Books and glasses

Best of the week - 24 April 2020

This article was written by Juliet Dryden
This article was published on

Each week BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for COVID-19 content that might interest you. Here she brings this week's best podcasts and readings. She finishes with 'In other news', giving you a moment's break from the pandemic.

This week marks the second of our 'Best of lockdown' lists of readings, podcasts, videos and non-COVID news, and the first of this becoming a weekly series. If you missed the first list covering the first three weeks of lockdown, it's still available on our analysis pages.

Podcasts

  • The Talking Politics team interview Nate Silver on database politics.  A fascinating look through an expert’s eye to reading the data and what it means for politics.
  • Listen to The Conversation’s review of coronavirus theories with the Anthill Podcasts by Annabel Bligh. Why are there so many and what lies behind them?
  • The Ezra Klein Show analyses the loneliness pandemic. What are the social consequences of social distancing, and what toll will isolation and loneliness take on our health?
  • Talking Politics interviews Adam Tooze in ‘Shockwave’. What do we know about the crisis that we didn't know a month ago, and what do we still not have much of a clue about? Talking Politics tries to join up the dots from fights inside the French government to the fate of the planet, from shale gas to corona bonds.
  • Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd give us ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’, on learning from the crisis. They ask two historians about learning lessons from the past. Walter Scheidel argues that economic inequality has only ever been significantly reduced by catastrophes and war. Theda Skocpol discusses the impact that ideas and social movements can have.

Readings

In other News

UK Politics: Mile End Institute podcast – What’s Keir Starmer all about?

Brexit: The Guardian – UK making impossible demands over Europol database

Middle East:  EA Worldview – 'Trump threatens as Tehran launches first military airstrike' and Helen Thompson in the Guardian - 'Low demand for oil is not good news'.

Earth Day: April 22nd was Earth Day.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash