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 than the state — and nobody noticed the difference
— The 10% threshold: when the foreign-born population reaches a certain level, free speech is the price of keeping the peace
— How Britain could dismantle its entire progressive legal architecture in a single statute — and why France, Canada, and America cannot — Pierre Trudeau’s constitutional coup: how Canada became the end game of perverted Westminster, and why only Tony Benn and Enoch Powell saw it coming
— The three deaths of the father: de Gaulle, paternal authority, and the gold standard — and why the West no longer produces leaders
— How Vichy was weaponised to impose collective guilt on the French people and delegitimise national sovereignty
— Why the smartphone killed assimilation and the Ellis Island myth is dead
— Why the only way to save the West is Christian revival

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Find Nathan Pinkoski:

• Substack: lamentforthenations.substack.com

• X

• The Suicide of France by Eric Zemmour

Related episodes you might enjoy:
— France Is Fracturing Along Ethnic And Religious Lines. Britain Is Next
— What Happens When The West’s Strong Gods Return
— The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man
— How Ireland Changed Beyond Recognition

The Call of England — a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England:

• Episode 1

• Episode 2

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Watch the episode here:

Subscribe now

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 — and whether there is a floor below which even the strong gods cannot reach
— Why Christianity remains a contested but robust force in American public life while Britain’s established church has been abandoned by its own people
— How Blair’s open society theology disfigured Britain’s understanding of itself
— Pierre Manent’s argument that the modern West has irreversibly chosen the city of man over the city of God
— Why the first duty of the sovereign is to preserve the realm — not because it is conducive to greater utility but because the realm has intrinsic value
— Alex Karp’s observation that Europeans no longer believe their civilisation will last
— Why multiculturalism is a theory designed to explain how disintegration is actually the birth of something new — and why it cannot work
— The Parmenidean resurgence: classical schools, elite religious revival, and the young men turning to rigorous Christianity
— Why Trump is the Vishnu of early 21st century politics — the great destroyer after whom someone must build

Share

Find R.R. Reno and First Things:

• Website: firstthings.com

• X: x.com/raborenn

• Related episodes you might enjoy:
  — Carl Trueman — The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man. Now Something Darker Is Coming:

— Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World And This Is Why:

— Pierre d’Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers:

The Call of England — a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England to discover what remains of the national inheritance:

• Watch Episode 1 here:

• Watch Episode 2 here:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Subscribe now

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 believe the existing institutions could not be saved
— How Boethius took the seeds of civilisation and cast them into the future from a prison cell — and why that matters now more than ever
— Why “the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be lit” and why Ralston brings students to Samos, Greece, to light them on fire
— The deathbed test: did I live as I should have lived? And why no culture that fails to help its people answer that question deserves to endure
— Why the universities are the most upstream influence over the degradation of Western culture
— The difference between legal protection of free speech and a culture of genuine truth-seeking
— What Tocqueville saw in America that Britain is losing, which is to say self-governance as the precondition for democracy
— Why Roger Scruton was right that a culture is just the things we have loved, and transmitting it is just teaching others to love them too
— What growing up as the eldest of ten on a Canadian farm taught Blackwood about human nature, duty, and what a human being at full gallop looks like

Share

Find Stephen Blackwood and Ralston College:
- Website: ralston.ac
- Podcast: The Ralston College Podcast
- YouTube

Watch the episode here:

Related episodes you might enjoy:
— Dr — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World And This Is Why
— Carl Trueman — The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man. Now Something Darker Is Coming
— — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers

Watch The Call of England, a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England to discover what remains of the national inheritance:

• Watch Episode 1 here

• Watch Episode 2 here

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

— What Anglofuturism actually is — and whether the Britain it imagines is one that also knows who built it and why it matters
— Whether you can be an Anglofuturist without being a cultural conservative — and whether material renewal without cultural renewal is just efficiency
— Whether Britain can become Europe’s energy powerhouse — offshore wind, Rolls-Royce SMRs, North Sea oil, battery storage — without paving over the green and pleasant land
— Whether population growth is necessary for prosperity — or whether a high-tech, high-skill country can stabilise its population and still thrive
— Why the technocratic class that would need to deliver the Anglofuturist future is the same class that produced the decline — and whether it can be removed
— The demographic question that Anglofuturism cannot avoid — and what “a future that feels like home” requires
— Whether beauty is a non-negotiable — and who decides what beautiful means when the institutions that once knew have been captured
— What the ordinary Briton, the CEO, and the Prime Minister should each do on Monday morning

