Business Daily

As India battles a surge in Covid cases and hospital beds become scarce, Business Weekly hears how social media is helping connect patients with medical help. Several areas of the country have gone back into lockdown. We get reaction from businesses. In Denmark, the authorities have introduced a Corona Pass, which lets the vaccinated attend various events. Our reporter looks at how well it’s working. We look at the online advertising industry as several big companies scale back their digital marketing spend. The suggestion is that they aren’t seeing the returns on investment they perhaps should be, and that data doesn’t always give an accurate idea of success. Could a bubble be about to burst? And is your boss clueless? We hear about a new piece of research from Microsoft which suggests managers aren’t aware of how lockdown has affected their workers. Business Weekly is presented by Lucy Burton and produced by Matthew Davies.

Filmmaker Adam Curtis questions the value of Big Data in society. In his latest BBC series, 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head', Curtis explores "Love, power, money, ghosts of empire, conspiracies, artificial intelligence – and You." Curtis spoke to Business Daily's Ed Butler about how the rise of artificial intelligence, Big Data and targeted advertising have come to shape the way we see our world and caused us to feel helpless within it. He also explains that the psychological experiments which underpin our faith in the effectiveness of such technologies might not be as reliable as once thought, which Curtis says gives us some cause for hope.

Producer: Frey Lindsay.

Large companies have slashed their digital marketing budget. Airbnb and Procter & Gamble made such a cut in recent years, after coming to believe the cost doesn’t necessarily translate to increased sales. They follow in the footsteps of eBay who, in 2013, announced it would cease paying for ad sponsorship on Google. Economics professor Steve Tadelis, who led eBay’s research into this, explains how they came to conclude advertising wasn’t worth it. Also in the programme, brand safety advocate and co-founder of Check My Ads Nandini Jammi explains how the modern digital ad market works, and where some doubts lay about its effectiveness. Luke Smith of marketing consultancy Croud says companies need to be clearer in what they want from digital marketing, in order to get the most out of it. But what if the market is overvalued as a whole? Former Google employee Tim Hwang, author of ‘Subprime Attention Crisis’ says we might be looking at an inflated market that could threaten a financial crash online.

President Biden hosts a virtual summit this week as the US seeks global climate action. But can he convince the rest of the world to go further and faster on cutting carbon emissions when the country has been out of the game for the past four years? Justin Rowlatt asks former US climate envoy Todd Stern and Isabel Hilton, founder of China dialogue. And, in a world where some countries are rolling back protections, can consensus still be found? We hear from the heart of the Brazilian rainforest, where the environmental police say they are losing the war against the loggers. Lisa Viscidi, director of the energy and climate change programme at the Inter-American Dialogue think-tank, says the summit provides an opportunity for Latin American countries.

Photo: Climate protestors in Lyon, France hold up a sign saying 'SOS' (Credit: Getty).

In 2016 when producer Georgia first met him, Demille was a cycle courier in his early twenties, taking his company to a tribunal over better working conditions. He was fired-up, political, and excited about a case he would go on to win.

For the past five years, Georgia and Demille have been meeting and recording.

Demille’s story is one of being young and trying to stay afloat in the gig economy; of resilience and hope and trying to find control over his city and life.

Every day 55 million meetings take place in the United States. But just how effective are they at actually getting stuff done? British comedian David Mitchell has been investigating how the meeting evolved and the "meeting-isation" of society.

(Picture: a man boring colleagues during a meeting. Credit: Getty Images.)

The US is making overtures to China about working together to save the planet. On Business Weekly, we hear what concessions each side would like the other to make as they try to put aside their diplomatic differences for the sake of the environment. We also hear from climate activist Greta Thunberg, who tells us what her vision for the future is and what she’d like to see politicians doing. As the cargo ship Ever Given remains in the Suez Canal - this time impounded by the Egyptian authorities - we take a close look at the huge vessels in the shipping industry. At what point do companies have to start thinking about reducing the size of these mega ships? And drone racing is increasing in popularity. One pilot tells us what it’s like to fly drones competitively and whether you can make a living from it. Business Weekly is presented by Lucy Burton and produced by Matthew Davies.

A hybrid model mixing home working with office time is being favoured by major companies. But critics worry it will create divisions in the workplace. Small business owner and columnist Gene Marks explains why managing remote workers presents such a challenge, and Darren Murph from GitLab, a tech firm of 1,300 employees and no office, tells us why having a mix of home and office work could be the worst of both worlds. Economist Nicholas Bloom discusses the risk of discriminating between workers who choose to spend more or less time in the office, and remote working expert Kate Lister tells us why companies will have to offer flexible working to attract employees in the future.

(Photo: A man works at home on his bed, Credit: Getty Images)

Will the US President continue with an increasingly hostile attitude towards China? Or does economic common sense demand that Washington should back off from Beijing? Ed Butler asks Diana Choyleva of Enodo Economics, and he chairs a debate between David Sacks of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC and Kishore Mahbubani, a distinguished fellow at the National University of Singapore.

(Picture: US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Credit: Getty Images.)

During the Coronavirus pandemic, people have been spending more time at home, and online, than ever before. This has given online scammers a golden opportunity to find new victims. And it’s worked. We’ll hear from Danielle in Illinois, who was caught up in just such a scam and lost thousands of dollars from her savings. And she’s not the only one. Craig Jones, Director of Cyber Crime at Interpol, describes the rise they’ve seen in all types of online scams during the pandemic. But why does lockdown make us more vulnerable? Dr. Stacey Wood, professor of psychology at Scripps College in California, breaks down how different demographics are made more vulnerable in their own ways. And if you or a loved one do get targeted by a scammer, Amy Nofziger at the American Association of Retired Persons Fraud Watch Network explains what to do.

Presenter: Tamasin Ford.