In June 1897, the Royal Navy assembled the greatest fleet in the world at Spithead for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Among the vessels in attendance was a small experimental boat from the Tyne called Turbinia.

By the end of the day, she was the star of the show. Powered by Charles Parsons' steam turbine, an engine the Admiralty had been slow to take seriously, she raced past the assembled fleet at thirty-four knots, and nothing there could match her. Nine years later, HMS Dreadnought launched with Parsons turbines. Within a generation, the same technology was generating the world's electricity.

Parsons didn't just invent the turbine. He engineered, built and tested it on one river. This episode asks why that connection between invention and production once defined British industry, where it survives today, and what it should teach us now.

Along the way: how Sheffield turned a clockmaker's frustration into a century of steel, why the economist Alfred Marshall said industrial knowledge lived "in the air", what happened to graphene after Manchester discovered it, and why Derby, Barrow and the Tyne still hold the pattern that built Britain.

It ends with four tests for deciding what Britain should build next.

Has Brexit damaged UK industry?

Ten years on from the referendum, the debate is still dominated by politics. But what does the evidence actually show?

In this episode, Rob Gilbert examines the Brexit balance sheet for British industry. He looks at the impact on trade, productivity and investment, and explores what the new trading relationship has meant for automotive, agriculture and food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, defence and financial services.

The evidence points to a real economic cost, particularly for goods-producing sectors and smaller exporters. But Brexit did not begin Britain’s industrial decline, and many of the constraints blamed on Brussels were in fact the result of domestic political choices.

The episode also considers the opportunities created by regulatory autonomy, new trade agreements and greater freedom to support strategic industries — and why those freedoms have yet to produce a meaningful industrial dividend.

The central question is no longer whether Brexit was right or wrong. It is how Britain now works with its European allies, uses its independence where it creates genuine value, and rebuilds the industrial capability on which prosperity, security and national power depend.

Just how is the offshore wind industry in the UK really doing?

I put that question to Tim Pick on the fringe of Global Offshore Wind 2026 in Manchester. Tim is Britain's first offshore wind champion, a former clean power commissioner, vice president of the Energy Institute and chair of the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership.

We cover where the industry really stands, AR7 and the job of turning an allocation round into built projects, why Ardersier has upended the conventional wisdom on ports, the bet on floating wind in the Celtic Sea, and why the North Sea starts to sustain itself in the 2030s. Tim is also clear about the cost of politicising all this.

The question underneath it all is the one this show keeps coming back to. Do we build, or do we buy?

Feedback, guest suggestions and future episode requests are always welcome.