<![CDATA[Thinking Class]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KAgT!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb27251d9-c6d2-47c4-ab2a-bea7dcb94182_961x961.pngThinking Classhttps://thinkingclass.substack.comSubstackWed, 04 Nov 2026 12:50:24 GMT<![CDATA[The British State Is Not Broken And The System Is Working Exactly As It Was Designed- David McGrogan | Thinking Class #151 ]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-british-state-is-not-broken-ithttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-british-state-is-not-broken-itThu, 29 Oct 2026 15:01:53 GMT is a legal scholar at Northumbria University and the author of the Substack .

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• Why the intelligentsia wanted to show mercy to the most treasonous man in British history

• Rebecca West and the moral vocabulary Britain abandoned

• Policing by consent becoming policing by negotiation — and why nobody trusts the police

• The shoplifter who comes every day — and why calling the police is a punchline

• Bukele, Napoleon, and the ancient Greek cycle of democratic collapse

• The Empire of Diversity — why Hobbes explains what is happening

• Why Jonathan Sumption is wrong — and why no free society on earth has survived this level of division

• Britishness vs Englishness — and what needs to be said that nobody will say

• What living in Japan taught him about the state, morality, and the adults who stopped policing themselves

Sponsored by Aquinas Tuition: https://aquinastuition.co.uk/

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Register your interest for the Albion Institute.

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

▶ YouTube

✍ Substack

🎧 Spotify

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New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

]]><![CDATA[How Australia Became A Warning For Every Western Democracy - Bella D’Abrera | Thinking Class #150]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-state-wants-your-children-and-0c2https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-state-wants-your-children-and-0c2Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:00:52 GMTBella d’Abrera is the former Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Programme at the Institute of Public Affairs in Australia and the author of Mindless.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• How Paulo Freire conquered every teachers’ college in the Anglosphere
• The deliberate destruction of the humanities — Shakespeare removed, grievance installed
• Geoffrey Blainey — death threats for questioning immigration
• The state of Australia — demographic transformation and national mythology
• Why the capture of education is a project, not a failure
• What recovery actually requires — at the level of a parent, not a policy paper
• Thomas Sowell on the political bigotry of the left

Sponsored by Aquinas Tuition: https://aquinastuition.co.uk/

Watch The Call of England:


Register your interest for the Albion Institute: https://albioninstitute.org

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

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]]><![CDATA[The West Taught The World Freedom And Forgot Why It Mattered - Marie Kawthar Daouda | Thinking Class #149]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/they-told-her-she-was-a-victim-ofhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/they-told-her-she-was-a-victim-ofThu, 15 Oct 2026 14:02:48 GMT

is a French-Moroccan scholar at the University of Oxford and the author of Not Your Victim.

In this conversation we think out loud about:

  • Why a French-Moroccan Oxford scholar wrote a love letter to British civilisation

  • MacIntyre and the question of story — what happens when a civilisation loses its narrative

  • The French Revolution as spiritual catastrophe and its influence on the modern university

  • Victimhood as cultural capital and what it does to the people it claims to liberate

  • The noble savage myth — Rousseau, permanent infancy, and the worst form of moral racism

  • Islamic aniconism and the unique curiosity of the European eye

  • Tolkien, Lewis, and the civilisational importance of loving home

  • The Oxford students of 1917 — and what this generation owes them

Find Marie’s work:

Related episodes:

Watch The Call of England:

Register for the Albion Institute: https://albioninstitute.org

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.
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]]><![CDATA[The Bruderhof Gave Up Everything The Modern World Tells You To Want And They Say They Are Happier Than You - Bernard Hibbs | Thinking Class #148]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/they-gave-up-everything-the-modernhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/they-gave-up-everything-the-modernThu, 08 Oct 2026 14:02:05 GMTBernard Hibbs is a member of the Bruderhof; an intentional Christian community of three hundred people living in East Sussex without money, without mortgages, and without personal possessions. Everything is held in common and if someone needs something, they ask and they receive it. The Bruderhof have lived this way for over a hundred years.

