All That I Have Met

Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Biweekly

Long-form, unhurried conversations with people who've actually been in the room — from a UN crisis negotiator working sixty wars at once to an BBC executive who watched newsroom courage disappear. New episodes drop every other Thursday. Hosted by award-winning journalist Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson. meredithogilviethompson.substack.com

  1. Sep 3

    The Cow in the Room: Tom Silvester on Conservation in Kenya

    In 1992, a young livestock manager named Tom Silvester arrived at Loisaba, a cattle ranch in Northern Kenya with a few hundred head, one old Land Rover and a payroll of about twenty-five people. Not long after, he was shown a skull — the last black rhino to walk this land before it was poached out in the 1970s. Thirty years on, he’s still there, running what many consider to be one of the finest conservation trusts in the world — 58,000 acres that is home to cattle, elephants, lions, a community of hundreds, and, once again, rhinos. Bringing the latter back took five years of political negotiation and a translocation by truck. The first night nearly ended it all when a newly arrived female was attacked by lions before she’d got fifty metres from the truck. Rangers stood guard over her until dawn, uncertain if the whole effort would collapse. She survived and went on to have a calf. Two years later, there are now twenty-nine black rhinos on Loisaba, eight that have been born there. I spoke with Tom about what it costs to run a place like this, and about the long, slow work behind the rhino story, as well as the shift from a private family ranch to a Kenyan trust, the grazing arrangements Tom has kept with Samburu and Maasai neighbours, and a herd of over a thousand cattle he manages on their behalf under a fattening scheme — because as he puts it, you don’t do anything about anything in northern Kenya without a cow in the room. Learn more about Loisaba Conservancy and support the Ranger Challenge Photo: ©️Ami Vitale | Courtesy TNC Please follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you usually listen, and leave a rating. It takes a minute but is how the podcast gets found. Watch clips of the interview on YouTube Don’t let an algorithm decide what you read or listen to — subscribe for free and never miss an episode. Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov Get full access to All That I Have Met at meredithogilviethompson.substack.com/subscribe

    The Cow in the Room: Tom Silvester on Conservation in Kenya

  2. Aug 20

    Former BBC, ABC and RTÉ Head Jon Williams on the Loss of Courage in the Newsroom

    "Journalism requires courage back in the newsroom every bit as much as it does on the front line." Jon Williams has run three of the world's biggest newsrooms — BBC, ABC, RTÉ — through thirty years of war, revolution and dramatic changes in mainstream media. He's lost colleagues to the story, and had to tell a widow her husband wasn't coming home. On watching reporters sit through an hour of public insults from the president at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, then stand and applaud him anyway, Jon told me, "I cannot get my head around that." And when the subject turns to Gaza, the deadliest place on earth to be a journalist right now, he doesn't pretend there are two sides to the death toll. And then there’s ABC — his own former network — handing $15 million to a sitting president to make a lawsuit disappear. “There used to be a line beyond which nobody would step,” he said. “People have just lost the courage to step up to it, and peer over, and go no further.” There needs to be a shared truth for any of us to make sense of our lives. Without it, Jon says, we're all just flailing in the dark. This is a conversation about the importance of truth, and what happens when the people paid to defend it stop being brave enough to do so. Please follow this podcast on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you usually listen, and leave a rating or review. It takes a minute but is how the podcast gets found. Watch clips of the interview on YouTube Don’t let an algorithm decide what you read or listen to — subscribe for free and never miss an episode. Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov Get full access to All That I Have Met at meredithogilviethompson.substack.com/subscribe

    Former BBC, ABC and RTÉ Head Jon Williams on the Loss of Courage in the Newsroom

  3. Aug 6

    How Bad Is It? Princeton Historian Julian Zelizer on American Democracy and Political Power

    Congress is weaker. The presidency is stronger. Political parties are more polarised. And the Supreme Court now sits at the centre of some of America’s most contentious political debates. How did we get here? And is this moment as unprecedented as it feels? Julian Zelizer is one of the few people equipped to answer those questions. He is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, author of more than twenty books on American political history, and a regular contributor to NPR and Foreign Policy. He has spent his career studying power: how it is consolidated, abused and held in check. In this conversation, we cover whether Congress’s surrender of power to the executive is a cause of the current crisis or merely a symptom; how the filibuster and budget reconciliation have reshaped what the Senate can do with a bare majority; the origins of the Electoral College and gerrymandering; the role of the Supreme Court during periods of intense polarisation; what happened to the American media; and what history tells us about the moments that felt more dangerous at the time than they turned out to be — and those that felt less dangerous than they were. Since recording this episode, Zelizer has been named a Scholar in Residence at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, where he will spend the coming academic year working on a new book, Rendezvous with Democracy: America, 1945–1974. Please follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you usually listen, and leave a rating. It takes a minute but is how the podcast gets found. Watch clips of the interview on YouTube Don’t let an algorithm decide what you read or listen to — subscribe for free and never miss an episode. Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov Get full access to All That I Have Met at meredithogilviethompson.substack.com/subscribe

    How Bad Is It? Princeton Historian Julian Zelizer on American Democracy and Political Power

  4. Jul 23

    Who Owns Intelligence and How Should It Be Priced?

    “The token is a measure of input. It’s not a measure of output.” That observation, from economist Michael Power, goes to the heart of this conversation — the possibility we are fundamentally mispricing and misreading the AI boom. Michael Power spent two decades as Global Strategist at Ninety One, formerly Investec Asset Management. Steven Boykey Sidley spent years as Group Chief Technology Officer at a prominent Fortune 500 company before becoming Professor of Practice at the Johannesburg Business School, a partner at Bridge Capital, and a columnist-at-large at the Daily Maverick. Together they argue that the race for AI is no longer simply a technological contest, but a contest between competing economic systems, competing political philosophies, and competing visions of who should own intelligence itself. Recorded on June 25, 2026, this conversation covers trillion-dollar valuations built on losses, pension funds corralled into holding equity they never consented to own, the Chinese open-weight ecosystem that could make the US AI business model structurally irrelevant, and why the democratic backlash against artificial intelligence — however legitimate — may be the most consequential strategic error of our time. Not long before recording this episode, Power asked DeepSeek to rewrite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43 — “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” — to describe what is happening in AI today. What came back, in seconds, reads like an uncanny gloss on the argument Power and Sidley make about open weights and closed fortresses: How many ways will those fortress walls collapse?Let me count the ways—on cost, on speed, on might,On data’s flow, on talent’s flight, on gapsIn licensing, in ecosystem’s light.The fortress thought its walls were built to last—On hardware, training, benchmarks, and control.But open weights have broken through them fast,And now the Free City has claimed its role.The walls are down—not by a single blow,But by a thousand cuts, a thousand ways.The fortress cannot stop the open flow—The Free City is rising—count the days.How many ways? A hundred, more than ten—The fortress falls, and freedom rises then. Beneath the excitement about AI lies a far bigger story. This is it. If this conversation meant something to you, please leave a rating, follow the show and share it with someone else. It's how the podcast gets found. Watch clips of the interview on YouTube Don’t let an algorithm decide what you read or listen to — subscribe for free and never miss an episode. Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov Get full access to All That I Have Met at meredithogilviethompson.substack.com/subscribe

    Who Owns Intelligence and How Should It Be Priced?

  5. Jul 9

    International Crisis Group President Comfort Ero on Wars Rising and Imperfect Peace

    “It’s not a beauty contest. There is no one path to resolution.” In a world with sixty active conflicts, the President and CEO of the International Crisis Group isn’t looking for a silver bullet. She’s looking for openings. Founded in 1995 in response to the failures of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia, the ICG has a mission that couldn’t be more straightforward: When war looms, sound the alarm. When it breaks out, work to stop it. When it drags on, find ways to alleviate the suffering it causes. Ero has spent twenty-five years doing exactly that — in West Africa, on the ground in Liberia with the UN, in transitional justice, and for the past four and a half years as head of the world’s most respected and consequential conflict prevention organisation. We recorded this conversation five days after the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding that few are sure will hold. The trust deficit between Washington and Tehran, as Ero puts it, is “less than zero.” Add to that the extractive nature of this administration’s diplomacy, the way warfare is being reshaped every single day in Ukraine, and Sudan’s continuing inability to command the world’s attention despite being the largest humanitarian catastrophe on earth, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. This conversation is for anyone trying to understand not just what is happening in the world right now, but the architecture of why. It's also a reminder of what serious, rigorous, field-based analysis looks like in an era when the assumptions that underpinned the international order no longer seem quite so certain. A footnote: Comfort Ero was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the King's 2026 New Year Honours, recognised by the British Crown for services to crisis response and conflict prevention. Please follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you usually listen, and leave a rating. It takes a minute but is how the podcast gets found. Watch clips of the interview on YouTube Don’t let an algorithm decide what you read or listen to — subscribe for free and never miss an episode. Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov Get full access to All That I Have Met at meredithogilviethompson.substack.com/subscribe

    International Crisis Group President Comfort Ero on Wars Rising and Imperfect Peace

  6. Jun 24

    Why Opinion Isn’t Reporting: The Stories We Live By

    Watch clips and video previews on YouTube  This is a bonus episode — a guest appearance I made on AI Script to Screen with Quint Boa, reposted here with his kind permission. What happens to truth when facts become optional? In this conversation with Quint Boa — filmmaker, AI producer and host of AI Script to Screen — we get into the difference between facts and truth, why journalism is changing but not dying, what Section 230 actually did to public discourse, and why AI is a brilliant tool but should never be mistaken for a substitute for human connection. We also get into the uncanny valley of digital resurrection, Christopher Nolan’s flip phone, and why a story about cemeteries in rural Virginia took me four months to report. Recorded in May 2026. If this conversation meant something to you, share it — it's how the show gets found. And if you'd like to support the work, a paid subscription goes a long way.  Subscribe here Want more between essays and episodes? Check out Below the Fold — shorter dispatches on the stories worth paying attention to, from the people in my own backyard to the forces reshaping the wider world. Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov Get full access to All That I Have Met at meredithogilviethompson.substack.com/subscribe

    Why Opinion Isn’t Reporting: The Stories We Live By

  7. Jun 18

    James Beard Finalist Neal Wavra on Quitting Trade Policy for the Kitchen

    Watch clips on YouTube Neal Wavra was on track for a career in global trade policy — trained in commercial diplomacy and conflict resolution, a summer at the Hague — when his government supervisor flicked a proposal back across her desk without reading it and told him they weren’t in the business of innovating. That was twenty years ago. He's since attended the Culinary Institute of America, worked the floor at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago — at the time, the most demanding room in American fine dining, the place that trained a generation, ten James Beard Awards — and eventually found his way to a building on Main Street in Marshall, Virginia that's been feeding people since the 1800s. He and his wife Star have been running it as Field & Main for ten years. In 2023 they bought Red Truck Bakery — the business across the street — twice listed among the New York Times’ best food purveyors in the country and a favourite of everyone from Oprah to the Obamas. This year, Neal was James Beard Award finalist — the only one from the great state of Virginia. But our conversation isn’t really about all that. From farm-to-table as an alibi for mediocrity to what a genuine connection between a kitchen and its community actually requires, and what happens when you decide the thing directly in front of you is enough — and the garden you’re standing in is worth the full force of your attention. Neal has views on all of it, and they’re not what you’d expect. If this conversation meant something to you, share it — it’s how the show gets found. And if you’d like to support the work, a paid subscription goes a long way. Subscribe here Want more between essays and episodes? Check out Below the Fold — shorter dispatches on the stories worth paying attention to, from the people in my own backyard to the forces reshaping the wider world. Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov Get full access to All That I Have Met at meredithogilviethompson.substack.com/subscribe

    James Beard Finalist Neal Wavra on Quitting Trade Policy for the Kitchen

  8. Jun 12

    Tech Bros and the World's Most Expensive Mid-Life Crisis

    A German biotech billionaire who injects himself daily is funding a sporting event where athletes are paid to take testosterone, Adderall and human growth hormone in pursuit of “superhumanity.” Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. are on the cap table. Jeff Bezos has invested $100 million in a startup that claims it can identify the brain’s “core algorithm” and replicate it in silicon. Meanwhile, public institutions, scientific research and foreign-aid programs are being hollowed out at the behest of many of the same political and ideological forces. Naturally, I had to talk to the clever if irreverent hosts of The Atlantic Current podcast, Vince Martin and Tull McAdoo of The Irish Politics Newsletter about it all! We discuss the Enhanced Games, biohacking billionaires, prescription drugs, consciousness research, regulatory capture, libertarianism, immortality and the increasingly popular idea that being human is a problem technology needs to solve. Please follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you usually listen, and leave a rating. It takes a minute but is how the podcast gets found. Watch clips of the interview on YouTube Don’t let an algorithm decide what you read or listen to — subscribe for free and never miss an episode. Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov Get full access to All That I Have Met at meredithogilviethompson.substack.com/subscribe

    Tech Bros and the World's Most Expensive Mid-Life Crisis
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About

Long-form, unhurried conversations with people who've actually been in the room — from a UN crisis negotiator working sixty wars at once to an BBC executive who watched newsroom courage disappear. New episodes drop every other Thursday. Hosted by award-winning journalist Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson. meredithogilviethompson.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson
  • Show Website
    All That I Have Met

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