This is Election, the weekly Cambridge politics podcast, which tackles the biggest questions from new angles. Last season it asked the questions no-one else did in the run up to the UK's General Election: in Season II, it's going international. 

From January until April, Election will look at the US Presidential election and other elections around the world, exploring the current state of democracy and the many challenges it faces in 2016. 

It will continue to take the temperature of British politics, after last year's remarkable election and the even more remarkable events that followed. Can Corbyn hold the Labour Party together? Will Britain be leaving the EU? Where is opposition to the government going to come from? 

With David Runciman, Helen Thompson, Finbarr Livesey and Chris Brooke, plus new voices and a new series of guests, Election promises insights from the worlds of science, history, philosophy and beyond. 

A new episode every Thursday morning: please join us for the most interesting politics conversation out there.

http://www.cam.ac.uk/election


ELECTION

listen to next

~ intellect ~

learn

informational talks

Taken from Regressions Through the Mirrors of Time. Get the CD: http://www.hayhouse.co.uk/cds/140192235X/regression-through-the-mirrors-of-time

Enjoy a meditation in which Dr. Brian Weiss will help you to induce a state of serenity and contentment.

Brian Weiss - A Meditation to Inner Peace, Love and Joy

‘I am drawn to people who seem to have been born defeated,’ Penelope Fitzgerald once wrote. She considered herself one of these, and despite great early promise lived much of her life in drudgery and near destitution. Then, in her late 50s, she began to write. Over the next two decades, she not only published three biographies, but nine brief and brilliant novels, four of which were shortlisted for the Booker, Offshore winning it. At 80, Fitzgerald found fame both sides of the Atlantic. Chaired by Hermione Lee, whose widely acclaimed biography of Fitzgerald was published last autumn, and who will speak about her life, three writers celebrate one of the great writers of the 20th Century, and one of the most fascinating. Biographer and critic Susannah Clapp, who regularly edited Fitzgerald’s work at the LRB, considers her biography of the poet Charlotte Mew. Penelope Lively, who was a friend, talks about The Gate of Angels. Alan Hollinghurst looks at Offshore, a novel based on Fitzgerald’s experiences of living on a leaky houseboat on the Thames.

We are grateful to the Royal Literary Fund
for sponsoring this event.

On Penelope Fitzgerald

A panel of prominent scholars – Colin Burrow, University of Oxford, Michael Dobson, Director, Shakespeare Institute, James Shapiro, Columbia University, Emma Smith, University of Oxford, and Marina Warner, University of Essex – will discuss whether Shakespeare should be considered our contemporary, or as a difficult, distant historical ‘other’.

LRB Lecture at the British Museum, 19 October 2012

LRB Lecture Shakespeare: our contemporary?

From Louise Hay's "Meditations for Loving Yourself to Great Health"
The guided meditations in this audio program were created by Louise Hay, Ahlea Khadro, and Heather Dane to support you in changing your way of life to one that focuses on nourishing your body and treating it with love. Sit back, relax, and allow yourself to be guided to more loving choices.

Louise Hay -  Healthy Body, Healthy Mind Meditation

From the University of Cambridge comes ELECTION, our weekly Politics Podcast; asking the questions that no one else is in the run-up to the British General Election with the greatest minds inside and outside the political arena. 

Can democracy adapt to our strained political system? Who (if anyone) will ‘win’ in 2015? What can the lessons of the past teach us about the future? 

Professor David Runciman interviews and puts these questions to philosophers, historians, scientists, and political thinkers – with enlightening results – in a weekly podcast series coming from his office in the Department of Politics and International Studies. 

More information at http://www.cam.ac.uk/election

S01-EP05 - Clare Jackson on the United Kingdom, Scotland & the politics of memory

S01-EP04 - John Naughton on Facebook in Politics, Edward Snowden, & Surveillance

S01-EP03 - Martin Jacques on the global perspective, Britain’s decline, & China’s rise

S01-EP02 - Martin Rees on surviving this century, scientists in politics, and 2015

S01-EP01 - Maurice Glasman on democracy, creative destruction and Wolf Hall

Democracies ancient and modern: just how far have we come from the ancient Athenian idea of democracy and what can we do to get back to it?  Are we still really democracies at all?  We speak to classicist and historian Paul Cartledge about what the ancient Greeks meant by democracy and what it should still mean to us.  Plus we ask the panel for their views about the current state of democracy in the age of Trump and Brexit: how bad is it?  In this bumper final episode we also get their predictions for the US presidential election and the EU referendum.

