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LSE: Public lectures and events

1,433 episodes - English - Latest episode: 15 days ago - ★★★★ - 256 ratings

The London School of Economics and Political Science public events podcast series is a platform for thought, ideas and lively debate where you can hear from some of the world's leading thinkers. Listen to more than 200 new episodes every year.

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Episodes

Recasting the global economy and international institutions: collaboration, competition, and the new growth story

March 14, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 83 MB

Contributor(s): Rachel Kyte, Professor Lord Stern | As part of the Lionel Robbins Lecture Series, our panel discuss the growth story for the 21st century: building sustainable, resilient, and equitable development.

Look again: the power of noticing what was always there

March 13, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 79.9 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Tali Sharot, Professor Cass R. Sunstein | The authors tackle a great question: why are we so often oblivious to things around us, from pollution and lying to bias and corruption? 

A new growth story: structural transformation; policies and institutions

March 13, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 73.2 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Cameron Hepburn, Professor Lord Stern | As part of the Lionel Robbins Lecture Series, the second lecture explores structural transformation; policies and institutions.

A world re-drawn; a world in crisis; a moment in history; the agenda for growth and transformation

March 12, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 81.8 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Emily Shuckburgh, Professor Lord Stern | As part of the Lionel Robbins Lecture Series, our panel discussed the first theme on a world re-drawn; a world in crisis; a moment in history; the agenda for growth and transformation.

Global ocean governance: past, present, and future

March 11, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 74.1 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Scott Barrett | The ocean is governed by a combination of property rights, established in customary law, cooperative agreements, and under treaty law. Professor Scott Barrett looks at what these institutions have achieved and why.

217 million census records: evidence from linked census data

March 07, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 84.7 MB

Contributor(s): Professor James Feigenbaum | In this talk, James Feigenbaum shows how the ability to link individuals over time, and between databases, means that new avenues for research have opened up, thus allowing us to track intergenerational mobility, assimilation, discrimination and the returns to education.

Déja vu all over again? Super Tuesday and the race for the presidency

March 06, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 83.5 MB

Contributor(s): Dr Jason Casellas, Dr Ursula Hackett, Mark Landler, Professor Stephanie Rickard | Jason Casellas is the John G. Winant Visiting Professor in American Government at the University of Oxford affiliated with Balliol College and the Rothermere American Institute.  Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow.  Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The New York Times. Stephanie J Rickard is Professor at t...

How can we tackle inequalities through British public policy?

March 05, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 69.2 MB

Contributor(s): Dr Tania Burchardt, Professor Neil Lee, Professor Mike Savage | Our panel of speakers will cover a range of topics, such as how we can improve the quality of employment, how to implement a levelling up agenda, and how we can tackle wealth inequality in the UK.

What's funny about everyday sexism?

March 05, 2024 00:00 - 38 minutes - 30.8 MB

Contributor(s): Cally Beaton | They discuss how comedy can both perpetuate and conceal sexism, while also having the profound ability to reveal and rise above bias and discrimination.

Shaping major cities – the challenge of being a mayor

February 29, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 86.6 MB

Contributor(s): Marvin Rees OBE | What lessons are there about how to represent, lead and shape a city? How difficult is it to balance short-term priorities with long-term vision and strategy? And what does central government need to learn about public policy and city services from the sharp end? Join us as we host Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, to address this and more.

The inequality of wealth: why it matters and how to fix it

February 28, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 83.3 MB

Contributor(s): Katie Schmuecker, Professor Mike Savage , Liam Byrne MP | Yet, it doesn’t have to be like this. In his new book The Inequality of Wealth: why it matters and how to fix it, former Treasury Minister, Liam Byrne, explains the fast-accelerating inequality of wealth; warns how it threatens our society, economy, and politics; shows where economics got it wrong – and lays out a path back to common sense, with five practical new ways to rebuild an old ideal: the wealth-owning democrac...

Moments of polycrisis: a mayor's perspective

February 27, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 70 MB

Contributor(s): Kostas Bakoyannis | It has become vital to draw from the local perspective when tackling global issue. The same is true for many organisations and communities, for whom traditional, top-down approaches do not offer the agility and responsiveness that is essential for effective crisis management in our times. Having served local government for 13 years, from a rural to an urban context and from a small town to a region and a big city, Kostas Bakoyannis shares his experience of ...

Are we on the verge of a weight-loss revolution?

February 25, 2024 00:00 - 60.7 MB

Contributor(s): Sarah Appleton, Nikki Sullivan, Paul Frijters, Helen | Joanna Bale talks to Helen, who found Ozempic ‘life-changing’, Clinical Psychologist Sarah Appleton, and LSE’s Nikki Sullivan & Paul Frijters.

The modern left for progressive governance

February 23, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 78.8 MB

Contributor(s): Stefanos Kasselakis | In Greece, SYRIZA rose dramatically to lead the fight against euro-zone imposed austerity. Yet, it lost badly in two national elections last year and the left is fragmenting. How can the fortunes of the left be restored? What kind of unity is feasible and desirable on the left? How can the left avoid further defeat?

Transnational anti-gender politics and resistance

February 22, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 104 MB

Contributor(s): Tooba Syed, Professor Judith Butler | What might feminist, queer and decolonial forms of resistance teach us about diverse forms of 'anti-gender' backlash? How can we generate political solidarity to counter 'anti-gender' mobilisations across different contexts? Our keynote speakers reflect on political, epistemic and ethical interventions and open up for discussion with the audience.

The new China playbook: beyond socialism and capitalism

February 20, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 53.9 MB

Contributor(s): Dr Keyu Jin | Yet Western economists have long been incorrectly predicting its collapse. Why do they keep getting it wrong? Because, according to Keyu Jin, the Chinese economy that most Westerners picture is an incomplete sketch, based on Western dated assumptions and incomplete information. We need a new understanding of China, one that takes a holistic view of its history and its culture. Professor Jin presents The New China Playbook, a revelatory, clear-eyed, and myth-busti...

The great fear: the politics of performing

February 15, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 64.1 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Richard Sennett | The Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical dimensions of performing, rather than on words. Richard Sennett is particularly attuned to the ways in which the rituals of ordinary life are performances. The book draws on history and sociology, and more personally on the author's early career as a professional cellist, as well as on his later...

Transforming rural Southeast Asia

February 14, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 73 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Tania Murray Li | In Southeast Asia, 30 million more people live and work in rural areas today than they did in 1990. Yet rural people are largely absent from public and academic discourse, out of sight and out of mind. One reason for the neglect is the stubbornly persistent transition narrative which suggests that rural populations are anachronistic: they belong to the past, and sooner or later they will move to cities and join the march of progress. Hence it is not...

Growth through investment: what should the UK's FDI strategy look like?

February 13, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 129 MB

Contributor(s): Lord Harrington, Professor Nigel Driffield, Professor Riccardo Crescenzi, Laura Citron | The recently published Harrington Review of Foreign Direct Investment offers a set of evidence-based and achievable recommendations for the UK to provide a tailored, responsive and comprehensive offer that meets foreign investors’ expectations and factors in the speed of the modern world. This panel discussion pushes the debate on FDI attraction and retention forward and consider how the H...

Empowering the economy

February 12, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 51.3 MB

Contributor(s): Christian Lindner | The German Finance Minister talks about new realities and strengthening Germany’s competitiveness for the benefit of its economy and its partners.

The shortcut - how machines became intelligent without thinking in a human way

February 12, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 77.7 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Nello Cristianini | Instead, the prevailing form of machine intelligence is the direct result of a series of decisions that we have made over the past decades. These were shortcuts aimed at addressing various technical (and business) problems, and that are now behind many of the current concerns about the impact of this technology on society. A major shortcut was taken with the creation of the very first statistical language models, and we will describe how that step...

The revolutionary city

February 08, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 83 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Mark R Beissinger, Professor Olga Onuch | In his new book, The Revolutionary City, Mark R. Beissinger provides a new understanding of how revolutions happen and what they might look like in the future. He is joined by Olga Onuch who will discuss the book.  

The seaside: England's love affair

February 07, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 122 MB

Contributor(s): Lord Bassam, Sheela Agarwal, Madeleine Bunting | England invented the seaside resort as a place of pleasure and these towns became iconic in the nation's sense of identity for over a century, but for over four decades the rise of package holidays and cheap flights have eroded their economies. This has resulted in a 'salt fringe' of deprivation, low pay, poor health and low educational achievement and the worst social mobility in the country. Despite persistent affection for ma...

The Oceans Treaty as a win for multilateralism: what lies ahead

February 06, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 89.6 MB

Contributor(s): Dr Michael I Kanu, Philippe Carvalho Raposo, Lowri Mai Griffiths, Dr Robert Blasiak, Dr Siva Thambisetty | On 5 March 2023, state parties at the United Nations agreed the text of a new Treaty to cover biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, in areas also known as the high seas. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Treaty sets out governance mechanisms for oceans over nearly half the planet’s surface covering marine genetic resources, environmental impact ass...

The perils of Saudi nationalism

February 05, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 71.5 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed | Mainly the pervasive sub-national identities that dominated Arabia or the supra-national Islamic identity that the regime promoted to achieve legitimacy. But since the rise of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in 2017, a new populist Saudi nationalism is promoted. This lecture traces the shift in Saudi nation-building from the early days of religious nationalism to the current populist trend. It will explain why only recently constructing a Saudi n...

Recent advances in the understanding of human sociality

February 01, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 124 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Joseph Heath | Major unanswered questions involve the relationship between biological and sociocultural factors in promoting cooperativeness, as well as the vulnerability of human social systems to stagnation or collapse. We have amassed a great deal of theory regarding these questions, but our scientific knowledge remains fragmented. In recent years, however, a few pieces of the puzzle have begun to be fitted together. In this lecture Joseph Heath discusses two impo...

Limitarianism: the case against extreme wealth

January 31, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 74.2 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Lea Ypi, Martin Sandbu, Professor Ingrid Robeyns | What we need is a world without decamillionaires – people having more than ten million pounds. That is what the philosopher Ingrid Robeyns from the University of Utrecht argues in her new book, Limitarianism. The Case Against Extreme Wealth. Why would a world without anyone being superrich be better? Because extreme wealth undermines democracy; is incompatible with climate justice; and the money could be used much be...

Why is it worth staying curious about racial capitalism?

January 31, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 56.1 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya | The framing of racial capitalism can become a way to freeze analysis - as if the same circuit of dispossession and violence continues across time and space and, with the desperate implication, for always. In this talk, Gargi Bhattacharyya considers the changing violences of racial capitalism and considers how can we use this language to identify emerging patterns of racialised dispossession, and what might we then do about it.

Empowering citizens with behavioural science

January 30, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 64.4 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Ralph Hertwig | Nudging promises that minor adjustments in choice architecture can influence decisions without altering incentives. However, nudging has also been criticised, including objections to its soft paternalism and its neglect of agency, autonomy, and the longevity of behaviour change. In response to such criticisms— and the proliferation of highly engineered and manipulative, commercial choice architectures—other behavioural policy approaches have been prop...

Fluke: chance, chaos and why everything we do matters

January 29, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 107 MB

Contributor(s): Dr Brian Klaas | Brian Klaas explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and random events. How much difference does our decision to hit the snooze button make? Did one couple's vacation really change the course of the twentieth century? His new book, Fluke, is a provocative new vision of how our world really works - and why chance determines everything.

Solidarity economics: why mutuality and movements matter

January 25, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 76.8 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Manuel Pastor, T.O. Molefe | Traditional economics is built on the assumption of self-interested individuals seeking to maximize personal gain, but that is far from the whole story. Sharing, caring, and a desire to uphold the collective good are also powerful motives. In a world on fire – facing threats to multiracial democracy, tensions from rising economic inequality, and even the existential threat of climate change, can we build an alternative economics based on ...

It's in the news: we're decarbonising!

January 25, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 79.2 MB

Contributor(s): Adam Vaughan, Dr James Painter, Fiona Harvey, Roger Harrabin | This event gathers journalists from various backgrounds to discuss the challenges they face in informing and promoting balanced public discussions about decarbonisation, particularly in the context of looming local and general elections. Media coverage of climate change has long centered on alerting the public about, as well as debating and contesting, the dangers of climate change. Today, history has moved on. The...

