Ratio Talks

The idea of a relational social policy that responds to a powerful civil society, one comprising relationships between people, is built from my own research and experiments, learning from Ratio’s partners, and a lot of reading. At the core of the reading are a dozen or so seminal texts. Robin Dunbar is on that list. Over the last eight years, I keep coming back to his work.

Robin’s research explains why we build social networks, the limits of those networks and their function. His recent book How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures shows how religion built out from ancient rituals designed to manage conflict and maintain strong social networks, and the benefits they bring to our health and wealth.

Today’s episode barely scratches the surface of Robin’s work. But it provides the foundation for the rest of this series on religion, and hopefully will encourage listeners to read his work. (It is relevant not just for understanding religion, but also for thinking about work on place, building community power, and recovering trust in democracy).

Here are 10 lessons I take from Robin’s work into the rest of the series.

* Relating is difficult for all animals, including humans. Once we get beyond groups of 50, we are predisposed to violence.

* This has been a problem for our evolution, and we have been trying to solve it in many ways, two of which, first the political and judicial institutions of the state and second religion have proved highly influential.

* (Religion has evolved from communal religions bound by trance like experiences; doctrinal religions that rely on merciless gods, sacrifice, and shared moral codes, and eventually into monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam that now dominate and are characterised by a single god, formal places of worship, priesthoods and rituals.

* All religions fire up the endorphins, and make us feel good. They also increase our sense of bondedness and proliferate the numbers of -to use Robin’s words- ‘shoulders we can cry on’ in times of difficulty.

* Societies are more religious when their members are under threat. When there is a war, religious observance rises, as we see in present day Ukraine. Under peaceful conditions, religious observance declines. The enduring peace in Europe after centuries of war may explain the decline in religious observance.

* Religion is an emotional response, not a cognitive response. But the emotional response, the sense of shared moral order, the sense of collective agency, the idea that together we can, the sense that we have a common language, these perceptions are real in their consequences. At scale, the shared emotional response boosts health and wealth.

* Religions are most effective when they reflect behaviours that participants value, certainly more so than when they use a policeman in the sky type god to impose order.

* Religions scale by building up from the bottom, building on local rituals, local places of worship, existing shared moral codes. They then add on the top a shared discipline, things that we all do at the same time, and at least weekly, and also by offering shared vision.

* At the same time, religion has a tendency to colonise civil society and undermine natural social order, hence the potential for religion to be a force for ill as well as a force for good.

* The active ingredients in religion -the routine endorphin inducing activities- mean that religious groups endure longer than secular groups, irrespective of the truth of the religion’s doctrine.

This episode start a new sub-series on the relationship between religion and civil society. The series is a collaboration with Chine McDonald from the think tank Theos. We have benefited from help and insight from Liz Slade, head of the Unitarians, and who also contributes to the series.

At its core, the series explores the ways in which religion extends and restricts civil society. The impetus is Robin Dunbar’s recent book How Religion Evolved. It is built on what is known as Dunbar’s number -which is 150- that refers to the number of people that the human species can meaningfully interact with at any one time. Robin’s book explains how religion has contributed to our evolution and extending social networks beyond that number. Robin joins the podcast next week to explain these ideas.

In this episode, Chine and I simply and briefly set the scene and outline what is coming.

Josh Bilton is a community artist -he explains what this means at the beginning of the podcast. He has been working in the Brunswick Centre where, until recently, I was living. The Brunswick Centre is a megabuilding -a complex of buildings that serve several functions- in central London. It is home to several thousand people, it is a shopping centre, and it offers workspace for designers and craftspeople. It is a building that people can either love or hate. To someone like me, interested in modernism and community it is a love affair. To many who live in the Brunswick, fighting the council and utility companies for basic rights and services, and to onlookers more at home with Georgian Bloomsbury, it feels like a struggle and/or looks like an eyesore.

I bumped into Josh at the exhibition of his work, and was so fascinated by what he had to say I recorded a podcast with him then and there.

Josh’s insights into life in The Brunswick are a metaphor for life in England. He talks about the need for repair. About acts of care. About recovery. To me, he is talking about the groundwork needed for England to mend the divisions that have set people apart over the last decade and a half.

