The Peter McCormack Show

Chemist and University of Glasgow professor Lee Cronin argues that the current tech narrative is a "massive AI delusion," dismissing modern artificial intelligence as an advanced form of plagiarism rather than a new life form. While Silicon Valley predicts the imminent arrival of sentient machines, Cronin explains that AI models are merely trained on human history-making them powerful tools, but fundamentally incapable of the curiosity, consciousness and biological intelligence that define true life.

Instead of fearing silicon, Cronin’s actual mission is far more ambitious: programming chemistry to solve the origin of life and turn sand into living cells. In this episode, we explore why biological consciousness is tied to an unbroken 3.8-billion-year evolutionary lineage and why silicon will never replicate it. Cronin also breaks down why DNA might just be a cosmic fluke, how chemistry can be used to measure the complexity of life and why he firmly believes we will detect actual alien life within the next two decades.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - The AI Model Is Not Intelligent
00:01:38 - Trying To Create Life In A Lab
00:06:29 - Consciousness Is An Illusion
00:08:51 - We Know Nothing About The Origin Of Life
00:11:24 - Nobody Can Define Life
00:13:48 - The Adam Savage Definition
00:17:21 - Molecules Came Before Cells
00:21:53 - DNA Is A Fluke
00:25:48 - Biology Is The Descendant Of Chemistry
00:26:36 - Dark Matter And Dark Energy
00:31:50 - The Meaning Of Life Is Existence
00:35:18 - If You Handed Me Alien Matter
00:40:28 - What Is Digital Chemistry?
00:42:28 - Six Eureka Moments
00:49:12 - Unfathomable Is Not Strong Enough
00:53:01 - Could You Copy A Human?
01:11:55 - Why The AI Escape Story Was Nonsense
01:16:28 - The Photograph Nobody Thought Possible
01:18:25 - Curiosity Is The Coolest Thing We Have
01:31:33 - Social Media Is The New Smoking

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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 LEE CRONIN
› Cronin Group – https://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/
› Chemify – https://chemify.io/
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/leecronin

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Quo – https://quo.com/pete
› Venice AI – https://venice.ai/lp/mccormack/oct1

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu
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› 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.

The UK has accumulated £3.4 trillion in debt, and the interest payments alone now dwarf the national defence budget. Author and journalist Ross Clark argues that the nation is sleepwalking into a sovereign debt crisis that politicians refuse to acknowledge.

We discuss the brutal arithmetic of the public purse, detailing why standard political talking points - like taxing billionaires-are mathematical illusions that fail to address the core rot of uncontrolled state spending and collapsing public sector productivity.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Print The Money, Get Hyperinflation
00:01:17 - Is Britain Bust Or Trading Insolvent?
00:02:57 - Whose Fault Is This?
00:07:24 - Taxing The Billionaires Buys Six Months
00:09:12 - How Bad Is The Debt Really?
00:12:07 - Perma-Stimulus
00:14:22 - No Party Has A Viable Plan
00:17:32 - What The Public Actually Thinks About Tax
00:19:21 - Three Choices On The Bond Market
00:24:02 - Where He Would Cut
00:25:33 - The Motability Scheme
00:29:03 - The Client State
00:30:06 - Austerity Never Actually Happened
00:34:21 - Productivity Is Almost Everything
00:44:32 - The Chancellor's Oldest Trick
00:46:51 - The Wealth Tax Trap
00:50:03 - The 1976 Tribute Act
00:55:59 - What Liz Truss Got Wrong
00:59:18 - How Would You Know A Crisis Had Started?
01:04:38 - What Gives Him Confidence

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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 ROSS CLARK
› The Spectator – https://www.spectator.co.uk/writer/ross-clark/
› Substack – https://rossjonathanclark.substack.com/

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter
› Venice AI – https://venice.ai/ – Code PETER15

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu
› 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.

Nick Bostrom is a world-renowned philosopher, founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University and author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies and Deep Utopia. Widely credited with launching the global AI safety and existential risk movements, his work on machine alignment, recursive self-improvement and the Simulation Hypothesis has shaped how world leaders, tech founders and frontier AI developers view the future of humanity.

In this episode, we discuss the rapid acceleration toward machine superintelligence and why leaving biological minds "in the dust" creates an urgent alignment crisis. We explore the real-world social fallout of AI-including looming 30% white-collar unemployment-alongside existential risk scenarios, the potential creation of an oppressed digital "slave class" and why humanity may already be living inside an advanced computer simulation.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Machine Minds That Leave Us In The Dust
00:01:33 - The Freak Out Camp
00:03:08 - We Already Have An Alignment Problem
00:05:07 - Why Nobody Can Afford To Slow Down
00:08:41 - The Anti-AI Movement Is Growing
00:13:19 - Three Buckets Of Disaster
00:15:02 - Winner Takes All
00:16:24 - Why It Might Still Need Us
00:18:55 - What Superintelligence Actually Unlocks
00:20:50 - What Do We Even Want It For?
00:22:14 - Did An AI Push Someone Off A Building?
00:24:15 - Can A Weaker AI Align A Stronger One?
00:28:51 - Will AI Become Conscious?
00:33:17 - Was Consciousness An Accident?
00:40:53 - Uploading A Human Brain
00:45:51 - What Happens To Status?
00:49:51 - We Could Redesign Ourselves
00:52:31 - My Daughter Is Studying Philosophy
00:56:35 - The Simulation Argument
01:04:20 - We Are Going To Need Some Luck

