RSA Minimate: Winners Take All | Anand Giridharadas

In this powerful new RSA Minimate, TIME’s Editor-at-Large Anand Giridharadas argues that while the winners of our age might be well meaning in their desire to give back, too many stop short at the kinds of real change that would see power more radically distributed.

The minds behind the award-winning RSA Animate series are back! RSA Minimates are super-short, information-packed animations for busy people. All audio excerpts are taken from live, FREE events at the RSA’s HQ in London, and animated by Cognitive. This animation was produced by RSA Senior Events and Animations Producer, Abi Stephenson.

RSA Minimate: The Tyranny of Merit | Michael Sandel

Work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll go as far as your talents will take you. Right? But so often this isn’t how the system works. In this powerful new RSA Minimate, political philosopher Michael Sandel confronts our age of stalling social mobility and entrenched inequality, and asks: what would it take to give everyone a fair shot at a good life?

The minds behind the award-winning RSA Animate series are back! RSA Minimates are super-short, information-packed animations for busy people. All audio excerpts are taken from live, FREE events at the RSA’s HQ in London, and animated by Cognitive.

RSA: The Truth About Algorithms | Cathy O'Neil

We live in the age of the algorithm - mathematical models are sorting our job applications, curating our online worlds, influencing our elections, and even deciding whether or not we should go to prison. But how much do we really know about them? Former Wall St quant, Cathy O'Neil, exposes the reality behind the AI, and explains how algorithms are just as prone to bias and discrimination as the humans who program them.  

RSA Replay: How to Build a More Equal and United Society | Eric Klinenberg

Eric Klinenberg is Director of the Institute of Public Knowledge at New York University. His pioneering research into the power of social infrastructure led to his appointment in 2013 as Research Director for President Obama's $1 billion programme to rebuild the region affected by Superstorm Sandy. At the RSA, through uplifting human stories and an illuminating tour through the science of social connection, he shows that properly designing and maintaining our ‘social infrastructure’ might be our single best strategy for a more equal and united society.

Aeon: Our divided brains are far more complex and remarkable than a left/right split

The notion that the brain’s right hemisphere is responsible for emotion and its left hemisphere is responsible for reason has been debunked. But the two hemispheres are indeed distinct, albeit in much more complex ways than we once thought. Animated by Cognitive Media with audio excerpted from a lecture given at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) by the British psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, The Divided Brain takes a deep dive into the real differences between our two brain hemispheres.

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RSA: Raoul Martinez on The Myth of Responsibility

Are we wholly responsible for our actions? We don’t choose our brains, our genetic inheritance, our circumstances, our milieu – so how much control do we really have over our lives? Writer, artist and award-winning filmmaker Raoul Martinez argues that no one is truly blameworthy. Our most visionary scientists, psychologists and philosophers have agreed that we have far less free will than we think, and yet most of society’s systems are structured around the opposite principle – that we are all on a level playing field, and we all get what we deserve. 

RSA: Who's Destroying The American Dream

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 31st October 2017

It’s now conventional wisdom to focus on the excesses of the ultra-rich top 1% who are hoarding income and wealth while incomes for the rest are stagnant. But the more important, and widening, gap in American society, argues Richard Reeves, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is between the upper middle class and everyone else.

Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. Income isn’t the only way to measure a society, but in a market economy it is crucial because access to money generally determines who gets the best quality education, housing and health care.

As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighbourhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is a fracturing of American society along class lines, not just an economic divide.

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The RSA: Capitalism Without Capital

For all sorts of businesses, from tech firms and pharma companies to coffee shops and gyms, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success. But this is not just a familiar story of the so-called ‘new economy’. The growing importance of intangible assets has also played a role in some of the big economic changes of the last decade. The rise of intangible investment is, Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake argue, an underappreciated cause of phenomena that ranges from economic inequality to stagnating productivity. In their latest work, Haskel and Westlake bring together a decade of research on how to measure intangible investment and its impact on national accounts, to show how the distinctive features of an intangible-rich economy make it fundamentally different from one based on tangibles.

The RSA: The War on Truth | Matthew d'Ancona

Post-truth’ was the Oxford Dictionary word of the year 2016 – but what does it mean, and how can we champion truth in a world of lies and ‘alternative facts’? Renowned journalist Matthew d’Ancona distinguishes post-truth from a long tradition of political lies, exaggeration and spin. For D’Ancona, what is new is not the mendacity of politicians but the public’s response to it and the ability of new technologies and social media to manipulate, polarise and entrench opinion.

RSA: Populism and the Fate of the West | Bill Emmott

When faced with global instability and economic uncertainty, it is tempting for states to react by closing borders, hoarding wealth and solidifying power, and for citizens to look upon one another with suspicion, incomprehension and mistrust.

But as mainstream technocrats are purged, and populists fall on their own swords, could something better emerge from the rubble? Could we be in the process of watching the birth of a repoliticised and refreshed democracy?

Speakers: Bill Emmott, Former Economist Editor-in-chief; Joris Luyendijk, Investigative Journalist; Edward Luce, US columnist, Financial Times, Chair: Rowan Conway

RSA: The Populist Revolt

What are the political and moral fault-lines that divide Brexit Britain — and how can we achieve a new settlement that works for everyone?

Several decades of greater economic and cultural openness in the West have not benefited all our citizens.

