In August 2025, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held its 25th annual summit in Tianjin, China, with the country’s leader Xi Jinping, hosting representatives from more than 20 countries including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi. The absence of the United States in this gathering of global leaders may tell us about how China is competing with the US and building its own global order.

To discuss China’s strategic competition with the US, and how it is evolving under the Trump administration, in September 2025, the Phelan US Centre spoke to Professor Evan Medeiros, the Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies and the Cling Family Senior Fellow in US-China Relations at Georgetown University.

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Avan Fata.  

Further reading and resources

•	“China and Russia Will Not Be Split”, Michael McFaul and Evan S. Medeiros, Foreign Affairs, 4 April 2025
•	Medeiros, E. S., & Polk, A. (2025). China’s New Economic Weapons. The Washington Quarterly, 48(1), 99–123. 
•	“U.S.-China Relations for the 2030s: Toward a Realistic Scenario for Coexistence”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace”, 17 October 2024
•	“The Delusion of Peak China”, Evan S. Medeiros, Foreign Affairs, 24 April 2024

Take the Ballpark Listener survey and enter the prize draw for £250 in vouchers!

The Ballpark will be ten years old in 2026, and we want to hear from you to make the podcast even better, so we’re running a listener survey until 1 November 2025. 

•	Fill in our listener survey – it only takes 15 minutes – here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1 
•	Voucher prize draw terms and conditions are available here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/ballpark-listener-survey-prize-terms-conditions-2025 


LSE: The Ballpark | US-China strategic competition with Professor Evan Medeiros

Will artificial intelligence cause huge unemployment? Will it free us from working? Will it replace us? In this special edition of LSE iQ, Sophie Mallett sits down with Professor Judy Wajcman, LSE’s Emeritus Professor of Sociology and one of the world’s leading voices on technology and society. Together, they explore one of the biggest questions of our time: what does artificial intelligence really mean for the future of work? 
 
In this wide-ranging conversation, Judy shares what really saves people time, talks about the fear of job replacement, and warns of the dangers of letting the most powerful tech companies design the future 
From Silicon Valley boardrooms to everyday lives, Judy challenges us to think differently about progress, productivity, and what we truly value as work. 
Contributors: Judy Wacjman  
Research links:  
From connection to optimisation 
How Silicon Valley sets time 
Feminism confronts AI: the gender relations of digitalisation 
LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. 


Will AI free us from work?

In this episode, we discuss the powerful, magisterial closing pages of Annie Ernaux’s The Years (pp.182-225) alongside philosophical work in progress by Alice Harberd, one of our hosts. In this paper, Alice considers various ‘narrative’ theories of the self, and argues that, when it comes to the articulation of a sense of self, ‘narrativity is a choice’. We examine Ernaux’s intertwining of personal and sociological selves and ponder to what extent it embraces, or resists, narrative form. We are joined in the UCL Studio by Emmanuel Campion-Dye, a Philosophy PhD student and an ever spirited and probing member of our Philosophy and Literature Reading Group.
 
Hosts: 
Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.
Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.
 
Guest:
Emmanuel Campion-Dye, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

Transcript Link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/e82414f3/transcript.txt

S2, Ep 5 The Narrative Self: Alice Harberd, with special guest Emmanuel Campion-Dye

Creating more inclusive environments is key to innovation and success, but how can we do this? Dr Michael Woodrow, Lecturer in Engineering Education, joins Professor Philip Schofield to discuss how dyslexia’s image-based, big-picture thinking fuels engineering creativity. Dr Woodrow dives into his research on the vital roles of choice and autonomy in inclusive spaces, and critiques the prevalence of 'one-size-fits-all' solutions. 


Date of episode recording: 2025-10-23
Duration: 26:38
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Professor Philip Schofield
Guests: Dr Michael Woodrow
Producer: Justin Hardy
Podcast Owners: Dr Paul Ayris, Margaret Stone, Lara Speicher, Helen Carney, Alison Fox

Transcript link: https://otter.ai/u/TSwiUShNgcg7ZpXfsnGw1lJNDuM

Season 2, Episode 2 - Why People with Dyslexia Make Great Engineers, featuring Dr Michael Woodrow

We practice meditation because the present moment is the only place where we can truly find ourselves, love others, and be loved by the divine. This is why we gather, why we sit, why we breathe together. We practice surrendering to what lies beyond our control and responding rather than reacting to life's challenges. We cultivate curiosity about what's arising within and around us, learning to do difficult things like changing and growing. Because we trust there's a limitless reservoir of strength, compassion, and resilience flowing through us at every moment. 


Host: Brandon Nappi 


Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast 


You can support our work at https://tinyurl.com/support-transforming-leaders 

71: "Why We Practice" - reflection and meditation with Brandon Nappi

Does neurodivergence shape the way that we sleep and dream? In this episode, Professor Dagmara Dimitriou, Professor of Sleep Education and Research, draws on two decades of research to explain why standard sleep advice often falls short for neurodiverse individuals. From infant dreams to nightmares – take a deep dive into the strange world of sleep and the brain. 

