LSE IQ

Mar 03 2025 73 ep. 33 mins 836

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LSE IQ is a monthly podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science in which we ask some of the smartest social scientists - and other experts - to answer intelligent questions about economics, politics or society. #LSEIQ

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Are we in danger of losing our communities?

Mar 03 2025 29 mins

Contributor(s): Professor Shani Orgad, Dr Divya Srivastava, Dr Julia King, Dr Olivia Theocharides-Feldman | With the cost-of-living crisis leading to the closure of community spaces around the UK, and the pressures on urban development projects, this episode of LSE iQ asks, are we in danger of losing our communities? Speakers: Professor Shani Orgad, Dr Divya Srivastava , Dr Julia K

Do we need to drive?

Feb 03 2025 29 mins

Contributor(s): Dr Phillip Rode, Professor Rachel Aldred, Dr Chris Tennant, Indira Ray | This episode of LSE iQ looks at whether we should still be driving, whether public transport in cities has helped alleviate the need to drive and how driverless cars are still a distance away from really helping solve the issue of the number of cars on the road. Speakers: Dr Phillip Rode, Profe

Why are our rivers and seas polluted by sewage?

Jan 06 2025 33 mins

Contributor(s): Professor Gwyn Bevan, Dr Kate Bayliss, Jo Bateman | This episode of LSE iQ explores a national scandal: widespread illegal sewage dumping by our privatised water companies, and why they are all under criminal investigation. Speakers: Professor Gwyn Bevan, Dr Kate Bayliss, Jo Bateman Research links: How Did Britain Come to This? A century of systemic failures of gove

Who owns outer space?

Nov 19 2024 29 mins

Contributor(s): Dr Helen Sharman, Dr Jill Stuart, Dr Dimitrios Stroikos | What kind of possibilities does this new space age bring—and what dangers should we be worried about? Can any nation seize possession of the moon? Could it be mined? Is there junk in space? And whatever happened to that flag that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted on the moon fifty five years ago? To fi

What’s it like to win a Nobel Prize?

Sep 30 2024 33 mins

Contributor(s): Professor Esther Duflo, Elizabeth Lewis Channon, Khari Motayne, Professor Sir Christopher Pissarides | While there are always rumours about who might win a Nobel Prize every year, there is no short list for the globally revered academic awards. This means that winning one always comes as a complete surprise. In this episode of LSE iQ, we explore what it’s like to

How can we solve the gender pay gap?

Sep 02 2024 28 mins

Contributor(s): Nina Rousille, Camille Landais, Jane Garvey | This episode of LSE iQ explores whether gender pay gap reporting, pay transparency and tackling gender norms can reduce the gender pay gap. On average across the globe, for every pound earned by a man, a woman earns around 80 pence, according to a 2023 report from the United Nations. But despite huge advances in access t

Will the US remain the world’s superpower?

May 20 2024 35 mins

Contributor(s): Elizabeth Ingleson, John Van Reenen, Ashley Tellis | A shining city on a hill. America the beautiful. The United States has long been mythologised as the land of dreams and opportunity. And since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s it has been undisputedly the most powerful nation on earth. But is it a fading force? The idea of an America in decline has

China, war and the civilizational state

Apr 08 2024 18 mins

Contributor(s): Professor Christopher Coker | For the late Professor Christopher Coker the answer lay in the rise of a new political entity, the civilizational state. In an episode of LSE iQ which explored China’s position in the world in the coming century, Professor Coker talked about this, the potential for war between the United States and China and what that might look like.

Are we on the verge of a weight-loss revolution?

Contributor(s): Nikki Sullivan, Paul Frijters, Sarah Appleton, Helen | Joanna Bale talks to Helen, who found Ozempic ‘life-changing’, Clinical Psychologist Sarah Appleton, and LSE’s Nikki Sullivan & Paul Frijters.

Why do so many people mistakenly think they are working class? | Extra iQ

Feb 05 2024 9 mins

Contributor(s): Professor Sam Friedman | More than one in four people in the UK, from solidly middle-class backgrounds, mistakenly think of themselves as working-class. Why is this? In this episode of Extra iQ, a shorter style of the LSE iQ podcast, Sue Windebank speaks to Sam Friedman, a sociologist of class and inequality at LSE to find out more. Sam spoke to the podcast in Novem