The Peter McCormack Show

Fernando Nikolic joins me to discuss the AI productivity explosion, one-person companies and what happens when software becomes something anyone can build.

Fernando explains how he now runs a company as the only human in it, using AI agents to build systems, process data and operate at a level that previously would have required a team, funding and infrastructure. We discuss Claude, Gemini, vibe coding, AI agents, internal tools, the collapse of traditional software moats and why the cost of building has fallen so dramatically.

We also get into the SaaS apocalypse, AI...

Helen Pluckrose joins me to discuss how liberalism was lost and why free speech, individual liberty and viewpoint diversity need to be defended from both the authoritarian left and the authoritarian right.

Helen explains why liberalism does not mean “left wing”, why it is better understood as the opposite of authoritarianism, and how critical social justice, identity politics and language policing have changed the way people think, speak and behave. We discuss woke ideology, DEI, equality vs equity, trans rights, queer theory, free speech, institutional capture and why suppressing ideas usually makes them more powerful.

I talk to Chris Summerfield about what artificial intelligence reveals about the human mind, and what the brain still does better than today’s AI systems.

We discuss why LLMs feel human, how models are trained to be helpful and agreeable, why memory and continual learning remain major unsolved problems in AI, and how sleep helps humans consolidate knowledge. They also explore agentic AI systems, rogue behaviour, reward hacking, misalignment, superintelligence, education, jobs, and whether AI will make humans more capable or less in control.

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Julian Jessop joins me to discuss what has gone wrong with the British economy and whether the country can still turn things around.

Julian argues that Britain’s problems are largely self-inflicted: weak productivity, high taxes, too much regulation, poor energy policy, a bloated state and politicians choosing popular policies over evidence. We discuss why the state has become too big, why the tax system is holding back growth, and why government intervention in housing, energy and the labour market is making people poorer.

I also ask Julian about Reform, the Greens, Labour, th...

Tom Bilyeu joins me to discuss debt, money printing, broken politics, AI, Bitcoin and why the economy feels rigged against ordinary people.

Tom argues that every empire eventually faces the same test: whether it can hold the power of the money printer without printing itself into oblivion. We talk about inflation, the debt cycle, asset prices, populism, Britain’s decline, and why the working and middle class are being squeezed.

We also get into AI and the future of work. I talk through my own recent experience building a system in seven days th...

Frank Wright joins me after going viral for saying that reality, not extremism, is radicalising people.

We discuss Britain’s decline, Restore, Reform, immigration, national identity, liberal democracy, working-class dignity, debt, inflation, the failure of our institutions, and why Frank believes this is the last chance to save the nation.

I push Frank on what it actually means to restore Britain, how you build a big enough tent, why nationhood matters, and how we avoid this ending in conflict.

Whatever your politics, Frank has clearly touched a nerve - and I...

Simon Dixon joins me to discuss AI, Bitcoin, algorithms, media capture, central banking, programmable money, geopolitics and how to escape the system. Simon argues that the world is moving towards a more centralised architecture of artificial intelligence, social credit scores, programmable money and financial control.

Simon and I discuss why AI may be the most important opportunity of our lifetime, how small businesses can now build tools that once required entire teams, why politics may no longer be the route to change, and why the answer may be to build with AI, own assets that cannot...

Lord Malcolm Offord joins me to discuss why Britain and Scotland have stopped creating wealth.

They discuss state spending, political fragmentation, Scotland’s elections, Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, QE, the Bank of England, first jobs, minimum wage, small businesses, quangos, the managerial class, Reform, the Greens, America, and whether Britain needs a welfare economy or a wealth economy.

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Rupert Lowe joins Peter McCormack to discuss Restore Britain, Reform UK, immigration, Parliament, the judiciary, the civil service, tax, welfare, young people, the Green Party, the private sector, Bitcoin, inflation and whether Britain can still be saved.

Rupert argues that the state has become too powerful, Britain may no longer have the rule of law, the private sector is dying, and Restore’s mission is to return power to the people.

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Narinder Kaur joins Peter McCormack to discuss racism, immigration, British politics, feminism, motherhood, young men, the cost of living, minimum wage, small businesses, Reform, Tommy Robinson, the Green Party and whether Britain is being divided by politicians, media and algorithms.

They disagree on plenty, but the conversation ends somewhere unexpected: perhaps left and right are not the real enemy - perhaps ordinary people are being played by the system.

