Europe after the European Age: historical reflections [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Mark Mazower | What forces have shaped Europe's place in the world over the past two centuries? And how do the challenges of the two 'post-European' epochs - after 1945 and 1989 - compare? Mark Mazower is Ira D Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University.
Risk, ethics and public sensitivities [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor George Gaskell | In this lunchtime series of lectures, a selection of LSE's academics from across the spectrum of the social sciences explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed.
Delivering a Low Carbon London [Audio]
Speaker(s): Isabel Dedring | Isabel Dedring will discuss developing and implementing a vision for a low carbon London. Isabel Dedring is environment adviser to the Mayor of London. She has also been director of the policy unit at Transport for London.
Out of the Bretton Woods: Building a World Bank for the 21st Century [Audio]
Speaker(s): Douglas Alexander MP | The first decade of the 21st Century has shown the extent to which we are increasingly interdependent for our prosperity, security and environmental sustainability. Tackling global poverty in today's world is not only a moral imperative, but in our common interest. Douglas Alexander will assess the importance of the World Bank in the fight against poverty, and propose the reforms that are necessary to equip it for the challenges that lie ahead.
Uncertainty and Ambiguity in American Fiscal and Monetary Policies [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Thomas J Sargent | Combining an historical approach with macroeconomic theory, Thomas Sargent will discuss ways of thinking about American fiscal and monetary policies - exploring how contradictions have developed and how they have been resolved. Thomas Sargent is professor of economics at New York University and senior fellow at Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
LSE Literary Festival - How Would a Robot Read a Novel? [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Kavita Abraham, Dr Jon Adams, Dr Robert Hudson | Don't judge a book by its cover? Don't be ridiculous. We constantly make judgements on books - from where it appears in a shop, its pretty cover, its heft or subject matter, the praise and criticism we hear about it. Reviewers are even more prejudiced. They know the author, or hate the publisher or, even worse, are a meticulous and lucid expert on the subject. All human readings are subjective. Is there another way? Would an objecti
LSE Literary Festival - Literature and the Academic: Literature as a resource for other disciplines
Speaker(s): Richard Bronk, Professor Margot Finn, Dr Neil Vickers | The session examines how the reading of literature can expand the analytical imagination, provide alternative metaphors and supply vital empirical evidence. Three academics from very different disciplines discuss ways in which literature can be invaluable to the broader research community.
LSE Literary Festival - Sociology as Literature [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Richard Sennett | Richard Sennett's award winning Sociology of Literature explores the role of narrative in social research and in writing sociology.
LSE Literary Festival - Speaking of Love [Audio]
Speaker(s): AS Byatt, Ben Okri, Helen Simpson, Colin Thubron | Four very different writers consider four very different aspects of love: love as enchantment, and love as madness; passion in youth, and compassion in age. They read their favourite passages on love both from their own work, and from the work of others, and, on Valentine's eve, discuss Shakespeare's notion that 'The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact'.
Renewing the Left's ideology: what should be the principles and goals of the centre-Left today? [Aud
Speaker(s): James Purnell MP | The credit crunch was followed by a consensus on the centre-Left that the world was entering a "progressive moment", and that the financial crisis represented a failure of the ideas of the New Right. Yet, in Europe at least, social democracy has struggled to articulate what the progressive response to the crisis, and has struggled electorally as a consequence. To resolve this paradox, the Left needs to recognise that the financial crisis challenges its received ide
How rich are the baby boomers and how poor are their children? [Audio]
Speaker(s): David Willetts MP | David Willetts will analyse the distribution of income and wealth between different generations in Britain. He will investigate why the baby boomer generation have done particularly well for both income and wealth. He will then look at why the younger generation face much less favourable economic circumstances. Drawing on his new book The Pinch he will firmly place the issue of fairness between the generations on the political agenda.
Jimmy Stewart Is Dead -- Ending the World's Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking [A
Speaker(s): Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff | Let's call a spade a spade. Today's financial system, with its limited liability, insider rating, political kickbacks, director sweetheart deals, non disclosure, and internal corporate raiders, was built for hucksters -- hucksters who systematically manufactured and sold trillions in fraudulent securities, grabbed hoards of loot, and left the public to pick up the pieces.
This Sporting Planet: global sport and global capitalism [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor David Goldblatt | Globalisation has seen sport achieve a hitherto unequalled global cultural significance, but it has also left it in thrall to capitalism. Will economic forces continue to shape sport? David Goldblatt is a writer, broadcaster and teacher. He is author of The Ball is Round: a global history of football.
Does the Electric Car have the Juice? [Audio]
Speaker(s): Len Curran, Andrew Heiron | Fierce price competition, painstaking cost-cutting, and widespread volatility is making life in the auto industry incredibly challenging. How has Renault adapted, and where does it see the auto industry heading? As a fledgling technology (and one of the great hopes for reducing global carbon emissions) can any electric car concept overcome such an inhospitable environment? Renault Group Commercial Director Len Curran and Electric Vehicles chief Andrew Heir
Prosperity without Growth [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Tim Jackson | This lecture will discuss a new vision of shared prosperity. It will consider the capability of human beings to flourish within the ecological limits of a finite planet. Tim Jackson is professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey and economics commissioner on the UK Sustainable Development Commission.
Hamlet Without the Prince of Denmark: how development has disappeared from today's 'development' dis
Speaker(s): Professor Ha-Joon Chang | Ha-Joon Chang is a reader in the political economy of development at Cambridge University. This event is supported by the LSE Annual Fund.
Geopolitics and Imperialism: the British Empire and Halford Mackinder 1890-1940 [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr John Darwin | It was perhaps no coincidence that Halford Mackinder, the most famous exponent of geopolitical theory, wrote his seminal essay in 1904 when British world power seemed on the verge of a secular crisis. This lecture examines how far the insights contained in Mackinder's four major works explain the geopolitical fortunes of the British world system in its age of blood and iron.
Risk versus responsibility in the regulation of the company [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr David Kershaw | In this lunchtime series of lectures, a selection of LSE's academics from across the spectrum of the social sciences explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed.
Independent Prosecutors and Democratic Accountability [Audio]
Speaker(s): Sir Ken MacDonald QC | Public prosecutors must be free from political influence to command confidence. But if they are not answerable to politicians, how are they accountable to the public for their work?
Mind-Body Problems: Science, Fiction, and God [Audio]
Speaker(s): Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Professor Steven Pinker | What happens when a novelist and philosopher talks to a cognitive neuroscientist about faith, reason, fiction, and God? Listen in as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and her husband Steven Pinker explore what Spinoza would say about Darwin, what role fiction should play in intellectual life, whether any of the arguments for the existence of God are any good, and other topics at the interface of literature, science, and philosophy.
