WHAT'S ON
Full List
by Natalie Schroyens
Ideas | Thurs 10th Sept | 9.00am - 1pm (in English)
Also possible to attend an afternoon session in Dutch
*Hosted event
Does your message resonate with the people you're trying to reach - or only with those who already agree with you?
Effective climate communication depends on understanding the audiences that matter for your goals - including which messages resonate, which fall flat, and which backfire.
Message testing is a research method that helps you bridge that gap: identifying which narratives, frames, and words land well with specific audiences, and which ones may do more harm than good.
In this session, Natalie Schroyens, analyst at the Climate Opinion Research Exchange (CORE), walks you through the essentials of message testing in practice - and shows how it can inform your communication strategies.
We'll explore real examples from recent studies on climate communications, and you'll have the chance to practice together in applying the method to your own work: defining your audience, clarifying the attitudes you want to shift, and identifying the narratives worth testing.
What you'll take away:
This session is for anyone involved in climate or sustainability communication: NGO staff, campaigners, institutional communicators, educators, policy advocates, and anyone who wants their message to land beyond the bubble.
PRACTICAL INFO
Free, but registration is required
Free networking lunch included
Format: Interactive workshop — max. 30 participants
Language: English
ABOUT WAVEMAKER
The Good Wave is a network of effective climate action. It organises networking activities, free Learning Labs, an exciting toolbox and thematic sessions named Wave Maker Sessions. The latter focus on a specific topic related to climate action and communication.
Launch Party | Season 14
2026-27
SEASON LAUNCH | Fri 11th Sept | 7pm
Welcome to a brand-new Season!
Let this one inspire you with its vibrant mix of thinkers, doers, authors, activists, artists, musicians, and more. We're unveiling our exciting new programme and introducing some of the brilliant hosts behind your favourite regular activities.
Come for a drink and a tasty bite, meet some new faces and soak up the warm, welcoming vibe of our place and community.
Not a member yet? No worries — you can join right there on the night!
*
Attendance is FREE, but please register.
FREE drinks for Members in the 1st hour.
OPEN TO ALL
ADDITIONAL INFO
ACCESS
Bar open with snacks
Can we Make Climate Great Again? Amnesty International
Ideas | Thurs 17th Sept | 7-9 pm
(Doors open 6.30pm)
Had a sweltering summer? Climate change may be front of mind, albeit temporarily. But authorities (International, regional & national) are not acting urgently or comprehensively enough.
We are already +1.5°c warmer, with +2°c expected by the end of this century. This is a planetary and human rights catastrophe.
Before your attention shifts, get updated on the latest in the transition away from fossil fuels, from actors at the coal-face of climate justice.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Matthias Petel, researcher & lecturer in Human rights law and climate justice, (ULB) has been working closely on the Farmer Case (Falys v. TotalEnergies),
Charles Mertens, climate justice campaigner at Amnesty International Belgique francophone (AIBF),
An environmental defender from W. Papua,
Laurie van der Berg, Public Finance team lead, Oil Change International
Benjamin van Bunderen Robberechts, founder Climate justice for Rosa.
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Bar & Snacks
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Culture | Thurs 17th Sept | 7:00-8:30 pm
Monthly meet up to discuss a great read, along with drinks & good company.
*Doors open at 6.30pm. The book club begins at 7pm.
“A sweeping page-turner [...] a kind of Romeo and Juliet story for a modern, globalized age.” —Publishers Weekly
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kiran Desai is an Indian writer and the bestselling author of three novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, which won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is her latest work of fiction, shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. The judges described the novel as an epic of love and family, spanning generations and countries, that is the most "ambitious and accomplished" work by Desai. Born in India, she moved to the US when she was sixteen and now lives in New York City. In January 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of 20 most influential global Indian women.
Social | Sat 19th Sep | 3-5 pm
Curious about Full Circle? Join us for a drink & discover what we're all about.
Whether you're already part of our community or simply intrigued, you’ll have the opportunity to meet the team, explore the house & hear more about our future plans – including what the different types of Full Circle memberships have to offer. It’s a relaxed & informal setting, ideal for asking questions & seeing if this is a place where you feel at home.
We warmly welcome current members & their guests too – so feel free to bring a friend or two along. It's a lovely way to connect with others who share a curiosity for ideas, culture & community. No pressure, just good company & a great conversation.
We're looking forward to welcoming you!
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Bar & snacks
DANCING IN THE DARK
Book Launch / Sat 19th Sept / 5-7 pm
As a Palestinian woman who grew up in Israel, Eva Dalak's personal story is woven with the collective wounds of conflict, displacement, and inherited pain. Her memoir of transformation, Dancing in the Dark, is an exceptional, powerful journey through loss, identity and the reclamation of light in the face of darkness.
Eva does not just share a testimony of survival, but a profound exploration of healing. As she even lost her vision for two years, she had to navigate physical blindness alongside the unseen landscapes of trauma, belonging and ancestral memory. With honesty and poetic grace, she traces her path from disorientation to clarity, from fragmentation to wholeness.
She also introduces her Peace Activation framework, through which she weaves trauma-informed practices, intergenerational dialogue and embodied resilience into a new way forward - for individuals as well as for communities and nations caught in cycles of violence.
What if the reason we struggle to create lasting peace isn't what we think? What if our most well-crafted peace agreements fail not because we lack good intentions, but because we're missing something fundamental? Come hear Eva's powerful testimony of awakening, begin to see with new eyes and discover how to activate peace as a lived experience.
Eva Dalak is an Israeli Palestinian peacebuilder and peace activator with over 25 years of experience in conflict transformation. She is the founder of Peace Activation and co-founder of One Whole Peace, both soul-centred peace movements in Palestine and Israel bringing citizens of different faiths together in conflict transformation. She is passionate about activating peace, promoting gender equality, interfaith dialogue, and empowering communities to build peace from within. As a skilled conflict transformation facilitator, peacebuilding trainer, and gender advisor, Eva has amassed experience in over 22 countries in conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. She is committed to promoting individual soul-centred leadership and radical responsibility through innovative and entrepreneurial initiatives.
GOODREADS
Dancing in the Dark, How I found my True Vision for Peace (2025).
THE SOCIAL BRAIN, USE IT OR LOSE IT A Salon with Sarah Stein Lubrano
Salon / Ideas | Tues 22 Sept | 6.30-8.30pm
*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speaker will start at 7pm.
Not a Member yet? Join Full Circle now & come to events at the Members' rate!
Have you noticed yourself preferring to stay in more? Trusting people a little less? Finding small talk a little harder? You might not be imagining it — your brain might actually be changing shape.
Researcher Sarah Stein Lubrano calls it social atrophy: the quiet shrinking of our social brains as we withdraw from each other. The more time we spend alone behind screens, the harder social cues become to read, the more suspicion creeps in, and the more we convince ourselves — "I prefer to be alone," "people can't be trusted" — that isolation was our choice all along. It's a vicious cycle, and in a world growing more transactional and distrustful by the day, we may all be caught in it without realizing.
But Lubrano isn't here just to diagnose the problem, but to show us the way out. Because the brain that atrophies can also be retrained. Join Sarah as she unpacks the data, debunks the myths, and makes the case that regular, genuine social contact isn't a nice-to-have. It's the foundation of a shared life and the only place from which we can actually begin to fix things together.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sarah Stein Lubrano is a researcher, author and broadcaster. Her academic research has focused on the role of emotion in political communication, and specifically cognitive dissonance. Lubrano is the head of research for the Future Narratives Lab. For many years she was the head of content at The School of Life, where she is still a content lead. She writes and speaks publicly on a variety of topics. In earlier lives, Lubrano made films and worked as a prison tutor and obituary writer.
GOOD READS
Don't Talk About Politics, How to Change 21st Century Minds (2025);
Double workshop:
Narrative Mapping for Political Strategy & Creative Storytelling in the Attention Age
Future Narratives Lab: Sarah Stein Lubrano & Dan Stanley
WORK | Wed 23rd Sept | 10am-1pm & 2pm-5pm
For professionals in political & communications strategy Places are limited. Book for 1 or both sessions.
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Narrative Mapping for Political Strategy (morning)
In order to challenge harmful political ideas and systems, from carbon emitting industries to increasingly authoritarian governments, it’s crucial to shift public understanding and common sense. And to do that, NGOs, governmental bodies, and others need to first understand why prevailing narratives maintain their power and appeal. Only then does it become possible to strategically select and design interventions (from media-led campaigns to embedded community practices) that will be sufficiently powerful and appealing to change the political landscape for good.
