Thinking Class

Bernard Hibbs is a member of the Bruderhof; an intentional Christian community of three hundred people living in East Sussex without money, without mortgages, and without personal possessions. Everything is held in common and if someone needs something, they ask and they receive it. The Bruderhof have lived this way for over a hundred years.

In this conversation we think out loud about:

• How three hundred people actually live without money
• The founding of the Bruderhof in nineteen-twenties Germany and its expulsion at gunpoint by the SS
• What it means to make lifetime vows of membership
• The consumer trap and whether we need everything the modern world tells us to want, and what we could gain if we turned away from it
• If Christ-centeredness is the only thing that can hold a community like this together
• Whether ordinary families can learn anything from the Bruderhof without joining one

Related:

• Luke Dysinger — The Last Time Western Civilisation Collapsed One Institution Saved Everything: https://youtu.be/HC3PLGAQhIM
• The Base — They Were Trained By The Best In British Theatre: https://youtu.be/sNQ6ank7quI
• Lola Salem — You Can Win Every Election. If The Whole Of Culture Is Against You Nothing Will Change: https://youtu.be/6dWWMysaN3E

Watch The Call of England: https://youtu.be/muBQWIP6ZQQ

Register your interest for the Albion Institute: https://albioninstitute.org

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West.

 Hosted by John Gillam.
 ▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

 New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Father Luke Dysinger is a Benedictine monk of Saint Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, California. He trained as a physician, practised family medicine, and at the age of 27 walked away from it all because he fell in love with a way of life centred on prayer. He has lived in the monastery ever since. He studied at the Benedictine House of Studies at Oxford, holds a doctorate in patristic theology, and is now a professor of theology and a bioethicist.

In this conversation we think out loud about:

• Why a trained physician walked away from medicine to become a monk
• The three Benedictine vows - stability, obedience, and conversion of life - and why they produce institutional coherence that no modern organisation can replicate
• How the monasteries saved Western civilisation by accident — not by copying manuscripts but by praying them
• What England lost when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries — and what survived in Evensong
• Why secular institutions trying to save civilisation without prayer will always feel hollow
• The Benedict Option — can families and communities outside the monastery build something that lasts?
• The foundational question monastic prayer forces you to answer: do you believe you are loved by God?
• What a young man who knows something has gone deeply wrong should do with his life.

Related:
- Pierre d’Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers: https://youtu.be/KXn2z3mfCDk
- The Base — They Were Trained By The Best In British Theatre: https://youtu.be/sNQ6ank7quI] - Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World: https://youtu.be/yrlmkVl86-0

Watch The Call of England: https://youtu.be/muBQWIP6ZQQ

Register your interest for the Albion Institute: https://albioninstitute.org

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam. 

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Dr Lola Salem is a musicologist, cultural critic, and Catholic convert. She is the author of the forthcoming Artless (Polity Press) and writes for The Critic and the Catholic Herald.

In this conversation we think out loud about:
• The boycott crisis in the arts and how it works in the shadows 
• Why the right keeps winning elections and losing the civilisation 
• The left as high-functioning alcoholics of culture 
• The post-cultural state — institutions remain, the spirit has left 
• The collapse of the managerial elite 
• The education pipeline that reproduces institutional capture 
• Whether the recovery of culture requires the recovery of faith •
 Verdur_in — small, serious, uncompromising spaces outside the captured institutions

Follow Lola's work:
- https://x.com/SalemLola
- http://salemlola.substack.com

Sponsored by Aquinas Tuition: https://aquinastuition.co.uk/

Related: 

• Pierre d’Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers: https://youtu.be/KXn2z3mfCDk 
• The Base — They Were Trained By The Best In British Theatre: https://youtu.be/sNQ6ank7quI
• Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World: https://youtu.be/yrlmkVl86-0

Watch The Call of England: https://youtu.be/muBQWIP6ZQQ
Albion Institute: https://albioninstitute.org

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam. 

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Oliver Bennett and Morgan Watkins are the co-founders of The Base and RADA-trained actors with nearly twenty years of experience in British film, television, and theatre.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• What The Base is and why it exists
•  The campification of British theatre and the shame around the Western canon
• The Edinburgh Fringe as a monument to progressive capture and why the RSC is rehearsing a lesbian Othello set against the climate crisis
• Meeting Shakespeare on his own terms (the third position beyond progressive deconstruction and conservative nostalgia)
• The working men’s club with a library, what the working class built and what was taken from them 
• Why not a single pro-Brexit play was produced in a country that voted 52% to leave
• Why today’s rebels know nothing about the past they claim to be rebelling against
• Whether counter-institutions like The Base can survive without funding
• The return of masculinity and the need for men to stand up

Find The Base: 

• thebasecreates.com 
• X: @thebasecreates
• Substack
• YouTube

Related: 

• Pierre d’Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers: https://youtu.be/KXn2z3mfCDk
• Carl Trueman — The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man: https://youtu.be/zwhbWVc1PgU
• Frank Furedi — In Defence of Populism: https://youtu.be/qTdxAR40T4E

Watch The Call of England: https://youtu.be/muBQWIP6ZQQ 

Albion Institute: albioninstitute.org

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam. 

