Featuring in-depth conversations that explore cutting edge research and analysis from the University of Liverpool, each episode features our academic experts discussing research in their specialist field.
This podcast series, produced in collaboration with the University of Liverpool online, provides a quick route to insider knowledge on new trends and upcoming key issues.
October 16, 2018
Professor Louise Kenny knew she would find herself embedded in a heated debate when she joined the campaign to repeal Ireland’s eighth amendment. After all, the change to the Irish constitution would end the country’s near-total ban on abortion. What was surprising however was the degree to which fake facts, false stories and foreign opinions infiltrated the discussion. It is increasingly clear there was an organized effort by foreign parties to influence the outcome of a democratic process. But in the end, it didn’t work. And the ‘Yes’ side’s success offers a fascinating case study in how to rise above the growing tide of fake news.
Professor Kenny is the Executive Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool; Professor and Maternal and Fetal Health and a Consultant Obstetrician at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
To find out more you can listen to the podcast by clicking here.
October 4, 2018
For many, ancient Egypt conjures up images of the Great Pyramids of Giza or the splendours of Tutankhamun’s tomb. A series of eras between those two well-known chapters in Egypt’s history are known as the intermediate periods. Historians have long referred to this time as a dark age, but recent scholarship is challenging that idea.
Dr Glenn Godenho is a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on this 120-year period following the collapse of the first kingdom that built the famous pyramids.
September 18, 2018
Many heterosexual couples begin their lives together expecting to share work and non-work roles equitably. But soon after children enter the picture, a mix of unequal workplace policies and differing cultural expectations for men and women challenges that egalitarian impulse. Eventually, many couples find the division between work and non-work roles becomes increasingly unbalanced as their family grows.
Dr Laura Radcliffe researches and lectures on managing non-work roles and identities. Dr Radcliffe is a lecturer in organisational behaviour at the University of Liverpool. In her public talks, Dr Radcliffe uses storytelling to demonstrate how roles and identities can form almost mysteriously, without any clear decision to follow one particular path. She brings that story to us in this episode.
To find out more you can listen to the podcast by following the links below:
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Music is by Lee Rosevere under CC license. Listen to more of Lee’s music here: https://leerosevere.bandcamp.com/
September 4, 2018
On 3 July 2018, Thai rescuers safely extracted the last of 12 boys and their football coach from deep inside a flooded cave. The rescue mission was complex, dangerous and had to be devised and executed quickly. For Professor Laurence Alison, this makes the rescue a fascinating case study in overcoming decision inertia.
Decision inertia is the psychological process during crises that freezes decision making. It happens when a decision maker struggles to commit to a choice, when all options could yield negative consequences. Professor Alison contrasts the Thai cave rescue with the Grenfell Tower fire disaster and discusses how emergency responders, and by extension, all high-stakes decision makers, can overcome the paralysing effects of decision inertia.
August 21, 2018
Nearly 5 million people in the UK are now self-employed. Technology has made it easier than ever to open a business and offer your services to others willing to pay but this shift towards gig employment concerns many analysts including Dr Ming Lim.
Dr Lim is an Associate Professor in Marketing and Management at the University of Liverpool. She argues that many of the people we see, tapping away at computers at all hours in coffee shops are working for click-farms and the work they do, is actually a form of slavery.
August 7, 2018
The hit programme Love Island came under a lot of pressure after it aired an ad for Skinny Sprinkles. The diet product is part of the lucrative weight loss market, with an estimated worth of 66 billion dollars in the US, and 44 billion Europe. While the market’s expansion has kept pace with our growing waistlines, its origins can be traced back to a time when food was scarce. This is a rebroadcast of our interview with Dr Myriam Wilks-Heeg, Lecturer in Twentieth Century History, on the history of slimming in the UK and how it became an obsession for women.
July 24, 2018
In the battle against the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, one industry, in particular, is coming under a lot of pressure. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 80% of medically important antibiotics are used in the animal sector. Most of these medicines are used on healthy animals.
Unfortunately, cutting down on veterinary medicines is not a simple thing to do. And even if we do, it’s not clear how much of a difference it would make.
Dr Jonathan Rushton is a Professor of Animal Health and Food Systems Economics. Dr Lucy Coyne is a veterinarian and researcher in Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Liverpool.
