Birkbeck, University of London

And then I really started writing about statistics and data and AI and technology from that point of view.

And then more recently, I've been a postgraduate philosophy student at Birkbeck, looking at all sorts of things, but particularly the ethics of risk.

That's the thing I've been most interested in.

So it's quite hard to pin down in terms of subject matter, but I think that there's quite a kind of logical progression in how my interests have spread out and then come back together again.

Since then, it seems like Britain and Germany have rebuilt a much more cordial relationship.

But with Britain having left the EU, aggressive forms of nationalism rearing their heads in both countries, and a painful history, how might these two powerful countries shape the future of the continent together or apart? I'm Alex von Tunselman, and to help untangle the history and future of Anglo-German relations, I'm joined by Professor of History at Birkbeck University and Scholar of German and British History, Jan Ruger.

His new book is Great Powers, the History of Britain and Germany.

Welcome to the bunker, Jan.

I remember those days.

Actually, in 2015, that's where I met my wife at Birkbeck University, where historical materialism is held in London.

We were talking about was also reasons in power, you know liberalism looks like it's starting to crater a little bit You know The Arab Spring seems to make democracy look like it's a viable thing in the Middle East for the first time in a long time And then of course the next year Trump came into office Brexit happened and we were like, I guess we spoke a little too soon

by 2015 the Syriza moment had kind of passed but but but yeah, the certainly Trump came into office, but I would say that The Arab Spring and Syriza both collapsed before Trump, well before Trump.

Um, without really actively choosing it, I decided to, to be an academic 'cause it's an obvious thing to do after a PhD.

So the first 20 years of my academic career I was at Birkbeck, part of University of London that you know well, David.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've got to work it up into a fully written paper.

It's joint work with a colleague at Birkbeck College in London, Richard Evans.

And yeah, we're writing it up at the moment.

It's close to being ready, but then it's going to have to go through the whole process of refereeing for a peer-reviewed academic journal.

It's probably the best researcher on it was that, uh, I believe he was at one of the University of London.

I think it might have been Birkbeck.

But John Clear? Yeah.

He wrote on it.

First, he collected 10,000 pounds.

Then, he took a course at Birkbeck University in England in October on Culture, Diaspora, and Ethnicity.

Then he collected £1,600, and there was another person, Singh Mahon.

So for him, he collected money so that he could go to university and study Defending Islam from a Marxist Perspective.

An interesting new study that is currently under peer review is suggesting that advanced alien civilizations would inevitably shed pieces of technological debris, much like we do with the increasing amount of space junk around our planet, and that perhaps it could be found on the moon.

A team of scientists, led by Louis Pinault of the SETI Institute and Birkbeck College, is now looking into the possibility.

They state that as advanced cultures spread, tiny pieces of their various products and machines could wear down and break off, left to drift across the vast expanses of space and conceivably come to rest as microscopic fragments on the lunar surface.

The Moon, they say, being geologically inactive, would hold this evidence better than any planetary bodies.