The Edition: Cambridge in crisis, Trump’s wicked humour & the beauty of AI ceramics
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2024
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our greatest universities are betraying students, writes David Butterfield, who has just resigned from teaching Classics at Cambridge after 21 years. What went wrong? First, class lists of exam results became private, under alleged grounds of ‘data protection’, which snuffed out much of the competitive spirit of the university. Now even the fate of examinations hangs in the balance. Grade inflation is rampant, and it is now unheard of for students to be sent down for insufficient academic performance. For students, the risks have never been lower. ‘The pace of change over the past decade has been astonishing, driven on by three forces: an administrative class that wants to minimise complaints, a subset of academics who actively resent the no-nonsense traditions of the university, and a proportion of students who will take the easiest path proffered.’ David joined the podcast alongside the author Philip Womack, who recalls his own run-in with university administrators in the magazine. (01:46)
Next: the return of Trump the stand-up comedian.
There had been a lot of talk that Trump had lost some of his spark, with declining attendance at his rallies and his jokes failing to land. But, as The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews writes this week, he appears to have his mojo back. At the Al Smith dinner, he delivered a series of wicked barbs aimed at his opponent Tim Walz and Kamala Harris, to a rapturous reception in the room. So what has changed? And why is humour so important to Trump? Kate joined the podcast alongside journalist and former speechwriter to Tony Blair, Philip Collins. (18:06)
And finally: could AI lead to a revival of decorative beauty?
In her arts lead for the magazine, Lara Prendergast meets the founders of a company in Stoke-on-Trent using AI technology to mass-produce uncannily authentic Delftware tiles, the iconic blue and white ceramics. ‘Josiah Wedgwood would have loved what we are doing… I suspect William Morris would have hated it,’ says the co-founder of Not Quite Past – the company creating these tiles – and who joins the podcast to discuss further. (37:55)
Hosted by Lara Prendergast and William Moore.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews. |
| 0:06.2 | Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online, |
| 0:11.5 | along with a free £20 £10, John Lewis or Waitrose voucher. |
| 0:15.0 | Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher. |
| 0:30.4 | Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shed a little light on the thought process behind putting the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed. |
| 0:35.3 | I'm Laura Prendergast, the Spectator's Executive Editor. |
| 0:38.2 | And I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor. |
| 0:41.2 | This week, how has university education become infantilised? |
| 0:45.5 | Has Donald Trump rediscovered his funny side? |
| 0:48.6 | And will AI lead to a revival of decorative beauty? |
| 1:01.3 | No. lead to a revival of decorative beauty. First up, is university what it once was? |
| 1:05.2 | Well, David Butterfield has just resigned from teaching classics at Cambridge off for 21 years, |
| 1:10.5 | and in his cover piece for the |
| 1:12.5 | magazine this week, he says that our greatest universities are betraying the students. |
| 1:18.3 | What does he think has gone wrong? Well, he writes in his piece that the pace of change |
| 1:22.2 | over the past decades has been astonishing. It's been driven by three forces. An administrative |
| 1:27.4 | class that wants to |
| 1:28.6 | minimize complaints, a subset of academics who actively resent tradition, and a proportion of |
| 1:34.0 | the students who want to take the easiest path. Well, David joined us to talk more about his |
| 1:39.0 | piece, along with the author Philip Womack, who also writes for this week's magazine about his run-in |
| 1:44.0 | with university administrators. |
| 1:46.4 | I started by asking David, when was the moment he started to realise that things were going wrong? |
... |
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