The pub isn’t the typical place to learn about whether a nanny state knows best when it comes to public health, why you should eat bugs, or why smart people make bad financial decisions.
But on August 25, 20 academics at 10 Auckland pubs will give their lectures to the public, who can learn about those topics and 17 more.
The Raising the Bar event is back for its 10th year, and on today’s episode, The Detail gets a taste of what’s on offer this time.
Dr Neil Birrell, a research fellow at the University of Auckland, will be presenting his Grubs in the Pubs talk, where he talks about how bugs have been suggested as a novel protein source that could help with food security as the population grows – and the challenges of convincing people to eat them. And no, the difficulty in getting people to choke down a bug isn’t just about how creepy crawlies look.
“There’s also sort of a learned cultural response where perhaps as a child … you might be inquisitive and touching an insect or a spider or something like that and your parents might have gone like ‘Oh don’t touch that, that’s dirty’. So, people might have learnt their association and applied it to all insects as well.”
Birrell is no stranger when it comes to eating the small creatures himself.
He says there are more than 1500 different species of insects consumed around the world.
“I’ve tried about 20 of them and they all have different flavours and different textures, so there’s a real variety if you’re into eating and want to try something new, they’re a good option to try.”
His favourite?
“Definitely the cicada … they taste kind of like an edamame bean … just really fresh and beany flavoured and pop in your mouth, so they were quite tasty.”
If bugs aren’t your thing, Martin Wilkinson, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Auckland, is discussing whether a nanny state know best when it comes to public health, and whether we can find a balance between looking after people’s health and not being too restrictive.
“The way I think about it is this: if you’re going to stop people doing what they otherwise might want to do – stop them doing something that they think they’ve got a reason to do – then the first question to ask is why are you doing it? Is it for their sake or is it for other people?
“For instance, you might stop people smoking in public areas, not for the sake of the people who wish to smoke but for the sake of others.
“But a lot of these [public health] policies, well they’re really going to have to depend upon saying, ‘Well we’re going to stop people doing things for their sake’.
“So, the next question is ‘Okay, well why?’.
“What makes you think you’re going to make them better off by making them healthier? Health isn’t the only thing that matters in people’s lives.”
But what about the long-term effects? Would more healthy people mean fewer people in hospital and fewer taxpayer dollars being spent?
Wilkinson says that although that might be the case sometimes, it certainly isn’t always. He gives the example of smoking.
“It’s a kind of brutal reason, and I’m not saying this is a good reason for not restricting smoking, but it’s nonetheless true – people who smoke do not cost more than others. People who smoke cost less than others.
“They cost less than others because they live shorter lives and they live shorter lives because smoking is so bad for you that it means they actually use up less health care resources than people who don’t smoke, and they don’t collect their pensions.
“So we want to be very careful about this ‘Let’s stop people doing things that cost other people money’ kind of argument because on this kind of view we would subsidise smoking instead of taxing it.”
On today’s podcast, we also talk to Dr Gertjan Verdickt, a senior lecturer of finance at the University of Auckland, who will be presenting his pub lecture on why smart people still make bad financial decisions. Other lecture topics include tariffs, Trump and trade; how art changes the brain, and the debate over copyright infringement in AI.
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