IEA Podcast

Is the triple lock on the state pension sustainable? What does the future of free speech in Britain actually look like? And when does safety regulation cross the line into doing more harm than good? Kristian Niemietz, Lord Frost, and host Callum Price tackle three of the most contested policy questions in British public life right now.
The panel examines the case for and against the triple lock, exploring what a fairer, more sustainable pension system might look like and how the retirement age should relate to rising life expectancy. They also dig into the Adam Smith Institute’s proposed free speech bill, asking whether Britain’s long-standing reputation as a bastion of free expression still holds up when you look at the laws actually on the statute book.
Finally, the group debates the real-world costs of building safety regulation, and whether politicians and the media are willing to have an honest conversation about trade-offs. It is easier said than done, but without that conversation, good policy becomes almost impossible to make.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.
The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.


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In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, chair Callum Price hosts the 33rd Hayek Lecture, introduced by Lord Frost, IEA Director General. Harvard Professor of Economics Edward Glaeser delivers the lecture entitled “Does Britain Need a Second London?”, examining the relationship between urban density, housing supply and economic growth. Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, joins the panel discussion alongside Lord Frost to respond to the lecture and discuss its implications for Britain.
Glaeser sets out the economic case for cities, arguing that density drives productivity, innovation and upward mobility. He examines Britain’s chronic failure to build housing and infrastructure, tracing it to planning restrictions that have constrained London’s growth and throttled the capacity of other cities to develop. Drawing on data from across the United States, he argues that high house prices are a supply problem, not a demand problem, and that the places which build the most are consistently the most affordable. He also challenges the case for rent control, new state-built cities and large-scale rail investment, arguing instead for deregulation, brownfield densification and mass production in housebuilding.
The panel discussion ranges across Britain’s 18 years of near-stagnant per capita growth, the counterintuitive finding that planning restrictions worsened under Thatcher, the limits of government competence in directing economic development, and Lord Frost’s observation that government policy effectively killed Birmingham as a productive city in the post-war decades. The conversation closes with the argument that Britain is not physically full — it simply believes it is, and that changing that psychology is essential to changing the country’s economic prospects.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.
The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty is one of the most important works of political philosophy of the 20th century -- but it’s also one of the most difficult to read. Written over 15 years while its author battled illness, moved between continents, and collected a Nobel Prize, the book is uneven, repetitive, and densely philosophical in places. In this interview, Dr Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute, explains why he wrote a guide to make Hayek’s ideas accessible to a modern audience.
At the heart of Law, Legislation and Liberty is Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution: the idea that our most important institutions -- justice, morality, language, markets -- were not designed by anyone, but emerged gradually over millennia. Butler explains why Hayek believed this process produces a kind of accumulated wisdom that no government planner can replicate, and why attempts to redesign society from scratch -- from the French Revolution to Soviet Russia -- have so consistently ended in failure, repression, and corruption.
The interview also covers Hayek’s famous critique of social justice, his views on the proper limits of democracy, the difference between “law” and “legislation,” and what the most important lesson of the book is for policymakers today. Dr Butler’s guide to Law, Legislation and Liberty is published by the IEA and is available now -- link in the description.


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In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor at the IEA, speaks with Dr. Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics at the University of Southern Denmark and author of A Farewell to Alms (2008) and The Son Also Rises (2014). The conversation explores why economic growth was almost non-existent before 1800 and what set Britain on the path to the Industrial Revolution, focusing on the relationship between social mobility, fertility patterns and the gradual transformation of human behaviour over centuries.
Dr. Clark sets out his argument that pre-industrial England was characterised by a consistent fertility advantage among the upper and middle classes, with wealthier families producing significantly more surviving children than poorer ones. He explains how this demographic pressure drove the slow downward spread of commercially useful traits through the population over many generations, contributing to declining interest rates, rising literacy, and falling rates of violence long before industrialisation took hold. The discussion also covers why other societies with comparably sound institutions, including ancient Rome, Babylonia and Qing Dynasty China, never made the same transition, and what role European marriage patterns, particularly the tendency to marry later and for love rather than family arrangement, may have played in shaping the distribution of abilities within society.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, and Lord Frost, IEA Director General. They discuss the OECD’s latest growth forecasts, which place the UK as the hardest hit economy in the G20, the Government’s response to the energy price shock, and what — if anything — should be done about rising inflation.
The conversation then turns to the Government’s new towns plan, narrowed from 12 to 7 proposed sites. Kristian and Lord Frost debate whether these amount to genuine new towns or simply extensions of existing conurbations, whether the history of new towns offers any useful lessons, and whether the current planning system is capable of delivering the housing numbers the country needs.
The final segment examines a piece in The Critic by Steve Loftus arguing that AI will be so transformative that capitalism itself will need to be replaced. Kristian and Lord Frost push back, questioning whether AI is truly different in principle from previous technological revolutions, what the productivity figures actually show so far, and what Hayek’s insights about tacit knowledge mean for the limits of machine intelligence.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.
The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.
0:00 Introduction
1:56 OECD Growth Forecasts & The UK’s Energy Crisis
11:20 New Towns: Central Planning or Pragmatic Housing Policy?
24:18 Will AI Replace Capitalism?


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe