“My grandchildren are so busy with all their extra classes that I seem to spend most our time together acting as a taxi service.” “When the children come to stay I’m constantly worried about keeping them safe.” “ I’d love to have fun with them, but my daughter expects me to supervise their homework and test them on their spelling.” Are today’s gran…

What are grandmothers for? That’s what Sally Feldman wondered when she first learned that her daughter was pregnant. As a former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she was familiar with so many aspects of female experiences. But faced with the prospect of a grandchild, she realised she was clueless. So now she’s writing a book of advice for new g…

With Covid rates remaining stubbornly high and a huge pent-up demand for hospital care, the UK’s National Health Service faces a tough winter. Intensive care wards are the canary in the mine, reports Rachael Jolley. Mark Toshner: We can make beds, but what we can’t make are specialised staff to run those beds. The accident and emergency department …

It’s not about individual countries. It’s not about individual regions. It’s not even about blocks. This doesn’t work unless we vaccinate everybody. But is geopolitics getting in the way of good public health policy as we strive to overcome COVID-19? In this podcast, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow …

The death of writer and activist Nawal el Saadawi has just been announced. In 2011 Tess Woodcraft interviewed her at a conference organised by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Right Organisation for Pod Academy. We reproduce it here. Typically, and at 80 years old, she had stopped off at the Occupy encampment around St Paul’s Cathedral on her way fr…

Journalism has sometimes been a dangerous profession during the pandemic, but there has been real innovation, too. In this, the third part of our series on Journalism in the Pandemic, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield considers how …

Authoritarian restrictions on the press, attacks on journalists in the streets and more accusations of ‘fake news’ – it’s like a war zone out there. Rachael Jolley looks at the dangers of reporting during the Covid -19 pandemic. Jolley (@londoninsider) has developed a series of podcasts for Pod Academy on News in the Pandemic, this is the second in…

Local newspapers have been in decline for years, but the decline has been massively exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. Can a new type of hyper-local journalism be the answer for local news and local democracy? And how will it be funded? Rachael Jolley (@londoninsider), research fellow @sheffjournalism and former Editor-in-Chief of Index on Censorsh…

A Scottish Laird becomes Lord of the Bedchamber in the Abyssinian/Ethiopian court and finds the source of the Nile. Like many of his wealthy contemporaries in the 18th and 19th centuries, Lord James Bruce of Kinnaird made the grand tour of Europe (see the companion blog to this podcast). Unlike many of them he also ventured further afield. For thre…

What does it mean to be a ‘good man’? With so much talk about toxic masculinity, there is, perhaps. a pre-supposition that there is no good masculinity. This lecture by Dr Nina Power, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University, is based on her forthcoming book, What do Men Want? It is part of the IF Project‘s 2019 lecture series, Thinki…

This lecture on Left populism is part of the IF Project’s lecture series, Thinking between the Lines: Truth, Lies and Fiction in an age of populism. Dr Marina Prentoulis, Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at University of East Anglia and a member of Syriza, explores the differences between Lef…

“No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I. know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues. Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician’s or the demagogue’s but also of the statesman’s trade. Why is that so? And w…

Who is allowed to make things up? What does fiction writing have to do with life? Is a novel a document? This is the second lecture in the If Project series, Thinking Between the Lines: truth, lies and fiction in an age of populism. Dr Katie da Cunha Lewin (@kdc_lewin) explores what it means to ‘make things up’ in literature, especially looking at …

“We need to get away from the idea that knowledge, expertise and truth are obvious and given.” This first lecture in the IF Project lecture series 2019, Thinking Between the Lines: Truth, lies and fiction in an age of populism is given by Professor Will Davies of Goldsmith’s, University of London. Professor Davies’s powerpoint can be found here. Wh…

Pat Thane, Research Professor at King’s College, London and Professor Emerita, University of London, explores the social and political history of Britain over the past 100+ years with Pod Academy’s Lee Millam, as they discuss her latest book, Divided Kingdom. This podcast is a tour de force as Professor Thane takes us from the founding of the Labou…

What is the real cost of IVF? As Louise Brown the world’s first “test tube” baby celebrates her 40th birthday – this seminar organised by the Progress Educational Trust explores not just the economic cost, but also the emotional and psychological costs. Worldwide there have been 60 million live births as a result of IVF, but it is still the case th…

This podcast is drawn from a Progress Educational Trust (PET) event called Putting Your Genome to Work: For the NHS, for Industry, for the UK Post-Brexit Chair: Sarah Norcross, Director of PET Speakers: Dr Eliot Forster, Chair of MedCity Dr Edward HockingsFounding Director of Ethics and Genetics Dr Athena Matakidou, Head of Clinical Genomics at Ast…

