Silicon Valley used to be regarded as the global hub of entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. It was the home of the world’s best technologies, new products and services. Yet today, Silicon Valley’s tech companies seem to have become the twenty-first-century equivalent of mediaeval robber barons. They are condemned for fleecing customers, evading taxes, and pocketing monopoly profits. Once associated with freedom, Silicon Valley is now condemned as the agency of global surveillance. Has i...
Mar 26, 2018•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 73
How could so many people be convinced to vote for Donald Trump? Why did so many Brits vote to leave the EU, despite almost unanimous advice from experts, political leaders and celebrities that we should remain? Some attribute these results to the power of Big Data, specifically to the high-tech psychological marketing techniques of a company called Cambridge Analytica. Can the manipulation of data really swing important votes? What are the implications of this approach for privacy and democracy?...
Mar 18, 2018•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 72
Recording of the debate at Battle of Ideas 2017 ( https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/safety-first/ ) The ‘safety first’ outlook, intending to keep us safe by imagining the worst, risks increasing our sense of existential insecurity. Always anticipating catastrophe may mean over-reacting, especially in the fields of science, health and technology. We have become the victims of scaremongering over theoretical risks – from mobile phone radiation or the latest strain of flu, even from familiar...
Mar 09, 2018•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 71
The Russian government is now routinely portrayed as a threat to the West, both on the international stage, in Ukraine and Syria, and in domestic politics, accused of interfering in elections. Russia is certainly back on the world stage and no longer prepared to accept Western-backed regime change, but to what extent does Russia represent a threat? Does Russia have legitimate interests that it is entitled to defend as much as Britain is? Is Putin simply playing a weak hand well? Does Russia loom...
Mar 02, 2018•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 70
After the school shooting in Parkland, Florida on 14 February 2018, the issue of gun control and the meaning of mass shootings in America has come to the fore once more. This session from Battle of Ideas 2013, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting and Boston Marathon bombing, took a step back to examine these issues in a wider context. SPEAKERS Nancy McDermott writer; advisor to Park Slope Parents, NYC's most notorious parents' organization Christine Rosen fellow, New America Foundation; s...
Feb 23, 2018•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 69
Recording of a debate at the Battle of Ideas festival at The Barbican on Sunday 29 October 2017. George Orwell claimed that ‘political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable’. Today, many claim that the increasing corruption of language has become detrimental to our democracy. Political labels, such as fascism and populism, right-wing and left-wing, are used promiscuously, often as insults against opponents. The rise of identity politics has given us new words...
Feb 16, 2018•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 68
Diversity is widely celebrated in contemporary society. Big employers have adopted elaborate strategies to recruit more diverse workforces. On the world stage, diversity is posited as a progressive antidote to ‘backward forces’ clinging to outdated national cultures. But has diversity become an illiberal orthodoxy? When Google engineer James Damore notoriously inquired whether diversity was an incontestable virtue, he lost his job. Do diversity policies invite a permanent war of cultures, result...
Feb 09, 2018•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 67
Alastair Donald, Claire Fox and Rob Lyons discuss the fallout from the Presidents' Club dinner, the stasis within the Conservative government and the prospects for Brexit, and the misguided 'war on plastic'. (Apologies for some noise in parts of this recording.)
Jan 26, 2018•32 min•Ep. 66
Who can journalists trust out of the overwhelming selection of competing interests to act as reliable sources? Can anyone play the role of the ‘honest broker’? How can the public untangle dubious, pseudo-scientific advice and dodgy stats from facts and truth? How can we know whether journalism, particularly reporting on complex issues or assessing notoriously difficult ideas such as risk, is accurate? Should we accept that it is our responsibility as citizens to check the facts for ourselves or ...
Dec 21, 2017•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 65
Listen to the debate at the Battle of Ideas 2017 at the Barbican in London. Whereas earlier generations of young people provoked outrage among their elders, millennials – those born in the late 1990s and early 2000s – seem to attract merely condescension and concern. Today’s youth have been labelled ‘Generation Snowflake’ for their declarations of emotional vulnerability and demands for protection and support. Instead of revolting, today’s students seem to be preoccupied with difficulties in neg...
