Academy Of Ideas

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 being obsessed with what our kids might be up to, we must give them the freedom to roam and explore without constant adult supervision. The term ‘cotton wool kids’ has become part of everyday language. Indeed, many parents, academics and others share a concern that children have become over­protected. The worry is that youngsters no longer have enough freedom to explore, to get into scrapes, have accidents and work out how to deal with situations when they don’t have adults telling them what to do. Discussions about this problem often focus on Mum and Dad: the blame, it is said, lies with ir

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 new campaign to protect women on social media.

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 event was to offer a panel of high-profile speakers an opportunity to set out the case for Remain and Leave, and allow an audience of almost 300 people to get involved, offering their own views as well as challenging the panel. The result was a lively, engaging and passionate debate. For anyone interested in hearing the arguments played out with intelligence and without name-calling, this debate is well worth listening to in full. SPEAKERS Rt Hon David Davis Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden; former Foreign Office minister (1994–1997) and Shadow Home Secretary (2003-2008) Simon

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 accusations of media bias be handled? The team also discusses the claim that Brexit might lead to war in Europe, the controversy over SATS exams and the effect on wider society of claiming that schoolkids are too sensitive to be tested.

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 less common. Yet the idea that ‘the personal is political’ has survived, albeit giving way to an increasing fractious identity politics. The bizarre story of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman presenting herself as a mixed-race leader in the NAACP, has raised sharp questions about how we think about who a person is.  More broadly, there has been an explosion of different groups vying with one another for social recognition and respect. US writer Cathy Young argues this has led to a ‘reverse caste system in which a person’s status and worth depends entirely on their perceived oppression and disadvantage’

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. A particular concern for economists is low productivity – the amount of wealth produced by each worker – which is well below that of other countries and 15 per cent below where it would have been if pre-crisis trends had continued. Yet across the main political parties there seems little vision of how the UK economy could look different in five, 10 or 20 years’ time. The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has made much play about the creation of a ‘northern powerhouse’. The H

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 advances in technology and medical care, have resulted in a system at breaking point. One million patients are seen every 24 hours, at a cost of £2 billion each week. The kind of care available and sums of money involved would surely astonish the institution’s founders. Indeed, although often perceived as one homogeneous care provider, high-profile scandals, such as those at Mid Staffordshire and at the Morecambe Bay Maternity Unit, have illustrated the variability in care across different hospitals – even within the same trust. And on many important measures – for example, cancer survival rates –

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 Papers making the not-so-startling revelation that the super rich sometimes avoid paying tax, the team ask why the rich feel the need to sit on their capital in the first place rather than using it productively. And finally, there’s analysis of the latest in the Brexit referendum campaign including the government’s latest controversial move: using public money to peddle the Remain line.     

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 Improving Diet’, a policy document produced by the Department of Health in March 2013, most people in England are overweight or obese - 61.3% of adults and 30% of children aged between 2 and 15. The associated health problems are costing the NHS, it is claimed, more than £5 billion every year. The reasons given for people ‘going large’ are not always clear, and numerous reasons have been suggested: that the modern Western diet is too high in carbohydrates / fat / sugar [delete as appropriate], that we no longer sit down together for a home-cooked family meal, but graze all day or eat ready-meals in fr

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 to shape the world around them? Or, is it a misguided attempt by privileged students to rewrite the past by shutting down debate and making anachronistic claims to be victims of historical wrongs?

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 campaign, 'One You' - why are government lecturing people to change their bad habits?

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 offspring. In the same month, parents were also told by researchers how long they should read to their children each day. Business Secretary Sajid Javid has ordered university heads to establish a taskforce to take on sexist ‘lad culture’ and guide students to conduct their interpersonal relations in line with enlightened mores. Of course, not everyone follows expert advice on any of the above. Policy advisers and academic experts frequently complain about those who refuse to acknowledge their wisdom and carry on smoking, drinking sugary pop, being laddish. Cutting-edge techniques of behavioural psycholo

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 can find out more about Brexit The Movie and contribute to the Kickstarter fund here. Donations close on Wednesday 2 March.

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 to Rob Lyons about space-time, the Big Bang and the on-going debates in physics between quantum mechanics and relativity theory.

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 wide-ranging historical approach to examining the changing meanings attributed to the act of reading. From ancient Rome to contemporary society, his book focuses on the relationship between reading and social discourses about morality and culture. He questions key contemporary beliefs such as that the internet damages our ability to digest information and that boys don’t read, and argues for the art of reading, not as a mechanism to moral good or social and economic advancement, but as a humanist pursuit. In this podcast, recorded at the launch of the book earlier this month, Furedi delivers a ta

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 Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both narrowly missing out on winning their respective caucuses in Iowa, signalling a crisis for both the Republicans and Democrats. The team also discuss the latest killjoy advice from the UK’s most senior doctor, Dame Sally Davies, who believes that women should ask themselves whether they want to raise their risk of breast cancer every time they’re tempted by a glass of wine. 

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, and reading is increasing among under-30s, while sales of printed books are proving remarkably robust in competition with e-books. The announcement that Harper Lee would be publishing her sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird generated a storm of international media interest, as did Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he was launching his own online book club with 31 million members. Meanwhile, that once-seemingly doomed literary form, the essay, seems to have enjoyed a resurgence, as new media embraces the ‘long-read’ and serious literary journals and small publishers continue to thrive rather than face ex

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 anything, censorship on UK campuses is getting worse.

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 speech at its heart. So it is striking that today, student radicals appear to be at the forefront of calling for restrictions on what they and their fellow students are allowed to say, read and hear. In February, the online magazine spiked launched the UK’s first Free Speech University Rankings. It found that 80 per cent of universities censored speech, and that the vast majority of this was carried out by students’ unions. No Platform policies, which originally banned fascist speakers, are now used to ‘protect’ students from a wide range of controversial ideas, and not only right-wing ones; even fe