Podcasts about Oxford Martin School

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,For most of history, stagnation — not growth — was the rule. To explain why prosperity so often stalls, economist Carl Benedikt Frey offers a sweeping tour through a millennium of innovation and upheaval, showing how societies either harness — or are undone by — waves of technological change. His message is sobering: an AI revolution is no guarantee of a new age of progress.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with Frey about why societies midjudge their trajectory and what it takes to reignite lasting growth.Frey is a professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and a fellow of Mansfield College, University of Oxford. He is the director of the Future of Work Programme and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School.He is the author of several books, including the brand new one, How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations.In This Episode* The end of progress? (1:28)* A history of Chinese innovation (8:26)* Global competitive intensity (11:41)* Competitive problems in the US (15:50)* Lagging European progress (22:19)* AI & labor (25:46)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. The end of progress? (1:28). . . once you exploit a technology, the processes that aid that run into diminishing returns, you have a lot of incumbents, you have some vested interests around established technologies, and you need something new to revive growth.Pethokoukis: Since 2020, we've seen the emergence of generative AI, mRNA vaccines, reusable rockets that have returned America to space, we're seeing this ongoing nuclear renaissance including advanced technologies, maybe even fusion, geothermal, the expansion of solar — there seems to be a lot cooking. Is worrying about the end of progress a bit too preemptive?Frey: Well in a way, it's always a bit too preemptive to worry about the future: You don't know what's going to come. But let me put it this way: If you had told me back in 1995 — and if I was a little bit older then — that computers and the internet would lead to a decade streak of productivity growth and then peter out, I would probably have thought you nuts because it's hard to think about anything that is more consequential. Computers have essentially given people the world's store of knowledge basically in their pockets. The internet has enabled us to connect inventors and scientists around the world. There are few tools that aided the research process more. There should hardly be any technology that has done more to boost scientific discovery, and yet we don't see it.We don't see it in the aggregate productivity statistics, so that petered out after a decade. Research productivity is in decline. Measures of breakthrough innovation is in decline. So it's always good to be optimistic, I guess, and I agree with you that, when you say AI and when you read about many of the things that are happening now, it's very, very exciting, but I remain somewhat skeptical that we are actually going to see that leading to a huge revival of economic growth.I would just be surprised if we don't see any upsurge at all, to be clear, but we do have global productivity stagnation right now. It's not just Europe, it's not just Britain. The US is not doing too well either over the past two decades or so. China's productivity is probably in the negative territory or stagnant, by more optimistic measures, and so we're having a growth problem.If tech progress were inevitable, why have predictions from the '90s, and certainly earlier decades like the '50s and '60s, about transformative breakthroughs and really fast economic growth by now, consistently failed to materialize? How does your thesis account for why those visions of rapid growth and progress have fallen short?I'm not sure if my thesis explains why those expectations didn't materialize, but I'm hopeful that I do provide some framework for thinking about why we've often seen historically rapid growth spurts followed by stagnation and even decline. The story I'm telling is not rocket science, exactly. It's basically built on the simple intuitions that once you exploit a technology, the processes that aid that run into diminishing returns, you have a lot of incumbents, you have some vested interests around established technologies, and you need something new to revive growth.So for example, the Soviet Union actually did reasonably well in terms of economic growth. A lot of it, or most of it, was centered on heavy industry, I should say. So people didn't necessarily see the benefits in their pockets, but the economy grew rapidly for about four decades or so, then growth petered out, and eventually it collapsed. So for exploiting mass-production technologies, the Soviet system worked reasonably well. Soviet bureaucrats could hold factory managers accountable by benchmarking performance across factories.But that became much harder when something new was needed because when something is new, what's the benchmark? How do you benchmark against that? And more broadly, when something is new, you need to explore, and you need to explore often different technological trajectories. So in the Soviet system, if you were an aircraft engineer and you wanted to develop your prototype, you could go to the red arm and ask for funding. If they turned you down, you maybe had two or three other options. If they turned you down, your idea would die with you.Conversely, in the US back in '99, Bessemer Venture declined to invest in Google, which seemed like a bad idea with the benefit of hindsight, but it also illustrates that Google was no safe bet at the time. Yahoo and Alta Vista we're dominating search. You need somebody to invest in order to know if something is going to catch on, and in a more decentralized system, you can have more people taking different bets and you can explore more technological trajectories. That is one of the reasons why the US ended up leading the computer revolutions to which Soviet contributions were basically none.Going back to your question, why didn't those dreams materialize? I think we've made it harder to explore. Part of the reason is protective regulation. Part of the reason is lobbying by incumbents. Part of the reason is, I think, a revolving door between institutions like the US patent office and incumbents where we see in the data that examiners tend to grant large firms some patents that are of low quality and then get lucrative jobs at those places. That's creating barriers to entry. That's not good for new startups and inventors entering the marketplace. I think that is one of the reasons that we haven't seen some of those dreams materialize.A history of Chinese innovation (8:26)So while Chinese bureaucracy enabled scale, Chinese bureaucracy did not really permit much in terms of decentralized exploration, which European fragmentation aided . . .I wonder if your analysis of pre-industrial China, if there's any lessons you can draw about modern China as far as the way in which bad governance can undermine innovation and progress?Pre-industrial China has a long history. China was the technology leader during the Song and Tang dynasties. It had a meritocratic civil service. It was building infrastructure on scales that were unimaginable in Europe at the time, and yet it didn't have an industrial revolution. So while Chinese bureaucracy enabled scale, Chinese bureaucracy did not really permit much in terms of decentralized exploration, which European fragmentation aided, and because there was lots of social status attached to becoming a bureaucrat and passing the civil service examination, if Galileo was born in China, he would probably become a bureaucrat rather than a scientist, and I think that's part of the reason too.But China mostly did well when the state was strong rather than weak. A strong state was underpinned by intensive political competition, and once China had unified and there were fewer peer competitors, you see that the center begins to fade. They struggle to tax local elites in order to keep the peace. People begin to erect monopolies in their local markets and collide with guilds to protect production and their crafts from competition.So during the Qing dynasty, China begins to decline, whereas we see the opposite happening in Europe. European fragmentation aids exploration and innovation, but it doesn't necessarily aid scaling, and so that is something that Europe needs to come to terms with at a later stage when the industrial revolution starts to take off. And even before that, market integration played an important role in terms of undermining the guilds in Europe, and so part of the reason why the guilds persist longer in China is the distance is so much longer between cities and so the guilds are less exposed to competition. In the end, Europe ends up overtaking China, in large part because vested interests are undercut by governments, but also because of investments in things that spur market integration.Global competitive intensity (11:41)Back in the 2000s, people predicted that China would become more like the United States, now it looks like the United States is becoming more like China.This is a great McKinsey kind of way of looking at the world: The notion that what drives innovation is sort of maximum competitive intensity. You were talking about the competitive intensity in both Europe and in China when it was not so centralized. You were talking about the competitive intensity of a fragmented Europe.Do you think that the current level of competitive intensity between the United States and China —and I really wish I could add Europe in there. Plenty of white papers, I know, have been written about Europe's competitive state and its in innovativeness, and I hope those white papers are helpful and someone reads them, but it seems to be that the real competition is between United States and China.Do you not think that that competitive intensity will sort of keep those countries progressing despite any of the barriers that might pop up and that you've already mentioned a little bit? Isn't that a more powerful tailwind than any of the headwinds that you've mentioned?It could be, I think, if people learn the right lessons from history, at least that's a key argument of the book. Right now, what I'm seeing is the United States moving more towards protectionist with protective tariffs. Right now, what I see is a move towards, we could even say crony capitalism with tariff exemptions that some larger firms that are better-connected to the president are able to navigate, but certainly not challengers. You're seeing the United States embracing things like golden shares in Intel, and perhaps even extending that to a range of companies. Back in the 2000s, people predicted that China would become more like the United States, now it looks like the United States is becoming more like China.And China today is having similar problems and on, I would argue, an even greater scale. Growth used to be the key objective in China, and so for local governments, provincial governments competing on such targets, it was fairly easy to benchmark and measure and hold provincial governors accountable, and they would be promoted inside the Communist Party based on meeting growth targets. Now, we have prioritized common prosperity, more national security-oriented concerns.And so in China, most progress has been driven by private firms and foreign-invested firms. State-owned enterprise has generally been a drag on innovation and productivity. What you're seeing, though, as China is shifting more towards political objectives, it's harder to mobilize private enterprise, where the yard sticks are market share and profitability, for political goals. That means that China is increasingly relying more again on state-owned enterprises, which, again, have been a drag on innovation.So, in principle, I agree with you that historically you did see Russian defeat to Napoleon leading to this Stein-Hardenberg Reforms, and the abolishment of Gilded restrictions, and a more competitive marketplace for both goods and ideas. You saw that Russian losses in the Crimean War led to the of abolition of serfdom, and so there are many times in history where defeat, in particular, led to striking reforms, but right now, the competition itself doesn't seem to lead to the kinds of reforms I would've hoped to see in response.Competitive problems in the US (15:50)I think what antitrust does is, at the very least, it provides a tool that means that businesses are thinking twice before engaging in anti-competitive behavior.I certainly wrote enough pieces and talked to enough people over the past decade who have been worried about competition in the United States, and the story went something like this: that you had these big tech companies — Google, and Meta, Facebook and Microsoft — that these were companies were what they would call “forever companies,” that they had such dominance in their core businesses, and they were throwing off so much cash that these were unbeatable companies, and this was going to be bad for America. People who made that argument just could not imagine how any other companies could threaten their dominance. And yet, at the time, I pointed out that it seemed to me that these companies were constantly in fear that they were one technological advance from being in trouble.And then lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. And while in AI, certainly, Google's super important, and Meta Facebook are super important, so are OpenAI, and so is Anthropic, and there are other companies.So the point here, after my little soliloquy, is can we overstate these problems, at least in the United States, when it seems like it is still possible to create a new technology that breaks the apparent stranglehold of these incumbents? Google search does not look quite as solid a business as it did in 2022.Can we overstate the competitive problems of the United States, or is what you're saying more forward-looking, that perhaps we overstated the competitive problems in the past, but now, due to these tariffs, and executives having to travel to the White House and give the president gifts, that that creates a stage for the kind of competitive problems that we should really worry about?I'm very happy to support the notion that technological changes can lead to unpredictable outcomes that incumbents may struggle to predict and respond to. Even if they predict it, they struggle to act upon it because doing so often undermines the existing business model.So if you take Google, where the transformer was actually conceived, the seven people behind it, I think, have since left the company. One of the reasons that they probably didn't launch anything like ChatGPT was probably for the fear of cannibalizing search. So I think the most important mechanisms for dislodging incumbents are dramatic shifts in technology.None of the legacy media companies ended up leading social media. None of the legacy retailers ended up leading e-commerce. None of the automobile leaders are leading in EVs. None of the bicycle companies, which all went into automobile, so many of them, ended up leading. So there is a pattern there.At the same time, I think you do have to worry that there are anti-competitive practices going on that makes it harder, and that are costly. The revolving door between the USPTO and companies is one example of that. We also have a reasonable amount of evidence on killer acquisitions whereby firms buy up a competitor just to shut it down. Those things are happening. I think you need to have tools that allow you to combat that, and I think more broadly, the United States has a long history of fairly vigorous antitrust policy. I think it'd be a hard pressed to suggest that that has been a tremendous drag on American business or American dynamism. So if you don't think, for example, that American antitrust policy has contributed to innovation and dynamism, at the very least, you can't really say either that it's been a huge drag on it.In Japan, for example, in its postwar history, antitrust was extremely lax. In the United States, it was very vigorous, and it was very vigorous throughout the computer revolution as well, which it wasn't at all in Japan. If you take the lawsuit against IBM, for example, you can debate this. To what extent did it force it to unbundle hardware and software, and would Microsoft been the company it is today without that? I think AT&T, it's both the breakup and it's deregulation, as well, but I think by basically all accounts, that was a good idea, particularly at the time when the National Science Foundation released ARPANET into the world.I think what antitrust does is, at the very least, it provides a tool that means that businesses are thinking twice before engaging in anti-competitive behavior. There's always a risk of antitrust being heavily politicized, and that's always been a bad idea, but at the same time, I think having tools on the books that allows you to check monopolies and steer their investments more towards the innovation rather than anti-competitive practices, I think is, broadly speaking, a good thing. I think in the European Union, you often hear that competition policy is a drag on productivity. I think it's the least of Europe's problem.Lagging European progress (22:19)If you take the postwar period, at least Europe catches up in most key industries, and actually lead in some of them. . . but doesn't do the same in digital. The question in my mind is: Why is that?Let's talk about Europe as we sort of finish up. We don't have to write How Progress Ends, it seems like progress has ended, so maybe we want to think about how progress restarts, and is the problem in Europe, is it institutions or is it the revealed preference of Europeans, that they're getting what they want? That they don't value progress and dynamism, that it is a cultural preference that is manifested in institutions? And if that's the case — you can tell me if that's not the case, I kind of feel like it might be the case — how do you restart progress in Europe since it seems to have already ended?The most puzzling thing to me is not that Europe is less dynamic than the United States — that's not very puzzling at all — but that it hasn't even managed to catch up in digital. If you take the postwar period, at least Europe catches up in most key industries, and actually lead in some of them. So in a way, take automobiles, electrical machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, nobody would say that Europe is behind in those industries, or at least not for long. Europe has very robust catchup growth in the post-war period, but doesn't do the same in digital. The question in my mind is: Why is that?I think part of the reason is that the returns to innovation, the returns to scaling in Europe are relatively muted by a fragmented market in services, in particular. The IMF estimates that if you take all trade barriers on services inside the European Union and you add them up, it's something like 110 percent tariffs. Trump Liberation Day tariffs, essentially, imposed within European Union. That means that European firms in digital and in services don't have a harmonized market to scale into, the way the United States and China has. I think that's by far the biggest reason.On top of that, there are well-intentioned regulations like the GDPR that, by any account, has been a drag on innovation, and particularly been harmful for startups, whereas larger firms that find it easier to manage compliance costs have essentially managed to offset those costs by capturing a larger share of the market. I think the AI Act is going in the same direction there, ad so you have more hurdles, you have greater costs of innovating because of those regulatory barriers. And then the return to innovation is more capped by having a smaller, fragmented market.I don't think that culture or European lust for leisure rather than work is the key reason. I think there's some of that, but if you look at the most dynamic places in Europe, it tends to be the Scandinavian countries and, being from Sweden myself, I can tell you that most people you will encounter there are not workaholics.AI & labor (25:46)I think AI at the moment has a real resilience problem. It's very good that things where there's a lot of precedent, it doesn't do very well where precedence is thin.As I finish up, let me ask you: Like a lot of economists who think about technology, you've thought about how AI will affect jobs — given what we've seen in the past few years, would it be your guess that, if we were to look at the labor force participation rates of the United States and other rich countries 10 years from now, that we will look at those employment numbers and think, “Wow, we can really see the impact of AI on those numbers”? Will it be extraordinarily evident, or would it be not as much?Unless there's very significant progress in AI, I don't think so. I think AI at the moment has a real resilience problem. It's very good that things where there's a lot of precedent, it doesn't do very well where precedence is thin. So in most activities where the world is changing, and the world is changing every day, you can't really rely on AI to reliably do work for you.An example of that, most people know of AlphaGo beating the world champion back in 2016. Few people will know that, back in 2023, human amateurs, using standard laptops, exposing the best Go programs to new positions that they would not have encountered in training, actually beat the best Go programs quite easily. So even in a domain where basically the problem is solved, where we already achieved super-human intelligence, you cannot really know how well these tools perform when circumstances change, and I think that that's really a problem. So unless we solve that, I don't think it's going to have an impact that will mean that labor force participation is going to be significantly lower 10 years from now.That said, I do think it's going to have a very significant impact on white collar work, and people's income and sense of status. I think of generative AI, in particular, as a tool that reduces barriers to entry in professional services. I often compare it to what happened with Uber and taxi services. With the arrival of GPS technology, knowing the name of every street in New York City was no longer a particularly valuable skill, and then with a platform matching supply and demand, anybody could essentially get into their car who has a driver's license and top up their incomes on the side. As a result of that, incumbent drivers faced more competition, they took a pay cut of around 10 percent.Obviously, a key difference with professional services is that they're traded. So I think it's very likely that, as generative AI reduces the productivity differential between people in, let's say the US and the Philippines in financial modeling, in paralegal work, in accounting, in a host of professional services, more of those activities will shift abroad, and I think many knowledge workers that had envisioned prosperous careers may feel a sense of loss of status and income as a consequence, and I do think that's quite significant.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .     "The book seems to be more timely than originally anticipated."  I'm talking with Carl Benedikt Frey about his new book, How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations, and its exploration of the political and economic effects of policies like tariffs and university defunding comes at a very critical time. AI is projected to have enormous economic and social impacts that call for the biggest of big picture thinking, and Frey is the co-author of the 2013 study The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization, which has received over 12,000 citations. He is Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Director and Founder of the Future of Work Programme at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford. His 2019 book, The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, was selected as a Financial Times Best Book of the Year and awarded Princeton University's Richard A. Lester Prize.   In the conclusion, we talk about the links between innovation and industry productivity, why AI hasn't yet delivered broad gains, automation's uneven effects on workers, the role of antitrust in sustaining competition, and the need for institutions like Oxford to adapt. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.            

