The things you hear
The closest I ever got to a proper job was as a local radio journalist, and I still love it as a medium. These days, I'm trying to get into the habit of recording my talks, as well as conversations with interesting people I meet.
And, for a bit of fun, I've dug out some old radio pieces, the kind of silliness I used to inflict on the people of Sheffield over their cornflakes.
Talks
- What's art got to do with it? - a talk at the University of Warwick, 25 February 2012.
- 'It's wrong to wish on space hardware': The power and failure of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth mythos - a talk (16min) at Nature Inc?, The Hague, 30 June 2011.
- It's not how big your society is, it's what you do with it - a speech (16min) at Voluntary Action in South West Surrey conference, 29 March 2011.
- How to avoid getting a proper job - a guest lecture (57min) followed by a discussion (43min) with Nick Stewart and students at Winchester School of Art, 11 February 2011.
- The University in Transition - how do we salvage the best of the university from the wreckage of a collapsing system? My keynote (40min) from the Transition Universities conference in Winchester, 6 February 2011.
- Remember the Future? - a talk (30min) about our relationship to the past and the future, given at the Landscape/Mindscape weekend hosted by Dougie and Em Strang at Laurieston Hall, 15-18 October 2010.
- Deschooling Everything - an introduction to Ivan Illich (1h44) at the Temporary School of Thought, a huge squat in Mayfair, London, 10 January 2009. (5 mins of chat before it starts.)
Conversations
- The Return of 'The Vernacular' - a conversation with Sajay Samuel, a friend and student of Ivan Illich, about the increasing relevance of Illich's understanding of life beyond the production and consumption of commodities. The Hague, 2 July 2011.
- Kick the Bastards Out: Comparing Collapsonomics Elections - a conversation with futurist Justin Pickard about his reading of elections in the aftermath of economic crises in Ireland and Iceland, and their lessons for the UK.
- Has politics reached its Napster moment? - a podcast for New Public Thinking. Vinay Gupta and I kick around ideas about the connections between protests around the world. Brussels, 17 February 2011.
- Avoiding the Starbucks version of informal learning - part of a conversation (8min) with Fred Garnett and friends about the desirability and dangers of making informal learning more visible and fundable. School of Everything: Unplugged, 3 November 2010.
- The Open Teacher - an interview with Drew Buddie (57min) about being a school teacher and an ardent user of Twitter. What happens at the interface between his institutional and networked lives? Recorded at School of Everything: Unplugged, 27 October 2010.
- Cuts for Contraction? - talking Collapsonomics on a Wednesday morning at School of Everything: Unplugged with David Jennings, Clodagh Miskelly, Tony Hall and Patrick Hadfield, 18 August 2010.
- A Tale of Two Crises - sovereign debt and the music industry with Pat Kane, Vinay Gupta, Alex Fradera and Mike Bennett, Brixton Village, 28 April 2010.
- Talking Impro - a conversation with Lloyd Davis, 14 September 2009
Radio
- Things that go bump in the night - a piece I did for BBC Radio Sheffield about an encounter between the Yorkshire UFO Society and a paranormal investigator.
- Tea or coffee? - a journalistic investigation into the social and political implications of one's choice of hot drink.
- I love Hummers - a rant about the offensiveness of the stretch Humvee, live on the Radio Sheffield breakfast show, some time in 2005.