Contributor(s): Professor Gwyn Bevan, Dr Kate Bayliss, Jo Bateman | This episode of LSE iQ explores a national scandal: widespread illegal sewage dumping by our privatised water companies, and why they are all under criminal investigation.

Speakers: Professor Gwyn Bevan, Dr Kate Bayliss, Jo Bateman

Research links:

How Did Britain Come to This? A century of systemic failures of governance by Gwyn Bevan: https://press.lse.ac.uk/site/books/m/10.31389/lsepress.hdb/

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated: The persistence of neoliberalism in Britain by Kate Bayliss et al, European Journal of Social Theory: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13684310241241800

Contributor(s): Dr Helen Sharman, Dr Jill Stuart, Dr Dimitrios Stroikos | What kind of possibilities does this new space age bring—and what dangers should we be worried about?

Can any nation seize possession of the moon? Could it be mined? Is there junk in space? And whatever happened to that flag that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted on the moon fifty five years ago?

To find out more, Maayan Arad speaks to Dr Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut in space who flew aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz TM-12 in 1991. He also talks to Dr Jill Stuart, an expert in the politics, ethics and law of outer space exploration and exploitation and Visiting Fellow in LSE’s Department of Government, and Dr Dimitrios Stroikos, LSE Fellow in the Department of International Relations and Head of the Space Policy Programme at LSE IDEAS.

 

Contributors

Dr Helen Sharman, first British astronaut

Dr Jill Stuart, Visiting Fellow at LSE’s Department of Government

Dr Dimitrios Stroikos, LSE Fellow in the Department of International Relations at LSE and Head of the Space Policy Programme at LSE IDEAS.

Contributor(s): Professor Esther Duflo, Elizabeth Lewis Channon, Khari Motayne, Professor Sir Christopher Pissarides | While there are always rumours about who might win a Nobel Prize every year, there is no short list for the globally revered academic awards. This means that winning one always comes as a complete surprise. In this episode of LSE iQ, we explore what it’s like to win the prestigious prize and how it changes your life.

The Nobel Prizes were established in 1900 at the behest of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish Chemist, Inventor and Industrialist, known in particular for his invention of dynamite. In his will he stated that his fortune was to be used to reward those who have made the most significant contributions to humanity. The prizes would recognise achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. The prize for economics would come much later in 1968. The prizes are awarded in October every year.

Sue Windebank and Charlotte Kelloway talk to two Nobel Laureates, Professor Esther Duflo and Sir Christopher Pissarides, as well as to the family of the first black person to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, Sir Arthur Lewis.

 

Contributors

Professor Esther Duflo

Elizabeth Lewis Channon

Khari Motayne

Sir Christopher Pissarides

 

Research

Professor Esther Duflo published papers

Sir Christopher Pissarides published papers

Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour , Manchester School, by Sir W. Arthur Lewis

The theory of economic growth, University Books, by Sir W. Arthur Lewis

Contributor(s): Nina Rousille, Camille Landais, Jane Garvey | This episode of LSE iQ explores whether gender pay gap reporting, pay transparency and tackling gender norms can reduce the gender pay gap.

On average across the globe, for every pound earned by a man, a woman earns around 80 pence, according to a 2023 report from the United Nations.

But despite huge advances in access to education, the labour market, and the introduction of the UK Equality Act of 2010, which guarantees equal pay for men and women doing equal work, those figures have pretty much remained the same for the past two decades. Still, the gender pay gap - the difference between the average earnings of men and women - endures. So, how can we solve it?

Anna Bevan talks to broadcaster Jane Garvey about the impact of gender pay gap reporting and what happened to her after the BBC was forced to publish its gender pay gap report.

She also speaks to Nina Rousille, the Executive Director of LSE’s Hub for Equal Representation and Assistant Professor of Economics at MIT, about the role of the Ask Gap and pay transparency, and Camille Landais, Professor of Economics at LSE about the Child Penalty.

 

Research

The Role of the Ask Gap in Gender Pay Inequality by Nina Rousille

The Child Penalty by Camille Landais, Henrik Kleven and Gabriel Leite-Mariante, also displayed here

Who has the power to address the child penalty globally? LSE Festival online exhibition

Contributor(s): Elizabeth Ingleson, John Van Reenen, Ashley Tellis | A shining city on a hill. America the beautiful. The United States has long been mythologised as the land of dreams and opportunity. And since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s it has been undisputedly the most powerful nation on earth. But is it a fading force? The idea of an America in decline has gained traction in recent years and has, of course, been capitalized on by President Trump. Is America’s ‘greatness’ under threat?