Is the future of clean energy and climate solutions brighter than we think? In this episode of Cleaning Up, Michael Liebreich welcomes back Hannah Ritchie — Deputy Editor at Our World in Data, researcher at the Oxford Martin School, and author of her new book, Clearing the Air.In Clearing the Air, Hannah tackles 50 of the most common myths and misconceptions about climate solutions, from “Isn't climate action too polarised and politically divisive to fix?” to “What happens when the wind doesn't blow?” and “Won't the world run out of minerals?” Hannah dives into the data behind renewables, electric cars, nuclear power, grids, and even lab-grown meat — cutting through the noise with clarity.Michael quizzes Hannah on why she wrote the book and what she hopes to achieve with it, and whether it has the potential to change the minds of climate skeptics. This conversation offers a grounded, accessible look at what really works, what doesn't, and why we should feel more hopeful than the doom-filled narratives suggest.Leadership Circle:Cleaning Up is supported by the Leadership Circle, and its founding members: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Arup, Cygnum Capital, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP of Portugal, Eurelectric, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on the Leadership Circle, please visit https://www.cleaningup.live.Links & more:Clearing The Air: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/462676/clearing-the-air-by-ritchie-hannah/9781784745745Ep147: Dr Hannah Ritchie: https://youtu.be/fMLmeWc7NFoEp178: Dr Andy Palmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzDWFFRDK8oDecarbonising the Last Few Percent: https://mliebreich.substack.com/p/decarbonizing-the-last-few-percent 

Many people expect improvements in technology over the next few years, but fewer people are optimistic about improvements in the economy. Especially in Europe, there's a narrative that productivity has stalled, that the welfare state is over-stretched, and that the regions of the world where innovation will be rewarded are the US and China – although there are lots of disagreements about which of these two countries will gain the upper hand.To discuss these topics, our guest in this episode is Carl Benedikt Frey, the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute. Carl is also a Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, and is Director of the Future of Work Programme and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School.Carl's new book has the ominous title, “How Progress Ends”. The subtitle is “Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations”. A central premise of the book is that our ability to think clearly about the possibilities for progress and stagnation today is enhanced by looking backward at the rise and fall of nations around the globe over the past thousand years. The book contains fascinating analyses of how countries at various times made significant progress, and at other times stagnated. The book also considers what we might deduce about the possible futures of different economies worldwide.Selected follow-ups:Professor Carl-Benedikt Frey - Oxford Martin SchoolHow Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations - Princeton University PressStop Acting Like This Is Normal - Ezra Klein ("Stop Funding Trump's Takeover")OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-PubA Human Amateur Beat a Top Go-Playing AI Using a Simple Trick - ViceThe future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? - Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. OsborneEurope's Choice: Policies for Growth and Resilience - Alfred Kammer, IMFMIT Radiation Laboratory ("Rad Lab")Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .     "The book seems to be more timely than originally anticipated."  I'm talking with Carl Benedikt Frey about his new book, How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations, and its exploration of the political and economic effects of policies like tariffs and university defunding comes at a very critical time. AI is projected to have enormous economic and social impacts that call for the biggest of big picture thinking, and Frey is the co-author of the 2013 study The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization, which has received over 12,000 citations. He is Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Director and Founder of the Future of Work Programme at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford. His 2019 book, The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, was selected as a Financial Times Best Book of the Year and awarded Princeton University's Richard A. Lester Prize.   We talk about whether progress is inevitable, how growth depends on the interplay of technology and institutions, the link between productivity and innovation, the importance of institutional flexibility and decentralized funding, the effects of tariffs, the risks of China's increasingly centralized model, and why the US and China are both triggering declining dynamism in each other. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.            

Was bringt die Zukunft der KI? Erleben wir gerade das Ende der Arbeit oder wird mit KI geradezu ein Ende der Stagnation (im Westen) eingeleitet? Wird uns KI befreien oder unterwerfen? Steht gar die Singularität vor der Tür? All diese Fragen und Prognosen werde ich nicht beantworten, sondern werde vielmehr versuchen, sinnvolle Fragestellungen im Umfeld der KI zu entwickeln und versuchen sie in einen Kontext zu stellen. Diese Folge wird also Fragen aufwerfen sie aber bewusst nicht beantworten. Es ist der Versuch (nach Ralph Ruthardt) einer konstruktiven Irritation. Sie soll helfen, zu neuen Ideen zu kommen, auch zu irritieren und zum Nachdenken anzuregen. (Sollte ich die eine oder andere Frage doch versuchen zu beantworten, verzeihen Sie mir, dieser Podcast ist noch von Menschen, nicht von KI gemacht.) Hörer werden unterschiedliche Antworten finden. Auch wird es zahlreiche Fragen und Aspekte geben, die ich nicht bedacht habe. Teilen Sie Ihre Erkenntnisse und Kritik! Ein Posting auf X mit Referenz an mich wäre eine gute Möglichkeit, auch E-Mails sind gerne gesehen. Hier noch einige Zitate aus der Episode im Original:  “big data all comes from the same place – the past.”, Rory Sutherland   “I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points which must be gone into before a case could be laid before a judge or jury.”, Sherlock Holmes   “AI technology is exceptionally expensive, and to justify those costs, the technology must be able to solve complex problems, which it isn't designed to do.”, Jim Covello   “the US is currently placing its money on one huge bet: that AI will unleash a productivity revolution so great it will ultimately re-start the economy it's presently impeding.” […] “Over the same three years that the AI revolution has been in full swing, labour productivity has grown at barely 1% a year, maintaining a decades-long trend of declining growth across Western countries.”, John Rapley   »Die aufeinanderfolgenden neuen Waffensysteme zeichneten sich durch wachsende operative Schnelligkeit aus, beginnend mit operativen Entscheidungen […], und gerade diese wachsende Schnelligkeit brachte den prinzipiell unberechenbaren Zufallsfaktor ebenfalls ins Spiel. Das ließe sich wie folgt formulieren: ‘Unerhört schnelle Systeme begehen unerhört schnell Fehler.' Dort wo Bruchteile von Sekunden […] entscheiden, ist es unmöglich, militärisch-strategische Gewissheit zu erzielen, oder anders: Man wird nicht mehr zwischen Sieg und Niederlage unterscheiden können.«, Stanislaw Lem   »Die Politiker der parlamentarisch regierten Länder bewältigten schon im vergangenen Jahrhundert nicht einmal alle Probleme des eigenen Staates, geschweige denn die Weltprobleme, und darum hatten sie Berater. […] Mit der Zeit nahmen sie Computersysteme zu Hilfe, und zu spät erkannte man, daß die Menschen zu Sprachrohren ihrer Computer wurden. Sie meinten, sie selbst seien es, die die Dinge überdenken und Schlüsse ziehen […]. Doch tatsächlich operierten sie mit einem vom Rechenzentrum vorfabrizierten Material, und dieses Material bestimmte die menschlichen Entscheidungen.«, Stanislaw Lem   “If the economy is an information-processing system, does that mean that every corporation is an artificial intelligence? If people are worried about out-of-control AI taking over the world and destroying everything, shouldn't we have been trying to do something about them at least seventy years ago – and probably more like two hundred?”, Dan Davies   "The Czar himself is powerless against the bureaucratic body; he can send any one of them to Siberia, but he cannot govern without them, or against their will. The experience of imperial China was very much the same.”, John Stuart Mill   Referenzen Alexander Schatten auf X Weitere Episoden Episode 129: Rules, A Conversation with Prof. Lorraine Daston Episode 128: Aufbruch in die Moderne — Der Mann, der die Welt erfindet! Episode 125: Ist Fortschritt möglich? Ideen als Widergänger über Generationen Episode 122: Komplexitätsillusion oder Heuristik, ein Gespräch mit Gerd Gigerenzer Episode 121: Künstliche Unintelligenz Episode 119: Spy vs Spy: Über künstlicher Intelligenz und anderen Agenten Episode 118: Science and Decision Making under Uncertainty, A Conversation with Prof. John Ioannidis Episode 109: Was ist Komplexität? Ein Gespräch mit Dr. Marco Wehr Episode 103: Schwarze Schwäne in Extremistan; die Welt des Nassim Taleb, ein Gespräch mit Ralph Zlabinger Episode 100: Live im MQ, Was ist Wissen. Ein Gespräch mit Philipp Blom Episode 71: Stagnation oder Fortschritt — eine Reflexion an der Geschichte eines Lebens Episode 68: Modelle und Realität, ein Gespräch mit Dr. Andreas Windisch Episode 65: Getting Nothing Done — Teil 2 Episode 64: Getting Nothing Done — Teil 1 Fachliche Referenzen Frey, C. B., & Osborne, M. A. (2013). The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Rory Sutherland, Alchemy, WH Allen (2021) Roger Penrose on AI and consciousness  Arthur Conan Dolye, The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, Strand Magazine (1893) John Rapley, Is the AI Bubble about to Burst? Unherd (2025) GEN AI: To Much Spend, Too Little Benefit? Goldman Sachs (2024) Stanislaw Lem, Waffensysteme des 21. Jahrhunderts (1983) Dan Davies, The Unaccountability Machine, Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind, Profile Books (2024)

This week we are delighted to welcome Professor Paul Behrens to the Nutshell.Paul is a British Academy Global Professor based at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford where his research focuses on the impacts of food system transformations. His research and writing on food and energy systems, land use and climate change has appeared in scientific journals and media outlets and he is the editor and author of the textbook  ‘Food and Sustainability'.As an academic with a background in Physics, Professor Behrens is an environmental expert, and he combines this expertise with a communication style that is accessible to all in his book ‘The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science' which we discuss in this episode.To buy the book:https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/PaulBehrensTo connect:https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-behrens-6b586427/?originalSubdomain=ukLinks to further information discussed in this episode:https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/the-planetary-health-diet-and-you/https://en.fvm.dk/Media/638484294982868221/Danish-Action-Plan-for-Plant-based-Foods.pdfhttps://www.carbonbrief.org/cropped/https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/author/zacharyboren/https://www.ft.com/susannah-savagehttps://www.theguardian.com/profile/arthurneslenhttps://www.food.systems/https://foodfoundation.org.uk/publication/meat-factshttps://foodfoundation.org.uk/sites/default/files/2025-05/TFF_Meat%20Facts.pdfhttps://foodfoundation.org.uk/initiatives/broken-platehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2514664525000104

Julian Jacobs, a Research Lead for the Oxford Group on AI Policy, Artificial Intelligence, Inequality and Society at Oxford Martin School, joins this episode of AI, Government, and the Future to explore the economic effects of AI, the potential inequalities that AI may bring, and the need to address job displacement. They also navigate the importance of government support in creating a strong middle class and the significance of human skills in the AI age.

