Pod Academy

Mar 30 2023 300 ep. 447

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Lively and entertaining podcasts on current research in science and environment, arts and culture, humanities and economics. It’s sound thinking.

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Grandmothers and ‘intensive parenting’

Mar 30 2023 19 mins

“My grandchildren are so busy with all their extra classes that I seem to spend most our time together acting as a taxi service.” “When the children come to stay I’m constantly worried about keeping them safe.” “ I’d love to have fun with them, but my daughter expects me to supervise their homework and test them on their spelling.” Are today’s grandmothers too p

Grandmothers and ‘intensive parenting’

Mar 28 2023 19 mins

“My grandchildren are so busy with all their extra classes that I seem to spend most our time together acting as a taxi service.” “When the children come to stay I’m constantly worried about keeping them safe.” “ I’d love to have fun with them, but my daughter expects me to supervise their homework and test them on their spelling.” Are today’s grandmothers too p

How to be a (nearly) perfect grandmother

Feb 20 2023 26 mins

What are grandmothers for? That’s what Sally Feldman wondered when she first learned that her daughter was pregnant. As a former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she was familiar with so many aspects of female experiences. But faced with the prospect of a grandchild, she realised she was clueless. So now she’s writing a book of advice for new grandmothers. This podcast

NHS: A cold Covid winter ahead?

Oct 03 2021 11 mins

With Covid rates remaining stubbornly high and a huge pent-up demand for hospital care, the UK's National Health Service faces a tough winter. Intensive care wards are the canary in the mine, reports Rachael Jolley. Mark Toshner: We can make beds, but what we can't make are specialised staff to run those beds. The accident and emergency department needs a very specific skill set.

COVID-19 and the geopolitics of health

Apr 20 2021 26 mins

It's not about individual countries. It's not about individual regions. It's not even about blocks. This doesn't work unless we vaccinate everybody. But is geopolitics getting in the way of good public health policy as we strive to overcome COVID-19? In this podcast, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow at the Centre for Freedom o

Beyond the Virtual Exhibition

Apr 06 2021 19 mins

Cautiously, museums across the world are opening their doors. But there's one place where, even during the pandemic, you always get to be up close - the virtual museum. In the digital environment, the museum can take on a new role, less a place of authority, more an agora of ideas. But we have to think outside the box to solve curatorial issues in the digital space. Zara Karschay t

Nawal el Saadawi – writer and activist

Mar 23 2021 14 mins

The death of writer and activist Nawal el Saadawi has just been announced. In 2011 Tess Woodcraft interviewed her at a conference organised by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Right Organisation for Pod Academy. We reproduce it here. Typically, and at 80 years old, she had stopped off at the Occupy encampment around St Paul's Cathedral on her way from the airport, before coming on

Journalism in the pandemic: challenges and innovation

Feb 22 2021 17 mins

Journalism has sometimes been a dangerous profession during the pandemic, but there has been real innovation, too. In this, the third part of our series on Journalism in the Pandemic, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield considers how Covid 19 has influenced the future

The dangerous business of journalism in the pandemic

Feb 03 2021 13 mins

Authoritarian restrictions on the press, attacks on journalists in the streets and more accusations of 'fake news' - it's like a war zone out there. Rachael Jolley looks at the dangers of reporting during the Covid -19 pandemic. Jolley (@londoninsider) has developed a series of podcasts for Pod Academy on News in the Pandemic, this is the second in the series. William Horsley: Th

Local journalism in the pandemic

Jan 19 2021 32 mins

Local newspapers have been in decline for years, but the decline has been massively exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. Can a new type of hyper-local journalism be the answer for local news and local democracy? And how will it be funded? Rachael Jolley (@londoninsider), research fellow @sheffjournalism and former Editor-in-Chief of Index on Censorship, has developed a series of pod