conversation, Ben and I think out loud about the relationship between progressivism and C...

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 little about the scale of issues facing the country, the future of the SDP's political strategy in the UK ...

Driss Ghali is a political author and speaker. Driss was born in Morocco and educated in Europe. He graduated from prestigious French universities and spent a lot of time in a corporate career focused on high-tech companies. Driss is an intellectual and observer of human nature as it is: ugly and splendid at the same time. Since 2017, he has written books about Violence and Identity. He frequently appears in French media to talk about immigration, diversity, the Middle East and French politic...

This is a compilation episode focused on the themes of England and Britain's history at home and abroad, the making of its social, political, and cultural life. You can expect to hear from the likes of Peter Hitchens, Connor Tomlinson, Charlie Downes, David Starkey, Nigel Biggar, Robert Tombs, Paul Embery, Lionel Shriver, Douglas Carswell, Neema Parvini, Alan MacFarlane, & many more. There are huge problems facing England and Britain. People can feel it, and they might have ...

Dr. Bijan Omrani is a classicist, historian, and Oxford-educated barrister. His research explores questions of religious history and cultural identity, spanning from ancient Roman Greece to Afghanistan and the Silk Road. He has taught Classics at Eton College and Westminster School, is a former editor of Asian Affairs, and currently serves as a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. He is also a churchwarden. In this episode, Bijan and I think out loud about his book God is an Englishm...

Prof. Tim Lang is the emeritus professor of food policy at City University London Centre for Food Policy. He was professor of food policy at Citi from 2002 to 2021 and had founded the Centre in 1994 at Thames Valley University, now the University of West London. After a PhD in social psychology at Leeds University in the early seventies, he became a hill farmer in the forest of Boland Lancashire, which shifted his attention to food policy. In this episode, Tim and I think out loud about...

Dr. Mario Trabucco della Torretta is a classical archaeologist trained in Sicily and Athens. Mario's expertise covers classical Greek architecture and sculpture, ancient Athens and the Elgin Marbles. He tweets @Mario_Trabucco and runs the YouTube channel @ElginMarbleGames⁩. In this episode, Mario and I think out loud about how museums acquire artefacts, the contested nature of certain items, the historical context of ownership, particularly of the Elgin Marbles, Greek public opinion regardin...

Douglas Carswell was a member of the British Parliament for 12 years. He also co-founded Vote Leave the Official campaign that won the 2016 Brexit vote in Britain. The author of five books, Douglas has written widely about bank reform and monetary policy, as well as publishing a libertarian history of human progress. In this episode, Douglas and I think out loud about his plan to save Britain, why advocating for remigration is a necessary step to restore the country's identity, why the...

Charles Cornish Dale, otherwise known as Raw Egg Nationalist, is a writer and owner of a popular X/Twitter account. Charlie is the editor of the Mans World Magazine and the author of four books, Raw Egg Nationalism in Theory and Practice; Three lives of Golden Age Bodybuilders; Draw Me a Gironda and Raw Egg Trilogy. His fifth book is The Last Men: Liberalism and The Death of Masculinity. He has written for The Spectator, The American Mind, and The Daily Caller. In this episode, Charlie and I ...

Nuriyah Khan is the host of the YouTube channel Holy Humanist and is a prominent ex-Muslim and women's rights campaigner, known for her fearless advocacy and outspoken views. In this episode, Nuriyah and I think out loud about her experiences as an ex Muslim and her views on women's rights and human rights. We also talk about the changing landscape of Islam in Britain, the perception of institutional preference for Muslims over other religious adherents, the potential for an Islamic ref...

Niall Gooch is a writer and has appeared in The Spectator, Unheard, and The Catholic Herald. In this episode, Niall and I think out loud about the unique aspects of British identity, the impact of political ideologies on historical narratives, and why we need to strike a balance between kindness and justice in public policy. We also talk about why each of us need a deeper understanding of the cultural values we hold, why we must preserve historical context when engaging in discussions ...

Lorenzo Warby writes the Substack Lorenzo from Oz and he contributes regularly to Helen Dale's Substack, Not on your team, but always fair. He needs little introduction to long time classmates because this is the third time he has appeared on the show. Check out the archives for the other two. In this episode, Lorenzo and I think out loud about why the term capitalism is misleading and why we should speak about living in a mercantile society instead, the many complexities of commerce an...