Protect, strengthen, prepare - 2024 as a moment of truth for the future of the European continent

January 23, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 87.6 MB

Contributor(s): Alexander De Croo | Belgium will enter 2024 as the rotating chair of the European Union. As one of the founding fathers of the Union, Belgium presides over the EU for the 13th time. The number might sound unlucky and the challenges ahead are surely daunting. That said, Prime Minister De Croo will talk about the strengths of the Union, its relationship with the United Kingdom, and the ways in which the EU needs to reform to stay in shape.

Why do so many people mistakenly think they are working class? | Extra iQ

January 22, 2024 00:00 - 9 minutes - 17.9 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Sam Friedman | More than one in four people in the UK, from solidly middle-class backgrounds, mistakenly think of themselves as working-class. Why is this? In this episode of Extra iQ, a shorter style of the LSE iQ podcast, Sue Windebank speaks to Sam Friedman, a sociologist of class and inequality at LSE to find out more. Sam spoke to the podcast in November 2022 for an episode which asked, ‘How does class define us?’ The whole interview was fantastic but we couldn’...

In conversation with Bisher Khasawneh, Prime Minister of Jordan

January 22, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 63 MB

Contributor(s): Dr Bisher Khasawneh | Bisher Khasawneh (@BisherKhasawneh) is Prime Minister of The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Minister of Defence, positions he has held since October 2020. He held the position of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2017 and Minister of State for Legal Affairs 2017-2018. He served as King Abdullah II’s Advisor for Communication and Coordination Affairs from April 2019 to August 17, 2020 and as the King’s Adviser for Policies in the Royal Ha...

Inflation: new and old perspectives

January 19, 2024 00:00 - 1 hour - 78 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Iván Werning | Previous inflationary episodes have taught us a lot on what causes inflation and what can be done to reduce it. But the world has changed and previous insights may no longer be valid. Iván Werning will discuss how old insights extended with new frameworks can be used to shed light on the recent surge in inflation.

Engaging the global urban agenda: from the south

December 06, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 73.6 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Susan Parnell | Sue Parnell outlines why a new urban disposition, that breaks with geographies, disciplines, and ideologies might be helpful in building new communities of practice to advance a global urban agenda. Creating solutions to the complex problems of cities, like gender inequality, informality, climate resilience or disease prevention, necessitates global not just national and local analysis and intervention. Some progress has been made, for example in the ...

A lecture by Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados

December 06, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 69.7 MB

Contributor(s): Mia Amor Mottley, Esther Phillips, Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah | Ms Mottley was elected to the Parliament of Barbados in September 1994 as part of the new Barbados Labour Party Government. Prior to that, she served as one of two Opposition Senators between 1991 and 1994. One of the youngest persons ever to be assigned a ministerial portfolio, Ms. Mottley was appointed Minister of Education, Youth Affairs and Culture from 1994 to 2001. She later served as Attorney General and...

The economic costs of British planning: unaffordable housing and lost employment and productivity

December 05, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 76.4 MB

Contributor(s): Lord Wolfson, Professor Paul Cheshire, Dame Kate Barker, Stephen Aldridge | It is 40 years since Paul Cheshire began to investigate the economic effects of our land use planning system and 20 years since Kate Barker published her first review of the impact of planning on housing supply. Their insights have helped us understand what can be done to ensure decent housing for all and boost productivity – but, after three failed attempts at significant planning reform - we are now ...

Rights, virtues and humanity: re-thinking the ethics of human rights

December 04, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 60.3 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Kimberly Hutchings | For the past twenty years the idea of human rights as an absolute and universal ethical standard has been subject to a barrage of criticism. Critiques have come from all philosophical and political directions, including communitarian, pragmatist, poststructuralist and decolonial. In this lecture, Kimberly Hutchings explores the critical landscape of human rights thinking today and how we might re-think the concept of human rights in ways that wil...

How can we tackle loneliness?

December 02, 2023 00:00 - 26 minutes - 49.4 MB

Contributor(s): Heather Kappes, David McDaid, Molly Taylor | According to the Office for National Statistics, 7.1 per cent of adults in Great Britain - nearly 4 million people - say they 'often or always' feel lonely. Look around you when you’re in a crowded place – a supermarket or an office - 1 in 14 of the people you’re looking at are likely to be lonely, not just sometimes but most of the time. And that’s half a million more people saying that they feel chronically lonely in 2023 than the...

The oceans, the blue economy and implications for climate change

November 29, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 74 MB

Contributor(s): Dr Siva Thambisetty, Dr John Siddorn, Ishbel Matheson, Dr Joanna Post, Dr Darian McBain | The blue economy is estimated to be worth over US$1.5 trillion per year globally, providing over 30 million jobs and supplying protein to over three billion people. With new large-scale industrial activities, such as offshore renewable energy as well as the growing interest in ocean mining and marine biotechnology, the oceans have moved to the top of political and economic agendas. This e...

Greek foreign policy: future challenges and opportunities

November 27, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 70.2 MB

Contributor(s): Professor George Gerapetritis | Climate change, worldwide aggression, migration flows, food crisis and public health emergencies have core common characteristics: they destroy certainties, they produce extraterritorial effects, they are not dealt through deliberative mechanisms. In light of these, we need to revisit the current status and, perhaps, return to the basics. Enhancing democratic institutions and global principled governance, acknowledging the moral value of solidar...

The legacy of Richard Titmuss: social welfare fifty years on

November 27, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 67.7 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Ann Oakley, Professor Chris Renwick, Professor Sally Sheard, Professor John Stewart | Richard Titmuss, the first chair in Social Administration at the London School of Economics and Political Science, died fifty years ago in 1973. From his appointment in 1950 until his death Titmuss established and defined the field of social policy. This event will discuss Titmuss’s critique of the ‘welfare state’, and how his insights have had to evolve in the light of the challeng...

How economics changes the world

November 23, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 72.7 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Mary S Morgan | While the conventional view is that ideas create policy change and economic change follows on - it is just not that simple. We can see what is involved by looking at major changes - such as the reconstruction of post-war economies, post-colonial economic development planning, or switching from capitalist to socialist systems. Designing such new kinds of worlds required new ways of thinking about how the economic world could work involving imagination ...

Why the racial wealth divide matters

November 22, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 66.4 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Vimal Ranchhod, Faeza Meyer, Dr Eleni Karagiannaki, Dr Shabna Begum | Wealthy households able to draw on owner occupied housing assets, private pensions, savings and financial investments have prospered. Meanwhile the majority of the populations, even in rich nations – have been exposed to harsh ‘austerity’ policies, and often the need to balance debt obligations. There is increasing evidence that wealth assets play a significant role in allowing social mobility adva...

Dementia and decision-making

November 21, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 83.4 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Richard Pettigrew, Dr David Jarrett, Nicci Gerrard, Ruth Bright | Many of us will face this important question: over 850,000 people in the UK currently have dementia, and many more will be involved in their care. One of the great strengths of the LSE is its work in decision-theory – but how should we apply decision-theory to those with dementia? How can we figure out the preferences of a person who currently has dementia, whose desires may appear incoherent and ever-...

Making good law in a time of polycrisis

November 20, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 50.6 MB

Contributor(s): Lord McFall | He advises caution on radical reform of the Upper House, arguing that incremental change to the process for nomination of peers would strengthen its role as a “forum for civil society” allowing the country to draw on expertise from outside politics.

Trends and determinants of global child malnutrition: what can we learn from history?

November 16, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 68.1 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Eric Schneider | Children with poor nutrition or who are exposed to high levels of chronic disease grow more slowly than healthy children. Thus, children’s growth is a sensitive metric of how population health has evolved over time. Eric begins by showing how child growth has changed around the world since the nineteenth century and linking changes in child growth to child stunting, children who are too short for their age relative to healthy standards, the most comm...

The elusive plantation: imagining development in Mozambique

November 15, 2023 00:00 - 1 hour - 84.8 MB

Contributor(s): Professor Catherine Boone, Professor Wendy Wolford | For over 100 years, plantations have served as the imagined ideal for agricultural production and labor management in Mozambique. This talk outlines the colonial roots of this desire for the always-elusive plantation and argue that it manifests in contemporary Mozambique in a variety of ways: the global market takes priority over local needs; agricultural researchers rely on external funding that is short-term, motivated by ...

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