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Physicist Professor Melvin Vopson joins Peter McCormack to discuss information physics, simulation theory, AI, digital life, consciousness, God, free will, and death.

Melvin argues that the universe may be governed by information and computation, and that recent advances in brain emulation could force us to confront one of the strangest questions imaginable: if a brain is loaded into a simulation, what exactly wakes up?

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Roman Yampolskiy believes reality itself may not be real.

One of the world’s leading AI safety researchers, Roman has spent years warning that humanity is racing toward systems we may never be able to control. But we go somewhere much stranger than artificial intelligence.

He believes the universe itself may be artificial.

We talk about simulation theory, digital physics, consciousness, AI agents and the terrifying possibility that reality is rendered rather than real.

Roman explains:

•⁠ ⁠Why he believes we may already be living inside a simulat...

Two brothers who escaped Russia say we have 2 years before AI replaces us - and we're paying the corporations building it.

Daniil & David Liberman sold their first company to Snapchat. Now they're racing to build a decentralised alternative to OpenAI and Google before the window closes. They explain why centralised AI ends in a two-tier world - a small elite with access, and the rest of us as "moving parts" - and why the next 24 months decide which path we take.

In this episode:

→ Why you can't opt out of AI an...

Graham Linehan wrote Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. Five BAFTAs. Then he said women's spaces should be for women, and the industry that built him decided he was a bigot. He lost his marriage, his career and twenty-five years of friendships.

Once one of the most celebrated comedy writers of his generation, Graham became the first major artistic figure to be comprehensively cancelled for speaking out on sex-based rights - and has never gone quiet to claw his reputation back.

He explains:

•⁠ ⁠Why the people who built their careers...

The economy you grew up in is ending and most people have no plan. Bitcoin pioneer Michael Saylor reveals why you have 10 years to adapt before AI rewrites everything.

Michael Saylor is the founder of MicroStrategy and one of the most influential voices on money, capital and the future of value. A Wall Street outsider turned Bitcoin's most prominent corporate advocate, he is known for his sweeping frameworks on monetary debasement, technological disruption and how civilisations rise and fall - and what individuals must do to thrive inside them.

He explains:

•⁠ ⁠Why the...

In this episode, I sit down with Andrew Wilson to discuss what so many people are starting to ask but struggle to answer:

Why does modern life feel like it isn’t working anymore?

We discuss rising political division, economic pressure and a growing sense of dissatisfaction - and what might actually be driving it.

Andrew explains that many of today’s problems aren’t just political or economic, but cultural - and that culture itself is shaped by something even more fundamental: shared values, belief systems, and community.

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Preston Byrne is the only American lawyer fighting the UK's attempt to censor US companies under the Online Safety Act. He's representing 4chan, Kiwi Farms, Gab and Sanctioned Suicide - pro bono - because no other firm would take the cases.

In this interview, Preston explains why Britain isn't a free country anymore, what Ofcom actually claims the power to do to American websites and why he says the UK is trying to enforce British censorship law on American soil. We get into the moment that started him down this path - a 16-year-old getting a...

Hans Niemann on beating Magnus Carlsen, the cheating accusations that nearly ended his career, and the "chess mafia" he says tried to destroy his life.

At 19, Hans Niemann beat the world's greatest chess player. Magnus Carlsen withdrew without explanation. Within weeks, Niemann was facing global cheating accusations, blacklisting from his own federation, and a fight to save his career.

Four years on, he's world No. 12 and still climbing. In this interview, Hans addresses everything: what Magnus actually saw at the board, the $100 prize he won at 12 that became "the greatest crime" of the...

Britain is now poorer than the poorest American state and economist Andrew Lilico says a full-blown fiscal crisis is coming within ten years. He explains how Britain broke itself, why the political establishment lost its faith and the £180 billion in spending cuts he believes should be the baseline, not the radical option.

Andrew Lilico is Executive Director of Europe Economics and Chairman of the IEA Shadow Monetary Policy Committee. He is one of Britain's most prominent economists and a regular voice on UK fiscal policy.

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Freddie New studied the classics and has spent years obsessing over one question: how does a superpower destroy itself? The answer, he argues, is always the same - it starts with the money.

