2022 has been dubbed the ‘year of the squeeze’ by the Resolution Foundation. In April, soaring energy bills will collide with tax increases for working people. Last month grocery prices rose at their fastest rate in eight years, and inflation is at its highest level in almost three decades.

When the media talk about the ‘cost of living crisis’, what do they mean? How did we end up in a country with more food banks than branches of McDonalds? And what can the government do to make sure everyone can afford life’s essentials?

Ayeisha is joined by NEF's Alfie Stirling and Sabine Goodwin, coordinator of the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN).

Some of the clips used in this episode are from IFAN members, supporting people in food banks across the country. Thanks to Mairi McCallum, Joyce Leggate, Charlotte White, Betty Grant and Rajesh Makwana for sharing your experiences with us.

- If you’d like to get involved in NEF’s campaign for income support, head over to the Living Income website: https://livingincome.org.uk/

- Read Pushed to the Edge: poverty, food banks and mental health, a new report by Tom Pollard and co-produced with the IFAN and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation: https://www.foodaidnetwork.org.uk/blog/mental-health

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Chris Zabriskie and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The New Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Families are bracing for less and less money to get by as energy bills rise this spring. In the fifth richest country in the world, pensioners are skipping meals so they can afford their heating bills, and parents are only switching the heating on when their children are at home. At the same time, fossil fuel companies like BP and Shell made their biggest profit in years.

What do these two things have to do with each other? Why are energy bills soaring? And what can the government do to make sure everyone can afford to heat their homes?

We’re no longer the Weekly Economics Podcast because episodes will now be coming to you every fortnight. But as always we’ll be discussing the more important economic issues with a variety of interesting voices.

For the first episode of the New Economics Podcast, Ayeisha is joined by Dr Joseph Baines, senior lecturer in international political economy at King’s College London and Abby Jitendra, principal policy manager on energy at Citizens Advice.

-If you're worried about paying your energy bills, you can get in touch with Citizens Advice on their website: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/

-To get involved in NEF’s campaign to retrofit Britain’s cold and draughty homes, head over to the Great Homes Upgrade website: https://greathomesupgrade.org/

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Bobby Richards and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The New Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Coronavirus cases are once again rising in Europe and across the world. The World Health Organisation has said that countries shouldn’t be giving out booster jabs for the rest of the year, but in the UK we’re offering third shots to people as young as 40. Meanwhile, only 3% of people in low-income countries have had a single dose.

Covid vaccines may have prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths in the UK, but who is missing out on the global vaccine rollout? Why can’t poorer countries get hold of the Covid vaccine? And how can we change the rules of our international economy so that everyone is protected during the pandemic?

For the last episode of the series, Ayeisha is joined by Achal Prabhala, writer, researcher, and coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, and Saiorse Fitzpatrick, advocacy manager at STOPAIDS.

- Listen to a previous episode on vaccine nationalism with Miriam Brett and Tahir Amin https://neweconomics.org/2021/02/weekly-economics-podcast-vaccine-nationalism

- Read more about the WTO proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily waive intellectual property on Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and related technologies. Talks on this due to take place in Geneva on the 30th November have now been postponed. https://www.twn.my/title2/intellectual_property/trips_waiver_proposal.htm

- Support the People's Vaccine https://peoplesvaccine.org/

- Follow STOPAIDS on Twitter - the hashtag for the ice cream action Ayeisha mentioned in this episode is #Iscreamvaccine https://twitter.com/STOPAIDS

- For more from Achal, head to the AccessIBSA website https://accessibsa.org/

- For more on Covid-19 vaccines, the TRIPS waiver and more, go to the Third World Network website https://www.twn.my/

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Asthmatic Astronaut and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

A record number of employees have quit their jobs in recent months, in what’s been dubbed the Great Resignation. Newspapers report that it’s part of post-Covid demand for flexible working and better work life balance.

After last year, where up to a quarter of the UK workforce was paid not to work through the furlough scheme, are we reassessing our relationship to our jobs? How does work impact our health and sense of self? And should we improve our working conditions - or try to abolish work altogether?

Ayeisha is joined by Amelia Horgan, assistant lecturer at the school of philosophy and art history, University of Essex, and author of Lost in Work.

- Grab a copy of Amelia's book: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745340913/lost-in-work/

- Listen back to past episodes on outsourcing and the impacts of the economy on mental health: https://neweconomics.org/section/podcasts

- Read Ayeisha's piece for the second issue of the New Economics Zine: https://neweconomics.org/2020/10/this-is-your-brain-on-neoliberalism

- Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is available here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/103/1038399/the-second-sex/9780099595731.html

- Find out more about Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism: https://www.dukeupress.edu/cruel-optimism

- Take a look at the Antiwork subreddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/

- Read Capital Realism by Mark Fisher: https://bookshop.org/books/capitalist-realism-is-there-no-alternative/9781846943171

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

In August this year Jake Davison, a 22-year-old from Plymouth, went on a shooting rampage that left six dead, including his mother and himself. In the aftermath it emerged that Davison had been a member of ‘incel’ forums online. He’s not the first mass shooter to have links to online groups espousing extreme hatred of women. Since Elliot Rodger killed six people in California in 2014, self-proclaimed ‘involuntary celibates’ have carried out multiple mass murders, mostly in North America.