Find Anglofuturism:
Substack: anglofuturism.substack.com
YouTube: youtube.com/@anglofuturism
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/0PxQEO62ESL7DYmZHLgQID

You can watch the show on YouTube or watch it here:

Related episodes you might enjoy:
— Pierre d’Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers:

— William Clouston — Why British Politics Governs Against The National Interest:

— Michael Lind — Why America & Britain Keep Betraying Their Working Class:

— Jonathan Rose — What The British Working Class Lost And Who Is Responsible:

— Lord Tony Sewell — Life At The Bottom In Broken Britain:

The Call of England - a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England to discover what remains of the national inheritance:

• Watch Episode 1 here:

• Watch Episode 2 here:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingClass
✍ Substack:

Thinking Class

Thinking Class is a weekly long-form interview podcast about history, culture, civilisation, and the moral and political challenges facing Britain and the West. Expect depth and clarity over headlines and hot-takes.

By John Gillam

🎧 Spotify:

🍎 Apple Podcasts: ▶ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingClass
✍ Substack:

Thinking Class

Thinking Class is a weekly long-form interview podcast about history, culture, civilisation, and the moral and political challenges facing Britain and the West. Expect depth and clarity over headlines and hot-takes.

By John Gillam

🎧 Spotify:

🍎 Apple Podcasts:

🐦 X: https://x.com/thinkingclasses

🐦 X: https://x.com/thinkingclasses

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Subscribe now

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

— What made the West so continuously innovative across thousands of years — from the Indo-Europeans through Greece and Rome to the modern era
— Why the Faustian drive — the relentless urge to create, discover, and push beyond every known boundary — appears unique to European civilisation
— The discovery of the thinking self in ancient Greece and why
self-consciousness and reason developed differently in the West
— Why the very qualities that made the West great — rationalism,
individualism, universalism — contain the seeds of its own unravelling
— How liberal progressivism evolves logically from John Locke through John Stuart Mill to open borders and multiculturalism
— Why capitalism and liberalism together have created a system that structurally resists reform
— Whether civilisational recovery is possible — or whether we are witnessing an irreversible decline

Find Ricardo Duchesne:

• X: x.com/dr_duchesne

• Books: https://link.amazon/B00NSP1LA
  
  Related episodes you might enjoy:
  — Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western
  World And This Is Why:

— Carl Trueman — The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man. Now
Something Darker Is Coming:

— Jonathan Rose — What The British Working Class Lost And Who Is
Responsible:

— Pierre d’Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its
Gravediggers:

The Call of England — a documentary series retracing a 1927
journey through England to discover what remains of the national
inheritance:

- Watch Episode 1 here:

- Watch Episode 2 here:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

If you find this valuable, please subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• Why the founding generation openly called their own project an empire — and why that fact became invisible to later Americans

• Frederick Jackson Turner’s argument that America only became culturally distinct once settlers crossed the Appalachians and had to build civilisation anew

• David Hackett Fischer’s four British folkways and which of them actually drove the push westward

• Why the Scots-Irish Borderers who settled Appalachia resemble the Bedouin of Arabia more than they resemble the East Coast settlements they left behind

• The recurring tension between liberty and order in the Anglo-American character, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the modern day

• George Washington as a land speculator and enclosure man who died the richest man in the country — the story behind the myth

• Why neither the settlers nor the Native Americans held a monopoly on civilisation or savagery, and what a forensic reading of the primary sources actually shows

• Why Clement changed his mind about universalism — and what that means for how the modern world’s institutions were built

Clement Knox is the author of The Scramble for America: How the United States Conquered a Continent. Buy your copy here: https://amzn.to/4fgXRwY

Find Clement Knox:

• Substack:

Past Notes

Essays on literature, cinema, and the past

By Clement Knox

Related episodes:
— Gary Gerstle — The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order:

— Michael Lind — Why America & Britain Keep Betraying Their Working Class:

— David Starkey — Britain as a Disaster Since 1945:

— Katharine Birbalsingh — She Told 4,000 People The West Is Committing Suicide:

