Sovereign Albion

Here in Sovereign Albion, we are interested in exploring and scaling British greatness. So I wanted to speak with Elijah, a friend and artist who’s a very special person to have that conversation with.
Elijah is a writer, DJ, and founder of the record label Butterz. He came up through grime and pirate radio, a scene that had to build its own infrastructure, and in doing so produced something totally distinctive in Britain, culturally, sonically, and economically. More recently, he’s the author of Close the App, Make the Ting, a set of prompts and provocations that I think of as akin to a16z’s It’s Time to Build, but aimed at encouraging agency in new and emerging artists.
This was a really special conversation. We explored cultural sovereignty and the role of media institutions in platforming British arts, power laws and talent spotting in record labels, cultural company building in the internet era, overcoming tall poppy syndrome, rent as the creative director, and how it’s up to all of us to reconnect the nation. All fundamentally in service of an increasingly important question: how do we platform, and scale, cultural greatness in Britain?
Thanks to the Centre for British Progress for supporting the podcast, to Podcast House for production support, and Simon Panayi for original music.
00:00 British Cultural Greatness
01:23 Elijah's Journey
03:53 Grime Stories
07:19 UK Platforms and Cultural Sovereignty
10:29 Talent Spotting and Power Laws in Music
13:46 Building a Record Label in the Internet Era
16:07 Butterz and Creative Entrepreneurship
24:33 Change, Activism and Optimism
30:43 Arts Funding and Democratic Variance
31:59 Rent as the Creative Director
32:55 "But Does It Work at Scale?"
34:08 London Privilege
37:09 University, Philip Gould, Aspiration and AI
40:17 Build Without Permission
41:20 Who Is Making Interesting Work Today? (+ Why Fred Again is an Athlete)
46:40 Greatness in British Music
49:10 Reviving Patriotism
57:01 Elijah's Deep Feedback Podcast


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com

Zakia Sewell is a writer, broadcaster and DJ from London. She is the host of Dream Time on BBC 6 Music and the author of Finding Albion, which explores British national identity, folk culture and myth.
Here we discuss the origins of Albion, folk culture as an alternative source of meaning and radical history, Empire and greatness, and imagining a new Festival of Albion.
01:21 Defining Albion
04:19 William Blake’s Albion
06:02 Stonehenge Pilgrimage
07:27 Unity at Sunrise
08:48 The Woo Woo Taboo
10:20 Beyond Twee Folk
11:09 Making Folk Accessible
12:18 Alternative Stories of Britain
14:40 Identity and Empire
19:25 Exploring British Greatness
21:42 Land and Right to Roam
28:06 Grime, and New Folk Cultures
30:54 Folk Revival and Social Media
41:19 Festival of Albion


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com

Dan Akarca is Co-founder & CEO at Callosum, a new AI infrastructure company orchestrating and co-evolving heterogeneous chips & intelligence to solve the world's hardest problems.
Here we discuss how to move beyond the dominant, monolithic AI paradigm, what we can learn from the brain to unlock exquisite, efficient intelligence, and what this means for redistributing leverage away from the biggest labs and countries to rebuild optionality across the world.
00:00 The Brain as an Analogy for AI
04:38 Why One Big Model Fails
06:57 The Heterogeneous Compute Spectrum, from Datacentres to Edge Computing
11:54 Orchestrating Chips and Models
16:58 Supply, Demand and the Hardware Lottery
29:36 Value Beyond Chips
30:43 Bringing Chips to Market
35:50 Dynamic Compute Future
39:22 Funding and Roadmap
43:39 Riskiest Assumptions and Scaling the Team


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com

Dan Akarca is Co-founder & CEO at Callosum, a new AI infrastructure company orchestrating and co-evolving heterogeneous chips & intelligence to solve the world's hardest problems.
Here we discuss how to move beyond the dominant, monolithic AI paradigm, what we can learn from the brain to unlock exquisite, efficient intelligence, and what this means for redistributing leverage away from the biggest labs and countries to rebuild optionality across the world.
00:00 The Brain as an Analogy for AI
04:38 Why One Big Model Fails
06:57 Datacenter to Edge Spectrum
11:54 Orchestrating Chips and Models
16:58 Supply, Demand and the Hardware Lottery
29:36 Value Beyond Chips
30:43 Bringing Chips to Market
35:50 Dynamic Compute Future
39:22 Funding and Roadmap
43:39 Risks and Team Scaling


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com

Lawrence Lundy-Bryan is GP at Cloudberry, Europe’s first dedicated semiconductor fund. He also writes the State of the Future substack, which researches frontier technology analysis.
Here we discuss how to invest in AI sovereignty, the bifurcation of VC into specialists and AUM agglomerators, the compute gradient, how the government's new venture fund (SovAI) can succeed, and enabling European founder ambition
00:00 Introduction01:07 Launching Cloudberry VC01:44 The Future of VC Funds: AUM Agglomerators vs Specialists04:47 Semiconductors: Past, Present, and Future10:21 The Importance of Edge Computing12:58 Europe's Role in the Semiconductor Industry21:38 Investing in New Applications29:23 Government's Role in AI and Semiconductors33:08 Complexity and Capabilities in Industrial Strategy35:57 Domain Elasticity and Building Conviction in New Founders41:41 Lawrence's Decision Making Process47:40 The European Venture Capital Landscape53:43 Raising Collective Ambition


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sovereignalbion.com