Free Cities Podcast
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...
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199 - The Hanseatic League in the Cloud | Petar Čekerevac
<p>The four layers of building a new jurisdiction, and why the network state might be a backup layer for the world</p> <p>- Petar Čekerevac is a Senior Fellow at Atlas Network, working on their Project on Decentralizing Technologies. He was executive manager of Libertarian Club Libek in Belgrade, he helped set up the Serbian media outlet Talas, and he is an advisor to Bitcoin District in Próspera.</p> <p>The conversation starts in Serbia in the 1990s, with three wars and a dictatorship just behind it, and a teenager working out that neither the centre left no...
198 - We’re Building a New Country in Europe | Daniel Jackson
<p>At 21 years old, Daniel Jackson is already president of a country. There is just one problem: he currently can't enter it.</p> <p>If you follow Free Cities, micronations or alternative governance online, there’s a good chance Verdis has suddenly appeared in your social media feed. Daniel says Verdis-related content has generated more than 200 million views over the past year, much of it following footage of him being chased by Croatian police boats.</p> <p>Verdis claims a tiny piece of land on the Danube between Croatia and Serbia, close to Liberland. Daniel and his team established a se...
197 - They'll Blame You When It Fails | Dominic Frisby
<p>Gold, Bitcoin, and who gets the blame when the money fails.</p> <p>- Dominic Frisby has written about gold for MoneyWeek for the best part of twenty years. He co-wrote and narrated Four Horsemen, and wrote Life After the State, Bitcoin: The Future of Money? and Daylight Robbery. He writes the newsletter The Flying Frisby, performs stand-up, and has a satirical song you have probably heard without knowing it was his. His new book is The Secret History of Gold, published by Penguin.</p> <p>Timothy caught him at Liberpulco, at the Liberland Ark Village in Apatin. They...
196 - The Panopticon Is Already Here | Gareth Icke
<p>Why are so many people suddenly questioning the official version of everything?</p> <p>- Gareth Icke grew up surrounded by some of the most controversial ideas in Britain. His father, David Icke, built an entire body of work around hidden networks of power, manipulation and control, and Timothy came across many of those books when he was younger. He found the way David connected institutions, incentives and influence into a much larger picture genuinely compelling, even if the shape-shifting reptiles were a bridge too far. This conversation begins there: with Gareth separating what he believes from what he...
195 - How to Survive a Hostile Government | Christian Betancourt
<p>A first hand account from inside the worst four years.</p> <p>- Christian Betancourt is a Honduran lawyer, entrepreneur and one of Próspera's earliest residents. He was also one of the first people Timothy Allen ever interviewed for this podcast, back in episode three in 2022, when Próspera consisted of little more than the Beta building and the Honduran government had just begun its campaign against the ZEDE framework. Nobody knew whether the project would survive. Christian was so confident in the legal architecture that he left his corporate law career and moved there, betting his future on...
194 - Two Founders, Two Futures | Liam Martin & Nick Francis
<p>One says relax. One bought a Bunker. Two founders on whether AI is coming for your job.</p> <p>- Liam Martin is the co-founder of Time Doctor and Running Remote, and the creator of Peppermint, an AI tool that builds a working digital twin of you out of your emails, messages and calls. Nick Francis spent more than fifteen years building and running Help Scout as a fully remote company. Both were recorded at Running Remote in Austin.</p> <p>When Timothy Allen first sat down with Liam Martin a year ago in Morocco, he was the one...
193 - Fifty Years of Watching It Go Wrong | Mark Frazier
<p>He knew the men who tried to start their own countries. He watched every one of them fail.</p> <p>- Mark Frazier has been in this movement longer than almost anyone alive. He put out libertarian magazines in high school, and by eighteen he had been made publisher of Reason, back when it ran out of a truck driver's apartment and had three hundred subscribers. That was 1970. Over the following half century he worked on free zones in more than fifty countries, advised the Reagan administration on enterprise zones, consulted for the World Bank and USAID, and wrote...
192 - The First Country on the Internet | Joey Flores
<p>A Country on the Internet, a Passport by 2050, and the Death of the CV</p> <p>- Joey Flores is Head of Marketing at SafetyWing, the Y Combinator-backed company building a global social safety net for remote workers. A two-time startup founder whose YC-funded music startup was acquired, he dropped out of high school at sixteen and now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico.</p> <p>Timothy Allen sits down with Joey at the Running Remote conference in Austin, Texas, for a conversation about building for the 21st century nomadic life. SafetyWing's pitch is simple and audacious: your healthcare, income protection...
191 - Everyone Needs a Plan B | Vance
<p>Second Passports, Plan B Residencies, and the Americas Super Cycle</p> <p>- Vance is the founder of My Latin Life, an immigration agency covering residency visas across Latin America. A Canadian-American software developer, he began travelling after reading Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek and arriving in Playa del Carmen in 2018.</p> <p>Timothy Allen sits down with Vance in Próspera for a practical guide to internationalising your life. They discuss the five routes to a second passport, why ancestry should usually be investigated first, why Mexico often suits Americans while Paraguay appeals to Europeans, and how some L...
190 - Building Prosperity in the Danger Zone | Joyce Brand
<p>Spencer Heath, the Entrecom Model, and the City With One Owner</p> <p>– Joyce Brand is a proper OG of the Free Cities world: author of 'Pioneering Prosperity: The Morazán Model for Free Cities', co-author of Spencer Heath's posthumous Economics and the Spiritual Life of Free Men, and one of the very few people in this movement who has actually lived in a Free City. She spent three years as an early resident and chronicler of Ciudad Morazán, the "blue-collar" Honduran ZEDE built not for tech founders and digital nomads but for ordinary Honduran workers, in what was...
