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The Rest Is Politics: Leading

169. Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia vs. Musk, AI, and the Battle for Truth

The Rest Is Politics: Leading

Goalhanger

News, Government, Politics

4.63.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Who gave us an encyclopedia in our pockets? Why is the statement that Donald Trump is the "worst president in US history" allowed on his Wikipedia page? How do Brazilians and Americans differ on the history of the airplane? Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell are joined by the creator of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, to discuss all this and more. For Leading listeners, there’s free access to the Wordsmith Academy - plus their report on the future of legal skills. Visit https://www.wordsmith.ai/politics Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Adam Thornton Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Alice Horrell Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen Head of Politics: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus.

0:03.6

To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room and gain early access to live show tickets.

0:09.4

Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolics.com.

0:18.5

Welcome to the Restisbury's leading with me, Alastair Campbell.

0:21.6

And with me, Rory Stewart. And today we're going to interview Jimmy Wells. And Jimmy

0:25.9

Wells is the founder of Wikipedia, which is, as everybody listening, I think for once, I

0:34.3

don't need to do one of these explainers for internationalists, as everyone

0:37.9

listening will know, is the world's great free online encyclopedia, which I think now has 99 times

0:44.9

as many entries as the old Encyclopedia Britannica, in English alone. A huge thing, and something

0:51.4

which from the beginning was astonishingly revolutionary. Instead of the old

0:56.4

encyclopedias, which used professors, paid monies to write their specialist articles, it trusted

1:03.1

that essentially crowdsourcing, getting members of the public to come in and just contribute to an

1:10.2

article, they would be able to map

1:12.5

out human knowledge.

1:13.5

My goodness, they've done it.

1:14.5

They've done it in medicine.

1:15.5

They've done it in history.

1:16.5

They've done it in science.

1:18.5

And it's become, in a sense, the underpinning for many things.

1:22.4

A great deal of what we are relying on in AI and large language models relies on them reaching into Wikipedia.

1:30.3

It's unpaid volunteers, largely working in this, and it's a non-profit foundation lying behind

1:36.8

it.

...

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