In this session, we’ll share our expertise about how best to do this, building on years of experience working with coalitions and progressive institutions across the world. Together, we’ll map dominant societal narratives that keep our imagination and action trapped in a limited spectrum of possibilities, and tracing the institutions, practices, and policies that make narratives powerful.
In this workshop, we will:
Creative Storytelling in the Attention Age (afternoon)
In this session, we’ll sharpen our storytelling skills, with the help of tools and frameworks that can guide and inspire us. And we’ll consider how to make the age-old power of a story work in the age of fragmented political soundbites and the shortest of short-form video.
We will:
PARTICIPANTS
The workshops Narrative Mapping for Political Strategy and Creative Storytelling in the Attention Age are for all professionals working towards reframing a key social issue, or want to communicate more strategically or creatively about an important problem, on or offline.
If you are working in a governmental or nongovernmental organisation that is struggling to cut through the noise on a particular topic, this is designed with you in mind.
ABOUT THE HOSTS
Future Narratives Lab is a democratically owned and controlled non-profit that exists to build the independent cultural and political power of civil society. Based in London, their team works across Europe and beyond, typically through partnerships with groups working on entrenched and complex social challenges. Future Narrative Lab equips campaigners, coalitions and communities with narrative as a tool for building their collective power.
Dan Stanley is Executive Director at non-profit research body the Future Narratives Lab, and Strategy Director at economic development co-operative Stir to Action. Daniel has worked with campaigns, coalitions, foundations and political parties in the UK and globally to develop strategies for broadening the appeal of alternative social and economic propositions, including seven years leading digital mobilisation agency Small Axe.
TICKETS
MEMBERS Sngle workshop (am or pm) €200 Double workshop (full day) €400
NON-MEMBERS Single workshop (am or pm) €225 Double workshop (full day) €400
INCLUSIVITY / DONATION RATE - waiting list. Any available places will be allocated to those on the waiting list before the event.
KEY LINKS
Future Narratives Lab
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FOOD & DRINK
Refreshments provided. Lunch available
Book Launch / Wed 23rd Sept / 6pm - 8pm
*Doors open at 5.30pm*
Les Juifs, les Arabes, ma famille et moi by Pierre Hazan is a deeply personal yet political narrative tracing two centuries of Jewish-Arab coexistence through the story of the author's own family.
Writing as a member of the last generation of Jews born in Arab lands, Hazan traces this history through four figures: his ancestor Moshe, a rabbi who journeyed from Jerusalem to Europe and back before siding with the Arab world against European colonial powers; his great-uncle Daoud, a revolutionary and co-founder of Egypt's first independence party who was sentenced to death by the British yet remained a Zionist; his maternal grandfather Maurice, whose Arab, Jewish, and British identities collided as the Middle East grew turbulent in the 1940s; and his father, Elie, who tried to delay an irreversible exile after the 1956 Suez Crisis, as Jews across the Arab world were uprooted following the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Weaving family history with broader historical currents, the book is both an elegy for a largely vanished world of Jewish-Arab coexistence and a fragile note of hope that such coexistence might be reimagined.
Pierre Hazan is the former Diplomatic Correspondent for Libération (Paris) and Le Temps (Geneva), specializing in humanitarian action and international justice, and has closely observed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and the Middle East. A Fellow at Harvard Law School (2005) and the United States Institute of Peace (2006), he has authored several books, including Justice in a Time of War and Judging War, Judging History (Stanford University Press, 2010), and served as a U.N. expert on cultural rights in 2013.
A news commentary with
James Kanter & guests
Ideas / Wed 23rd Sept / 6.30-8.30pm
Live & On the Record: A Podcast with James Kanter
Europe’s news is loud and moving fast. Behind the News keeps up and cuts through the noise. Come join veteran Brussels journalist James Kanter and a stellar cast of journalists and reporters who break through the clutter and help make sense of it.
From EU power plays, to the stories that shaped the week and the ones that slipped past the front page, come hear what's really going on behind the headlines.
This is journalism doing what it's supposed to do: telling it as it is. Unfiltered and live in front of you. Join us and dig into the stories defining Europe right now.
James Kanter is an American and British award-winning journalist and Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. Previously at Herald Tribune and The New York Times. He's co-founder and editor of the Podcast EU Scream.
