

RSA Events
RSA
World-changing ideas. For free. For everyone.
Featuring the world’s most exciting public thinkers, innovators and changemakers, RSA talks bring people and ideas together to shape a better future for all.
Featuring the world’s most exciting public thinkers, innovators and changemakers, RSA talks bring people and ideas together to shape a better future for all.
Episodes
Mentioned books

May 31, 2018 • 1h 3min
After Brexit: A Future Beyond The EU
If not the EU, then what? Mike Kenny and Nick Pearce explore the idea of the ‘Anglosphere’ as a forgotten factor in the decision to leave the EU.
Amidst the ongoing Brexit negotiations, a question mark looms over Britain’s future place in the world. The wish for a post-Brexit ‘global Britain’ has driven the idea of an alliance between Britain and its old Commonwealth colonies to resurface, based on a belief in a special bond shared by English-speaking peoples across the world.
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 31st May 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/05/after-brexit-a-future-beyond-the-eu

May 25, 2018 • 1h 1min
How To Be More Pirate
Founder and former CEO of award-winning marketing agency Livity, Sam Conniff Allende re-purposes the innovative strategies of Golden Age pirates for 21st century would-be disruptors.
How can we create radical change within an old-fashioned system, and in the face of unprecedented change and uncertainty? We must break and then re-make the rules – just like pirates did before us.
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 24th May 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/05/how-to-be-more-pirate

May 24, 2018 • 1h 11min
Strong Arts, Strong Schools
Why should schools be interested in the arts, and how should we be looking to understand their impact? With Global Teacher Prize winner Andria Zafirakou.
The RSA, together with the Education Endowment Foundation, is currently investigating the difference made by cultural learning to pupils’ academic achievement and character development. But what else do the arts offer schools and their students? How can we get better at understanding those benefits and ensure that evidence of what works makes its way into wider practice?
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 24th May 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/05/strong-arts-strong-schools

May 24, 2018 • 58min
The People Vs. Democracy
Trust in politics is dwindling, and authoritarian populists are seizing power around the globe. Renowned academic and author Yascha Mounk argues for radical political reforms that will benefit the many, not the few.
Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating living standards, fears of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the march against liberal democracy, he argues that politicians must act now to create radical reforms in these three areas that benefit the many, not just the few.
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Wednesday 23rd May 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/05/the-people-vs.-democracy

May 17, 2018 • 57min
On Bullshit Jobs
Is modern work actually productive, or just an end in itself? 'The most influential anthropologist in the world', David Graeber, explores how ‘meaningless’ jobs have become so widespread, and what we can do about it.
In doing so, he looks at how we value work, and how, rather than being productive, work has become an end in itself; the way such work maintains the current broken system of finance capital; and, finally, how we can get out of it.
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 17th May 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/05/on-bullsht-jobs

May 11, 2018 • 58min
A New Approach To Depression
Leading professor of psychiatry Edward Bullmore introduces breakthrough new science on the link between depression and inflammation of the body and brain.
Going beyond the clinic and the lab, Professor Bullmore presents a whole new way of looking at how mind, brain and body all work together in a sometimes misguided effort to help us survive in a hostile world. Offering insights into the story of Western medicine, he shows how we have got it wrong as well as right in the past, and how we could start getting to grips with depression and other mental disorders much more effectively in the future.
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 10th May 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/05/a-new-approach-to-depression

Apr 27, 2018 • 1h 2min
Redefining Economic Value
Do modern economies reward the extractors – not the creators – of economic value? Leading economist Mariana Mazzucato urges us to rethink how we determine value in our economy.
At the heart of the crisis in modern capitalism, she says, lies the blurred line between ‘taking’ and ‘making’; those who merely extract value are rewarded more highly than those who create it, generating perverse incentives and stifling a productive, healthy economy and society. In order to replace this broken system with a more sustainable, symbiotic capitalism, we must reconsider fundamental assumptions about what we value.
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 26th April 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/04/redefining-economic-value

Apr 26, 2018 • 57min
Strengthening Our Parliamentary Democracy
In this Vote100 year, Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom asks: can we really say our democracy is as equal as the Suffragettes sought to make it?
Andrea visits the RSA to share the lessons of her work addressing harassment and bullying in Westminster, to explore the challenges and opportunities for Parliament posed by the digital age, and to set out her views on what both say about our wider political culture.
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Wednesday 25th April 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/04/strengthening-our-parliamentary-democracy

Apr 25, 2018 • 59min
How The Internet Is Killing Democracy
Should you really be shocked by the Facebook revelations? Author and Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, Jamie Bartlett argues that our fragile political system is being threatened by the digital revolution.
We have given over much of our lives to shadowy powers behind a wall of code, all manipulated by a handful of Silicon Valley utopians, ad men, and venture capitalists. And, in light of recent data breach scandals around companies such as Cambridge Analytica, what does that mean for democracy, our delicately balanced system of government that was created long before big data, total information and artificial intelligence?
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 19th April 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/04/how-the-internet-is-killing-democracy

Apr 25, 2018 • 59min
The Power of Elastic Thinking
Academic, bestselling author and Star Trek scriptwriter Leonard Mlodinow gives us the tools to harness the power of elastic thinking in an endlessly dynamic world.
How can we train our brains to be more comfortable when confronting change? How do our brains generate new ideas, and how can we nurture that process? Why can diversity and even discord be beneficial to our thought process?
This event was recorded live at The RSA on Thursday 12th April 2018. Discover more about this event here: https://www.thersa.org/events/2018/04/the-power-of-elastic-thinking