In this conversation we map the fall of Rome directly onto the West today. The Roman denarius lost 97% of its purchasing power over 150 years. The British pound has lost 95% of its in the last century alone. The parallels don't stop there - military overstretch, a dependent population kept loyal by the state, leaders who can't stop the printing even when they know it's...

Emmet Connor, author of Red Pandemic, joins me to discuss his claim that Marxist ideas are expanding globally through culture, institutions and politics.

We start with the core question: is there actually a coherent Marxist movement in the modern West or is the term being used too loosely to describe broader social change?

We also explore what Marxism is today, how it may have evolved beyond its original economic focus and whether its historical outcomes are a failure of implementation or something inherent to the ideology itself.

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Liz Truss, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, joins me to discuss what really happened during her time in office and why she believes the UK is in long-term economic and political decline.

We talk about the limits of political power, the role of institutions like the Bank of England, and why she argues that meaningful change is harder than voters realise. Liz also reflects on why she was removed from office and whether Britain can reverse its current trajectory.

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Scott Horton is the director of Antiwar.com and one of the most outspoken critics of US foreign policy.

In this episode, Scott explains how war connects directly to the things people feel every day - rising prices, falling purchasing power, growing debt and a system that never seems to improve no matter who is in charge.

We also discuss how governments fund wars, why debt keeps expanding, how inflation quietly shifts the cost onto ordinary people and the incentives that keep the cycle going. Lastly, Scott explains the role of media, the relationship between...

Scott Horton is the director of Antiwar.com and one of the most outspoken critics of US foreign policy.

In this episode, Scott explains how war connects directly to the things people feel every day - rising prices, falling purchasing power, growing debt and a system that never seems to improve no matter who is in charge.

We also discuss how governments fund wars, why debt keeps expanding, how inflation quietly shifts the cost onto ordinary people and the incentives that keep the cycle going. Lastly, Scott explains the role of media, the relationship between...

Are we heading for a mathematical market crash or has the system just been perfectly designed to extract your wealth? In this episode, I sit down with macro-strategist Mike Green to discuss the hidden plumbing of the global economy. Mike explains why the stock market is no longer tied to reality, how the rise of passive index funds has created a dangerous "flow inelastic trap" and why the modern retirement system is forcing a massive generational wealth crisis.

Mike also explains the brutal economic realities of the Middle East conflict, how monopolies have secretly captured free-market capitalism...

Why does everything feel more expensive even when the economy is supposedly "growing"? The truth is, the financial system isn't broken - it's functioning exactly as it was designed to

In this episode, macroeconomist and author Lyn Alden joins the show to discuss the mechanical reality of the fiat ledger and the global debt trap.

We explore how the system forces a silent extraction of wealth from the working class to subsidise sovereign debt, why we are re-entering a 1940s-style era of financial repression, and how corporations (like Coca-Cola) use debt to actively "short" the...

Former Apple employee, Mark Suman explains why Apple refused to allow ChatGPT internally and what that reveals about how AI systems are learning how we think.

Most people are now using AI every day - for work, personal decisions, even private conversations. But as Mark explains, the more we share, the more these systems begin to model our behaviour, often understanding our thinking patterns better than we do ourselves.

This raises a deeper question: what happens when intelligence is centralised, and systems can influence not just what we do, but how we think?

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Are we witnessing the managed decay of Western democracy, or a civilisational shift that we can still reverse?

I sit down with academic and author Matt Goodwin and discuss the survival of the West. Matt warns that unprecedented demographic transformation and a radicalised, disconnected elite are fundamentally dismantling our national identity.

We also discuss institutional rot, the effectiveness of Reform UK, the danger of letting old political insiders hijack the populist uprising, and whether taking a "sledgehammer to the state" is the only way out.

In this episode:

The Institutional Rot...

Are we witnessing the organic collapse of the Western world, or is the current global chaos a highly engineered script?

Simon Dixon returns to map out the hidden architecture of global power. He breaks down how the Financial, Military, and Technical Industrial Complexes are actively managing a transition to a multipolar world. From the "transitional theater" of the Middle East to the weaponization of global debt, Simon explains how elites are using chaos to asset-strip the West and consolidate their wealth in a K-shaped economy.

We also discuss the pivot to the real pandemic: the...

The political system appears broken but is functioning exactly as it was designed to - ensuring the ruling class never loses power.

Author and academic Neema Parvini joins the podcast to discuss the mechanics of elite control. We discuss the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" - the reality that all political parties, no matter how radical they start, eventually conform to the establishment . Neema also explains the structural advantages the elites use to maintain their monopoly on power.