Katrin Prybil is a senior correspondent at Reportrois, with previous experience in the UK and the Middle East. She's the Brussels-based EU correspondent for a pool of major regional German newspapers, covering EU affairs, NATO and current affairs in the Benelux countries.
Joanna Gill is a British journalist based in Brussels, whose work on TV and in print has featured on Reuters, AFP, Euronews, Channel 4 news, and others. She has spent 15 years reporting on the EU connecting policy to the people it impacts.
Raziye Akkoc is AFP's EU correspondent in Brussels, covering trade, tech and economics. Her career spans London, France and six years in Ankara reporting Turkish politics, where she co-founded Turkey recap newsletter. Previously she was at The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.
CORPORATE POWER in the age of ai
Ideas / Salon | Thurs 24th Sept | 6.30-8.30 pm
Who really rules the world we live in? Not governments. Not voters. According to award-winning economist Cecilia Rikap, it's a small cluster of cloud hegemons (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) whose intellectual monopolies over knowledge, data and narratives now shape global capitalism itself.
Rikap reveals how even giants like Disney, McDonald's, Nike and Walmart depend on these tech rulers to extract value through AI and discipline their own workforces. States, too, are watching core functions slip from their hands. Innovation, in this telling, is not a free and neutral game - it's a hierarchy, and someone is always at the top of it.
To get there, Rikap went straight to the source: 112 interviews with people inside the world's largest firms, combined with hard data on venture capital, acquisitions, open source, AI conferences and patents - piecing together a vivid map of who holds power today and what's at stake.
However, this is not a story without an exit. Rikap's counterimage insists technology can still be developed by the people, for the people and the planet, through democratic planning rather than predatory concentration.
Come hear how we got here and how we might take the cloud back.
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Cecilia Rikap is an award winning economist and currently Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is also a researcher at the CONICET, Argentina's national research council and a researcher at University of Technology of Compiègne. Her research is rooted in the international political economy of science and technology and the economics of innovation. She currently studies the rising concentration of intangible assets leading to the emergence of intellectual monopolies, among others from digital and pharma industries, the distribution of intellectual rents, resulting geopolitical tensions and the effects of knowledge assetisation on the knowledge commons and development.
The Rulers, Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud (2026); Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered (2021); The Digital Innovation Race: Conceptualising the Emerging New World Order (2021).
We only have 120 tickets and we always sell out!!
It's time to dust off your dancing shoes and join a traditional Scottish ceilidh.
No previous experience or dancing skills required - the band will be calling out the steps as we go along. If you're a ceilidh regular then you know how much fun it is!
Bring your friends or come along but please, no spikey heels on our rather beautiful wooden floor.
* 7.30pm doors open - bar snacks available
* 8.00pm start dancing!
* 10.30pm Band finishes
*TICKET INCLUDES 1 DRINK (BEER, WINE OR SOFT)
BAR SNACKS AVAILABLE ALL EVENING
Bar & light food
The Hoggies are the original Brussels-based Scottish ceilidh band.
WAF CAFF
Ideas I Tues 6th Oct I 12.15-1.15 pm **OPEN TO ALL**
We meet for one hour on the first Tuesday of every month at Rond-Point Schuman, outside the European Commission, to stand up for democracy.
Each gathering focuses on a different issue, highlighting where rights and freedoms are at risk.
This is about freedom and about us as engaged citizens. Coffee and conversation are part of the gathering.
Democracy & coffee ☕
Join us and exercise your democratic rights.
No need to book, just drop by.
GEOPOLITICAL SHIFTS AT EUROPE'S EDGES
Salon / Ideas | Tues 6 Oct | 6.30-8.30pm
Long before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, conflict was simmering on Europe's borders. Why have Russian resorts sprung up on the coast of Northern Cyprus? What does Sarajevo's local politics reveal about the ambitions of Trump, Putin, and Erdoğan? these questions were already being written into the map, In overlooked territories in eastern Europe, the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus, where local disputes spiral into regional crises, global alliances are forged and broken, and power is brokered while the West looks elsewhere.
It is in these overlooked borderlands that empires end, new conflicts begin, and where Europe's future may be decided.
From the Balkans to the Caucasus, Cyprus to Nagorno-Karabakh, acclaimed correspondent and Pulitzer grantee Hannah Lucinda Smith has spent years in Eurasia's grey zones, meeting the politicians, spies, and ordinary people caught where local disputes quietly become global reckonings.