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Dr Ben Jones is the Director of Case Management at the Free Speech Union and author of Island of Strangers: Diversity, Decline & Free Speech In Crisis

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• When saying “it’s a free country” died in Britain and what replaced it
• 6,000 people punished for speaking in five years, and what the Free Speech Union’s caseload reveals about modern Britain
• How hyperdiversity and the decline of Christianity have destroyed the shared moral universe
• Why the ethno-nationalist vs civic-nationalist debate is irrelevant — both will be swept away by events
• Britain’s pre-revolutionary state: the last time this happened, we executed a king
• Why Islam poses a distinct challenge that cannot be reconciled with Western liberal values
• The ruling class has seceded from the nation and treats the population as an obstacle
• The psychological toll of cultural dispossession and why he now has to spell “Ben Jones”
• The state is sponsoring an invasion inflicted primarily on women and girls, which has created a crisis of legitimacy
• Why 2029 may be the last chance to turn this around

Find Ben Jones: 

• X
• Island of Strangers

Related episodes: 

• Nathan Pinkoski — France Sacrificed Free Speech To Keep The Peace: https://youtu.be/ztpqjZq9h4M?si=DtQxUi4K84cPYapg
• Auron MacIntyre — The West Has Already Become A Total State: https://youtu.be/GbTU7HrQlU8?si=zg8pwO_MVhPor9qo
• R.R. Reno — What Happens When The West’s Strong Gods Return: https://youtu.be/U_cXZnkU-JI?si=shQ2C4lKRNP5sBqN
• Lionel Shriver — Immigration, Demography, And Belonging: https://youtu.be/IWG6zPX0EpE?si=CJ_W1ogZtHbhzCJk

Watch The Call of England: https://youtu.be/muBQWIP6ZQQ

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam. 

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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 leaving education to build his media platform, writes the Substack The Total State, and appears across conservative and heterodox media.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

• Why every Western state is becoming total and why the HR department is the new political commissar
• How bureaucracies automatically recognise one another as authoritative and create a self-reinforcing system
• Why it’s not a state-run media but a media-run state and that distinction changes everything
• Why Britain is further along the path to total control than any country in the West 
• The First Amendment and American federalism as defence mechanisms  and whether they will hold
• Why Texas told the federal government no and the federal government backed down
• Why the system doesn’t need boxcars it just closes your bank account
• Why constitutions don’t make people, people make constitutions  and what happens when you change the people 
• John Adams at Edgehill: the English foundations of American liberty 
•  R.R. Reno’s strong gods: will they return, and whose gods will they be? 
• Why the right cannot govern when it wins and what formation institutions must be built

Find Auron MacIntyre:

• X
• YouTube
• Instagram
• The Total State: https://link.amazon/B0fCMJp6R

Sponsored by Aquinas Tuition - bespoke academic tutoring for children who deserve to be stretched, not managed: https://aquinastuition.co.uk/

Related: 

• Nathan Pinkoski - France Sacrificed Free Speech To Keep The Peace
• R.R. Reno - What Happens When The West’s Strong Gods Return
• Carl Trueman - The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man

Watch The Call of England: https://youtu.be/muBQWIP6ZQQ

▶ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingClass 
✍ Substack: https://thinkingclass.substack.com 
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/37vvzrlxpo8eORDoTDRtbH 
🍎 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/thinking-class/id1717021615 
🐦 X: https://x.com/thinkingclasses 

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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 writes for First Things and Compact and publishes the Substack Lament for the Nations.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

— Why Zemmour’s Suicide of France sold half a million copies and what it tells the English-speaking world 
— How the 1968 revolution conquered society rather than the state — and nobody noticed the difference 
— The 10% threshold: when the foreign-born population reaches a certain level, free speech is the price of keeping the peace 
— How Britain could dismantle its entire progressive legal architecture in a single statute — and why France, Canada, and America cannot — Pierre Trudeau’s constitutional coup: how Canada became the end game of perverted Westminster, and why only Tony Benn and Enoch Powell saw it coming 
— The three deaths of the father: de Gaulle, paternal authority, and the gold standard — and why the West no longer produces leaders 
— How Vichy was weaponised to impose collective guilt on the French people and delegitimise national sovereignty 
— Why the smartphone killed assimilation and the Ellis Island myth is dead 
— Why the only way to save the West is Christian revival

Find Nathan Pinkoski: 

• Substack: lamentforthenations.substack.com 
• X
• The Suicide of France by Eric Zemmour

Related episodes you might enjoy:
— France Is Fracturing Along Ethnic And Religious Lines. Britain Is Next
— What Happens When The West’s Strong Gods Return
— The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man
— How Ireland Changed Beyond Recognition

The Call of England — a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England: 

• Episode 1
• Episode 2

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam. 

