Eve Pollard

On November 4, Eve Pollard delivered the 41st annual Baggs Memorial Lecture on the theme of “Happiness – what it is and how it may be achieved by individuals as well as nations”. We spoke to her before the lecture to get her thoughts on the subject of happiness. 

On November 4, Eve Pollard delivered the 41st annual Baggs Memorial Lecture on the theme of “Happiness – what it is and how it may be achieved by individuals as well as nations”. We spoke to her before the lecture to get her thoughts on the subject of happiness.

Episode 6: Eve Pollard on Happiness

In this episode we talk about the impact of Brexit on the University; on our people and core activities. We are joined by Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International), Professor Robin Mason and Professor Dagmar Scheel-Toellner, a German member of staff who’s worked at the University for the past 25 years. We cover what the best Brexit deal would be for the University, what we're doing to plan ahead, how we're supporting staff and students, as well as searching for some potential positives in this time of great uncertainty.

In this episode we talk about the impact of Brexit on the University; on our people and core activities. We are joined by Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International), Professor Robin Mason and Professor Dagmar Scheel-Toellner, a German member of staff who’s worked at the University for the past 25 years. We cover what the best Brexit deal would be for the University, what we're doing to plan ahead, how we're supporting staff and students, as well as searching for some potential positives in this time of great uncertainty.

Episode 5: Brexit

Matt Collins welcomed former member of The Communards and current Church of England priest, Reverend Richard Coles, to talk about happiness. Reverend Coles was at the University recently to deliver the 40th annual Baggs Memorial Lecture on the theme of Happiness. During the 1980s Richard had chart success with The Communards, who had three UK Top 10 hits, including the biggest-selling single of 1986, Don’t Leave Me This Way, making him the only vicar to have ever had a number one single. Richard is also co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live and is a regular guest panellist on shows such as Have I Got News For You and QI. In January 2014, he won the BBC’s Celebrity Mastermind, and in 2017 he appeared on Strictly Come Dancing.

Matt Collins welcomed former member of The Communards and current Church of England priest, Reverend Richard Coles, to talk about happiness. Reverend Coles was at the University recently to deliver the 40th annual Baggs Memorial Lecture on the theme of Happiness. During the 1980s Richard had chart success with The Communards, who had three UK Top 10 hits, including the biggest-selling single of 1986, Don’t Leave Me This Way, making him the only vicar to have ever had a number one single. Richard is also co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live and is a regular guest panellist on shows such as Have I Got News For You and QI. In January 2014, he won the BBC’s Celebrity Mastermind, and in 2017 he appeared on Strictly Come Dancing.

Episode 4: "You're a terrible dancer"

Welcoming the 2018 British Transplant Games (BTG) to Birmingham. Professor Adnan Sharif, Consultant Transplant Nephrologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, and Alan Wheeldon, a competitor at the Games, discuss the event, organ donation and how we increase rates of organ transplantation in the UK.

Welcoming the 2018 British Transplant Games (BTG) to Birmingham. Professor Adnan Sharif, Consultant Transplant Nephrologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, and Alan Wheeldon, a competitor at the Games, discuss the event, organ donation and how we increase rates of organ transplantation in the UK.

Episode 3: The 2018 British Transplant Games

Episode 2: Matt Collins chats with Professor Martin Powell and Dr Sophie Cox on the anniversary of the NHS. Would today’s NHS be recognisable to its founder, Aneurin Bevan, and what needs to be done to ensure that the NHS has a sustainable future? Can healthcare technologies help meet some of the challenges that the NHS faces?

Episode 2: Matt Collins chats with Professor Martin Powell and Dr Sophie Cox on the anniversary of the NHS. Would today’s NHS be recognisable to its founder, Aneurin Bevan, and what needs to be done to ensure that the NHS has a sustainable future? Can healthcare technologies help meet some of the challenges that the NHS faces?

Episode 2: The NHS at 70

Welcome to Friday Afternoon at the Bratby’s first podcast: a preview of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Matt Collins chats with Conor McKenna, Dr Natasha Rulyova and Dr Jamie Rann ahead of one of the most controversial and politically charged football World Cups of all time.

