The world is rapidly changing and the future is more unknown than ever – Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk explore the narratives and predictions we use to help navigate economic uncertainty. We all make decisions with an eye to the future; we form expectations, calculate likelihoods, and predict the outcomes of every action we take. But in a culture of restless innovation, we can’t always be sure that the future will resemble the past, and as the pace of change increases, we often have to make dec...
Nov 01, 2018•59 min•Ep. 231
What can hidden histories teach us about multiracial society in Britain today? With author Emma Dabiri, footballer Eartha Pond and gal-dem deputy editor Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff. Emma’s status as a professional footballer, in one of Britain’s earliest women’s football matches in 1895 attended by thousands of paying spectators, is hugely significant. That she travelled the country, accompanied by widespread media coverage, demonstrates the profile she would have enjoyed in the 1890s. But while her...
Oct 31, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 230
Sir Ian Cheshire welcomes an expert panel to discuss the interim findings of the RSA’s Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. Since the Commission launched last autumn, we’ve reviewed 1000 policy proposals, and hosted roundtables and discussions to explore the current policy domain. We’ve cycled right round the UK to meet people in their communities and workplaces, and set up separate long-term inquiries in the devolved nations and in three English counties to help us test ideas and understan...
Oct 29, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 229
Migration has long been a high-profile political issue. A panel including HOPE Not Hate’s Rosie Carter gathers to discuss the state of the conversation and how and why public opinion has shifted over time. Research suggests that public attitudes towards immigration in the UK are less extreme than national headlines and social media would have us believe, but it remains a contentious subject. Migration has been a key pivot point in the ongoing Brexit debate, and the Windrush scandal and “hostile ...
Oct 29, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 228
Award-winning social psychologist Michele Gelfand explains how the clash between ‘tight’ and ‘loose’ cultures drives many of our most polarised and intractable global challenges. With rave reviews from heavyweights such as Steven Pinker, Robert Cialdini, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Carol Dweck, Professor Michele Gelfand’s ‘ground-breaking analysis’ of cultural divides ‘Rule Makers, Rule Breakers’ has been hailed as the manual for how we approach today’s most intractable challenges. This event was r...
Oct 18, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 227
Youth champion Ruth Ibegbuna; Sam Conniff Allende, chair, Generation Change; Dame Julia Cleverdon, founder, Step Up To Serve; and education activist Adam Ramgoolie on young people leading change. As the RSA launches its latest report ‘Teenagency: how young people are changing the world’, which reveals the continued gulf between public perceptions and the reality of young people’s experiences and aspirations, we explore how to give every young person, from every background, the opportunity to eng...
Oct 16, 2018•56 min•Ep. 226
First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon delivers a speech on the current state of play of the UK Government’s Brexit negotiations and the future of the UK and Europe. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Monday 15th September 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/10/keynote-address-by-first-minister-of-scotland
Oct 16, 2018•56 min•Ep. 225
How can we tackle our ignorance about what the world is really like? Bobby Duffy, Director of Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute, explains how we can get a handle on the facts in a ‘post-truth’ era. Evidence suggests that most of us are very wrong about what goes on in the world around us. Misinformation in the media is a growing worry, but it’s not all about fake news. No matter how impartial we think we are, we’re all biased towards information that confirms what we already believe – and our...
Oct 12, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 224
Child and adolescent mental health is in the headlines almost daily. How can we support young people’s wellbeing and build mentally healthy school communities? Join our expert panel as they share the latest insights. The issue was identified as one of the “burning injustices” of our time by the Prime Minister during her first Downing Street address. Whilst the problem has been rising up the political agenda in recent years, parents, carers and children alike have been demanding more and better a...
Oct 12, 2018•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 223
Sociologist and best-selling author Eric Klinenberg shows how social infrastructure holds the key to health, happiness, safety and healing our divided society. Too often we take for granted and neglect our libraries, parks, markets, schools, playgrounds, gardens and communal spaces, but decades of research now show that these places can have an extraordinary effect on our personal and collective wellbeing. Why? Because wherever people cross paths and linger, wherever we gather informally, strike...
