Tipping points

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Science, Society & Culture

4.4 • 973 Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2011

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Laurie Taylor explores the idea of the Tipping Point using a multidisciplinary project at Durham University as a springboard to examine what tipping points are, how they happen and what effect they have. Professor Tim Clark and Professor Pat Waugh from Durham University and Professor Alex Bentley from Bristol University are all involved in the Durham Tipping Points project and they are joined by Dr Shahidha Bari from Queen Mary, London to discuss the idea of the tipping point and what it might tell us about ourselves and our environment - and how, perhaps, we can use our understanding of it to prevent significant problems in areas as diverse as banking and sociology. Producer: Chris Wilson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix,
0:06.0	the Science of Happiness Podcast.
0:08.0	For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want
0:14.4	to share that science with you.
0:16.1	And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.
0:19.4	I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that
0:25.4	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.7	This is a Thinking Loud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and
0:37.0	much, much more about thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co. UK.
0:43.0	Yes, of course, what else, Nirvana with smells like teen spirit?
0:59.0	And why Nirvana?
1:00.0	Because if we all got together behind Nirvana, then we could alter the course of musical history by ensuring that the prized number one position in the charts this Christmas fails to go to this song. So come on coverage is to be shy.
1:17.0	You know that one.
1:20.0	X-factor winners.
1:21.0	That's right.
1:22.0	Little mixed with cannonball. and as in previous campaigns along these lines, as in 2009, when rage against the machine beat the X Factor singer Joe McEldery to the top spot, success depends upon getting the momentum going. the ballistic when, in other words, it reaches the tipping point.
1:44.3	Do you remember that concept?
1:45.9	I think I must have first come across it in American urban sociology where it was used to
1:49.9	describe the critical threshold at which white people would begin to leave an increasingly
1:55.4	black-dominated community.
1:57.8	And since then it's been taken up by a variety of academic and quasi-academic writers and applied to everything from the adoption of new
2:04.8	pieces of personal technology to the political transformations we now know as
	...

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