The Age of Consent Podcast

Working with Warwick University's Laura Lammasniemi, funded by the Leverhume Trust, this five-part series explores ideas about consent, where they’ve come from and how we tend to use them, particularly in our laws, and how these ideas have evolved both legally and socially.

Ep.1

Consent is the cornerstone of our current laws on rape and sexual offences - but that wasn’t always the case. In this episode, we explore the history of the legal evolution of consent

Listen Here

Ep.3

There is a divide between legal theory and legal practice. What impact does this have on access to justice in the context of rape? In this episode, we think about credibility and court processes in practice.

Listen Here

Ep.2

Consent is not just a legal matter - it’s cultural one. What are our social frameworks for thinking about consent? In this episode, we look at how we talk and think about consent.

Listen Here

Ep.4

The way we legislate and think about consensual sex is flawed. How can we improve it? In this episode, ways in which history, journalism and philosophy can help us think differently about ethical sex.

Listen Here

Ep.5

Are we imagining a world without rape, or are we imagining a world where every rapist is locked up? In this episode we look at how the boundaries of consent could be changed to help enable ethical sex, and also question whether consent is the best conceptual framework to do this in the first place.

Listen Here

Ep.6 Bonus

What are better stories we could be telling about sex and relationships? Two years after The Age of Consent series, we reflect on previous episodes, different ways we could talk about what happy, healthy, and ethical sex looks like, and an alternative approach to sexual justice that better captures the complex realities of sex.

Listen Here