Politics

I have listened to and would recommend the following podcasts (2015-2018 recommendations to follow):

2014

Imagine that we could build "start-up countries" and escape limiting, outdated forms of governance that hold people back. "Seasteading", according to its advocates, has the promise to do this, creating new "spaces for human freedom".

Inspiring the world for 50 years and counting...more than half a century since Dr King spoke, and still as powerful and relevant as ever...

In a tribute programme from the BBC, global figures celebrated the legacy of Dr King by reading the words of "I Have a Dream".

A.S. Byatt tells us that "for the Victorians, everything was part of one thing - science, religion, philosophy, economics, politics, women, poetry. They didn't compartmentalise - they thought big." - quote in New Statesman, 27/04/09

This is the Halcyon philosophy too, as much of what's most interesting and important in life appears to come from the interconnectedness of ideas, from the alchemy of putting together - in the words of Theodore Zeldin - two ideas that have never met.

To Oxford Martin School to see Ian Goldin, former Vice President of the World Bank and former economic advisor to Nelson Mandela.

Goldin believes development is the no.1 issue facing humanity - why do some societies and some individuals develop, get richer, get rights etc....while others don't? Why is GDP so pre-dominant, meaning that destructive practices (e.g. environmental harm) are counted as economic acticity - in short, "why are the bads of economies counted as goods?"

Goldin traced the trajectory of development over recent decades. Dependency theory led to uneven development which countries tried to address through import substitution, but countries are generally not very good at state-controlled production and then the oil price rises of the 1970s led to a vicious cycle of debts and bail-outs.