Alan McFarlane is an anthropologist, historian, and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at King’s College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles covering the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan, and China. A fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society, Alan has dedicated much of his work to the comparative study of the origins and nature of the modern world. In this episode, Alan and I think out loud about how we don...

Today, I’m speaking with Dr Anthony Daniels, better known by his pen name, Theodore Dalrymple. He is an English cultural critic, prison physician, and psychiatrist who has worked in several sub-Saharan African countries and London’s East End. **Please excuse the audio issues on my side. This problem was caused by my audio interface. Anthony's audio is clear and that is the main thing** Before retiring in 2005, he practised at City Hospital and Winson Green Prison in Birmingham. He is a contri...

Neema Parvini is the author of eight books including The Prophets of Doom, The Populist Delusion, The Defenders of Liberty, Shakespeare's Moral Compass. He has also written dozens of chapters and articles in scholarly publications and the media. Neema is the Director of Academic Agency, which he set up to focus on core academic skills and knowledge areas which can help students and learners of all ages to achieve both academic excellence and improve communication and research skills in the wo...

Lord Nigel Biggar CBE is Emeritus Regis Professor of Moral Theology at Oxford and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House. Nigel holds a BA in Modern History from Oxford and a PhD in Christian Theology and Ethics from the University of Chicago. In 2021, he was appointed CBE for services to higher education. His books include Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning and What's Wrong With Rights?. He has written for publications such as the Financial Times, The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Spect...

David Starkey is a historian, broadcaster, and bestselling author. Known for The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Monarchy, David now runs the popular YouTube channel David Starkey Talks and has written extensively on the British monarchy, including Monarchy, Crown and Country, and Henry, a Virtuous Prince. In this episode David and I think out loud about why history, properly taught, is the basis of our civilisation, why we should be terrified of the current political class for their lack of hist...

Dr. Roy Baumeister is one of the world's most prolific and influential psychologists. He has published over 700 scientific works, including over 40 books. In 2013 he received the highest award given by the Association for Psychological Science, the William James Fellow Award in recognition of his lifetime achievements. As of 2023, Roy holds affiliations with Harvard University in the USA, Constructor University Bremen in Germany, Florida State University, also in the U. S., Better Up, Inc., U...

Dr. Mark Dooley is an Irish philosopher, author and journalist who has taught at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and at University College Dublin where he was John Henry Newman Scholar in Theology. He has been a columnist for both the Sunday Independent and the Irish Daily Mail, and is currently a Contributing Editor to The European Conservative magazine. His many books include The Roger Scruton Reader, Why Be a Catholic?, Moral Matters: A Philosophy of Homecoming, and Conversat...

Warren Smith is the founder of YouTube channel The Secret Scholar Society (@SecretScholars ). He lives in Massachusetts, USA, where he is a volunteer firefighter. In this episode Warren and I discuss his transition from teaching to becoming a full time YouTuber with his channel and why that 'career-change' happened at all, and we think out loud about the importance of critical thinking, the nature of truth, how to navigate political discourse and media narratives, and why storytelling ...

Sam Bidwell is the Director of the Next Generation Centre at the Adam Smith Institute and has worked as a Parliamentary Researcher, and as a Press and Research Consultant for the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council. His writing on foreign affairs has been published internationally, including in Australia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and he was a contributor to the 2023 Commonwealth Security Review. Sam is a graduate of the University of Cambridge where he studied Law at Sidney Sussex...

Harrison Pitt is a writer at the European Conservative and a fellow at the New Culture Forum. In this episode, Harrison and I think out loud about the problem in talking about British values and why they cannot be reduced to bullet point summaries, the philosophical underpinnings of national identity and cultural heritage, the impact of mass immigration on British culture, whether integration in a diverse society is possible, the implications of multicultural policies in a historically...

Ed West is a British author, journalist, and blogger known for The Wrong Side of History on Substack and his work with UnHerd, The Catholic Herald, The Spectator, and more. His books include Small Men on the Wrong Side of History, The Diversity Illusion, and Tory Boy. Paul Morland is one of the world’s leading demographers, exploring how population trends shape our world. A former research fellow at Birkbeck and senior member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, his books include The Human Tide,...

