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Laurie Taylor explores the latest research into how society works and discusses current ideas on how we live today. Primary Format : Talk Language : Unknown Also Listed as: State/Province : ENG Country : United Kingdom Region : EU User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of Thinking Allowed Podcasts Methings.com listings of Thinking Allowed Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

TA: British Constitution and America and Rome Fifty years ago nearly one in ten people belonged to a party, now numbers have declined to 1 in 88, yet political parties still have a huge role in administering power in our democracy. It is that anomaly which constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor claims lies behind the frustration and disillusionment people feel towards our political system. He discusses his book, The New British Constitution with Laurie. Also, why is the idea of Rome so powerful in the American imagination? How is Roman ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Betting Shops and Assembly Lines They are an egalitarian space, unlike pubs there is no necessity to buy, and as long as your behaviour does not impact on anyone elses you can do what you want. The betting shop brings people of different backgrounds and ethnicities together in a unique way. Rebecca Cassidy tells Laurie that they are incredibly cosmopolitan and tolerant, and are emblematic of the changes that are happening in Britain. He also hears from Miriam Glucksmann who has updated a study of women working on assembl ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Segregation and Mizrahi Jews Are there walls going up round Britain's communities? Are we sleepwalking to racial segregation? Laurie hears of new research from Ludi Simpson which counters some contemporary fears about immigration in Britain, they talk to Tariq Modood. Also, Rachel Shabi talks about the Mizrahi Jews of Israel who she claims are discriminated against because they come from Arab lands. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Achitecture is Contingent and Class Endures Do the buildings built today cater for modern life or merely reflect idealistic dreams? Laurie hears a savage indictment of architecture, from Jeremy Till and something of a defence from Ricky Brudett. Will Atkinson, author of a new study tells Laurie of the enduring influence of class on the choices people make about their lives. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Suicide Bereavement and Midriffs What do you say to someone whose parent has just committed suicide? The lack of normal codes of behaviour cause painful isolation and enduring grief in the children left behind which can assert a powerfully negative force throughout their lives. Laurie is joined by Stephen Platt to talk to Caroline Simone about her new study of the families of suicide victims. Also, how the 'mid-riff'' has become professional term in the advertising industry and has come to signify a 'post-feminist' genera ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Young Scottish Conservatives and Murder Why was the murder rate higher in the middle ages than it is now? What factors have pushed the practice of killing men down the social order and should we worry about the first increase in the murder rate for over two hundred years? Laurie discusses the history of murder Pieter Spierenburg, author of A History of Murder; Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present and Joanna Bourke author of An Intimate History of Killing. He also hears of the surprise of Antje Bednarek, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Rank - Picturing the Social Order Who do we think we are? In a special edition Laurie visits the first ever exhibition to draw together images of how, historically, artists have represented the social order. He is joined by Alistair Robinson, the curator of Rank: Picturing the Social Order 1615-2009, as well as by the political cartoonist Martin Rowson and the sociologist Gordon Fyfe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Stalin's Comeback and Cultural Capital Stalin is back! The exiled Russian academic Mikhail Ryklin tells Laurie why Putin's Russia is turning the clock back and rehabilitating the most famous demon of the Soviet Union. Also groundbreaking British study which shows how access to the world of culture is still divided along class lines, and perpetuates the class divide as much as money. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Green Politics and Capitalism The world has changed for ever. There is no such thing as a job for life and the certainties of a generation ago are simply a dream to the people at work in today’s 'runaway world'. At least that is the story we have been told repeatedly but after a close analysis of lanbour markets in the UK and the US Kevin Doogan tells Laurie that is all a myth. Also, Anthony Giddens talks about how to overcome the dilemmas of climate change politics. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Wild West and Garden Love It was a place where boys became men and injuns ran scared. Whatever happend to the American West? Laurie discusses the myth of Wild West with Karen Jones and John Wills. He also hears how humans are closer to nature than they think, according to a new anthropological study by Catherine Degnen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Documentary films and Intellectual Property Documentaries purport to reflect reality, but do they? Laurie discusses the genre from the early stunts of 1930s throught to the impact of YouTube and videoblogs with David Gauntlett and Brian Winston. He also talks to James Boyle about the creeping power of intellectual property, and how it is stifling creativity worldwide. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Drugs and Laddish Students How much of the effects of drugs are ingrained within their chemistry? lauire talks to Angus Bancroft and Dick Hobbs. He also hears from Sian Preece and Deborah Cameron about a new study showing how working class students adopt a self defeating, laddish posture in response to university culture. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Renaissance Dance and Liverpool Working Class Elizabeth I danced six galliards every morning up until a year before her death, and Francis I of France publicly performed as the head of a centaur with the Cardinal of Marseille as the rear end. Laurie hears from Maragret MacGowan how that in the renaissance dance obsessed the courtly classes, and why. He also discusses the workign class of Liverpool in the 1950s with Selina Todd and Beverley Skeggs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Privatisation Death Rate and Prisoners' Families In the early 1990s optimism was unleashed in the former Soviet block as shares in state industries suddenly became available and many people swiftly became rich. However, the era lead to chaos and uncertainty for most people and a new study published in the Lancet argues that mass privatisation led to large rises in mortality, the swifter the pace of privatisation the higher the rate of premature death. Laurie discusses the conclusions with authors David Stuckler and martin McKee and also h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Hole in the wall and Gaslight When gaslight first brought illumination to Britain's city streets people said night had been turned into day, but after the initial hyperbole had died down did it lead to a new type of social control? Laurie discusses the politics of gaslight with Chris Otter and Lynda Nead and hears from Sugata Mitra of the project that inspired the movie Slum Dog Millionaire. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Moral Relatavism Different cultures have different beliefs, so what gives us the right to judge the behaviour of other people in a world where moralities often conflict? This week Laurie explores moral relativism: is there a universal human standard of right and wrong, or does culture explain and excuse behaviour that other peoples might find abhorrent? How should the anthropologist understand cannibalism, can a cultural context excuse female genital mutilation? Laurie is joined by a distinguished cast of S ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Popular Music and Violence What do David Gray, Eminen, ACDC, Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera and Nancy Sinatra have in common? They have all been used by states as instruments of war. Laurie discusses how music – despite the protests of the artists involved - is used in conflicts, and how it is increasingly employed by public utilities and commercial organisations in attempts to control what people do. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Gangs When stories of gang conflict hit the headlines commentators like to hark back to a golden age in which British streets were safe. But did such an age ever exist? Laurie discusses the Scuttlers, gangs who waged violent turf war in Victorian Manchester. They fought for for fun, with belts and knives. In response, some called for the Lash and others for lads clubs. Are there lessons to be learnt from the past? Laurie Taylor is joined by Andrew Davies, the author of ‘The Gangs of Manchester ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website TA: Detectives On a summer’s night in 1860, in a beautiful Georgian country house, a young boy of three was brutally strabbed to death by one of the inhabitants of the house. The man sent to solve the crime was Jonathan Whicher, the most celebrated detective of the day. The whole country was agog and it was a case which set the template for detective work and for detective fiction for more than a hundred years. Laurie discusses the culture of the detective from the 19th century to the present day with a ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website