Pod Academy

“My grandchildren are so busy with all their extra classes that I seem to spend most our time together acting as a taxi service.” “When the children come to stay I’m constantly worried about keeping them safe.” “ I’d love to have fun with them, but my daughter expects me to supervise their homework and test them on their spelling.” Are today’s grandmothers too protective and anxious? Benedetta Cappelini, Professor of Marketing at the University of Durham, certainly thinks so. She talks to Sally Feldman, who is currently writing a book of advice for new grannies, about the effects of the new trend in intensive parenting. 'Intensiveparenting', with its emphasis on extra curricular activities, supervised 'playdates' and conversations about thoughts and feelings is fast becoming the norm for this generation of parents, requiring the investment of significant amounts of time, money and energy in raising children. What are the implications for grandparents who did not raise their own children in this way, but wh

What are grandmothers for? That’s what Sally Feldman wondered when she first learned that her daughter was pregnant. As a former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she was familiar with so many aspects of female experiences. But faced with the prospect of a grandchild, she realised she was clueless. So now she’s writing a book of advice for new grandmothers. This podcast is a conversation with four grandmothers. Their discussion is a taster of the forthcoming book, featuring some of the joys and challenges of this most precious role. Sally would love to hear from other grandmothers, so do send your comments here, or else contact her at: sallyjoyfeldman@gmail.com

With Covid rates remaining stubbornly high and a huge pent-up demand for hospital care, the UK's National Health Service faces a tough winter. Intensive care wards are the canary in the mine, reports Rachael Jolley. Mark Toshner: We can make beds, but what we can't make are specialised staff to run those beds. The accident and emergency department needs a very specific skill set. And once you run out of their capacity, you don't really have anywhere to turn. The winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how difficult that is, I think we don't know, but it's going to be difficult. If you hear people from intensive care,  telling you things are tough, that's a really important canary down the mine, because these people are the SAS of clinical staff. And if they are telling you it's tough, you should be listening. Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are

It's not about individual countries. It's not about individual regions. It's not even about blocks. This doesn't work unless we vaccinate everybody. But is geopolitics getting in the way of good public health policy as we strive to overcome COVID-19?     In this podcast, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield considers how geopolitics is affecting government decisions around vaccines and distribution, with guests from the US, UK and the Philippines.   Mark Toshner: It's not about individual countries. It's not about individual regions. It's not even about blocks. This doesn't work unless we vaccinate everybody. John Nery:  The survey shows that something like 68% of Filipino adults have doubts about whether they should take the COVID-19 vaccine or not. Then that's just really worrying. Jeffrey Wasserstrom:   So we can think of it as soft power sort of related to having a space program, to ha

Cautiously, museums across the world are opening their doors. But there's one place where, even during the pandemic, you always get to be up close - the virtual museum. In the digital environment, the museum can take on a new role, less a place of authority, more an agora of ideas. But we have to think outside the box to solve curatorial issues in the digital space.  Zara Karschay takes us on a tour...... . To see each and every brushstroke. To handle priceless objects. A place where figures in famous works of art turn to look back at you. A place where you can stay as long as you like in front of the Mona Lisa. Virtual collections aren't new. But for much of last year, our only option to see museum was online. And 2020 had many more cultural institutions racing to develop their virtual collections and tours. As we enter the promised ‘new normal’, or perhaps even a ‘virtual-first’ era, where we might come to see a collection and objects online before going in person, we wonder, what can virtual collections

The death of writer and activist Nawal el Saadawi has just been announced.  In 2011 Tess Woodcraft interviewed her at a conference organised by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Right Organisation for Pod Academy. We reproduce it here. Typically, and at 80 years old, she had stopped off at the Occupy encampment around St Paul's Cathedral on her way from the airport, before coming on to the conference. Note: there is also an Italian translation of this podcast, by Federica di Lascio, below. Nawal el Saadawi is one of the foremost Egyptian writers. A doctor by profession, she has written over 40 books of fiction and non-fiction, which have been translated into 30 languages. Since her very first novel, written in her twenties, she has taken on some of the most difficult, challenging, controversial subjects, including: female genital mutilation, domestic violence, child marriage, prostitution, the impact of war on women and children, so-called ‘honour killing’ and the laws that maintain women’s status as minors.

Journalism has sometimes been a dangerous profession during the pandemic, but there has been real innovation, too.  In this, the third part of our series on Journalism in the Pandemic, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield  considers how Covid 19 has influenced the future of  journalism.   Rachael Jolley: Welcome to Pod Academy and our third podcast in this series on journalism during the pandemic. In this episode we look at the challenges that reporters were just not prepared for. And what are the innovations and changes that come out of the crisis that will be significant for the years ahead. As the pandemic kicked off, the big challenge for many news organisations was to move their reporting teams to work completely remotely, so there was a massive shifting of equipment to people's homes. Suddenly all sorts of questions were being asked about filing stories in different ways and how to cover

Authoritarian restrictions on the press, attacks on journalists in the streets and more accusations of 'fake news' - it's like a war zone out there.  Rachael Jolley looks at the dangers of reporting during the Covid -19 pandemic. Jolley (@londoninsider) has developed a series of podcasts for Pod Academy on News in the Pandemic, this is the second in the series. William Horsley: They say that the first casualty of war is truth, but pandemic is in the same category Jean-Paul Marthoz:  Today being a journalist, you don't show necessarily that you are press. It's like going to a war zone Lada Price:  In Bulgaria, there are several reports of journalists being attacked, despite clearly identifying themselves as members of the press. Kirstin McCudden: We started keeping track of journalists who were harassed for covering the protests (which would be part of a normal news gathering routine, of course) Donald Trump: They are the fake, fake, disgusting news Rachael Jolley: My name is Rachael Jolley and welcome

Local newspapers have been in decline for years, but the decline has been massively exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.  Can a new type of hyper-local journalism be the answer for local news and local democracy? And how will it be funded? Rachael Jolley (@londoninsider), Research fellow @sheffjournalism and former Editor  in Chief of Index on Censorship, has developed a series of podcasts for Pod Academy on News in the Pandemic.  This one, on local journalism, is the first in the series. Intro excerpts... Rachael Jolley: My name is Rachael Jolley. Welcome to Pod Academy and  our series of three podcasts, exploring journalism during the pandemic. In the first of the series, we talk about local journalism. it's economics and job losses, the hurdles and the technical challenges and find out about pink slime sites. Our, first guest is Damian Radcliffe, professor of journalism at the University of Oregon. We started off by talking about how journalists have responded to the challenges of working during the pan

Pod Academy's Chair, Chris Creegan, reflects on Covid-19 and HIV.

A Scottish Laird becomes Lord of the Bedchamber in the Abyssinian/Ethiopian court and finds the source of the Nile. Like many of his wealthy contemporaries in the 18th and 19th centuries, Lord James Bruce of Kinnaird made the grand tour of Europe (see the companion blog to this podcast).  Unlike many of them he also ventured further afield. For three years, from 1769 to 1772, the six-foot four Scottish laird with vivid red hair, travelled to Abyssinia, the old Ethiopian Empire comprising the northern half of present-day Ethiopia.  But his reasons for going are shrouded in mystery. Was he trying to find the source of the Nile or like an 18th century Indiana Jones, was he really searching for the Ark of the Covenant? Our producer Antonia Dalivalle takes up the story…. Bruce arrived in the country at a time when Abyssinians weren’t exactly fans of Europeans.   A century earlier, the Emperor had kicked out the Portuguese Jesuits. They had pushed their luck and tried to convert the already-Christian Ethiopians

Take a look at The Tribuna of the Uffizi by Johan Zoffany. What do you see? A group of Georgian Grand Tourist poseurs.  But one figure, towers above the rest, stands apart, on the far right of the painting. It is James Bruce of Kinneard, the real Indiana Jones. James Bruce is introduced in this blog, and in the accompanying short podcast  by our producer, Antonia Dalivalle.  Antonia explores the story of Bruce's travels in Abyssinia/Ethiopia in her  longer podcast The Real Indiana Jones - coming soon.  In the left-hand corner of the painting, a jumble of valuable artefacts - including a distressed looking lion sculpture – are strewn across the floor. The connoisseurs are crowded into a chapel-like space, the Tribuna in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. This was a ‘Holy of Holies’ – a ‘Hollywood Walk of Fame’ – of treasured European antiquities and artworks. They were on an eighteenth-century equivalent of the ‘Gap Year’. They weren’t finding themselves – but rather, the roots of European culture, through art, lit

What does it mean to be a 'good man'? With so much talk about toxic masculinity,  there is, perhaps. a pre-supposition that there is no good masculinity. This lecture by Dr Nina Power, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University, is based on her forthcoming book, What do Men Want?  It is part of the IF Project's 2019 lecture series, Thinking Between the Lines: truth, lies and fiction in an age of populism. Nina Power points to the resentment men feel towards women (and women's resentment of men).  Nowhere is that resentment more apparent than in the male only groups that are springing up  such as Fathers for Justice, INCEL men, and Men Going their Own Way (mgtow), whose website says. Happiness is a man who protects and cares for his family, goes forth and conquers, gives of himself for a greater cause, and ensures his legacy – because that’s what he was made to do.........But today’s men are ... told to “man up” and tough it out through turbulent waters while being called misogynists for expectin

This lecture on Left populism is part of the IF Project’s lecture series, Thinking between the Lines: Truth, Lies and Fiction in an age of populism.   Dr Marina Prentoulis, Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at University of East Anglia and a member of Syriza, explores the differences between Left and Right Wing populism. She recognises that Left and Right populism are often seen as two sides of the same coin, and points to What is Populism? by Jan-Werner Müller (one of the best known books on populism) as being an analysis which wrongly conflates left wing and right wing populism, in part because it uses a journalistic rather than a rigorous theoretical approach, focusing on form rather than policy.  For example, Werner contends that “populist claim that they, and only they, represent the people” p. 20 “populists live in a kind of political fantasy world: they imagine an opposition between corrupt elites and a morally pure, homogeneous people” (p.

