https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRrlkEqWpZA&t=12s Here's a presentation I gave at the anniversary of Australian Policy Online which has been cunningly rebranded under its old acronym as Analysis and Policy Observatory. I gave a similar one at Kings College London a few weeks p...

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https://youtu.be/tXlM99xPQC8 Well there's been a frisson of excitement in the chess and AI world lately with the extraordinary performance of AlphaZero – essentially the computer that mastered the game Go – a game which proved, despite the relative simplicity of its rules, a m...

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https://soundcloud.com/britishacademy/the-redescription-of-enlightenment Last night, having read a fantastic essay (pdf) by the great historian of revolutionary and pre-revolutionary America Bernard Bailyn, I made my way to the lecture series in honour of Isaiah Berlin where t...

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The extraordinary outpouring of national happiness following the passage of the same sex marriage legislation on Thursday unavoidably gives rise to the question of whether some similar community consultation/plebiscite/survey mechanism (perhaps a well-designed and secure onlin...

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The EU and the UK government have just agreed to muddle on in their negotiations. Nothing is truly decided until everything is decided, but they have adopted a position document (see here ) that details what they want the next steps to look like and what they will do in case o...

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