Academy of Ideas

In this edition of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons talks to Alastair Donald from the Future Cities Project about what can be done to solve the UK's housing crisis and barrister Jon Holbrook comes in to tell us why he would scrap the Human Rights Act. Rob also talks to Dr Fiona McEwen from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry on new research, which appears to show that autism is largely caused by genetic and not environmental factors, members of the Institute of Ideas team give us their opinions on the week's stories, and Geoff Kidder reports back from the inaugural session of the Dublin Salon.

In this week's podcast of Ideas David Bowden talks to Dolan Cummings about whether racial equality laws are now, or ever have been, needed in the UK, Rob Lyons addresses an event held by Policy Exchange on childhood obesity, and spiked's assistant editor Tom Slater comes in to talk about the Down With Campus Censorship! campaign.

The recent crisis in Ukraine has been widely portrayed in the West as a rerun of the Cold War, with a peaceful pro-EU Ukraine being pulled apart as the result of an aggressive and newly expansionist Russia seeking to re-establish hegemony over its neighbourhood. Russia’s annexing of the Ukrainian region of Crimea has been roundly condemned as violating international law, state sovereignty, democracy and causing the most serious crisis in European security since the end of the Cold War. The situation is complicated, however, by the close historic ties between Russia and Ukraine and the fact that many Russian-speaking Ukrainians want to maintain them, as well as the fact that Crimea was actually part of Russia within living memory.

Significantly, however, in recent decades Russia has tended to cite the importance of national sovereignty in opposition to Western-led foreign interventions; this is the first time it has accepted the idea that sovereignty can be overridden by other concerns. So is this the beginning of a newly aggressive Russian foreign policy, or is Ukraine a special case?

Some commentators have presented a different narrative from the Western one of Russian expansionism, pointing to European and American actions in the run-up to the crisis, such as US senator John McCain’s visit to anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan before the fall of the government. It is argued that the EU and the American directly intervened with the effect of destabilising Ukraine by delegitimising an elected government and effectively hand-picking a new government, alarming many Ukrainians, in particular those in the Crimea and other Russian-speaking areas. Appeals to Ukrainian national sovereignty are further complicated by the fact that anti-Russian Ukrainians’ desire to join the EU arguably means swapping client status with one bigger power for another.

So who is right? How should we understand the current crisis over Ukraine? Is it a new Cold War provoked by Russian aggression or do we need to look closer to home to understand the causes?

SPEAKERS Professor Ivan Krastev Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia; permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna Dr Tara McCormack lecturer in international politics, University of Leicester; author,Critique, Security and Power: the political limits to emancipatory approaches Will Vernon producer, BBC News (speaking in a personal capacity) Dr Kataryna Wolczuk reader in politics and international studies, University of Birmingham CHAIR Bruno Waterfield Brussels correspondent,Daily Telegraph; co-author,No Means No

In this episode of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons talks to economics journalist and author Daniel Ben-Ami about what tax has become one of the biggest issues in British politics and Rob Killick about whether Uber and AirBnB represent the first shoots of a new economy. Plus, Claire Fox explains why state-regulation of what appears on a cigarette pack is a free-speech issue and Institute of Ideas staff select their stories of the past two weeks.

In this episode of the Podcast of Ideas, Rob Lyons speaks to Professor Bill Durodié about last week’s terror attacks in Copenhagen and the implications they have for free speech in Europe. Claire Fox talks about how societal change and the emergence of the public has been reflected through theatre down the ages. And Bríd Hehir tells Rob about how the panic stirred up over female genital mutilation has prompted a witch hunt against physicians and parents.

In late 2014 the Labour party indicated their support for legal ‘buffer zones’ around abortion clinics to prevent protests from interfering with the provision of services. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), Britain's largest abortion provider, supported the move saying that the pro-life protests outside their clinics cause unwarranted levels of distress to those seeking to access lawful healthcare. Is this an acceptable limitation on the freedom to protest, or an unnecessary expansion of the law into the regulation of free speech? Speakers: Frank Furedi (University of Kent), Tim Stanley (Daily Telegraph).Chair: Luke Gittos This Podcast was recorded at the London Legal Salon event at the October Gallery in London on February 10 2015. To find out more about the London Legal Salon's upcoming series of debates on abortion click here .