And if you haven’t already, go and watch The Call of England — my documentary series retracing H.V. Morton’s 1927 journey to find out what’s left of the old country. Episode one and two are live now on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCHptEOmbMRzSV7TQqVMJxAVohAEnvLdA&si=VcpwRhAUmrcrWOTm

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

If you find this valuable, please subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

A thrush sings evensong from a broken pillar. An architect, asked how the monks built something as beautiful as Fountains Abbey and he answered that they sang, and their work was done for them. The subject of this episode is not just three ruined abbeys, but the rather alien idea to us in modernity that industry and prayer were once the same act. The monks of the North Riding built water-mills and blast furnaces three centuries before anyone called it an Industrial Revolution except this work was as an extension of worship rather as a substitute for it. It is obvious to anyone with a grasp of history and eyes to see that we kept the furnace but lost the psalm. The second half of this episode, at the walls of York and the thousand-year-old watch still kept nightly in Ripon’s market square, asks what a people does once it’s no longer sure who, or what, it’s keeping watch for.

In this episode:
- Beverley Minster, built on the bones of a saint, and a modern reworking of its Adam and Eve that raises an old question in a new form: piety to whom?
- Whitby Abbey and the Synod of Whitby — the moment it was decided whether England would follow the Celtic Christian way or the Roman one
- Caedmon, the illiterate monk who sang the first sacred verse in English, and Hild, who presided over the Synod
- The North York Moors and Morton’s three glories of the North Riding: Fountains, Rievaulx, and Jervaulx
- Why the monks were England’s first industrialists, and what was lost when their industry — carried out in service of the sacred — was dissolved
- York’s city walls, and the question of whether a demographically transformed and increasingly fractured country will need walls again
- Ripon’s Setting of the Watch: a horn blown nightly in the market square for over a thousand years, and whether the newcomers of the last twenty years will ever join that watch, or keep one of their own

Based on H.V. Morton’s In Search of England (1927) and The Call of England (1928).

The Call of England is a six-part documentary series. New episodes released on YouTube and Substack.

Watch episode 1 here:

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

Chapters

00:00 — Called by my nation of England to go in search of it
01:24 — Last episode: East Anglia to Lincoln
01:41 — This episode: into Yorkshire
02:42 — Morton on Beverley: a town built on the bones of a saint
04:26 — Beverley Minster today: piety, but to whom?
07:12 — Morton arrives in Whitby
10:29 — Whitby today: what has changed since Morton
11:37 — The Synod of Whitby: Celtic Christianity or Roman?
14:24 — The North York Moors
16:00 — The road to Rievaulx
17:02 — Morton on the three glories of the North Riding
19:13 — The monks were the first industrialists
21:45 — Fountains Abbey: they sang, and their work was done
23:52 — Morton on Rievaulx
25:49 — Morton on Jervaulx
26:56 — Morton on the walls of York
28:10 — Will we need walls again?
29:11 — The curfew bell of York
30:22 — The Merchant Adventurers of York
31:48 — The view from the minster roof
33:11 — Ripon and the Setting of the Watch
36:05 — Will the new arrivals ever join the watch?
38:32 — The road north — Episode 3

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In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• Why Katharine believes children are born naughty rather than good — and why saying so out loud triggered a national media storm

• Why the most progressive schools in Britain are often the expensive private ones, not the state schools everyone assumes are failing

• What actually happens inside a school that treats children as capable of excellence rather than victims of circumstance

• The ARC speech that caused a stir — on minoritarian victimhood, institutional shame, and why she thinks a certain group of people in Britain need to simply “take a break”

• Her real disagreement with Connor Tomlinson — whether ancestry or shared values are what actually holds a nation together

• Why she believes schools now shape children more powerfully than families do — and what that means for the future of the country

Katharine Birbalsingh is the headmistress and founder of Michaela Community School in Wembley, and a former UK Social Mobility Commissioner.

Find Katharine Birbalsingh:
- Strictly Education: https://www.youtube.com/@StrictlyEdPod
- Michaela School: https://www.michaela.education/

Related episodes:
- Lord Tony Sewell — Life At The Bottom In Broken Britain:

- Frank Furedi — In Defence of Populism:

Jonathan Rose — What The British Working Class Lost And Who Is Responsible:

- The Call of England — a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England to discover what remains of the national inheritance. Watch Episode 1 here:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

If you find this valuable, please subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Share

Subscribe now

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. In 2024, he co-founded Verdurin, a space for experimentation in aesthetics, learning, and the difficult conversations which drive today’s culture.

