Academy of Ideas
The Academy of Ideas is an organisation that has been hosting public debates since 2000, aiming to challenge prevailing orthodoxies. The podcast shares recordings of its live conferences, discussions, and salons. It provides a platform for critical thinking and open debate. More information can be found at academyofideas.org.uk.
Episodes
Out with the old, in with the new world order
Battle of Ideas festival 2026 takes place on Saturday 17 & Sunday 18 October at Church House, Westminster. View the full programme here. Early-bird tickets are available until 17 September here.
This debate was recorded at Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The process of globalisation was supposed to make the world a more uniform place. But that prospect
Can the state solve the housing crisis?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner made housing a central pillar of their domestic agenda when they were elected. Yet from two disgraced housing ministers to younger generations’ desperation about astronomical rents and unaffordable property prices, housing controversies are rarely fa
Battle Book Club: Running the Risk – From Shark Attacks to Nuclear Disaster
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Risk is everywhere. Taking the bus, crossing the street, swimming in the ocean, going somewhere alone. Everything is risky – and we are, in many ways, more concerned about life’s riskiness than ever before. In Running the Risk: From Shark Attacks to Nuclear
Decline… and fall? The UK economy
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
After a year of a Labour government, the UK is heading for a ‘debt-crisis cliff edge’, if it is not already in a ‘debt doom-loop’. Things are in many ways worse even than the moribund economy that the Conservatives bequeathed. Government borrowing, inflation and unemployment are g
What does post-woke art look like?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
In December last year, critic Dean Kissick, in an article for Harper’s Magazine, caused controversy in the contemporary art world. He complained that the ‘fascination with identity’ was lending to a ‘nostalgic turn to history’. The ‘socially conscious turn’ of the early 2010s, he
Beware the manosphere? Misogyny and toxic masculinity
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Netflix’s hit series Adolescence seemed to capture the current anxiety surrounding young men and what they might be getting up to online. The show tells the story of a teenage boy who, seemingly out of the blue, stabs and kills his female classmate after she calls him an ‘incel’ o
Policing today: two-tier justice?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
From accusations of ‘two-tier’ justice to an inability to tackle everyday criminality, the disarray enveloping British institutions is nowhere more evident than with the police.
In recent times, intervening to stop widespread crime such as shoplifting, and solving – or even invest
Are patriotism and the nation state back?
‘The populists, nationalists, stupid nationalists, they are in love with their own countries’, declared Jean-Claude Juncker, the former president of the European Commission, in May 2019. This familiar retort of a leading figure in the globalised elite exemplifies the recent fashion for regarding any manifestation of national pride with contempt. But what was intended as a snide insult about love o
Digital ID: privacy vs safety?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
National ID cards have been a hotly debated issue for decades in Britain. Being able to unambiguously prove who you are can be extremely useful for us all as individuals – but that facility also comes with concerns about our liberties.
Historically, the British public have not bee
From Bud Light to Jaguar: brands caught in the Culture Wars
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Marketing with purpose, rather than solely for profit, hit the mainstream 20 years ago with the launch by Unilever of the ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ for Dove. This was a well-meaning attempt to link selling soap with a broader social theme: female body positivity.
With the rise of
Science at the cutting edge: who makes the rules?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The past 20 years have seen astonishing advances in science, technology and medicine. Building upon the completion of the Human Genome Project at the turn of the century, scientists have developed ever more powerful ways to sequence and study DNA, enabling us to better understand
Battle Book Club: TERF Island – how the UK resisted trans Ideology
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
TERF Island is the story of the brave and determined women who led the charge against demands that undermined their rights and jeopardised the physical and mental health of children. They dragged shadowy campaigns into the daylight, exposing the harm that would result – and the ha
Why you should read Plato’s Republic
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Plato wrote The Republic around 375 BC, making it 2,400 years old. Yet it has continued to reverberate throughout the entire subsequent history of Western philosophy. Any serious philosopher since has had to reference their ideas to the framework Plato originally set down in ancie
Online dating: the end of romance?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, Hinge, Feeld – whatever your dating preference, there’s an app for it. Gone are the days of hitting the town in the hopes of catching someone’s eye in a busy bar. People moan about their problems, and some want to leave digital dating behind, but for today’
World Cup Podcast of Ideas, episode 4: after that semi-final
The Academy of Ideas team of Alastair Donald, Geoff Kidder and Rob Lyons are joined by Sebastian Moore from the Take Me Home podcast to discuss why England lost that semi-final, what they thought about the performances of England and Scotland in the tournament, why 64 teams isn't as mad as it sounds, and who they think between Argentina and Spain will walk away with the trophy on Sunday.
