Academy of Ideas

In the first of a series of podcasts in the run-up to June's general election in the UK, Adam Rawcliffe introduces a discussion with Claire Fox, Alastair Donald and Geoff Kidder. What do the team think about the decision to call an election? What are the key debates in Election 2017? Are traditional party political considerations relevant at the moment? Indeed, as suggested by the first round of v...

Phil Mullan discusses his latest book, Creative Destruction: How to Start an Economic Renaissance (Policy Press), with Austin Williams, director of the Future Cities Project . This was the official launch of the book. While governments talk of rebalancing the economy, Mullan talks about a fourth industrial revolution - a revolution that doesn't prioritise holding onto jobs, but "lets the low-produ...

According to Jean-Claude Juncker, ‘borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians’. For the president of the European Commission, transnational institutions like the EU are champions of cosmopolitanism. But is there really a contradiction between national sovereignty and internationalism? The cosmopolitan ideal, first conceptualised by Immanuel Kant, emerged in parallel with the rise of...

Parliament has given the government the power to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and the formal process of the UK’s departure from the EU should begin before the end of this month. What should British negotiators be seeking from the talks? What should any deal mean for immigration, trade and wider cooperation? Are the difficulties of getting out so great that we should reconsider our decis...

Arguments over tax and inequality have moved centre stage in politics in recent years. Erstwhile Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders declared: ‘The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time.’ The World Economic Forum argues ‘A growing body of research sug...

Listen to the debate from the Battle of Ideas 2016. In recent years, more and more political and cultural discussions have been conducted through the prism of identity. Who we are, rather than what we do or believe, has become ever more important. But why has this happened and what are the implications? The shift from the idea of a universal human outlook, born in the Enlightenment, appears to hav...

Immigration was a key issue during Britain’s EU referendum. The success of the Leave campaign owed much to the belief that the UK has lost control over its borders. Many British citizens are resentful that their communities have undergone dramatic changes as a result of immigration policies about which they were not consulted. At the same time, there are humane, economic and political arguments fo...

Rob Lyons talks to Patrick Hayes, director of the British Educational Suppliers Association, about the UK government's recent consultation document on industrial strategy, why Brexit has focused the minds of politicians on economic growth and why we need to be far more ambitious about supporting research, innovation and wider development.

Rob Lyons is joined by Claire Fox and Alastair Donald to discuss the UK government's housing strategy, John Bercow's refusal to invite President Trump to address parliament and the protests against invited speakers on US campuses. The team also discuss a new Institute of Ideas initiative, Living Freedom.

This week, the latest GDP figures revealed that the UK economy continues to grow faster than expected, despite the vote to leave the European Union. In fact, in 2016, the UK economy grew faster than any of the other G7 industrialised countries. But will these good times last? Earlier this month, the prime minister, Theresa May, announced that she intended to leave both the EU's single market and c...

Rob Lyons is joined by Claire Fox and Geoff Kidder to discuss Donald Trump's inauguration, the attitude of liberals and the media to Trump's supporters and offer their thoughts on Theresa May's Brexit speech.

As a new year begins, thoughts turn to the future. But how do we see the year - or the decade - ahead? Do we think that things will get better, that our lives will improve, or will we be stuck in a gloomy mind-set that suggests that the world is going to hell in a handcart? Can we imagine a truly prosperous world where everyone lives in peace - a true utopia? Does the concept of utopia represent a...

Britain’s vote to leave the EU, the election of Donald Trump and the high opinion poll ratings of Marine Le Pen’s Front National have led to anxious debate about the rise of populism, inspired by what many regard as a rogues’ gallery of demagogic leaders of rising anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic movements throughout Europe and the US. The declining appeal of traditional parties of both left and ri...

Listen to the debate from the Battle of Ideas 2016. In November, Oxford Dictionaries declared ‘post-truth’ its Word of the Year. For some commentators, both the US presidential campaign and the EU referendum in the UK have revealed the emergence of ‘post-truth’ politics. Donald Trump has dismissed fact-checking as an ‘out-of-touch, elitist media-type thing’. Former Tory minister and Brexit leader...

From parking wardens generating record profits for councils through to bans on smoking and busking, the authorities are making more and more previously normal activities illegal or subject to onerous regulation. Yet it is not clear who benefits from this micromanagement of our lives. Here, Josie Appleton talks about her new book, 'Officious: The rise of the Busybody State', which examines the caus...

A recording of the discussion at the Battle of Ideas 2016. The architect Zaha Hadid, who died in March, was described in a CNN interview in 2013 as ‘one of the most celebrated – and divisive – designers on the planet’. In life, she was respected or reviled, but seldom ignored. She was a powerful woman in a man’s world, and an Arab at the top of the Western design industry. She was a designer of cu...

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, it seemed that all four of Britain’s major political parties were falling apart. Similar tendencies towards crisis and disintegration are evident in the old parties in the USA and in Europe. Are we seeing a refreshing departure from the old-style politics of left and right, or simply a process of fragmentation? Are we exaggerating the scale of the crisis facing...

Rob Lyons speaks to Australian policy consultant Terry Barnes In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas Rob Lyons speaks to policy consultant and former senior advisor to the Australian Government, Terry Barnes about alternatives to the NHS and the public health lobby’s war on people’s lifestyle choices from sugar taxes to vaping.

Claire fox, Geoff Kidder and Rob Lyons discuss the fallout from the US election After a hiatus the Podcast of Ideas is back with the Institute of Ideas team discussing Donald Trump’s shock victory in the US Presidential race. What explains Trump’s appeal?  Why did Clinton have such an inability to inspire the voters? Are his supporters really just “a basket of deplorables”?  And is the explosion o...

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas 2016 In 2013, historian Perry Anderson observed that it is axiomatic for US foreign policy advisors that, ‘the hegemony of the United States continues to serve both the particular interests of the nation and the universal interests of humanity’. But troubled is the head that wears the crown of world domination. The US establishment is worried by the threat of domest...

Big data knows where you’ve been and who your friends are. It knows what you like and what makes you angry. It can predict what you’ll buy, where you’ll be the victim of crime and when you’ll have a heart attack. Big data knows you better than you know yourself, or so it claims. But how well do you know big data? What is data? What makes it big? And is it only size that matters? From science to sm...

Max Sanderson talks to London's former deputy mayor for education and culture. In a new series of podcasts ahead of the forthcoming Battle of Ideas festival, journalist Max Sanderson profiles some of the Battle’s most interesting speakers and their ideas. In the final episode of Battle Cry, Max speaks to Munira Mirza, an arts and philanthropy adviser and London’s former deputy mayor for education...

Podcast: Rob Lyons speaks to sociologist Jennie Bristow. In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons talks to Dr Jennie Bristow from Canterbury Christ Church University, author of Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict, about whether the young should be angry at older generations for profligacy and selfishness, or if the blame game is just a displacement exercise preventing millennials from...

Battle Cry - Anders Sandberg on ethical AI Max Sanderson profiles Anders Sandberg from the Future of Humanity Institute In a new series of podcasts ahead of the forthcoming Battle of Ideas festival, journalist Max Sanderson profiles some of the Battle’s most interesting speakers and their ideas. In this the third episode of Battle Cry, Max speaks to Anders Sandberg from the Future of Humanity Inst...

Max Sanderson profiles Ian Dunt, editor of Politics.co.uk In a new series of podcasts ahead of the forthcoming Battle of Ideas festival, journalist Max Sanderson profiles some of the Battle’s most interesting speakers and their ideas. In this the second episode of Battle Cry, Max speaks to journalist Ian Dunt about the why the term ‘populism’ is now being bandied about so often in both Europe and...