Pierre previously directed waterside contemporary, a gallery that tested social and political questions in the art market. He curated exhibitions with artists who included Turner Prize nominee Oreet Ashery and has commissioned works with artists such as Mirza and Butler which traveled to Artes Mundi and Sydney Biennale.

Having trained in the sciences before coming to artistic practice, Pierre also worked on cultural exchange and engagement strategies in higher education and the charity sector and has held senior positions in publishing and financial services.

Pierre d’Alancaisez spent over a decade building a career inside British contemporary art — as a gallerist, then a critic — before COVID broke his faith in the institutions he’d helped construct. He now runs Verdurin, a counter-institution built, deliberately, outside the ruins of the one he left.

Find :

• Personal website: https://petitpoi.net/

• Verdurin website: https://verdur.in/

• Substack: https://verdurin.substack.com/

• X: https://x.com/verdur_in

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@verdurin

Related episodes:
— #127 Jonathan Rose — What The British Working Class Lost And Who Is Responsible:

— #106 Carl Trueman— The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man. Now Something Darker Is Coming:

— #130 Iain McGilchrist— There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World And This Is Why:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

If you find this valuable, please subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Subscribe now

In this conversation Frank and I think out loud about:

• the spirit of populism, why the credentialized class fears it

• how anti-populists restrict democracy while claiming to defend it

• why fascism and populism are not just different but opposite

• why nostalgia underpins cultural continuity

• why 60% of the crisis starts in the schools

• whether assimilation is possible in a normless society

• and why to be a real conservative you must be very radical.

Subscribe now

Follow Frank’s work:

• Subscribe to

• Buy Frank’s books here

• @FurediByte

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

If you find this valuable, please subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Subscribe now

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.

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In this conversation we think out loud about:

• In what specific ways the British establishment has gone off at the deep end

• The real-life impact of anti-racist and DEI policies on the British public

• How the progressive left re-racialised British public life and is now horrified that the wider public has adopted the same lens

• Ash Sarkar, Novara Media, and the hypocrisy of racialising everything until the racialisation turns against you

• Two-tier policing, two-tier sentencing, and the cases of Valdo Calocane and Henry Novak

• The Islamisation of Britain — jihadism, blasphemy law by stealth, and the demographic projections

• The future of British Jews and whether the trajectory is recoverable

• Whether the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish are allowed an ethnic identity in the same way as every other group

• The emergence of English national identity and why suppressing it is the most dangerous thing the establishment can do

Find Max Klinger:

• Max Klinger’s Newsletter on Substack

• X: @ MaxE2Review

Related episodes:
— #102 David Betz — What Britain Will Look And Feel Like When Things Get Nasty:

— #106 Driss Ghali — France’s Identity Crisis: Violence, Islamism & The Risk Of Social Fracture:

— #129 Andrew Hussey — France Is Fracturing:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

If you find this valuable, please subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Subscribe now

In this conversation we think out loud about:

• Why France is fracturing into fragments that do not speak to each other

• The three Frances: the citadels, the banlieues, and the forgotten white working-class periphery

• How French prisons became the engine room of radicalisation

• The difference between Maliki Islam and Wahhabi puritanism — and why it matters

• Why the French Republic’s promise to make everyone a Frenchman is being tested to destruction

• The RN rallies: Hussey spent time with the supporters and found not fascists but ordinary people

• Whether the progressive left’s grievance politics has made integration permanently impossible

• The Charlie Hebdo demonstration and the moment Hussey converted to French Republicanism

• Naboukh la France: what the ancient curse really means and why it matters

• What all of this tells Britain about what is coming

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

In this conversation we think out loud about:
- Why some societies became rich while others remained poor — and why it has little to do with institutions
- Why Indian cotton mills in the 1920s could not match Lancashire despite identical technology
- What Clark discovered from studying more than 422,000 English people across four centuries
- Why social mobility appears largely unchanged since the Middle Ages
- Why Denmark and Britain have almost identical mobility rates despite radically different welfare states
- Why family size, birth order, and the death of a father have no measurable effect on life outcomes
- Why the upper classes decline at the same rate the lower classes rise — and what that symmetry means
- Whether England has been a meritocracy since 1300
- Why governments may be attempting to solve problems that are largely resistant to policy
- Clark’s forthcoming book — and why it is proving difficult to publish