Few books are timelier than Ian Goldin's new The Shortest History of Migration. Drawing from his personal history as a South African emigrant and his experience working with Nelson Mandela, the Oxford based Goldin explores the when, why and how humans move - from the prehistoric peopling of the planet to today and tomorrow's migrants. He addresses current political tensions, including J.D. Vance's recent criticisms of European migration policies and Elon Musk's controversial stance on immigration. Goldin argues that migration has been fundamental to human progress and economic growth, while acknowledging that there are legitimate questions about unregulated immigration policy. Here are the five KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Goldin* Migration patterns have remained remarkably consistent (about 3% of global population) over the past century, though absolute numbers have increased with population growth. However, what has changed dramatically is the creation of formal borders, passport controls, and our perception of migration.* There's a growing disconnect between political rhetoric and economic reality. While many politicians take strong anti-immigration stances, economies actually need migrants for their dynamism, particularly in aging societies. This is evidenced by Silicon Valley's success, where over half of tech entrepreneurs are migrants.* The distinction between economic migrants and refugees is crucial but often conflated in public discourse. Goldin argues that different policies are needed for each group - economic migration can be managed through choice, while refugee protection is a humanitarian obligation.* Local pressures versus national benefits create tension in immigration debates. While immigration's economic benefits often accrue nationally and long-term, the immediate pressures on housing, public services, and infrastructure are felt locally, leading to public resistance.* Future migration patterns will be dramatically reshaped by demographic changes, climate change, and automation by 2050. Goldin predicts that current debates about keeping people out may reverse as developed countries compete to attract migrants to address labor shortages and maintain economic growth.Full transcript of the Goldin interviewKEEN: Migration is back in the news. A couple of days ago, J.D. Vance was in Europe, in Munich, attacking Europe over its migration policy. Meanwhile, European politicians have slammed France's call to be inclusive of far-right parties which are hostile to immigration. Immigration is really one of the most controversial issues of our age, perhaps of any age, as is underlined by my guest Ian Goldin, one of the great thinkers on globalization. He has a new book out this week in the U.S., "The Shortest History of Migration." Ian is joining us from Oxford, where he lives and teaches. Ian, what do you make of this latest violent spat in Europe? Is it something new or just more of the same?GOLDIN: I think it is an escalation of previous trends. For the U.S. to come to Europe and talk about domestic policies represents a change not only in tone and intensity but also in diplomacy. Politicians don't tend to go to other countries—UK and European politicians don't go to the U.S. and tell the U.S. how to run itself. So it is different when the vice president of the U.S. comes to Europe and comments very directly about individuals, meets with far-right leaders, and basically tries to advise Europe on what to do. It's a big step up from what we've seen before, and it's very polarizing.KEEN: This term "far right"—and it's not a term that I know you invented, you just used it—is it appropriate to describe these anti-immigrant parties in Europe and indeed in the U.S.? The AfD in Germany, the Reform Party in the UK, the MAGA movement in America. Are they all premised on hostility to immigration?GOLDIN: Immigration unites parties across the political spectrum, and anti-immigration is certainly not the preserve of far-right parties. Even the Labor Party in the UK at the moment has come out as very hostile to immigration. But what's different about Vance's visit to the UK is that he met with the AfD leader in Germany, didn't meet with the leader of the government. He's the only major global leader who's met with the AfD. Similarly, we've seen members of Trump's cabinet, like Elon Musk, endorsing the Reform Party in the UK and pumping up what I think are legitimately described as far-right parties on the political spectrum in Europe. But as you say, it's not the exclusive domain of the far right to be anti-immigrant. This is sweeping the board across the spectrum in many European countries and in the U.S. The Democrats are also pretty anti-immigration.KEEN: You brought up Musk. You have something in common with him—you're both South African migrants who've made good in the West. There's something very odd about Musk. Maybe you can make more sense of it, particularly given what you have in common. On the one hand, he is the poster child for globalization and migration. He was brought up in South Africa, came to the U.S., made a fortune, and now is the richest man in the world. On the other hand, he seems to be the funder of all these reactionary, anti-immigrant parties. What's going on here?GOLDIN: There's a lot to be said. Musk was an immigrant himself, just like Trump's grandfather was to the U.S., just like many members of the Cabinet's forebears were. So there's a contradiction of people who really owe their histories and where they are to immigration being so anti-immigrant. Personally, I not only come from the same town and went to the same high school in Pretoria, South Africa, but I've met him. He came to Oxford—if you look on the Oxford Martin School website, you'll see a conversation we had when he brought the first Tesla up to Oxford. I think he's moved a long way in the last years. It's difficult to explain that, but clearly what he's saying today is not the same as he was saying 5 or 10 years ago.He and others like Peter Thiel are very strong supporters not only of MAGA but of similar parties in Europe. I think it represents a new force—the amount of money these people have is very significant, and they do make a real impact on politics. Indeed, it's likely that Musk directly through his giving had material impact on the U.S. presidential election. Rich people have always given to political parties and owned media, but this is a whole new level of engagement where extremely rich people can influence outcomes.KEEN: The subtitle of your book, "The Shortest History of Migration" is "When, Why, and How Humans Moved from the Prehistoric Peopling of the Planet to Today and Tomorrow's Migrants." It's an ambitious book, though short. Has something changed over the last 50 or 100 years? Humans have always been on the move, haven't they?GOLDIN: There have been dramatic changes. One change is the creation of borders as we know them today and passports, border controls. That's relatively recent—before the First World War, people could basically move around without the controls and identity documents we know today. Secondly, there are many more countries now, well over 100 countries. The number of borders has greatly increased.The cost of travel and the risk associated with travel—I don't mean dangerous crossings across the Rio Grande or the Sahara, but air travel, ship travel, and motor vehicles—has gone down dramatically. The world population has increased significantly. Although the share of people migrating hasn't budged over the last hundred years—it's about 3% of the world's population—the absolute numbers have increased because 3% of 8 billion people is clearly a much bigger number than 3% of what it was around 2 billion 100 years ago.The big change has really been in the way we think about migrants today compared to, for example, the age of mass migration when 20-25% of the U.S. was migrant in the period 1850-1892, before the First World War.KEEN: But wasn't that also fair to say in the U.S. that there have been cycles of anti-immigrant politics and culture where at points the border was open and then got slammed shut again?GOLDIN: Yes, very much so, particularly in the post-Second World War period. We have what we might see again now, which is this two-handed approach. On one hand, politicians trying to be very strong on migration and saying things which they feel appeal to voters, and at the same time in practice very different things happening.We've seen that in many countries where the rhetoric on migration is very strong, where there are attempts to show that one is doing a lot by policing, by deporting, by building walls, etc. But the numbers of migrants actually go up because of the need for migrants. The stronger the economy, the more migrants you need; the older the economy, as the workforce ages, the more migrants you need.GOLDIN: Migrants are a source of economic dynamism. They are much more likely to create startups. It's no accident that Musk is a migrant, but well over half of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs are migrants. It's a characteristic of migrants that they are much more productive, typically. They're much more likely to invest and to start up businesses. So if you want to have a dynamic economy and if you want to look after the elderly and pick your agriculture, you need migrants. I'm sure that even those in the government of the U.S. that are violently anti-immigrant recognize these things. That's where the tension will be played out.KEEN: You argue today's rich countries owe much of their success to the contributions of migrant workers. Is there any argument against migration? You're clearly on one side of the debate. What's the best argument against allowing migration into your country?GOLDIN: I'm not utopian in the sense that I do believe we need border controls and need to regulate the number of migrants who can come in. Clearly, we need to keep some people out—criminals and sex traffickers, for instance. But where we get real problems is that migrants can put a lot of pressure in the short term on resources. You see this in housing markets. People are feeling a lack of affordability of homes in dynamic cities—San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, New York, London, and many others. And it is true that in part this is because of the number of immigrants in these cities.Now, the immigrants also contribute and make these places dynamic. So it's a virtuous circle, but one has to address the concerns of citizens who say they cannot afford a home or public transport is too crowded, or that the lines are too long at hospital emergency services. These are real concerns. The challenge we face is that investment in resources, in public services, in housing, in transport and so on hasn't kept pace with population growth in dynamic cities particularly, and people are feeling the pinch.There's not much truth to the claim that immigrants undermine wages. In fact, there's quite a lot of evidence that they create jobs and lift wages. But there's also a short-term and long-term issue. The costs are often local, so people feel in a particular locality that they're overwhelmed by the number of immigrants, while the benefits are national and long-term. The immigrants build the houses, work in the hospitals, demand goods and services. They're buying things, building things, creating things. But that doesn't all happen at the same place at the same time.The other important thing is to distinguish between migrants and refugees. A lot of the problems that societies have is because these things are conflated. When I think of migrants, I think of economic migrants, of students, of people coming that are going to benefit themselves and the countries, but have a choice. Refugees are different. Refugees have a legitimate fear for their lives if they do not get refugee status. Governments need very different policies for refugees than they do for migrants.KEEN: You've mentioned the US, the UK—your book breaks down immigration around the world. You argued that the US is home to the largest absolute numbers of migrants, 51 million. Is the US still symbolically the place where the pro-anti migration argument gets played out? Trump, of course, has been outspoken and arguably it was really the reason why he was elected president again.GOLDIN: Yes, I think it is the place where it's being played out. It has the most migrants. It's a society we've always thought of historically as being constructed by migrants. It's an immigrant country—of course, it displaced an indigenous people that were living there before. But it is a society now that's basically come from elsewhere. The future dynamism of the US, where the US is going to be in ten, 20, 30 years' time, is going to depend to a large extent on its policies on immigration. If it throttles the source of its lifeblood that created the country that we know as a dynamic world-leading economy, it's going to fall back.KEEN: Musk is, as always, a little bit more complicated than he seems on immigration. On the one hand, he's obviously opposed to mass immigration. On the other hand, as a tech billionaire, he's sympathetic to qualified people coming into the country. And there seems to be a division within the Republicans between Musk and people like Steve Bannon, who seem to be opposed to all forms of immigration. Is this an important debate that you think will be played out on the American right?GOLDIN: Yes, I think it's extremely important. Both Musk and Steve Bannon have said pretty harsh things about the other side of this debate. Musk gets that the US needs tech workers. The tech industry is dependent on Indian and many other programmers. He's aware that the leaders of many firms, including Microsoft and Google, are immigrants, as is he. He's been focusing on the need for high-skilled immigrants. Steve Bannon is taking the fundamentalist MAGA line, claiming immigrants will take jobs—of course, they don't take jobs, they create jobs.My own guess is that Musk is going to win this particular debate, both because he's right at the center of power and because the businesses around him also get it. For agriculture, it's absolutely essential to have immigrants across the economy. Business will be crying out. And interestingly enough, as I highlighted in my Project Syndicate piece, a lot of Republican governors have been asking for immigration.KEEN: You mentioned you and Musk were born in the same South African town. You worked for Mandela. How do you place the colonial experience in your history of migration—where the white Europeans who showed up and conquered Africa, were they migrants, or something different?GOLDIN: They were migrants—migrant armies, migrant businesspeople, migrants, settlers. Some of them, particularly in Australia, were convicts shipped out. They often were underdogs doing it out of desperation. My grandparents migrated to South Africa because they were in that state. My grandfather on my father's side was from Lithuania, in Russia, where those who remained were all killed. Those of my mother's side who stayed in Austria and Germany were all killed. These were migrant refugees.The impact of colonialism was devastating. This goes back to the first settlers in the Americas—600 Spaniards who landed probably led to the death of over 20 million Native Americans through guns, germs, and steel, but mainly through germs. And before the colonial period, there was slavery, which is a terrible stain on humanity. Over 20 million people were forced into this absolutely inhumane system across the Atlantic. Slavery wasn't new—it had existed from before the first millennia. But the industrialization of it, the scale and horror of it, and the number of people who died in transit, that was new.I emphasize in the book that not all migration is good, and that migration is often a very unhappy experience, a brutal experience. But we need to try and understand this historical context. Certainly with immigration today, we need to make it more humane, better, and recognize that often what migrants do, they're doing to support their families, to create better opportunities for themselves and future generations. And the recipient countries need it too. The question is, can we better manage it?KEEN: Should the two histories be seen side by side—the images of North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans coming to Europe, children dying on beaches—should we be thinking about this as a counter-migration, a consequence of the European colonization of Africa?GOLDIN: There are clearly some links, but Africa is where it is today as a result not only of its colonial history and slavery, which often was driven by African slave kings before Africa was colonized. There are much more recent explanations as well—massive mismanagement of resources in Africa, the despotic actions of governments. The refugees coming to Europe are often in fear for their lives, whether it's being called up into the Eritrean army or what's happening in Somalia and Sudan. These people are escaping to protect their lives and to sustain people left behind through remittances.KEEN: Your book is very personal. You dedicate it to your grandparents. You write with the sensibility of a relative of migrants and a man who's migrated himself. You seem to be a citizen of the world. This is a labor of love, isn't it?GOLDIN: It is. I wrote another book on migration in 2012, "Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future." When the publishers came to me with this series, I leaped at it. I learned an enormous amount doing it. It's difficult to compress the whole history of migration, which is everything about humanity really, into 250 pages. But the main aim was to raise a sensibility that we're all migrants and that we need to better understand the role of migrants in our own personal histories and our countries' histories. These migrants are not "other people"—they are where we come from. I believe fundamentally that migration is what makes humans an exceptional species. It's the reason we've thrived. If we hadn't migrated, we would have died out.KEEN: So you don't buy the argument that the world is divided into the "somewheres" and the "everywheres"—the thesis that some people are locked into a place for generations, and others like yourself move around all the time?GOLDIN: I've debated that with David Goodhart. I think what he's picked up on, which I empathize with, is that people have an identity based on place. It's important not to deny that identity. But what his argument completely fails to pick up on is that firstly, that can be threatened. My mother's parents thought they were absolute Viennese—my grandfather was on the Viennese Opera Committee. It didn't help him when they decided to kill all the Jews in Vienna. My grandparents on my father's side were upright members of the Lithuanian community running a small business—that didn't help them.There's no evidence that having immigrants in your society makes you weaker or threatens your community. Indeed, if you want your community to thrive, you're going to need immigrants—not only to do the work that your community doesn't want to do, whether it's picking fruit or cleaning hospital floors, but to keep the place dynamic. That's what these governors in the US who are calling for more immigrants have recognized about their dying towns in the Midwest. They need immigrants to keep their communities alive.Dynamic cities are great examples of places which thrive on being melting pots. The magnetism of them is quite phenomenal. Look at Dubai, which I was in last week—90% immigrant.KEEN: Let's cast our eyes forward. What might the future hold for migration? Are there conceptual differences as the 21st century evolves? By 2050, will the debate be the same? Could technology change it? Musk is trying to settle on Mars—might that be the difference in 25 years' time?GOLDIN: It would be easier to settle at the North or South Pole than on Mars. I think there will be major differences by 2050. One of the major drivers is going to be demographic change. We're seeing a very rapid reduction in birth rates in well over half the countries of the world. We're going to see big labor contractions in labor markets in North America, Europe, and across Asia. As societies age and people live longer lives, we're going to see great shortages of labor.I think the fragility of different places is also going to be played out. Extreme climate and weather will lead to very different migration patterns. Oceans are going to rise, there'll be flood plains, intense weather, extreme droughts, lack of water by 2050. A place like Miami is going to be very threatened.AI will likely take over repetitive jobs, manufacturing, call centers. But the jobs that people will want in our wealthier societies—hospitality, elderly care, massages—these are what economists call non-tradable services. We'll need more of these, and they cannot be done remotely. They are unlikely to be done by machines by 2050. We're not going to want machines giving us massages or meals.So I think we're likely to see Europe, North America, and many parts of Asia turn the current debates on their head—from keeping people out to how we get more people into our societies. Population will start declining very rapidly, and workforces will decline before populations decline.KEEN: Finally, Ian, you write about the history of passports. You say they began in the early 20th century. With our increasingly sophisticated technology of data, how will that play out in your future history of migration?GOLDIN: I think it's going to play out differently in different places. The big question is how much we trust those who have the information. How we feel about it in Europe will be different from how people feel about it in China. One of the amazing experiments of the late 20th century is that within 27 countries in Europe, there are no passport controls. It's proved to be a remarkable, successful experiment.I hope increased surveillance becomes part of a bigger bargain in which we accept more people into our societies, treat them more fairly, protect them, and give them rights. But we also say we don't want some people to come, and we are able to control this. It gives people confidence that they don't feel out of control. So I do see a silver lining if it's used in a humane and effective way. The risk is that it's not, and people are continually forced into dangerous passages across the Mediterranean or the Rio Grande. That's what we need to work against.KEEN: There you have it. Amidst all this controversy about migration, some wisdom from Ian Goldin. Thank you so much.GOLDIN: Thank you so much for having me and all the best to you and to all your listeners.Ian Goldin is the Oxford University Professor of Globalization and Development and founding director of the Oxford Martin School, the world's leading center for interdisciplinary research into critical global challenges, where he has established forty-five research programs. Previously, he was vice president of the World Bank and its Head of Policy, responsible for its collaboration with the United Nations and key partners. He served as adviser to President Nelson Mandela, has been knighted by the French government, and is the author of three BBC series. Ian has been an advisor to numerous businesses, governments, and foundations and is a founding trustee of the International Center for Future Generations and Chair of the CORE Econ initiative to transform economics. He is the author of twenty-five books, including Age of the City, which was selected by the Financial Times as one of its best books of 2023.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

