Is it possible to describe the origins of the universe, dark matter, planets, alien worlds, particle physics, galaxies and telescopes in just 1000 words? Yes, says astrophysicist, Dr Roberto Trotta in this interview with Craig Barfoot.

Roberto Trotta, Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics at Imperial College, University of London has written The Edge of the Sky, a tale of the great discoveries and outstanding mysteries in modern cosmology, all in the 1000 most common words in the English language, and in the process has created an entrancing and lyrical account of the wonders of the universe.

 

 

 

Through the eyes of a female scientist (student-woman) looking for dark matter in far-away galaxies (Star-Crowds) with one of the biggest telescopes (Big-Seers) on Earth (Home-World), Dr Trotta explains what we have learnt about the universe (All-There-Is) and our place in it.

Photo of Night Sky in Grand Canyon National Park, by Grand Canyon National Park

First published in 1983, Lise Vogel's seminal work, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Towards a Unitary Theory, was seized on by a generation of feminists who called themselves Marxist feminists, but were finding the fragmentation of socialism and feminism difficult to navigate.  Now republished, it was launched (or, rather, re-launched) at the Historical Materialism Conference in London in late 2014.  Pod Academy was at the launch, and recorded the platform speakers:

 

 

Lise Vogel,   Professor (retired) of Sociology at Rider University and the author of numerous books and articles. Before becoming a sociologist, she had an earlier career in art history.

Dr. Tithi Battacharya. associate professor at Purdue Liberal Arts University in the US,

Kate Davison, of Melbourne University

Dr  Sue Ferguson, Associate Professor of Digital Media and Journalism at the Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, who co-wrote, with David McNally, the introduction to the new edition of the book.

 

This bookpod has been made possible by a grant from the Amiel Melburn Trust

You may also be interested in our recording of the Beyond the Fragments event held in London in 2013.

Podcast produced and presented by Craig Barfoot

The past 25 years have witnessed the most rapid economic and social development the world has ever seen.

In our increasingly globalised world, if something happens in one place, the aftershocks move quickly around the globe.  Globalisation creates systemic risks.

Professor Ian Goldin,Director of the Oxford Martin School, University ofOxford. and author, with Mike Mariathasan,  of The Butterfly Defect:  How globalization creates systemic risks, and what to do about It talks to Craig Barfoot about the joys and perils of gloabalisation.

By any measure – life expectancy, nutrition, infant mortality, income – we see improvements.  But the unintended consequences of hyper globalisation such as microbial resistance, obesity, water shortages, climate change, as well as the threats from hyper complexity and integration -  growing inequality, cyber attack, terrorist attack, pandemics and financial crises suggest that the gap between the world’s ability to control its affairs, and what is happening on the ground, is widening.

If we look backwards at globalisation, the glass if half full – there has been significant progress.  But if we look forward 25 years and ask is this progress likely to be sustained, the answer is probably not, it is essential that we learn to manage globalisation and the systemic risks it poses.

A systemic risk is one that cascades across sectoral boundaries – it is not confined to an industrial or commercial sector, or a country.  The 2008 financial crisis was the first systemic risk, it started with the banking industry, but crossed industrial boundaries, flattening industries and putting people out of work, and it fanned out across national borders.

The financial crisis should be seen as a wake up call.  We need to learn from the financial crisis, put in place the necessary reforms.  But the lessons have not been learned and it is likely that there will be another financial crisis.

The Butterfly Defect looks in detail at the financial crisis, but transposes some of the lessons to potential crises involving pandemics, infrastructure, supply chains, ecology, environment and business systems.

The question is, how do we manage complexity and prevent our hyper connected systems leading to contagion and risk?  How, for example, do we ensure that airports are places for conveying people and prevent them becoming places that convey pandemics?

Part of the answer lies in understanding the nature of the risks we face.  For example, we must ensure that no place, as well as no industry, is too big to fail.  Much risk has become geographically concentrated (eg servers in Nevada, banks in Wall Street).

It is also crucial that our international institutions are up to the challenges posed by globalisation – the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, the United Nations, for example.  At present they are not.

Ian Goldin also discusses the paradox of the rise of nationalism in this increasingly globalised world.  Many people feel that the world is out of control and respond by trying to put up walls (trade protectionism, anti immigration laws, referenda for leaving the EU ) and go back to an imagined, safer past.

This is Professor Goldin's second podcast for Pod Academy.  See also  Divided Nations: global challenges, global governance 

Photo by Lars Plougman

Jo Barratt talks to architect, designer and inventor, Alistair Parvin in this latest podcast from Civic Radio.

