The Peter McCormack Show

Why does the world feel more dangerous at a time of extraordinary technological progress? Gideon Rachman joins me to discuss his book, War Is Interested in You, and the return of leaders driven by territory, personal glory and their place in history. We explore Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine, the pressures on NATO, Trump’s decisions over Iran and how miscalculation could turn regional conflicts into something much bigger.

Gideon explains why the risk of a wider war has risen, while arguing that World War III is neither inevitable nor highly likely. We also discuss nuclear deterrence, the cost of conflict for ordinary people, Britain’s weak growth, rising taxes and debt and what AI could mean for jobs and the next generation.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Why Aren't We Living In The Best Of Times?
00:02:53 - All Prime Ministers Eventually Go Mad
00:04:44 - Why It Gets Dangerous To Step Down
00:06:09 - The Table, The Generals And The Grovelling
00:09:43 - How Bad Policy Actually Happens
00:12:03 - We're Being Told To Prep
00:14:21 - Closer To World War Three Than Ever
00:18:34 - Why Would We Even Get Involved?
00:20:45 - Is Any Of This In Russia's Interest?
00:24:53 - Is There A Path To Peace?
00:29:24 - War By Accident
00:32:26 - What Would Actually Make It A World War?
00:34:33 - Every War Starts With A Miscalculation
00:38:55 - Would You Really Fire Back?
00:41:21 - The Letters Of Last Resort
00:43:48 - The Night They Thought Russia Would Go Nuclear
00:50:20 - What Is The Logic Of The Iran War?
00:56:20 - They're Briefing Congress On The Next Strike
01:02:09 - There Is Just No Money
01:10:25 - We Are Handing Our Children The Bill

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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
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CONNECT WITH GIDEON RACHMAN
› War Is Interested In You – https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/475001/war-is-interested-in-you-by-rachman-gideon/9781529969825
› Financial Times – https://www.ft.com/gideon-rachman
› The Rachman Review – https://www.ft.com/rachman-review

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Venice AI – https://venice.ai/lp/mccormack/nov4 – Code PT15
› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is human consciousness a biological necessity, or merely a controlled hallucination designed to help us coordinate and survive?
In this episode of The Peter McCormack Show, I sit down with Professor Karl Friston, the world’s most cited neuroscientist, to interrogate the fundamental architecture of the mind, the true nature of reality, and what happens when artificial intelligence collides with human development.

From working alongside modern AI pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis to developing the foundational theories of how the brain navigates uncertainty, Friston gives a stark warning: while today’s large language models mimic thought, they lack true agency, authentic curiosity, and an understanding of consequences. More critically, by outsourcing knowledge retrieval and cognitive friction to algorithms, we risk stunting the neurodevelopment of the next generation - eroding social cues, theory of mind, and the very foundation of human empathy.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - It's All An Illusion
00:06:48 - How Much We Don't Know About The Brain
00:11:07 - Nobody Can Define Intelligence
00:16:03 - Do We Actually Have Free Will?
00:18:28 - Why Two People See It Differently
00:24:27 - Are Animals Self-Aware?
00:29:59 - True Alignment Would Need Suffering
00:34:42 - You Need A Self To Understand Others
00:37:15 - Where Morality Comes From
00:40:05 - Why Empathy Weakens With Distance
00:44:41 - We Are Not Trying To Live Longer
00:49:56 - Can We Solve Alignment?
00:56:34 - Would Synthesis Make Us Less Unique?
01:01:44 - Could A Machine Have Rights?
01:03:56 - Outsourcing Our Mortality
01:09:35 - Nobody Knows Where To Look
01:14:00 - Knowledge Frozen In Time
01:18:22 - Have We Paused Human Development?
01:22:13 - It Can Never Be Curious
01:24:05 - Why Do You Send Your Children To School?

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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact
› Email – me@petermccormack.com
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CONNECT WITH KARL FRISTON
› Selected Papers – https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/
› VERSES AI – https://www.verses.ai/

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter
› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have smartphones been a terrible mistake? Are social media and artificial intelligence changing the way our children think, learn and develop? And what happens to humanity when technology removes the need to struggle, imagine and think for ourselves? In this episode Baroness Susan Greenfield, Oxford neuroscientist and member of the House of Lords, explains the impact of digital technology on the human brain. We discuss smartphone addiction, declining attention, the mental health of young people, the importance of resilience, and whether our education system is preparing children for a future that no longer exists.

We also explore what makes us human, the pursuit of happiness, the importance of imagination, and how to build a better world for the next generation. Susan also shares her deeply personal experience of her mother's Alzheimer's disease and the experimental research she is leading into early diagnosis and potential treatments. Finally, they confront political polarisation, the failings of modern democracy and the responsibilities we have to future generations. At its heart, this is a conversation about whether technological progress is genuinely improving our lives, or whether we're sacrificing the very things that make life worth living.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - They Chose Electric Shocks Instead
00:03:22 - Struggle Shaped Us
00:05:55 - The Pony She Had To Wait For
00:11:23 - Was The Smartphone A Mistake?
00:15:48 - Outsourcing Your Thoughts
00:19:45 - Deliberately Addictive
00:20:59 - Should AI Images Be Labelled?
00:26:20 - The Girl Who Used AI To Get An A
00:29:20 - Educating For A World That Doesn't Exist
00:31:48 - Wine, Women And Song
00:37:04 - Where The Partying Ended
00:40:29 - Play, Creativity And The Phone
00:41:32 - The Mental Health Crisis
00:46:25 - If I Ruled The World
00:50:35 - You Need Linear Activities
00:57:15 - AI Has To Be A Tool
01:05:46 - How You Build An Out-Group
01:07:44 - The Alzheimer's Work
01:17:35 - Three To Five Years
01:27:26 - Our Debt Matters More Than Your Education

