We’re overusing the earth’s finite resources, and yet excessive consumption is failing to improve our lives. In this talk, Dan O’Neill will lay out a visionary but realistic alternative to the perpetual pursuit of economic growth—an economy where the goal is enough, not more. He will explore specific strategies to conserve natural resources, stabilise population, reduce inequality, fix the financial system, create jobs, and more—all with the aim of maximizing long-term well-being instead of short-term profits.

Dan O’Neill is a lecturer in ecological economics at the University of Leeds, and the chief economist at the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). His work focuses on the changes that would be needed to achieve a prosperous non-growing economy, and alternative ways of measuring progress besides GDP. He is co-author (with Rob Dietz) of Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, an international best-seller which has recently been made into a short film.

It’s easy to think of pseudoscience existing in a glass case at a museum – something to be examined and critiqued from a safe distance, but not something to touch and to play with. Using examples taken from his own personal experiences in skepticism, Michael Marshall will show what happens when you begin to crack the surface of the pseudosciences that surround us – revealing the surprising, sometimes-shocking and often-comic adventures that lie beneath.

Michael Marshall is the Vice President of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and Project Director of the Good Thinking Society. He regularly speaks with proponents of pseudoscience for the Be Reasonable podcast. His work with the MSS has seen him organising international homeopathy protests and co-founding the popular QED conference. He has written for the Guardian, The Times and New Statesman.

Simon Singh, author of Fermat's Last Theorem and Big Bang, talks about his latest book, which explores mathematical themes hidden in The Simpsons. Everyone knows that The Simpsons is the most successful show in television history, but very few people realise that its team of mathematically gifted writers have used the show to explore everything from calculus to geometry, from pi to game theory, and from infinitesimals to infinity. Singh will also discuss how writers of Futurama have similarly made it their missions to smuggle deep mathematical ideas into the series.

IMPORTANT NOTE: observant skeptics (that is skeptics who attend religiously) will have noticed this event is on a Wednesday evening rather than our usual Thursdays. We'll also be starting as close to 7pm as we can to enable Simon to get the last train!