We are increasingly reaching for cards, apps and even cryptocurrencies to make payments and manage our money. Though cash is still widely used, the narrative around it suggests it is outdated and presents cash dependency as a problem we need to solve. The shift to digital, ‘cloudmoney’ is presented as inevitable and defended by claims of consumer convenience. Developments in the global payments arena are fuelling this change. Big banks, FinTech apps and Big Tech are forming new alliances and lau...
Jul 14, 2022•37 min•Ep. 441
The West Midlands and Greater Manchester are leading the way on devolution with more control over transport, planning, housing, policing and skills. The combined authorities were both singled out in the Levelling Up White Paper for trailblazer devolution deals with Government, with negotiations beginning imminently. The elected Mayors in these regions act as a single point of accountability – both to local people and central government. Should Mayoral combined authorities be given even more auto...
Jul 08, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 440
From ‘take back control’ to ‘levelling up’, from the tragedy of Morecambe Bay to the remaking of English football culture, award-winning journalist and editor Jason Cowley re-examines recent key news events and reflects on the human stories behind the headlines, taking stock of the state of the nation in 2022, and searching for the shared experiences and values that unite us through difference and change. #RSAStories Become an RSA Events sponsor: https://utm.guru/udI9x Donate to The RSA: https:/...
Jul 07, 2022•48 min•Ep. 439
Design Emergency: How can design help us to build a better future? Join us for this special event celebrating the 2021/22 RSA Student Design Awards programme and the power of design to help us build a better future. The 2022 SDA keynote address will be delivered by award-winning design critic, author and co-founder of Design Emergency, Alice Rawsthorn . In her address, Alice will describe how she and MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli are using their research platform, Design Emergency , to exp...
Jul 01, 2022•52 min•Ep. 438
The pandemic exposed and intensified the deep-rooted problems gripping the nation – from poverty to precarity to underfunded public services. But social distance has been at the heart of our biggest challenges since long before Covid-19 struck: in particular, the distance that those in power often keep from the issues they are in charge of solving. If proximity to a problem makes us better placed to understand how to address it, then it’s no wonder we are faltering. The distance – be it geograph...
Jun 30, 2022•46 min•Ep. 437
We unthinkingly grant internet companies access to our homes, relationships, and most private thoughts. This information is used to mould our realities, influencing our everyday choices and actions – from who we date to how we vote. How can we safeguard our freedom of thought in an age when our minds are for sale? As human rights lawyer Susie Alegre explores, this is a new frontier in an age-old struggle: the powerful have always sought to influence how we think, and these latest tools for doing...
Jun 23, 2022•52 min•Ep. 436
From policing and politics to education and the media, systemic gender prejudice is embedded in the pillars of our society. Potential solutions often require change from the women experiencing the problem rather than the systems that perpetuate the problem. Whether for walking home alone at night or for not demanding a seat at the table, we blame women for not overcoming odds that are stacked against them. In the wake of violent behaviour from men, we turn to women to change lifestyles and behav...
Jun 16, 2022•44 min•Ep. 435
Minority ethnic teachers are still under-represented in all lanes of education, routes into education lack focused training on structural racism and unconscious bias, and exclusion rates for mixed white and black Caribbean boys continue to be disproportionally higher than that of white British boys. The education system in Britain needs drastic change. With experience both as a black teacher and a black student, Jeffrey Boakye ’s journey through education has been one of exploration, from the ou...
Jun 09, 2022•36 min•Ep. 434
Sebastian Mallaby is one of the world’s most admired and respected financial storytellers. In his new book The Power Law he draws on unprecedented access to insiders and legendary figures of the venture capital community to tell the origin stories of the VC-backed enterprises that have changed our world in recent decades, from Apple and Google to eBay and Alibaba. The key to understanding the venture capitalist mindset, he explains, is to grasp that they operate according to an enduring financia...
Jun 02, 2022•59 min•Ep. 433
Farming is the single greatest cause of environmental destruction: we have plundered our land and pillaged our rivers and oceans to feed ourselves, yet millions still go hungry and our food system is faltering. We need a food revolution – and the answer, says author and environmental activist George Monbiot, lies beneath our feet. Exploring incredible advances in soil ecology, Monbiot lays out a vision for a new food future in which we farm less but grow more, producing cheap and healthy food in...