July 10, 2018
Scientists are getting quite good at predicting where and when lava will erupt around the Kilauea volcano – important for the residents of Hawaii. Kilauea has been very active for the past few months.
In the past seven days, residents in the area around Kilauea have experienced more than 900 earthquakes. For the most part these have been minor tremors, often only showing up on seismographs. The quakes are caused by magma deep inside the volcano moving underground; infiltrating cracks and fissures and occasionally shooting lava into the air in dramatic fashion.
All of this is being very closely watched by Dr Janine Kavanagh. She is a lecturer in Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences at the University of Liverpool.
June 26, 2018
Revisiting the discussion with Professor Peter Kinderman on the use of the term ‘illness’ in relation to mental health. Professor Kinderman says there are some signs things are changing and, he believes, improving. We respond to life’s stressors in different ways and the treatment he prescribes is for all of us to take greater social responsibility to address the situation rather than reaching for medication.
June 12, 2018
The Paleo Diet is one of the most popular diets in the UK, the US and across the developed world. The basic idea behind the so called ‘caveman’ diet is to eat what Paleolithic humans ate. According to Paleo diet advocates, this is supposed to mean staying away from things like grains, legumes and certain vegetables. Yet, according to Dr Ceren Kabukcu, an archaeology fellow at the University of Liverpool, the Paleo Diet doesn’t have a much in common with what humans actually ate during the Paleolithic Era.
June 9, 2018
Dr Jackie Bell is a theoretical particle physicist, athlete, and a certified space junkie so It’s easy to see why she was selected as one of twelve candidates for the BBC2 program, “Astronaut: Do You Have What It Takes.” The program put the candidates through a series of challenges to see if they have the mental, physical and emotional capacity to become an astronaut. The former chief of the International Space Station Chris Hadfield was the host. Jackie’s journey, from an 8-year old in Liverpool, watching Red Dwarf with her Dad, to being one of twelve candidates for astronaut training is a remarkable, funny and inspiring story.
May 15, 2018
Researchers are designing robots with artificial intelligence that evolves on its own. Generation after generation, only the fittest survive to pass their “genes” onto the next generation. The result is AI that actually evolves at an astonishing rate to accomplish a complex goal. All without the guidance of a programmer.
The process is called Neuro-evolution and University of Liverpool Ph.D. student James Butterworth is using it to develop a squad of intelligent autonomous drones.
You can find an example of Super Mario neuro-evolution here
Another fascinating example can be found here
Some examples of James’ recent work showing drones trying to maximally cover an area can be found here.
Music in the podcast is by Kai Engel
May 1, 2018
Major events, like a terrorist attack or natural disaster, force the emergency services to make decisions under extreme pressure and often with very little information.
To make matters worse, these scenarios are frequently unique so decision makers do not have experience or protocol to fall back on. Such events make a fascinating focus for research into decision making.
Dr Sara Waring is a lecturer in Forensic Psychology at the University of Liverpool and the research director for the Critical and Major Incident Psychology Research Group. She talks about the challenge of making smart decisions in the most stressful situations imaginable.
April 18, 2018
As the world around us grows increasingly digital, as education, shopping and social service programs go online, who is being left out? Who is being excluded?
Professor Simeon Yates is the Director of the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Science at the University of Liverpool. He recently led a major initiative to develop a new digital culture policy in the UK. This highlighted one of his chief concerns about digital policy: the serious and growing problem of digital exclusion.
April 3, 2018
In our latest podcast Dr Karl Simms, a Reader in English at the University’s Department of English, discusses what makes a good political speech.
Donald Trump’s detractors criticise the US President’s speaking style for its seeming lack of coherence, simplicity and its appeal to raw emotions. Yet to his supporters, Trump’s extemporaneous style communicates an honest and genuine connection with his audience. It is a style that stands in stark contrast to the rehearsed, formally structured speeches of his political opponents.
Dr Karl Simms dissects Trump’s discursive strategies and distils what they teach us about effective communication.
March 20, 2018
In our latest podcast Costas Milas, Professor of Finance at the University’s Management School, discusses how social media has become a popular open forum for analysing economics/finance.
Professor Milas’ research shows that Twitter is better at predicting the financial future than even the most sophisticated financial tools. This is especially true in periods of negative economic news when traditional models that use only financial variables might prove inadequate.
He is now extending his research on prediction to things like Google search trends and he argues that search can predict how Brexit negotiations are likely to unfold.
