All That I Have Met

Conversations with people changing the world. Not the usual suspects. Not the usual questions. New episodes drop the first and third Tuesday of the month. Hosted by award-winning journalist Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson.

All That I Have Met is a education podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 15 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts All That I Have Met, a education show with 15 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #15

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

  Aug 18, 202639 minS1

  "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. Have something to say? I'm all ears. 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. If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription to All That I Have Met goes a long way. Subscribe here If you'd like to watch clips and video previews, you'll find them on YouTube Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov

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  Episode #13

  Dragon in the Machine

  Jul 21, 202653 minS1

  In conversation with Michael Power and Steven Boykey Sidley. “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 that we are fundamentally 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 gaps In 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. Have something to say? I'm all ears. 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. If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription to All That I Have Met goes a long way. Subscribe here If you'd like to watch clips and video previews, you'll find them on YouTube Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov

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  Episode #12

  Wars Rising

  Jul 7, 202653 minS1

  In conversation with Comfort Ero. “It’s not a beauty contest. There is no one path to resolution,” Comfort Ero told me. 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 foreign 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. Have something to say? I'm all ears. 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. If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription to All That I Have Met goes a long way. Subscribe here Watch clips and video previews on YouTube Want more between essays and episodes? Below the Fold is where I publish 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

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  Episode #11

  BONUS: The Stories We Live By, And Why They Matter — Meredith on AI Script to Screen

  Jun 23, 202651 minS1

  This is a bonus episode — a conversation I had with filmmaker and AI producer Quint Boa on his podcast, AI Script to Screen , reposted here with his permission. What happens to truth when facts become optional? In this conversation 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. Have something to say? I'm all ears. If this conversation meant something to you, share it — it's still the best way new listeners discover the show. The podcast is free and always will be. If you'd like to support the reporting, essays and interviews behind these conversations, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Subscribe here Want more between essays and episodes? Check out Below the Fold —dispatches on the stories worth paying attention to, from the people in my own backyard to those reshaping the wider world. Watch clips and video previews on YouTube Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov

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  Episode #10

  Hôte Cuisine

  Jun 16, 20261 hourS1

  In conversation with Neal Wavra. Neal Wavra was on track for a career in global trade policy — trained in commercial diplomacy, as well as conflict resolution 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 a James Beard Award finalist — the only one from the great state of Virginia. But our conversation isn’t really about any of that. It’s about 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 — on farm-to-table as an alibi for mediocrity, on what genuine connection between a kitchen and its community actually requires, on whether excellence needs external recognition to be real — and they’re not what you’d expect. Have something to say? I'm all ears. If this conversation meant something to you, share it — it's still the best way new listeners discover the show. The podcast is free and always will be. If you'd like to support the reporting, essays and interviews behind these conversations, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Subscribe here Want more between essays and episodes? Check out Below the Fold —dispatches on the stories worth paying attention to, from the people in my own backyard to those reshaping the wider world. Watch clips and video previews on YouTube Credits: Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs Music: Ilya Kuznetsov

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