May 26, 2022•50 min•Ep. 432
Across Britain, people of all generations are being priced out of homeownership, shut out of social housing options, and required to find a home in the private rental sector. Recent decades have seen this sector reshaped by Right to Buy, Buy to Let, divestment in social housing and deregulation, creating a situation where rents are rising faster than incomes and landlords hold more rights than their tenants. Combined with the lasting impact of the pandemic and the rising cost of living, Britain ...
May 20, 2022•45 min•Ep. 431
Youth populations across Sub-Saharan African countries are growing at rapid rates compared to other countries globally. With more than 42% of the population under 14 years old, Nigeria is one of the youngest countries in the world. This sharp population shift is ushering in a thriving culture of innovation and disrupting societal norms as more young people move to cities, challenge traditional political structures, and reap the benefits of more widespread access to technology. A growing diaspora...
May 12, 2022•29 min•Ep. 430
Language is powerful, and often political. With ‘free speech’ debates dominating the so-called culture wars, and hate speech finding new outlets online, we must consider the impact of how words are used, and understand how language both binds and frees us. How does language act as a frame of reference for what we treat as important? What does this mean for who gets to speak freely, and which perspectives are privileged over others? How do we perceive things like gender differently depending on t...
May 05, 2022•47 min•Ep. 429
We live in a world of tumultuous change, in which democracy is in retreat, geopolitical risks are multiplying, the climate crisis is accelerating and the pandemic continues to shape our world. Societies need to learn how to seize and shape new solutions. Yet, we come to these challenges with the historic patterns of gender disadvantage still marring life chances. Based on her experiences in politics and her work at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard ...
Apr 29, 2022•57 min•Ep. 428
When news of every catastrophe – a war, an earthquake, a terrorist attack – can reach across the world in a matter of moments, we can hardly fathom the human impact. We wonder: in these worst of moments, how do people find the strength to come together, pick up the pieces, and begin to heal? Lucy Easthope has spent her life at the edges of disaster, coordinating the response and recovery in the wake of countless seismic events etched on all our memories. From 9/11 to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami ...
Apr 29, 2022•48 min•Ep. 427
The debate around whether we should eat animals has historically been the domain of an ethically minded minority, but with the recent surge in vegetarianism and veganism, it is now posed every day on restaurant menus, on supermarket shelves and at the family dinner table. This dietary shift has re-awoken age-old questions, concerns and contradictions surrounding the place of meat in our diet. How should we align our love for animals with their place on our plates? Is there an ethical way to eat ...
Apr 14, 2022•41 min•Ep. 426
Today’s energy sector is grappling with an unprecedented price crisis whilst also looking out on an ambitious journey to deliver Net Zero by 2050. This period of recovery and transformation will have a huge impact on households, businesses, and industries, potentially requiring substantial financial investment and behaviour change from us all. With such large-scale change ahead, it is imperative to consider the power of collective, community-driven change within the energy sector. Against the ba...
Apr 07, 2022•39 min•Ep. 425
In September 2021, RSA Chief Executive Andy Haldane was appointed by the Prime Minister to define and develop the flagship national levelling up strategy – a decade-long moral, social and economic cross-government, cross-society programme to spread opportunity and prosperity to all parts of the UK. Kicking off a series of talks around the country, Andy Haldane explores how the White Paper’s ambitious vision and 12 national levelling up missions can now be made a reality in towns and cities in ev...
Apr 06, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 424
Join one of the most influential women in UK sport, leadership coach Michelle Moore and leading anti-racism activist and author Nova Reid as they celebrate and discuss Michelle’s debut leadership book, “Real Wins: Race, Leadership and How to Redefine Success”. Real Wins shows us how to face our fears, build resilience and find our own unique leadership style. In the book, Michelle draws on her experiences, from the track to the boardroom, to examine the relationship between leadership and identi...
Apr 01, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 423
Shame is a powerful emotion and a potent social force. It can assert collective values, hold power to account, and uphold the social good – but shaming has also taken a dangerous new turn. Huge sectors of the economy are built to capitalise on our wishes to live up to certain ideals, targeting those – often the powerless and vulnerable – seen to be falling short. The shame associated with bodies, health, habits, money, and morals is a lucrative industry, and poised to amplify its efforts exponen...
