Re-engineering the Economy for Real People [Audio]
Speaker(s): Samantha Heath | In the face of current economic and climatic challenges, decarbonising the economy sometimes amounts to little more than tweaking the supply chain. Samantha Heath will pose the questions that Londoners need to consider before we can transform our behaviour to produce an economy suitable for real people. Samantha Heath is director of London Sustainability Exchange, a member and former co-chair of the London Sustainable Development Commission, and a member of the Londo
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
Fred Halliday - an intellectual appreciation [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Michael Cox, Howard Davies, Professor Fawaz Gerges, Professor Christopher Hill, Professor Margot Light, Dr Justin Rosenberg | This public event is an intellectual appreciation of Professor Fred Halliday who worked at the London School of Economics and Political Science for more than 20 years and who sadly passed away in April 2010. Michael Cox is professor of international relations at LSE. Howard Davies is director of LSE. Fawaz Gerges is professor of middle eastern politi
Investment Treaty Law after Lisbon [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr. Steve Woolcock, Dr. Jan Kleinheisterkamp and others | The workshop will present a recent study for the European Parliament on the Commissions communication and draft Regulation on the future of investment treaty law after Lisbon, with commentators from the EU Commission, the UK government and investment arbitration practice. Dr Steve Woolcock is the director of the International Trade Policy Unit of the LSE International Relations Department. Dr. Jan Kleinheisterkamp is heading t
Ten Years After Milosevic: How can Serbia Contribute to the Stabilisation of the Western Balkans? [A
Speaker(s): Zoran Vujic, Zoran Jeftic, Sonja Stojanovic, Bojan Brkic | Zoran Vujic is Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs. Zoran Jeftic is Deputy Minister of Defence. Sonja Stojanovic is Director of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. Bojan Brkic is Deputy Editor in Chief of Radio Television Serbia.
Dignified Foreign Policy [Audio]
Speaker(s): Alexander Stubb | Alexander Stubb, Finland's Foreign Minister is a graduate of the LSE. He became Minister for Foreign Affairs in April 2008. Before that he served for four years as a member of the European Parliament.
Risk as Feeling: New Perspectives on Risk Perception [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Paul Slovic | Editor's note: We apologise for the poor audio quality of this podcast. Dr. Slovic will describe the laboratory experiments that led to the concept of risk as feelings and illustrate some insights gleaned from this perspective for behaviors as diverse as cigarette smoking and apathy toward large scale natural and human caused disasters. Dr. Slovic studies judgment and decision processes with an emphasis on decision making under conditions of risk. His work examines f
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?'
Trying to Quantify Uncertainty [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor David Spiegelhalter | Editor's note: We apologise for the poor audio quality in the question and answer session of this podcast. There has been a traditional division between 'risk', which can be quantified using probability distributions, and 'uncertainty', which is the surrounding mess of doubt, disagreement and ignorance. Spiegelhalter will use examples from swine flu to climate change to illustrate different approaches to dealing with uncertainty, from ignoring it to tr
Impunity in Cambodia [Audio]
Speaker(s): Brad Adams, Margo Picken, Simon Taylor | Senior leaders of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea are now on trial in Cambodia for the crimes committed between 1975 and 1979 when two million people are estimated to have died. Will these trials help to break the impunity that has characterised Cambodia's recent history and which continues today? Brad Adams is executive director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division and is a general expert on Asia. Simon Taylor is one of
Balkans 2020: The Ministerial Debate [Audio]
Speaker(s): Vuk Jeremić, Nickolay Mladenov | 'Balkans 2020: The Ministerial Debate' marks the launch of the Balkan International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS. The foreign ministers of Bulgaria and Serbia will identify the issues the region faces today and offer their vision of the Balkans in 2020. Can present challenges endanger the region's fragile stability or, will the Balkans forever shed the infamous attribute of being the "powder keg of Europe"? Vuk Jeremić was sworn in as minister of
What has the financial crisis taught Europe? [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Simeon Djankov | The recent financial crisis has uncovered several weaknesses in Europe's regulatory system. Belatedly, the European Commission has tried to fix these weaknesses with extensive new regulation, including the creation of several new institutions. Simeon Djankov Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Bulgaria will in this lecture offer an analysis of the most recent developments as well as a perspective on how the financial sector in Europe, and its regulati
EU as a global player: reality or illusion? [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Danilo Türk | Dr Danilo Türk is President of the Republic of Slovenia. Dr Türk assumed the position of Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to the United Nations in 1992. Following the successful conclusion of Slovenia's term (from 1998 to 1999) as non-permanent member of the Security Council, Mr Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation, appointed Dr Türk as Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs. For more than five years his tasks incl
The Importance of Being Independent: a regulator and female lawyer's view [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dame Janet Gaymer | Law aspires to independence, and the value of the rule of law is closely associated with that independence. This is the final event in the Independence of Law? lecture series. Janet Gaymer is commissioner for public appointments in England and Wales and former senior partner of Simmons & Simmons.
Africa and the World: the view from Washington [Audio]
Speaker(s): Howard Wolpe | Ambassador Wolpe will comment on the Obama Administration's Africa policy and its perceptions of the continent's place in the international community today. Howard Wolpe is former special envoy to the Great Lakes Region for President Barack Obama. Dr Chris Alden is Co-Head of the Africa International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS. Michael Cox is Professor of International Relations at the Department of International Relations at LSE.
Rationality in the Social Sciences: black box, empty box, or both [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Nicholas Baigent | Nicholas Baigent is professor at the Institute of Public Economics at Graz University and president of the Central European Program in Economic Theory.
The Meaning of Life [Audio]
Speaker(s): Robert Rowland Smith | From Plato through Monty Python to Terry Eagleton and beyond, the question of the meaning of life has been a source of both mystery and mirth. In this lecture, based on his new book Driving with Plato, Robert Rowland Smith breaks life down into its milestones from cradle to grave: what does it mean not just to be born and to die, but to learn to talk, to lose your virginity or have a mid-life crisis? Robert Rowland Smith began his career as a Prize Fellow of Al
Gender, Words and Power: meanings of inequality at a time of neo-liberalism [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Mary Evans | This lecture explores changing vocabularies of feminism and the possibilities of a new political language and new forms of politics. Mary Evans is LSE centennial professor attached to the Gender Institute from 2010 to 2013.
Eating Animals [Audio]
Speaker(s): Jonathan Safran Foer, Kristina Musholt | Eating Animals is an exhaustively-argued account of one man's decade-long struggle with vegetarianism. Part memoir, part exposé, the book examines the topics of factory farming and commercial fisheries and explores the cultural significance of food. Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Everything Is Illuminated, which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book Award.Kristina Musholt