Controlling the narrative?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
After Labour’s election last year, the new defence secretary, John Healey, wrote a memo to Cabinet colleagues in relation to the scandalous Afghan data leak and the subsequent cover-up of relocations. Healey stressed the need to ‘maintain control of the narr
The problem with defining Islamophobia
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
In February 2025, the then deputy prime minister and communities secretary, Angela Rayner, established an independent government working group, chaired by former Conservative MP and Attorney General Dominic Grieve KC, to advise on a definition of ‘anti-Musli
Should there be a mental-health professional in every school?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
There is no doubt that far too many of our children and young people are not thriving mentally or emotionally in the way that they should be. In 2024, almost 20 per cent of school-aged children in the UK had been diagnosed with a mental-health condition, up
Is Germany ready for revolt?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
When US Vice President JD Vance warned in a Fox News interview this summer that Europe risked ‘committing civilisational suicide’, he was chiefly concerned with Germany, which he says is in danger of bringing about its own demise.
While Vance’s fire was dire
World Cup Podcast of Ideas, episode 3
The AoI team of Geoff Kidder, Rob Lyons and Jake Weston are joined by Donald Clark, author, speaker and CEO of Wildfire Learning, to discuss the start of the knockout phase of the tournament. They reflect on Scotland's exit, England's struggles, the rise of the diaspora teams like DR Congo and Morocco, and how multiculturalism may be affecting the way fans in England enjoy the tournament.
From Saudi to Sheffield: is football still the beautiful game?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
‘I have the feeling that this competition is going to be as important, if not more important, than the Champions League’, said Chelsea manager, Enzo Maresca, after his team had won the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup. This summer’s competition was intended to showcase club football
Jane Austen: spinster, feminist or just a good writer?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Jane Austen turns 250 this year, prompting the question: is one of the world’s greatest female novelists still relevant? With too many BBC and Netflix adaptations to count, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Colonel Brandon, George Knightley and Austen’s other love interest
Religious fervour: the rise of faith or Cultural Christianity?
Lots of people are converting to Christianity and, across the country, church attendance is increasing. While the numbers vary, one survey shows the number of people attending church at least once a month is up from eight per cent in 2018 to 12 per cent in 2024. Perhaps most notably, the survey shows a quadrupling of attendance among Gen Zers, aged 18 to 24, from four per cent to 16 per cent.
The
Never Again – for anyone? The new Holocaust relativism
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Genocide, Holocaust, Never Again. Phrases that once conjured up only one image: the Nazis’ systematic attempt to eliminate the entire Jewish people and eradicate Jewish culture, identity and future generations of Jews from the face of the earth. It was once
What do the AoI team make of Makerfield - and what next?
So the ‘King of the North’ has cleared the first step in his quest to be prime minister of the UK. Andy Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election was certainly impressive and it looks clear that Labour will be in the midst of a leadership contest very soon. Yet Burnham rarely stuck his neck out to offer any policy alternative to Keir Starmer, merely offering a change of personnel at the top.
World Cup Podcast of Ideas: episode 2
We've had a full week of action now and every team has made its first appearance. In this episode, the regular team of Rob Lyons, Geoff Kidder and Jake Weston are joined by special guest Denis Russell to offer a viewpoint from Ireland.
The team offer their impressions of the tournament so far. Who has impressed and who has disappointed? With England winning a seemingly tricky opening match against
Letters on Liberty: The Freedom to Blaspheme
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Since 2020, the Academy of Ideas has published Letters on Liberty – a radical pamphlet series aimed at reimagining arguments for freedom today and inspiring rowdy, good-natured disagreement.
