Disasters come in many shapes and sizes. One way of looking at them are by their scope: how much of the world and the future do they affect? And by their severity: how bad are they?

Global catastrophic risks are those that affect the entire world, while existential risks are those that threaten all future generations – typically extinction risks. There are many potential threats in these categories, ranging from asteroid impacts to nuclear war. Most are fortunately unlikely to spell our doom… but there are enough of them to make us rightly concerned about our well-being.

While natural risks are unlikely to cause an end of humanity, human-made risks are. What is the role of climate change in this? Direct extinction by a changed climate is very unlikely: it takes very extreme heat to stop an adaptive, technological species that is spread worldwide.

But climate change poses a systemic threat. By stressing nearly every part of the world as we move into a century with many other risks, powerful emerging technologies, and an interconnected and fragile global system, it can amplify other dangers and make them more likely to coincide into vast disasters.

Climate change may not be the end of the world, but it can certainly help it along. Conversely, some (but not all!) ways of handling climate change can reduce large risks.

How has Manchester changed to such an extent? And what lessons does its journey hold for other places?

Guardian columnist John Harris and Sunday Times journalist Hannah Al-Othman both have a long-standing interest in how Manchester has been revived and regenerated over the last 30 years, and the big social issues its transformation has highlighted.

Where is Manchester and its surrounding region now heading?

With Boris Johnson’s ideas about “levelling up” apparently fading and Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham using his new job to carve out a different kind of politics, there are huge questions to address. Not just for Manchester, for the whole of the country.

John and Hannah share and explore their personal perspectives in this ‘in conversation’ style event.

The Northern Powerhouse launched over a decade ago, to boost northern economic growth and to rebalance the UK economy. But where are we now?

The government doesn’t talk much about the Northern Powerhouse now, preferring the broader ‘levelling-up’ concept.  But the challenges, and the opportunities, remain. We can’t recreate the old industries. We have to somehow re-invent and re-invigorate areas that have suffered long term economic decline. And it’s not going to be easy.

From here in Manchester, reaching out to Liverpool in the West and Leeds and Sheffield in the East, we have a population of about 8 million.  This is not too dissimilar to London. Could this area become an integrated single market for producers and consumers, with spin-off benefits for the whole of the North?

Lord Jim O’Neill is one of the Northern Powerhouse’s original architects and a major contributor to its early successes. In this talk, he names six individual challenges that have to be solved: education; skills; devolution; business connectivity; transport; and technology infrastructure.  And he is clear that all six will need to be solved if the Powerhouse objectives are to be achieved. So, is the government serious?

How can we build a more diverse, respectful and inclusive society?

Award-winning author, journalist, broadcaster and academic, Professor Gary Younge, shares his personal journey. From growing up as a child in a single parent home to becoming an author and professor.

He reflects on the collective struggles of those that have gone before him. And how it was only through those struggles that opportunities were created for others.

Gary writes:

The diverse, inclusive, respectful society that we wish to build does not exist yet; it is constantly in the making.  We are in some senses closer than we were; although what is gained in one quarter is often conceded in another.  But in almost every sense we are not even close to where we need to be.

The COVID pandemic laid bare both our vulnerabilities and potential.  It exposed the inequalities and precarities that are the fault lines of societal unrest and global inequities.  It has also made the case, as no politician can, that there is such a thing as the common good, that we have a collective responsibility for our common wellbeing and that we are capable of adapting to meet the challenge. We all suffered and we all made sacrifices; we did not, however suffer or sacrifice equally.

But in order to build that diverse, inclusive, respectful world we must first imagine it.  That is precisely what oppressed people have been doing for centuries as they fought for rights that seemed impossible and a world they could not see.  Whatever diversity, inclusivity and respect we have attained thus far has not been the inevitable product of decency, natural evolution or time and tide; it is the product of struggle by generations of people who waged battles they were unlikely to win for a world they did not know was possible.  People who fought not because victory was plausible but because not fighting ensured defeat.

That is also the story of my own unlikely journey from a single parent migrant home to being an author and professor.  But while it is my personal story, it’s not just my personal achievement.  It was the collective struggles of others that have gone before me that made that journey possible.  That suggests that there are myriad other journeys, yet to be made to destinations unknown, that we can make possible through our struggles today.