Free Cities Podcast
byTimothy Allen
BusinessEntrepreneurshipNewsPoliticsSocietyCulture
The Free Cities Podcast is the leading podcast covering alternative governance, new jurisdictions, and the global movement to build freer societies. Hosted by Timothy Allen, the show features long-form, in-person conversations with the people building autonomous jurisdictions and real-world pathways to more freedom. We focus on what actually works, the legal structures, incentives, economics, and business models that turn freedom from an idea into a way of life. Builders and sceptics welcome. Free Cities, Charter Cities, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Network States, Startup Societies, Pioneer Communities, Intentional Communities, Popup Cities, Governance Innovation, Competitive Governance, Governance as a Service, Regulatory Innovation...
Episodes(40 episodes)
180 - Why Bad Ideas Persist | Crémieux
IQ, Institutions & Why Every Country Is Run Poorly
- Crémieux is a pseudonymous statistician and writer with a large following on Substack and X. He likes to take widely cited studies, reopen the data, and argue the conclusions don't always hold up. His readers include Elon Musk and JD Vance, and his work circulates widely in tech and policy circles.
Timothy Allen sits down with Crémieux in Honduras, for a wide-ranging conversation about IQ, institutions, fertility, biotech, agglomeration economies, and why he thinks every country on Earth, even Singapore, is run poorly. The re...
Published: May 1, 2026Duration: 1h 14m 53s
179 - My Family Owns a Country | Liam Bates
Sealand, Sovereignty & Building Freedom Without Permission
- For nearly six decades, the Principality of Sealand has stood as one of the world’s most famous experiments in self-declared sovereignty: a former wartime sea fort occupied in 1967 by Paddy Roy Bates and still run by the Bates family today. What began as a pirate-radio outpost became a long-running test case in jurisdiction, legitimacy, and what it means to build freedom outside existing systems.
Timothy Allen sits down with Prince Liam Bates of the Principality of Sealand, grandson of Paddy Roy Bates and part of the family st...
Published: Apr 24, 2026Duration: 1h 15m 16s
178 - 8 Hard Truths from 25 Years of Investing in Free Cities | Patri Friedman
Why Most Free City Projects Fail & What Actually Works
- After more than two decades investing in charter cities, seasteading, and governance innovation, Patri Friedman has arrived at a blunt conclusion: most attempts to build new societies fail not because of bad ideas, but because of poor execution.
Timothy Allen sits down with the founder of The Seasteading Institute and General Partner at Pronomos Capital, the first venture capital fund dedicated to charter cities. Patri has spent 25 years exploring and investing in the Free Cities ecosystem and shares eight hard-earned lessons from trying to turn...
Published: Apr 17, 2026Duration: 1h 20m 26s
177 - The Próspera Master Plan | Gabriel Delgado
Inside Próspera's Survival, Legal Battle, and Vision for Governance as a Service
- Próspera is the world's most closely watched startup city - a Free City project on the Honduran island of Roatán operating under the ZEDE framework with its own civil code, tax structure, and regulatory system. After surviving years of political hostility from the previous Honduran government, it now faces a pivotal moment: a friendlier administration, an ongoing CAFTA arbitration, and a development roadmap that could reshape how governance experiments scale globally.
In this episode, Timothy Allen sits down with Gab...
Published: Apr 10, 2026Duration: 1h 15m 29s
176 - Why Everything Feels Broken | James Price
“When Starmer came in in 2024, how many people across the entire British state changed jobs?
Two hundred. One hundred ministers… and one hundred special advisors… And that’s it. And everybody else in that deep state stayed exactly the same.”
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Timothy Allen sits down with James Price, former UK government adviser and political commentator, for a wide-ranging conversation on what it’s really like inside the machinery of the modern state.
Drawing on his experience at the heart of government, James offers a candid perspective on why many institutions are increasingly...
Published: Apr 3, 2026Duration: 1h 17m 38s
175 - The Last Free Place | Oswald Horowitz
“I will die at sea for sure. I’m not going back.”
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Timothy Allen sits down with filmmaker Oswald Horowitz, the man behind the upcoming documentary The Legend of Landi, to trace the strange true story of Samuele Landi, an Italian tech entrepreneur who set out to live beyond the reach of the normal system on a rusty barge in international waters between Dubai and Iran.
What begins as Oswald's quixotic quest to track Landi down, involving ignored Telegram messages, a ketchup-themed short film, a Croatian police ban, and a Dubai fisherman willin...
