Pod Academy

Are career politicians responsible for the disengagement of the electorate?

If all the salt in the ocean could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth’s land surface it would form a layer more than 166 metres thick - about the height of a 40-storey building. Adam Smith discovers why the salt of the Earth is so important.

Charles Dickens was a francophile who had a little known passion for the French language, life and culture. A Tale of Two Cities, set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, is only part of the story. Much of his journalism was also about France.

IPPR researcher Rick Muir, author of the report, Pubs and Places: The Social Value of Community Pubs, talks to Claire Cain about the dramatic decline of pubs, their role in society and the actions we can take to hold on to a British institution.

NASA’s Kepler mission made some remarkable discoveries - Kepler-16b, 200 light years away and Kepler 22-b, a planet that may have the perfect conditions for life.

A new UK think tank, British Future, has been set up to look into identity, integration, migration and opportunity in modern Britain. Their new research report, Hopes and Fears, looks at what it means to be British in 2012.

Earthquakes and volcanoes capture our imaginations for the power they wield. But most of us are unaware that they are also connected to climate change

This podcast is about the books that have been forgotten, the literature that no one reads any more. Dr. Kate Macdonald is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Ghent, in Belgium. She seeks to uncover the literary gems of the recent past; books which achieved huge commercial success when they were published but are now rarely read or are no longer in print.

Left-handedness is certainly an everyday phenomenon. We all probably know somebody who writes with their left hand or possibly do so ourselves. But how often do we pause to think about what might be the cause of such a preference or how, something as natural as left-handedness, might be understood in societies other than our own? In his book, The Puzzle of Left-handedness, Rik Smits addresses some of the enigmas, rumours and paradoxes surrounding the left-handed among us. Rik begins by telling us about his background and how he came to approach writing a book about left-handedness. Rik Smits: Well I started out as a linguist, first in universities and then, when universities couldn’t afford me any more, I went in for writing because I always liked to tell people, who had no access to everything that we knew and were finding out, what was going on in the heads of these people and why that was interesting in a way that they would listen and could understand. That’s how it all began and I have been doing that ev

Mladen Ostojic explores the impact of international justice on post-conflict states that are undergoing a political transition. He asks whether international tribunals are a threat to stability in targeted countries - do justice and truth, or justice and peace, always go hand-in-hand?

In the last ten years the humanities has become obsessed with stuff – things, ephemera, paraphernalia and possessions. Writer and critic Brian Dillon speaks to Steven Connor, Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck College, London, about the curious magic of everyday things.

Noam Chomsky is a world renowned linguist and one of America's foremost social critics. He is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at M.I.T. He is the author of numerous books for Pluto Press, including Pirates and Emperors Old and New, Fateful Triangle, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo and Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. In October 2011 Professor Chomsky visited King’s College London in order to promote the launch of International State Crime Initiative’s new journal, State Crime.  State Crime is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to state crime scholarship.

Anupama Srinivasan argues that what we know about gender violence in South Asia - dowry harassment, domestic violence, acid attacks -  is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Anupama is Programme Director at the Gender Violence Research and Information Taskforce (GRIT) at Prajnya. Based in Chennai, India, she has spent the last year carrying out research in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh into gender violence, looking at it through the lens of security. Rachael Jolley:  Could you talk me through the motivation for doing this research? Anupama Srinivasan: The starting point was that gender and sexual violence remains an under researched area.  It tends to fall into many different categories - you see some work on it under the label of human rights, and some under the label of women’s issues.  As a result, different people take, or abdicate, responsibility for it.  It is everyone’s problem and no one’s. So the starting point was, what is the big picture?   And also, what is the evidence we h

Stephan Wolf and Dino McMahon use radar to track bee behaviour. By doing so, they hope to find out why bee populations have, in some parts of the world, gone into such rapid decline.

The invention and reception of change ringing in seventeenth-century England

The challenges of identifying disease genes using exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing.

Speakers explore the merits, practicality and value of maintaining a multiplicity of languages at the University of Reading.

The Researchers' Night is a Europe-wide event bringing together the public and academic researchers. The aim is to showcase university research, exploring its relevance and importance for all of us.

1 in 10 children in the UK suffers from a diagnosable mental health problem. What can be done to prevent depression, stress and anxiety amongst children?