Sovereign Albion

How to scale cultural greatness, with Elijah

Here in Sovereign Albion, we are interested in exploring and scaling British greatness. So I wanted to speak with Elijah [https://x.com/eli1ah], 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 [https://www.instagram.com/butterzsound/]. 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 [https://velocitypress.uk/product/elijah-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 [https://a16z.com/its-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 [https://britishprogress.org/] for supporting the podcast, to Podcast House for production support, and Simon Panayi [http://simonpanayi.com] for original music. 00:00 British Cultural Greatness 01:23 Elijah's Journey 03:53 Grime Stories 07:19 UK Platforms and Cultural Sovereignty 10:29 Talent Spotting and Power Laws in Music 13:46 Building a Record Label in the Internet Era 16:07 Butterz and Creative Entrepreneurship 24:33 Change, Activism and Optimism 30:43 Arts Funding and Democratic Variance 31:59 Rent as the Creative Director 32:55 "But Does It Work at Scale?" 34:08 London Privilege 37:09 University, Philip Gould, Aspiration and AI 40:17 Build Without Permission 41:20 Who Is Making Interesting Work Today? (+ Why Fred Again is an Athlete) 46:40 Greatness in British Music 49:10 Reviving Patriotism 57:01 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 [https://www.sovereignalbion.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

How to find Albion, with Zakia Sewell

Zakia Sewell is a writer, broadcaster and DJ from London. She is the host of Dream Time [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00232vs] on BBC 6 Music and the author of Finding Albion [https://www.pagesofhackney.co.uk/webshop/product/finding-albion-myth-folklore-and-the-quest-for-a-hidden-britain/], 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 Albion 04:19 William Blake’s Albion 06:02 Stonehenge Pilgrimage 07:27 Unity at Sunrise 08:48 The Woo Woo Taboo 10:20 Beyond Twee Folk 11:09 Making Folk Accessible 12:18 Alternative Stories of Britain 14:40 Identity and Empire 19:25 Exploring British Greatness 21:42 Land and Right to Roam 28:06 Grime, and New Folk Cultures 30:54 Folk Revival and Social Media 41:19 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 [https://www.sovereignalbion.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

How to build a new AI paradigm, with Dan Akarca (CEO, Callosum)

Dan Akarca is Co-founder & CEO at Callosum [https://www.callosum.com/], 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 AI 04:38 Why One Big Model Fails 06:57 The Heterogeneous Compute Spectrum, from Datacentres to Edge Computing 11:54 Orchestrating Chips and Models 16:58 Supply, Demand and the Hardware Lottery 29:36 Value Beyond Chips 30:43 Bringing Chips to Market 35:50 Dynamic Compute Future 39:22 Funding and Roadmap 43:39 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 [https://www.sovereignalbion.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

How to invest in AI sovereignty, with Lawrence Lundy-Bryan (Cloudberry VC)

Lawrence Lundy-Bryan [https://substack.com/@stateofthefuture] is GP at Cloudberry [https://cloudberry.vc/], Europe’s first dedicated semiconductor fund. He also writes the State of the Future [https://stateofthefuture.substack.com/about] 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 ambition 00:00 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 [https://www.sovereignalbion.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Launching the Sovereign Albion podcast: How to Regulate British Nuclear, with John Fingleton & Mustafa Latif-Aramesh

Sovereign Albion [http://sovereignalbion.com/] 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 [http://gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-regulatory-taskforce]. 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 [https://britishprogress.org/] 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 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNRz1FbXEek], ©Sellafield Limited. * John Fingleton [https://x.com/JohnFingleton1] 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 [https://fingleton.com/]. * Mustafa Latif-Aramesh [https://www.google.com/search?q=Mustafa+Latif-Aramesh&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8] 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 Nuclear 01:00 Challenges in British Nuclear Development 04:02 Comparing Nuclear Costs: UK vs. South Korea 07:41 The Role of the State in Nuclear Projects 12:05 Future Technologies and Recommendations 16:18 Regulatory and Financial Incentives 28:20 Inside the Taskforce 32:56 Taskforce Member Roles and Expertise 34:53 Formation and Delays of the Taskforce 35:46 Reflections and Future Improvements 39:23 Is The Deep State Real? 45:11 Regulatory Bottlenecks and Political Economy 53:55 Compensation and Community Benefits 57:02 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 [https://www.sovereignalbion.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]