Listen to the debate from the Battle of Ideas 2016.
In November, Oxford Dictionaries declared ‘post-truth’ its Word of the Year. For some commentators, both the US presidential campaign and the EU referendum in the UK have revealed the emergence of ‘post-truth’ politics. Donald Trump has dismissed fact-checking as an ‘out-of-touch, elitist media-type thing’. Former Tory minister and Brexit leader Michael Gove notoriously claimed that ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’.
Have experts been over-reaching themselves and intruding into matters that require political judgement rather than statistics? On the other hand, if people scorn evidence, will society sink into the mire of prejudice and superstition? Have the majority of voters really given up on assessing the evidence?
SPEAKERS
Professor Frank Furedi
sociologist and social commentator; author, What’s Happened to the University?, Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, and Authority: a sociological history
Josh Lowe
European politics reporter, Newsweek
Neena Modi
professor of neonatal medicine, Imperial College London; consultant in neonatal medicine, Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust; president, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
Dr Adam Rutherford
geneticist, science writer and broadcaster, BBC; author, Creation and A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived.
Book Launch: Free Speech and Why It Matters, with Andrew Doyle
#Arts&Society: Le Corbusier: universal artist or technocrat?
#EducationForum: Is lockdown damaging children’s mental health?
#LockdownDebates: Love under lockdown - are we finished with intimacy?
#Arts&Society: What is the future of classical music in the UK?
Book Launch: The Corona Generation, with Jennie Bristow
#LockdownDebates: Big Tech - platform, publisher or poison?
#PodcastOfIdeas: new year, new normal?
#EducationForum: Exploring Head, Hand, Heart by David Goodhart
#LockdownDebates: Conquering Covid - is there a better way?
#EconomyForum: Tilting at windmills - are there downsides to a ‘green recovery’?
Book Launch: Democracy Under Siege - Don’t Let Them Lock It Down!, with Frank Furedi
Book Launch: The Problem With Parenting, with Nancy McDermott
#EconomyForum: Time to scrap GCSEs?
#BookClub: Dorothy West’s ’The Wedding’
#LockdownDebates: Civil liberties in times of corona
#SocialPolicyForum: Is working from home, working?
#ScotlandSalon: Should we support the Scottish Hate Crime Bill?
#EconomyForum: Globalists, nationalists and their discontents
#ScotlandSalon: Will Covid-19 change education?
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free