In this conversation we think out loud about:

  • How three hundred people actually live without money

  • The founding of the Bruderhof in nineteen-twenties Germany and its expulsion at gunpoint by the SS

  • What it means to make lifetime vows of membership

  • The consumer trap and whether we need everything the modern world tells us to want, and what we could gain if we turned away from it

  • If Christ-centeredness is the only thing that can hold a community like this together

  • Whether ordinary families can learn anything from the Bruderhof without joining one

Watch the show on YouTube:

Related:

  • Luke Dysinger — The Last Time Western Civilisation Collapsed One Institution Saved Everything:

  • — They Were Trained By The Best In British Theatre:

Watch The Call of England:

Register your interest for the Albion Institute: https://albioninstitute.org

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

Hosted by John Gillam.
▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
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New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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]]><![CDATA[The Last Time Western Civilisation Collapsed One Institution Saved Everything And It Did It By Accident - Fr. Luke Dysinger | Thinking Class #147]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-last-time-western-civilisationhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-last-time-western-civilisationThu, 01 Oct 2026 14:02:52 GMTFather Luke Dysinger is a Benedictine monk of Saint Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, California. He trained as a physician, practised family medicine, and at the age of 27 walked away from it all because he fell in love with a way of life centred on prayer. He has lived in the monastery ever since. He studied at the Benedictine House of Studies at Oxford, holds a doctorate in patristic theology, and is now a professor of theology and a bioethicist.

In this conversation we think out loud about:

  • Why a trained physician walked away from medicine to become a monk

  • The three Benedictine vows - stability, obedience, and conversion of life - and why they produce institutional coherence that no modern organisation can replicate

  • How the monasteries saved Western civilisation by accident — not by copying manuscripts but by praying them

  • What England lost when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries — and what survived in Evensong

  • Why secular institutions trying to save civilisation without prayer will always feel hollow

  • The Benedict Option — can families and communities outside the monastery build something that lasts?

  • The foundational question monastic prayer forces you to answer: do you believe you are loved by God?

  • What a young man who knows something has gone deeply wrong should do with his life.

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


- The Base — They Were Trained By The Best In British Theatre:

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



Watch The Call of England:

Register your interest for the Albion Institute: https://albioninstitute.org

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.

]]><![CDATA[They Were Trained To Perform The Greatest Works In Western Civilisation. Now They Say The Whole Thing Has Been Captured By Cowards And Liars - Oliver Bennett & Morgan Watkins | Thinking Class #145]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/they-were-trained-by-the-best-inhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/they-were-trained-by-the-best-inThu, 17 Sep 2026 14:01:35 GMTOliver Bennett and Morgan Watkins are the co-founders of The Base and RADA-trained actors with nearly twenty years of experience in British film, television, and theatre.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

  • What The Base is and why it exists

  • The campification of British theatre and the shame around the Western canon

  • The Edinburgh Fringe as a monument to progressive capture and why the RSC is rehearsing a lesbian Othello set against the climate crisis

  • Meeting Shakespeare on his own terms (the third position beyond progressive deconstruction and conservative nostalgia)

  • The working men’s club with a library, what the working class built and what was taken from them

  • Why not a single pro-Brexit play was produced in a country that voted 52% to leave

  • Why today’s rebels know nothing about the past they claim to be rebelling against

  • Whether counter-institutions like The Base can survive without funding

  • The return of masculinity and the need for men to stand up

Find The Base:

Related:

Watch The Call of England:

Albion Institute: albioninstitute.org

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

]]><![CDATA[Britain Has Become An Island Of Strangers And You’re Not Allowed To Say So - Ben Jones | Thinking Class #144]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/britain-has-become-an-island-of-strangershttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/britain-has-become-an-island-of-strangersThu, 10 Sep 2026 14:03:39 GMTDr Ben Jones is the Director of Case Management at the Free Speech Union and author of Island of Strangers: Diversity, Decline & Free Speech In Crisis