My guest today is Eric Beinhocker, Professor of Practice in Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and the founder and Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University's Oxford Martin School. Eric is the author of numerous academic articles and books, including The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (2007). In our conversation, Eric and I contrast traditional economics (neoclassical theory) with new economics (complexity economics). We also explore the policy implications of these differing economic theories, discussing topics ranging from aggressive growth strategies to complexity catastrophes in digital economies. I hope you enjoy our conversation. References: The origin of wealth: Evolution, complexity, and the radical remaking of economics (2007) ⁠https://moldham74.github.io/AussieCAS/papers/Origins⁠ of Wealth.pdf Getting Big Too Fast: Strategic Dynamics with Increasing Returns and Bounded Rationality (2007) ⁠https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mnsc.1060.0673⁠ Fair Social Contracts and the Foundations of Large-Scale Collaboration (2022) ⁠https://oms-inet.files.svdcdn.com/staging/files/Fair-Social-Contracts-Beinhocker-v8-22-22.pdf⁠ Reflexivity, complexity, and the nature of social science (2013) ⁠https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1350178X.2013.859403⁠

******Support the channel****** Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao   ******Follow me on****** Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/ The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoB Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT   This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/   Dr. J. Doyne Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. He was an Oppenheimer Fellow and the founder of the Complex Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World.   In this episode, we focus on Making Sense of Chaos. We talk about the economy as a complex system, business cycles, simulating the economy, and the housing bubble crises of the 2000s. We discuss the differences between standard economics and complexity economics. We talk about how we can understand inequality, market inefficiencies and crashes, and whether we can prevent financial crises. Finally, we discuss climate economics, how we can solve climate change, and whether we can tackle inequality. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, EDWARD HALL, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, IGOR N, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, NIKLAS CARLSSON, GEORGE CHORIATIS, VALENTIN STEINMANN, PER KRAULIS, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, MASOUD ALIMOHAMMADI, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, ERIK ENGMAN, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, STARRY, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, BENJAMIN GELBART, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, AND STEVEN GANGESTAD! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, AL NICK ORTIZ, NICK GOLDEN, AND CHRISTINE GLASS! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, BOGDAN KANIVETS, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

We hear warnings from the Country Land and Business Association that changing tax rules for farms could close many down. The RSPB says any cuts to the farming budget would put nature and climate targets at risk. To start our week looking at greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, we speak to Professor Sir Charles Godfrey of the Oxford Martin School who says we should be producing less and better meat.Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Beatrice Fenton.

Welcome to The Orthogonal Bet, an ongoing mini-series that explores the unconventional ideas and delightful patterns that shape our world. Hosted by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Samuel Arbesman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. In this episode, Sam speaks with J. Doyne Farmer, a physicist, complexity scientist, and economist. Doyne is currently the Director of the Complexity Economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and the Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Doyne is also the author of the fascinating new book “Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World.” Sam wanted to explore Doyne's intriguing history in complexity science, his new book, and the broader field of complexity economics. Together, they discuss the nature of simulation, complex systems, the world of finance and prediction, and even the differences between biological complexity and economic complexity. They also touch on Doyne's experience building a small wearable computer in the 1970s that fit inside a shoe and was designed to beat the game of roulette. Produced by ⁠⁠CRG Consulting⁠⁠ Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠George Ko⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & Suno

J. Doyne Farmer is director of the Complexity Economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is a renowned physicist and complex systems scientist with a career spanning more than four decades. As a pioneer in chaos theory and complexity science, he has made significant contributions to understanding dynamic systems and their applications in various fields, including economics and financial markets.In this conversation with Dave Young, the Global Leader of the BCG Henderson Institute's Center for Climate & Sustainability, Doyne discusses his journey from astrophysics to pioneering work in chaos theory and complex systems. He explains how modern computational power and big data are revolutionizing economic modeling, sharing insights from his team's accurate prediction of COVID-19's economic impact in the U.K. Farmer argues for a shift from traditional macroeconomic models to more dynamic, data-driven approaches that can capture the intricacies of our complex economic systems.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Giles Whittell and guests debate what should lead the news. They discuss the mysterious packages being sent to US election officials, the abortion laws that contributed to the death of Amber Thurman and the Labour's migration plan.Tickets to the News Meeting live on 25th September available here: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/thinkin/the-news-meeting-live-10/ Explore the Westminster Accounts: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/the-westminster-accounts/Email: newsmeeting@tortoisemedia.comGuests:Jess Winch, News Editor at Tortoise Katie Riley, Data Editor at Tortoise Ian Goldin, Oxford professor, founding Director of the Oxford Martin School and author of ‘The Shortest History of Migration'.Host: Giles Whittell, deputy editor at Tortoise.Producer: Casey MagloireExecutive producer: Rebecca Moore To find out more about Tortoise:- Download the Tortoise app - for a listening experience curated by our journalists- Subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts for early access and exclusive content- Become a member and get access to all of Tortoise's premium audio offerings and moreIf you want to get in touch with us directly about a story, or tell us more about the stories you want to hear about contact hello@tortoisemedia.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Charles Godfray, Director of the the Oxford Martin School tells Jim Al-Kahlili about the intricate world of population dynamics, and how a healthy obsession with parasitic wasps might help us solve some of humanity's biggest problems, from the fight against Malaria to sustainably feeding a global community of 9 billion people.

In this episode, Oluwatamilore Oni speaks with Dr Christian Johannes Meyer, the Director of the Future of Development programme at the Oxford Martin School. Christian's career spans research and programming focused on livelihoods and labour market interventions for vulnerable groups at the University of Oxford, the World Bank and the Center for Global Development. From this rich background, he shares insights on the interactions between micro and macro economics and the confluence of international and domestic policymaking. He also underscores the necessity of humility when working on technology-enabled solutions and how understanding beneficiary behaviours and backgrounds is crucial to effective programming. He likens his work to gardening as in nurturing the seeds of inquiries about the best policies and practices and also to plumbing as in digging into the inner workings and bottlenecks of policy making and implementation. We invite you to enjoy Christian's unique perspective!

In the 1970's, J. Doyne Farmer built the first wearable computer which he used to predict the game of roulette. While this didn't make him particularly popular in casinos, it did mark the beginning of a glittering scientific career in complexity and systems theory, as well as in theoretical physics and biology. And, along the way, Farmer founded a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to UBS in 2006 as well as working for a while as an Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos Labs. So when a guy as smart as Farmer - who now teaches both at Oxford and at the Santa Fe Institute — turns his big brain to economics, we should take note. In his new book, Making Sense of Chaos, Farmer explains how we can get to a “better economics for a better world” through what he calls complex economics. As a fusion of big data analysis and behavioral economics, Farmer is navigating a third economic way between the scylla of traditional free market economics and the charybdis of de-growth economics. Seriously smart stuff from one the world's brainiest men. J. Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. He was a founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to UBS in 2006. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. During the 1980s he was an Oppenheimer Fellow and the founder of the Complex Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. While a graduate student in the 1970s he built the first wearable digital computer, which was successfully used to predict the game of roulette.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Imagine a world where cities are not just places to live, but dynamic hubs of innovation, specialization, and cooperation. What if the cities of today are shaping the political and economic landscapes of tomorrow in ways we are only beginning to understand? In this episode, we dive deep into the heart of urban development with Ian Goldin, a leading expert on global development and urbanization. Ian is a renowned Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Martin Programme on Technological and Economic Change. In our conversation, we discuss the historical evolution of cities, the ways cities drive innovation, and the transition from manufacturing-based economies to knowledge-based economies. Explore the continued rise of major cities, the challenges they will face, the impact of remote work on urban clustering and economic geography, and how cities shape the politics of a country. Discover strategies for creating more accessible and equitable cities, why transport, education, and housing are vital, how urban policies need to change, mitigating climate change impacts through successful urbanization, and more! Tune in to uncover the hidden mechanisms behind urban success and the future of our rapidly urbanizing world with Ian Goldin!Key Points From This Episode:Discover how cooperation, specialization, and innovation drive the evolution of cities.Unpack the role of diversity and connectivity in driving urban innovation.Learn about the key historical milestones in urban development.Impact of the Industrial Revolution on urban growth and specialization.Insights into the political implications of urban concentration.How cities can successfully transition from a manufacturing-based economy.Unpack the unique challenges faced by cities in developing countries.The future of industrialization and urbanization in a rapidly changing world.Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:Ian GoldinIan Goldin on XOxford University Age of the CityThe Death of DistanceCharter Cities InstituteCharter Cities Institute on FacebookCharter Cities Institute on X