Alistair Parvin says it is easier to capture what a citizen is not, than what a citizen is, and notes the language of ‘customers’ and ‘consumers’ that has been increasingly employed as public services have been privatised.

But he points to the growing movement of those who are reframing ‘democracy’ (so that it isn't just about registering a vote every few years) and challenging how public services are provided. He suggests that new technology enables a true revolution – in which we move away from centralised civic structures, towards a world in which community planning and construction is done by citizens rather than to citizens. Where architects are not just working for the rich and for huge construction companies, but supporting more people have more power over their environment.

This is not just a theoretical position.  Alistair is part of Zero Zero, a company that encourages and coordinates the development of Open Source architecture blueprints of houses, (the WikiHouse) that can be downloaded free of charge, and made, in kit form, with 3D printing.  The kit can then be constructed by those with no traditional construction skills, in a matter of days.

Scale model of Wikihouse in New Zealand             pic by Martin Luff

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also see Alistair Parvin's Ted Talk here.

 

 

Child and family therapist Dr Marilyn Wedge talks to Craig Barfoot about her latest book, A Disease Called Childhood: Why ADHD Became an American Epidemic. 

 

Over the course of her career as a child and family therapist, Marilyn Wedge has witnessed an 'astronomical rise' in the number of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  Until 1995 she had hardly heard of ADHD, but over the following decades the number of children on medication for ADHD grew and grew until now 13% of boys and 5% of girls in the US - 6 million children -  are on prescription drugs (mainly Ritalin and Adderall) with that diagnosis.

 

But this approach is not shared by other countries,  A child in the US is 8 times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than in France, and 80 times more likely than in Finland!  Dr Wedge says this is because in those countries, when a child is exhibiting difficult behaviour they look at the context - perhaps the child is unhappy at school, or seeing their parents fight at home - and they address the problem rather than medicate the child.  She points out that in the US a child can be taken to the doctor, and receive a diagnosis of ADHD and a prescription for drugs in 15 minutes, while in France the observation and consultations are likely to take 8 hours.

 

Why? because 'biological psychiatry has taken over the field of psychiatry in the US'  says Dr Wedge.  The view that the problem is in the child's brain or nervous system, rather than in his or her environment was set out for the first time in DSM 3 in 1980, and Dr Wedge points the finger at the pharmaceutical companies for this approach.

 

Dr Wedge argues that psychiatry needs to completely change it approach, and look at the child's environment, offering help to parents through parenting classes etc.

 

Website mentioned in podcast:

http://www.propublica.org/article/dollars-for-docs-the-top-earners

 

Marylin's blog on Psychology today:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children

 

Photo:  Family Portrait by Jörg Schubert

Podcast produced and presented by Lee Millam

"A chocolate hug".  That's how one person we talked to describes her 'addiction' to sugar and chocolate.

Sugar is everywhere.  It is added to virtually all processed foods from pizza and curry sauces to soups, and fishcakes.

The average person in the UK eats the equivalent of 15 teaspoons a day (that's probably an underestimate as few people are honest about their sugar intake)- but the recommended level is no more than 6 teaspoons per person per day.  We crave chocolate and other sweet things.

And it has had a huge impact on our health and our health services.  Not only is it very bad for our teeth (Queen Elizabeth 1 had black teeth from eating too much sugar), but it is a major contributor to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

In this podcast Lee Millam talks to Professor Graham MacGregor of the Wolfson Institute who says we are not exactly 'addicted' to sugar, but rather, we are habituated to sugar.  We now expect it in our food. "You get used to a lot of sugar in things and your sugar taste receptors get suppressed and you then prefer more and more sugar."

So why are we consuming so much sugar?  Professor MacGregor points the finger at the food industry.  The food industry, he says, is feeding us rubbishy, cheap, tasteless food, and making it more attractive by adding sugar, salt and palm oil - all of which are very bad for us. Sugar is a cheap additive, it bulks up the food and makes us crave it.  The industry is good at marketing cheap foods to poor communities, including children in poor communities, and the result is high rates of obesity and diabetes. And now, he says, they are planning on moving into India and China and Vietnam to sell this 'rubbish food'.

So what is to be done?  Professor MacGregor dismisses the idea of promoting healthy eating, and says we have to ban products with high sugar content (and high levels of saturated fat and salt).  And all of us, individually, must avoid eating biscuits, and confectionery and give up drinking soft drinks and fruit juice.

All music from freemusicarchive.org: 

EX LUNA - Serial Project - LAFAYETTE 

Abstract Nostalgic Fractals Systems – Floating In A Lake Of Happiness

Project 5am - The Dream

Photo, Lips Like Sugar AJC

The New Citizenship project wants to challenge the idea of an individual as a consumer - and replace it with the individual as a citizen, using the techniques of marketing and public relations(usually associated with consumerism) to do so.

in this latest podcast from Civic Radio, Jo Barratt talks to  Jon Alexander and Irenie Wilson, the Directors of the New Citizenship Project.

Has the world of commerce encroached irrevocably on our civic spaces, and how much do we care? How much is civic exclusion growing because of what participation demands or expects of us? Civic Radio is on the road, seeking out the people and organisations that are exploring these topics in different ways.

The New Citizenship Project is interested in how you create a shift in the dominant story of the individual in society from the Consumer to the Citizen.

Subscribe on iTunes to Citizen Radio..

Produced by Jo Barratt.

This is the latest podcast in the Civic Radio series.

Other podcasts in this series can be found here:

Launch of Civic Radio with writer and urbanist Adam Greenfield

Social inequality and civic participation featuring Simon Willis, CEO of the Young Foundation

At the service of the citizen:redefining civic tech conversation with tech activist Laurenellen McCann

Re-imagining local government  with Anna Randle of Lambeth Borough Council, London

Aral Balkan on being a citizen

Can public servants change the face of local government? with Dave Seliger, a New York civil servant.

Civic Innovation and the Interconnected City with Bryan Boyer

Podcast produced and presented by Lily Ames

This podcast is part of our Feast for the Senses strand and is the first of a mini series on the study of Sound by Lily Ames.

Mike Wyeld: It’s a new world, it’s like the sound is in the air as everybody jokes about at the moment and it really is, we have that ability now to have people who are dedicated to thinking about how we hear and what kind of rich culture is that.

 

Lily Ames:  Mike Wyeld has many roles a the Royal College of Art, including instructing in both the animation and sound departments. For the last few years he has run the Sound Lab at RCA. In this programme we will hear from Mike and a few of his students about how they’re breaking new sound in the academic world.

 

MW: So I suppose in sound at the Royal College of Art we treat it in a couple of ways.

First of all as a post production technique for filmmaking, so for animation we have quite a well respected animation department, the tracks are entirely crafted here so the students learn how to create their own foley, their own sound effects, atmospheres, that kind of thing and learn how to record it themselves. They also move on, we mix it professionally, we have full 5.1. pro tools based sound mixing facility and we also have a large sound recording area so large live room and we have everything from bands to orchestras to individual musicians to foley sessions - you name it, we do it. So that’s the more conventional part of it. In an academic sense we also think of sound in a fine art context. A few years ago, here in the UK an artist by the name of Susan Philipsz won what is generally considered one of Britain’s most biggest art prizes - the Turner Prize. It was for a work rendered entirely in sound and since then we’ve kind of seen an explosion in people wanting to work in sound for its own sake - so sound for galleries, sound for installation. And really, the way to think of it is to think of the ear temporarily displacing the eye as the seat of thinking.

 

I suppose in the last five or six years we’ve seen an explosion in people working in sound in a number of different ways. We’ve also seen the explosion of people being able to work with sound because of its democratization. Pro tools, the grandaddy of software for example, now works on a laptop and now avid, the company that owns it have announced there will be a 16 track version of it for free for everyone to use on earth. So, people are able to now manipulate sound, design sound and think about sound in new ways without a great deal of knowledge or expertise. They can now just get going with it. So we’ve seen that happen and we’ve also seen people become interested in some of the myths of sound, so there’s a lot of sound in terms of what it can do to the body and how it can affect you physically and we know that it does have physical effects. So we’re seeing a lot of new technology and everyday people starting to grapple with that, including artists.

 

LA: As sound technology becomes more accessible, students have started to show interest in the field.

 

MW: I’ve noticed people being able to think and speak more intelligently about sound, because there’s a lot more thinking out there about sound, so that’s the first thing. The other thing is I’ve noticed people starting to want to engage in sound, it used to be the case that you would go into a gallery and if there was a moving image work it would often be silent and I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think people are more brave about accompanying their image with sound they’ve deliberately chosen as opposed to sound that is naturally upon the chosen image. So people have intentionally brought sound to their moving image work. I’ve also noticed people realizing the emotional power that sound has. In terms of enrollment,

"Citizenship is about participating in a thing that is bigger than yourself and in which everyone has an equal stake.”  says architect Bryan Boyer.