Subscribe now

Find Professor Clark’s work:
- A Farewell to Alms: https://amzn.to/4vak59q
- The Son Also Rises: https://amzn.to/4okonIx
- London School of Economics: https://www.lse.ac.uk/people/greg-clark

This episode is part of the Thinking Class series on class in Britain and the West:
- Lord Tony Sewell - Life At The Bottom In Broken Britain:

- Theodore Dalrymple & Rob Henderson - They Called It Compassion:

- Michael Lind - The Real Class War:

- Jonathan Rose — What The British Working Class Lost And Who Is Responsible:

Related episodes:
- #130 Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World:

- #034 Garett Jones - Why Migrants Make Countries Like The Ones The Left:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

In this conversation we think out loud about:

• The difference between the actions and thoughts produced by the left and right hemispheres of the brain

• The most visible symptoms of civilisational decay in Britain and the West

• The key inflection points in history that set the West on a road to ruin, having previously defined the path to greatness

• What the Romantics were longing for in the industrial era — and why nostalgia is not a bad thing but necessary

• Why we need more new Romantics to show us how to live more fully human lives in the machine age

• What the industrialisation of man has done to our souls

• What the world we have built is doing to our minds and why mental health diagnoses are so prevalent amongst the young

• The mistake made by the West in becoming post-Christian

• Why Iain would rather die than sever his relationship with the faith — What Iain has not changed his mind on

Find Dr McGilchrist’s work:

• Channel McGilchrist:

https://channelmcgilchrist.com

• McGilchrist Substack:

The Matter with Things

How to realise life, humanity and the cosmos anew

By Iain McGilchrist

• The Master and His Emissary — Yale University Press: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300188591/the-master-and-his-emissary/

• The Matter with Things — Perspectiva Press: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/matter-with-things/

• Ralston College: https://ralston.ac

Related episodes:

#126 Gary Gerstle — The Iran War Is Ending The Global Economy As We Know It:

#110 Renaud Camus — The Disaster: The Great Replacement, Elite Failure & The Crisis Of The West:

#042 Peter Hitchens - How Britain Witnessed A Moral And Cultural Revolution:

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Subscribe now

Today, in 2026, I have been called by my nation of England to go in search of it myself. This is the first episode of The Call of England, a documentary travelogue retracing Morton’s journey to understand the English people, the people who made England, to find what remains of old England, and what has been lost in the emergence of a new one.

The Call of England is brought to you by Thinking Class.

About Thinking Class: Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with thinkers, historians, and commentators grappling honestly with the condition of our civilisation.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
🐦 Follow on X

New episodes every week.

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 economy on the assumption that global stability was permanent. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for nearly three months. William Clouston and Firas on what is actually happening, how Britain ended up this exposed, what a sane government would do, and what the crisis reveals about a deeper civilisational loss of will.

We think out loud about:
- What the Strait closure actually means militarily and whether it will ever reopen
- How Britain ended up with no strategic reserve, no energy self-sufficiency, and no industrial base
- Why successive governments stopped thinking like custodians of a nation
- What a sane government would actually do on energy, manufacturing and borders
- The ideological double whammy: free trade purism and net zero combined are lethal doe Britain
- How the financial sector was ideologically captured and failed to see the crisis coming
- Whether the integrated global economy is finished and what will replace it
- How the faith crisis underpins the nation’s morale crisis and why power stations alone will not fix it
- What ordinary people should actually begin doing differently in their own lives in response

Subscribe now

Follow their work:
- SDP Investment State Green Paper: https://www.sdp.org.uk
- Firas Modad Geopolitics: https://modadgeopolitics.com
- The Lotus Eaters: https://lotuseaters.com

About Thinking Class: Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with thinkers, historians, and commentators grappling honestly with the condition of our civilisation.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
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In this conversation, Lord Sewell and I think out loud about:

• Why white working-class boys are still at the bottom

• How the numbers were deliberately fudged to hide the problem

• The three causes behind poor performance: poor schools in post-industrial areas, family breakdown, and no one championing their cause

• The self-loathing of middle-class white professionals and how their luxury beliefs that harm those below them

• Anti-white animus in the institutions and class warfare dressed up as progressivism

• The road man culture cutting across every ethnicity and what John saw on his road trip for his The Call Of England travelogue

• Why Sewell thinks Netflix’ Adolescence missed the point entirely

• A modern-day dissolution of the monasteries. Can the institutions can be trusted or do they need to be replaced?