In his Letter – The Freedom to Blaspheme – writer and curator Manic
Should the West get ready for war?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The past year has seen a flurry of announcements about military investment in Western countries. Following Trump’s re-election, and his blunt demand that European countries invest more in their militaries, the EU announced €800 million of funds for defence i
Comedy: is politics that funny?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
From Yes Minister to The Thick of It, the political class has always been a go-to topic for comedians and satirists. But in a world in which political developments have become so extreme and self-satirising, is it still so easy to find laughs in the corridor
World Cup Podcast of Ideas: episode 1
The World Cup is back – and so is the World Cup Podcast of Ideas. With the biggest-ever tournament kicking off on Thursday 11 June across the US, Mexico and Canada, we’ve got the team together to discuss some of the burning issues.
Are we actually looking forward to it?
Is 48 teams too many – or is it giving a chance to smaller nations to take their bow on the biggest stage in sport for the first
Rebuilding Britain: the infrastructure crisis
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The UK’s infrastructure is at a crossroads. Decades of underinvestment and misdirected investment have left transport networks congested, energy systems under strain, digital connectivity patchy, sewers clogged, towns flooded, bridges crumbling and housing t
Racial grievance politics: how did we become so divided?
Vickrum Digwa, the killer of Henry Nowak, was convicted of murder last month. This week, the police released bodycam footage showing how Nowak was handcuffed and assumed to be the offender in a racist attack, even though he was dying from stab wounds. The fallout has been public and political outrage, and has spotlighted the way the police (and many other institutions) have formal policy to treat
Is there a right to die? The moral dilemmas of assisted death
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is still being discussed in parliament. But beyond proposals for a law change, how should we tackle one of the great debates of our time: should we set up a system of assisted death and prof
Elections 2026: what next for populism, democracy, Starmer and the Union?
The implosion of the two traditional major parties and the widespread success of Reform (and, to a lesser extent, the Greens) have been widely described as historic, a shifting of the tectonic plates of British politics. But what does last Thursday’s vote mean for the present and future?
The Academy of Ideas team got together in the wake of Keir Starmer’s ‘speech of a lifetime’ to share their post
Podcast of Ideas: Has Scottish devolution been a failure?
Ahead of the elections to the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 7 May, Alastair Donald and Rob Lyons talked to Dean Thomson, author of Scotland Undone: Nationalism, Dogma, and Decline in the Devolution Era. In a wide-ranging discussion, topics included:
Thoughts on what will happen in the election, including the fall and rise of the SNP, the Reform UK insurgency, the decline of Labour and Conservat
Taking the PIP: who can reform welfare?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Sunday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The government suffered serious embarrassment earlier this year when its attempts to rein in Personal Independence Payments (PIP) had to be hurriedly scaled back in the face of a backbench revolt. But the scale of welfare payments today remains a huge worry – and there seems littl
Why is my energy bill so high?
The war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have focused attention on skyrocketing energy prices, leading to demands to encourage more output from the North Sea and causing travel chaos in Ireland. But bills were already high before this happened. This discussion with three experts, recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 at Church House in London, explains why - war or no war -
Women and gender: Supreme Court ruling, one year on
This debate was part of Battle of Ideas North on 7 March 2026 in Manchester.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The Supreme Court judgement in April 2025, in the case of For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers, was seen as a ‘landmark ruling’ in clarifying the definition of a woman as based on biological sex at birth. The hope was that by clarifying the law, women’s rights, including single-sex spaces, wou
Letters on Liberty: Abortion and the Freedom to Forge Our Own Fate
Following the vote in the House of Lords to approve the decriminalisation of women who have abortions after the legal limit of 24 weeks, the whole issue of abortion itself has once again become highly contested. In that context, this debate – recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October – is very topical.
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
Since 2020, the Academy of Ideas has
Net Zero or ‘drill, baby, drill’? The future of UK energy
With the war in Iran leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, preventing or restricting oil and gas being exported from many of the Gulf states, the UK's energy policy has come to the fore once more. Proponents of renewables claim that a rapid shift to homegrown wind and solar power will spare us from the volatility of international supplies of fossil fuels. Critics argue the UK will need o
Island of strangers: is Britain broken?
Recorded at Battle of Ideas North on Saturday 7 March 2026 at Pendulum Hotel, Manchester.
