Tyler Interviews MP Tom Tugendhat.

Quite the resume, as you can see at the transcript. Cowen likes to warm up both the guest and the audience with unexpected questions.

COWEN: Okay. First question, what is your favorite walk around London, and what does it show about the city that outsiders might not understand?

TUGENDHAT: Oh, my favorite walk is down the river. A lot of people walk down the river. One of the best things about walking down the river in London is, first of all, it shows two things. One, that London is actually an incredibly private place. You can be completely on your own in the center of one of the biggest cities in the world within seconds, just by walking down the river. Very often, even in the middle of the day, there’s nobody there. You walk past things that are just extraordinary. You walk past a customs house. It’s not used anymore, but it was the customs house for 300, 400, 500 years. You walk past, obviously, the Tower of London. You walk past Tower Bridge. You walk past many things like that.

Actually, you’re walking past a lot of modern London as well, and you see the reality of London, which is — the truth is, London isn’t a single city. It’s many, many different villages, all cobbled together in various different ways. I think outsiders miss the fact that there’s a real intimacy to London that you miss if all you’re doing is you’re going on the Tube, or if you’re going on the bus. If you walk down that river, you see a very, very different kind of London. You see real communities and real smaller communities.

But Tugendhat gets into much more serious stuff, including upgrades to the UK nuclear arsenal, what ten years in the military (mostly Afghanistan) taught him, and why it's version of representative democracy works.

I won’t tell you any secrets, but I suppose the one secret that I can tell you that some people just won’t believe me is: Conspiracies are unbelievably difficult, and I just don’t believe in them anymore. I believe in cock-up. I believe there’s huge numbers of mistakes that happen, and people are constantly misjudging things. That, I believe in, and that leads to very, very unpredictable outcomes in some circumstances. But the conspiracies, I’m afraid, I don’t believe in them.

A very fun interview.