tonycurzonprice: Recent Episodes
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Part 2 of an interview around Roger Scruton's new novel, Underground Notes. The contrast between Prague in the early 1980s and Washington in the late 2000s is the backdrop for a reflection on the nature of love, freedom and necessity
Part 1 of an interview around Roger Scruton's new novel, Underground Notes. Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s is the backdrop for an exploration of a conservative existentialism.
JS Mill went from being a strong supporter of national liberation movements in 1848 to a more nuanced position as he saw liberation turn to nationalism, solidarity turn to tribalism. His ideal was of cultural hybridisation and of citizens loyal to their states. He supported foreign intervention especially to counter the intervention of autocrats or on humanitarian grounds, but he firmly opposed any notion of being able to imposes democracy by the sword. And what would he have thought of Syria today?
JS Mill, liberalism's intellectual giant, justified despotism in India, thought Britain, like Athens, should be a beacon of Liberty (because of its navy) and that it is impossible for a democracy to rule another country well. Listen to Dr Georgios Varouxakis on his latest book, Liberty Abroad
Dr Georgios Varouxakis in conversation with Tony Curzon Price on his latest book, "Liberty Abroad, J.S.Mill on International Relations". JS Mill stands to liberalism as Karl Marx does to socialism. Mill is liberalism's intellectual giant of the nineteenth century. He was a public intellectual, a high ranking official of the East India Company, a man who had gained political influence both through the respect accorded to his views and through direct election to Westminster. He involved himself in every important practical issue of mid century politics, and Dr Varouxakis brings the context to light through an analysis of the arguments Mill engaged in. From the American Civil War to the Spring of Nations; from self-government of settler colonies to the character of civilisations ... JS Mill thought subtly about international relations and his themes continue to have strikingly contemporary echoes. Part 1 of the conversation.
Part 3/3
A December 2012 conversation between Antony Lerman and Tony Curzon Price around Antony Lerman's book, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist, A Personal and Political Journey
Part 2/3
A December 2012 conversation between Antony Lerman and Tony Curzon Price around Antony Lerman's book, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist, A Personal and Political Journey
Part 1 (of 3)
A December 2012 conversation between Antony Lerman and Tony Curzon Price around Antony Lerman's book, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist, A Personal and Political Journey
I imagine that prison would be endlessly dull. And that's a tough quality to represent dramatically - boredom. Sophie Besse, in her debut play, "A woman inside" (Etcetera Theatre, Camden, until May 6 2012) certainly avoids that. This beautifully acted & intense drama is about both brutality and tenderness, about dehumanisation, but also about the triumph of human qualities. No simple oppositions or cliches here.
The two central characters are inside, inside a cell together, but prison is also seeping into them. The guards get inside them - quite literally during the body searches; the smell and dirt gets inside one inmate, a beautician ... but Sharon, the violent, disturbed prisoner also lets music get inside her. Eventually and cathartically, she starts to get some of that inside out.
Sophie Besse has worked as a therapist in prisons and has taught drama to women prisoners. In the play, the women guards also occasionally let their guard down - they are women inside too.
There is no simplistic moralising in the play. Sharon is a tough nut, whatever she has inside, and whatever has toughened her. There are real victims to her crime. Guard number 1 puts on a protective, professional mask when she needs to. And daffy Barbara may be a loving mum, but it takes Sharon to remind her how selfish she has been to her daughter.
The intensity of the drama is amplified by the smallness of the pub theatre; the still louche surroundings of Camden Lock on a darkening evening is just the right context for those marginalised stories that we continue to have to learn to live with.
Some of Luis' writing in English on openDemocracy - http://www.opendemocracy.net/author-profile/luis-de-miranda
Come to continue this conversation on March 2nd 2012, http://luisdemiranda.eventbrite.com/
The SOPA fight was presented as one about fundamental rights versus greedy Hollywood. Tony Curzon Price talks to Albert Wenger, partner at Union Square Ventures, the venture capital fund behind a lot of the most innovative and visible web companies of today, to try to understand: is it about principle, or the competing interests of big Tech vs. big Entertainment
David Pryce-Jones in conversation with Tony Curzon Price about his latest book on radicals of the left and right whose anger with England and whose traumas led them to seek comfort and revenge in foreign causes. Is there really a common thread to Byron, T.E. Lawrence and Lord Haw Haw? And should one take care to distinguish reason from motive?
Liberalism does not evolve and progress according to some internal process, but because of the historical challenges it has faced. Slavery, colonialism, anti-semnitism have all been a part of this. How do religious fundamentalism, environment and immigration challenge Liberalism today?
A conversation based around Dominico Losurdo's book, Liberalism, A counter history (verso)
A conversation with Vaclav Stetka on Media/Politics/Business in central and Eastern Europe
Yvan Guichaoua, West Africa expert researching non-government armed groups, describes what kind of force is Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb is, what motivates its members and what are the conditions of its success. Smuggling, fast cars, and the economics of ransoms combine with ideology to create a new threat.
Min Sec Note
1 31 H-J C Starts
2 50 How did Economics as a discipline get taken over by dogmatism?
10 50 How should we think about the role of politics in economic management?
14 5 The model by which center right governments provide competent technocracies - France, Korea, Japan
16 21 What should the relationship of the public servant be to the nation?
20 21 Warren Buffett on the social contingency of his success
23 17 How should we integrate social capital into economists' theories?
24 53 How could Britain be so much righer than Korea in the 1980s when the people were no brighter?
27 57 What goes wrong when you think your computer is a washing machine?
30 11 Student funding - is paying wrong?
37 4 The inheritors- Gary Becker versus Pierre Bourdieu on discrimination
40 21 What to do with the financial sector?
44 21 The general habit of privatising gains and socialising losses
46 45 The social invention of limited liability - Mill and Marx approve
47 33 But we live in planned economies today
49 53 Back to politics - How should the planning knobs be set?
52 21 The dreadful example of the takeover of TRIPS at the WTO
53 57 The Tube strike -= measurement, and back to socialising losses
57 46 And when banks socialise the loss of a stolen cheque book
58 42 The vulnerability of the social system
60 34 Do we need to re-invent a capital allocation mechanism?
62 37 Back to politics - who writes the rules?
65 9 A depressing view of global institutions - how does democracy get back in control?
67 33 The freedom of corporate speech - what was that?
69 9 Legitimacy as one of the most important public goods
65 9 The idea of the nation, immigration, and the rise of the xenophobic right
78 21 World government and democratic control
79 33 The theatre of EU negotiations in the ACP
81 9 The role of East Asia in world governance