Konstantin Kisin: Soviet-born British political commentator, co-host of the Trigonometry podcast and Sunday Times bestselling author of 'An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West.' Known for non-partisan, first-principles critiques of Western politics and economics.
What this episode covers
Kisin and Steven Bartlett unpack a turbulent geopolitical moment: Trump seizing Maduro, threats over Greenland and Taiwan, war in Ukraine, and unrest in Iran. Kisin frames it all as the collapse of the post-WWII 'rules-based order' into a multipolar, every-power-for-itself world where strength is the only currency. He argues Britain and Europe have made themselves irrelevant through debt, high taxes, net-zero energy policy, deindustrialization and mass immigration that masks per-capita decline. The conversation widens into AI-driven job loss and the rise of socialism, the exodus of UK entrepreneurs, and why he believes things must get much worse before they improve. It closes on family, Thomas Sowell, and a Jordan Peterson story.
The guest's own work
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West
Konstantin Kisin
“An immigrants love letter to the West, the book that you wrote. It was a smash here, Sunday Times bestseller.”— Konstantin Kisin
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
“you will know Harari on your show... wrote the book called Sapiens in which he talks about the fact that almost everything that we live in the world... is a kind of shared myth”— Konstantin Kisin
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
Winston Churchill
“a friend of mine, very good friend of mine gave me the the history of the English-speaking peoples by Winston Churchill and it talks about the history of this country”— Konstantin Kisin
The Jungle Book (Disney)
Walt Disney
“the Jungle Book that we had in the Soviet Union is very different to the one that you see that you guys had here. Did you see Jungle... the original Jungle Book?”— Konstantin Kisin
Big reveals from this episode
- Claims international law is now effectively dead because nothing but the most powerful nation can enforce it.
- Says that in a world where no one has a job, he would be '100% on board with communism' and wealth redistribution becomes unavoidable.
- Plays an Elon Musk clip predicting Optimus robots will be better surgeons than the best humans within three years.
- Argues mass immigration is largely a political trick to hide that the country is getting poorer per capita.
- Declares the shift Britain needs is 'not political, it's cultural,' and calls himself an accelerationist who believes things must get really bad first.
- Calls nuclear weapons 'the great force for peace' while warning they may not be the most powerful weapons 20 years from now.
- Reveals he has just finished a new book and jokingly agrees to give Trigonometry a UK exclusive.
- Attacks the 'woke right' (naming Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens) as an identitarian victimhood movement he calls openly fascistic.
Worth remembering
- Europe is 12% of the world's population, 25% of its GDP, but 60% of the world's welfare spending.
- The UK now spends roughly 1.5x more on annual debt-interest repayments than on its entire defense budget.
- Britain's GDP per capita is lower today than it was in 2006 - people are poorer per person than 20 years ago.
- Germany shut its nuclear plants and became reliant on Russian gas, then offered Ukraine only 5,000 helmets at the invasion's start.
- An innovation accelerator founder told Kisin the 'brain' for a robot arm fell from $20,000-$30,000 to about 2 cents.
- The top 10% of UK taxpayers pay about 60% of all income tax; the top 1% pay roughly 30%.
- Revolut's founder relocating to the UAE represents an estimated ~3 billion pound potential capital-gains-tax loss - equal to the income tax of ~430,000 average UK taxpayers.
- There are nine nuclear powers: US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel (which officially denies it).
- Kisin recounts touring with Jordan Peterson, who let his steak go cold to give every fan equal attention.