Josh’s exhibition Repair was shown at the Brunswick Centre on the 12th and 13th of July 2025. It is the latest in a series of projects known as Passengers conceived and curated by Julie Hill, in partnership with Gauld Architecture.

This week’s guest on Ratio Talks is Cormac Russell, one of the leading thinkers in community development. Cormac learned his trade with John McKnight, and Jody Kretzmann and other leading lights of the community development movement in Chicago, and the community power movement across the United States. Cormac is perhaps best known in the U.K. for ABCD -Asset Based Community Development- but his understanding of community is far deeper -such as his knowledge about community power- and his interests are much wider -for example his 2020 book Rekindling Democracy. Cormac’s work is now applied across the world.

Podcast regular Pritpal S. Tamber gives his reflections on Cormac’s comments. He brings the conversation back to the seminar work of S.Leonard Syme and, in particular, his early work on control.

In this second episode of my conversation with Simon Duffy, we talk about the policy and practice implications of the concept.

In the podcast, Simon refers to the work of philosophers Hannah Arendt, particularly her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, and Simone Weil. Simon also draws on Guy Standing’s 2014 book The Precariat.

I asked Simon about three books: Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Granddaughterabout the rise of the right in Germany. (I will review Schlink’s novel in the coming weeks); Claudia Rankin’s extraordinary book length poem Citizen: An American Lyric; and Dieter Helm’s Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy.

In the second episode, Simon refers to several networks developing power shifting practices that build on his work on citizenship. The European Municipalist Networkmaps and connects initiatives in this area, including Barcelona en comú mentioned by Simon in the podcast. The Fearless Cities is a similar network. Simon is heavily involved in Fearless Cities South Yorkshire.

If you find these episodes interesting, you may want to listen to Simon’s previous contribution describing his role in the fight to de-institutionalise people with intellectual disabilities.

There are multiple additional sources and resources at Citizen Network.

In this and the next episode of Ratio Talks, Simon Duffy talks about the foundational concept of citizen -not in the sense of citizen of a nation, but in terms of the rights and responsibilities of every person who lives in a country, regardless of their nationality.

In the podcast, Simon refers to the work of philosophers Hannah Arendt, particularly her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, and Simone Weil. Simon also draws on Guy Standing’s 2014 book The Precariat.

I asked Simon about three books: Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Granddaughter about the rise of the right in Germany. (I will review Schlink’s novel in the coming weeks); Claudia Rankin’s extraordinary book length poem Citizen: An American Lyric; and Dieter Helm’s Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy.

In the second episode, Simon refers to several networks developing power shifting practices that build on his work on citizenship. The European Municipalist Network maps and connects initiatives in this area, including Barcelona en comú mentioned by Simon in the podcast. The Fearless Cities is a similar network. Simon is heavily involved in Fearless Cities South Yorkshire.

If you find these episodes interesting, you may want to listen to Simon’s previous contribution describing his role in the fight to de-institutionalise people with intellectual disabilities.

There are multiple additional sources and resources at Citizen Network.

This week’s guest on Ratio Talks is a political theorist, leader of the UCL Policy Lab, and former speechwriter to ex-Labour Party leader Ed Milliband.

Marc Stears grounds his work in the meaning that we all find in our ordinary lives. The proposition is set out in his book Out of the Ordinary, an analysis of the work of British writers such as George Orwell, J.B. Priestly, Dylan Thomas, D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.

The most vivid representation of the idea is Dylan Thomas’ insistance that a stumbling squirrel is at least as important as Hitler’s invasions. When Thomas was writing, politicians understood the importance of everyday life. The relentless centralisation of power has loosened the connection. Democracy is suffering as a result.

During the conversation Marc and I mentioned several books, TV shows and podcasts including:

Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing Out of Western Democracy, Verso Books

James Graham’s TV series Brian and Maggie on Channel 4

Ordinary Hope: A New Way of Changing Our Country and Ordinary Hope: A Mission to Rebuild from the UCL Policy Lab

Richard Galpin’s work on conversations as discussed in a previous podcast

Marc’s book Out of the Ordinary: How Everyday Life Inspired a Nation and How it Can Again, was published by Belknap/Harvard in 2021. It is beautifully written and full of love for life and culture.