In this episode of LSE iQ, a collaboration with the LSE Phelan US Centre's podcast, The Ballpark, Sue Windebank and Chris Gilson speak to LSE’s Elizabeth Ingleson and John Van Reenen and Ashley Tellis from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Contributors

Elizabeth Ingleson

John Van Reenen

Ashley Tellis

 

Research

Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade by Elizabeth Ingleson

The Fall of the Labor Share and the Rise of Superstar Firms by David Autor, David Dorn, Lawrence F Katz, Christina Patterson and John Van Reenen, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2020.

Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China by Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis

 

LSE Phelan United States Centre: https://www.lse.ac.uk/United-States

Listen to The Ballpark podcast: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/Podcasts; LSE Player, Spotify; Soundcloud

Related interviews on The Ballpark with guests on this episode

Dr Ashley Tellis - The Future of US-China Competition

Dr Elizabeth Ingleson - Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade

Contributor(s): Professor Christopher Coker | For the late Professor Christopher Coker the answer lay in the rise of a new political entity, the civilizational state. In an episode of LSE iQ which explored China’s position in the world in the coming century, Professor Coker talked about this, the potential for war between the United States and China and what that might look like.

 

Christopher Coker, was Professor of International Relations at LSE for almost four decades, and co-Director of LSE IDEAS, LSE’s foreign policy think tank. He was a scholar of war and warfare. This episode of LSE iQ is a lightly edited version of our 2019 interview recorded before the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is dedicated to his memory.

 

 

Contributors

 

Professor Christopher Coker

 

Research

The Rise of the Civilizational State by Christopher Coker

 

The Improbable War, China, the United States and the Logic of Great Power Conflict by Christopher Coker

Contributor(s): Nikki Sullivan, Paul Frijters, Sarah Appleton, Helen | Joanna Bale talks to Helen, who found Ozempic ‘life-changing’, Clinical Psychologist Sarah Appleton, and LSE’s Nikki Sullivan & Paul Frijters.

Contributor(s): Professor Sam Friedman | More than one in four people in the UK, from solidly middle-class backgrounds, mistakenly think of themselves as working-class. Why is this? In this episode of Extra iQ, a shorter style of the LSE iQ podcast, Sue Windebank speaks to Sam Friedman, a sociologist of class and inequality at LSE to find out more. Sam spoke to the podcast in November 2022 for an episode which asked, ‘How does class define us?’ The whole interview was fantastic but we couldn’t include it all in the original episode. This episode features some more of the thought-provoking content from that interview.

 

Contributors

Sam Friedman

 

Research

Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self by Sam Friedman, Dave O’Brien and Ian McDonald

Contributor(s): Heather Kappes, David McDaid, Molly Taylor | According to the Office for National Statistics, 7.1 per cent of adults in Great Britain - nearly 4 million people - say they 'often or always' feel lonely. Look around you when you’re in a crowded place – a supermarket or an office - 1 in 14 of the people you’re looking at are likely to be lonely, not just sometimes but most of the time.

And that’s half a million more people saying that they feel chronically lonely in 2023 than there were in 2020 – suggesting that the pandemic has had some enduring impacts in this respect.

Sue Windebank talks to a young person who responded to her own deep feelings of loneliness by campaigning to help others. She hears how people can be influenced to feel more or less lonely – at least for a short time. And she got a surprising insight into which group of people are the loneliest.

Sue talks to: Heather Kappes, Associate Professor of Management at LSE; David McDaid Associate Professorial Research Fellow in the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre at LSE; and Molly Taylor, Loneliness Activist, Founder of #AloneNoMore.

Contributor(s): Faiza Shaheen, Duncan Green, Dr Jens Madsen | Experts will discuss how change isn't as straightforward as we'd like it to be – How it can be all in the timing and that, at times, you just need to wait for the right moment to make change happen. We’ll hear from an academic striving to become a Member of Parliament and make change from within the political system, rather than by lobbying from the outside. And an author and strategic advisor to Oxfam will explain how change is built around communities and groups of people rather than the individual.

Mike Wilkerson talks to: Faiza Shaheen, an author and a Labour candidate running to become an MP; Dr. Jens Madsen an Assistant Professor at LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science; and Dr. Duncan Green a Professor in Practice and Senior Strategic advisor to Oxfam.

Contributors

Faiza Shaheen

Duncan Green

Jens Madsen

 

Research

How change Happens: Duncan Green