Futuremakers

By Oxford University

Welcome to Futuremakers, from the University of Oxford, where our academics debate key issues for the future of society.

Season Four: Brain and Mental Health

Season Three: The History of Pandemics

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FAQs about Futuremakers:

How many episodes does Futuremakers have?

The podcast currently has 50 episodes available.

Futuremakers episodes:

November 17, 2019 S2 Ep7: Can we be green and capitalist?
Many of our panellists in season two have described barriers that are standing in our way if we hope to restrict global warming to the 1.5 degrees C limit that the 2018 IPCC report outlined, and some have advocated how our current economic system could be used to overcome them. But can markets really provide a tool to promote necessary action? In this episode we ask; can we be green AND capitalist?

Joining Professor Millican on this latest episode of Futuremakers are:
Thomas Hale, Associate Professor in Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, Charmain Love, ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at our Saïd Business School, and Ben Caldecott, Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme.

And at the end of this episode there's a bonus conversation between Peter and Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, who in 2009 led an international group of twenty eight leading academics, in proposing a new framework for government and management agencies as a precondition for sustainable development on the planet Earth.

Find out more about Oxford’s climate research at http://po.st/TruePlanet
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1h 29min
November 10, 2019 S2 Ep6: Should nuclear power be part of our energy system?
Nuclear energy is still a controversial idea for many people, with dangerous accidents and destructive bombs being at the top of their minds when they hear the words, yet other renewable energy sources are not without their critics, and arguably are not yet at a place where they can entirely replace our current energy systems. So what role can, or should, nuclear be playing in the UK energy sector as we move towards a sustainable future?

Join our host, philosopher Peter Millican, as he explores this topic with Professor Nick Eyre, Director of the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions, who in 1997 wrote the first published study on how the then Government’s 20% carbon emission reduction target might be achieved; Dr Sarah Darby, Acting Leader of the Energy Programme at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, who has a particular interest in how energy systems might develop in more environmentally and socially-benign ways; and James Marrow, James Martin Professor of Energy Materials, whose work is focussed on the degradation of structural materials.

Find out more about Oxford’s climate research at http://po.st/TruePlanet
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1h 3min
November 03, 2019 S2 Ep5: What did the Paris Climate Agreement change?
On the 12th December 2015, at the 21st COP in Paris, representatives of 196 states reached an agreement to combat climate change that was celebrated around the world. With the long-term goal of keeping global temperature to below two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, and covering areas such as nationally determined contributions and global stocktakes, Paris was heralded as a huge break-through. But four years on, and against the backdrop of the United States announcing its intention to withdraw from the agreement, what did the politicians at Paris actually achieve?

Join our host, philosopher Peter Millican, as he explores this topic with Fredi Otto, Acting Director of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute and a lead scientist on the World Weather Attribution project; Richard Millar, a Senior Analyst for the Committee on Climate Change, whose research spans the physical and economic consequences of climate policy; and Sugandha Srivastav, a researcher on the post carbon transition, who’s previously worked at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

Find out more about Oxford’s climate research at http://po.st/TruePlanet
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1h 5min
October 27, 2019 S2 Ep4: Climate change: do individual actions matter?
With a lot of Government work relying on geo-political understanding between nation states and large multinational corporations, is there still potential for actions on an individual level to shape the future of the planet? Do actions such as changing our diets, varying how we commute or even joining in with mass demonstrations, have the possibility of being anywhere near as effective as changes that can be made on an international level? Can one person save the planet?

Join our host, philosopher Peter Millican, as he explores this topic with Professor Susan Jebb, a nutrition scientist who is co-director of the
Livestock, Environment and People (or LEAP) project, Dr Tina Fawcett, a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, who works on the ECI’s energy programme, and Tristram Walsh, President of the Oxford Climate Society, a student society dedicated to developing informed climate leaders.

Find out more about Oxford’s climate research at http://po.st/true_planet
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56min
October 20, 2019 S2 Ep3: How do you build a greener country?
What does the current infrastructure in the UK look like, and how far is it from where we need to be to meet our international commitments, or even our own challenge to be Net Zero by 2050?
How much do our working practices and lives contribute to how ‘green’ the country is, and how can we promote and preserve biodiversity across the globe?
How do we compare to other countries, and what can we learn from them?
Finally, how do you build a ‘greener’ country?

Join our host, philosopher Peter Millican, as he explores this topic with
Professor Cameron Hepburn, Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, who has provided advice on climate policy to a number of governments; Alison Smith, a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, who’s worked on a number of EU climate projects and is the author of ‘The Climate Bonus: co-benefits of climate policy’; and April Burt, who has spent the past eight years working in conservation management in the western Indian ocean and is now part of Oxford’s Environmental Research team.