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

  • When saying “it’s a free country” died in Britain and what replaced it

  • 6,000 people punished for speaking in five years, and what the Free Speech Union’s caseload reveals about modern Britain

  • How hyperdiversity and the decline of Christianity have destroyed the shared moral universe

  • Why the ethno-nationalist vs civic-nationalist debate is irrelevant — both will be swept away by events

  • Britain’s pre-revolutionary state: the last time this happened, we executed a king

  • Why Islam poses a distinct challenge that cannot be reconciled with Western liberal values

  • The ruling class has seceded from the nation and treats the population as an obstacle

  • The psychological toll of cultural dispossession and why he now has to spell “Ben Jones”

  • The state is sponsoring an invasion inflicted primarily on women and girls, which has created a crisis of legitimacy

  • Why 2029 may be the last chance to turn this around

Find Ben Jones:

Related episodes:

  • Nathan Pinkoski — France Sacrificed Free Speech To Keep The Peace:

  • Auron MacIntyre — The West Has Already Become A Total State:

  • R.R. Reno — What Happens When The West’s Strong Gods Return:

  • Lionel Shriver — Immigration, Demography, And Belonging:

Watch The Call of England:

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
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New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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]]><![CDATA[The West Has Already Become A Total State And Most People Inside It Have No Idea - Auron MacIntyre | Thinking Class #143]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-west-has-already-become-a-totalhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-west-has-already-become-a-totalThu, 03 Sep 2026 14:01:32 GMT is the host of The Auron MacIntyre Show on Blaze TV and the author of . 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 commissar

  • How bureaucracies automatically recognise one another as authoritative and create a self-reinforcing system

  • Why it’s not a state-run media but a media-run state and that distinction changes everything

  • Why Britain is further along the path to total control than any country in the West

  • The First Amendment and American federalism as defence mechanisms and whether they will hold

  • Why Texas told the federal government no and the federal government backed down

  • Why the system doesn’t need boxcars it just closes your bank account

  • Why constitutions don’t make people, people make constitutions and what happens when you change the people

  • John Adams at Edgehill: the English foundations of American liberty

  • R.R. Reno’s strong gods: will they return, and whose gods will they be?

  • Why the right cannot govern when it wins and what formation institutions must be built

Watch the episode on YouTube:

Share

Find Auron MacIntyre:

Sponsored by Aquinas Tuition - bespoke academic tutoring for children who deserve to be stretched, not managed.

Related:

Watch The Call of England:

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
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New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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]]><![CDATA[France Sacrificed Free Speech To Keep The Peace. Britain Did The Same. Now Neither Has Either - Nathan Pinkoski | Thinking Class #142]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/france-sacrificed-free-speech-tohttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/france-sacrificed-free-speech-toThu, 27 Aug 2026 14:02:17 GMTNathan 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 .

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:

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:

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

]]><![CDATA[What Happens When The West's Strong Gods Return And Find Nobody Home - R.R. Reno | Thinking Class #141]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-the-wests-stronghttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-the-wests-strongThu, 20 Aug 2026 14:03:11 GMTR.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 — 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

]]><![CDATA[The Man Who Built A University Because The West Forgot What Education Is For - Stephen Blackwood | Thinking Class #140]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-man-who-built-a-university-becausehttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-man-who-built-a-university-becauseThu, 13 Aug 2026 14:00:49 GMTStephen 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 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:

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

]]><![CDATA[The Future Should Feel Like Home - Tom Ough & Calum Drysdale | Thinking Class #139]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-future-should-feel-like-home-d67https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-future-should-feel-like-home-d67Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:34:01 GMT is Senior Editor at UnHerd and author of The Anti-Catastrophe League. is a historian and writer. Together they host the , in which they explore ambitious, outlandish, and remarkably achievable ideas to revitalise Britain from their thatched space station.