"No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I. know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues. Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician's or the demagogue's but also of the statesman's trade. Why is that so? And what does it mean for the nature and the dignity of the political realm, on one side, and for the nature and the dignity of  truth and truthfulness, on the other?" From Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought So says political philosopher Hannah Arendt, the subject of this lecture which is part of the IF Project's lecture series, Thinking between the Lines: Truth, Lies and Fiction in an age of populism. Dr Dan Taylor of Goldsmiths, University of London, takes the title Truth and Politics (the title of Arendt's essay quoted above), to explore the testy and troublesome relationship between truth and politics. Are all politicians just liars? 

Who is allowed to make things up?   What does fiction writing have to do with life? Is a novel a document? This is the second lecture in the If Project series, Thinking Between the Lines: truth, lies and fiction in an age of populism.  Dr Katie da Cunha Lewin (@kdc_lewin) explores what it means to 'make things up' in literature, especially looking at writing by women.   “I don’t have to go anywhere, I don’t have to imagine anything. It’s in the living room with me. – Sheila Heti The quote above from Sheila Heti, a Canadian writer whose recent work Motherhood (2018), dealt with the many questions that underpin the idea of mothering and child-rearing, helps us think about the central idea of this lecture: what does it mean to ‘make things up’ in literature? Who is allowed to make things up? And what happens if writing avoids doing that all together? In my argument for this lecture, I want to unpack some of these questions, but I also want to suggest something about the politics of making things up. This lect

"We need to get away from the idea that knowledge, expertise and truth are obvious and given." This first lecture in the IF Project lecture series, Thinking Between the Lines: Truth, lies and fiction in an age of populism is given by Professor Will Davies of Goldsmith's, University of London. Professor Davies's powerpoint can be found here. What does it mean to know the world?  Why can't we agree on what is true anymore?  Why do many people no longer trust experts? Professor Davies sets out to fathom what is driving the conflicts and fragmentations in the infrastructure underpinning our understanding of the world.   Using his most recent book, Nervous States, as a jumping off point he analyses the the disintegration of consensus, identifying the roles played by the ubiquity and speed of technology as well as economics and psychology. Importantly he asks, what is a fact?  And in answer looks back in history, drawing on the work of Mary Poovey (A History of the Modern Fact ) who traced the origins of 'acce

Pat Thane, Research Professor at King's College, London and Professor Emerita, University of London, explores the social and political history of Britain over the past 100+ years with Pod Academy's Lee Millam, as they discuss her latest book, Divided Kingdom. This podcast is a tour de force as Professor Thane takes us from the founding of the Labour Party in 1900 in response to low wages and poor working conditions, through 2 world wars and the arrival of globalisation with its attendant precarity and poverty wages.  Highlighting changing living standards and expectations and inequalities of class, income, wealth, race, gender and sexuality,  she reveals what has (and has not) changed in the UK since 1900, explaining how our contemporary society, including its divisions and inequalities, was formed. Over the years there are recurring themes such as housing shortages and women's campaigns for equality, and there are some surprises - the much derided 1970s were actually the time of the greatest equality! D

What is the real cost of IVF?  As Louise Brown the world’s first “test tube” baby celebrates her 40th birthday – this seminar organised by the Progress Educational Trust  explores not just the economic cost, but also the emotional and psychological costs.  Worldwide there have been 60 million live births as a result of IVF, but it is still the case that over 60% of IVF cycles don't work. Does receiving fertility treatment confer any benefit to patients, even if there is no baby to take home at the end? Is unsuccessful fertility treatment more devastating than no treatment at all, or is it better to at least have had the chance to try? The event was held at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG). You may be interested to read the RCOG scientific impact paper on multiple pregnancies following assisted conception, referred to in the seminar Chaired by Sally Cheshire, Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority Speakers Dr Rebecca Brown Jacky Boivin Professor of Health Psy

This podcast is drawn from a Progress Educational Trust (PET) event called Putting Your Genome to Work: For the NHS, for Industry, for the UK Post-Brexit Chair:  Sarah Norcross, Director of PET Speakers: Dr Eliot Forster, Chair of MedCity  Dr Edward HockingsFounding Director of Ethics and Genetics Dr Athena Matakidou, Head of Clinical Genomics at AstraZeneca's Centre for Genomics Research, and Consultant in Medical Oncology at Cambridge University Hospitals Dr Jayne Spink, Chief Executive of Genetic Alliance UK We are at the beginning of a biomedical revolution built on the promise of genomics. The British government has put this at the heart of its post-Brexit industrial strategy.  So what is the potential of genomics, what is the journey we are setting out on, and what are the pitfalls? The British Government's Industrial Strategy White Paper Building a Britain Fit for the Future sets out an ambition for the UK to 'be the world's most innovative economy' and play a leading role in a 'fourth indu