Pop-Up Ideas

One of the world's most influential counter-insurgency experts, David Kilcullen, whose ideas were described by the Washington Post as "revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West", talks about the time-bomb of rapidly-growing coastal mega-cities.

"It took all of human history until 1960 for the world to get 3 billion people," he says. "But the latest estimate is that we're going to add the same number of people in just the next thirty years - and they'll all be going into cities, on coastlines, in the developing world".

Through the story of a Somali commander he met in Mogadishu, David tells how the urban overstretch that tore Mogadishu apart in the 1990s, with frightening consequences, is happening in cities all over Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tim Harford is joined by Gillian Tett for the second in this new series of talks inspired by ideas in anthropology and the social sciences.

The financial journalist describes how her background in anthropology led her to predict the financial crisis in 2008.

"For my doctorate I spent a year in a remote mountainous area of Tajikistan where I lived as a Tajik girl, wearing the local Atlas robes, fetching water and firewood and chasing goats," says Tett. She studied their rituals and social networks and how they helped to maintain village life.

Later, she became a journalist for the Financial Times and put her anthropology "into a deep, dark, mental drawer" and almost forgot about it. "Having a PhD in economics or astrophysics gave you credibility. Knowing about Tajik wedding rituals did not!"

She describes how one day, years later, she suddenly stopped and wondered: "what would happen if I was to look at the world of finance and business like an anthropologist peering at my Tajik village?".

Tett explains how this set her journalism on a new path, a path that was to help her predict the economic turmoil of 2008.

Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tim Harford (the Financial Times' 'Undercover Economist' and presenter of Radio 4's More or Less) is joined by Malcolm Gladwell, David Kilcullen and Gillian Tett for a new series, 'Pop-up Ideas'.

Following on from his earlier Radio 4 series 'Pop-up Economics', Tim and the others use key ideas in anthropology and the social sciences to tell fascinating stories about how we - and the world - work.

The talks are recorded in front of an audience at the Southbank Centre in London.

Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer at the New Yorker and best-selling author of books such as The Tipping Point and Outliers, tells an extraordinarily powerful story about how listening more carefully might have shortened the Vietnam War.

One of the world's most influential counter-insurgency experts, David Killcullen, whose ideas were described by the Washington Post as 'revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West', talks about how future instability will emanate from rapidly-growing coastal megacities.

The financial journalist Gillian Tett describes how her background in anthropology led her to predict the financial crisis in 2008.

Tim Harford explores the concept of 'The Tragedy of the Commons' - a term coined by the American ecologist Garrett Hardin in a hugely influential 1968 essay.

Tim compares Hardin's work to that of the American political economist Elinor Ostrom, to reflect on the impact of mankind on the world around us.

Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tim tells the story of Chris Ferguson who applied game theory to poker and won - big time. But, as Ferguson would find out, there's always a bigger game.

Tim Harford tells the story of Bill Phillips - war hero, engineer, crocodile-hunter, and one of the fathers of macro-economics.