LOCKDOWN DEBATE: Matt Ridley discusses his new book in conversation with Rob Lyons. Innovation is key to economic growth and the improvement of human welfare. In his new book, How Innovation Works, Matt Ridley examines how new technologies, products and medical advances come about. He notes that innovation is more than mere invention - the aim is not simply to create an interesting new device, for example, but to produce something that is genuinely useful and widely available. What drives innova...
Jul 10, 2020•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 170
SPORTSCAST OF IDEAS: For months the lockdown has starved us of sport. But in the past couple of weeks it has made something of a return. And not only are the back pages and sports channels sparking into life but football, rugby, tennis, cricket have all made the front pages too as they become entangled with the big issues of our times, whether the coronavirus pandemic or Black Lives Matter protests. Hilary Salt, Duleep Allirajah, Geoff Kidder, Rob Lyons and Alastair Donald discuss.
Jul 01, 2020•46 min•Ep. 169
LOCKDOWN DEBATE: The Covid-19 pandemic has put an unusual strain on health systems around the world. What can we learn from how the NHS is dealing with the crisis? Should we continue with a model of healthcare that is both publicly funded and (mostly) publicly provided? Could we learn from other countries’ systems that have coped better? Are the problems the NHS has faced a result of politicians not backing up supportive words with adequate funding? Or has the NHS’s place as our ‘national religi...
Jun 25, 2020•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 168
ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: When Patrick Marmion first saw Stephen Berkoff’s Greek as a student back in the Eighties at the Edinburgh Festival it blew his head off. A notoriously difficult man himself who has been accused of all sorts of sexual transgression, there are aspects of his writing which are gloriously uncomfortable for today’s audiences. And yet with all the repressive puritanism that’s accompanied the counter revolution against the liberalism of the Sixties and Seventies, too many writ...
Jun 18, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 167
BOOK CLUB: Author Ella Whelan looks at how a modern interest in the politics of consent comes face to face with old-school romance in Sally Rooney's Normal People.
Jun 17, 2020•1 hr 52 min•Ep. 166
ECONOMY FORUM: Anyone who drives regularly will have noticed the sharp drop in petrol prices since the spate of lockdowns around the world and the fall in economic output. What’s going on? Robert Fig, a seasoned commodity risk practitioner, looks at what this all means for the future of world trade. Will negative pricing become a regular phenomenon? What does the future hold for commodity, bond and currency pricing in general?
Jun 12, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 165
EDUCATION FORUM: Passion and anger have greeted the Westminster government’s proposals for a phased return of school pupils. The largest teaching union, the National Education Union (NEU), says that 92% of its members feel unsafe at what it condemns as a “reckless” plan that is “too fast, too confusing and too risky”. It is advising members not to co-operate. Amid uncertainty around the degree of risk and public disagreement among scientists over the impact and necessity of the lockdown, what ar...
Jun 12, 2020•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 164
BOOK CLUB: The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror. Sound familiar? David Bowden re-reads Albert Camus' classic.
Jun 12, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 163
LOCKDOWN DEBATE: As we now all know, on 25 May, a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd was arrested on suspicion of paying for cigarettes with a fake $20 bill. Within 20 minutes he was dead - police officer Derek Chauvin had knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes. Almost immediately, protests, often violent, spread across the US. American cities seem to be burning in righteous rage at the injustice. Since then, largely under the slogan of Black Lives Matter, spontaneous, mass demonstrations ...
Jun 12, 2020•2 hr 12 min•Ep. 162
LOCKDOWN DEBATE: The worldwide response to the pandemic has challenged many long-cherished values. Democracy was put on hold, with elections postponed and parliaments in recess. Freedoms were curtailed, with extensive powers granted to police forces. Traditional markers of compassion, like funerals, were cancelled. And many say that essential workers, from nurses to shop-assistants, were put in harm’s way. Amidst such widespread moral challenges, how are we to decide what’s right? Whilst a rich ...
Jun 04, 2020•1 hr 55 min•Ep. 161
LOCKDOWN DEBATE: What lessons should we draw from the pandemic response? Is China turning from a ‘status quo’ power to one that will become more disruptive and active in pursuit of global influence? To what extent will the international order and its institutions continue to fray? Are we seeing the return of the nation state, or will realpolitik in the face of the pandemic likely encourage renewal of cooperation and new institutions? What is the likely impact of the inevitable economic restructu...
Jun 04, 2020•2 hr 4 min•Ep. 160
ECONOMY FORUM: When members of the US Federal Reserve met in late January, they expressed confidence in the country’s ability to stretch a record run of economic growth and job gains well into 2020. Indeed, 2019 had seen strong performance in certain indicators, including rising real incomes among lower-earners. Two months later, the US was in a coronavirus lockdown, and the economy was in freefall. Some 34million jobs have been lost, and GDP is expected to decline by 35% or more in the second q...
May 26, 2020•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 159
LOCKDOWN DEBATE: What is behind this seeming media crisis and what are the implications? With the press already having taken a beating in some quarters for their failures over reporting Brexit, how worried should we be over the collapse of press standards, and the way the ‘media class’ seems to stand apart from the rest of society? Are we shooting the messenger for the failings of others, such as government mismanagement, even misinformation? What is the news and commentary we need during this p...
May 26, 2020•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 158
ECONOMY FORUM: Earlier this year, as what would become known as Covid-19 struck Wuhan, there was some discussion about how China’s GDP might temporarily fall and what impact that fall might have on the world economy. There was little sense that the disease might become a pandemic and affect the whole world. Now, with most Western countries facing unprecedented falls in economic output, China appears to have ridden the storm remarkably well. Like it or not, the UK, EU and US are remarkably depend...
May 26, 2020•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 157
BOOK CLUB: Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever - a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemm...
May 26, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 156
ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: Kate Abley’s first novel, Changing the Subject, is an entertaining narrative about ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. She says ‘You don’t have to have read any Salman Rushdie to engage with this talk: I will make it my job to inspire you to try him. Under the feeble cover of having written a novel myself, I would like to make the experimental assertion that it is possible to describe novels in English as Pre-Rushdie and Post-Rushdie. Of course, there were ru...
May 26, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 155
LOCKDOWN DEBATE: In the past few years, the idea that we should do what the experts tell us has lost some of its power. Some experts admit that there was, perhaps, a belief that the science was more definitive than it actually is. Even on the core advisory group, SAGE, there are significant differences of view amongst scientists, from the core understanding of the biology of the new coronavirus to estimates of how far it has spread, and over the rules informing social distancing and the efficacy...
May 26, 2020•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 154
EDUCATION FORUM: When should schools reopen and what does this debate tell us about what we value most about schools? Is it their role as engines of social mobility, as safeguarders of vulnerable children, as an unofficial child-minding service, exams or something else? Is it really a big deal if children miss a few months at school? David Perks and Joanna Williams discuss.
May 07, 2020•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 153
ECONOMY FORUM: In Germany, as in the UK, the economy is predicted to contract sharply as a result of the lockdown. But has this crisis become a convenient distraction from the deeper, structural problems of the German economy? And as the economic pain becomes clear, who will bear the brunt? Developing economies could suffer the greatest effects from the Covid-19 pandemic even though they have been little discussed in the West. They constitute a diverse range of countries, but it is possible to i...
May 07, 2020•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 152
ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: 'News poet’ Dr Andrew Calcutt, principal lecturer at the University of East London, introduces Antigone by the Ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles, translated as The Burial at Thebes by Seamus Heaney. Focusing on the messenger’s speech (a recurring feature in Greek tragedy), Andrew explains how this directed him towards a new way of news reporting.
May 07, 2020•34 min•Ep. 151
ECONOMY FORUM: How can we avoid the worst of a coronavirus depression? Are these lockdowns doing more harm than good? What will be the long-term economic impacts of the pandemic and the reaction to it? Joan Hoey, Phil Mullan and Jake Pugh discuss.
May 07, 2020•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 150
EDUCATION FORUM: Since the 1980s, much has been said of the educational potential of digital technologies, both within the classroom and beyond. With the coronavirus crisis, however, much of this discussion has been sidelined, as for the first time in school history nearly all England’s schools and colleges are by necessity scrambling to move their entire pedagogic operation online. What can we learn from the crisis about the role of digital technology in education? The first ever online meeting...
May 07, 2020•29 min•Ep. 149
ECONOMY FORUM: One of the biggest policy benefits from leaving the EU is the end of the ‘Brussels excuse’. No longer can British ministers blame the European Commission – often illegitimately – for tying its hands in dealing with Britain’s economic challenges. Now the buck clearly stops with a Boris Johnson-led government, which is also has the benefit of a large parliamentary majority. What do its early actions tell us about the new government’s approach to national economic policy? Phil Mullan...
May 07, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 148
PODCAST OF IDEAS: Alastair Donald, co-ordinator of our international Battle satellites, talks to friends and speakers from our annual festival: the Battle of Ideas. From Italy: Dominic Standish is a lecturer in media and a commentator on Italian affairs as well as the author of Venice in Environmental Peril? Myth and reality. From Germany: Sabine Beppler-Spahl is the chair of Freiblickinstitut e.V, CEO of Sprachkunst36, author of Brexit-Demokratischer Aufbruch in Großbritannien and the Germany c...
May 01, 2020•46 min•Ep. 147
PODCAST OF IDEAS: The current coronavirus pandemic has revealed, or heightened, many underlying political issues - from the lingering effect of the culture wars to the consequences of fearmongering in political discourse. But one issue that seems to have bucked the trend is the generation debate. Going by much of the discussion of the last 10 years, young and old people are supposed to be at odds with each other. And yet, this virus has proven that the tensions between the generations might not ...
Apr 23, 2020•22 min•Ep. 146
BOOK CLUB: ‘It is the history of a revolution that went wrong - and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for the perversion of the original doctrine,’ wrote Orwell for the first edition of Animal Farm in 1945. Orwell wrote the novel at the end of 1943, but it almost remained unpublished; its savage attack on Stalin, at that time Britain’s ally, led to the book being refused by publisher after publisher. Orwell’s simple, tragic fable has since become a world-famous classic...
Apr 20, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 145
SPORTSCAST OF IDEAS: Sport, like everything else, is on lockdown. But that doesn't mean talk about sport has died down - from controversies over furloughing to accusations of virus spreading at games. But how do we move forward, are football matches and other big public sporting events on the horizon? And is our absence from sport making the heart grow fonder, or will online matches replace the beautiful game? Alastair Donald, Geoff Kidder and Rob Lyons from the Academy of Ideas are joined by at...
Apr 16, 2020•28 min•Ep. 144
PODCAST OF IDEAS: Europe might be the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic at the moment, but this is a global problem. Alastair Donald, co-ordinator of our international Battle satellites, talks to friends and speakers from our annual festival: the Battle of Ideas. From Singapore: Stuart Derbyshire is the associate professor in psychology at the National University of Singapore and the Clinical Imaging Research Centre. From upstate New York: Nancy McDermott is an independent researcher with a ...
Apr 10, 2020•50 min•Ep. 143
PODCAST OF IDEAS: We're closing in on week two of lockdown in the UK, with life on pause for many of us cooped up at home. But thinking outside of our own four walls, it has often been hard to get a sense of what's happening across Europe, where cases of the virus seem to be skyrocketing. Some countries, like Italy, have forced their citizens into weeks of house arrest. Others have taken a more liberal approach - and have often been criticised for it. This week, in the latest of a new series of ...
Apr 03, 2020•44 min•Ep. 142
PODCAST OF IDEAS: The coronavirus might have changed life for many of us, but at the Academy of Ideas we’e adamant that it won’t stop our ability to challenge and interrogate the cultural, political and scientific big questions of our time. With this in mind, Claire Fox, Geoff Kidder, Jacob Reynolds, Rob Lyons, Mo Lovatt, Alastair Donald and Ella Whelan discuss everything from the government's new social-distancing measures to what this all means for the economy and social interaction....
Mar 27, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 141