In this episode we talk to Sophie Hackford about technology. Sophie is a futurist, and has given 220+ provocative talks to boards and exec teams on novel science and tech. Sophie is an advisor to John Deere & Co, on the future of food, climate, and agriculture. Sophie is also an advisor to New Lab in Brooklyn. Sophie co-founded and chaired 1715Labs: a spinout from Oxford University's Astrophysics Department, labelling data to train algorithms. She previously worked at WIRED Magazine, Singularity University on the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, and the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University, where she raised $120m for frontier-bending research.Our conversation covers:the merger of biological and silicon-based systemsis technological advancement actually progress for humanitythe hidden power of "dark compute"interspecies communicationthe power of narratives to inspire and drive positive changeinnovative solutions in environmental monitoring and conservationIf you want to help make science more relevant, representative and connected  consider checking out The British Science Association.If you want to channel your inner citizen scientist how about classifying some galaxies on the Galaxy Zoo page.Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyzTwitter: @whrshallwemeetInstagram: @whrshallwemeet

In today's episode, Nathan is joined by J. Doyne Farmer, the director of the Complexity Economics Program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, and author of the new book "Making sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for Better World" to discuss the importance of understanding and explaining economic models, particularly agent-based models. J. Doyne Farmer: Book: "Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World" More S&P Global Content: The Daily Update Look Forward Credits: Host/Author: Nathan Hunt Producer/Editor: Patrick Moroney Published With Assistance From: Kyle May, Kurt Burger, Camille McManus www.spglobal.com

How are our fates in society like hikers on a mountain, climbing together? In our ever increasingly interconnected world how can one balance the rewards of a connected planet against the perils that come with it?Ian Goldin is an Oxford University Professor of Globalisation and Development, Senior Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, and the author of several books. His upcoming book is titled, Age of the City: Why our Future will be Won or Lost Together.Greg and Ian discuss intertwined nature of global connectivity and the systematic risks it poses. Ian explains how pandemics, like COVID-19, highlight these vulnerabilities, emphasizing the need for global cooperation and resilience. Greg and Ian explore modern urbanization, emphasizing how the future is increasingly urban and the challenges and opportunities this presents for sustainability and community within cities. At the end Ian leaves us inspired to adopt global stewardship in our daily lives, in a lesson he learned working with Nelson Mandela.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Is the future more urban?39:55:  Cities are going through a transformation, but one thing I would bet on is that the rate of urbanization will not decrease, and that's true in the U.S. and it's true elsewhere around the world. Where the most growth of cities is in developing countries with big challenges, the pandemic posed a big challenge, climate is a massive challenge. Cities are hotter than other places, so how they cope with heat stress, with water stress, with flooding becomes important. Ocean rise is a massive challenge for seaboard cities…So, big challenges, but the future will be more and more urban.Cities are the future40:55: Cities are the future, but making them livable and sustainable is a massive challenge; getting to zero carbon will make them resilient to climate pressures.Why do people flock to urban Centers for choice and community?45:37: People want to be near other people who are like them, creative, and where they'll have high efficiency. What we find in cities is that we have many more options. We can choose the lifestyle we want, whether you are young or old, have sexual preferences, religious preferences, fashion preferences, music preferences, or food preferences. All of these things can be satisfied in a city, which they never could in a small town, let alone in the countryside. And so, the more that we move into a world where our own preferences become important and we can be anywhere, we're going to be in a big city because that's where we're going to satisfy our preferences.Is there always going to be a trade off that when we increase connectedness, we are necessarily  increasing risks?03:12: Entanglement is the underbelly, the other side of connectivity, and I think it happens at all dimensions. If you think about it, one's own life, the more you get to know other people and get involved in them, it brings great joy and many benefits, but it can also bring great sadness. And I think it's like that at a macro scale as well, that we now increasingly recognize that we are entangled around the world in multiple ways. And that means that we can benefit enormously. A vaccine can be developed in one place and be around the world, or the worldwide web can join us all. We can hear new music or fashion, go to other places, meet incredible people, and benefit from incredible ideas, but we are also more vulnerable as a result. And so the great challenge of globalization, I think, is how does one harvest the upside and manage the downside.Show Links:Recommended Resources:GlobalizationSuez CanalHenry PaulsonDeregulationWorld BankOECDGiovanni Pico della MirandolaRenaissanceNiccolò MachiavelliHouse of MediciGirolamo SavonarolaMartin LutherJohn CalvinSocratesAristotleHumanismNelson MandelaGuest Profile:IanGoldin.orgFaculty Profile at the University of OxfordWikipedia ProfileHis Work:Amazon Author PageAge of the City: Why our Future will be Won or Lost TogetherThe Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do about ItRescue: From Global Crisis to a Better WorldAge of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New RenaissanceExceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our FutureDevelopment: A Very Short IntroductionIs the Planet Full?Divided Nations: Why global governance is failing, and what we can do about itThe Pursuit of Development: Economic Growth, Social Change and IdeasGlobalization for Development: Meeting New Challenges

J. Doyne Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, a Professor at the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. In this episode, we explore Doyne's latest book, “Making Sense of Chaos.” We focus on the relationship between chaos and scaling theory, and more specifically, how chaos can be factored into scaling theory. By the end of this conversation, you will learn why it might be easier to predict the long distant future than predicting tomorrow, how Moore's Law conflicts with other scaling laws that underpin technological progress, how agent-based modeling can help all scientists and policymakers, how to dominate the world with your theories (...), and even how to trick casinos. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Find me on X at @⁠⁠ProfSchrepel⁠⁠. Also, be sure to subscribe to the Scaling Theory podcast; it helps its growth. ***

J. Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.In this episode, Doyne discusses his journey from chaos theory to complexity economics. He shares his experience developing agent-based models for the economy and talks about the importance of multidisciplinary work and applying complexity science principles to economics and climate change.   Resources: Purchase ‘Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World' here   Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.

How does the European Union conduct its foreign policy in a turbulent world? Since its creation in 2010, what has the European External Action Service learned from shocks and crises? Jan Eijking speaks to former EEAS Managing Director for Africa and for the Middle East, Dr Nicholas Westcott, who is Professor of Practice at SOAS University of London. We spoke about crisis in the Sahel, the EU's engagements in Libya and Syria, and the future of the EU in a turbulent world. More about the EEASMore about Nick WestcottMore background on EU diplomacyGlobal Shocks is the official podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, University of Oxford. Changing Global Orders is a collaboration of members of the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Relations. Our co-directors are Professor Andrew Thompson, Professor Patricia Clavin, Professor Louise Fawcett, and Professor Andrew Hurrell. Our postdoctoral fellows are Dr Boyd van Dijk and Dr Jan Eijking. Host and producer: Jan Eijking (University of Oxford)Music: “Space!” by HoliznaCC0, CC0 1.0Logo: Roger Gray (Oxford Martin School)Audio consultant: Melissa FitzGerald (Zinc Media)Website: changingglobalorders.web.ox.ac.ukTwitter/X: twitter.com/OxGlobalOrdersChanging Global Orders is a programme of the Oxford Martin School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We look at this thoughtful attempt to dig into the complexity of real world situations and the attempts to make better models to understand what is happening around us and why. See more about the author Doyne Farmer here. Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World, reviewed This is a challenging topic to do well. Models are always limited by their inherent nature, how many factors do you incorporate? How much data do you need, over how long a time period? How do you factor in the slightly to very unpredictable behaviour of humans themselves, and their inclination towards capricious behaviour sometimes? The author does a good job of explaining these challenges, while offering some small hope with positive and interesting examples. The ability to predict the weather is one example that the author refers to. Citing the observation, that, with each decade that passes, humanity seems able to predict one more day further into the future. For sure we can't yet say what the weather will be one month from now, but one to three day forecasts are pretty reliable, and even four to six days out, we are now able to have a pretty good idea of what is coming down the line. Of course human's impact on global warming, and more unstable weather systems does then counter impact on these improvements. Farmer also discusses the solar industry with interesting, and potentially hopeful and positive predications about the continued fall in the price of solar generated energy units, relative to those generated from fossil fuels. We found this book to be well written, self critical, and aiming to tackle something which, by it's vary nature is extremely difficult to do really well. If you are looking to get up to speed in any of the topics tackled then we would recommend it. More about the book In Making Sense of Chaos one of our most influential scientists, J Doyne Famer, tackles these questions and more. Introducing the new field of complexity economics, he describes how rebellious economists and other scientists are revolutionising our ability to predict the economy, developing new approaches to global problems - like climate change, inequality, and the devastating impact of financial crises, which hit the poorest hardest. These issues are all rooted in the economy, yet mainstream economics isn't helping to solve our most pressing problems. Farmer explains why it can't do the job, and suggests a better alternative, called complexity economics. Complex systems are characterized by emergent phenomena - creating a whole that is qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. Examples are the human brain, the weather system, and of course, the economy. The ideas behind complexity economics have been around for many years, but enabled by enormous improvements in computing power and big data, its time has come. We can now build real-world computer simulations of the economy that track its emergent behaviour in detail. For instance, it is possible to simulate how the occupational labour force changes through time, how economic policies affect rich or poor households, or how the economy will evolve during the energy transition. This new science, Farmer shows, will allow us to test ideas and make better economic predictions, enabling us to better tackle global problems like inequality and climate change, creating sustainable growth, and more. And, ultimately, create a better world. More about the author Doyne Farmer is an American complex systems scientist and entrepreneur who pioneered many of the fields that define the scientific agenda of our times: chaos, complex systems, artificial life, wearable computing, and more. Currently he is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the University of Oxford, Chief Scientist at Macrocosm, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously, he was a...

