Agile Rabbit

From Partygate and Boris Johnson’s farewell to Jeremy Corbyn handing over Labour’s leadership to Keir Starmer – bestselling author John Crace takes us on a hilarious tour of the whirlwind world of post-Brexit Britain.

Over the past few years, the various Prime Ministers, and some heated parliamentary debates at Westminster, John Crace’s brilliant political sketches have provided the nation with some desperately needed comic relief.

He speaks about his new book, Depraved New World: Please Hold, the Government Will Be With You Shortly, capturing British politics at its most absurd.

Recorded on December 3rd 2023 at Exeter Phoenix

DEATH STARS AND DEMOCRACY

The hugely popular Star Wars films famously came about from George Lucas’s desire to tell a ‘Vietnam War in space’. Since then, the Star Wars films have always focused on repurposing contemporary events in a science fiction setting.

We’ll discover the fascinating ways in which Star Wars is inspired by real-world events and history. This event explores the films and their responses to real world moments. We also look at the books and computer games in the franchise, to see how they responded to the fall of the Soviet Union, genocides and ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, and both 9/11 and the Global War on Terror.

Funded by DEFRA’s Resilience Innovation Programme, Blue Heart is investigating how rain, river and waste water move through Eastbourne and southern Wealden to help reduce the impact of flooding.

Blue Heart are working with local organisations and communities to build resilience to flooding and other effects of climate change, be more sustainable and strengthen connections to our local environment.

The latest BBC programme narrated by David Attenborough, Wild Isles, looks at the beauty of nature here in Britain and Ireland.

We were joined by Nick Gates one of its directors and producers at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne for a special event.

Nick is a naturalist, producer, and writer based in Bristol. The South Downs feature in the series and Nick grew up in Sussex. With a passion for conservation, nature-friendly farming, and rewilding, he loves to find stories that inspire people to care for the natural world.

This was a Blue Heart event recorded at Towner Gallery in Eastbourne

You can find out more at

blueheart.org.uk

Thursday 22 June 2023

Exeter Phoenix

Prof David Butler FREng, Professor Tania Kovats, Trevor Bishop, Dr Sarah Ward, Anu Anand

Hear four speakers passionately discuss the implications of our changing world on a key area. Climate Change and water are intertwined, from flooding and drought, to increased demand and varying quality.

We’re looking at the 10 key changes you need to know: what we are already experiencing, alongside what to expect in the coming years, and the positive ways scientists and engineers are building resilience.

We’re sharing the research behind the headlines, with a particular focus on the work of the Centre for Water Systems at the University of Exeter.

We’ll examine the science behind attribution; is there evidence that individual extreme flooding events were affected by Climate Change?

How can we become more resilient in a changing world to extreme weather events and how does the artistic community work with scientists to communicate their work?

This event is in partnership with the Centre for Water Systems at the University of Exeter, which is celebrating its 25 year anniversary.

CAN I TRUST SCIENCE?

From anti-vaxxers to climate deniers, not everyone trusts science. A special live event with a panel of international experts to look at why there is mistrust and positive antidotes to deal with it.

This discussion explores the Open Science movement, which is sweeping the globe promoting practices to make science more transparent and less biassed.

One method is sharing data – that increases trust through openness and accelerates the quality of research. There are hurdles to sharing data: who owns it, how it’s arranged, and the motivation of scientists when their careers are driven by publishing results.

But are there limitations, a tyranny of openness?

Sharing data without acknowledgement or payment may lead to exploitation of those who produced it.

The panel examines the ethics of data and share positive solutions to make science more responsible, so we can all trust it.

TIMANDRA HARKNESS

SABINA LEONELLI

TRAVIS COAN

CAROLE GOBLE CBE FRENG FBCS

JAMES COOMARASAMY

A lively discussion with some of the world’s leading thinkers as we reassess our relationship with the internet and set out a positive vision of how it can be improved so we can reshape the digital world into a space where we can all flourish.

In partnership with the Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Exeter

HELEN MARGETTS OBE

Director of the Public Policy Programme, Professor of Society and the Internet

The Alan Turing Institute

University of Oxford

SILVIA MILANO

Lecturer in Philosophy of Data and Data Ethics

Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI)

University of Exeter

CHICO CAMARGO

Lecturer in Computer Science (E&R)

Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI)

University of Exeter

RITULA SHAH (CHAIR)

Lead Presenter, The World Tonight

BBC Radio 4

Stegosaurs are a group of dinosaurs characterized by the possession of two rows of plates and spines that extend from the neck to the end of the tail. Join us for a live event with acclaimed scientist Dr Susannah Maidment from the Natural History Museum. Discover the function of the plates of stegosaurs. Were they for display or to deter predators?

Psychedelic drugs are gaining attention in the pharmaceutical industry because of increasing scientific evidence of their potential benefits for people suffering with psychiatric disorders.

Join world experts David Nutt, Dr David Erritzoe, Professor Christine Hauskeller, Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, and BBC host Ritula Shah to look at the medical, societal, and historical implications of these recent discoveries.

This event took place at Dartington Hall as part of FUTURES2022, a festival of discovery across the South West of England and online on Friday 30 September and Saturday 1 October, funded by UK Research and Innovation. Find out more at https://futuresnight.co.uk/

Hear an inspirational and often riotously funny first-hand account of the movement to rewild the British landscape with beavers – and how it became the most subversive nature conservation act of the modern era. Since the early 1990s – in the face of opposition from government, landowners, and even some conservation professionals – Derek Gow has imported, quarantined and assisted the reestablishment of beavers in waterways across the UK.

For 400 years they have been hunted to the point of extinction, cast as pests, enemies of landowners and destroyers of habitats. Their fur, oils, glands and meat helped build North America and fueled international trade. In recent years the beaver is making a dramatic and welcomed comeback.

Beavers are being recognised as nature’s architects, whose dams help to filter water, stop run-off and reduce flooding, while also providing much needed habitat for a range of wetland wildlife.

Held in high esteem by fellow rewilders, including Chris Packham and Isabella Tree, Derek is a maverick communicating the urgent need to bring these charismatic creatures back to Britain. They are, he passionately believes, a key to ecological recovery.

How do we relate neuroscience research in laboratories to our experience of living? The goal of Field Neuroscience is to build a bridge between the two – it’s the non-invasive study of nervous systems “in the wild”.

Neuroscientists study something that everyone uses every day to navigate the complexities of human society – their nervous system. Perhaps without even knowing it, everyone has a familiarity with the nervous system’s influence on their own behaviour and the behaviour of others. This gives neuroscience a unique and largely untapped potential compared to other sciences.

Dr. Danbee “Tauntaun” Kim is a Korean-American neuroscientist and teacher who earned her BSc in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT, where they also spent 10 years acting, directing, choreographing, costuming, and writing original content for the MIT Musical Theater Guild. While completing her PhD with Dr. Adam Kampff at the Champalimaud Neuroscience Program, Danbee authored a graphic novel version of their doctoral dissertation called The First VIRS. Danbee’s current focus is developing a framework for precisely observing nervous systems in ecologically relevant settings, aka “field neuroscience”. This includes studying cuttlefish, building interactive exhibits, and using comics and circus as a tool for education and research. To learn more, you can visit www.danbeekim.org.