Academy of Ideas

Student Elrica Degirmen on her fight for free speech on campus In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas Rob Lyons speaks to Elrica Degirmen who is leading the fight for free speech at the University of Manchester, and is currently running for election to the Student Union on a free speech platform. 

The polemical filmmaker talks about his crowdfunded documentary making the case for leaving the EU. With the date for the UK’s referendum on membership of the EU now set for 23 June, Rob Lyons speaks to filmmaker Martin Durkin about his forthcoming feature-length documentary, Brexit The Movie, which sets out the case for leaving the European Union and it’s anti-democratic technocracy behind. You c...

Physics teacher and communicator Gareth Sturdy discusses a major scientific discovery. Earlier this month, scientists confirmed the detection of gravitational waves, confirming an important conclusion from Albert Einstein’s work. But what are gravitational waves and what does their detection mean for our understanding of the universe? In this podcast, Gareth Sturdy from The Physics Factory talks t...

Podcast: Frank Furedi discusses his new book in conversation with Russell Celyn Jones. Have we forgotten how to read well? Is there a tendency to reduce reading to a minimalist set of functional skills? Or is reading over-fetishised as a signifier of civil and enlightened society? In The Power of Reading, Frank Furedi addresses twenty-first-century anxieties about the future of reading. He takes a...

Listen to the team discuss Brexit, the US presidential election and public-health naggers. In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden discuss the lacklustre start to the EU referendum debate and how the lack of cohesion in the pro-Brexit camp doesn’t bode well for the campaign ahead. In the US, politics is also in disarray, with anti-establishment candidates Do...

From the Battle of Ideas 2015 When Roland Barthes infamously declared ‘the death of the author’ in 1967, he also intended it as a celebration of ‘the birth of the reader’. And while literacy campaigners continue to fight the Reading Wars over literacy rates, by most measures reading is in a healthier state than ever. Polls indicate the number of Americans reading books has doubled since the 1950s,...

Tom Slater, deputy editor of spiked, on this year's spiked Free Speech University Rankings. A year ago, spiked‘s groundbreaking Free Speech University Rankings (FSUR) revealed that there was active suppression of speech and expression at 80 per cent of UK universities. Tom Slater, deputy editor of spiked and coordinator of the FSUR project, talks to Rob Lyons about the FSUR 2016 and why, if anythi...

From the Battle of Ideas 2015  Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California, Berkeley, through which academics and students successfully overturned the censorious policies of university management. Against the backdrop of McCarthyism, the FSM ushered in a new era of student activism across the US and Europe, with free spe...

From Big Data to the driverless car, we seem to live in an age of dizzying technological progress, which many hail as a ‘new industrial revolution’. Robotic intelligence is becoming so advanced that many warn machines could take white-collar jobs within a generation, while computers are moving ever closer to passing the Turing Test. Meanwhile, smart technology is increasingly marketed as desirable...

Charlie Hebdo one year on, Corbyn's reshuffle, debating Brexit and more In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden discuss the state of free speech one year on from the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Labour’s seemingly interminable shadow cabinet reshuffle, David Cameron’s decision to allow his ministers to campaign for Brexit and the way the debate is shaping up, the...

After the Conservative Party’s victory in the general election, it now looks likely that David Cameron will follow through on his promise to hold an in/out referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union by the end of 2017. Although Cameron himself would prefer the UK to remain a member, there is now a serious possibility of ‘Brexit’, particularly given the rise of UKIP and a general disil...

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick discusses public health's war on our bad habits. In the run up to Christmas, the season of excess and indulgence, Rob Lyons and David Bowden are joined by writer and retired GP Michael Fitzpatrick to discuss the ever increasing curbs on our ability to eat, drink, smoke and be merry.

Listen to the team discuss the Paris attacks, bombing Syria and the climate change talks In this week’s Podcast of Ideas Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden discuss the aftermath of the Paris attacks, intervention in Syria, Jeremy Corbyn’s embattled position as Labour leader and this week’s UN climate change conference .

When Jeremy Corbyn went from being the token lefty candidate for Labour leader to the favourite to lead the party this summer, it became clear that the old assumptions no longer apply. But while the ‘Corbyn Wave’ appeared to be something new, there was an unmistakable paradox in the fact that the man of the moment had been hiding in plain sight at Westminster since 1983. So is he a blast from the...

Listen to the special Battle of Ideas satellite put on in Stockholm in the wake of the Paris attacks At last weekend’s series of Battle of Idea Satellite debates in Stockholm an impromptu session was held in response to last Fridays terror attacks in Paris. Speakers Isobel Hadley-Kamptz author and journalist Kashif Mahmood Virk imam, Stockholm Ahmmadiyya congregation Brendan O’Neill editor, spiked...

Listen to this session from the International Battles strand of the recent Battle of Ideas festival In the past few years, the Middle East has undergone serious convulsions, from the collapse of Iraq to the Arab Spring, the Syrian war and the Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen. The spread of Islamic State has wiped out one hundred-year-old borders in a matter of months, with large areas of Iraq and Sy...

In recent years, the popularity of e-cigarettes has exploded. They have been celebrated by many as being the greatest aid to smoking cessation ever invented, with even the anti-smoking group ASH giving them grudging approval. E-cigarettes do not contain the tar and toxins that make cigarettes harmful, but as this is a relatively new technology, some argue we cannot be sure of their long-term effec...

Debate at the Battle of Ideas 2015 (http://www.battleofideas.org.uk) With the rise of fantasy and sci-fi, geek culture is now mainstream. Yet trailing its success has come vicious infighting amongst fans. 'Gamergate' moved quickly from a dispute between game developers and journalists to a row over gamers' attitudes towards women. Dr Matt Taylor's choice of a bawdy shirt overshadowed his work in l...

Trigger warning: 'If you're easily offended you really shouldn't come.' - Claire Fox With just a few days to go before the Institute’s annual Battle of Ideas at the Barbican in London, Rob Lyons, Claire Fox and David Bowden get together to talk about what makes the festival unique and why it’s an unapologetically unsafe space where ideas are fought over and contested, as well as discussing some of...

Listen to the introductory remarks from last week's Battle of Ideas satellite in Amsterdam We are living longer, healthier and richer lifes than ever before. These trends have already spread to billions of people in poorer countries. But are the costs of all this progress beginning to outweigh the benefits? Greens worry that the Earth cannot sustain our desire for more, more, more. Do their worrie...

Listen to the introductory remarks from this week's Battle of Ideas satellite at the House of St. Barnabas in London The announcement that the UK population grew last year by half a million – roughly the population of Edinburgh – has provoked much discussion about whether the country will cope with an increasing demand on resources. With half that rise coming from migration rather than births, the...

Podcast: Rob Lyons speaks to Dr Shirley Lawes about the state of French politics and society The world’s spotlight fell on France early this year with the attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The subsequent wave of solidarity, which rallied France around the slogan ‘Je suis Charlie’, was heralded by many as a bold reassertion of the nation’s commitment to the liberal values of the French Revol...

Rob Lyons speaks to Sandy Starr about the history of eugenics and whether the term is useful today Using techniques like mitochondrial donation - ‘three-person IVF’ - we can alter genes to resolve congenital medical conditions. Other techniques that change our heritable characteristics will follow. But such developments often inspire resistance: the ability to manipulate our germlines is sometimes...

Listen to the opening remarks from the Battle of Ideas launch event at the Barbican in London London has, by most accounts, emerged as one of the premier cities of the twenty-first century: firmly established as a global hub for finance, technology and culture. Yet there have been growing anxieties about the effect rising inequality levels are having on the city and its inhabitants. Soaring privat...