Sexually explicit material has always challenged censors and traditional moralists. From the 1960s, liberal values on sex and sexual relationships became one of the markers of a civilised, modern society. Over the past decade, however, there’s a gnawing unease that sexually explicit material has gradually stepped down from the top shelf and into the mainstream. Whether it was Rihanna’s raunchy display on The X Factor, Jonathan Ross’ lewd chat shows or Katie Perry simulating oral sex in pop videos, pornographic imagery has become the wallpaper of twenty-first-century society. With the rise of the increasingly ubiquitous ‘celebrity sex tape’, fans of chart-friendly pop stars such as Tulisa Contostavlos are exposed to increasingly graphic and intimate depictions of their icons. And then there’s Fifty Shades of Grey.

Traditional moralists have always found much to censor in modern society, but when former champions of sexual liberalism, such as Joan Bakewell, start bemoaning the onslaught of naked flesh into the living room, something appears to have changed. Indeed, it is fortysomething ex-punk journalists turned parents who have started to wonder aloud why thong-thrusting pop videos are being shown at lunchtime. But could it be argued that we’ve been here many times before? From Elvis Presley and David Bowie to Madonna and Prince, pop stars have sought to challenge and question society’s taboos around sex. Surely Rihanna and Perry are simply the latest practitioners of taboo busting exhibitionism? Or is it the case that sex and relationships have become devalued, with porn aesthetics the new low-grade currency? A civilised society should be open about sex, but are we in danger of forgetting that civilised values also means the separation of the public and private, the decent and the debased? Is the rush to smash sexual taboos a sign of healthy libertarianism or of self-loathing by a cultural elite unwilling and unable to promote higher culture? Are the sexual-taboo smashers really hammering elite traditionalists and conservatives or is it a radical way of sneering at ordinary people’s ‘small minded’ values?

Neil Davenport writer; head of sociology, JFS Sixth Form Centre; contributor, spiked Dr Jan Macvarish research fellow, Centre for Health Services Studies; founding associate, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury Anna Percy feminist performance poet; member, Stirred Feminist Poetry collective; organiser and facilitator, live poetry events and writing workshops Chair: Suzy Dean freelance writer; blogger, Free Society

In the first podcast in a new series, Rob Lyons speaks to Dave Bowden about the state of press freedom in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Justine Brian fills us in on the latest news from Debating Matters, and Geoff Kidder gives us the lowdown on the upcoming Greek elections.

America’s problems at home and abroad have led many to wonder if the US is in decline. US foreign policy, from Syria to Ukraine, appears rudderless and impotent. The Iraq War is widely seen to have been a failure, while US forces are leaving Afghanistan with the Taliban still active and the country far from being a happy democracy.

The US recovery from the recession has been weak, too, while China and India – and even parts of Africa - seem to offer more glittering possibilities for expansion and wealth creation than the US. China may overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in GDP terms by the end of the decade.

At home, the American political class appears to be almost at an impasse, unable to address its challenges, as epitomised by last year’s shutdown of the federal government. Political commentator Timothy Garton Ash argues ‘the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers’. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says that the failure of politics in Washington has been ‘hastening the emergence of a post-American world’.

Yet such declinist talk is hardly new, as exemplified by Paul Kennedy in his 1987 bestseller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. America is still the largest economy in the world, despite having a quarter of the population of either China or India. America is still by far the greatest military power, has the world’s top universities and produces the most cutting-edge research and technological innovation. Even in ‘soft power’ terms, America is the pre-eminent source of the world’s culture. In contrast, the much-vaunted ‘BRIC’ countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China are all faltering in one way or another.

Is the US truly facing the prospect of being replaced as the world’s greatest power? Is the sluggish America today in similar circumstances to Britain at the time of First World War - the faded Greece to Asia’s Rome? Or, is the declinist view overly pessimistic? After all, periods of introspection and worry about US decline over the past 30 years have given way to later resurgence. Is this time different?

Speakers Dr Yaron Brook Executive director, Ayn Rand Institute Dr Jenny Clegg senior lecturer, Asia Pacific Studies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston Dr Sue Currell chair, British Association for American Studies; reader, American Literature, Sussex University James Matthews management consultant; founding member, NY Salon ; writer on economics and business Sir Christopher Meyer chairman, PagefieldAdvisory Board; former British Ambassador to the United States Chair Jean Smith co-founder and director, NY Salon