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
From immigration to an aging population, the UK has been experiencing rapid demographic change just as many mainstays of community life – such as pubs, churches, community centres and trade unions – are in rapid decline. Consequently, while individuals share a common geographic
After Greenland: understanding the new geopolitics
This is an extract from the Academy of Ideas Economy Forum discussion 'After Greenland: understanding the new geopolitics', which took place on Tuesday 24 February 2026.
First, economist and author Phil Mullan offers his analysis of what the Greenland affair tells us about the present and future of international politics. Then James Woudhuysen explores the changing nature of warfare today.
ORIGINA
Are the old political parties over?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster.
Victory for the Greens in the Gorton & Denton by-election is the latest sign that old political loyalties have broken down. In what was, even as recently as the 2024 General Election, a very safe Labour seat, Hannah Spencer was elected with a majority of over 4,000. Reform ca
The rise of the workplace speech police
Debate recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House, Westminster.
This week, Reform's Suella Braverman declared that if the party were elected to government it would 'repeal the Equality Act, because we are going to work to build a country defined by meritocracy not tokenism, personal responsibility not victimhood, excellence not mediocrity, and unity not di
Rape gangs, Post Office and Scottish self-ID: an anatomy of three scandals
A debate recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival at Church House, Westminster on Saturday 18 October 2025.
ORIGINAL FESTIVAL INTRODUCTION
In recent years, Britain has been rocked by several scandals where the public has been kept in the dark. Politicians and the authorities have indulged in obfuscation, denial, cover-ups and even possible collusion – all to avoid accountability or admit responsib
China's Trump card? Rare earths and geopolitics
Recording of a debate at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 on Saturday 18 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
One consequence of Donald Trump’s trade war with China has been increasing attention to a group of minerals called ‘rare earths’. Rare earths are vital to the production of everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to wind turbines and advanced weapons.
Despite t
Podcast of Ideas: Trump's intervention into Venezuela
The Academy of Ideas team – Alastair Donald, Claire Fox, Rob Lyons and Jacob Reynolds – discuss the immediate fallout after President Trump's decision to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Why did Trump act? Is it about narcotics, oil, democracy or his desire to create a 'Don-roe doctrine' of US dominance in the Americas?
What has been the role of domestic politics – is this the culture
Woke politics: ‘People are realising it is deeply authoritarian’
In a wide-ranging interview, Andrew Doyle talks to Claire Fox about his new book, The End of Woke and why there is much still to be done to defend freedom.
Andrew notes that while some things have shifted in recent months – from the Cass Review and the UK Supreme Court judgement on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act to the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term – it doesn’t mean
Cure or cult? Special educational needs in the classroom
Dave Clements is a policy adviser, writer, and parent of a child diagnosed with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite a longstanding scepticism about the claims made about the increase in these and other similar conditions, since becoming a father he has been forced to question his views. Clements describes his son’s condition as something that ‘runs through him like a stick of rock’. A
The scary new powers to trawl through our bank accounts
Claire Fox sits down with Jasleen Chaggar of Big Brother Watch and author Timandra Harkness to talk about the latest attack on our privacy.
The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill does not sound like the kind of legislation that will set your pulse racing. But one part of it in particular should be more widely known and the cause of great concern: the new eligibility verification p
How can the UK return to growth?
Recording of the introductory remarks at the Academy of Ideas Economy Forum on 20 March 2025.
Ever since the great financial crisis of 2008, growth in Britain – both in terms of GDP and living standards – has stagnated. While the Covid pandemic and lockdowns didn’t help, the problems of the UK economy (indeed, most Western developed economies) are longstanding. What has gone wrong?
Labour has prom
Podcast of Ideas: does England need a football regulator?
Next week, the Football Governance Bill will go to Report Stage in the House of Lords. While it will then go to the House of Commons, the debates in the House of Lords are a chance to amend a piece of legislation that threatens to damage English football in ways that. as yet, are not getting enough attention. The introduction of an Independent Football Regulator (IFR) has become a controversial su
Girls only: Sall Grover and the fight for women's rights
Claire Fox talks to Sall Grover and Katherine Deves about their fight in Australia to reassert in law that a woman is an adult human female.
Sall Grover is the founder of the female-only app, Giggle for Girls and Katherine Deves is one of her legal team. Both have been visiting the UK from Australia to get support for their appeal of an important test-case decision on the definition of ‘woman’, wh
'Why do we do it? This is the best job in the world.'