Oct 12, 2018•58 min•Ep. 222
Urban designer Don Carter explores routes to recovery and revitalisation for post-industrial cities and communities. His newest book is Remaking Post-Industrial Cities: Lessons from North America and Europe, documenting ten case studies and common themes from the international Remaking Cities Congress he co-chaired in Pittsburgh. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 20th September 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/10/remaking-post-indust...
Oct 04, 2018•58 min•Ep. 221
To mark 50 years of the International Baccalaureate, our panel asks: what kind of education do we need now to enable young people to flourish the 21st century? With Anthony Seldon, David Willetts and Naomi Climer. The International Baccalaureate is today offered by 4,871 schools across the world, to nearly 160,000 students each year through four different programmes. In the UK it is offered by 140 schools, independent, state and international. IB’s courses encourage students to become active, co...
Sep 27, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 220
To celebrate the launch of the 2018/19 Student Design Awards, Cat Drew, director at Uscreates, calls on service designers to question systemic issues of power and culture. Uscreates is a service design agency specialising in health and wellbeing where Cat leads work for local and national government around citizen-led innovation and place-based change. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 25th September 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/0...
Sep 26, 2018•47 min•Ep. 219
Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency will speak about the damaging consequences of climate change and the need for urgent action to protect and improve the environment. Extreme weather, increasing temperatures and sea level rise are all now a scientifically proven reality. Climate change is simply the biggest issue there is, and we should be alarmed. But there is still time to do something about it if we act fast. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Monday 24th Septe...
Sep 25, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 218
Journalist and author Ian Kearns warns of the dangers faced by a European Union on the brink of collapse – and issues a call to action to defend peace and progress in Europe. The momentous Brexit vote has thrown the future of the EU into doubt, and the rise of terrorism, the refugee crisis, growing Euroscepticism, and threats from both East and West have cast a shadow over Europe. Warnings over these issues have often been labelled as scaremongering; however, what if the real threat to Europe co...
Sep 21, 2018•52 min•Ep. 217
Afua Hirsch and Matthew Taylor discuss Britain's current identity crisis at Wilderness Festival. Britain is a nation experiencing an identity crisis – populist movements attempt to draw us back to a nostalgic vision of homogenous, white Britain, whilst demographic changes see our cities more diverse and multi-dimensional than ever. How do we tackle issues like racism, identity and belonging against this backdrop, and are so-called ‘colour-blind’ liberals part of the problem? Barrister, broadcast...
Aug 16, 2018•41 min•Ep. 216
Academic and writer Danny Dorling argues that Britain has finally reached peak inequality, and immediate action is needed to defuse Britain’s ticking time bomb. The chasm between rich and poor has had dire implications for our health, housing, education, demography, and politics. Today more than 99% are losing out. So how do we become more equal this time? And without a full-blown civil war? This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 19th July 2018. Discover more about this event here: ...
Jul 23, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 215
Political insider Tom Baldwin shares worrying insights from behind the curtain of power, and warns that we are in danger of pressing ‘delete’ on liberal democracy altogether. Having interviewed everyone from Tony Blair to Michael Gove, top journalists to Russian bloggers, and tech giant execs to online activists, Tom describes a vicious battle for control of the news agenda, at the expense of public trust and the value of truth. He visits the RSA to show how technological change has hollowed out...
Jul 23, 2018•56 min•Ep. 214
As the RSA launches its new Future Work Centre, an expert panel considers how we can harness new technologies to create a better world of work. Will technologies like AI and robotics exacerbate economic inequality, deepen geographic divisions and entrench discrimination in the workplace? Or can they be wielded to create a better world of work – one that is more humane, productive and purposeful? And, to the extent that automation does occur, what measures can be taken to mitigate its risks and h...
Jul 23, 2018•58 min•Ep. 213
Political failure is a failure of the imagination. Journalist and author George Monbiot joins us to tell the new political story we’ve been missing. A toxic ideology rules the world – of extreme competition and individualism. It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. Only a positive vision can replace it, a new story that re-engages people in politics and lights a path to a better world. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 5th July 2018. Discover more abo...
