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 skeptics 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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179 - Make Sealand Great Again | Liam Bates
<p>Sealand, Sovereignty & Building Freedom Without Permission</p> <p>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.</p> <p>Timothy Allen sits down with Prince Liam Bates of the Principality of Sealand, grandson of Paddy Roy Bates and part of the family still ca...
178 - 8 Hard Truths from 25 Years of Investing in Free Cities | Patri Friedman
<p>Why Most Free City Projects Fail & What Actually Works</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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 governance...
177 - The Próspera Master Plan | Gabriel Delgado
<p>Inside Próspera's Survival, Legal Battle, and Vision for Governance as a Service</p> <p>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.</p> <p>In this episode, Timothy Allen sits down with Gabriel Del...
176 - Why Everything Feels Broken | James Price
<p>“When Starmer came in in 2024, how many people across the entire British state changed jobs?</p> <p>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.”</p> <p>-</p> <p>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.</p> <p>Drawing on his experience at the heart of government, James offers a candid perspective on why many institutions are increasingly...
175 - The Last Free Place | Oswald Horowitz
<p>“I will die at sea for sure. I’m not going back.”</p> <p>-</p> <p>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. </p> <p>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...
174 - The Architecture of Spontaneous Order | Patrik Schumacher
<p>"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."</p> <p>-</p> <p>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...
173 - The Hidden Path to Tyranny | Mailyn Salabarria
<p>"You can vote your way into socialism, but you can only shoot your way out. They're never going to leave power."</p> <p>-</p> <p>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.</p> <p>From there, the conversation gets darker: why Cuba is not “quaint,” how the country is actively...
172 - The Ultimate Exit Strategy | Joe Quirk
<p>"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. </p> <p>It's called the cruise ship industry."</p> <p>-</p> <p>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...
171 - The Truth About Special Economic Zones | Lotta Moberg
<p>"There were probably a lot of brown envelopes on the table involved — they said, okay, have this zone then."</p> <p>-</p> <p>Timothy Allen speaks with economist Lotta Moberg.</p> <p>Lotta, author of the leading academic book on special economic zones, joins the podcast to challenge the conventional wisdom around why zones exist, whether they actually work, and what the popular narrative gets wrong. </p> <p>The conversation opens with Lotta's framework: political economy and public choice theory, which assumes policymakers are self-interested humans, not benevolent optimizers. This lens reshapes how we understand why governments create zo...
170 - Leaving Europe Is The Rational Choice | Tim Stern
<p>"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?"</p> <p>-</p> <p>“The whole country is falling apart and nobody gives a shit about it.”</p> <p>-</p> <p>Timothy Allen speaks with Tim Stern, founder of C...