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our times. One of the most important organisations dedicated to the topic is Greenpeace. How has Greenpeace dealt with shocks in the past, and what is the future of climate activism in a turbulent world? Jan Eijking speaks to the former head (2009-2015) of Greenpeace International, Dr Kumi Naidoo. We spoke about his life as an activist, about the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, and why international organisations need to do better. More about GreenpeaceMore about Kumi Naidoo and the Riky Rick Foundation Kumi Naidoo's podcastKumi Naidoo's memoir "Letters to My Mother"More historical backgroundGlobal Shocks is the official podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, University of Oxford. Changing Global Orders is a collaboration of members of the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Relations. Our co-directors are Professor Andrew Thompson, Professor Patricia Clavin, Professor Louise Fawcett, and Professor Andrew Hurrell. Our postdoctoral fellows are Dr Boyd van Dijk and Dr Jan Eijking. Host and producer: Jan Eijking (University of Oxford)Music: “Space!” by HoliznaCC0, CC0 1.0Logo: Roger Gray (Oxford Martin School)Audio consultant: Melissa FitzGerald (Zinc Media)Website: changingglobalorders.web.ox.ac.ukTwitter/X: twitter.com/OxGlobalOrdersChanging Global Orders is a programme of the Oxford Martin School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The growing membership of the OECD today accounts for 41.1% of global GDP. This powerful organisation is dedicated to stimulating economic growth and setting international standards. But what does the OECD do exactly? How has it dealt with past crises? In this episode, Jan Eijking speaks to the OECD's former Deputy Secretary-General (2014-19) Mari Kiviniemi, who previously was Prime Minister of Finland (2010-11). We spoke about Mari Kiviniemi's experience working for the OECD, about aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis, the effects of the 2015 European migrant crisis, and what lessons the organisation draws from the past. More about the OECDMore about Mari KiviniemiMore historical backgroundGlobal Shocks is the official podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, University of Oxford. Changing Global Orders is a collaboration of members of the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Relations. Our co-directors are Professor Andrew Thompson, Professor Patricia Clavin, Professor Louise Fawcett, and Professor Andrew Hurrell. Our postdoctoral fellows are Dr Boyd van Dijk and Dr Jan Eijking. Host and producer: Jan Eijking (University of Oxford)Music: “Space!” by HoliznaCC0, CC0 1.0Logo: Roger Gray (Oxford Martin School)Audio consultant: Melissa FitzGerald (Zinc Media)Website: changingglobalorders.web.ox.ac.ukTwitter/X: twitter.com/OxGlobalOrdersChanging Global Orders is a programme of the Oxford Martin School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julian Jacobs, a Research Lead for the Oxford Group on AI Policy, Artificial Intelligence, Inequality and Society at Oxford Martin School, joins this episode of AI, Government, and the Future to explore the economic effects of AI, the potential inequalities that AI may bring, and the need to address job displacement. They also navigate the importance of government support in creating a strong middle class and the significance of human skills in the AI age.

Professor Charles Godfray, Director of the the Oxford Martin School tells Jim Al-Kahlili about the intricate world of population dynamics, and how a healthy obsession with parasitic wasps might help us solve some of humanity's biggest problems, from the fight against Malaria to sustainably feeding a global community of 9 billion people.

What is the future of global public health? In turbulent times, will we be ready for the next pandemic? To find out, in this episode Jan Eijking is joined by Professor Ilona Kickbusch, a global public health expert with many years of experience working for the World Health Organisation (WHO). They discuss questions including: how has the WHO dealt with past public health crises? How can it learn from that experience? Ilona Kickbusch shares first-hand experience working for the WHO during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, what lessons the organisation has drawn from tackling some of the world's most difficult public health crises, and how it can reform to be prepared for future challenges. More about the WHOMore about Ilona KickbuschMore historical background Global Shocks is the official podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, University of Oxford. Changing Global Orders is a collaboration of members of the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Relations. Our co-directors are Professor Andrew Thompson, Professor Patricia Clavin, Professor Louise Fawcett, and Professor Andrew Hurrell. Our postdoctoral fellows are Dr Boyd van Dijk and Dr Jan Eijking. Host and producer: Jan Eijking (University of Oxford)Music: “Space!” by HoliznaCC0, CC0 1.0Logo: Roger Gray (Oxford Martin School)Audio consultant: Melissa FitzGerald (Zinc Media)Website: changingglobalorders.web.ox.ac.ukTwitter/X: twitter.com/OxGlobalOrdersChanging Global Orders is a programme of the Oxford Martin School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How does the global financial system cope with a turbulent world? In this episode of Global Shocks, Jan Eijking is joined by Maurice Obstfeld, former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Maurice Obstfeld is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2015 through 2018, he served as Economic Counsellor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. In 2014 and 2015, he was a Member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. A leading macroeconomist, he has published widely on the international financial system and its resilience to crises and shocks.More about the IMFMore about Maurice ObstfeldMore historical backgroundGlobal Shocks is the official podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, University of Oxford. Changing Global Orders is a collaboration of members of the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Relations. Our co-directors are Professor Andrew Thompson, Professor Patricia Clavin, Professor Louise Fawcett, and Professor Andrew Hurrell. Our postdoctoral fellows are Dr Boyd van Dijk and Dr Jan Eijking. Host and producer: Jan Eijking (University of Oxford)Music: “Space!” by HoliznaCC0, CC0 1.0Logo: Roger Gray (Oxford Martin School)Audio consultant: Melissa FitzGerald (Zinc Media)Website: changingglobalorders.web.ox.ac.ukTwitter/X: twitter.com/OxGlobalOrdersChanging Global Orders is a programme of the Oxford Martin School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We speak to UN peacekeeping expert Renata Dwan, former Chief of Peacekeeping Policy at the UN headquarters in New York. Tune in to hear Renata share first-hand experience with peacekeeping in Mali, peacekeeping after the Arab Spring, and how peacekeeping was affected by the 2008 financial crisis.More about UN peacekeeping: https://www.icrc.org/enThe history of UN peacekeeping: “Blue Helmet Bureaucrats” by Margot Tudor, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/blue-helmet-bureaucrats/796DA861774D924CA2A7B829DAA5E103#fndtn-information More about Renata Dwan: https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-people/renata-dwan Global Shocks is the official podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, University of Oxford. Changing Global Orders is a collaboration of members of the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Relations. Our co-directors are Professor Andrew Thompson, Professor Patricia Clavin, Professor Louise Fawcett, and Professor Andrew Hurrell. Our postdoctoral fellows are Dr Boyd van Dijk and Dr Jan Eijking. Host and producer: Jan Eijking (University of Oxford)Music: “Space!” by HoliznaCC0, public domain / CC0 1.0 Universal LicenseLogo: Roger Gray (Oxford Martin School)Audio consultant: Melissa FitzGerald (Zinc Media)Website: changingglobalorders.web.ox.ac.ukTwitter/X: twitter.com/OxGlobalOrdersChanging Global Orders is a programme of the Oxford Martin School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this first episode of Global Shocks, we speak to humanitarian leader Yves Daccord, former Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. Tune in to hear Yves share his first-hand experience with how the ICRC dealt with humanitarian crises in Yemen, how social media affects the work of ICRC staff, and how 9/11 has affected the work of Red Cross organisations around the world.More about the ICRC: https://www.icrc.org/enThe history of the Red Cross: Caroline Moorehead (1999), Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dunants-Dream-Switzerland-History-Cross/dp/0786706090); History of the ICRC in 5 volumes (https://blogs.icrc.org/cross-files/history-of-the-icrc-in-5-volumes/); Boyd van Dijk (2023) Preparing for War: The Making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/preparing-for-war-the-making-of-the-1949-geneva-conventions-9780198912613)More about Yves Daccord: https://edgelands.institute, https://principlesforpeace.org/, www.linkedin.com/in/YDaccord1 Global Shocks is the official podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders, University of Oxford. Changing Global Orders is a collaboration of members of the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Relations. Our co-directors are Professor Andrew Thompson, Professor Patricia Clavin, Professor Louise Fawcett, and Professor Andrew Hurrell. Our postdoctoral fellows are Dr Boyd van Dijk and Dr Jan Eijking. Host and producer: Jan Eijking (University of Oxford)Music: “Space!” by HoliznaCC0 / CC0 1.0Logo: Roger Gray (Oxford Martin School)Audio consultant: Melissa FitzGerald (Zinc Media)Website: changingglobalorders.web.ox.ac.ukTwitter/X: twitter.com/OxGlobalOrdersChanging Global Orders is a programme of the Oxford Martin School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can international organisations tackle crises, wars, and other global shocks? Understanding how to deal with such mounting global challenges is more crucial than ever. At Global Shocks, we enter the conversation with leading figures from the world's major international organisations — from the International Committee of the Red Cross to the World Health Organisation.Host and producer: Jan EijkingMusic: “Space!” by HoliznaCC0, public domain / CC0 1.0 Universal LicenseLogo: Lorie Shaull (https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/25149951911/) CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)Audio consultant: Melissa FitzGerald, Zinc MediaTwitter/X: twitter.com/OxGlobalOrdersChanging Global Orders is generously funded by the Oxford Martin School. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Hein de Haas about migration and many of the myths surrounding immigration. They discuss why immigration is a major issue globally and its connection with nationalism, distinctions between immigration, emigration, asylum seekers, and refugees, and how migration is not at an all-time high. They also talk about internal/external migration, borders, labor demand in the USA, low-skilled vs. high-skilled workers, refugee crisis, hypocrisy on the political left and right, future of migration, and many more topics. Hein de Haas is a sociologist and a geographer who has lived and worked in the Netherlands, Morocco and the United Kingdom. He is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He has a Bachelor's in cultural anthropology and Master's degree in social and environmental geography from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in social sciences from the University of Nijmegen. He has worked as a researcher at the University of Amsterdam and as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Nijmegen. He was visiting scholar at Bilkent University in Ankara (Turkey) the Program of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University of Cairo (AUC Egypt). He has been part of the International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford and played a central role in lecturing and directing the newly established MSc in Migration Studies at the  Oxford Department of International Development (ODID). He was also a fellow at the Oxford Martin School and governing body fellow at Wolfson College. He is lead author of The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, a seminal text book in the field of migration studies. He is the author of the new book, How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics. Website: https://heindehaas.org/Blog: https://heindehaas.blogspot.com/Twitter: @heindehaas Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

Today I speak with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change.  Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry's destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation.  Franta also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incurred by such misinformation and disinformation. In sum, we learn about what the industry has done, and how ordinary people and municipalities can fight back.Benjamin Franta is the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. The Climate Litigation Lab is a multidisciplinary research initiative to inform, enable, and accelerate climate change litigation globally. Ben is also an Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford.  Ben holds a JD from Stanford Law School and is a licensed attorney with the California State Bar, a PhD in History of Science from Stanford University, a separate PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University, an MSc in Archaeological Science from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Physics and Mathematics from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He is also a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.  He is the recipient of numerous academic and research fellowships including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the U.S. National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, the USAID Research and Innovation Fellowship, the University of Oxford Clarendon Scholarship, and the Coe College Williston Jones Scholarship.  His research and writing have appeared in 10 languages, been featured in the Paramount+ documentary Black Gold, been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record, and been published in numerous scholarly and popular venues including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and more. 