In the wake of the huge farmers' protest in London on 10 February, Rob Lyons talks to two Cumbrian farmers, John Shaw and Richard Kerr, along with their accountant Paul Benson, about the state of farming in the UK today.
Why farmers are so angry about the Labour government's inheritance tax changes
The existing difficulties with making a good living from farming, particularly the power of superma
Neurodiversity to gender dysphoria: a problem of over-diagnosis?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Saturday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
In many areas of life, an explosion of diagnostic labels seem to have expanded far beyond straightforward medical prognosis. Medicine seems to have become tangled up with fashionable identities, and a zeitgeist that stresses vulnerability and victimhood. How do such trends affec
Running back to EU? Labour, Europe and the economy
On the fifth anniversary of Brexit, listen to this debate recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Saturday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
In July, on the eve of the General Election, Keir Starmer was asked if he could foresee ‘any circumstances’ in which the UK would rejoin the EU’s single market ‘in his life’. His response was an emphatic ‘no’. Yet it is c
From social media to AI: a tech moral panic?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Saturday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Smartphones have become almost ubiquitous in modern society. The rise of social-media services, which have billions of users worldwide, has gone hand in hand with the use of smartphones. Few technologies have seen such rapid adoption. With concerns about several social problems
The Great British Energy crisis
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
With concerns growing about potential blackouts on cold winter evenings with little wind, listen to this debate on what is happening to UK energy, particularly with the arrival of the new Labour government.
The Labour government has set out an ambitious goal to decarbonise the UK’
Assisted dying bill: for or against?
Recording of an Academy of Ideas debate on Tuesday 26 November 2024 via Zoom.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
With Parliament about to vote on the issue for the first time since 2015, join us for a discussion on the rights and wrongs of legalisation.
The House of Commons will vote on Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29 November. The Bill claims to ‘allow adults who are
Allison Pearson's lawyer on free speech, hate crime and the law
Criminal solicitor Luke Gittos offers an insider's view on the Telegraph columnist's case and the worrying rise of censorship.
The case of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson has drawn attention to the scale of policing (quite literally) of speech in the UK today. Pearson’s lawyer in the case is Luke Gittos - a partner at Murray Hughman solicitors in London and director of Freedom Law Clinic, as w
Is it time to kick VAR out of football?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
In 2018, the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) was introduced at the World Cup in Russia – and the arguments about it haven’t stopped since, with complaints that decisions are still often wrong while lengthy reviews cause confusion and frustration.
Using technology to help referees get imp
Kamalamania, Trump and the vibes election
On the eve of the US presidential election, listen to our discussion from the Battle of Ideas festival 2024:
Within days of being announced as the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris went from the most unpopular vice president in 50 years – a figure whose unpopularity reportedly led to the former president, Barack Obama, scrambling to find an alternative – to a viable presidential candidate. After s
Online safety vs free speech
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2022 on Saturday 15 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The Online Safety Bill is causing huge concern for those who believe in free speech. But how can we protect free expression and still deal with the many problems that arise online?
The Bill has passed through the House of Commons and will now be debated in the House of Lords. There a
Podcast Of Ideas: It ain't over 'till the fat lady votes
Media scrutiny, political scandals and electoral upsets - the Academy of Ideas team get together on the eve of the General Election for one last pre-vote discussion.
Podcast of Ideas: manifestos, media snobbery and Macron
The manifestos are in! And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the two main parties have caused the least stir. Reform UK’s ‘contract’ has been denounced by commentators and think tanks alike as ‘uncosted’, while the SDP’s manifesto was praised for standing out as an unusually comprehensive list of ideas in a sea of general obfuscation.
Meanwhile, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have been battling it out f
Podcast of Ideas General Election special: D Day, selection madness and the return of Farage
The Academy of Ideas team discuss the latest in the General Election campaign - plus a view from Europe.
Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse for the Conservative Party, its leader - Rishi Sunak - managed to mess up on an international scale. The prime minister’s decision to leave D-Day commemorations early - allegedly returning home for a TV interview - has upset many people, includi
Podcast of Ideas: General Election specials, episode 1
Listen to the first of our regular discussions with the Academy of Ideas team on the highs and lows of election campaigning.