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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, In the Ruins of the Church, and a forthcoming rock climbing memoir. He has taught theology at Creighton University and has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Commentary.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

— What the strong gods look like when they return to a country that no longer has any gods at all — and whether there is a floor below which even the strong gods cannot reach
— Why Christianity remains a contested but robust force in American public life while Britain's established church has been abandoned by its own people
— How Blair's open society theology disfigured Britain's understanding of itself
— Pierre Manent's argument that the modern West has irreversibly chosen the city of man over the city of God
— Why the first duty of the sovereign is to preserve the realm — not because it is conducive to greater utility but because the realm has intrinsic value
— Alex Karp's observation that Europeans no longer believe their civilisation will last
— Why multiculturalism is a theory designed to explain how disintegration is actually the birth of something new — and why it cannot work
— The Parmenidean resurgence: classical schools, elite religious revival, and the young men turning to rigorous Christianity
— Why Trump is the Vishnu of early 21st century politics — the great destroyer after whom someone must build

Find R.R. Reno and First Things:
Website: firstthings.com
Subscribe: firstthings.com/subscribe
X: x.com/raborenn

Related episodes you might enjoy:
— Carl Trueman — The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man. Now Something Darker Is Coming: https://youtu.be/zwhbWVc1PgU
— Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World And This Is Why: https://youtu.be/yrlmkVl86-0
— Pierre d'Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers: https://youtu.be/KXn2z3mfCDk

The Call of England — a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England to discover what remains of the national inheritance:

• Watch Episode 1 here: https://youtu.be/muBQWIP6ZQQ
• Watch Episode 2 here: https://youtu.be/jbVZfSR3ZF4

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam. 

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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 Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). 

This episode is supported by Aquinas Tuition, which provides bespoke academic tutoring for children who deserve to be stretched, not managed.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

— What Blackwood saw inside the Western university system at its highest level that made him believe the existing institutions could not be saved
— How Boethius took the seeds of civilisation and cast them into the future from a prison cell — and why that matters now more than ever
— Why "the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be lit" and why Ralston brings students to Samos, Greece, to light them on fire
— The deathbed test: did I live as I should have lived? And why no culture that fails to help its people answer that question deserves to endure
— Why the universities are the most upstream influence over the degradation of Western culture
— The difference between legal protection of free speech and a culture of genuine truth-seeking
— What Tocqueville saw in America that Britain is losing, which is to say self-governance as the precondition for democracy
— Why Roger Scruton was right that a culture is just the things we have loved, and transmitting it is just teaching others to love them too
— What growing up as the eldest of ten on a Canadian farm taught Blackwood about human nature, duty, and what a human being at full gallop looks like

Find Stephen Blackwood and Ralston College:
- Website: ralston.ac
- Podcast: The Ralston College Podcast
- YouTube

Related episodes you might enjoy:
— Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World And This Is Why
— Carl Trueman — The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man. Now Something Darker Is Coming
— Pierre d'Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers

Watch The Call of England, a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England to discover what remains of the national inheritance:

• Watch Episode 1 here
• Watch Episode 2 here

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam. 

▶ YouTube
✍ Substack
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple
🐦 X

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

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 Britain from their thatched space station. Robert Jenrick declared himself an Anglofuturist at a 2025 conference. Curtis Yarvin has appeared on their show.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

— What Anglofuturism actually is — and whether the Britain it imagines is one that also knows who built it and why it matters
— Whether you can be an Anglofuturist without being a cultural conservative — and whether material renewal without cultural renewal is just efficiency
— Whether Britain can become Europe's energy powerhouse — offshore wind, Rolls-Royce SMRs, North Sea oil, battery storage — without paving over the green and pleasant land
— Whether population growth is necessary for prosperity — or whether a high-tech, high-skill country can stabilise its population and still thrive
— Why the technocratic class that would need to deliver the Anglofuturist future is the same class that produced the decline — and whether it can be removed
— The demographic question that Anglofuturism cannot avoid — and what "a future that feels like home" requires
— Whether beauty is a non-negotiable — and who decides what beautiful means when the institutions that once knew have been captured
— What the ordinary Briton, the CEO, and the Prime Minister should each do on Monday morning

Find Anglofuturism:
Substack: anglofuturism.substack.com
YouTube: youtube.com/@anglofuturism
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/0PxQEO62ESL7DYmZHLgQID

Related episodes you might enjoy:
— Pierre d'Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers: https://youtu.be/KXn2z3mfCDk
— William Clouston — Why British Politics Governs Against The National Interest: https://youtu.be/Rm2Qp-1qnJw
— Michael Lind — Why America & Britain Keep Betraying Their Working Class: https://youtu.be/YN212csIsvU
— Jonathan Rose — What The British Working Class Lost And Who Is Responsible: https://youtu.be/OKHcEo2QrJg
— Lord Tony Sewell — Life At The Bottom In Broken Britain: https://youtu.be/WKf26_Va_yM

The Call of England - a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England to discover what remains of the national inheritance:

• Watch Episode 1 here: https://youtu.be/muBQWIP6ZQQ
• Watch Episode 2 here: https://youtu.be/jbVZfSR3ZF4

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam.

▶ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingClass
✍ Substack: https://thinkingclass.substack.com
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/37vvzrlxpo8eORDoTDRtbH
🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/thinking-class/id1717021615
🐦 X: https://x.com/thinkingclasses

New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.