Pod Academy

This podcast is presented and produced by Kieron Yates. Although he’s one of France’s most widely read and popular authors of the twentieth century, Boris Vian has never won the international recognition gained by friends and contemporaries such as Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Kieron Yates talks to Alistair Rolls, Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia about the life and work of Boris Vian Even within France, apart from a few doctoral studies, Vian’s work has remained outside the consideration of academia and to some degree is still frowned upon by scholars. The closest most English speaking audiences will have come to Vian’s work is probably Michel Gondry’s 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which drew inspiration from two of Vian’s novels. More recently Gondry has directed a film of Vian’s most famous book, L’Ecume des Jours. Titled Mood Indigo for English speaking audiences, the film stars Audrey Tautou and

How much of our social status is tied to that of our parents and grandparents? How much does this influence our children? More than we wish to believe. While it has been argued that rigid class structures have eroded in favour of greater social equality, Gregory Clark's The Son Also Rises, proves that movement on the social ladder has changed little over eight centuries. In this bookpod, Gregory Clark, a Professor of economics at the University of California, Davis, talks to Craig Barfoot about his novel technique of tracking family names over generations to measure social mobility across countries and periods.  It led him to conclude that even in countries apparently committed to equality - like Sweden and the USA - it can take hundreds of years for high status families to revert to the mean of ordinariness.  

This podcast is about the relations between the social sciences and the neurosciences, and what it might mean to do interdisciplinary work between these areas. Des Fitzgerald and Felicity Callard, two social scientists interested in stepping outside the bounds of social-science methods, and especially experienced in engaging with neuroscientific experiments, offer a new way of thinking about collaboration between the social- and neuro-sciences. They call their approach ‘Experimental Entanglements’. Research on the brain, as well as the widespread dissemination of this research, has significantly shaped our understanding of what it is to be human in the 21st century. Indeed, many facets of human life that were, for much of the twentieth century, primarily understood through the abstractions of ‘culture’ or ‘society’ – commercial and economic life, historical change, identity, mental illness – are increasingly understood as functions of the cerebral architecture of individuals or of groups of individuals. This

Introducing Hari Kunzru Hari Kunzru is an award-winning British novelist famous for authoring several highly acclaimed novels, including The Impressionist (2002), Transmission (2004), My Revolutions (2007) and Gods Without Men (2011). Named among the twenty best young British novelists by Granta in 2003, Kunzru is also a PEN activist and 2014 Guggenheim Fellow. Since his debut novel’s publishing in 2002, he has cemented his role as one of Britain’s most acute observers and commentators on modern life and its intricacies. “Transmission: A Conversation with Hari Kunzru”, was an event in honour of the author held at Birkbeck, University of London, in June 2014. In the Podcast, Kunzru answers questions about his work and there is additional insight and context provided by experts studying his work. There is also advice on ‘where to start with Kunzru’ for listeners wishing to learn more about the novelist. A roller-coaster ride of surrealism, dystopia and satirical humour, Kunzru’s works come to life to both c

A third of workers, internationally, earn less than $2 a day. The World Bank sets the poverty line at $1.25 a day, and on that basis asserts that poverty is declining.  But is that right? Where did that figure come from?  The New Economics Foundation estimates that it should be set at $5 a day, and others suggest $10. Craig Barfoot talks to Dr Ben Selwyn Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Sussex University about his book the Global Development Crisis. Rejecting the idea that 'the poor' need to rely on benign assistance, and that the market provides the answer, Dr Selwyn puts forward the view that the capital/labour relationship is the reason most of the world's workers are poor, and advocates labour-centred development - where 'the poor' (the global labouring classes), and their own collective actions and struggles constitute the basis of an alternative form of non-elitist, bottom-up human development. You can catch up with Ben Selwyn lecturing at Sussex in this YouTube video: here This book p

This podcast is produced and presented by Lee Millam. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD, is a clinically recognised disorder which affects around 1-2% of the population. It is debilitating and paralysing. People with OCD experience intensely negative, repetitive and intrusive thoughts, combined with a chronic feeling of doubt or danger (obsessions). In order to quell the thought or quieten the anxiety, they will often repeat an action, again and again (compulsions). [definition from OCD Action] Psychologists believe the condition may run in families or that people with OCD have an imbalance of serotonin in the brain. Now new research is being done at Goldsmiths, University of London that could, in the future, help with treatment. It identifies the precuneus, considered as a central hub between posterior and prefrontal brain regions (and often involved with processing of self-attribution, responsibility and causal reasoning) as a key area for intervention.  In the meantime, for those with Obsessive Compulsive