Published: Mar 27, 2026Duration: 2h 52m 43s
174 - The Architecture of Spontaneous Order | Patrik Schumacher
"Land use should not be prescribed by any planning regime. People come together into the city by seeking out very particular connections and a multitude of connections. And they have to find each other. There needs to be the degree of freedom to associate and self-organize what I call the co-location synergies."
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Timothy Allen sits down with Patrik Schumacher, principal architect at Zaha Hadid Architects and the theorist behind “parametricism,” to talk about what happens when cities are allowed to evolve like markets: bottom up, adaptive, and shaped by real human purposes rather than plan...
Published: Mar 20, 2026Duration: 1h 46m 33s
173 - The Hidden Path to Tyranny | Mailyn Salabarria
"You can vote your way into socialism, but you can only shoot your way out. They're never going to leave power."
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Timothy Allen sits down with Mailyn Salabarria, a Cuban refugee and liberty advocate, to talk about what “voting with your feet” looks like when it is not a lifestyle choice but a survival move. Mailyn describes leaving Cuba with two suitcases and $200, then having to learn how freedom actually works once she arrived in the US.
From there, the conversation gets darker: why Cuba is not “quaint,” how the country is actively...
Published: Mar 13, 2026Duration: 1h 14m 59s
172 - The Ultimate Exit Strategy | Joe Quirk
"The golden age of voluntarism, anarcho-capitalism has already emerged. It's all over two-thirds of the Earth's surface. It's completely flourishing. It's long since entered its golden age. We've already proved that it works because it emerged naturally on the sea.
It's called the cruise ship industry."
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Timothy Allen sits down with Joe Quirk, president of The Seasteading Institute, to make the strongest practical case for “exit” as a governance strategy, starting with Sealand and pirate-radio absurdity and ending with a serious blueprint for floating communities that can iterate on rules the way mark...
Published: Mar 6, 2026Duration: 2h 37m 2s
171 - The Truth About Special Economic Zones | Lotta Moberg
Special Economic Zones, Public Choice, and the Truth Behind China's Miracle
Lotta Moberg is an economist and author of The Political Economy of Special Economic Zones, widely regarded as the leading academic book on the subject. After a PhD at George Mason University she spent a decade in macro investing and is now co-founding a wealth management firm, alongside an unusual sideline in cannabis credit.
Timothy Allen sits down with Lotta for a conversation that quietly dismantles the story most people tell about special economic zones. The legend of China's zones as a wise master...
Published: Feb 27, 2026Duration: 1h 55m 37s
170 - Leaving Europe Is The Rational Choice | Tim Stern
"I want to be back in my tribe. I want to have strong people which I can rely on, which I can do business with, which I know, which have my back and I have theirs. That's exactly what I want to have. And if we are building this place right now, why would I fill it with people I don't know and I don't give a shit about?"
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“The whole country is falling apart and nobody gives a shit about it.”
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Timothy Allen speaks with Tim Stern, founder of C...
Published: Feb 20, 2026Duration: 1h 30m 38s
169 - The First Operational Seasteading Resort: Reef Resort | Mitchell Suchner
"If I can sell someone something to buy, they might buy it. If you can sell someone something that they can live in, they're likely to buy it. If you can sell someone something that they can live in and also generates passive income for them, they're very likely to buy it."
A real seasteading resort exists today. Here’s the business model behind it.
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Timothy Allen speaks with Mitchell Suchner, founder of ArkPad.
Mitchell is building real, operational seasteading infrastructure, including Reef Resort in the Philippines. This episode is the economic case for ho...
Published: Feb 13, 2026Duration: 1h 26m 30s
168 - Vikram Bharati: At the Intersection of Free Cities & Network States
“The free cities community seems very much more buttoned up and more pragmatic – real estate, free cities, development, SEZs. You need lawyers, you need bankers.
And then the network state community, there’s a lot more dreamers, young dreamers who want to do pop-up cities.
But there’s a convergence in between where you have a group of people who are a bit of both. And I think that middle group of people are people that are going to do some very interesting things.”
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Timothy Allen speaks with Vikram Bharati.
Vikr...
Published: Feb 6, 2026Duration: 2h 4m 26s
167 - Mikkel Thorup: The Global Freedom Map Is Changing
“How do you get out of this? How do you separate yourself from your government today? How do you protect your wealth and your ability to provide for your family today?”
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Timothy Allen speaks with Mikkel Thorup.
Mikkel is a long-time expat, offshore consultant, and founder of Expat Money. He has spent over 25 years living outside his country of birth, traveled to more than 120 countries, and works directly with families, entrepreneurs, and high earners looking to reduce friction with the systems they live under.