Professor Robert Tombs is Professor Emeritus of French History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College. Robert is the author of That Sweet Enemy (2006, co-written with his wife Isabel), The English and Their History (2014), and the Sunday Times bestseller This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe. In this episode, Robert and I think out loud about whether England and Britain are in decline, how England's national identity was formed, England's historical ...

Professor Alan McFarlane is a renowned anthropologist, historian, and Professor Emeritus of King’s College, Cambridge. Author or editor of 20 books and countless articles, Alan has spent his career exploring the origins and nature of the modern world. Alan is also the creator of the YouTube channel @ayabaya. In this episode, we Alan and I discuss England’s unique national character and its influence on politics, language, law, economics, and literature, the origins of English individua...

Tom Rowsell is a historian and an independent film maker, director and editor, known for From Runes to Ruins (2014) and his YouTube channel Survive the Jive, which includes documentary films about pagan religion and ancient European cultures. In this episode, Tom and I delve into the genetic ancestry of the British peoples and how Genetic studies reveal the stability of Northwest European ancestry over time, the significance of ancient monuments, and national myths such as those surrounding ...

David Goodhart is a British journalist, commentator and author. David is the Head of the Demography, Immigration and Integration Unit at the think tank Policy Exchange and the founder and a former editor of Prospect magazine. David has authored four books, including The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt & The Future Of Politics, Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle For Dignity And Status In The 21st Century, and most recen...

Philip Kiszely is a cultural historian, an academic, an author, a political commentator, and senior fellow at the New Culture Forum. In this episode, we talk about the evolution of British culture, media, and education from the post-war era to the present day, why we have seen significant shifts in the media's treatment of Britain and its history, how British comedy has changed, how social media has impacted cultural identity, the decline of traditional music and comedy, our changing relati...

Professor James Clark is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and has published widely on medieval monasteries and their place in the medieval world and he was historical advisor on the BBC TV series Tudor Monastery Farm. His book, The Dissolution of the Monasteries: A New History was published in 2022 to widespread acclaim. In this conversation, James and I talk about the impact of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in England, its historical significance, ...

Carl Trueman is Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. And he is the author of several books and perhaps best known for The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and The Road to Sexual Revolution. Karl is also the author of To Change All Worlds, Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse. In this conversation, Karl and I talk about why it is important to Unpack a topic, an idea, or a philosophy...

Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class. Today I'm speaking with, well, myself and you, dear listener. I'm a management consultant, podcaster, and proud Northumbrian, Englishman and Briton. I'm recording this episode to mark 50 episodes of Thinking Class and almost one year, and to reflect on what I've learned, which episodes have proven popular and why they spoke deeply to me, and what I've had to start telling myself, the deeper I have found myself getting into the top...

Spencer Klavan is a scholar, writer, and podcaster. A graduate of Yale, he earned his doctorate in ancient Greek literature from Oxford University. Spencer is the author of the acclaimed book How to Save the West, Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crises, and his latest release is Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science through Faith. Spencer is also the editor of Gateway to the Stoics, the host of the Young Heretics podcast, and associate editor of the Claremont Review of Bo...

Dr. Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert is the director of the organisation Don't Divide Us. She is an educator, academic, author, and campaigner who believes passionately in the essential importance of impartiality. In this episode, Alka and I think out loud about the importance of recognising our common humanity amidst a sea of divisive ideologies, the various critiques of the current anti-racism movement and why Alka emphasises the need for a more universal and humanistic approach to governance, h...

William Clouston is the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the United Kingdom. In this episode, William and I talk about the reasons behind the SDP’s resurgence, his personal political journey, what the current political landscape looks like in Britain, and why it’s hard to escape the feeling of civilisational decline in the country, how cultural identity is being undermined through ideological zeal, mass immigration, and multiculturalism, Britain’s immigration challenges a...

Glen Scrivener is an ordained Church of England minister and evangelist who preaches through writing, speaking, and online media. Glen is also the director of Speak Life, and the creator of the 3-2-1 evangelism course. In this episode, Glenn and I talk about the profound impact of Christianity on Western values, the personal journeys that lead someone to faith, and the cultural shifts that have resulted in a meaning crisis, why it is important to understand the Christian story as foundational...