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.

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]]><![CDATA[The Greatness And Ruin Of Western Civilisation - Ricardo Duchesne | Thinking Class #138]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/ricardo-duchesne-the-greatness-andhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/ricardo-duchesne-the-greatness-andThu, 30 Jul 2026 14:03:29 GMTRicardo 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:

— 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:


— 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.

]]><![CDATA[America Was Never Not An Empire. It Just Won So Completely It Forgot - Clement Knox | Thinking Class #137]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/america-was-never-not-an-empire-ithttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/america-was-never-not-an-empire-itThu, 23 Jul 2026 14:01:27 GMTTwo 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. This conversation asks how — and who actually did it, because the people who crossed the Appalachians, fought the wars, and settled the frontier were not a random sample of humanity. They were the descendants of specific English and British folkways, and their story tells us a great deal about the inheritance they carried across the ocean.

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.

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New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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]]><![CDATA[The Call of England | Episode 2: The Psalm & The Furnace]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/call-of-england-episode-2-the-psalmhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/call-of-england-episode-2-the-psalmWed, 22 Jul 2026 14:01:27 GMTEngland faces a civilisational predicament of historic proportions, and a part of the reason is because we have forgotten our own history or been made to forget it.

A century ago, H.V. Morton drove east out of London in search of England and he could find it everywhere. I drove the same road and found that the country has been transformed almost beyond recognition, whether demographically, spiritually, architecturally, and in ways that few nations, indeed, perhaps none, in history have experienced.

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:

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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

]]><![CDATA[She Built Britain's Best School By Believing Children Are Born Bad - Katharine Birbalsingh | Thinking Class #136]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/katharine-birbalsingh-thinking-classhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/katharine-birbalsingh-thinking-classThu, 16 Jul 2026 15:17:01 GMTShe 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.

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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

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]]><![CDATA[How The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers - Pierre d'Alancaisez | Thinking Class #135]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/how-the-custodians-of-beauty-becamehttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/how-the-custodians-of-beauty-becameThu, 09 Jul 2026 14:01:59 GMTThere are sync issues on the original Substack video and this cannot be replaced, therefore please watch on YouTube here:

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 :

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

]]><![CDATA[The West Is Crushing Democracy In The Name Of Defending It - Frank Furedi | Thinking Class #134]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-west-is-crushing-democracy-inhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/the-west-is-crushing-democracy-inThu, 02 Jul 2026 14:01:37 GMT 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 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.

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Follow Frank’s work:

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

]]><![CDATA[They Re-Racialised Britain. Now They Can't Control What They Created - Max Klinger | Thinking Class #133]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/they-re-racialised-britain-now-theyhttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/they-re-racialised-britain-now-theyThu, 25 Jun 2026 14:02:20 GMTBritain in 2026 is a country in which a Sudanese asylum seeker can attempt to behead a man in Belfast and the establishment finds no evidence of terrorism while a man who reads Douglas Murray can be referred to Prevent. linger is a lawyer and political analyst. He writes at on Substack and his work has appeared in The Spectator. In this conversation we discuss the re-racialisation of British public life, the real-life impact of DEI, the Islamisation of Britain, the future of British Jews, and the emergence of English national identity.

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:

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

]]><![CDATA[France Is Fracturing Along Ethnic And Religious Lines. Britain Is Next - Andrew Hussey | Thinking Class #132]]>https://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/france-is-fracturing-along-ethnichttps://thinkingclass.substack.com/p/france-is-fracturing-along-ethnicThu, 18 Jun 2026 14:02:37 GMTProfessor 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 OBE for services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and France. He writes for the Observer, the Guardian, and the New Statesman. His forthcoming book, The White In-Between Sea, explores the real life of the South of France from Corsica to the Spanish border.

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



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