Sovereign Albion

Here in Sovereign Albion, we are interested in exploring and scaling British greatness. So I wanted to speak with Elijah, a friend and artist who’s a very special person to have that conversation with.Elijah is a writer, DJ, and founder of the record label Butterz. He came up through grime and pirate radio, a scene that had to build its own infrastructure, and in doing so produced something totally distinctive in Britain, culturally, sonically, and economically. More recently, he’s the author of Close the App, Make the Ting, a set of prompts and provocations that I think of as akin to a16z’s It’s Time to Build, but aimed at encouraging agency in new and emerging artists. This was a really special conversation. We explored cultural sovereignty and the role of media institutions in platforming British arts, power laws and talent spotting in record labels, cultural company building in the internet era, overcoming tall poppy syndrome, rent as the creative director, and how it’s up to all of us to reconnect the nation. All fundamentally in service of an increasingly important question: how do we platform, and scale, cultural greatness in Britain?Thanks to the Centre for British Progress for supporting the podcast, to Podcast House for production support, and Simon Panayi for original music.00:00 British Cultural Greatness01:23 Elijah's Journey03:53 Grime Stories07:19 UK Platforms and Cultural Sovereignty10:29 Talent Spotting and Power Laws in Music13:46 Building a Record Label in the Internet Era16:07 Butterz and Creative Entrepreneurship24:33 Change, Activism and Optimism30:43 Arts Funding and Democratic Variance31:59 Rent as the Creative Director32:55 "But Does It Work at Scale?"34:08 London Privilege37:09 University, Philip Gould, Aspiration and AI40:17 Build Without Permission41:20 Who Is Making Interesting Work Today? (+ Why Fred Again is an Athlete)46:40 Greatness in British Music49:10 Reviving Patriotism57:01 Elijah's Deep Feedback Podcast This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com

Zakia Sewell is a writer, broadcaster and DJ from London. She is the host of Dream Time on BBC 6 Music and the author of Finding Albion, which explores British national identity, folk culture and myth.Here we discuss the origins of Albion, folk culture as an alternative source of meaning and radical history, Empire and greatness, and imagining a new Festival of Albion.01:21 Defining Albion04:19 William Blake’s Albion06:02 Stonehenge Pilgrimage07:27 Unity at Sunrise08:48 The Woo Woo Taboo10:20 Beyond Twee Folk11:09 Making Folk Accessible12:18 Alternative Stories of Britain14:40 Identity and Empire19:25 Exploring British Greatness21:42 Land and Right to Roam28:06 Grime, and New Folk Cultures30:54 Folk Revival and Social Media41:19 Festival of Albion This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com

Dan Akarca is Co-founder & CEO at Callosum, a new AI infrastructure company orchestrating and co-evolving heterogeneous chips & intelligence to solve the world's hardest problems.Here we discuss how to move beyond the dominant, monolithic AI paradigm, what we can learn from the brain to unlock exquisite, efficient intelligence, and what this means for redistributing leverage away from the biggest labs and countries to rebuild optionality across the world.00:00 The Brain as an Analogy for AI04:38 Why One Big Model Fails06:57 The Heterogeneous Compute Spectrum, from Datacentres to Edge Computing11:54 Orchestrating Chips and Models16:58 Supply, Demand and the Hardware Lottery29:36 Value Beyond Chips30:43 Bringing Chips to Market35:50 Dynamic Compute Future39:22 Funding and Roadmap43:39 Riskiest Assumptions and Scaling the Team This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com

Lawrence Lundy-Bryan is GP at Cloudberry, Europe’s first dedicated semiconductor fund. He also writes the State of the Future substack, which researches frontier technology analysis.Here we discuss how to invest in AI sovereignty, the bifurcation of VC into specialists and AUM agglomerators, the compute gradient, how the government's new venture fund (SovAI) can succeed, and enabling European founder ambition00:00 Introduction01:07 Launching Cloudberry VC01:44 The Future of VC Funds: AUM Agglomerators vs Specialists04:47 Semiconductors: Past, Present, and Future10:21 The Importance of Edge Computing12:58 Europe's Role in the Semiconductor Industry21:38 Investing in New Applications29:23 Government's Role in AI and Semiconductors33:08 Complexity and Capabilities in Industrial Strategy35:57 Domain Elasticity and Building Conviction in New Founders41:41 Lawrence's Decision Making Process47:40 The European Venture Capital Landscape53:43 Raising Collective Ambition This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com

Sovereign Albion is a new platform, exploring who we are, where we're going, and how we get there, told through the lens of the builders – of companies, state capacity, and the nation – making it real.This launch episode is with John Fingleton and Mustafa Latif-Aramesh, who were part of the UK’s brilliant recent Taskforce on Nuclear Regulation.When it launched, the report quickly became a rallying point for the many people who refuse to accept that Britain is at some terminal value, both economically and culturally. Nuclear could play an enormous role in enabling safe, clean, abundant energy — solving the energy trilemma of cost, climate and capacity! — but we have made it slow and expensive to build. Britain was the first country in the world to have civil nuclear energy, but today we haven’t built a new nuclear power station for 30 years. I wanted to understand how we got here, and what needs to come next.Thank you to the Centre for British Progress for supporting this experiment, to Julia Garayo-Willemyns, David Lawrence and Alys Key for their editorial support, and to Ben Mills and The Subthread for production support. Intro news footage source, ©Sellafield Limited. * John Fingleton is a leading economist and regulator. He was the CEO of the predecessor to the Competition and Markets Authority and was on the board of UK Research and Innovation, and now runs Fingleton.* Mustafa Latif-Aramesh is a leading infrastructure planning lawyer at TLT LLP and Parliamentary Agent who works across nuclear and other nationally significant planning and infrastructure projects.00:00 The History of British Nuclear01:00 Challenges in British Nuclear Development04:02 Comparing Nuclear Costs: UK vs. South Korea07:41 The Role of the State in Nuclear Projects12:05 Future Technologies and Recommendations16:18 Regulatory and Financial Incentives28:20 Inside the Taskforce32:56 Taskforce Member Roles and Expertise34:53 Formation and Delays of the Taskforce35:46 Reflections and Future Improvements39:23 Is The Deep State Real?45:11 Regulatory Bottlenecks and Political Economy53:55 Compensation and Community Benefits57:02 Cultural Perspectives on Nuclear Energy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com