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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact
› Email – me@petermccormack.com
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› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH SUSAN GREENFIELD
› Website – https://susangreenfield.com/
› Neuro-Bio – https://www.neuro-bio.com/
› Mind Change – https://susangreenfield.com/books/

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Quo – https://quo.com/pete
› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter
› Venice AI – https://venice.ai/lp/mccormack/oct30

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why does working harder no longer feel like getting ahead? Frank Wright returns to discuss Britain’s debt-driven economy, inflation and the squeeze on living standards. We explore his argument that financial power has become detached from productive wealth, while households face rising costs and the next generation inherits the bill.

We discuss central banking, the offshoring of industry, housing costs and student debt, before turning to what rebuilding Britain would involve: cheaper energy, domestic production, skilled work and a long-term national strategy.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Everything That Destroys You Is A Business Model
00:01:14 - Migration As An Industry
00:11:21 - Debt Servitude
00:13:35 - The Creation Of The Federal Reserve
00:19:19 - Just A Podcaster And A Banjo Player
00:25:00 - A Curated, Locked Discourse
00:28:53 - Replacing Real Wealth With Debt
00:35:54 - What Happened To Castle Road
00:38:56 - The Post His Son Showed Him
00:42:23 - A Society That Lives On Debt
00:45:01 - Can We Vote Our Way Out?
00:51:07 - A Declaration Of Independence Moment?
00:54:18 - Where Is The Money Actually Going?
00:57:03 - Work Is Joyless
01:07:20 - The Coming Financial Crisis
01:09:35 - There Is No First Class Anymore
01:19:14 - The Family Is The Engine
01:39:17 - I Can't Promise My Children What I Had
01:48:39 - The Restaurant Test
01:52:55 - Could You Be Wrong?

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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact
› Email – me@petermccormack.com
› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/
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CONNECT WITH FRANK WRIGHT
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/frankwrighter

SPONSORS
› Venice AI – https://venice.ai/lp/mccormack/oct27

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sir David Spiegelhalter is one of the world’s leading statisticians, Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University and author of The Art of Uncertainty. Having served on public inquiries into mass murder (Harold Shipman) and systemic healthcare failures, he has spent decades analysing how data is used - and misused - in society.

In this episode, Sir David breaks down the mechanics of numerical manipulation in media, why "objective truth" is a flawed concept and how we can protect ourselves from confirmation bias.

We discuss:
•⁠ ⁠Why you should immediately distrust any statistic you hear in the news.
•⁠ ⁠⁠How mathematical algorithms helped catch Britain’s most prolific serial killer.
•⁠ ⁠⁠How simple linguistic tricks make identical statistics sound terrifying or reassuring.
•⁠ ⁠⁠The breakdown of public trust during COVID-19 and the error of simplistic messaging.
•⁠ ⁠⁠"Hedgehogs vs. Foxes": The mental framework that separates terrible forecasters from super-forecasters.
•⁠ ⁠⁠The rise of AI "black boxes" in healthcare, weather, and business forecasting.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - I Can Make Any Number Look Frightening
00:03:08 - The System That Could Have Caught Shipman
00:06:45 - Can You Mislead People With The Truth?
00:09:54 - Your Own Bias Does The Work
00:15:33 - Sitting In The Middle Of The COVID Argument
00:17:52 - What The Public Got Wrong About Vaccines
00:19:37 - Safe And Effective Was The Wrong Message
00:20:56 - The Experiment On A Thousand People
00:25:00 - What The Data Says About Lockdowns
00:30:25 - The Government Threw Its Weight Around
00:31:02 - I Cannot Forgive The Fear Mongering
00:34:08 - Children Have Never Been Safer
00:36:28 - Trustworthy, Not Trusted
00:37:34 - How The Productivity Figures Went Wrong
00:41:28 - Predicting The Crowd At Real Bedford
00:48:20 - Will AI Replace Statisticians?
00:50:03 - Musk's 20% Chance
01:01:39 - The Model That Predicts When You Die
01:05:05 - What AI Did To Mathematicians
01:15:00 - Hedgehogs And Foxes

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CONTACT PETE
› Website – http://petermccormack.com
› Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact
› Email – me@petermccormack.com
› Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mccormack555/
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/

CONNECT WITH DAVID SPIEGELHALTER
› Website – https://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~david/
› The Art of Uncertainty – https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/447230/the-art-of-uncertainty-by-spiegelhalter-david/9780241658628
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/d_spiegel

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Quo – https://quo.com/pete

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
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› Fountain: https://bit.ly/FountainPM
› YouTube: https://bit.ly/YouTube_PM
› Rumble: https://bit.ly/RumblePM

FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
› https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/
› https://x.com/curttayloruk/

EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
› https://x.com/ConorM04

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.