Apr 01, 2022•56 min•Ep. 422
As our world has changed, the way we produce and wear clothes has changed with it. Industrialisation moved textile work out of everyday life and into factories, creating a complex, inscrutable mass clothing trade that moves faster than the planet can sustain. What has the changing story of clothes meant for the people who make and wear them, and for the world we all live in? Writer and artist Sofi Thanhauser traces the history of our favourite textiles, examining how we went from making fabric f...
Mar 24, 2022•54 min•Ep. 421
What would it look like to put the same creativity and energy into involving people as Citizens? What would you do in this time, if you truly believed in yourself and those around you? In Citizens, Jon Alexander explores what citizenship means today and argues that now is the time to reclaim the language around citizenship while making visible stories of this new way of living. Here, with New York Times bestselling writer Ariane Conrad, Alexander explores what we need to do to step into a bigger...
Mar 18, 2022•47 min•Ep. 420
Social media has unlocked a new land of opportunity where anyone has the potential to make a million using their smartphone and being an influencer is now the top career choice for early 20 somethings and children growing up today. However, influencer success is hard-won, and ambition, deceit and exploitation are often key tools in this digital rat race. In Get Rich or Lie Trying, Symeon Brown takes an innovative look at the influencer economy, considering the social, cultural and economic trend...
Mar 11, 2022•39 min•Ep. 419
The global political and economic shocks of recent years have been felt in the rupturing of the European Union, political turbulence in the US, destabilisation of the Middle East, and the creation of over $25 trillion of new money by central banks. The pandemic constituted its own unique crisis, but also acted as a window on the decade of turmoil that preceded it. What led us to the moment we’re living through, and what can we learn from it? Professor of Political Economy Helen Thompson examines...
Mar 03, 2022•54 min•Ep. 418
The highest inflation rates in decades mean cost of living increases threaten to overwhelm those already in difficult financial situations. Young people will be hit hard: recent RSA work found that almost half of young people are financially precarious. How do these challenges impact people’s everyday lives, and what measures are needed to improve financial security, enable greater independence, and support overall wellbeing? A panel gathers to reflect on how recent findings on financial precari...
Feb 25, 2022•47 min•Ep. 417
At this pivotal moment in the history of work, isn’t now the time to develop something better, something more meaningful and something more workable? Julia Hobsbawm, chair of the Demos Workshift Commission and author of 'The Nowhere Office', describes the biggest shift in working for 100 years by addressing six key shifts from time and place to networks, wellbeing and management. Hobsbawm argues that many of the issues we now face can be understood as challenges we long delayed facing - how to b...
Feb 10, 2022•40 min•Ep. 416
Digital technology is revolutionising economics; both the tools it uses, and what it seeks to measure, understand, and shape. Long-standing accusations levelled against economics – that it values the wrong things, ignores the real world, and misunderstands what drives people – have been given a new edge by events of recent years. How does economics need to change to respond to the dizzying changes we have experienced, and help policymakers resolve our biggest crises? Professor Diane Coyle explor...
Feb 03, 2022•50 min•Ep. 415
The focus on sustainable design has led to a great deal of positive change in our shared built environment, but for two visionary systems change thinkers, it’s now time to embrace a radical, regenerative design approach for a truly flourishing future. Michael Pawlyn, founder of the innovative biomimicry architecture firm Exploration , has joined forces with Sarah Ichioka, urbanist and leader of multi-disciplinary strategic consultancy firm Desire Lines , on a new book which maps out key design p...
Jan 27, 2022•52 min•Ep. 414
The modern workplace can be tough to navigate. But women of colour in particular are hired, promoted, paid, and retained at lower rates than other groups. Many underrepresented women feel like they need to work twice as hard to get half the recognition. What needs to change to level the playing field? What can underrepresented women do for themselves and each other to get to where they want to be? What should employers really do to nurture diverse talent? Award-winning coach and author Octavia G...
Jan 20, 2022•39 min•Ep. 413
Much like 2020’s, the events of 2021 have largely been dwarfed by the ongoing Covid crisis. The second year of the global pandemic challenged the globe with more overwhelming loss, restriction and separation. Glimmers of normal life appeared after heroic mass vaccination campaigns, but with 5.2 million deaths and another variant on the loose, it seems our old ‘normal’ is retreating ever further in the distance. But despite our focus firmly set on the pandemic, somehow there was also time for oth...
Dec 17, 2021•46 min•Ep. 412
