COVID & Brexit: The Double-Wicked Challenge - Fault Lines & New Values - Interview with Angie Hobbs

Jericho

As a nation, the Brits have been through quite a bit over the last year. A sort of late midlife health and emotional crisis. The twin demons of pandemic and Brexit have scarred and divided us. But what is the collective mindset that led to the Brexit vote? And how have our values determined how we have coped with the pandemic: the wishes and needs of the individual do not always coincide with those of the group, our nation. Face masks don’t just protect us they are intended to safeguard others. How has pandemic changed our values and priorities - both on a personal and public level? Or will it be back to business as usual once we are all vaccinated?

In the latest in its series of podcasts supported by the investment bank Stifel and its European President Eithne O’Leary, Jericho Chambers Partner, Matthew Gwyther speaks to Eithne plus three book authors and a young, American colleague of Eithne’s who has only recently joined the bank after completing a Masters at LSE in London.

Professor Angie Hobbs is one of the UK’s most sparkling and life-enhancing academics. About as far removed from a dusty university garett as possible - yet without succumbing to the crass populism and over exposure of other TV Profs - she is a Cambridge-trained classicist, and Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Wildly popular among her students, she has even appeared on Desert island Discs. Her interview tells us what Plato would have made of that would-be classicist Boris Johnson who has a bust of Pericles in his office. What the Stoics and Epicureans can teach us about coping with pandemic - they had many plagues in Ancient Greece - and how the fashionable cult of mindfulness has been around for more than two thousand years. And sovereignty and freedom...would the average ancient Greek in his sandals have voted Leave?

This podcast is part of The Double-Wicked Challenge; COVID and Brexit conversation series, curated by Jericho on behalf of Stifel Europe.

For further information or to get involved, please contact Jericho Founder, Robert Phillips or Programme Director, Becky Holloway.

Jericho Conversations is one of a number of initiatives that spontaneously emerged during the first COVID lockdown – part of a determination to use moments of crisis to pivot towards a better, fairer, more equitable and sustainable future for all. By popular demand, we have reignited the series to help find surprising and refreshing solutions and insights into a world in constant flux. Each conversation – led by an expert speaker – is designed to keep Jericho communities engaged and thinking about “what comes next?” for business and society.