Where Shall We Meet

On AI Filmmaking with Xavier Collins

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2372295/fan_mail/new] Welcome to the where shall we meet podcast. Our guest this week is Xavier Collins who is the CEO and Co-founder of Wonder Studios, an AI-native creative studio redefining how film, advertising, and music video content is made. Based in London, Xavier founded Wonder alongside CCO Justin Hackney with a clear thesis: that the most valuable creative work in the AI era lives at the intersection of human taste and intelligent production — what the studio calls “crafting jewelry from AI gold.” Wonder has raised $15M from investors including LocalGlobe and Blackbird, with angels from ElevenLabs, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind — and is building toward becoming the A24 of the AI generation. Before Wonder, Xavier held senior roles scaling some of the world’s fastest-growing consumer platforms, including Uber and Deliveroo. We talk about: * Who is the maker when we use AI? * Does what we value change when things don’t require effort? * Is the box office truly reflective of what care about? * Will AI tools empower the unskilled? * How will we adjust to fakery? * Is Inga Rose a watershed moment? * Will artisanal always resonate more AI? * Can AI create novelty? Let’s wonder! Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz [https://www.whereshallwemeet.xyz/] Twitter: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.twitter.com/whrshallwemeet] Instagram: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.instagram.com/whrshallwemeet]

On Traversal with Maria Popova

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2372295/fan_mail/new] Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. This is the first time we have a returning guest. We talk about Maria Popova’s new book Traversal, which to be honest defies summary. Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz [https://www.whereshallwemeet.xyz/] Twitter: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.twitter.com/whrshallwemeet] Instagram: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.instagram.com/whrshallwemeet]

On Embodied Brains with Nick Potter

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2372295/fan_mail/new] Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is Nick Potter, who is a consultant Osteopath at King Edward the VII hospital, in London. He researches “Bendy Bodies, Bendy Brains”: studying the relationship between hypermobility, ADHD, anxiety, and nervous-system regulation He is the author of The Meaning of Pain: A Radical New Approach to Overcoming Chronic Pain, which has been translated into several languages. His book explores how modern stress, biology, behaviour and breathing can interact with pain. In the early 2000’s, Nick worked in Paris with Alain Prost’s team doctor for The Institut Biomedical Sports et Vie. There he conducted intensive assessments of Formula 1 drivers and their environments, going on to be a Human Performance Advisor to Jaguar F1. From the findings they made, particularly in sleep and stress medicine, the concept of the ‘Corporate Athlete’ was formulated, which Nick presented at INSEAD Business School. Through his links with Brevan Howard he has worked with John Coats and Dr. Danny Kahneman to study stress responses universal to us all and which are independent of personality type. Nick knows, through personal experience of a spinal injury, what pain is all about. Through applying his principles he is now pain-free. We talk about:  * How Descartes was wrong - it should be a synergy of mind and body * Captain Tom and how motion is lotion * Do we really move less now than before * The importance of dancing * Is Asthma a stress response * How keeping healthy can cost nothing * Keeping traders zen * The practice of interoception * Is anger unaddressed fear Let’s move! Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz [https://www.whereshallwemeet.xyz/] Twitter: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.twitter.com/whrshallwemeet] Instagram: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.instagram.com/whrshallwemeet]

On Fashion Science with Amanda Parkes

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2372295/fan_mail/new] Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest today is Dr Amanda Parkes. Amanda calls herself a fashion scientist - she has a PhD from the MIT Media Lab, where her research bridged computer science and material science, and dual Stanford degrees in mechanical engineering and art history. She has spent fifteen years trying to answer a deceptively simple question: what if we rebuilt the material world around nature's logic instead of against it? That question has taken her from algae biofuels to 3D printed couture, from developing science exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Science Museum here in London to running R&D at Pangaia, the company she describes as a material science company masquerading as a fashion brand. There she turned wildflowers into jacket insulation, Himalayan nettle into denim, and carbon dioxide pulled from the air to make sunglasses. She is now CTO at Mothership Materials, where she has gone even deeper - extracting the building blocks of biology from food waste to feed the next generation of bio-manufacturers. We talk about: * Fashion as a material science * Designing clothing as part of a biological cycle * High-tech Naturalism * How algae can transform into clothing dye * Bio fabrication * Humans are good at building not at breaking down * Using carbon air pollution to make ink * How banana skin can become a dress Let’s get dressed! Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz [https://www.whereshallwemeet.xyz/] Twitter: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.twitter.com/whrshallwemeet] Instagram: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.instagram.com/whrshallwemeet]

On Trust with Jimmy Wales

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2372295/fan_mail/new] Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is Jimmy Wales. He is an internet entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that launched in 2001, creating a radically collaborative model that allows anyone to contribute to and edit what has become the world’s largest free encyclopedia. Born in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1966, Wales studied finance before working in Chicago as a trader. Beyond Wikipedia itself, Wales also founded the Wikimedia Foundation in 2003, the nonprofit organization that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects, and later co-founded Wikia, now known as Fandom, a commercial wiki platform built around fan communities. Over the years, he has become both an advocate and a symbol of the broader idea that knowledge can be created collaboratively and made freely accessible at global scale. His role has often been less that of a traditional executive and more that of a public steward for a radically open model of information. Wikipedia is not just a website; it is a living experiment in whether strangers can cooperate, disagree, revise one another, and still produce something of enormous public value. That question of trust is central to his 2025 book The Seven Rules of Trust, in which he reflects on how trust can be built, and sustained in institutions and communities. We talk about: * His seven rules of trust * Trusting people to contribute wisely * The mechanics of Wikipedia * How a crisis lead to an innovation * News shouldn’t be entertainment * How collective knowledge negotiates truth * Can we find consensus as a society * Crisis of trust in politics Let’s search! Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz [https://www.whereshallwemeet.xyz/] Twitter: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.twitter.com/whrshallwemeet] Instagram: @whrshallwemeet [https://www.instagram.com/whrshallwemeet]