Join us for an intimate conversation with one of the most incisive voices writing on the borderlands today. Hannah brings the sharp reportage we need to understand contemporary Europe and its unfinished frontiers.
Hannah Lucinda Smith is a journalist and author. As foreign correspondent she has been reporting for major global publications including The Economist, The Times of London, BBC and Monocle, From 2013 to 2025 she has been based in Turkey, reporting across the Middle East and Europe for The Times of London, The Atlantic, WIRED, and others. Before Hinterlands she has also authored Erdogan Rising, an account of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rise to power, and Zarifa, the memoir of Afghan human rights activist Zarifa Ghafari.
Hinterlands: Journey's through Europe's edges (2026); Zarifa, A woman's battle in a man's world (2022); Erdogan Rising: The Battle for the Soul of Turkey (2019).
The Nights Are Quiet in Teheran by Shida Bazyar
Culture | Thurs 15th Oct | 7:00-8:30 pm
‘The pages … pulse with solidarities and betrayal, with heartache and humor.” ― the judges of The International Booker Prize 2026
Set across four decades, from 1979 to 2009, this is a polyphonic novel of one family’s flight from and return to Iran. It is about revolution, oppression, resistance, and the absolute desire for freedom.
1979. Behzad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah’s expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid.
1989. Nahid lives her new life in West Germany with Behzad. With their young children, they spend hour after hour in front of the radio, hoping for news from others who went into hiding after the mullahs came to power.
1999. Laleh returns to Iran with her mother, Nahid. Between beauty rituals and family secrets, she gets to know a Tehran that hardly matches her childhood memories.
2009. Laleh’s brother Mo is more concerned with a friend’s heartbreak than with student demonstrations in Germany. But then the Green Revolution breaks out in Iran and turns the world upside down.
Shida Bazyar studied writing in Germany, and worked in youth education for many years. Born in 1988, she is the author of the novels The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran and Sisters in Arms. The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran has won the Blogger Literary Award, Ulla Hahn Prize, and Uwe Johnson Prize. The English translation was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.
Ideas I Tues 3rd Nov I 12.15 - 1.15pm **OPEN TO ALL**
She Who Remains by Rene Karabash
Culture | Thurs 19th Nov | 7:00-8:30 pm
High in the Accursed Mountains, in an Albanian village ruled by the ancient laws of the Kanun, Bekja escapes an arranged marriage by becoming a sworn virgin, renouncing her womanhood to live as a man. Her decision sets off a brutal chain of events, destroying her family and separating her from the one she loves the most. Years later, as Bekija – now Matija – tells their story to a visiting journalist, long-buried truths come to light, along with the realisation of all that might have been.
She Who Remains - a dark and poetic novel about identity, gender, love, freedom, and societal norms - was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.
Rene Karabash (born Irena Ivanova) is a Bulgarian poet, writer, screenwriter, actor and playwright. She has won multiple awards for her work, including several Best Actress awards for her role in the film Godless. Her debut novel, She Who Remains, was awarded the 2019 Elias Canetti Prize, Bulgaria’s most prestigious literary award. It has been translated into over a dozen languages, and a film, adapted by the author, is set to be released in 2026. The English language edition was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026. Karabash is also the author of the collection Omar’s Letters to His Future Wife, and is working on her second novel.
You already know us, you know what we do, and that by coming YOU make this a great event!
Get your WEEKEND PASS today and treat yourself for the entire weekend!
Ideas Festival / Fri 20th Nov / 7 - 8:30 pm
*Hours might change*
What if the problem with climate conversations isn't that we're not scared enough — but that we're too scared to think clearly?
Melting glaciers. Ticking clocks. Apocalyptic headlines. We've been told fear is what moves people to act. Professor François Gemenne isn't buying it. One of the sharpest minds in environmental geopolitics, he argues that catastrophe-driven messaging doesn't spur action — it breeds fatalism, anxiety and division, and it's why the climate debate has stalled.
In this Salon, Gemenne makes the case for a different conversation entirely: one rooted in human agency, not helplessness. He'll explore what it actually takes to make a sustainable future feel attractive, achievable, and fair and he’ll connect the dots, showing why climate action can't be treated as an isolated "green issue" when it's entangled with everything from agriculture to social justice.