Find out more about Oxford’s climate research at http://po.st/true_planet
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1h
October 13, 2019 S2 Ep2: Climate change and politics - why haven’t we done more?
With the IPCC warning that policymakers have limited time to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5° C, beyond which the climate-related risks to humans and natural systems rise quickly, it’s clear that we need to act sooner rather than later. This may be why we’re seeing increasing public action from the likes of Extinction Rebellion and the Youth Strikes for Climate, but what action have we seen from governments in the UK and beyond since this stark warning was delivered? What confidence can we have in our leaders to bring about the changes we need over the next decade?

Join our host, philosopher Peter Millican, as he explores this topic with Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party politician and Member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion, Dr Ryan Rafaty, a political scientist at the University of Oxford working with our Climate Econometrics project, and Tristram Walsh, President of the Oxford Climate Society, a student society dedicated to developing informed climate leaders.

Find out more about Oxford’s climate research at http://po.st/true_planet
You can find the cartoon Caroline mentions at http://aries.mq.edu.au/images/Copenhagen-Pett.jpg

[Please note: this episode was recorded in July, at a time of extraordinary movement in UK politics – some people have changed jobs and some references have dated, but the themes remain as urgent as ever. One of our guests for this episode is Caroline Lucas, a Green MP, who we invited in her capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Climate Change – members from other parties were invited and could not attend.]
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56min
October 06, 2019 S2 Ep1: Twelve years to climate disaster?
The IPCC’s 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C broke into the public consciousness through media reporting that we only had twelve years to limit climate change catastrophe.
But was this really the conclusion of the report?
If it was, do we really only have twelve years to fix our climate, and if not, how soon should we take action?

Join our host, philosopher Peter Millican, as he explores this topic with Professor Myles Allen, Coordinating Lead Author on the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5 degrees, Professor Helen Johnson from Oxford’s Earth Sciences Department, whose work focuses on understanding ocean circulation and the role in plays in the climate system; and Dr James Painter from the Reuters Institute at Oxford, who focuses on the portrayals of climate change in online and offline media.

Find out more out Oxford’s climate research at http://po.st/true_planet
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1h 7min
September 22, 2019 S2: Trailer: Futuremakers season two coming soon...
Rising sea levels? Burning forests? 12 years to act?

These are the issues that will come to define our time. Join us as we bring together leading experts from Oxford and beyond to discuss the existential threats from climate change, and how we should rethink our governance, infrastructure, working practices and lives to help prevent them.

As Futuremakers returns for its second season, we're looking at the cutting-edge research into climate, energy, food, waste, water and biodiversity, and exploring the debates around how and where global climate action should be taken.

Join the discussion with host Professor Peter Millican and take a seat at the table for Futuremakers season two.

Coming October 2019.

Find out more at http://po.st/true_planet
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2min
April 07, 2019 Could quantum computing change the world?
Once we believed that the world around us behaved according to the laws of classical mechanics, and it took us hundreds of years to work out that actually something else was going on. Quantum computing offers what we believe to be the best way to process information based on the laws of physics as we now know them. But how did we discover that quantum mechanics could offer such developments in computing? And why did this realm remain hidden for so long?
For this special episode of Futuremakers, Peter Millican, Professor of Philosophy, set out to discover the truth about a global race to develop the world’s first scalable quantum computer. He met a diverse range of researchers, who gave him their thoughts on the powerful next realm of computation their work opens up, via the fundamental building blocks, to the ultimate goal of a truly universal quantum computer. Keep listening to find out why there's a race to create this technology, if Oxford's researchers believe we'll ever achieve our goal, and what it could mean for society if we did.
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47min
December 23, 2018S1 Ep10: Season Finale: AI selection box
In the final episode of our series, we’re looking back at the themes we’ve discussed so far, and forward into the likely development of AI. Professor Peter Millican will be joined by Professor Gil McVean, to further investigate how big data is transforming healthcare, by Dr Sandra Wachter, to discuss her recent work on the need for a legal framework around AI, and also by Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt on where the field of artificial intelligence research has come from, and where it’s going. To conclude, Peter will be sharing some of his views on where humanity is heading with AI, when you’ll also hear from his final guest, Azeem Azhar, host of the Exponential View podcast.
Futuremakers will be taking a short break now, but we’ll be back with series two in the new year, when we’ll be taking on another of society’s grand challenges: building a sustainable future. Before then we’ll also be publishing a special one-off episode on Quantum Computing and the global opportunities, and risks, it could present.
To read more about some of the key themes in this episode, you can find Sandra Wachter’s recent papers below.
A Right to Reasonable Inferences: Re-Thinking Data Protection Law in the Age of Big Data and AI: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3248829
Explaining Explanations in AI: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278331
Counterfactual explanations without opening the black box: automated decisions and the GDPR: https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v31/Counterfactual-Explanations-without-Opening-the-Black-Box-Sandra-Wachter-et-al.pdf
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1h 46min

FAQs about Futuremakers:

How many episodes does Futuremakers have?

The podcast currently has 50 episodes available.

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