050. Britain's growth obsession is delusional

About this episode

Tom and Calum discuss their shift in perspective on economic growth and propose alternative measures of prosperity.

From a hand-dug allotment in Stroud, Tom and Calum announce a fundamental change of direction for the podcast. After eighteen months of speaking to founders, technologists, and policy thinkers, they have come to an uncomfortable conclusion: it was all wrong. Growth is a trap. GDP is a fiction. The SMR under the village green was never going to save us. What Britain needs is less. The conversion happened gradually, then all at once. Calum attended a silent retreat in Totnes where a man named Giles explained that fusion energy would simply allow humans to destroy the biosphere more efficiently. Tom read a pamphlet about doughnut economics on the FlixBus from London to Oxford and wept. They have since decommissioned the King Charles III Space Station and replaced it with a community pottery studio. The episode explores: * Why GDP is a meaningless number and Britain should stop chasing it: Every guest on this podcast has said something like “Britain needs to grow.” But what is growth? More cars? More data centres? More Georgian townhouses? Tom and Calum now believe that true prosperity is measured in leisure time, hedgerow density, and the number of independently owned bookshops per…

People in this episode

Hosts: Tom Ough, Calum Drysdale

Topics covered

• economic growth
• doughnut economics
• technology critique
• sustainability
• community
• alternative measures of prosperity

Keywords

• GDP
• growth obsession
• cooperatively owned farms
• technology
• sustainability
• community pottery studio
• leisure time
• hedgerow density
• independently owned bookshops

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: King Charles III Space Station, doughnut economics

Places: Britain, Stroud, Totnes, Pitcairn Island

More episodes of Anglofuturism

• 057. Mat Dryhurst: Speculative aesthetics in the algorithmic age · June 6, 2026 · 1h 31m
• 056. Nicholas Boys Smith: How to build a city on the moon · May 24, 2026 · 1h 10m
• 055. Hyperculture, hypermnesia, and the Clarion-Clipperton Zone · May 4, 2026 · 1h 15m
• 054. Louis Elton: Anglofuturist aesthetics beyond podcræft · May 1, 2026 · 52 min
• 053. Louis Elton: Cræft, the English antidote to slop · April 28, 2026 · 1h 2m
• 052. Louise Perry: Artemis II and populating the solar system · April 9, 2026 · 1h 30m