We are joined at the end of the conversation by Alice Robson, Head of Communities at The Winch, a well established and highly esteemed civil society organisation, deeply rooted in community in Swiss Cottage North London. Alice links Marc’s words to community work, and reflects on what she learned as one of Marc’s students.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and is engineered by Nik Paget Tomlinson. Get in touch with us any time by messaging us on the Substack.

Jon Cruddas, until the last election the Member of Parliament for Dagennham and Rainham, wrote a book to mark the centenary and provide a new perspective on the history of the Party.

A Century of Labour is a masterclass in the complexities of modern party politics. Labour is not bound by a single political objective. It is a community of competing ideas about how we live together.

For Jon Cruddas, the competition revolves around three perspectives on social justice. Over the last 100 years, those ideas have evolved. Some have proved apposite for the social and economic challenges facing the U.K. at successive moments in its history, and became the bedrock of social policy at that moment.

Success for Labour, like success for any political party, is the product of deep conversation, pluralism -balancing competing ideas-, tolerance and political strategy. The picture Cruddas paints of the party has two sides. One looks a lot like civil society. There is social infrastructure to connect people. There are conversations about how to live peaceably. There is an unwritten almanac, continually updated, recording the shared moral order. There is natural mutual aid.

The other is mechanical. Looked at from this side, the Party is a machine geared up to win.

The conversation with Jon in this podcast explores what can be learned from A Century of Labour for the future of progressive politics, an effective balance between state and civil society, and finding new solutions to the existential challenges of climate change, managed migration and ethical A.I.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Get in touch with us any time by messaging us on the Substack.

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson.

In the last episode of the podcast, we talked to Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council during a quarter of a century of policy and democratic reform.

Richard was part of a double act. For most of the time he was leader, Sir Howard Bernstein was the Chief Executive.

Howard sadly died in the summer of last year. To understand his contribution to the Manchester story, and how he worked with Richard, I turned to my brother.

Geoff Little worked with Howard for nearly three decades.

In the podcast you will hear Geoff refer to the Memorial website and the many tributes to the man and his work. If you are in any doubt about Howard’s capabilities, renowned Manchester born economist Jim O’Neill, Baron O'Neill of Gatley, recently described Howard as the most important civil servant of his generation.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Get in touch with us any time by messaging us on the Substack

Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson.

If you skim through the domestic news headlines in British papers between 1996 and 2021, you will be reminded of the Blair years, the effects of the global economic crash, austerity, Brexit, pandemic, and the cost of living crisis. The pattern is very much rise and fall.

If you look very carefully, you will discover variations in the pattern. One of those variations is Manchester. For while we all obsessed about Westminster politics, the politicians and officials of Manchester worked hand in hand with civil society and the market and obsessed about what was right for local residents.

The remarkable story of Manchester’s exceptionalism is told this week by one of its architects, Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester Council for a quarter of a century. Working with his colleagues in the nine other boroughs that make up Greater Manchester, and supported by his officials, not least Chief Executive Sir Howard Bernstein, who features in the next episode, Richard oversaw economic success, urban regeneration and improvements in population health that bucked the U.K trends.

Devolution was a totem of the approach. Manchester assumed powers and duties from Westminster, and pushed democratic structures into neighbourhoods. As the podcast was being recorded, the current U.K. Government was preparing to publish plans to spread the Manchester model across the country.

Richard is a stickler for accuracy, and asked us to correct a few errors in the recording. The health legislation of 2002, is actually 2022. Richard was succeeded as leader of Manchester Council by Bev Craig. The Combined Authority of Greater Manchester never had a leader as such. Tony Lloyd became interim Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2015, and was succeeded by Andy Burnham in 2017.

The reflection on this episode comes from Jon Cruddas, former Member of Parliament for Dagenham and Rainham. Jon will be back in a few weeks to talk about his latest book A Century of Labour.

Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Get in touch with us any time by messaging us on the Substack, Ratio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson.