Sexuality and Empire 150 Years On: the Delhi High Court and Macaulay's sodomy offence [Audio]
Speaker(s): Michael Kirby | In 2009, the Delhi High Court in India upheld a challenge to the constitutional validity of s377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalized homosexuality. Michael Kirby will explain why UK lawyers should be engaged in the reform movement as a matter of basic human rights.
The Value of Nothing [Audio]
Speaker(s): Raj Patel | "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." Credit has crunched, debt has turned toxic, the gears of the world economy have ground to a halt. It's now clear that the market doesn't only get it wrong about sub-prime mortgages; it gets it wrong about everything. We need to ask again one of the most fundamental questions a society ever addresses: why do things cost what they do?
Uninhibited, Robust and Wide-Open: a free press for a new century [Audio]
Speaker(s): Lee Bollinger | Bollinger explores the meaning of freedom of the press in our globalised, internet-dominated era. Lee C. Bollinger became the nineteenth President of Columbia University on June 1, 2002. A prominent advocate of affirmative action, he played a leading role in the twin Supreme Court cases - Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger - that upheld and clarified the importance of diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education. A leading
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.
LSE Literary Festival - Literature and the Sciences: Where do they meet? [Audio]
Speaker(s): Michael Blackburn, Mario Petrucci, Richard Tyrone-Jones | Three poets discuss the interrelationship between art and literature and the social sciences. What are the links between these seemingly polarised disciplines? Does art have any concrete influence on the social and political sciences?
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.
Phoenix Cities - surviving financial, social and environmental turmoil in Europe and the US [Audio]
Speaker(s): Lord Richard Rogers, Bruce Katz, Professor Anne Power, Julia Unwin | This discussion will debate the issues arising from a new book Phoenix Cities which examines seven cities from very different regions of the EU, comparing them with the US experience. Their dramatic decline, intense recovery efforts and actual progress on the ground underline the significance of public underpinning in times of crisis. Innovative enterprises, new-style city leadership, special neighbourhood programme
Mandela's Way - Lessons on Life [Audio]
Speaker(s): Richard Stengel | For nearly three years Time magazine editor Richard Stengel collaborated with Nelson Mandela on his autobiography and travelled with him everywhere. Eating with him, watching him campaign, hearing him think out loud, Stengel came to know all the different sides of this complex man. He became a cherished friend and colleague. Now he has distilled countless hours of intimate conversation with Mandela into fifteen essential life lessons. In Mandela's Way, he recounts t
Art And The Limits Of The Political [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Herman Rapaport | A series of three lectures examining the proposition that contemporary art can go beyond transforming our understanding of the political and build new forms of political and social relations.
Art And The Limits Of The Political [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield | A series of three lectures examining the proposition that contemporary art can go beyond transforming our understanding of the political and build new forms of political and social relations.
The Quest for Meaning [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Tariq Ramadan | In this public lecture Tariq Ramadan, philosopher and Islamic scholar will talk about his new book The Quest for Meaning |in which he invites the reader to join him on a journey to the deep ocean of religious, secular, and indigenous spiritual traditions to explore the most pressing contemporary issues. Along the way, Ramadan interrogates the concepts that frame current debates including: faith and reason, emotions and spirituality, tradition and modernity,
Fanatacism [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Robert Eaglestone, Dr Alberto Toscano | Alberto Toscano will be debating his counter-history of fanaticism, in which he argues that fanaticism has played a critical role in forming modern politics. Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. Alberto Toscano is senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Green Social Advertising [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Luc Bovens | Editor's note: Unfortunately the last few minutes of the lecture are missing from the podcast. What are the aims and methods of green social advertising? Is it distinct from green nudges? Does it respect the sensitivities and the autonomy of the viewer? Luc Bovens is professor of philosophy at LSE's Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method.
The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World [Audio]
Speaker(s): Jonathan Powell | Taking the lessons Machiavelli derived from his experience as an official in fifteenth-century Florence, Powell shows how these lessons can still apply today. Illustrating each of Machiavelli's maxims with a description of events that occurred during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister, The New Machiavelli is designed to be The Prince for modern times.
State of Emergency: The Way We Were, Britain 1970-1974 [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dominic Sandbrook | The beginning of the 1970s saw Britain tottering on the brink of an abyss. Yet this time of immense unrest was also one of astonishing creativity and innovation, which helped shape society as we know it today. For perhaps the last time in our history Britain experienced the shock of the new, from celebrity footballers and the pornography boom to high street curry houses and foreign holidays. Dominic Sandbrook was born in Shropshire in 1974, an indirect result of t
European Questions – Turkish angles: Europe's citizens [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Richard Bellamy, Professor Thomas Diez, Maurice Fraser | Editor's note: Unfortunately the last few minutes of the lecture are missing from the podcast. This series of events explores how our understanding of Europe's identity can be enhanced and developed in a new way by taking in a distinctively Turkish perspective. Richard Bellamy is professor of political science and director of the School of Public Policy at UCL. Thomas Diez is professor of political science and interna
The Regime Complex for Climate Change [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Robert O Keohane | There is no integrated regime governing efforts to limit climate change. Instead, there is a 'regime complex'… but can this work to resolve climate change? Robert Keohane is professor of international affairs, Princeton University, and the author of After Hegemony.
The Wisdom of Bees [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Michael O'Malley | When Michael O'Malley first took up beekeeping he thought it would be a nice hobby to share with his son. But he noticed that bees not only work together to achieve a common goal but, in the process, create a remarkably productive organisation. O'Malley's new book The Wisdom of Bees shows what bees can teach managers and provides insight into decision-making, communication and forward planning. This event celebrates the publication of Michael O'Malleys new book
A Lecture by Álvaro García Linera, Vice President of Bolivia [Audio]
Speaker(s): Álvaro García Linera | The LSE IDEAS Latin America International Affairs Programme is pleased to announce a lecture by Bolivia's vice president Álvaro García Linera as part of its 2010-11 International Peace and Security in Latin America events series.
The Verdict: did Labour change Britain? [Audio]
Speaker(s): Polly Toynbee, David Walker | We've had Mandelson's memoirs, Blair's book and Brown biographies: in this lecture Polly Toynbee and David Walker look at what the Labour government in power from 1997 meant for people's lives by charting what it accomplished. Polly Toynbee is an author and a political and social commentator for the Guardian. David Walker edits Public and was formerly chief leader writer of the Independent. They are co-authors of 'The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain?'
