Culture, Power, Politics » Podcast
Sep 22, 2026 · 1 hr 16 min · 12 segments
What makes us, a couple of professors at modern British universities, ‘experts’ on anything? What makes *anyone* an acknowledged expert on anything, and why does it matter? Why does the political…
Alan FinlaysonHostyes okay no one pays for that no um so let's get on with um what we're going to talk about today we thought today we would talk about the question of what makes us or anyone else experts um this is despite the fact we have i have got an in tray full of suggestions from people which we want to look at some of them i might do on my own some of them might meet a guest some of them alan and i will do together but uh they all require a bit more work and don't say that no no well we just these are all incredible
well no we've been this is stuff we sort of know all that we know we don't need to do any background we know all this
He's got a really heavy teaching load and it's, you know, we're still going through the restructuring process at my workplace, which means me attending a lot of union meetings and writing letters about why I shouldn't be sacked.
melodramatic it's just been it's just been time consuming like more than and the the start of term is always difficult especially if you've got a heavy load like alan has this term and it's sort of it's sort of conference season for me the next couple of weeks but by from sort of early october and right for the next sort of nine months i'm going to be pretty i'm keeping things quite calm because i've got a lot of writing to do but That should mean the release schedule for the podcast is pretty steady and regular and a bit less jerky.
But so we're going to cover this topic, but also we wanted to cover this because really it follows on directly from our two mega series on universities and neoliberalism, actually, because obviously something that really came up in the episode on neoliberalism is, sorry, on universities is the question of, well, you know, what are the institutions in our society in the 21st century that decide what counts as valuable knowledge? And that's also a central theme when thinking about neoliberalism, actually.
Neoliberalism, as we explained a little bit, talking about its genesis and the thinking people are Hayek, is based on quite a specific set of claims and arguments about what is and isn't legitimate knowledge, in a certain sense, and what kind of knowledge can you have.
Who can you, you know, what kind of expertise can that be? So, but I mean, basically, Hayek, one starts off neoliberalism as a philosophical enterprise saying socialism simply can't possibly work because for it to work, it would rely on forms of knowledge which nobody can have.
therefore sort of planning is impossible so i think it is like i think it is really relevant and obviously it's relevant to us because alan as alan was just saying you know we both have the formal title professor i've never liked it really i've always i always felt vaguely embarrassed by it like it's great being called doctor something that's
just don't, I don't like, I aesthetically don't like the sound of the word, like professor.
It just sounds a bit, you know, you can hardly, it's hard to say it without sort of spluttering a bit.
because it sounds sort of professorial, like sort of yaffle in bagpuss? Is that, that's probably not a good example for our market, but it's very on brand, right? Yeah.
Yeah, and is it that kind of thing? I like the profess bit because I feel like you're there to profess something.
yes okay no one pays for that no um so let's get on with um what we're going to talk about today we thought today we would talk about the question of what makes us or anyone else experts um this is despite the fact we have i have got an in tray full of suggestions from people which we want to look at some of them i might do on my own some of them might meet a guest some of them alan and i will do together but uh they all require a bit more work and don't say that no no well we just these are all incredible
well no we've been this is stuff we sort of know all that we know we don't need to do any background we know all this
He's got a really heavy teaching load and it's, you know, we're still going through the restructuring process at my workplace, which means me attending a lot of union meetings and writing letters about why I shouldn't be sacked.
melodramatic it's just been it's just been time consuming like more than and the the start of term is always difficult especially if you've got a heavy load like alan has this term and it's sort of it's sort of conference season for me the next couple of weeks but by from sort of early october and right for the next sort of nine months i'm going to be pretty i'm keeping things quite calm because i've got a lot of writing to do but That should mean the release schedule for the podcast is pretty steady and regular and a bit less jerky.
But so we're going to cover this topic, but also we wanted to cover this because really it follows on directly from our two mega series on universities and neoliberalism, actually, because obviously something that really came up in the episode on neoliberalism is, sorry, on universities is the question of, well, you know, what are the institutions in our society in the 21st century that decide what counts as valuable knowledge? And that's also a central theme when thinking about neoliberalism, actually.
Neoliberalism, as we explained a little bit, talking about its genesis and the thinking people are Hayek, is based on quite a specific set of claims and arguments about what is and isn't legitimate knowledge, in a certain sense, and what kind of knowledge can you have.
Who can you, you know, what kind of expertise can that be? So, but I mean, basically, Hayek, one starts off neoliberalism as a philosophical enterprise saying socialism simply can't possibly work because for it to work, it would rely on forms of knowledge which nobody can have.
therefore sort of planning is impossible so i think it is like i think it is really relevant and obviously it's relevant to us because alan as alan was just saying you know we both have the formal title professor i've never liked it really i've always i always felt vaguely embarrassed by it like it's great being called doctor something that's
just don't, I don't like, I aesthetically don't like the sound of the word, like professor.
It just sounds a bit, you know, you can hardly, it's hard to say it without sort of spluttering a bit.
because it sounds sort of professorial, like sort of yaffle in bagpuss? Is that, that's probably not a good example for our market, but it's very on brand, right? Yeah.
Yeah, and is it that kind of thing? I like the profess bit because I feel like you're there to profess something.
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