Maxwell Ward talks to Dr Lawrence Rosenthal, chair of the Berkeley Centre for Right-Wing Studies, about the Alt-Right’s unlikely journey into the mainstream of US politics and their more recent struggles. What are their ambitions? What do they really think of Donald Trump? And where do they go from here? But the first thing Maxwell wanted to know… …

Journalism has been called ‘the first draft of history’, and as a first draft it may be written over, forgotten, ignored. In this podcast, journalist Martin Bright (@martinbright) considers one tiny strand of the story of the Iraq war. It illustrates truth and fake news, things that are very much on our minds at the moment. It is taken from a lectu…

Following the election of Donald Trump, the alt-right has come to play a significant role in American political discourse. They are an upstart political movement that rejects traditional conservatism and championed Trump and his opposition to political correctness. But how did a movement rooted in online and video game culture come to be so influen…

We appear fascinated with the phenomenon of the woman who kills. In the last year alone in the UK, both ITV and channel 4 have launched popular documentary series chronicling the shocking lives and crimes of women who commit murder. But what is it about the murderess that renders her so interesting? To social historian Dr Anna Jenkin (@acjenkin), i…

What is the scorecard for President Donald Trump after the first 100 Days? “C minus overall,” says Peter Trubowitz, Professor of International Relations and Director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs. Trump said he was going to sha…

“A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on,” said Winston Churchill. If that was the case then, how much more valid is it today. The explosion of social media and its ability to circulate and generate misinformaton has completely changed the political landscape. And it has led to a whole new branch of journalism –…

Always on our smartphones and other digital devices, we live in an expository society, says Prof Bernard Harcourt. The landscape described in his new book is a dystopia saturated by pleasure. We do not live in a drab Orwellian world, he writes. We live in a beautiful, colourful, stimulating, digital world a rich, bright world full of passion and jo…

This is the second in our series on the 2016 US Presidential election, in which Alex Burd talks to Peter Trubowitz, Professor of International Relations and Director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs. [ The first podcast, on Donald…

“The American dream is dead. I will bring it back and we will make America great again…..” In nine months Donald Trump has stunned the political establishment, brushing aside other contenders to become the Republican nominee in the race for the White House. How has the man made famous for saying ‘You’re fired’ come so close to landing the biggest j…

“We always write – and read – history thought the prism of our contemporary concerns,” So why study history? What do we mean by ‘history’? This podcast is a lecture by Dr Richard Barnett, which was part of a course on Thinking run by the IF Project, the free university in London. “We always write – and read – history thought the prism of our contem…

Once upon a time, in the land of Great Britain, Amanda woke up to the sun shining on a bright Monday morning. Before she got out of bed, she opened the BBC weather app on her phone to check the weather for the day ahead. She had started leaving her trail of digital breadcrumbs……. She took a shower, made some breakfast, brushed her teeth and left th…

When the gun is replaced by the melody: how does music resist? ‘Even if they don’t have a message, the act of actually playing music itself is resistance,’ says Dr. Sara McGuiness, senior teaching fellow in Music at SOAS. Classical Thai musician Luang Pradit Pairoh fought through the melodies of his songs surrounded by oppression; Ahmed Maher signe…

The internet has long been seen as a force of global connection, But this notion of a global internet has never been entirely accurate. Language barriers, access limitations, censorship and the human impulse to stay within your own social circles contribute to us staying local. And then there is the larger architecture of the internet. This podcast…

Autism is a condition that affects about one in a hundred of us. But few people understand or can recognise it. This can have serious implications when people with autism encounter the criminal justice system. Recent research by City University and the University of Bath suggests that most people with autism, and about 75% of their parents, are lef…

The films of truly outstanding director Spike Lee take a special niche in American cinema. More than that, they especially enrich so-called Black cinema. Lee’s oeuvre includes a great number of films. To mention just some of them: She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), He Got Game (1998), Love …

Science Fiction can often help us understand realpolitik in the real world. Is Tyrian Lannister a realist or a liberal? What would Mr. Spock have to say about rational choice theory? And what did Stanley Kubrick read to create Dr. Strangelove? Stephen Dyson is the author of Otherworldly Politics: The International Relations of Star Trek, Game of Th…

‘Lock them up and throw away the key!’ is something that is often heard. But does locking someone up for committing a crime really work to punish an individual? What about having them come back into society a changed person, asks presenter and producer Lee Millam in this podcast. Prisons, why do we send people there? Does it work? Should it work? T…

