The Ramsay Centre Podcast

The Ramsay Centre
  • 4.5 (2)
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Ready to delve deeper into the “great conversation” of Western Civilisation? Join us as we hear from prominent international and local speakers from all walks of life, including the arts, politics, academia, and business.

  1. 09/24/2025

    The Ramsay Centre Podcast: | Might Makes Right? Great Powers and Challenges to the International Order – Prof Brendan Simms

    The “rules-based” international system is under threat, both from within and without. However, this is not the first time it has faced challenges, or challengers. Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union ‒ great powers or would-be powers ‒ as well as others, have sought to disrupt or overthrow the world order based on free trade and, to some extent at least, liberal values. Now Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea confront the United States and its allies, who are grappling with the apparent fragility of the US’s commitment to world order and a much bigger role for neutrals and non-aligned. For our sixth Ramsay Event for 2025, the Ramsay Centre is pleased to present an in-person lecture by Professor Brendan Simms who delivers an address titled: Might Makes Right? The Past, Present and Future of the Great Powers and Challenges to the International Order. Professor Simms examines whether the future lies in a world determined by relations of power, in particular between the great powers, rather than rules or values. For example, should the EU pursue great power status? Is there still scope for the UK, Australia, Japan and other like-minded nations to carve out a space for themselves with or without American or European support? Please join us for this compelling discussion exploring current challenges to the “rules-based” international system.

    1h 28m

  2. 07/17/2025

    The Ramsay Centre Podcast: The Truth Test: Science and Pseudoscience in a World of Information Overload – Prof Ian Frazer AC.

    Science is power. So is the ability to persuade people that something is scientific or supported by science, i.e. that science is “on your side”. In a scientific civilisation, when our world is increasingly shaped by, and dependent on, the achievements of science, and the word “science” is often wielded as a weapon, what are the challenges facing scientists and non-scientists in distinguishing good science from what is merely presented as science, and in identifying the legitimate limits of science? For our fifth Ramsay Event for 2025, the Ramsay Centre is pleased to present an in-person lecture by world renowned scientist Ian Frazer, former Australian of the Year and co-developer of the basic technology behind the world’s first cancer vaccine. Professor Frazer delivers an address titled: The Truth Test: Science and Pseudoscience in a World of Information Overload. Professor Frazer examines how we can tell good science from bad, and why there is good reason to be optimistic. He is joined by Nick Enfield, Linguistics Professor and Director of the Sydney Social Science and Humanities Advanced Research Centre at the University of Sydney, who provides additional context and insights. Please join us for this compelling discussion exploring scientific research and its commitment to societal well-being.

    32 min

  3. 07/02/2025

    The Ramsay Centre Podcast: The future West: How we can harness new technologies to transform lives – Dr Catherine Ball

    From the scientific method, to the post-industrial economy, to new digital technologies, the West has played a pivotal role in many of the most transformative developments of the modern era. Now with the age of AI and robotics before us, how can we actively shape the future in an age of accelerating change? And how do we harness the power of technology in higher education, to ensure it advances learning, rather than diminishes the university experience?  For our fourth Ramsay Event for 2025, the Ramsay Centre is pleased to present an in-person lecture by globally renowned futurist Dr Catherine Ball titled: The future West: How we can harness new technologies to transform lives.  Dr Ball draws on her deep expertise in emerging technologies—from AI and robotics to digital ethics and sustainability—to illuminate the powerful role that leadership, purpose, and human-centred innovation play in genuine progress. Far from being passive observers of disruption, we are all participants in building what comes next. Dr Ball challenges the audience to move beyond fear or fascination with technology and instead harness it as a tool for impact and resilience. Please join us for this inspiring, thought-provoking event exploring how we can actively shape the future in an age of accelerating change.

    32 min

  4. 03/26/2025

    The Ramsay Centre Podcast: Digging Up History: What the Treasures of the Past Can Teach Us Today – Bettany Hughes

    In the age of AI and the smartphone is history a vital form of knowledge? How can the treasures of the past enrich our minds and help us to live more fully today? For our second Ramsay Event for 2025, the Ramsay Centre is pleased to present an in-person lecture by Bettany Hughes OBE titled: Digging Up History: What the Treasures of the Past Can Teach Us Today.  Drawing on her field research, including digs in Europe, North Africa and Central Asia, Bettany explores how archaeology in particular is a powerful tool that can make us better and wiser travellers in a modern world that is everywhere marked by the traces of the past. Please join us for this exciting presentation about why, at a time when technology seems to offer the possibility of existing solely in a permanent and therefore impoverished present, the past has absolute value and relevance, and why it is, in fact, one of our greatest treasures.

    47 min

  5. 03/05/2025

    The Ramsay Centre Podcast: Welcome to Oz – Immigration 1788-2100 – Bernard Salt AM together with Professor James Curran

    Today some 30 per cent of Australia’s population was born overseas, double the proportion in the US and the UK. How has Australia managed to add so many people so quickly and still maintain social cohesion? And how might our immigration mix change in the decades ahead? For our first Ramsay Event for 2025, the Ramsay Centre is pleased to present an in-person lecture by Bernard Salt AM together with Professor James Curran titled: Welcome to Oz – Immigration 1788-2100.  Leading social commentator and demographer Bernard Salt and eminent historian and journalist James Curran discuss changes to Australia’s demography and the political and cultural history of Australian immigration, from the gold-rush, to Federation, to the post-war era, to today. Bernard Salt delivers the main address with James Curran providing additional insights. Please join us for this stimulating exploration of the critical role that immigration has played in Australia’s development and how it is likely to continue to define us in the 21st century.

