Academy of Ideas

Max Sanderson profiles writer, broadcaster and comedian Timandra Harkness 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 first episode of Battle Cry, Max speaks to writer, broadcaster and comedian Timandra Harkness about her book, Big Data: Does Size Matter?, and...

Recorded at the Battle of ideas 2015.

Rob Lyons speaks to Dr Guy Smith from the National Farmers Union The Brexit vote throws the future of British farming and indeed how to produce enough food to feed Britain into question. The EU was always notorious for its apparently huge subsidies to farmers, while other struggling sectors of the economy – as illustrated by the threatened closure of Port Talbot steel works – have been refused suc...

Podcast: Invoke Democracy Now's Rob Killick speaks to Rob Lyons Since the vote to leave the European Union in June, the government has equivocated about when it will trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, initiating the two-year process to exit the EU. Meanwhile, a host of individuals and organisations, from law firms and business tycoons to high-profile politicians and rock stars, are doing eve...

Podcast of Rob Lyons' opening remarks from this week's Institute of Ideas Economy Forum The vote to leave the European Union has left the world’s economic experts, politicians and economic officials stunned. Voters were told that leaving the EU would hit the UK economy hard, with the only question being over what future arrangements might be made with the EU. If the UK negotiates membership of the...

Rob Lyons speaks to architect Austin Williams. In this week’s Podcast of Ideas architect Austin Williams speaks to Rob Lyons about China’s remarkably rapid urbanisation in recent years, and the tension between individual freedom and progress.

Few texts have sustained such extensive reference and quotation in Anglo-American politics as JS Mill’s classic. Mill’s famous ‘Harm Principle’ – that government power may only be justifiably used to prevent harm to others, not to improve one’s own good – still provides the ground on which numerous debates around civil liberties, lifestyle choices, and more recently ‘nudge theory’ are fought. More...

Listen to this week's public event in London. Seventeen million people voted to leave the EU last Thursday, an historically important democratic moment. Yet there are already attempts to thwart or row back from this decision. Many have signed a petition urging a second referendum so that voters can give the ‘right answer’; others threaten the vote with lawyers and bureaucratic challenges. There is...

Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden discuss the fallout from the Brexit vote. In a historic week where the British public voted to leave the European Union, sparking one of the most tumultuous political upheavals in living memory and causing hysteria across the political establishment and the media, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden offer some much needed sane analysis and give their visio...

From controversial law cases such as that of the footballer Ched Evans through to intense bursts of outrage at offensive jokes or unpopular opinions, the Twitterstorm seems to have replaced the mob in twenty-first-century imagination. While some defend the use of such tactics as a (mostly) harmless letting off of steam, others have become increasingly uncomfortable about what such tactics mean for...

Claire Fox, David Bowden and Rob Lyons discuss the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, its implications for the EU referendum campaign and the parallels with the Orlando night-club massacre.

Recorded at the Batle of Ideas 2015 In a week where opprobrium has been heaped on the parents of a four-year-old child who had to be rescued from a gorilla enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo, while the parents of a Japanese seven-year-old boy face charges after abandoning him to wander in the woods for a week, listen to this session from the Battle of Ideas 2015 where Lenore Skenazy argues that far from...

Claire Fox, David Bowden and Rob Lyons discuss the week's news. In this week’s Podcast of Ideas the team discuss whether the left’s mealy-mouthed support for the Remain campaign belies contempt for the demos and a fear of right-wing populism, why we should all be celebrating the decision to frack in Yorkshire, the public health lobby’s loss of credibility, the ban on legal highs and a patronising...

Recorded at this week's Institute of Ideas event at Goodenough College. On 23 June, the UK will vote in a referendum on whether or not to remain a member of the European Union. The decision is a momentous one, the first time British voters will have had a direct vote on membership since 1975. Yet the public debate about the pros and cons of Brexit has been frustratingly shallow. The aim of this ev...

In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, the team chews over Sadiq Khan's election as London mayor and the implications of the different election results across the country for the major parties - particularly the way old assumptions about political strongholds have been called into question. With BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg being targeted over her coverage by Corbynistas, how should acc...

In her 1969 essay, ‘The personal is political’, feminist Carol Hanisch defended consciousness-raising groups against the charge they brought ‘personal problems’ into the public arena. She argued that most difficulties women experienced in private were rooted in political inequality, so personal problems could spur women to political action in public life. Today, consciousness-raising groups are le...

Recorded at the Battle of ideas 2015. While the UK economy has recovered from the economic crisis, few would argue that the recovery is built on strong foundations. Wages are only just starting to rise in real terms after a number of years of decline. Economic output remains weak compared to previous recoveries, and the state is still spending almost £90 billion a year more than it receives in tax...

Claire Fox, David Bowden and Rob Lyons discuss the week's news In this week’s edition of the Podcast of Ideas the team discuss whether, on the Queen’s 90th birthday, the monarchy has any place today. There’s analysis of the latest in the Brexit referendum, what’s behind the prosecution of a German comedian for composing an insulting poem about Turkish President Erdoğan and why Dolmio has made the...

Podcast: listen to this debate from our Battle of Ideas archive. Recorded at the Battle of Ideas 2015 We all love the NHS, don’t we? Despite the ubiquity of platitudes about defending ‘our’ NHS, though, exactly what we are defending and why? The NHS has undergone significant changes since its inception in 1948. Shifts within patient demographics, combined with increased patient demands and advance...

Claire Fox, David Bowden and Rob Lyons discuss the week's news In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas the team ask whether, with Tata Steel’s operations in Britain haemorrhaging £1million a day, renationalisation is really the answer. Instead, should we be demanding investment in new and dynamic industries rather than propping up zombie sectors of the economy? With the release of the Panama Paper...

Podcast: listen to this debate from our Battle of Ideas archive. With the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, having recently announced a sugary drinks tax and the Lancet publishing new figures claiming that 38 per cent of UK adults will be obese by 2025, what is the truth about obesity? This archive debate was recorded at the Battle of Ideas 2013. According to ‘Reducing Obesity and Impro...

Claire Fox and Ian Dunt discuss the Rhodes Must Fall movement In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, David Bowden talks to Claire Fox and journalist Ian Dunt about the Rhodes Must Fall movement, which has swept campuses from Cape Town to Oxford demanding that vestiges of colonialism be removed from colleges, notably statues of Cecil Rhodes. Does the movement represent young people boldly trying...

Claire Fox and David Bowden join Rob Lyons to discuss the debate about Brexit so far. What does it reveal about attitudes to democracy today and the snobbery of many calling for the UK to stay in the EU? Is the media too obsessed with Westminster politics rather than the serious issues involved? What will really change if Britain votes to leave?  The team also discussed the new public health campa...

A keynote from the Battle of Ideas 2016 ‘If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all.’ Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? (1784) When One Direction announced they were splitting up, child psychologists offered parents of grieving tweenies advice on how to console their offsp...