Come talk about the hard things without the polarization. A shared, desirable vision of the future starts with better dialogue, not louder alarm bells.
GET THE WEEKEND OR DAY PASS
François Gemenne is a specialist of environmental geopolitics and the governance of migration, as well as a FNRS senior research associate at the University of Liège, where he also directs the Hugo Observatory, and at the University of Versailles (CEARC). He also lectures on environmental and migration policies in various universities, including Sciences Po (Paris and Grenoble) and ULB in Brussels. He has worked in particular with populations displaced by environmental changes, including natural disasters, and the policies of adaptation to climate change. He has conducted field studies in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, Tuvalu, China, Kyrgyzstan, the Maldives, Mauritius and Japan, after the Fukushima disaster. In 2010, he was awarded the ISDT-Wernaers Prize for achievement in the communication of science to the general public.
Parler Du Climat Sans Plomber L’Atmosphère (2026) ; L'écologie n'est pas un consensus. Dépasser l'indignation (2022). Atlas De L'Anthropocène (2021), On A Tous Un Ami Noir (2020), Dis, C'Est Quoi L'Immigration?(2020), Géopolitique Du Climat (2015), Geopolitique Du Changement Climatique (2015).
Ideas Festival / Sat 21st Nov / 6.30pm - 8pm
Why do people turn to the past when the future feels unbearable? And why does that turn so often lean authoritarian?
Critical theorist and ‘pyrotechnic thinker’ Dr. Louisa Toxværd Munch has spent her career examining the conditions that let fascism take root – and disconnection is at the heart of it. Nostalgia isn't really about the past, it's what happens when people can no longer imagine a shared future together. Isolation doesn't just make us lonelier, it makes us easier to manipulate, easier to divide, and more susceptible to the manufactured ignorance that authoritarian movements depend on.
Louisa makes the case that the way out is relational, not individual. Critical thinking, resistance cannot be done alone. We build these together - in classrooms, in communities, in (disappearing) third spaces, and in the rooms where people still gather to question power.
Louisa Toxvaerd Munch is a Danish critical theorist, writer, and educator whose work examines nostalgia, historical consciousness, and the political conditions enabling the resurgence of the far right. A PhD researcher and teacher at the University of Warwick, she brings critical theory to a broad public audience through writing, lectures, and social media. Drawing on Arendt, hooks, and Freire, she champions education as a democratic safeguard against manufactured ignorance. She is the author of the forthcoming Glitch: How to Think in a Time of Monsters (Allen Lane/Penguin), which reframes societal breakdowns as sites of resistance and collective agency.
Glitch: How to Think in a Time of Monsters (forthcoming, Allen Lane/Penguin).
Ideas Festival / Sun 22nd Nov / 4pm - 5.30pm
"I know we haven't known each other for long, but the connection I feel with you is profound." That's not a person talking but an AI companion, one of millions now fulfilling roles once reserved for friends, lovers, and therapists. Globally, ‘love machines’, personalised AI apps that simulate friendship, intimacy, therapy, or even communication with deceased loved ones, have been downloaded over million times and are used daily.
Sociologist James Muldoon has spent years studying the human cost of our AI systems. Drawing on interviews with users, developers, and the chatbots themselves, he examines why people are increasingly turning to machines for love and comfort, and what that reveals about the state of human connection today.
His findings reveal a striking shift: growing social distance, eroding support systems, and a dating landscape leaving people desperate for connection - all fuelling an unregulated 'loneliness economy.'
This talk isn't about technology itself. It's about what we accept as connection when the real thing feels out of reach, and who profits from that. Are these technologies ultimately bridging the gap between us, or widening it? Join James as he explores what AI relationships reveal about intimacy and connection in 2026.
James Muldoon is a sociologist and author whose work explores the human side of AI and other technologies. Muldoon is specialised in AI governance, data governance, AI supply chains, and the political economy of AI. He is Lecturer in Social Economy and in Global Ethics & innovation of AI at the University of Essexand a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, as well as an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School. He has authored five books and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, TIME, and the BBC.
Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships (2026); Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI (2025, co-authored with Mark Graham and Callum Cant); Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim Our Digital Future from Big Tech (2022)
Ideas Festival / Sun 22nd Nov / 6 - 7.30 pm
Every human being alive today shares a single point of origin: Africa. It's a scientific fact often stated, but rarely felt — and it's the starting point for Zeinab Badawi's extraordinary retelling of the continent's history.
