Thinking Class
Thinking Class is a weekly long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, and the Western world.
Hosted by John Gillam, the show brings together historians, philosophers, theologians, economists, and public intellectuals for conversations that go beyond the news cycle by examining the deep roots of the West's present predicament and asking what genuine recovery might require.
Guests have included David Starkey, Lord Jonathan Sumption, Lord Nigel Biggar, Robert Tombs, Peter Hitchens, Lionel Shriver, Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Stock, Carl Trueman, and many others.
If you value serious conversation about Britain, the West, and the forces shaping our future, then this is the show for you.
New episodes every week.
Episodes
142 episodes
#143 - Auron MacIntyre - The West Has Already Become A Total State And Most People Inside It Have No Idea
Auron MacIntyre is the host of The Auron MacIntyre Show on Blaze TV and the author of The Total State. Auron previously taught high school before...
#142 - Nathan Pinkoski - France Sacrificed Free Speech To Keep The Peace, Britain Did The Same And Now Neither Has Either
Nathan 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 wri...
#141 - R.R. Reno - What Happens When The West’s Strong Gods Return And Find Nobody Home
R.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, I
#140 - Stephen Blackwood - The Man Who Built A University Because The West Forgot What Education Is For
Stephen 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&n...
#139 - Tom Ough & Calum Drysdale - How Britain Forgot How To Build And Why The Consequences Are Coming
Tom Ough is Senior Editor at UnHerd and author of The Anti-Catastrophe League. Calum Drysdale is an engineer and writer. Together they host Anglofuturism — a podcast exploring ambitious, outlandish, and remarkably achievable ideas to revitalise...
#138 - Ricardo Duchesne - The Greatness And Ruin Of Western Civilisation
Ricardo 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 yea...
#137 - Clement Knox - The American Founders Didn't Invent A New Civilisation But Defended An English One
Clement Knox is a writer and historian. He is the author of The Scramble for America: How the United States Conquered a Continent (William Collins, 2026), and writes at Past Notes on Substack.Two hundred and fifty years ago, the United S...
#136 - Katharine Birbalsingh - Why Britain Stopped Believing Children Need Discipline
Katharine Birbalsingh is the headmistress and founder of Michaela Community School in Wembley, and a former UK Social Mobility Commissioner.She built the most successful school in Britain from nothing — in one of London's poorest boroug...
#135 - Pierre d'Alancaisez - 'I Helped Build The Cult Of Contemporary Art And Then I Walked Away'
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
#134 - Frank Furedi - The West Is Crushing Democracy In The Name Of Defending It
Frank 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 Ma...
#133 - Max Klinger - The British Establishment Re-Racialised Britain And Now It Can't Control What It Created
Max Klinger is a lawyer and political analyst. He writes at Max Klinger's Newsletter on Substack and his work has appeared in
#132 - Andrew Hussey - France Is Fracturing Along Ethnic And Religious Lines
Professor Andrew Hussey OBE is Dean of the University of London Institute in Paris and Director of the Centre for Post-Colonial Studies at th...
#131 - Gregory Clark - Why Everything The West Believes About Social Mobility Is Wrong
Professor Gregory Clark is a British-born economic historian at the University of California, Davis and holds a
#130 - Iain McGilchrist - The Industrialisation Of Man, The Loss Of Faith, And What The Western Mind Has Done To Itself
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, O...
#129 - William Clouston & Firas Modad - The Iran War Is Breaking The Global Economy And Britain Has No Plan
William Clouston is the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the United Kingdom and a member of the advisory board for Restore Britain. Fir...
#128 - Lord Tony Sewell - Life At The Bottom In Broken Britain - The White Working Class, The Road Man Culture, And The Collapse Of England
Lord Tony Sewell CBE is a British educational consultant, author, and life peer. Born in Brixton to Jamaican parents, he trained as a teacher and worked in some of London's most cha...
#127 - Jonathan Rose - Literacy Is At Record Lows But It Wasn't Always. What The British Working Class Built And How It Was Destroyed
Jonathan Rose is William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University in New Jersey. He edits the journal
#126 - Gary Gerstle - The Iran War Is Ending The Global Economy As We Know It & What Comes Next
Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge and the author of
#125 - Theodore Dalrymple & Rob Henderson - The Ideas That Claimed To Help Britain & America's Poor And Made Everything Worse
Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name of Dr. Anthony Daniels — physician, psychiatrist, and social diagnostician. He spent years working in the hospitals and prisons of Birmingham before his essays for
#124 - Michael Lind - Why Britain And America Keep Betraying Their Working Class
Michael Lind is a political theorist, historian, and one of America's most rigorous independent analysts of class, democracy, and political economy. He is a Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Af...
#123 - Carl Trueman - The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man. Now Something Darker Is Coming.
Dr. Carl R. Trueman is Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania and currently a visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. His most recent books are The Rise and Triumph of ...
#122 - Richard IV - Britain Stopped Giving Men Heroes And This Is What Fills The Vacuum
Richard IV is a writer, cultural commentator and men's mentor whose work has helped thousands of men in Britain and across the West understand what has gone wrong and what can still be recovered.In this episode of Thinking Class, John Gi...
#121 - Kathleen Stock - The West Is Offering Death As A Solution — Do Not Go Gentle
Kathleen Stock is a Contributing Editor to UnHerd, a philosopher, author of Material Girls and Do Not Go Gentle, and one of the most f...
#120 - Lord Nigel Biggar & Tirthankar Roy: Britain's Empire Was Not What You Were Taught — An Indian Historian Has The Evidence
For decades, the British Empire in India has been reduced to a simple moral claim: that it was an extractive, exploitative system which left only damage behind.But is that really the full story?In this episode of Thinking Clas...
#119 - John Waters - Ireland's Moral Revolution And The Crisis Of Authority
John Waters is an Irish journalist, author, and columnist known for his work with Hot Press, The Irish Times, and The Irish Independent. He has written on social and political issues, specialising in father's rights a...