A man from Scotland
Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2026 9:59 am
There was a man from Scotland who got on the radio.
His name was Alan Watt.
That, in itself, doesn’t sound particularly remarkable. People get on the radio all the time. They talk about politics, history, economics, religion, war, culture, whatever happens to be occupying the programme that day.
Alan was different.
He had a way of talking that could make a listener feel that several apparently unrelated things were actually connected. History would lead into economics, economics into politics, politics into culture, and suddenly something that had seemed like an isolated event was part of a much larger picture.
One of the places where people first encountered him was Sweet Liberty, the radio programme hosted by Jackie Patru.
Alan was a guest there before there was a large CTTM operation, before there was a vast archive of recordings and transcripts, before there were people maintaining websites and spending years preserving what he said.
There was simply Alan, talking.
People listened.
Some agreed with him. Some didn’t. Some probably thought he was completely mad. Others kept coming back because, whether they agreed with him or not, he had a peculiar ability to make them think.
And eventually Alan stopped being merely a guest on somebody else’s programme.
He began doing his own thing.
That became Cutting Through the Matrix.
At first it was just another programme on the growing frontier of the internet. But it didn’t stay small.
The recordings accumulated.
Then came the transcripts.
People began saving them. Other people began transcribing them. Websites appeared. Files were copied from one place to another. Listeners became regulars. Regulars became contributors. A scattered collection of people who had never met one another began to form something resembling a community.
There was no grand organisation behind it.No university.No newspaper.No large editorial department.Much of it was held together by people who simply cared enough to keep doing it.
And at the centre of all of it was Alan.
He produced an extraordinary amount of material. Years passed. The recordings multiplied. The transcripts multiplied with them. A listener who discovered CTTM in one year could go backwards and find years of earlier broadcasts waiting for them.
Eventually the programme became more than a radio show.
For some people, Alan was a researcher.
For others, he was a teacher.
For some, he became something closer to a guru.
There were people who followed his work for years and built a significant part of their intellectual world around it. There were people who devoted enormous amounts of time to transcribing, archiving and distributing his material.
And, as tends to happen around charismatic people, there were also arguments about Alan.
Who understood him?
Who knew him?
Who had actually been close to him?
Which interpretation was correct?
None of that was particularly unusual while Alan was alive.
Alan was still there.
If somebody wanted to know what Alan thought, there was always the possibility of asking him.
If two people disagreed about something he had said, there were thousands of hours of recordings to go back to.
The machine was messy, but it worked.
And then, after years of broadcasts, arguments, friendships, websites, transcripts and recordings, the man at the centre of it all was gone.
Alan Watt died on March 4, 2021.
At first glance, the obvious thing would have been to think that CTTM would simply continue.
The recordings were there.The websites were there.The archives were there.The people were there.But something had changed that could not be repaired by another recording or another website.
The one person who had always been able to settle the question of what Alan himself meant was no longer available.Nobody could ask him anymore.
And that was when the history of CTTM became a different story.Not immediately.There was no single moment when everything fell apart.
The old websites did not suddenly vanish. The recordings did not all disappear. People did not collectively announce that the old world was over.Instead, the people who had been around Alan began making their own decisions.Some stayed.Some left.Some went quiet.Some took on new roles.
Some continued to speak in Alan’s name.
And some began telling stories about what Alan had wanted, whom he had trusted, what he would have wanted after his death, and what should happen to the world he had left behind.
That is where this story begins.
Because once Alan was gone, there was no longer one person at the centre of CTTM.There were only people who remembered him.And they did not all remember the same thing.
His name was Alan Watt.
That, in itself, doesn’t sound particularly remarkable. People get on the radio all the time. They talk about politics, history, economics, religion, war, culture, whatever happens to be occupying the programme that day.
Alan was different.
He had a way of talking that could make a listener feel that several apparently unrelated things were actually connected. History would lead into economics, economics into politics, politics into culture, and suddenly something that had seemed like an isolated event was part of a much larger picture.
One of the places where people first encountered him was Sweet Liberty, the radio programme hosted by Jackie Patru.
Alan was a guest there before there was a large CTTM operation, before there was a vast archive of recordings and transcripts, before there were people maintaining websites and spending years preserving what he said.
There was simply Alan, talking.
People listened.
Some agreed with him. Some didn’t. Some probably thought he was completely mad. Others kept coming back because, whether they agreed with him or not, he had a peculiar ability to make them think.
And eventually Alan stopped being merely a guest on somebody else’s programme.
He began doing his own thing.
That became Cutting Through the Matrix.
At first it was just another programme on the growing frontier of the internet. But it didn’t stay small.
The recordings accumulated.
Then came the transcripts.
People began saving them. Other people began transcribing them. Websites appeared. Files were copied from one place to another. Listeners became regulars. Regulars became contributors. A scattered collection of people who had never met one another began to form something resembling a community.
There was no grand organisation behind it.No university.No newspaper.No large editorial department.Much of it was held together by people who simply cared enough to keep doing it.
And at the centre of all of it was Alan.
He produced an extraordinary amount of material. Years passed. The recordings multiplied. The transcripts multiplied with them. A listener who discovered CTTM in one year could go backwards and find years of earlier broadcasts waiting for them.
Eventually the programme became more than a radio show.
For some people, Alan was a researcher.
For others, he was a teacher.
For some, he became something closer to a guru.
There were people who followed his work for years and built a significant part of their intellectual world around it. There were people who devoted enormous amounts of time to transcribing, archiving and distributing his material.
And, as tends to happen around charismatic people, there were also arguments about Alan.
Who understood him?
Who knew him?
Who had actually been close to him?
Which interpretation was correct?
None of that was particularly unusual while Alan was alive.
Alan was still there.
If somebody wanted to know what Alan thought, there was always the possibility of asking him.
If two people disagreed about something he had said, there were thousands of hours of recordings to go back to.
The machine was messy, but it worked.
And then, after years of broadcasts, arguments, friendships, websites, transcripts and recordings, the man at the centre of it all was gone.
Alan Watt died on March 4, 2021.
At first glance, the obvious thing would have been to think that CTTM would simply continue.
The recordings were there.The websites were there.The archives were there.The people were there.But something had changed that could not be repaired by another recording or another website.
The one person who had always been able to settle the question of what Alan himself meant was no longer available.Nobody could ask him anymore.
And that was when the history of CTTM became a different story.Not immediately.There was no single moment when everything fell apart.
The old websites did not suddenly vanish. The recordings did not all disappear. People did not collectively announce that the old world was over.Instead, the people who had been around Alan began making their own decisions.Some stayed.Some left.Some went quiet.Some took on new roles.
Some continued to speak in Alan’s name.
And some began telling stories about what Alan had wanted, whom he had trusted, what he would have wanted after his death, and what should happen to the world he had left behind.
That is where this story begins.
Because once Alan was gone, there was no longer one person at the centre of CTTM.There were only people who remembered him.And they did not all remember the same thing.