Dec 15, 2017•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 64
Recording of the debate at the Battle of Ideas 2017 at The Barbican in London, in partnership with Immunocore. The new Life Sciences Industrial Strategy claims that ‘in a country where productivity is a major challenge, public sector life sciences discovery activity… is dramatically more productive compared to other countries such as the USA or Germany’. What role will biotechnology play in the industries of tomorrow? Will it predominate as a durable, sizeable and job-creating sector, helping to...
Dec 07, 2017•1 hr•Ep. 63
Recording of the debate at the Battle of Ideas 2017. Globalisation is the process by which national and regional economies, societies and cultures have become more integrated through global networks of trade, foreign direct investment, transport, telecommunications and immigration. Many argue that globalisation has been an enormous boon to worldwide living standards. However, serious debate has now broken out about whether globalisation is finally grinding to a halt. What is globalisation, and i...
Dec 02, 2017•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 62
Recording of the Battle of Ideas Stockholm 2017 debate at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern. (Please note, there is a very short introduction to the recording in Swedish, but the debate is in English.) Is #MeToo a valuable way for the everywoman to show solidarity with victims and raise awareness of the broader problems of sexual harassment everywhere? Or does it stir up the gender wars, exaggerating the idea that most men are sexual predators and most women their victims? What does #MeToo reveal about d...
Nov 24, 2017•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 61
Recording of the debate at the Battle of Ideas 2017 in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering. See full details here: https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/from-ai-to-big-data-can-technology-save-the-nhs/ At a time of ever-increasing healthcare costs, waiting times and ever-increasing strains on GPs and A&E departments, there is increased urgency in trying to find new approaches to treatment. Against this backdrop of cost-driven strains in patient care, can engineering innovati...
Nov 21, 2017•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 60
How should free speech activists respond to the challenge of identity politics? It no longer seems sufficient to cite the First Amendment, quote JS Mill, or cry academic freedom in trying to thwart assaults on free expression. There was a powerful illustration of this problem recently when protesters affiliated with Black Lives Matter gatecrashed an event at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and prevented the invited guest from the American Civil Liberties Union from sp...
Nov 13, 2017•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 59
Stephen Farrall, professor of criminology in the Centre for Criminological Research at the School of Law, University of Sheffield, talks to Rob Lyons about his film Generation Right, which looks at the election of Margaret Thatcher and her subsequent policies, particularly in relation to crime and criminal justice policy. Stephen notes how Thatcher's economic policies - in particular, the way they created mass unemployment and drove down welfare provision - led to an increase in crime. Yet she r...
Oct 24, 2017•20 min•Ep. 58
Jamie Bartlett is the director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think-tank Demos, where he specialises in online social movements, the impact of technology on society, and new big data research methods. He is also author of the best-selling book The Dark Net (2014) about internet subcultures and Radicals (2017) about fringe political movements. Earlier this year he presented the BBC series The Secrets of Silicon Valley. In this podcast, Jamie talks to Max Sanderson about why...
Oct 18, 2017•17 min•Ep. 57
Feminists routinely argue that women remain disadvantaged in society. But as Joanna Williams argues in her new book, Women vs Feminism: Why We All Need Liberating from the Gender Wars, this is now rarely the case in the UK. In fact, as she explains to Max Sanderson, by emphasising vulnerability, contemporary feminism actually perpetuates some out-dated notions about women and moves us further away from equality and liberation. Joanna is speaking in the session Women versus Feminism: do we all ne...
Oct 12, 2017•19 min•Ep. 56
Claire Fox, Rob Lyons and Adam Rawcliffe look ahead to the Battle of Ideas 2017 at The Barbican in London, pulling out some personal highlights from the 100+ debates taking place over the festival weekend - from populism and cultural appropriation to the end of globalisation and street art.
Oct 05, 2017•36 min•Ep. 55
The furore around a memo written by Google engineer James Damore, which argued that the relative paucity of female engineers could be explained in part by biology, brought the field of evolutionary psychology (EP) to wider public attention. EP seeks to identify the psychological traits that were adaptive in our evolution, forming part of ‘human nature’, and has been used to explain everything from gender differences to our propensity to eat unhealthy food. But critics argue EP is reductive and d...
Sep 27, 2017•18 min•Ep. 54
Cathy Young, contributing editor at Reason magazine and columnist for Newsday, talks to Max Sanderson about the recent political phenomenon of the alt-right. Who are they? Where did they come from? Why has the alt-right become popular and what does it stand for?
Sep 20, 2017•20 min•Ep. 53
With the furores this week over statues, we are republishing this debate from Battle of Ideas 2015. The Islamic State’s attacks on antiquities in Iraq and Syria have caused outrage worldwide. The systematic destruction of ancient archaeological ruins at Nimrud and Palmyra, artefacts at the museum of Mosul, early Christian churches and sacred Shia sites has raised almost as much ire internationally as IS’s barbaric execution of prisoners. Some have even suggested that attacks on cultural artefact...
Aug 18, 2017•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 33
Adam Rawcliffe is joined by Claire Fox, Izzy Lyons and Rob Lyons to discuss the news of the past two weeks. As Anthony Scaramucci leaves the White House after just 10 days, what on earth is going on inside the Trump administration? What are the pros and cons of Justine Greening's proposals on self-determination of gender identity? What should we make of the row over pay at the BBC? With public disagreements on what leaving the EU should mean and how long any transitional phase should last, is Br...
Aug 03, 2017•33 min•Ep. 50
Rob Lyons is joined by Alastair Donald and Claire Fox to discuss the week's news, including the row over public-sector pay, the current state of play in British politics, Donald Trump vs CNN and the aloof behaviour of Emmanuel Macron.
Jul 07, 2017•41 min•Ep. 46
Adam Rawcliffe is joined by Alastair Donald, Geoff Kidder and Pauline Hadaway to talk the events of the past week. Is the public discussion to the Grenfell Tower fire helpful or will it divert attention from some important underlying issues? Why were ministers so quick to label the attack on Muslims in Finsbury Parks as 'terrorism'? What do the Brexit talks and the potential Conservative deal with the DUP mean for Northern Ireland?
Jun 20, 2017•38 min•Ep. 45
Adam Rawcliffe is joined by Dolan Cummings, Alastair Donald and Claire Fox to discuss the fallout from the General Election. Can Theresa May survive without an overall majority? Is the strong reaction to a post-election deal with the DUP justified? Has class made a comeback at this election? And how should we view the apparent sharp rise in the youth vote?
Jun 12, 2017•38 min•Ep. 44
Rob Lyons is joined by Alastair Donald, Claire Fox and Geoff Kidder to discuss the surprise result in the General Election. Why did May’s gamble fail? What’s behind Labour’s relative success? What does the SNP’s decline mean for Scottish independence? What does it all mean for Brexit?
Jun 09, 2017•44 min•Ep. 43
Adam Rawcliffe is joined by Rob Lyons, Jacob Reynolds and Izzy Lyons to discuss the ramifications of the London Bridge attack for the election, why the opinion polls are so inconsistent, the state of play in Scotland and what people should consider when deciding who to vote for.
Jun 05, 2017•29 min•Ep. 42
Adam Rawcliffe is joined by Claire Fox, Jacob Furedi and Jacob Reynolds to discuss the political response to the Manchester bombing, the pause in the election campaign, the Tories' u-turn on social-care policy and the need to bring the debate back to Brexit.
May 25, 2017•30 min•Ep. 1
As the UK general election gets into full swing, Adam Rawcliffe is joined by Geoff Kidder, Izzy Lyons and Fraser Myers to talk about the latest developments. Are the local election results any guide to how the country will vote on 8 June? Why are the Conservatives riding high in the polls? Can the Labour Party - or Jeremy Corbyn at least - survive a heavy defeat? And what should we make of the 'progressive alliance' of Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and Scottish Nationalists? Does it amount to anythin...
May 15, 2017•28 min•Ep. 40