What’s driving this extreme misogyny? Is incel ideology on the rise? And are Big Tech companies to blame for allowing these groups to thrive online?

Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined Debbie Ging, associate professor in the school of communications at Dublin City University.

- Find out more about Zizi Papacharissi's work on affective publics oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/1…999736

- Michael Kimmel's book Angry White Men is available here uk.bookshop.org/books/angry-white…era/9781568589619

- Read Amnesty's report on Toxic Twitter www.amnesty.org/en/latest/researc…-women-chapter-1/

- The New Patriarchs of Digital Capitalism by Ben Little and Alison Winch is available here www.routledge.com/The-New-Patriarc…ok/9780367260156

- Find out more about Debbie Ging's work www.dcu.ie/communications/people/debbie-ging

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Poddington Bear and Chris Zabriskie under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

If you read mainstream media coverage of the issues facing transgender people in the UK, you’ll see a lot of fevered discussion of pronouns, bathroom access, and confusing legislation like the Gender Recognition Act. The media tells one story - but the other side of the coin is that half of trans people in the UK are unemployed and one in four have experienced direct healthcare discrimination.

When we focus on bathrooms and pronouns, what other conversations are shut down? What are the economic issues facing trans people today? And is trans liberation really a class issue?

Ayeisha is joined by Nim Ralph, community activist, writer, trainer and facilitator.

- Read Fergal O'Dwyer's interview with Nim in the third issue of the New Economics Zine: neweconomics.org/2021/08/why-trans-liberation-is-a-class-issue

- Read the Albert Kennedy lgbtq+ youth homelessness report: https://www.akt.org.uk/report

- Find gal-dem's investigation into transphobia in the gender-based violence sector here: https://gal-dem.com/transphobia-in-sexual-violence-services/

- Grab a copy of Shon Faye's new book, The Transgender Issue: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315/315349/the-transgender-issue/9780241423141.html

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Poddington Bear and Chris Zabriskie under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

At the height of the pandemic, politicians promised to do whatever it took to keep the economy going, and introduced emergency support like the furlough scheme. But now those measures have been cut and the conversation has turned to “fixing the public finances”, ending “reckless borrowing'' and preventing “soaring debt”. The word austerity hasn’t featured yet but it’s all feeling a bit familiar, isn’t it?

So, what do these phrases actually mean? Should we really be worried about things like government borrowing and public debt? And what are some of the alternative ways of thinking about our economy?

Ayeisha is joined by Dora Meade, head of messaging at the New Economy Organisers Network (NEON), and Frank van Lerven, senior economist at NEF.

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Poddington Bear and Christian Bjoerklund under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

In a few weeks’ time, 25,000 people will descend on Glasgow. They are coming for the UN climate summit, also known as Cop26. The delegates might not have the pleasure of sampling the city’s mac-and-cheese pies or a dram of whiskey. Instead they will meet with others from around the world to try and agree new ways to bring down greenhouse-gas emissions.

So what happens at a UN climate conference? Are negotiators in an events centre really going to stop runaway climate change? And what should we look out for once the Glasgow conference begins?

Ayeisha is joined be Nathan Thanki, co-coordinator at the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

- Find out more about the COP26 Coalition: https://cop26coalition.org/

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Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

The UK has the draughtiest and oldest housing in Western Europe. And our gas boilers pump out twice as much carbon dioxide as all of the country’s power stations.

Do we need to upgrade the UK’s homes? Why is our housing powering the climate crisis? And how can we make sure everyone’s home is warm, clean and green - whether we rent a flat or own a castle?

Ayeisha is joined by Chaitanya Kumar, head of environment and the green transition at NEF, and Martin Heath, director of Basingstoke Energy Services Co-op.

- Find out more about the Great Homes Upgrade campaign: https://greathomesupgrade.org/

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Music by Candlegravity and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Over 11m people have been furloughed in the last 16 months, and almost 6m are currently on universal credit. But over the next week, the government’s main emergency policies to help people through the pandemic will end. People on furlough will find out if their jobs are still waiting for them, and people on universal credit will find their benefits cut by £20 a week.

The government seems to be acting like we’re out of the woods of the pandemic - but are we really? With over a million people still furloughed, energy bills going up, and benefit cuts kicking in, what kind of winter are we facing? And how can we make sure everyone has enough to live on for the rest of the pandemic and beyond?

Back with a brand new series, Ayeisha is joined by Kate Bell, head of rights, international, social and economics at the TUC, and NEF senior economist Sarah Arnold.

- Read the TUC's proposal on a more progressive way to fund social care here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/new-deal-social-care-new-deal-workforce

- Read Sarah's piece on reforming our social security system here: https://neweconomics.org/2021/09/beyond-the-20-uplift-options-for-reforming-uc

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Music by Chris Zabriskie and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org