Our politics is drowning in spin, culture wars and career politicians. Politicians tell us they’ll help us take back control, but how do we actually do that in the system we have?

In this video I explore why direct democracy is now possible because of the internet. And it sounds superficially appealing. But voting on every issue online would lead to chaos and endless disinformation campaigns - the very same we see during elections. While we currently rely on elected representatives to deliberate on our behalf, they often no longer reflect the everyday people they are supposed to serve.

There is another way. In ancient Athens the Council of 500 ran the city. Instead of electing leaders to fight their way to the top, it was chosen by lottery as we choose jurors in a court. We need to do something similar, but not just in our courts. We need an institution like a jury to participate in government alongside our politicians.

This is the first step toward saving our politics.

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Social media currently rewards outrage over reason, functioning as a profit-driven "shoutocracy" that fuels online division. What if we could fix our digital public square using the same principles of governance that make Wikipedia generally reliable?

In this video, I explore the stark contrast between Wikipedia's structured meritocracy and the chaotic nature of modern platforms. While Wikipedia’s genius was focusing on the NPOV - the Neutral Point of View as the way its many participants converge on a common standard. It’s inherently harder on social media. That’s because so much discussion on social media isn’t just about what is the case but how society ought to be. It’s harder to get people to converge on better rather than worse responses to that question. But Wikipedia gives us some clues. I think the answer lies in bridging algorithms, tools designed to amplify voices that earn respect even from their ideological opponents.

Because bridging societal divides doesn’t generally maximise profit, I argue that cultural institutions, public broadcasters, and universities must take the lead. By pioneering pro-social networks, we can rebuild the vital "middleware" of our democracy. This video examines how prioritising collective sense-making over rage could fundamentally transform our algorithms and our future.

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By every rule of logic, giving a global army of volunteers the power to write an encyclopaedia should have resulted in total chaos. Yet, the miracle of the early internet was that it didn't. In this video, I argue that while we are mesmerised by the radical openness of platforms like Wikipedia, we are missing the invisible architecture that actually makes them work. I call this the 'middleware' of peer production.

We explore how successful open-source projects are not the democratic free-for-alls we imagine, but exacting meritocracies often ruled by 'benevolent dictators'. By ignoring this hidden structure, we fail to understand why modern social media has become a toxic mix of confusion and rage. We look at how the right kind of gatekeepers are essential to align individual actions with shared purposes, offering us the only real clue on how to fix our broken digital conversations. And it’s all leading up to an even bigger question we ask in the next video. What is the middleware of democracy and how can we build it?

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Do you remember the early euphoria surrounding social media? We were promised a revolution that would remake politics and overthrow corrupt systems. Instead, we seem to have ended up in a digital Thunderdome.

In this video, I use a fundamental idea from economics to understand exactly what went wrong: the distinction between public and private goods. Just as a game of tennis requires shared rules to function, a shared online culture is the operating system of our online discourse. But culture is a public good. And in building that good the tech giants put private profit ahead of public good, fostering tribalism rather than meaningful connection.

However, the internet does not have to be a hellscape. By contrasting the chaos of social media with the surprising stability of Wikipedia, we can begin to see how to design institutions that amplify the better angels of our nature rather than our worst instincts. And that sets us up to ask the next question. What is Wikipedia’s online culture, and why does it work so much better - a subject we take up in our next video.

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What if our biggest problem in politics is not voters, but how leaders are chosen? In this video, I explore a forgotten idea that once helped societies select capable, trusted leaders without rewarding ambition, money, or ruthless self-promotion.

Modern democracy claims to be bottom up, yet real power often flows through wealth, party machines, and professional campaigning. We end up with popularity contests rather than merit. But this was not always inevitable. From America’s founding debates to medieval Venice, we find practical systems designed to elevate integrity, judgement, and public spirit while limiting corruption and factionalism.

I look at how bottom up meritocracy worked in practice, from the Founding Fathers idea of the Electoral College, and the Venetian Republic to a contemporary citizens’ assembly in South Australia, and why random selection paired with peer judgement can outperform elections alone. The question is not whether democracy should change, but whether we can improve how we choose leaders in politics, public institutions, and beyond.

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Why are so many decent, honest people repelled by politics-as-usual? I use the story of Mal Meninga, the celebrated Australian rugby captain, who famously tried politics and quit 30 seconds into his first interview, choking on the very talking points he’d practiced for weeks. He simply balked at the falsity of it all.

His experience reveals something deeply unsettling about our modern democracy. The political system seems to actively filter out the humble and decent, leaving a space that attracts narcissists, Machiavellians and psychopaths.

We conclude with a glimpse at a different, older model of democracy, championed by America's founders and ancient Athens, that offers a way to heal our broken system.

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We all want good leaders in our democracy, but what if politics, elections, and the very systems we use to choose them actually give narcissists and bad leaders a leg up? In this video on the dark secret behind democracy, I explore the paradox at the heart of our modern institutions. We want leaders who serve others, not themselves.

Yet, our reliance on pitting leadership candidates against each other in open competition, whether in politics or organisations, discourages worthy candidates who dislike self-promotion. Worse, it actively attracts the very people who do the most damage. We have built a meritocracy that confuses what it takes to win with merit itself.

This system allows narcissists and psychopaths to thrive. I examine why our selection process favours the "dark triad" and how we lost touch with the idea of intrinsic merit.

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Why does modern politics feel so much like theatre? It's a problem that stretches right back to ancient Athens, where the very layout of the citizen assembly favoured the charismatic and the power-hungry.

Today, this has evolved into "democracy by theatre". We are drawn to politicians who entertain us, which means vital issues are often ignored simply because they aren't 'exciting' enough for the 24-hour news cycle.

In this video, I explore how this damaging focus on performance distracts from real governance. We look at an Austrian election, where the divisive topic of immigration eclipsed the public's stated priority: education. I then contrast this with a powerful alternative in East Belgium: a standing citizen jury that successfully tackles complex, real-world problems like affordable living and aged care, all away from the political spotlight.

It's time we asked how we can refocus our institutions on good governance rather than political grandstanding.

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