We explore why "anti-establishment" figures like Donald Trump and the leaders of Reform UK have ultimately sold out...

The "Net Zero" transition is built on a mathematical impossibility. The UK power grid currently relies on just over one hour of battery backup, and the political consensus is pushing us closer to civilisational collapse.

Nuclear chemist and author Tim Gregory explains why the current agenda to replace fossil fuels entirely with wind and solar is a dangerous illusion. He breaks down the harsh realities of our energy infrastructure: why rolling blackouts are a genuine threat , how the government is paralyzed by absurd regulations , and why the ultimate "green" scam is chopping down North American forests to...

The engineers building Artificial Intelligence do not actually know how it works. They are not programming it; they are "growing" it and they have no idea what it will do next.

Connor Leahy is an AI researcher and former builder of Large Language Models. In this interview we discuss Silicon Valley, where he reveals the reality inside the top tech labs: the "alignment problem" being unsolved, the race for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) accelerating and the people in charge are flying completely blind.

We discuss the chaotic trajectory of superintelligence, the corruption of the tech...

The war in the Middle East is usually discussed as a military conflict. In this interview, Firas Modad argues the real consequences are far wider.

We discuss how escalation could spread through energy markets, shipping lanes and commodity prices - and why the economic effects of war may hit far beyond the battlefield.

Firas also explains how political incentives, donor networks and foreign policy alignments shape decisions in Washington, and why the incentives behind modern wars often look very different from the public narrative.

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Governments aren't going to pay this debt down in real terms. More likely, they pay it back in weaker money.

Luke Gromen argues we're already deep into a sovereign debt cycle - and that AI could speed up the moment it really starts to crack.

In this interview we discuss how the system works: leverage, entitlements, interest costs, bond markets - and what happens when deflation hits an economy that depends on inflation to stay upright.

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Western Civilisation is collapsing, and the exits are being bricked up.

In this episode, Balaji Srinivasan (Author, The Network State) delivers a clear warning: the US and UK are approaching a sovereign debt default, and the "Berlin Wall" of capital controls is coming to trap your wealth inside.

We discuss why "staying is surrendering," the rise of the "Grey Tribe" (Tech) against the State, and his 3-step survival guide for the middle class: Liquidate, Emigrate, Accelerate.

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In this episode, Laila Cunningham discusses London's demographic change, mass immigration, housing failure and whether the capital is becoming a stress test for Britain.

We discuss debt, inflation, generational decline, state expansion, and why productivity gains from technology aren't improving living standards. We also explore AI, education reform, automation, housing regulation and whether the UK is prepared for technological acceleration.

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In this episode, Curtis Yarvin argues that modern democracies may lack clear sovereignty and that technological acceleration and sovereign debt are exposing that weakness.

We discuss AI as a force multiplier, bureaucratic continuity, legitimacy, regime structure and the limits of procedural governance.

We also explore fiscal exhaustion, debt sustainability, and whether a system that cannot make decisive changes can survive compounding crises.

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In this episode, Kathryn Porter explains why energy is civilisation and how he UK grid may be heading toward rationing and rolling blackouts within the next decade.

We discuss aging gas power stations, unrealistic utilisation assumptions, weak grid conditions, North Sea decline and why no single institution is accountable for security of supply.

We also cover what a blackout would actually look like, why nuclear build timelines matter, and how regulation and governance failures are compounding energy risk.

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In this episode, Jeff Booth explains why the natural state of a free market is deflationary and why a debt-based monetary system can't allow it.

We discuss AI as an acceleration event: exponential productivity should make life cheaper, but the system has to create scarcity to keep debt serviceable.

We cover how inflation functions as hidden extraction, why regulation favours monopolies, why politics becomes a fight over who controls broken money and why AI will intensify centralisation, surveillance, and social conflict unless the monetary layer changes.

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In this PMQs episode, we discuss the claim that most white-collar work could be automated within 12-18 months, and what that actually means.

We talk through jobs, incentives, education, and AI safety - why companies can't slow down even if they want to, why schools may be preparing kids for a world that's disappearing, and why safety teams are warning about systems they're still accelerating.

If AI can do the productive work, what happens to status, money, and meaning? And if models are already showing deceptive behaviour in testing, who decides what "broadly safe" really...