• Individual agency and community-led regeneration and what the state cannot fix

• The collapse of Christianity as the root cause underneath all of it

• What Sewell changed his mind on and why he came back to Christianity

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Find Lord Sewell’s work: Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-report-of-the-commission-on-race-and-ethnic-disparities Centre for Social Justice — White Working Class Boys report: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/newsroom/white-working-class-boys-still-at-the-bottom-of-the-class-says-race-report-chief

Generating Genius: https://www.generatinggenius.org.uk

About Thinking Class: Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with thinkers, historians, and commentators grappling honestly with the condition of our civilisation.

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An early questoon came from someone who argued the film was slanderous, that the English are the authors of modernity, not the charming country bumpkins I was allegedly presenting. He is, of course, right that we are the inventors of modernity but the argument I was making is that the same Faustian capacity became unmoored from the civic and religious frameworks that gave it direction and has consumed us. The financialisation of the United Kingdom, which he championed, for example, has hollowed us out. I didn’t make that response clearly enough.

There are four exchanges within the video that are particularly interesting, including that particular challenge, the question of whether the right has become incapable of discussing anything beyond demographics, the question of fertility and faith, and what Harrison (and Restore Britain) thinks would be possible when communities resist the deportations his party has proposed.

This is the edited highlight of an hour-long Q&A (it was meant to be half an hour) following a screening of Episode 4 of The Call of England and a panel discussion with David Goodhart and Harrison Pitt.

This conversation covers:
— The early challenge: are we celebrating white flight from cities (frankly, I’m quite puzzled as to where he got this notion from)? Are the English charming country bumpkins or the inventors of modernity and can both be true?
— Is the British right incapable of discussing anything beyond demographics and what comes after demographic security anyway?
— Could looming demographic change actually trigger a spiritual and fertility recovery or is that wishful thinking?
— What happens when communities physically resist deportation? Harrison Pitt’s unfiltered answer.

Find David Goodhart’s work:
- The Road to Somewhere: https://amzn.to/4dxVILh
- The British Dream: https://amzn.to/4ndzW3N

Find Harrison Pitt’s work:
- Restore Britain: restorebritain.co.uk
- The European Conservative: theeuropeanconservative.com

About Thinking Class: Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with thinkers, historians, and commentators grappling honestly with the condition of our civilisation.

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New episodes every week.

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Find Jonathan Rose’s work:

• The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes — Yale University Press: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300098952/the-intellectual-life-of-the-british-working-classes/

• The Literary Churchill: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300196535/the-literary-churchill/

• Drew University faculty page: https://www.drew.edu

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.

About Thinking Class: Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with thinkers, historians, and commentators grappling honestly with the condition of our civilisation.

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New episodes every week.

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Three generations in the room: a Boomer, a Millennial, and a member of Gen Z. Three different assessments of what England has become and what recovery might require.

This conversation covers:

• Whether England’s governing class has lost the concept of Somewhere entirely

• The anywhere/somewhere distinction — and Harrison Pitt’s challenge that it misses the asymmetric animus directed specifically at white majority Western nations

• Whether Englishness is ethnic, civic, or both and why the answer matters more than it appears

• The Rishi Sunak question: can someone be culturally English without being ethnically English and what happens to the yardstick when the ethnic core thins?

• Whether Christianity is part of the solution to England’s civilisational crisis or part of the problem

• What demographic security would actually require — and whether it is achievable

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Find David Goodhart’s work:
- The Road to Somewhere: https://amzn.to/4dxVILh
- The British Dream: https://amzn.to/4ndzW3N

Find Harrison Pitt’s work:
- Restore Britain: restorebritain.co.uk
- The European Conservative: theeuropeanconservative.com

About Thinking Class: Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with thinkers, historians, and commentators grappling honestly with the condition of our civilisation.

▶️ Subscribe on YouTube
🎧 Follow on Spotify
📰 Read on Substack
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New episodes every week.

Subscribe now