Subscribe to our Substack to keep up to date with our latest podcasts, events and comment.
Last week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took the nation - and many of his own MPs - by surprise by calling the next General Election. On Thursday 4 July, UK citizens will join the billio
Net Zero: can the economy and democracy survive?
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Climate change has become the great overarching mission of our times for politicians and business leaders. With the UN secretary general declaring that we are now in an era of ‘global boiling’, every leading politician talks about reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to ‘net zero’ – with the few emissions the economy does produce balanced by some method to soak them up, from pla
Understanding Modi's India
Battle of Ideas festival 2023, Sunday 29 October, Church House, London
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
In August, India made world news by being the first nation to land near the Moon’s South Pole. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described it as a historic moment for humanity and ‘the dawn of the new India’. Meanwhile, India’s digital transformation of its financial system is reported by payments systems compa
Religion in schools: protecting or neglecting the faithful?
Recording of the Academy of Ideas Education Forum discussion on 25 April 2024 in central London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
A High Court judgement hangs over Michaela Community School for banning ritual prayer. A Wakefield school suspended pupils for damaging a copy of the Quran. Two recent studies claim that faith schools select against poor and SEN children. Two thirds of the liberal Alliance Party i
Square-eyed screenagers: are phones corrupting our kids?
Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe
SQUARE-EYED SCREENAGERS: ARE PHONES CORRUPTING OUR KIDS?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Saturday 28 October at Church House, London.
Digital devices are so omnipresent that sociologists call today’s children ‘Generation Glass’. Our pre-tee
Disunited Kingdom: the rebirth of nations?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2021 on Sunday 10 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
According to many political commentators, the break-up of the UK is becoming inevitable. When devolution was implemented in the 1990s, one of the aims of its supporters was to head off rising support for separation. But the opposite has happened, with support for Scottish independence
Is AI the end of art?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Saturday 28 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The worlds of art and entertainment are wrestling with, and reeling from, the opportunities and challenges posed by ‘generative’ AI – tools that can generate seemingly unique, bespoke creations in response to ‘prompts’ submitted in plain language. Such technology is now having a dram
The politics of hate: is everyone a bigot but me?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Saturday 28 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The self-image of Western societies as cosmopolitan, liberal and tolerant has collapsed of late, with a darker view taking hold of people as extreme, hate-filled and hurtful. For example, in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel, anti-Semitism – ‘the oldest hatred’ – has come force
Should we leave the European Convention on Human Rights?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Sunday 29 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Most people acknowledge that there is an issue with Britain’s borders. The question is: who or what is to blame? For many, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and its courts in Strasbourg, has become the focus – either as the bulwark against anti-refugee sentiment, or the b
Power play: who really rules today?
Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Saturday 28 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
‘Take back control’, the central demand from the Leave campaign’s case for Brexit, posed the question: who should rule? However, today, when frontpage headlines frequently ask why nothing works in ‘Broken Britain’ and politicians blame myriad forces for thwarting democratically decid
Why do comedians keep siding with the Establishment?
Recording of a debate at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Sunday 29 October, at Church House, London.
Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe
INTRODUCTION
At the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Comedy Unleashed’s show, featuring Graham Linehan, was cancelled because the venue did not ‘support
Podcast of Ideas: 24 February 2024
In our latest Podcast of Ideas discussion, Ella Whelan is joined by regulars Claire Fox, Alastair Donald and Geoff Kidder, plus guest Mark Birkbeck from the campaign group Our Fight. They discuss events in the House of Commons this week as an SNP-led debate on the Israel-Hamas conflict descended into farce, leading for calls for the speaker of the house, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, to resign.
They also tak
Reviving economies: Is the state a help or a hindrance?
With the UK officially in recession, what should governments be doing? This debate was recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Saturday 28 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
With the Conservatives doing badly in the polls and Labour riding high, the UK could have a new party in government in the next year or so. How will this change the relationship between the state a
Deifying diversity: a value for our times?
Recording of the debate at Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Saturday 28 October at Church House, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Being ‘diverse’ is no longer simply about shaking things up. Today, diversity is considered a core value of any civilised society and its institutions. Diversity strategies are a must for businesses, small or big – diversity is good for the planet, good for politics, good