March 6, 2018
Paediatric medicine faces a troubling challenge. For good ethical reasons, scientists have long been reluctant to experiment on children. As a result, many of the oldest and most common medications used in pediatric medicine have not been tested on the youngest patients. This means there is very little good quality research on efficacy or proper dosage.
This concerns Dr Dan Hawcutt. He’s a Senior Lecturer Paediatric Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Liverpool and an Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital who wants to further what we know about the medicines we give to children.
February 20, 2018
The study of extreme weather usually involves lots of numbers, graphs and statistical comparisons. What’s missing is the human element; the way people responded to an unusual weather event.
During the deep freeze of 1838, did people stay huddled indoors or learn to skate? How about the flooding of the river Trent in the early 19th century? Were they scared?
Georgina Enfield is a professor of environmental history at the University of Liverpool. Her team has assembled a fascinating collection of diaries, letters and other personal accounts of how people felt about extreme shifts in the weather over the past several centuries.
The extreme weather history can be found here.
A list of the University of Liverpool Online’s programs can be found here.
Kai Engel’s compositions can be found here.
February 6, 2018
In our latest podcast Ian McHale, Professor of Sports Analytics at the University, discusses the remarkable rise of analytics in professional sport.
Analytics are the present and the future of professional sports. There use in cycling, baseball and basketball is well documented, but what about football?
Professor McHale believes the Premier League is behind other sports in adopting analytics to drive performance. This means some star players might be over-valued (and overpaid) while the role their teammates play may be overlooked.
If your favourite team does make full use of the analytics at their disposal they will be at a competitive disadvantage.
Learn more about Professor McHale’s research here.
January 23, 2018
In forty years, the number of obese children has increased 10 fold. This increase is not just in the UK or the US, but around the world and is considered to be a global public health crisis.
In the UK one in ten children is now obese. Experts are calling on government to reduce children’s exposure to junk food advertisements. The Obesity Health Alliance is pushing for a 9pm watershed on junk food advertisements in the UK.
University of Liverpool senior lecturer in psychology, Dr Emma Boyland, describes the surprisingly powerful effect these ads have on children’s appetites and food choices.
January 9, 2018
In our latest podcast University researchers discuss how urban farms could provide the solution to rising food and energy prices, increasing unemployment and unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyles.
The massive system that drives modern agriculture is changing, especially for the vast majority of us who live in cities.
Farm Urban is part of this shift, prompting us to think about how and, more importantly, where our food is produced. The Liverpool business is the brainchild of two University of Liverpool postdoctoral researchers Paul Myers and Jens Thomas. With the support of academic partner Dr Iain Young, they’ve built a company that grows fresh food in brick basements and urban rooftops. Not short of ambition, their mission is to change our relationship with food and the urban environment.
December 26, 2017
According to the group Alcohol Concern five million Britons took part in Dry January last year. Matt Field will be taking part this year as he has in past years. The professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool and expert on addiction is a fan of the effort, and he says it almost certainly has short-term benefits. However, he says it’s not entirely clear ‘Dry January’ changes our relationship with alcohol in a lasting way.
December 12, 2017
Professor Sarah Peverley returns to the podcast to compare what we know about Christmas traditions in the Middle Ages with modern Western festivities.
There are some surprises, like the early origins of Father Christmas or Santa Claus. But what’s not surprising is the degree to which our approach to Christmas has shifted over the millennium and Professor Peverley reflects on what we may have lost along the way.
November 28, 2017
It’s easy to see signs that it might be. Research into pop music and contemporary literature offers indirect evidence that narcissism is on the rise in Western culture. More direct evidence comes from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI): a database of thousands of US college students’ personality test results, collected over several decades. Results from these tests show narcissism has risen. Yet, new research has emerged that challenges this view.
University of Liverpool lecturer in psychology Minna Lyons takes us through the evidence.
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November 19, 2017
Earlier this year Colm Tóibín spoke before an audience the Victoria Gallery Museum in Liverpool. The author and University of Liverpool Chancellor read excerpts from his latest novel House of Names. The work is a retelling of one part of the classic Greek trilogy The Oresteia and depicts Clytemnestra’s revenge for the murder of her daughter. This special bonus episode features Tóibín’s fascinating and funny insights into the challenges he faced adapting a story that is 2,500 years old.
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