LSE IQ podcast
LSE IQ is a monthly podcast from the London School of Economics and Political Science in which we ask some of the smartest social scientists - and other experts - to answer intelligent questions about economics, politics or society. #LSEIQ
Episodes
December 1, 2025 • 30 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Alexander Evans, Dr Lauren Sukin, Nigel Inkster | It seems every week we hear a new report of a cyber-attack. Recent examples include the hacks on Marks and Spencer's, Jaguar Land Rover, and the Co-op, all causing massive economic disruption.
While these attacks seem to have come from cyber criminals working within the UK rather than other nation states, they highlight the destruction that cyber-attacks ca...
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November 3, 2025 • 21 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Judy Wajcman | 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...
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October 6, 2025 • 28 mins
Contributor(s): Dr Joseph Spooner, Sara Williams | Exploring the reasons people might find themselves with problematic levels of debt, the options open to those in financial trouble and how bankruptcy laws could be used more impactfully to the benefit of both individuals and society; this month we revisit an episode from 2023 which asks, “Do we always need to pay our debts?”
It's a question that has come back into focus recently as...
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September 1, 2025 • 32 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Tim Bale, Dr Marta Lorimer, Dr Michael Vaughan, Imam Adam Kelwick | How is the far right shaping our future?
Across the world, far right ideas, once confined to the political fringe, have entered the mainstream. They spread through social media feeds and dominate tabloid headlines. Many fear they’re transforming politics, threatening democracy and tearing at the fabric of society.
Joanna Bale meets Imam Ad...
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May 5, 2025 • 31 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Nick Couldry, Dr Eugenie Dugoua, Ceara Carney | Artificial intelligence is transforming the world around us, offering increased productivity and promising to help tackle difficult problems like global warming.
But behind the scenes, its environmental costs are mounting. From massive energy use to vast quantities of water required to cool data centres, AI’s footprint is growing fast. So, in an age of water ...
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April 7, 2025 • 32 mins
Contributor(s): Dr Suleman Lazarus, Professor Andrew Murray, Lisa Mills, Nikki MacLeod | This episode of LSE iQ looks at how we can avoid falling for online scams. We think it couldn’t happen to us, but incidents of online fraud are escalating at an alarming rate, affecting all areas of our day-to-day lives, from social media and dating apps to banking and business.
As AI deepfakes and impersonation tactics become more advanced, sc...
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March 3, 2025 • 29 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Shani Orgad, Dr Divya Srivastava, Dr Julia King, Dr Olivia Theocharides-Feldman | With the cost-of-living crisis leading to the closure of community spaces around the UK, and the pressures on urban development projects, this episode of LSE iQ asks, are we in danger of losing our communities?
Speakers: Professor Shani Orgad, Dr Divya Srivastava , Dr Julia King, Dr Olivia Theocharides-Feldman
Research links:...
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February 3, 2025 • 29 mins
Contributor(s): Dr Phillip Rode, Professor Rachel Aldred, Dr Chris Tennant, Indira Ray | This episode of LSE iQ looks at whether we should still be driving, whether public transport in cities has helped alleviate the need to drive and how driverless cars are still a distance away from really helping solve the issue of the number of cars on the road. Speakers: Dr Phillip Rode, Professor Rachel Aldred, Dr Chris Tennant and Indira Ray...
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January 6, 2025 • 33 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Gwyn Bevan, Dr Kate Bayliss, Jo Bateman | This episode of LSE iQ explores a national scandal: widespread illegal sewage dumping by our privatised water companies, and why they are all under criminal investigation.
Speakers: Professor Gwyn Bevan, Dr Kate Bayliss, Jo Bateman
Research links:
How Did Britain Come to This? A century of systemic failures of governance by Gwyn Bevan: https://press.lse.ac.uk/site/...
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November 19, 2024 • 29 mins
Contributor(s): Dr Helen Sharman, Dr Jill Stuart, Dr Dimitrios Stroikos | What kind of possibilities does this new space age bring—and what dangers should we be worried about?
Can any nation seize possession of the moon? Could it be mined? Is there junk in space? And whatever happened to that flag that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted on the moon fifty five years ago?
To find out more, Maayan Arad speaks to Dr Helen Sharman, ...
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September 30, 2024 • 33 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Esther Duflo, Elizabeth Lewis Channon, Khari Motayne, Professor Sir Christopher Pissarides | While there are always rumours about who might win a Nobel Prize every year, there is no short list for the globally revered academic awards. This means that winning one always comes as a complete surprise. In this episode of LSE iQ, we explore what it’s like to win the prestigious prize and how it changes your lif...
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September 2, 2024 • 28 mins
Contributor(s): Nina Rousille, Camille Landais, Jane Garvey | This episode of LSE iQ explores whether gender pay gap reporting, pay transparency and tackling gender norms can reduce the gender pay gap.
On average across the globe, for every pound earned by a man, a woman earns around 80 pence, according to a 2023 report from the United Nations.
But despite huge advances in access to education, the labour market, and the introductio...
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May 20, 2024 • 35 mins
Contributor(s): Elizabeth Ingleson, John Van Reenen, Ashley Tellis | A shining city on a hill. America the beautiful. The United States has long been mythologised as the land of dreams and opportunity. And since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s it has been undisputedly the most powerful nation on earth. But is it a fading force? The idea of an America in decline has gained traction in recent years and has, of course,...
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April 8, 2024 • 18 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Christopher Coker | For the late Professor Christopher Coker the answer lay in the rise of a new political entity, the civilizational state. In an episode of LSE iQ which explored China’s position in the world in the coming century, Professor Coker talked about this, the potential for war between the United States and China and what that might look like.
Christopher Coker, was Professor of International ...
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March 4, 2024
Contributor(s): Nikki Sullivan, Paul Frijters, Sarah Appleton, Helen | Joanna Bale talks to Helen, who found Ozempic ‘life-changing’, Clinical Psychologist Sarah Appleton, and LSE’s Nikki Sullivan & Paul Frijters.
LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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February 5, 2024 • 9 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Sam Friedman | More than one in four people in the UK, from solidly middle-class backgrounds, mistakenly think of themselves as working-class. Why is this? In this episode of Extra iQ, a shorter style of the LSE iQ podcast, Sue Windebank speaks to Sam Friedman, a sociologist of class and inequality at LSE to find out more. Sam spoke to the podcast in November 2022 for an episode which asked, ‘How does clas...
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December 11, 2023 • 26 mins
Contributor(s): Heather Kappes, David McDaid, Molly Taylor | According to the Office for National Statistics, 7.1 per cent of adults in Great Britain - nearly 4 million people - say they 'often or always' feel lonely. Look around you when you’re in a crowded place – a supermarket or an office - 1 in 14 of the people you’re looking at are likely to be lonely, not just sometimes but most of the time.
And that’s half a million more pe...
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November 6, 2023 • 29 mins
Contributor(s): Faiza Shaheen, Duncan Green, Dr Jens Madsen | Experts will discuss how change isn't as straightforward as we'd like it to be – How it can be all in the timing and that, at times, you just need to wait for the right moment to make change happen. We’ll hear from an academic striving to become a Member of Parliament and make change from within the political system, rather than by lobbying from the outside. And an autho...
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October 2, 2023 • 30 mins
Contributor(s): Ryan Centner, James, Jamal |
Homosexuality is illegal in just over a third of countries across the globe. Some nations, like Barbados, have recently repealed anti-gay laws, but others, like Uganda, have just introduced the death penalty.
Joanna Bale talks to LSE’s Dr Ryan Centner about how Western gay men living in Dubai create covert communities where they can meet and socialise. James, a British gay man, and Jam...
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September 6, 2023 • 30 mins
Contributor(s): Professor Sir Christopher Pissarides, Professor Charlie Beckett, Dr Giulia Gentile | We’ll hear about the introduction of Artificial Intelligence in the courtroom, and what might happen if robots take over the roles of judges. Experts will explore how journalism and other professional fields could be affected by the AI revolution. They will discuss what individuals can do to prepare, and the role of governments and ...
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