Date of episode recording: 2024-12-01
Duration: 24:45
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Professor Philip Schofield
Guests: Professor Dagmara Dimitriou
Commissioners: Professor David Docherty OBE & Dr Paul Ayris (Pro-Vice-Provost LCCOS: Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science, UCL) Director: Justin Hardy (IOE - Culture, Communication & Media, UCL) Producer: Stevie Doran


Transcript link: https://otter.ai/u/8KQYa3phFmb50i0glgZ3cyXsgSk

Season 2, Episode 3 - Why Sleep Hygiene Doesn’t Always Work, featuring Professor Dagmara Dimitriou

In this episode of Generation One, we’re exploring the importance of start-ups and the role of entrepreneurs in stepping up with ground breaking solutions to solve the climate crisis and what policy makers and organisations like UCL are doing to enable this.

Our hosts Professor Mark Maslin and Dr Simon Chin-Yee are joined by three inspiring guests who share their experiences and insights on how entrepreneurship is driving a greener future, building climate-focused businesses, overcoming start-up challenges, and the crucial role investors and incubators play in scaling climate impact:

Alexandra Ranft, Senior Project Manager from UN Global Compact Network UK.  The UN Global Compact’s aim is to mobilise a global movement of sustainable companies and stakeholders to create the world we want.

William Moore co-founder and CEO of Consus Energy and UCL alum (Geography 2025).  Consus Energy was selected to join UCL’s Hatchery incubator programme, which provides co-working space and business support to UCL startups.

Simon Chaudhuri was a Strategic Advisor for the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Obama Administration and founded CIV:LAB, a nonprofit developing and funding place-based innovation programs across the US.   Simon is also a Founding Fellow at the UCL Centre for Sustainable Business.  

Credits: 

Date of episode recording: 29th Oct 2025 and 5th of November 2025
Duration: 37:10
Language of episode: English 
 Presenter: Professor Mark Maslin and Dr Simon Chin-Yee 
 
Organisations:
 
UN Global Compact Network UK, https://www.unglobalcompact.org.uk
Consus Energy https://www.consusenergy.com
UCL Hatchery https://www.ucl.ac.uk/enterprise/students Alongside your studies at UCL, did you know you can access UCL’s specialist free extra-curricular entrepreneurship programme? 
CIV:LAB https://civ-lab.org
UCL School of Management https://www.mgmt.ucl.ac.uk/

Season 5, Episode 10 - Driving Climate Innovation Through Start-Ups

The last three decades have seen China’s economic rise. Alongside this, China has become much more influential on the global stage, emerging as a competitor to the United States in many arenas, including as a technology and innovation leader. China has accomplished all this while continuing to be an authoritarian state, which is at odds with many conventional ideas about the relationship between autocracies and technology. 

To discuss China’s technological rise in the context of its autocratic government, in October 2025 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Dr Jennifer Lind, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and a leading expert on the international relations of East Asia, about her new book, Autocracy 2.0 How China's Rise Reinvented Tyranny.

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Avan Fata.  

Further reading and resources

•	Autocracy 2.0 How China's Rise Reinvented Tyranny by Jennifer Lind (Cornell University Press, 2025)
•	Jennifer Lind and Michael Mastanduno. Hard Then, Harder Now: CoCom’s Lessons and the Challenge of Crafting Effective Export Controls Against China - Texas National Security Review (2025)
•	Blue Blaze on Substack

Take the Ballpark Listener survey and enter the prize draw for £250 in vouchers!

The Ballpark will be ten years old in 2026, and we want to hear from you to make the podcast even better, so we’re running a listener survey until 1 November 2025. 

•	Fill in our listener survey – it only takes 15 minutes – here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1 
•	Voucher prize draw terms and conditions are available here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/ballpark-listener-survey-prize-terms-conditions-2025 

LSE: The Ballpark | Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny with Dr Jennifer Lind

Discover how technology and innovative finance are helping communities protect forests and build sustainable economies. In this episode of Life of PIE, host Onye Idoko speaks with Nicolas Prieto, MSc Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship alum and CEO of climate tech startup Voltiva, and Tereza Bízková., co-founder of Refi Medellin. They explore real-world examples of crypto and regenerative finance in action in Colombia.

Date of episode recording: 2025-11-09
Duration: 00:35:17
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Onya Idoko
Guests: Nicolas Prieto and Tereza Bízková
Producer: Juan Manuel Fournier Castillo
Names of the podcast owner: Victoria Howard

How Can Crypto Protect Forests and Empower Communities

Can music unlock memories for people with dementia? In this episode, Professor Philip Schofield and Dr Jess Jiang, Senior Research Fellow in Neurodegenerative Diseases, draw on cutting-edge science as they explore the links between hearing and dementia. Dr Jiang explains how music not only supports treatment and emotional connection but also helps track disease progression for drug development. About the series How much do we understand the human mind? This question is at the heart of Beautiful Minds- The Greatest Good. Uncover facts about the mind as our expert speakers challenge misconceptions of autism, clear up common myths about Tourette's Syndrome and propose strategies for making our society more inclusive. 

 Date of episode recording: 2024-12-01
 Duration: 19:26
 Language of episode: English
 Guests: Dr Jess Jiang
 Presenter: Professor Philip Schofield
 Director: Justin Hardy (IOE - Culture, Communication & Media, UCL) 
Producer: Stevie Doran

Season 2, Episode 4 - Music and Memory, featuring Dr Jess Jiang

Sample clips from Books for Better Living Live.

Deepak Chopra and Rudy Tanzi

Booksforbetterliving