Renowned award-winning journalist, broadcaster & filmmaker Zeinab Badawi has spent years travelling to more than thirty African countries, interviewing historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and local storytellers to reconstruct a history too often erased or told by outsiders. For too long, Africa's story has been shaped by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or ignored altogether. Badawi sets out to change that, weaving together an epic, sweeping account of the oldest inhabited continent on Earth, told through the voices of Africans themselves - from ancient civilizations and medieval empires ruled by remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence.
This is a story about reconnection: of scattered histories rejoined, of a continent restored to its rightful place at the centre of the human story, and of an origin all of us — wherever we live now — ultimately share.
Join Zeinab as she reveals why understanding Africa's past is essential to understanding who we all are, and how deeply, ancestrally connected we remain.
Zeinab Badawi is an award-winning Sudanese-British journalist, broadcaster, and author, best known for presenting flagship programs on BBC World News and BBC News. Throughout her decorated four-decade career in media, she has interviewed numerous world leaders and prominent figures. Beyond journalism, her major contributions to history and education include the recent acclaimed 20-part BBC series on the (African) history of Africa, which she created and presented. This extensive project, which involved traveling to over 30 African countries, led her to author the book An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence.
An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence.
RETHINking capitalism on a burning planet
Salon / Ideas | Tues 8 Dec | 6.30-8.30pm
Join us for a rare opportunity to hear historian Alessandro Stanziani discuss Earth Capital, his sweeping new history of capitalism - one that finally puts the planet itself at the centre of the story.
For eight centuries, Stanziani argues, capitalism has run on two engines of exploitation: coerced human labour and what he calls 'Earth capital' - the land, fossil fuels, and natural resources we've mined, farmed, and burned in pursuit of growth. As forced labour receded after 1870, our plunder of the planet accelerated at a breakneck pace, bringing us to the ecological reckoning we face today.
Stanziani's investigations journey from Russia to the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean to France, weaving calories, energy, labour, and law into one urgent, unified narrative. However, he doesn't just diagnose the crisis. He makes the case for a radical new social contract built on democracy, equality, and environmental sustainability.
This new genre of 'total history' provides an essential viewpoint for anyone debating humanity's future. Come hear the ideas and join the conversation.
Alessandro Stanziani is a social and economic historian at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. He has written numerous books on the history of bonded labour, the history of capitalism, global history, food history.
Earth Capital: The Long History of Capitalism and Its Aftermath (2025); Les Entrelacements Du Monde: Histoire globale, pensée globale (2024); Les Guerres Du Blé: Une éco-histoire écologique et géopolitique (2024) Labor on the Fringes of Empire: Voice, Exit and Law (2018); After Oriental Despotism, Eurasian Growth in a global perspective (2014); Sailors, Slaves, and Immigrants (2014).
Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli
Culture | Thurs 10th Dec | 7:00-8:30 pm
‘Inventive, brilliant, playful, and transporting' ― by Katie Kitamura, author of Audition
A mother and a daughter take off on a road trip after the collapse of a marriage. Their journey begins in Sicily during a summer of rapidly-changing winds, volcanic rumbles and sudden tempests. How do you begin again, the mother wonders, if you got the beginning wrong? The trip soon becomes a quest for origins – not just to the familial past across continents, languages and generations, but also further back to a mythical and even geological past.
With her daughter coming into her own and her mother showing signs of dementia, the narrator finds herself confronting the primary questions of life: How do stories shape our children’s imaginations? How do we situate ourselves deeply in the world while accepting our transience in it? How are a family’s memories made and what happens when they disappear?
A road novel, a mother-daughter story, a mystery, Beginning Middle End is a shapeshifting novel that offers an exhilarating testament to the power and instability of the stories we hold most dear.
Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in Costa Rica, South Korea, South Africa and India. She is an acclaimed award-winning author and the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College Her previous novel, Lost Children Archive, was an international critical and commercial success. It was a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2019, won the Rathbone Folio Prize 2020, the Dublin Award 2021, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Booker Prize 2019 among others. In 2019 she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant for “challenging conventional notions of authorship in fiction, essays, and inventive hybrids of the two that pose profound questions about the various ways we piece together stories and document the lives of others.” Her work is published in more than thirty languages.
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