Welcome to Friday Afternoon at the Bratby’s first podcast: a preview of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Matt Collins chats with Conor McKenna, Dr Natasha Rulyova and Dr Jamie Rann ahead of one of the most controversial and politically charged football World Cups of all time.

Episode 1: 2018 Fifa World Cup preview

The University of Birmingham's Friday Afternoon at the Bratby Podcast

Friday Afternoon at the Bratby

The best podcast episodes on global issues affecting everyone. Covering topics such as the #metoo movement, climate change, the impact of technology and some of the biggest global issues facing us right now. For anyone interested in learning more about the world, and some of the issues we're facing, pick an episode below and start listening! Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

OwlTail

Elizabeth Kolbert covers climate change for the New Yorker. She's the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction. And she recently wrote a paragraph I can't stop thinking about. "The problem with global warming—and the reason it continues to resist illustration, even as the streets flood and the forests die and the mussels rot on the shores—is that experience is an inadequate guide to what’s going on. The climate operates on a time delay. When carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, it takes decades—in a technical sense, millennia—for the earth to equilibrate. This summer’s fish kill was a product of warming that had become inevitable twenty or thirty years ago, and the warming that’s being locked in today won’t be fully felt until today’s toddlers reach middle age. In effect, we are living in the climate of the past, but already we’ve determined the climate’s future."Kolbert lives, to an unusual degree, in the planet's future. She travels to the places around the world where the climate of tomorrow is visible today. She has watched glaciers melting, and seen species dying. And she is able to convey both the science and the cost with a rare lucidity. Talking with Kolbert left me with an unnerving thought. We look back on past eras in human history and judge them morally failed. We think of the Spanish Inquisition or the Mongol hordes and believe ourselves civilized, rational, moral in a way our ancestors weren't. But if the science is right, and we do unto our descendants what the data says we are doing to them, we will be judged monsters. And it will be all the worse because we knew what we were doing and we knew how to stop, but we decided it was easier to disbelieve the science or ignore the consequences. Kolbert and I talk about the consequences, but also about what would be necessary to stabilize the climate and back off the mass extinction event that is currently underway. We discuss geoengineering, political will, the environmental cost of meat, and what individuals can and can't do. We talk about Trump's cabinet, about whether technological innovation will save us, and if pricing carbon is enough. We talk about whether hope remains a realistic emotion when it comes to our environmental future.Books:-Edward Abbe’s “Desert Solitaire”-Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”-David G. Haskell’s “The Forest Unseen”-Bill McKibben’s “The End of Nature” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vox Conversations

Elizabeth Kolbert covers climate change for the New Yorker. She's the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction. And she recently wrote a paragraph I can't stop thinking about. "The problem with global warming—and the reason it continues to resist illustration, even as the streets flood and the forests die and the mussels rot on the shores—is that experience is an inadequate guide to what’s going on. The climate operates on a time delay. When carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, it takes decades—in a technical sense, millennia—for the earth to equilibrate. This summer’s fish kill was a product of warming that had become inevitable twenty or thirty years ago, and the warming that’s being locked in today won’t be fully felt until today’s toddlers reach middle age. In effect, we are living in the climate of the past, but already we’ve determined the climate’s future."Kolbert lives, to an unusual degree, in the planet's future. She travels to the places around the world where the climate of tomorrow is visible today. She has watched glaciers melting, and seen species dying. And she is able to convey both the science and the cost with a rare lucidity. Talking with Kolbert left me with an unnerving thought. We look back on past eras in human history and judge them morally failed. We think of the Spanish Inquisition or the Mongol hordes and believe ourselves civilized, rational, moral in a way our ancestors weren't. But if the science is right, and we do unto our descendants what the data says we are doing to them, we will be judged monsters. And it will be all the worse because we knew what we were doing and we knew how to stop, but we decided it was easier to disbelieve the science or ignore the consequences. Kolbert and I talk about the consequences, but also about what would be necessary to stabilize the climate and back off the mass extinction event that is currently underway. We discuss geoengineering, political will, the environmental cost of meat, and what individuals can and can't do. We talk about Trump's cabinet, about whether technological innovation will save us, and if pricing carbon is enough. We talk about whether hope remains a realistic emotion when it comes to our environmental future.Books:-Edward Abbe’s “Desert Solitaire”-Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”-David G. Haskell’s “The Forest Unseen”-Bill McKibben’s “The End of Nature” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>

Elizabeth Kolbert: We have locked in centuries of climate change

Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan delve deep on free speech for 3 hours! Somehow it gets more interesting through the episode, not less! Hear why often it's best to "be tolerant of the intolerable".
Canada tried to pass laws compelling people to use pronouns like zi and zur. Should you be compelled to call someone a certain pronoun? Jordan Peterson pushed back saying he had no problems using pronouns like zi and zur for people who have non-traditional genders, but that he had a problem being compelled by law to use certain pronouns. 
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Voltaire. 
We have gone from homosexuality being illegal in most of the west 60 years ago to same sex marriage being legal today. "Free speech is the master value because it is the value which allows us to update all other values." Sam Harris.

Free speech, only a small topic!

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos  100% off the Future Authoring Program code: "ChangeYourself" - The offer is valid until the end of Nov 30th.

The Joe Rogan Experience

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos</a> 100% off the Future Authoring Program code: "ChangeYourself" - The offer is valid until the end of Nov 30th.

#877 - Jordan Peterson

Best Episodes on Global Issues

The best philosophy podcast episodes. Asking questions about how to live a better life, what it means to be and do good, to the idea of God. This topic includes episodes that bring about important questions that everyone should be asking themselves. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

Michael Sandel explores the philosophical justifications made for national borders. Using a pioneering state-of-the-art studio at the Harvard Business School, Professor Sandel is joined by 60 participants from over 30 countries in a truly global digital space. Is there any moral distinction between a political refugee and an economic migrant? If people have the right to exit a country, why not a right to enter? Do nations have the right to protect the affluence of their citizens? And is there such a thing as a 'national identity'? These are just some of the questions addressed by Professor Sandel in this first edition of The Global Philosopher.Audience producer: Louise ColettaProducer: David EdmondsEditor: Richard Knight(Image taken by Rose Lincoln)

The Public Philosopher

Michael Sandel explores the philosophical justifications made for national borders. Using a pioneering state-of-the-art studio at the Harvard Business School, Professor Sandel is joined by 60 participants from over 30 countries in a truly global digital space. Is there any moral distinction between a political refugee and an economic migrant? If people have the right to exit a country, why not a right to enter? Do nations have the right to protect the affluence of their citizens? And is there such a thing as a 'national identity'? These are just some of the questions addressed by Professor Sandel in this first edition of The Global Philosopher. Audience producer: Louise Coletta Producer: David Edmonds Editor: Richard Knight (Image taken by Rose Lincoln)

The Global Philosopher: Should Borders Matter?

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about his new book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.” They discuss the importance of meditation for his intellectual life, the primacy of stories, the need to revise our fundamental assumptions about human civilization, the threats to liberal democracy, a world without work, universal basic income, the virtues of nationalism, the implications of AI and automation, and other topics. SUBSCRIBE to listen to the rest of this episode and gain access to all full-length episodes of the podcast at samharris.org/subscribe.

Making Sense with Sam Harris

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about his new book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.” They discuss the importance of meditation for his intellectual life, the primacy of stories, the need to revise our fundamental assumptions about human civilization, the threats to liberal democracy, a world without work, universal basic income, the virtues of nationalism, the implications of AI and automation, and other topics. SUBSCRIBE to listen to the rest of this episode and gain access to all full-length episodes of the podcast at <a href="http://samharris.org/subscribe" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">samharris.org/subscribe</a>.

Friday Afternoon at the Bratby

Weekly hand curated podcast episodes for learning