S02-EP13 Paul Cartledge on democracy ancient and modern: what can we learn from Greeks?

Amie Parnes from The Hill gives us a look at Hillary Clinton's long and some what difficult campaign.

Hillary Clinton’s Long Year on a Difficult Trail

Not all of President Obama's executive actions are news worthy. Gregory Korte from USA Today has more.

Obama's Executive Orders You Never Hear About

On Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979), introduction, chapter 1 through p. 63, conclusion, and postscript.

How do our tastes in music, art, and everything else reflect our social position? This philosophically trained sociologist administered a few detailed questionnaires in 1960s France and used the resulting differences in what people in different classes preferred and how they talked about these preferences to theorize about the role that taste plays in our social games. People with more education and/or with an upper-class social background use their ability to appreciate fine art (which requires some know-how to decode) to distinguish themselves: to prove that they deserve their social status. Other classes' tastes were in reaction to this dominant taste: middle-class responders aspired to have the taste of the elite (often getting it wrong by favoring simply pretentious works), while lower-class workers either made excuses for their lack of appreciation ("it's good but not not my cup of tea") or rebelled by reveling in low-class art. In all cases there was gamesmanship at work: the distinctions were at work in cementing or trying to move within or rebelling against the social order. (Seth posted the lists of classes as they were asked their opinions about a high-brow, middle, and low-brow work.)

Mark, Wes, and Seth were joined by Tim Quirk, famed as singer from the 90s band Too Much Joy and recent guest on Mark's Nakedly Examined Music podcast. Here's that presentation, "Good News for Yo La Tengo," that he talks about.

Recommended prerequisites: This can be seen as a reaction to the snobbiness displayed by Adorno (ep. 136), but Bourdieu explicitly identifies the un-worldly (which requires being shielded from economic necessity), aesthetic (and ultimately ascetic, i.e., denying of immediate pleasures) stance with Kant's theory of taste (ep. 105), and also explicitly discusses Schopenhauer's view (ep. 115).

Go to blog

Bourdieu on the Tastes of Social Classes (Part One)

A download of guided meditations aimed to complement the learnings found in Prof Mark William's and Dr Danny Penman's guide to freeing yourself from the stresses of everyday life. Containing all the meditations that are mentioned in the book this is an invaluable resource to cement their teachings on how to find Mindfulness, and how to keep it.

Mindfulness - Finding Peace In A Frantic World - Guided Meditations

Meditation Five: Sounds And Thoughts

Meditation Four: Breath And Body

Meditation One: Mindfulness Of Body And Breath

Looking Deeply (Digitally Remastered) is a selection of talks by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh offered during meditation retreats throughout North America. In these lectures, Thay, as his followers call him, talks about mindfulness within the context of the social and political issues of our time. Although these talks were recorded in 1987, the messages they bring us are still highly relevant today. The full download is available through BetterListen! at https://www.betterlisten.com/products/looking-deeply-by-thich-nhat-hanh

Buy at BetterListen!

Looking Deeply with Thich Nhat Hanh preview 1

Looking Deeply with Thich Nhat Hanh preview 2

Yale University professor Milette Gaifman discusses her new book, The Art of Libation in Classical Athens in a Yale University Press podcast interview.

Libations of Classical Athens

A look inside the human brain with neuroscientist David Linden who helps explain some of its mysteries.

How the Brain Works

Speaker(s): AS Byatt, Robert Irwin | AS Byatt and Robert Irwin discuss the enduring relevance of mythical stories and their portrayal of the human experience , and explore whther they are worth retelling time and again. A S Byatt is renowned internationally for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize-Winning Possession and The Children's Book. Her most recent book is Ragnorak: The End of the Gods, a retelling of the Norse myth. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, A S Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999. Robert Irwin is the author of For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies, The Middle East in the Middle Ages, The Arabian Nights: A Companion and numerous other specialised studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism. His novels include The Limits of Vision, The Arabian Nightmare, The Mysteries of Algiers and Satan Wants Me. Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT