

LSE: Public lectures and events
London School of Economics and Political Science
The London School of Economics and Political Science public events podcast series is a platform for thought, ideas and lively debate where you can hear from some of the world's leading thinkers. Listen to more than 200 new episodes every year.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jun 10, 2024 • 1h 4min
Economics and wellbeing: inflation, public debt, and commercial wars
Contributor(s): Professor Olivier Blanchard | What are the prospects for inflation? Is the level of public debt now dangerous? And will commercial wars between nations blight our future?

Jun 10, 2024 • 1h 16min
A year of elections: power and politics in 2024
Contributor(s): Bill Neely, Professor Sara Hobolt, Dr Mukulika Banerjee, Dr Nick Anstead | This year people around the world are going to the polls. What have been the surprises and takeaways from election results so far, and what is still to come?

Jun 10, 2024 • 1h 2min
The ministry for the future: navigating the politics of the climate crisis
Contributor(s): Professor Elizabeth Robinson, Kim Stanley Robinson | Kim Stanley Robinson is the Author of about twenty books, including the internationally bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140 and The Ministry for the Future and explores the political economy needed to cope with existential threats in his writing.

Jun 6, 2024 • 1h 34min
The 2024 European elections and the challenges ahead
Contributor(s): Professor Sara Hobolt, Dr Heather Grabbe, Tony Barber | The 2024 European Parliament elections promise to be a pivotal moment for the European Union. Polling suggests Eurosceptic parties could make large gains, fundamentally shifting the balance of power within the Parliament.

Jun 5, 2024 • 1h 29min
Tech tantrums - when tech meets humanity
Contributor(s): Baroness Beeban Kidron | AI is poised to supercharge its impact on almost every aspect of economic, public and personal life. Tech leaders in Silicon Valley believe that AI poses an existential threat to humanity even as they enter an arms race to be ’the ruler of the world”. This year 50% of the world’s population go to the polls, without a single party offering a vision of how they will ride, contain or regulate the wave of change that AI will bring.

Jun 4, 2024 • 60min
How to build a cohesive society
Contributor(s): Professor Jonathan Wolff, Professor Marc Stears, Professor Margaret Levi | Tim Besley, School Professor of Economics and Political Science and Director of the Programme on Cohesive Capitalism chairs our discussion on cohesion and capitalism.

Jun 3, 2024 • 1h 33min
Alternatives to neoliberalism
Contributor(s): Professor Debra Satz, Professor Sir Paul Collier | The first of two events to launch LSE’s new Programme on Cohesive Capitalism, a distinguished panel, chaired by LSE President and Vice Chancellor Larry Kramer.

May 30, 2024 • 1h 34min
Visions of inequality: from the French Revolution to the end of the Cold War
Contributor(s): Professor Branko Milanovic | The book is a history of how economists across two centuries have thought about inequality, told through portraits of six key figures (François Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Vilfredo Pareto, and Simon Kuznets). “How do you see income distribution in your time, and how and why do you expect it to change?”

May 29, 2024 • 1h 16min
The divine economy: how religions compete for wealth, power, and people
Contributor(s): Professor Paul Seabright | Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth.

May 28, 2024 • 1h 32min
England: seven myths that changed a country – and how to set them straight
Contributor(s): Dr Marc Stears, Tom Baldwin | Some politicians will talk of restoring an English birthright of liberty or the swashbuckling self-confidence to rule the waves. Others will yearn for the old-fashioned morality with which, they claim, England once civilised a savage world. Still will more look inwards to a story of an enchanted island that can stand alone and isolated against the world. But England - written by Tom Baldwin, the best-selling author of Keir Starmer's biography, and Marc Stears, influential think tank head - unravels seven myths that have provided so much ammunition for charlatans or culture warriors from both left and right.