IEA Podcast

The Definite Article is a new weekly livestream vidcast from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Each week Media Manager Emily Carver sits down with a member of the IEA staff to discuss the up-to-the-minute articles they’ve written for an array of national newspapers, news websites and magazines.

This week, Emily's guest is IEA Director General Mark Littlewood. 

They discuss his latest biweekly column for The Times on what lessons we can learn from Covid-19 after the crisis is over.

Originally recorded as a video, you can also watch the episode on YouTube.

School of Thought is the new weekly series from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Each week Professor Syed Kamall sits down with a special guest to discuss an important contributor to liberal thought, ask why their work matters and what impact their ideas have had on the guest and on the world.

This week, Syed's guest is Dr. Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute and author of 'School of Thought: 101 Great Liberal Thinkers', the IEA publication which inspired the series.

Originally recorded as a video, you can also watch the episode on YouTube.

Over the last three decades, governments have repeatedly set targets – often for their successors, or their successors’ successors – which may be missed, but then replaced by more ambitious targets. So what can be done? Are we on the right track? Is this even the right track to be on?

Our guest this week is Dr Jamie Whyte, a classical-liberal academic and author of Crimes Against Logic.

This is the third in the IEA’s ‘Zeroing In: Free market approaches to the 2050 target’ series and was originally recorded as a vidcast which you can watch on the IEA Youtube channel. The series will cover a range of ideas and viewpoints, with IEA spokespeople speaking to an array of experts and academics on how the free market can, or cannot, achieve the government's target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

As the UK government asks the nation to "Stay Home. Protect the NHS" and people are heading onto the streets for weekly claps to support healthcare workers, attention has never been more focused on the NHS.

At the same time, countries across the world are all tackling the same health crisis, with a range of different results. One country which seems to be performing well is Germany, with extensive testing and a low coronavirus mortality rate.

So how do they do it? What is it about the German healthcare system, with its higher spending and social insurance model, which makes it particularly good in a crisis? And what can the UK learn from how their decentralised system offers more choice for patients and medical professionals.

Joining Emma Revell, Head of Communications, to discuss the German model is Dr Kristian Niemietz, Head of Political Economy and author of several reports on health systems including Universal Healthcare without the NHS.

The recent slowdown in economic activity has brought a sense of comfort to the green left. Aeroplanes have been grounded, fewer cars are on the roads, and there has been a significant drop-in industrial activity. As a result, pollution levels have dramatically decreased. 

The British public have also shown a willingness to submit to temporary restrictions on freedom to combat the coronavirus crisis. 

Could the same tactics be applied to climate change? And does the authoritarian response of many governments provide a template for future controls to limit carbon emissions and other forms of pollution? 

Andy Mayer, Chief Operating Officer at the Institute of Economic Affairs joins Media Manager Emily Carver, to discuss the potential impact of coronavirus on the climate change debate.

You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Podbean.

The first part of this podcast focuses on minimum pricing for alcohol, introduced in Scotland in May 2018. We were told to expect 58 fewer alcohol-related deaths in the first year and 1299 fewer alcohol-related hospital admissions. But does the data tell a different story?

A new IEA briefing, authored by the IEA’s Head of Lifestyle Economics, Christopher Snowdon, and entitled ‘Short term impact of minimum pricing of alcohol in Scotland’, publishes data for the first time showing that there is NO evidence that minimum pricing has created a step-change in the rate of alcohol-related harm in Scotland.

The second part of this podcast will focus on Public Health bodies that have spent years telling us that drinking, smoking and obesity are the real epidemics. So a potentially fatal virus forcing billions of people into hiding should make them question their priorities, right? Wrong.

Single-issue nanny state pressure groups seem to be more active than ever, insisting that their longstanding pet policies just happen to be the solution to a world turned upside down.

You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Podbean.

Travel may have hastened the spread of coronavirus across the world but now the sector has been impacted on is every conceivable way. Planes are grounded, trains are running on skeleton timetables, and TFL have massively reduced services on both buses and tube lines. With restrictions on movement and instructions to stay home, travel is the last thing on peoples' minds and the AA have predicted there could be a permanent reduction in demand.

But is this likely? And if our travel habits do change - with the rise of working from home and nervousness around crowded spaces lingers long after coronavirus leaves us - what does this mean? Government revenue will fall, existing spending commitments will need to be revisited, and many travel companies will be a risk. What, if anything, should we do about it?

Dr Richard Wellings, Head of Transport at the Institute of Economic Affairs, joins Emma Revell, Head of Communications, to discuss the impact of coronavirus on our transport infrastructure and what the long-term effects might be.

To find out more about the possible impact of coronavirus on our working lives, visit the IEA website and download "Pass The Remote: Why home working doesn't work for everyone".

Dealing with an unforeseen crisis is a challenge for any government. But as the IEA’s Director General Mark Littlewood points out in today’s Times, we already have a tried-and-tested method of dealing with one-off shocks – namely, insurance. 

This IEA podcast explores some of the economic considerations around the debate on climate change. Over the last three decades, governments have repeatedly set targets – often for their successors, or their successors' successors – which may be missed, but then replaced by more ambitious targets.

Richard Tol, who joins the IEA's Professor Syed Kamall, remotely of course, is a former member of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. He has been a convening author with the IPCC and is a Professor of Economics at Sussex University. The discussion covers a number of issues including Coronavirus, challenging environmental orthodoxy, and whether we underestimate human ingenuity in tackling climate change.

Globalisation enables people and products to travel across the globe with relative ease. But in a time of coronavirus, some have argued our increasingly inter-connected world – with international travel and global supply chains – made a pandemic inevitable.

How much did globalisation cause our current troubles? Or it is actually the solution? After all, many of us are coping with self-isolation and social distancing by binge-watching Netflix and Skyping relatives – the internet is a key to globalisation and it’s making everything just a little bit more bearable.

On this week’s IEA podcast, Emma Revell, Head of Communications, is joined by our Head of Political Economy Dr Kristian Niemietz to discuss the connection between globalisation and global pandemics.