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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 NICK BOSTROM
› Website – https://nickbostrom.com/
› Deep Utopia – https://nickbostrom.com/deep-utopia
› The Simulation Argument – https://simulation-argument.com/

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter
› Venice AI – https://venice.ai/ – Code PETER15

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu
› 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.

Prof. Richard Werner is a world-renowned economist, professor of banking, and author of Princes of the Yen. Famous for coining the term "Quantitative Easing" (QE) and publishing the first empirical proof that private banks create money out of thin air through lending, he has spent decades exposing the central planning mechanisms that dictate global finance.

In this episode, we discuss the ”Revealed Preference" framework - demonstrating why we must analyse central bankers by their actions rather than their rhetoric. He explains how central planners use artificial recessions and banking crises as "windows of opportunity" to consolidate ownership, why textbook economics deliberately obscures credit creation, and how establishing decentralised local banks can unlock sustainable 10%+ annual growth.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Central Bankers Are Traitors To Their Countries
00:01:04 - Why Can't Britain Grow?
00:06:50 - Princes Of The Yen
00:11:19 - It Was Always About Control
00:13:38 - Banks Don't Lend Your Deposits
00:14:27 - Show Me Where The Money Is Created
00:16:14 - Every School Of Economics Gets It Wrong
00:20:14 - Why Would They Do This?
00:21:57 - Britain Is Close To Central Planning
00:22:46 - America Once Had 30,000 Banks
00:27:48 - The Problem Was Identified In 1918
00:31:18 - Who Runs The City Of London?
00:33:46 - We Need Thousands Of Small Banks
00:38:14 - First The Money, Then The Power
00:44:04 - Every Country Can Have 10% Growth
00:47:12 - Liz Truss And The Bank Of England
00:50:23 - We Don't Need Central Banks
00:52:22 - Were The Austrians Right?
00:57:35 - They Want Your Savings
00:59:21 - Europe's New Right

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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 RICHARD WERNER
› Website – https://professorwerner.org/
› Substack – https://rwerner.substack.com/
› Princes of the Yen – https://www.quantumpublishers.com/
› X/Twitter – https://x.com/drrichardwerner

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Arch Public – https://archpublic.com/peter
› Venice AI – https://venice.ai/ – Code PETER15

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu
› 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.

Russell Napier is a renowned financial historian, author of The Solid Ground newsletter, and co-founder of the Library of Mistakes. Having advised global institutional investors for over thirty years, he specialises in long-term macroeconomic cycles, central bank interventions, and structural debt resolution.

In this episode, we discuss the mechanics of "financial repression" - how Western governments use subtle regulatory mandates to force pension funds into negative-yielding sovereign bonds, effectively stealth-taxing savers to inflate away unpayable public debts.

He explains how risk-free assets have lost up to 78% of their real capital value, while revealing why the UK’s private sector balance sheet is "coiled like a spring" for an unprecedented economic boom.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Stealing Money From Old People
00:01:26 - Britain Wants Lower Taxes Now
00:03:14 - The Public Sector Is Broke, The Private Sector Isn't
00:05:17 - Why Nobody Feels Richer
00:07:42 - It Has Never Been Easier To Fix This
00:09:47 - The Ideology Holding Britain Back
00:16:09 - What Financial Repression Actually Is
00:17:45 - We Need 4% Growth
00:19:40 - They Are Coming For The Savers
00:24:26 - How They Made Pension Funds Buy The Bonds
00:25:23 - The Triple Lock
00:29:28 - What Should A Saver Actually Do?
00:34:41 - Bitcoin And Gold
00:38:36 - Europe Wants Your Savings
00:40:43 - France Is Worse Than America
00:44:27 - You Are Now The Enemy
00:47:31 - We Have To Build Like Never Before
00:54:37 - Can AI Deliver A Productivity Boom?
01:01:19 - AI Will Trigger A Debt Crisis
01:06:15 - Three Firms Own Everything

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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 RUSSELL NAPIER
› The Solid Ground – https://russellnapier.co.uk/
› The Library of Mistakes – https://www.libraryofmistakes.com/

SPONSORS
› IREN – https://www.iren.com/
› Quo – https://quo.com/pete
› Ledn – https://www.ledn.io/peter
› https://venice.ai/

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LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE
› Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/40ruY9K
› Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wc94Vu
› 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/

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