This is LBC from Global, leading Britain's conversation, mystery hour with James O'Brien.

Three minutes after 12 is the time you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC.

We take now a brief divergence from the diet of politics and hard news to paddle about in the shallows

a little. Your weekly opportunity to achieve the sort of satisfaction, not ordinarily available

anywhere else on your radio dial. You probably have a question buzzing away in the back of your

brain to which you know there must be an answer, but you haven't thus far been able to identify precisely what it is. I suppose you could have looked it up, but where's the fun in that,

when you can have a little bit of human interaction instead? In a true spirit of education,

we celebrate knowledge. And to be pompous for a moment, what do you mean for a moment,

it's a permanent state of affairs, to be even more pompous than usual for a moment, what do you mean for a moment? It's a permanent state of affairs.

To be even more pompous than usual for a moment, it does actually acknowledge a key social change mystery hour. I know you think it's just a bit of fun that we have every Thursday,

but there's something quite profound at its roots. And that is the recognition that the very nature of knowledge is changing because of

technology. I don't think I get carried away by this, but I know. We think back, you try

and make it generational specific. Think back to when there seemed to be something a little bit

rum about the idea of taking calculators into exams,

because we belong to a generation that thought you should have been able to do it all in your

head. My kids find that ridiculous. Well, what's the point of having it? So now, with an education

system that is still in large part, actually, post-Gove, it's gone back to this ability to retain knowledge

rather than to apply understanding um it it's not necessary in the age of the internet

i was at the national portrait gallery yesterday and bemoaning once again the huge gaps in

my knowledge when after

after Queen Elizabeth the first died the the succession there when it goes a bit

orange for a bit and then you've got the glorious revolution that has nothing to do

...