 

In this latest podcast from Civic Radio, Bryan Boyer a US architect who spent some time in the Finnish Innovation Fund in Helsinki, talks to Jo Barratt about re-imagining the libraries in New York and the importance of reconceptualising the civic.

 

With a bill for repairs that would top $1bn dollars (more than a universal childcare pledge), a grand library building programme was unlikely to be championed by New York politicians, so Boyer and his team had to find another approach, one that would leverage alternative forms of capital – time, expertise and also the institutional weight of individuals, communities, museums,  and non-profit organisations  - which could effectively  de-risk investment in civic assets.  It is, he says, crucial to demonstrate that innovation can bring good results, and at the same time de-risk the innovation (innovation can be scary for politicians), so that local politicians can buy in.

So what role does he see for public institutions?  For Boyer they provide ‘continuity and scale’.  Pubic institutions are important because, he says, they deal with large numbers of people in equal, fair and consistent ways.  However, because of their sheer scale they have often abstracted the detail – it is statiscitcal analysis rather than the experiences and needs of individuals, that drives policy. The big issue is making public instituions more responsive.

A lot of people in the UK are talking about a ‘digital public space’,could this be the answer?  According to Boyer it is important (and he commends gov.uk for its friendly interface), but ‘we still need to coexist on the street.’  We have to rethink how the core of an institution works.

So,  do civil servants really understand the potential of open data portals?  Boyer is clear that top civil servants know that a different approach is needed(but feel constrained by the system), and certainly front line staff at the bottom of the food chain know what is at stake and have the best ideas of what is needed.  But there are two problems.  Firstly, the tech community is not coming up with the killer apps that will seize the initiative, and secondly the huge number of civil servants in what he calls the ‘Fat Middle’ (a term he used in Helsinki) is so disconnected from the everyday concerns of citizens that they cannot see the need for a new way of working.

How can  ‘civic spaces’ (such as schools, parks, post offices and libraries) retain their importance at the heart of the community when they are increasingly facing competition from private providers?  The so-called ‘white flight’ from US cities in the 1980s meant a lower tax base for public services, which led to a vicious cycle of decline – the services deteriorated, so few people were then prepared to fight for them, they became sink services.

In part, says Boyes, this is a failure of the conceptualisation of the civic.  We need to develop services that people really want to use, and persuade them to participate in those services as citizens but, importantly, it is also about initiating a healthy conversation about funding the civic parts of our lives.

A key recognition is that civic institutions are linked – the swimming pool and the library and the park together give us an understanding of the connectedness of the city as a whole – and of utmost importance is affordable, efficient public transport that enables us to move around the city, and the safety and cleanliness of our streets.  Here there is also a role for civic tech – to connect us to what is going on (though as Boyes points out, he doesn’t know of one single place where information on  all the events and activities being run by the public authorities can be view...

This podcast about urban smellscapes was produced by Jo Barratt and first aired on Life in Scents.  It is part of our 'Feast for the Senses' series.

Have you ever stepped off a plane and been aware of a different smell in the air - the smell of a country, a city, a terrain?

This podcast is a fascinating exploration of our urban smellscapes.  We are all familiar with landscapes - 'smellscapes' are the smell equivalent.

It is drawn from a lecture by Victoria Henshaw lecturer in Urban Design and Planning at University of Sheffield, whose specialism is smell.   The lecture took place after one of Victoria's 'Smell Walks', organised by Scratch and Sniff events and explores how we live and navigate using our noses, how cities can be mapped by aroma, and how architects and planners might use a consideration of this in their work.

It starts by looking at how we adapt to different smells.  Usually we are smelling so many different things but we don't process them all consciously as it would be overwhelming to do so. Some smells are cultural, some smells we are more tolerant of at certain types of day(such as beer at night), some smells we experience differently depending on our genes (eg Androstenonethe the hormone in body odour - sometimes called the caveman odoour - which 60% of us can smell, but 40% cannot smell.  Of those who can smell it,  90% smell body odour, but 10% smell flowers!)  Have we 'sterilised' our environment, rid it of the smells?

Victoria finishes with a bit of futurology, and she tells us to expect smells for our mobile phones - which will give us different smells for different callers!

If you are interested in further exploration in the world of smell, the absolute go-to podcast platform is Life in Scents, which has lots of podcasts of interviews with people looking at their lives through smell.  Also take a look at Victoria Henshaw's great blog, Smells and the City, and Odette Toilette's olefactory adventure events.

Photo, Amsterdam: Fons Heijnsbroek

And find our podcast on Anosmia here.