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry's destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation. Ben also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incurred by such misinformation and disinformation. In sum, we learn about what the industry has done, and how ordinary people and municipalities can fight back.Benjamin Franta is the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. The Climate Litigation Lab is a multidisciplinary research initiative to inform, enable, and accelerate climate change litigation globally. Ben is also an Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the recipient of numerous academic and research fellowships including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research and writing have appeared in 10 languages, been featured in the Paramount+ documentary Black Gold, been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record, and been published in numerous scholarly and popular venues including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and more. “For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.”www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/benjamin-franta www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/oxford-sustainable-law-programme/research/climate-litigation-labwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry's destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation. Ben also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incurred by such misinformation and disinformation. In sum, we learn about what the industry has done, and how ordinary people and municipalities can fight back.Benjamin Franta is the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. The Climate Litigation Lab is a multidisciplinary research initiative to inform, enable, and accelerate climate change litigation globally. Ben is also an Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the recipient of numerous academic and research fellowships including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research and writing have appeared in 10 languages, been featured in the Paramount+ documentary Black Gold, been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record, and been published in numerous scholarly and popular venues including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and more. “For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.”www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/benjamin-franta www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/oxford-sustainable-law-programme/research/climate-litigation-labwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry's destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation. Ben also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incurred by such misinformation and disinformation. In sum, we learn about what the industry has done, and how ordinary people and municipalities can fight back.Benjamin Franta is the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. The Climate Litigation Lab is a multidisciplinary research initiative to inform, enable, and accelerate climate change litigation globally. Ben is also an Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the recipient of numerous academic and research fellowships including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research and writing have appeared in 10 languages, been featured in the Paramount+ documentary Black Gold, been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record, and been published in numerous scholarly and popular venues including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and more. “For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.”www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/benjamin-franta www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/oxford-sustainable-law-programme/research/climate-litigation-labwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry's destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation. Ben also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incurred by such misinformation and disinformation. In sum, we learn about what the industry has done, and how ordinary people and municipalities can fight back.Benjamin Franta is the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. The Climate Litigation Lab is a multidisciplinary research initiative to inform, enable, and accelerate climate change litigation globally. Ben is also an Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the recipient of numerous academic and research fellowships including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research and writing have appeared in 10 languages, been featured in the Paramount+ documentary Black Gold, been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record, and been published in numerous scholarly and popular venues including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and more. “For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.”www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/benjamin-franta www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/oxford-sustainable-law-programme/research/climate-litigation-labwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry's destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation. Ben also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incurred by such misinformation and disinformation. In sum, we learn about what the industry has done, and how ordinary people and municipalities can fight back.Benjamin Franta is the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. The Climate Litigation Lab is a multidisciplinary research initiative to inform, enable, and accelerate climate change litigation globally. Ben is also an Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the recipient of numerous academic and research fellowships including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research and writing have appeared in 10 languages, been featured in the Paramount+ documentary Black Gold, been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record, and been published in numerous scholarly and popular venues including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and more. “For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.”www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/benjamin-franta www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/oxford-sustainable-law-programme/research/climate-litigation-labwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry's destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementing change would be too costly. This became a powerful tool to stall and kill climate change legislation. Ben also talks about how communities have tried to sue fossil fuel companies for damages incurred by such misinformation and disinformation. In sum, we learn about what the industry has done, and how ordinary people and municipalities can fight back.Benjamin Franta is the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. The Climate Litigation Lab is a multidisciplinary research initiative to inform, enable, and accelerate climate change litigation globally. Ben is also an Associate at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the recipient of numerous academic and research fellowships including the Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research and writing have appeared in 10 languages, been featured in the Paramount+ documentary Black Gold, been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record, and been published in numerous scholarly and popular venues including Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, The Guardian, Project Syndicate, and more. “For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.”www.inet.ox.ac.uk/people/benjamin-franta www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/oxford-sustainable-law-programme/research/climate-litigation-labwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

EPISODE 1688: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Ian Goldin, author of AGE OF THE CITY, about how to make the 21st century city the heart of a new circular economy Professor Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford. He is a Professorial Fellow at the University's Balliol College. From 2006 to 2016 he was the founding Director of the Oxford Martin School and currently leads the Oxford Martin Research Programmes on Technological and Economic Change, the Future of Work, and the Future of Development. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Getting the global energy system to net-zero – a state in which it emits no more greenhouse gasses than it absorbs – means deploying clean energy infrastructure at a pace without historical precedent. The ripple effects of this transition are already apparent in business, geopolitics, and in people's daily lives.     Increasing public concern over climate change and breakthroughs in clean energy technology have rendered this challenge more achievable. But turning this momentum into tangible progress will require careful policymaking and implementation, across all levels of government.  How might the clean energy transition reconfigure the global economy? What levers can policymakers pull to accelerate it? And what emerging solutions are already changing the outlook for net zero? Today we're re-running host Jason Bordoff's interview with Cameron Hepburn about the economics of the climate crisis. Cameron is a Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford and Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.  He also serves as the Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme, based at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. Cameron has over 30 peer-reviewed publications spanning economics, public policy, law, engineering, philosophy, and biology.  In a summer of both heightened climate ambition and heightened alarm over climate change, this conversation was held in the aftermath of the COP27 climate summit. Jason and Cameron discussed how technology developments are accelerating the energy transition and how to scale their impact.

This week on Cleaning Up, Michael welcomes Achim Steiner, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and co-chair of UN Energy. Michael had questions for Steiner on UNDP's roster of initiatives, balancing climate priorities with development goals, and how to clear a path to financing billions of dollars of clean infrastructure in the midst of a global energy crisis.Like, share and subscribe to Cleaning Up for more essential conversations around the net zero transition. Links and Related Episodes: Learn more about UNDP: https://www.undp.org/energyOver 120 countries are part of UNDP's Climate Promise: https://climatepromise.undp.org/Discover UNDP's Sustainable Finance Hub: https://sdgfinance.undp.org/Many of the episodes mentioned can be found in our ‘United Nations' playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvl91lgPsUg&list=PLe8ZTD7dMaaDVAOrAyAwuMKrmq3G9ih75Watch Episode 98 with Bill McKibben: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W9uR6eTe94Watch Episode 59 with Alain Ebobissé: https://www.cleaningup.live/ep-59-alain-ebobisse-meeting-africas-infrastructure-needs/Guest BioAchim Steiner became Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme in 2017, and is also the Vice-Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group. Steiner has been a global leader on sustainable development, climate resilience and international cooperation for nearly three decades.Prior to joining UNDP, he was Director of the Oxford Martin School and Professorial Fellow of Balliol College, University of Oxford. He led the United Nations Environment Programme (2006-2016), and was Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi. Steiner previously held positions including Director General of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and Secretary General of the World Commission on Dams.Steiner graduated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (MA) from Worcester College, Oxford University, and holds an MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Farming and the environment with the Defra Secretary, Therese Coffey. How should we use our land? With competing priorities of housing, solar farms, food production and woodland to name but a few, who decides? We hear from Sir Charles Godfray, director of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University. And research on abuse of migrant labour within the fishing industry. Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Beatrice Fenton.

How should we use our land? With competing priorities: housing, solar farms, food production and woodland to name but a few - who decides? Sir Charles Godfray, director of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University, suggests that an apolitical body should look at land use, which he says will change as within a decade many processed meat products will be made with plant based meat substitutes. Disputes about sustainability and conservation, worries about attracting enough workers, and the slow pace of introducing change; just some of the issues we'll be covering this week as we look at the UK's fishing industry. Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Beatrice Fenton.

The clean energy transition is a multi-generational challenge. It will shake up geopolitics, shift the economy, and change our daily interactions with energy. We have no precedent for the scale and speed required to decarbonize the global economy.  Yet there are signs that new developments in technology, policy, and public opinion are turning the tide for a global response to the climate crisis. Achieving a net-zero future, however, will require careful implementation, creative solutions, and a whole-systems approach that prioritizes prosperity and justice.  What are the economic tools we have to deliver such a transition? And what are the emerging solutions that might make this future possible? This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Cameron Hepburn.  Cameron is a professor of environmental economics at the University of Oxford and director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. He also serves as the director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme based at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. Cameron has more than 30 peer-reviewed publications spanning economics, public policy, law, engineering, philosophy, and biology.  Jason and Cameron talk  about where we are in the energy transition – and where we need to go. They discuss the economics of the climate crisis, how technology developments are accelerating the energy transition, and how to scale their impact.

As our world knits together, economic interdependencies change in both shape and nature. Supply chains, finance, labor, technological innovation, and geography interact in puzzling nonlinear ways. Can we step back far enough and see clearly enough to make sense of these interactions? Can we map the landscape of capability across scales? And what insights emerge by layering networks of people, firms, states, markets, regions? We're all riding a bucking horse; what questions can we ask to make sure that we can stay in the saddle?Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I'm your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we'll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe.This week on Complexity, we speak with two SFI External Professors helping to rethink political economy: newly-appointed Science Board Co-Chair Ricardo Hausmann (Website, Wikipedia, Twitter) is the Director of the Harvard Growth Lab and J. Doyne Farmer (Website, Wikipedia) is Director of the Complexity Economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. In this episode we zoom wide to try and find a way to garden all together, learning limits that can help inform discussion and decisions on the shape of things to come…If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage. You can find the complete show notes for every episode, with transcripts and links to cited works, at complexity.simplecast.com. Heads up that our online education platform Complexity Explorer's Origins of Life Course is still open for enrollment until June 1st! We hope to see you in there…Thank you for listening!Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedInMentions and additional resources:The new paradigm of economic complexityPierre-Alexandre Balland, Tom Broekel, Dario Diodato, Elisa Giuliani, Ricardo Hausmann, Neave O'Clery, and David Rigbyin Research PolicyHow production networks amplify economic growthJames McNerney, Charles Savoie, Francesco Caravelli, Vasco M. Carvalho, and J. Doyne Farmer in PNASProductive Ecosystems and the arrow of developmentby Neave O'Clery, Muhammed Ali Yıldırım, and Ricardo Hausmann Horrible trade-offs in a pandemic: Poverty, fiscal space, policy, and welfareRicardo Hausmann and Ulrich Schetterin ScienceDirectHistorical effects of shocks on inequality: the great leveler revisitedBas van Bavel and Marten Schefferin Nature Humanities & Social Sciences Communications(Twitter thread)Complexity 56 - J. Doyne Farmer on The Complexity Economics RevolutionThe Multiple Paths to Multiple LifeChristopher P. Kempes and David C. Krakauer in Journal of Molecular EvolutionScaling of urban income inequality in the USAElisa Heinrich Mora, Cate Heine, Jacob J. Jackson, Geoffrey B. West, Vicky Chuqiao Yang and Christopher P. Kempesin Journal of The Royal Society InterfaceComplexity 12 - Matthew Jackson on Social & Economic NetworksComplexity 81 - C. Brandon Ogbunu on Epistasis & The Primacy of Context in Complex SystemsPitchfork Economicsby Nick Hanauer (podcast)Complexity 15 - R. Maria del-Rio Chanona on Modeling Labor Markets & Tech UnemploymentWill a Large Complex System be Stable?by Robert Mayin NatureInvestigationsby Stuart KauffmanThe Collapse of Networksby Raissa D'Souza (SFI Symposium Talk)