What begins with travel stories from Cent...
Published: Jan 30, 2026Duration: 1h 14m 28s
166 - Christoph Heuermann: You Can Live Tax Free Almost Anywhere
“Why do you need Free Cities if you can live tax-free everywhere?”
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Timothy Allen speaks with Christoph Heuermann.
Christoph is a perpetual traveler whose company Staatenlos sits at the intersection of global mobility, asset protection, and quiet preparation for uncertainty. What begins with stories of constant movement and remote places quickly turns into a deeper exploration of why some people choose not to anchor themselves to a single country, system, or plan.
Without turning it into a how-to guide, the conversation moves through unclaimed territories, unusual experiments in sovereignty, and the...
Published: Jan 23, 2026Duration: 1h 18m 46s
NEWS 002 - Venezuela After the Capture of Maduro
In this NEWS episode of the Free Cities Podcast, Timothy Allen summarizes a recent Free Cities Foundation Ambassador call focused on the reported capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and the rapid signals of reopening that followed.
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Drawing on firsthand accounts from Tim Stern, founder of CryptoCity, a residential special economic zone being built on Venezuela's Margarita Island, the discussion traced the immediate shock of the news, followed by a sudden surge in activity. Stern described how real estate inventory on Margarita tightened dramatically within days, with entry-level beachfront apartments disappearing and inb...
Published: Jan 21, 2026Duration: 19m 12s
165 - Rahim Taghizadegan: Exit Is More Powerful Than Voice
Bitcoin, Citadel Theory, Geoarbitrage, Capital Mobility, Privacy, Austrian Economics, citadel.garden, Family, Plan B, Private Communities, Optionality, Sovereignty, Free Cities
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Timothy Allen speaks with Rahim Taghizadegan.
Rahim is an Austrian economist and philosopher, founder of the Scholarium in Vienna, working in the Austrian School tradition on capital theory, entrepreneurship, and why political solutions consistently disappoint.
In this episode, he challenges deeply held assumptions about democracy, property, mobility, and what people mistake for security. He argues that freedom is not won through reform or participation, but through exit, optionality, and quiet...
Published: Jan 16, 2026Duration: 1h 16m 11s
164 - Mason: The Last Piece in the Puzzle for the Sovereign Individual
Seasteading, Floating Cities, Ocean Living, Private Governance, Catamaran Design, Flag Theory, Libertarian Communities, Sovereign Living, LiberArx, Atlas Island, Ocean Builders, Free Cities.
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Timothy Allen speaks with Mason.
Mason situates seasteading within the Free Cities movement, contrasting projects like the SeaPod from Ocean Builders and the ArkPad by Mitchell Suchner, before introducing LiberArx as a mass-producible, apartment-first floating home designed for comfort, mobility, energy independence, and cost competitiveness with global real estate, rather than traditional sailing performance.
He frames LiberArx as a practical bridge toward projects like Atlas Island, arguing that...
Published: Jan 9, 2026Duration: 1h 31m 52s
163 - Yaron Brook: Why Atlas Shrugged Keeps Happening
Collectivism, Individualism, Objectivism, Statism, Freedom, Ayn Rand, Free Speech, Entrepreneurship, Reason, Transhumanism, Free Cities, Self-Interest, Liberty, Technology, Philosophy
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Timothy Allen speaks with Yaron Brook.
Yaron is an Israeli American author and commentator best known as the longtime chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute and a prominent advocate of Objectivism.
In this conversation we talk about why the core political divide is, in Yaron's view, collectivism versus individualism rather than left versus right, and how growing statism erodes freedom, reason, and human flourishing.
Brook argues that modern politics, technology...
Published: Jan 2, 2026Duration: 1h 23m 50s
162 - Vladimir Leshko: You Will Live Forever If You Choose To
Longevity, Gene Therapy, Unlimited Bio, Próspera, Regulation, AI, Biohacking, Philosophy, Morality, Spirituality.
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Timothy Allen speaks with biomedical engineer Vladimir Leshko about gene therapy, longevity, and why Próspera’s regulatory environment makes human trials possible that are effectively blocked elsewhere.
Leshko explains how gene therapy works, why aging is a biological process rather than an inevitability, and explores the ethical, spiritual, and existential implications of choosing radically extended life in an age of AI and abundance.
Enjoy the conversation.
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SHOW SPONSOR: Veritas Villages: https://www...
Published: Dec 26, 2025Duration: 1h 34m 13s