Inspire Us Podcast

Alex Dryden previously spent over a decade as a Global Investment Strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management and is now pursuing a PhD at SOAS as a macroeconomist and Research Fellow at the SOAS university in the Centre for Sustainable Finance, specialising in sovereign debt, financial markets and climate finance. He is a CFA charterholder and his research has been featured in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and CNBC.We had the absolute pleasure to speak with Alex about his move from Wall Street to academia, and explored topics including why he left JP Morgan for a PhD, how debt-for-nature swaps actually work, and why he's worried about the scale of debt behind the AI boom.He is incredibly passionate about his subject, a brilliant communicator and a natural storyteller - qualities of a teacher!Hope you enjoy!

Adam Habib is Director and Vice Chancellor of SOAS University of London. Born and raised in South Africa, he previously served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he led the university through the Fees Must Fall protests. He is the author of Rebels and Rage, which recounts that period, and a former political activist who was arrested during apartheid's 1986 state of emergency.We had the absolute pleasure to speak with Adam about his life and career, and explored topics including growing up under apartheid, being arrested and held in solitary confinement, being deported from the US, why he sat with protesting students for 36 hours before calling in the police, balancing institutional empathy with academic freedom, and how UK universities can survive their financial headwinds.Hope you enjoy!

Christopher Cramer is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at SOAS University of London, where he has taught for over twenty years. He is the author of Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing, joint winner of the Edgar Graham Prize, and co-launched the Development Leadership Dialogue at SOAS in 2023. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a former Vice-Chair of the Royal African Society.We had the absolute pleasure to speak with Christopher about his career in development and explored topics on why civil war is not a stupid thing, writing economic policy for the ANC after apartheid, whether inequality really causes conflict, the end of USAID, what made Ethiopia work, and why success creates its own conflict.Hope you enjoy!

Mark Drakeford served as First Minister of Wales and Leader of Welsh Labour from 2018 to 2024. Before entering politics he worked as a probation officer and social worker in Cardiff, went on to become Professor of Social Policy at Cardiff University, and served as health and social policy adviser to Welsh Ministers. He is currently Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Welsh Language.In this episode we sit down with Mark Drakeford for a genuinely wide ranging and candid conversation. He explains why he opposes the social media ban for under sixteens despite recognising the harms, and argues the government is targeting the wrong people entirely. He dismantles Elon Musk's free speech arguments and explains why he thinks they are designed to protect the powerful. He gives a firsthand account of what it was actually like governing Wales through Covid while Boris Johnson was in Downing Street, including a genuinely surprising revelation about how the UK government accidentally devolved pandemic powers without realising it.We also get into his critique of forty years of neoliberalism, why he believes it taught Britain to distrust itself, the deep roots of Welsh left wing identity, why English identity has become defensive and what a healthier version might look like, Ukraine and Brexit, and what he considers his biggest regret in politics.Subscribe to Youtube: www.youtube.com/@InspireUsPodcastListen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4WAeOo2e2Xf6qOFD1ZagXF?si=c9aeead4dc6847f9Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inspire-us-podcast/id1732848248Follow us on social media:X: https://x.com/InspireUsPodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspireuspodcast/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@inspireuspodcast

Sir Vince Cable is the former Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in the Coalition Government under David Cameron from 2010 to 2015, one of the most senior Liberal Democrat figures in modern British political history. He began his career as an economics adviser to the Kenyan government, went on to become Chief Economist at Shell International, and is widely regarded as one of the few politicians to have publicly warned about the fragility of the financial system before the 2008 crash. He is the author of several books including his most recent Eclipsing the West, named one of the Financial Times Best Books of 2025.In this episode we sit down with Sir Vince for a wide ranging and candid conversation about the biggest questions facing Britain and the world today. He calls Brexit a terrible mistake and explains why reversing it will require a level of political honesty that no party has yet been willing to show. We get into China's role in African development and whether the neocolonialism narrative is overblown, the future of globalization under Trump, the Belfast attacks and the rise of the far right, Britain's relationship with the United States versus Europe, and what the progressive left needs to do to stop an extreme party winning power.This is a conversation about economics, geopolitics and what honest politics actually looks like.

Colin Smith coordinates the United Nations team that monitors global terrorism for the Security Council - the only UN body with an explicit mandate to work directly with the world's intelligence agencies. Every six months he reports on the threat from al-Qaeda and ISIS, which means part of his job is understanding what these groups are planning before the rest of us ever hear about it.We had the pleasure to sit down with Colin to explore the fascinating world of counter terrorism and it did not disappoint.Hope you enjoy!

Deirdre McCloskey is an economic historian, philosopher, and Distinguished Scholar and chair holder at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. She did her education at Harvard and taught at the University of Chicago — where Milton Friedman was her colleague — and produced a body of work that fundamentally challenges how economists think about language, ethics, and what actually made the modern world rich.At 83, she has been a socialist, a Keynesian, and is now a classical liberal. She calls her position "humanomics" — economics with the humans left in. In this conversation she makes the case for what she calls equality of permission: not income, not opportunity, but the simple freedom to try. From minimum wage and price controls to COVID lockdowns, free speech absolutism, and the creeping surveillance state, McCloskey is sharp, uncompromising, and an absolute pleasure to speak with.Hope you enjoy!

Robert B. Talisse is a Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and one of America's leading thinkers on democracy, political polarisation, and public reason. He has authored over fifteen books including Overdoing Democracy, Sustaining Democracy, and A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy — exploring how democracies can thrive amid deep disagreement, belief polarisation, and public ignorance.In this episode of Inspire Us, we discuss:— What belief polarisation is and why it's tearing us apart— Why the more you only talk to people like you, the more extreme you become— Free speech — and why it's not just about the person speaking, it's about you listening— Why government efforts to fix polarisation could actually make things worse— The future of the WestCan Western democracies fix polarisation, or have we already passed the point where the usual solutions apply?

Ehireme Alexis Uddin is a PhD researcher at SOAS University of London whose work sits at the intersection of climate finance, climate governance and development policy. Her research focuses specifically on Nigeria, examining the state of climate finance, the role of institutions in ensuring the green transition is effective and equitable, and what it actually takes to finance an energy transition in an economy built on oil.

John Hasnas is a Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and the McDonough School of Business, and the author of Common Law Liberalism, a bold and original contribution to political and legal philosophy that challenges how we think about law, order, and the role of government in society.This episode is a full breakdown of common law, what it is, where it came from, and why it may be the most important legal system most people have never thought about. John Hasnas makes the case that society has always been capable of regulating itself, and that the invisible framework of common law has been doing the heavy lifting all along while government legislation gets all the credit.

Find John Hasnas' book "Common Law Liberalism" on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/0fRXnDiz