As the Paris global climate negotiations get under way, we in Britain face the prospect of increased flooding. . What can we do about it? Gresham College in the City of London was founded in 1597 and over 400 years has provided a range of free lectures on different subjects to those who live and work in London. One recent lecture was The next big f…

The number of couples seeking fertility treatment is rising every year. But donor assisted conception poses huge ethical and human rights issues. Up until 10 years ago, sperm donors and women who donated eggs had a right to remain anonymous. Then the law was changed in 2005 giving donor conceived people the right to information about their donors. …

First published in 1983, Lise Vogel’s Marxism and the Oppression of Women – toward a unitary theory is regarded as one of the founding texts of Marxist Feminism. It has now been relaunched, and Pod Academy was at the relaunch. Lisa Vogel was joined on the platform by Dr Tithi Battacharya, Purdue Liberal Arts University, in US, Dr Sue Ferguson, Laur…

In this podcast, Tatiana Prorokova considers gender ambiguity in Vietnam War films. The Vietnam War takes a specific place in U.S. military history. Having influenced generations of Americans, the conflict unsurprisingly found a wide reflection in American cinema. The most famous, as well as the most significant ones were the films created in the 1…

Podcast produced and presented by Alex Burd In December 2011 a Tunisian vegetable vendor set himself alight in protest at the economic policies of his country. The death of Mohamed Bouazizi would light the touch paper in Tunis and the surrounding Arab world which would see dictators toppled, wars break out and millions of people displaced in what w…

Podcast produced by Lee Millam Slang. In this podcast Tony Thorne, former Head of the Language Centre, now Visiting Consultant, at King’s College, London and author of the Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, looks at what slang is, how it’s used, where it comes from and what words are being used as part of our everyday language. Slang shou…

Wilfred Bion (1897 – 1979) was an influential (if at times ‘gnomic’) psychoanalyst who spent much of his working life at the Tavistock clinic in London. He is perhaps best known for Experiences in Groups (London:Tavistock 1961), a key text in the emerging group psychotherapy and encounter group movements of the 1960s,and for Learning from Experienc…

“We know the jockey wants to win the race, and it is beguiling to imagine the horse knows what the challenge is, knows somehow the significance of the finishing post and therefore is a willing participant in this endeavour. If you buy into that framework you can imagine the horse views the whip strikes purely as a form of encouragement. ‘Thanks for…

New Zealand is an important place for thoroughbred breeding and racing. Most races are on the flat, but jumps racing is conducted in the cooler months. At the 2013 National Jumps Day at Te Rapa, Hamilton, two horses were put down after bad falls over the jumps. In this conversation Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan of the podcast show, Knowing Animals talks to…

Journalism is changing, and so is the way we consume journalism. On the eve of the 2015 Future of Journalism Conference, Tess Woodcraft talks to Angela Phillips, Professor of Journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London and author of Journalism in Context (Routhledge 2015) about how strong news journalism is crucial for informed citizenship, and …

In this podcast Dr Sonja Schillings explores how the use of the Latin term Hostis Humani Generis (the enemy of all mankind), which was originally applied to pirates, now creates an extralegal space which is being used to legitimise the assassination of international terrorists all over the world. This is just part of her forthcoming book, Hostis Hu…

This podcast is about how a group of women campaigners and academics worked together and achieved a change in the law – making the possession of rape pornography illegal. It features author and former barrister Elizabeth Woodcraft in conversation with Professor Erica Rackley, University of Birmingham, Dr Fiona Vera Gray of Rape Crisis South London …

In the ‘old game’, the analogue world of centralised knowledge institutions, knowledge was power. But now that knowledge is everywhere, the rules of the game have changed. In his essay “Digital tailspin: 10 rules for the internet after Snowden” writer and activist Michael Seemann (@mspro) examines how we’ve lost our ability to control the way infor…

14th January 1795 ANN HAWKINS was indicted for feloniously stealing, on the 7th of January , a feather bed, value 20s. a flock and feather bolster, value 10d. two woollen blankets, value 3s. a linen sheet, value 2s. a linen counterpane, value 12d. a looking glass in a walnut-tree frame, value 4s. a pair of tongs, value 6d. a brass candlestick, valu…

“Current economic orthodoxy”, says Christian Felber, “confuses means and ends. It says we should strive for the accumulation and maximisation of money and capital, but they are the means, not the ends……The end is the common good.” He proposes a new approach to economics, putting the system on a new course. Key to this new economy is moving from eva…