Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An economist who is Director of the London School of Economics and a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, also the youngest ever vice president of the
On the island
Eight records
The story of this piece of music was that he was invited to give a concert in Cologne. It was due to start very late at night, 11.30 at night. It was organized by a 17-year-old who ordered the wrong piano and when he arrived late at night, exhausted, the piano was broken. Some of the keys didn't work, the pedals didn't work. He refused to play and then in the end was persuaded and ended up playing and improvising the most beautiful piece of music which ended up becoming the best selling solo jazz album in history. And it's just a great reminder of how when things go wrong you can actually sometimes rise to the occasion.
The lyrics which I'll translate a bit start with 'I'm an Egyptian, whether I'm a Muslim or a Christian or a Southerner or from Sinai or whether I'm rich or whether I'm poor.' And it really speaks to me because of my own family experience. I come from a family that's Muslim. My grandmother, who was the fifteenth of 17 children, didn't go to school herself, but was incredibly liberal and open-minded. And she sent her children to French Catholic schools and encouraged them to learn about other religions. And there was just a level of tolerance that was very high. And similarly, when I was a teenager in Alexandria, I sort of got the tail end of the Alexandria of Lawrence Durrell, which and so my friends were a hodgepodge of Armenian and Greek and Lebanese and French and Italian and that open and tolerant world was one in which I grew up and which I value and which this song reminds me of.
I had a very fragmented educational experience. I went to, I think, nine schools, but I'm not quite sure, could have been ten. And partly it was because we moved, but mainly it was because it was the era of desegregation in the US. And so, you know, from year to year, they would bus you to a different school as they were trying to get a racial mix. And we were in the South, and it was tense. One of the things I remember most is that in American schools, you would usually say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the national anthem every morning. But the schools I went to, because they were trying to encourage racial integration, we sang this song, Black and White, every morning to start the school day. And so it's a very strong memory for me.
The next song is from Fleetwood Mac, which was Fleetwood Mac's album Rumours was the sort of soundtrack to my teenage years, like I guess a lot of people of my generation. It was the most popular song played when I was in secondary school and this particular song, Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, is one of my favourites.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral': IV. Presto - Allegro assai (Ode to Joy)Favourite
London Symphony Orchestra (performer)
When I was a student at the LSE, I bought a little Walkman on Tottenham Court Road and I listened to music on that and I had two cassettes. One was a Motown one, which was incredibly scratchy, and the other one was this one, which is Beethoven's Ode to Joy. And whenever I got really stuck when I was trying to write my thesis, I would listen to this, and it would motivate me to carry on.
Joni Mitchell's All I Want. And I think that music is from a period in my life when I think like a lot of people in your sort of twenties and thirties and you're sort of looking for love and trying to figure out that part of your life. I have a playlist which my husband jokingly calls Suffering Women, which consists of Joni Mitchell, Carol King, Edith Piaff, Adele, that sort of genre of music. But Joni Mitchell was the first music and eventually I did meet my husband and figured it out, but it took a while.
Queens Don't Stop Me Now, and I always remember an event at my children's school and they were performing that, and you had this thirty, ten year olds just full of life, screaming this song. And it reminds me particularly of my daughter, who's just bursting with life. And it's also a good reminder of how nice it is to be around young people and it's one of the reasons I love being at a university because there's just all that potential and energy and optimism which is contagious.
Prelude and Fugue No. 3 in C-sharp major, BWV 848
So this one is the first prelude and fugue that my son learned to play, and I think I must have heard it a thousand times, so it has to be one of my favourites.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:23Is it partly also to do with the fact that experts have oversold what they can tell us about the world and what they can predict?
Would that be fair? It would be fair. Some experts pretended that they could predict the future, and probably expressed more certainty about their forecast than was merited. … I think experts have to do a couple of things differently. One is that they need to Recognize that there's a lot of uncertainty and be more humble. Two is they need to let the public know what lies behind their expertise. … Need to share with the public the fact that the work that they do is backed by the rigours of peer review, that they have to publish their data, that they have to declare conflicts of interest, and they have to subject themselves to rigors that random people expressing views on social media don't have to subject themselves to. And I think if people know that, They will be much better equipped to decide which experts to listen to and which not to.
Presenter asks
6:52If you were to put yourself in [William Beveridge's] shoes, what do you think he would make of the welfare state and the position it's in currently in the UK?
I launched a project at the LSE this month to rethink the welfare state in light of Beveridge. It's the seventy fifth anniversary this year, and I think Beveridge would be amazed at how much the welfare state had grown. I think there are many elements to it that he never envisioned. You know, I think he thought of the NHS, for example, as a sort of in case of emergency as opposed to a preventative health care and comprehensive health care system. I think he'd be amazed at how the role of women has changed and how the welfare state has changed to support women. I think he would be Amazed at the size of the welfare state. I think he'd look at an aging society and the demographics. And I think he would say it's time for a reform and to rethink how do we have a welfare state that is both affordable but also meets a very different set of needs in a modern economy.
The keepsakes
The book
Because I'm not very practical and I I won't know which berries I can eat and that kind of thing. And most importantly, when I'm kind of have done with reflection and enjoying the beauties of this island and I'm ready to go home, I can build a boat and get back to reading lots more books.
The luxury
Photo albums of her children's lives
I have these albums which I keep for my children, in which I keep kind of a history of their lives. Everything from photographs to school reports to boarding passes from holidays to funny things they have said over the years. It's the kind of thing that if there was a fire in the house, what would you grab? It would be these albums. So I would take them.
Presenter asks
12:25What were the domestic circumstances like when you moved to America? Where did you live?
We lived in a small house in Savannah, Georgia. Took my kids there recently just to show them. It's quite modest and uh my mother pitched up speaking nothing but French and Arabic. And we didn't speak English either. And it was not a very Cosmopolitan neighborhood, I'd say. So it was a big change. … It was very hard for her. She was a very young mother. She had me at nineteen and we we moved to the US and she was twenty two. Goodness me. She'd never left Egypt other than for her honeymoon. She would go to the mailbox every day and cry until she got letters from her family.
Presenter asks
17:40Can we draw a reasonably straight line between the experience of your family and the fact that you knew economics mattered?
No, it's n it would be fair because, you know, so much of my work thereafter was around the relationship between the state and the economy. And in Egypt they had that period of nationalizations, which was very well intentioned, but failed. And I think trying to figure out what is the role of the state in promoting economic development in creating opportunity for its people is really one of the biggest questions in economics and is one that has kind of dominated my career.
Presenter asks
18:49Do you think it's time to reassess the commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on foreign aid, given austerity at home?
Actually, I think the commitment is something we should be proud of. I have personally seen The huge benefits that come from the aid program. Children who've gone to school who could have never had the opportunity, mothers who are able to manage the number of children they have, people who've been able to set up small businesses with tiny, tiny loans. It's amazing how very small resources can deliver huge impact. I also think that there is a case for enlightened self-interest, that if people in other countries have good prospects, they will stay in their own communities, they will build economies that will thrive and that we can trade with and there will be benefits. … Good for us. And I think there is a moral issue where I think Some of us are lucky to be born in certain countries, in certain in families, and I myself, when I was small and would go and visit my mother's family's village in Egypt, I would see little girls, they looked just like me, and I looked at them and I could have been them. And I could have grown up in a village without ever going to school, being forced to marry someone, not ever earning my own income. And I think for all of us we need to recognize that there is a huge element of our lives which is good fortune. And if we have had good fortune in life in terms of where we're born and how our life has turned out, we have a duty to share the benefits of that good fortune with others. Talent is spread evenly around the world, but opportunities are not. And some of us have had opportunities in our lives. And I think there's a moral dimension of being able to spread those opportunities to others.
Presenter asks
28:05You prefer the 'sticky door' to the 'glass ceiling'. Explain that to me.
The problem with that metaphor is it it implies you're sort of banging your head against something and then eventually it shatters and all these other women can flood through. And it doesn't really work that way. And I like the sticky door a bit more because it helps if there's somebody else pulling on the other side, what I just refer to, good bosses who are willing to take a risk on you, give you an opportunity that might be a bit of a stretch and then support you. And often even if you get through the door, the door shuts again and it sticks again and it takes another person to nudge it and someone else to pull it open for them before it stays open for everyone.
“Some experts pretended that they could predict the future, and probably expressed more certainty about their forecast than was merited.”
“One is that they need to Recognize that there's a lot of uncertainty and be more humble.”
“The average Bank of England report required a reading age of 13 years of education, which meant that the vast majority of the British public couldn't understand what we were talking about.”
“Talent is spread evenly around the world, but opportunities are not.”
“I like the sticky door a bit more because it helps if there's somebody else pulling on the other side, what I just refer to, good bosses who are willing to take a risk on you, give you an opportunity that might be a bit of a stretch and then support you.”