    1h 17m

  6. 11/13/2024

    The Ramsay Centre Podcast: The Tragedy of 21st Century Geopolitics – Robert D. Kaplan

    Trying to make sense of a world where great power rivalry, war and competition for resources are not ghosts of history but present realities?From the Middle East to Ukraine to the South China Sea, world leaders are confronted by complex crises with no easy solution in sight. US journalist, author and foreign policy advisor Robert D. Kaplan thinks that we must learn to think tragically if we are to avoid or mitigate tragedy. Leaders should be neither optimists nor pessimists but realists, argues Kaplan. His book, The Tragic Mind, reflects hard-won wisdom and was written as the author grappled with his promotion, as an influential journalist and respected analyst, of the second Iraq War, the US-led military intervention that toppled Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein but unleashed further bloodshed and anarchy. Kaplan was also deeply affected by former US President Bill Clinton hesitating to intervene in the Balkans after reading Kaplan’s 1993 book Balkan Ghosts. In The Tragic Mind, Kaplan notes that tragedy is not merely imperfection, nor is it the fact that progress is intermittent and reversible. Humans confront tragedy when they recognise that whatever they do, including nothing, some good will be lost. For our sixth Ramsay Lecture for 2024, the Ramsay Centre is pleased to present an in-person lecture by Robert D. Kaplan titled: The Tragedy of 21st Century Geopolitics.  After a period of deep personal reflection and exploration of the ancient Greeks and classics, Kaplan determined a tragic mindset was necessary to guide foreign policy in particular. In his talk, he explains that tragedy is not common misfortune or crime but the triumph of one good over another, and about the narrow choices we face, however vast the landscape. He discusses Ukraine, Gaza and the South China Sea as illustrations of tragedy and employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence and the burdens of what is always limited power. Please join us for this stimulating exploration of how a ‘tragic mindset’ could guide decision making and leadership and how the classics can help inform current conflicts.

    1h 39m

  7. 09/11/2024

    The Ramsay Centre Podcast: Well-Tempered Power: The Rule of Law in Theory & Practice – Professor Martin Krygier

    What is the key to ‘well-tempered power’? Can the rule of law be sustained by the law alone, or does it need to be blended with distinct cultural, political, social and economic forces? The Western concept of the ‘rule of law’ has not been applied with equal success in countries globally, many of whom have all the dressings of a legal system including courts, judges and lawyers, but still experience arbitrary exercise of significant power. For our fifth Ramsay Lecture for 2024, the Ramsay Centre is pleased to present an in-person lecture by Professor Martin Krygier titled: Well-Tempered Power: The Rule of Law in Theory & Practice. Professor Krygier is one of the world’s leading theorists on the rule of law. His argument that the rule of law, well understood, is not merely “following the rules” but includes a culture of respect for all sorts of limitation on arbitrary power, is one of the most original and influential jurisprudential arguments of the past fifty years. In his presentation Professor Krygier explains and defends his conception of the rule of law and discusses the challenges it faces around the world today. NSW Solicitor-General Michael Sexton SC, an esteemed commentator and author of several books on Australian history and politics, then offers a response. Please join us for this stimulating discussion about the concepts of ‘well-tempered power’ and the rule of law.

    1h 42m

  8. 07/31/2024

    The Ramsay Centre Podcast: Getting Russia Right – Kyle Wilson

    What is Russian exceptionalism? How can we best understand the mindset of Russians and Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure the most effective response to the war on Ukraine? Is there a path forward to ‘getting Russia right’? For our fourth Ramsay Lecture for 2024, the Centre is pleased to present an exploration of this topic – a recorded conversation between former Centre CEO Professor Simon Haines, and one of Australia’s foremost Russia experts, the esteemed academic, diplomat and Russian interpreter Mr Kyle Wilson. In their discussion, the pair draw upon Mr Wilson’s direct dealings with President Putin as well as his research into Russian history and society to explore the mindset that led Russia to invade Ukraine. Mr Wilson posits that President Putin is bent on reaffirming age-old traditions of autocracy at home and empire abroad. Far from being threatened by NATO expansion in its so-called near abroad, Putin is intent on integrating Ukraine into greater Russia. Leading into this conclusion, Mr Wilson and Professor Haines explore the following: *Mr Wilson’s thesis that contemporary political culture in Russia is a mirror of what Genghis Khan created in the Mongol Empire, a militarised empire where all power resides with an autocrat who is above the law and where people exist to serve the state. *Russian exceptionalism and how Russians are taught to believe they are unique, ethnically and culturally superior, and owed gratitude for saving humanity on three occasions from Khan, Napoleon and Hitler. *Why Russia believes the West is mounting a war against it and wants to influence the foreign policy of its small neighbours to the West because of the times it has been invaded from the West. *Why despite past invasions it is not NATO expansion and fear of invasion that are driving the war on Ukraine but rather Putin’s military strongman mindset and the desire to restore to Russia parcels of lands that it believes it still has right to.  Please join us for this compelling discussion that seeks to offer better comprehension of the events unfolding in Russia and Ukraine today.

    1h 10m
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Ready to delve deeper into the “great conversation” of Western Civilisation? Join us as we hear from prominent international and local speakers from all walks of life, including the arts, politics, academia, and business.

Information

  • Creator
    The Ramsay Centre
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    72
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Ramsay Centre Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Ramsay Centre Podcast