Speed dating, parking tickets and English pubs

This week Tim Harford entertained and informed a packed Great Room audience by showing how economics form an important part of many of our daily decisions, whether we realise it or not. With some revealing anecdotes from his new book, The Logic of Life, Tim explained the powerful rationalities that affect our choices - whether we're on a speed-date or trying to decide if it's worth risking that parking ticket. Those of you in the audience would have noticed that this event was being filmed; this is for our new exciting events strand, Vision. Along with our new website, we will be launching RSA Vision soon which will give you all the opportunity to watch some of your favourite events again and again.

On Wednesday Polly Toynbee chaired an excellent panel discussion on how we can reverse the worringly persistent correlation between how well-off a family is and the quality of the place they live in. And we rounded off our week with Paul Kingsnorth in conversation with Martin Wright, debating whether the proliferation of chain cafes and the demise of the humble English pub signals a deeper loss of national identity and character. A spirited DSA audience probed and prompted Paul with some great questions as he introduced some of the challenging themes that he writes about in his new book, Real England: Battle against the Bland.

We were delighted to get back some stats from our web team today who not only told us that over 60 people listened online live to Jeremy Deller's recent event but that it has been downloaded as an mp3 file over 1000 times. To listen again to any of our events from this week or before visit the audio pages of our website.

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