Founding editor of Prospect magazine, David Goodhart argues that among those who have been left behind, a populist politics of culture and identity has successfully challenged the traditional politics of Left and Right. He suggests that a new division has been created: between the mobile ‘achieved’ identity of the people from Anywhere, and the marginalised, roots-based identity of the people from Somewhere. This schism accounts for the Brexit vote, the election of Trump, the decline of the centre-left, and the rise of populism across Europe.

Goodhart visits the RSA to reveal how the 'Somewhere' backlash is a democratic response to the dominance of 'Anywhere' interests, in everything from mass higher education to mass immigration.

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RSA: Utopia for Realists | Rutger Bregman

Exciting new thinker Rutger Bregman visits the RSA to argue that the real crisis of our times is not that we don’t have it good, or even that we might be worse off in the near future - it’s that we don’t have the imagination to come up with anything better. Having already sparked a movement across the Netherlands, where 20 municipalities are now putting basic income into action, Rutger’s work inspires a firm belief that the most vital ingredient for political change is the conviction that there truly is a better way.

RSA: The Myth Gap

Alex Evans of NYU’s Center on International Cooperation argues that today we have a ‘myth gap’. He visited the RSA to contend that in this time of global crisis and transition – mass migration, inequality, resource scarcity and climate change – it is only by finding new myths that we will navigate our way to a better future. It is stories, rather than facts and pie-charts, that have the power to animate us and bring us together to change the world.

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The RSA: The Age of Anger | Pankaj Mishra

We are living in an age of anger: from American 'shooters' and ISIS to Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism across the world to racism and misogyny on social media. Renowned author and essayist Pankaj Mishra visits the RSA to discuss how and why we got to this point.

The RSA: A Field Guide to Lies | Daniel Levitin

We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process. It’s raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies in amongst the facts. But how can we know if we are being sold mistruths? Neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author Daniel J. Levitin visits the RSA to help us sort the wheat from the digital chaff. We may expect newspapers, bloggers, the government, and Wikipedia to be factually and logically correct, but they so often aren’t. We need to think critically about the words and numbers we encounter if we want to be successful at work, at play, and in making the most of our lives. This means checking the plausibility and reasoning—not passively accepting information, repeating it, and making decisions based on it. 

RSA: 2016: The Year in Review

2016: The Year in Review. Conflict, refugee and migration crises, an extraordinary US election race - and result, and post-Brexit-vote tumult for the UK and the EU - 2016 has been a year of exceptional, world-changing events. Our group of expert reviewers – historian and author of The Silk Roads Peter Frankopan; academic and cultural critic Sarah Churchwell and political scientist Matthew Goodwin - reflect on what has been a turbulent year in national and international political, social and cultural events.

Watch Peter Frankopan, Sarah Churchill and Matthew Goodwin in our latest RSA Spotlight - the edits which take you straight to the heart of the event! Loved this snippet? Watch the full talk here: https://youtu.be/5-aWu0y71fE

RSA: US Election 2016: The Result | John Prideaux

US Election 2016: The Result with John Prideaux, US editor at The Economist. It may be a post-pollster, post-pundit, post-truth landscape – but can we predict where the world goes from here? An extraordinary US presidential election campaign has resulted in an outcome that few could have predicted at its outset: Donald J Trump will become the 45th US President of the United States.

The implications of this historic decision are, for now, highly unpredictable, and for many, deeply concerning, with many questions unresolved around the course of future US policy on the economy, security, environmental protection, and human rights.

Join our expert panel at the RSA to consider what a Trump presidency says about, and means for America and the world in the days, months and years to come.

Our panel of experts include: John Prideaux, US editor at The Economist; James O'Brien, LBC radio & BBC Newsnight; Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Deputy Director-General of RUSI; Melanie McDonagh, Leader writer, Evening Standard and contributor, The Spectator; Stephen Bush, special correspondent, New Statesman.

The RSA: David Graeber on the Value of Work

David Graeber on the Value of Work. Does the world really need neuroadvertisers, PR researchers and branding consultants? Renowned academic and coiner of the ‘we are the 99%’ slogan, David Graeber is a passionate advocate for meaningful work. After famously condemning the 21st century phenomenon of ‘bullsh*t jobs’, in this short animation he investigates the philosophical underpinnings of employment, and calls for a reformulation of what work should be.

RSA: A Brief History of Tomorrow | Yuval Harari

A Brief History of Tomorrow with bestselling author Yuval Harari. What is the next stage of human evolution? How will we protect this fragile planet and humankind itself from our own destructive powers?We are delighted to be welcoming Yuval Noah Harari - bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – for his second much-anticipated RSA appearance. Where Sapiens was a wide-ranging exploration of humankind’s history, in his new work Homo Deus he envisions our future: a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges and possibilities.

With his trademark blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between, Harari will investigate the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century – from overcoming death to creating artificial life.

The RSA: The Psychology of Money | Claudia Hammond

he Psychology of Money with Claudia Hammond. Why don’t money and friendship mix? Can money buy happiness? Why does money have such a hold on us? The surprising psychology of money reveals that our relationship with it is more complex than we might think. BBC Radio 4 broadcaster Claudia Hammond explores the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, biology and behavioral economics, and offers some simple yet effective advice that can help us improve our relationship with money.