Jul 23, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 212
In his annual RSA Chief Executive’s Lecture Matthew Taylor makes a case for radical reform of our political and policymaking systems in the face of a growing crisis of liberal democracy. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Monday 2nd July 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/07/what-democracy-needs-now
Jul 23, 2018•57 min•Ep. 211
Clive Grinyer, past RSA Student Design Awards winner and RSA Design Advisor delivers the keynote address at the 2018 SDA winners ceremony. The RSA Student Design Awards challenge emerging designers to tackle pressing social, environmental and economic issues through design thinking. Our goal is to empower a generation of savvy, employable designers who understand the potential of design to benefit society, and we do this by running an annual Awards programme that challenges students and recent g...
Jul 20, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 210
The winners of the UK’s most prestigious awards for political writing are revealed, celebrating the best of this year’s books, journalism and innovative reporting on social issues. Each year, The Orwell Prize awards prizes for the writing and journalism which comes closest to George Orwell’s ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’. Prizes are awarded in three categories: for books, for journalism (commentary and reportage) and The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils, which ...
Jul 20, 2018•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 209
One year on from the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower, a panel gathers to reflect on what it exposed about the social and economic state of the nation, and how to secure safety and justice for everyone. In an area home to some of the country’s richest and poorest people side by side, where average incomes can drop ten times across a street, Grenfell has come to be seen as a microcosm not just of the broken housing market, but of how poverty and voicelessness meet to compound inequality. The nu...
Jun 22, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 208
Creativity guru and founder of Free Range Studios, Jonah Sachs argues that ‘safe thinking’ ultimately causes failure, and shows how we can unleash our boldness and creativity to tackle systemic challenges. Sachs draws on cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience to uncover the specific mental habits that account for the success of those who break the mould. And he reveals how, by embracing a handful of simple brain-hacks and cognitive tools, we can all harness the power of the unsafe thinkers. Th...
Jun 14, 2018•56 min•Ep. 207
Internationally acclaimed social entrepreneur Hilary Cottam shows how we can remake the relationships between us, and revolutionise the welfare state. Sharing her vision at the RSA, Hilary Cottam is joined in conversation by award-winning journalist Gary Younge to explore the principles behind this radically new approach, the design process that makes the work possible and the challenges of transition. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 7th June 2018. Discover more about this ev...
Jun 08, 2018•57 min•Ep. 206
One of the UK’s leading political scientists, David Runciman, argues that democracy is collapsing before our very eyes. But what - if anything - should replace it? Democracy has died hundreds of times, all over the world. We think we know what this looks like: chaos descends, and the military arrives to restore order until the people can be trusted again. But perhaps we are focusing on the wrong threats. Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end w...
Jun 08, 2018•56 min•Ep. 205
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett follow up their seminal work The Spirit Level with new insights into how inequality impacts us as individuals. Arguing that societies based on fundamental equalities, sharing and reciprocity produce much higher levels of wellbeing than those based on excessive individualism, competitiveness and social aggression, The Inner Level sheds important new light into how we should organise the way we live together. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 5th...
Jun 07, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 204
If not the EU, then what? Mike Kenny and Nick Pearce explore the idea of the ‘Anglosphere’ as a forgotten factor in the decision to leave the EU. Amidst the ongoing Brexit negotiations, a question mark looms over Britain’s future place in the world. The wish for a post-Brexit ‘global Britain’ has driven the idea of an alliance between Britain and its old Commonwealth colonies to resurface, based on a belief in a special bond shared by English-speaking peoples across the world. This event was rec...
May 31, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 203
Founder and former CEO of award-winning marketing agency Livity, Sam Conniff Allende re-purposes the innovative strategies of Golden Age pirates for 21st century would-be disruptors. How can we create radical change within an old-fashioned system, and in the face of unprecedented change and uncertainty? We must break and then re-make the rules – just like pirates did before us. This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 24th May 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.the...
May 25, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 202