Mario Balotelli, Patrice Evra, Kevin Prince Boateng and Dani Alves are just some of football's most decorated players to have endured racial abuse from fans in the past few seasons. For eighteen months, Dr Mark Doidge, a sports sociologist, has been studying the efforts to combat racism of three of Europe's biggest clubs - one in Poland, one in Germany and one in Italy . Last month he presented his findings to UEFA at their headquarters in Geneva. Alex Burd caught up with him on the phone to discuss his report. He started by explaining how he picked his case studies. Mark Doidge: I used Legia Warsaw in Poland, Borussia Dortmund in Germany and Roma in Italy. The reasons for these clubs was twofold really. One was to have a representative of a club from the north, south and east of Europe so you get a fairly wide geographic spread. The other one was through discussions with UEFA, the clubs should be of sufficient size but also have a bit of contestation within the fan group so it wasn’t a universal group wit

Money. We all know what it is, but who creates money? The answer is actually surprising. 97% of money in our economy is created by private banks when they make loans, and this is carried out by these banks simply typing numbers into a computer. In doing so, private banks invariably divert this newly created money into house price bubbles and other forms of financial speculation. So, in response to this, a campaigning organisation named Positive Money has sought to raise public awareness about such money supply issues, highlighting, in a recent book named Modernising Money(2012), how house price inflation, high levels of personal debt and widening inequality can all be linked to who has the power to create money. I went to speak with Positive Money’s founder, Ben Dyson, in their London office. I started by asking about the aims and objectives of the organisation. Ben Dyson: We're trying to get a banking system that works for society and not against it. We have seen all of the chaos that the financial system

Between 1975 and 2010 the style of gourmet dining, in America and beyond, was transformed. Increasingly, restaurants of ‘fine’ dining incorporated food, décor, and other elements previously limited to the ‘casual’ dining experience.  The celebrity chef, working in an open kitchen, took over from the Maitre D as the most important player, and in many places starched white tablecloths gave way to scrubbed wooden tables.  Innovation, experiment and diversity (rather than the long established rules of French cuisine) have become the order of the day. In this podcast Eric Lemay talks to Alison Pearlman, author of Smart Casual: The Transformation of Gourmet Restaurant Style in America (University of Chicago, 2013). It first aired on the New Books in Food channel of the New Books Network . The gourmet experience, of our imagination - an elegant restaurant with a single candle flickering at the center of a luminous white tablecloth,  a quartet playing somewhere in the background, a waiter slipping a perfectly plated

Christopher Daley: These days we are used to hearing about the power of banks, GDP percentages, hedge funds, shareholders, stock market reports, house prices, the business cycle, deficits, debts, surpluses – but has it always been this way? Has money and finance always been such a prominent focal point for the popular consciousness? And if so, how has the representation of money changed and what does this tell us about our society? To try to explore some of these questions, I went to speak with Professor Nicky Marsh from the University of Southampton, who has published widely on the interactions between finance, literature and popular culture. I started by asking how she became interested in this line of research. Nicky Marsh: It was actually visual culture that looped me into it, although it has taken me a long time to get back to that. So when I think about the moment, I had been working on questions of publics, counterpublics and politics and gender for a long time and I had been working on, in my teachi

"The ethos is the genius of the institution, and Civitas is our ethos..." "Civitas is something you can do to help someone else ‘s day – big or small.  A small thing you can do is opening the door for someone or telling them there is something on their back, anything, just to help someone and make their day better than it was before." "We want the pupils to have a deep understanding of what it means to be a good person, a virtuous person, and by having a concept with tangible examples, which we ask them to consider and actually practise, it make it become much more real." "If only five out of ten people do it, it will make the school better, even that small bit.  But the more people that do it, the better everyone’s day will get, and slowly the whole school will be a positive environment.” This is a podcast about the role schools can play in developing 'character'.  In it Tess Woodcraft talks to Tim Dainty, Senior Vice Principal - Pupils & Inclusion  at the Ark Academy in Wembley, where they are building,

July marks 20 years since the end of the Rwandan genocide. In the summer of 1994 the death of president, Juvenal Habiyaramana sparked brutal violence between the country’s two major ethnic groups. The genocide took place over 100 days but left an estimated one million people dead. Two decades on,Pod Academy's Alex Burd went to Manchester to speak to Dr Richard Benda, a Rwandan academic and genocide survivor. Their conversation has been split into three podcasts - of which this is the third (the first was about faith and reconciliation;   the second about ethnicity and democracy). In this episode he recalls the events of the genocide and begins by explaining what it was like growing up in Rwanda as a half Hutu, half Tutsi... Richard Benda: It made your life uncomfortable and I think that is a good thing – not to be comfortable in either group because the lack of comfort makes you sick. A better way of dealing with things but once you are told that you are Tutsi 100% or Hutu 100% it is as your life is pre-de

In 2015, the UN's eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - broad targets for eradicating poverty and disease and improving worldwide rates of primary education, maternal health and gender equality- will be replaced with newly agreed goals. The MDG approach was a new one for development policy, seeking to focus the attention and efforts of the international community on a clear set of shared targets - but inevitably there were criticisms that some crucial areas had been overlooked. One overlooked area was Higher Education. Now, as the world discusses what should replace the MDGs, the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) is campaigning for recognition of the fundamental importance of Higher Education for development. A vibrant Higher Education sector is crucial for many reasons, as Jay Kuber of the ACU explains in this podcast.  Firstly, universities undertake research that can inform government policy making; secondly, through their teaching, they also produce the educated men and women needed

"Why would you choose to keep basing your politics on a concept which is as destructive as ethnicity?.......Twenty years is a landmark. We should rethink Rwandan post-genocide politics and how we start to implement a democracy which is more inclusive". This is the second of our podcasts to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, in which Rwandan academic and genocide survivor, Dr Richard Benda is in conversation with Pod Academy's Alex Burd. In this interview Dr Benda explores current issues around ethnicity and the role of the state, and in particular the role of the President Paul Kagame, in developing alternatives to the narrative of Hutu and Tutsi identity in Rwanda Dr Benda began by explaining the state of ethnicity in Rwanda today. Richard Benda: I think the issue is still there. The government came out and said outright that ethnicity is abolished. As a political discourse that works; you can’t pretend to be a government and say: ‘Fine, carry on’ But in reality the problem is there. And I

July marks 20 years since the end of the Rwandan genocide.  In the summer of 1994 the death of the country’s president, Juvenal Habyarimana, sparked brutal violence between the country’s two major ethnic groups. The genocide took place over a hundred days, but left an estimated one million people dead. This is the first of a series of three podcasts in which, Rwandan academic and genocide survivor Dr Richard Benda, talks to Alex Burd about the process of reconciliation and the country’s charismatic leader, President Paul Kagame,  as well as his own memories of the genocide. Richard Benda's research at Manchester University addresses key questions in relation to religious authority and the role of faith in response to the complexity of African identity-based conflicts, of which the Rwandan genocide is an extreme case.  In this podcast he explores the role of religion, and the role of the state, in Rwanda’s healing process. Richard Benda: After the genocide, there were debates as to which faith community han

Involving citizens in the governance of public services - education, housing, transport - holds out the promise of more responsive, better run and more democratically accountable services. But it is a big ask.  Many people won't have the experience, the time or the confidence to get involved. In this podcast, which was first broadcast on the New Books Network, Heath Brown talks to Daniel Altschuler about the factors that can help ensure successful participatory governance. This question has long drawn the interest of scholars in political science. The promise of increasing civic engagement through institutions that allow citizens to participate has been studied extensively, but often in urban environments. Daniel Altschuler and Javier Corrales  build on this literature in their book, The Promise of Participation: Experiments in Participatory Governance in Honduras and Guatemala, but shift to rural parts of Honduras and Guatemala. The book focuses on Community Managed Schools and the participation of paren

Richard Branson, Tom Cruise, Darcy Bussell and Noel Gallagher are among the celebrity dyslexics mentioned on the website of the British Dyslexia Association.  But what does it mean to be dyslexic?  Pod Academy's Lee Millam went to find out. A new book, The Dyslexia Debate, says the term dyslexia is a broad and meaningless label.  The book also suggests that children are often labelled dyslexic when exhibiting a range of different reading difficulties.  One of the authors is Prof Julian Elliot from Durham University. Julian Elliot:  One of the things that happens quite often when a youngster is struggling with their reading is that some well meaning soul will come along and say, ‘ Have you ever though that little Jimmy might be dyslexic? Perhaps you should send him off for dyslexa assessment and see whether he is.  If he is, great!’ There are all sorts of problems with that. Firstly, making a diagnosis of dyslexia is not scientific because the criteria used vary greatly from one person to another.  In other

The Young Lives Project is a unique, long term study of childhood in 4 countries - Peru, Vietnam, India and Ethiopia.  It is exploring the impact of poverty on children's development, and identifying the most effective policy interventions that could enable poor children to reach their full potential. In this podcast, Amanda Barnes talks to Alan Sanchez, Principal Investigator in the Young Lives Project which is based at Oxford University, about the research he has been doing on child development in Peru. She started by asking him to explain the Young Lives study and what it is trying to achieve. Alan Sanchez:  The Young Lives study  is an international longitudinal study of childhood poverty.  We started in 2002 and the intention is to track the livelihood of families for basically 15 years.  And we are working in four different countries: in Peru, in Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Andhra Pradesh in India. The study is led by Oxford University and has research partners in each of the countries. We use a variety

Hello! My name's Dave Pickering and I make the weekly podcast Getting Better Acquainted where I record conversations with people I know, Part interview show, part oral history project, the show was nominated for a 2012 Radio Production Award, goes out regular on Resonance 104.4 FM and was featured on the Radio 5 Live podcast special, Helen and Olly's Required Listening. In GBA 41 I got better acquainted with Chris. He was my one of my lecturers at university but I hadn't seen him since I'd graduated. We talked about academia, journalism, media, the Iraq War and government cuts. It was recorded on a university campus so it was a trip down memory lane where I faced my past lessons and past prejudices. It's a conversation about ideas but also about people. Chris charts his journey from plumber to van driver to academic and critic. And he makes the argument for how, in a world so influenced and controlled by the media, media studies is far from being an irrelevant subject. If you liked this conversation wit