The Agenda Podcast

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Five years after the COVID pandemic, which devastated the industry, tourism is now back on its feet. But concerns about over-tourism and the impact of climate change are forcing the sector to look to new ways of operating.
 
So what does that look like in practice? 

On this episode of The Agenda, Juliet Mann speaks to Olga Kefalogianni, Greece’s Tourism Minister, and her Saudi Arabian counterpart, Ahmed Al Khateeb.

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In this CGTN special - China Agenda – Juliet Mann and her guests consider the outcomes of this year's Two Sessions gatherings and what it  all means for China, and the rest of the world.

Further modernisation, innovation driven development and further opening up were all key themes at the gatherings, but what will this all look like in practice? 

Juliet is joined by Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the World Trade Organisation,  Bert Hofman, Professor at the East Asian Institute of the National University Singapore and former China Director for the World Bank, Turing Prize winner and Emeritus Research Director at the VERIMAG Laboratory, Joseph Sifakis, Rebecca Fannin, entrepreneur and author of "Tech Titans of China"  and Shaoshan Liu, Director of Embodied AI, Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society.

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The results of Germany's snap election are in, and Friedrich Merz is set to be the country's next leader after his Christian Democratic Union took 28% of the vote.
 
But with the far-right AFD taking a strong second place, Europe's largest economy faltering and rows between the EU and the US only growing, how big a task is he facing?

Joining Juliet Mann on this episode of The Agenda are Heiner Flassbeck, honorary professor for economics and politics at Hamburg University and former state secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance, Eberhard Sandschneider, Director of the Research Institute of the German Society for Foreign Policy and Ariadna Ripoll Servent, Professor of Politics at the University of Salzburg.

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For decades, the relationship between the United States and Europe has been  characterised as a transatlantic alliance with shared values on the likes of foreign policy and security.   

But after a week of diplomatic shocks, including the Trump administration excluding Kyiv and Brussels from talks to end the Ukraine war, do the US and Europe still speak the same language?
 
 On this edition of The Agenda, Juliet Mann is joined by Erol Morkoc, Spokersperson for Republicans Overseas UK, Denis Macshane, the UK’s Former Minister for Europe and Waya Quiviger, a Professor at the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs at IE University in Spain.

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At the end of last year, DeepSeek was a little-known Chinese Artificial Intelligence startup. 

But by the end of last month it was the most talked about company in the world, whose revolutionary approach to open-sourced generative AI had rocked global markets, wiping more than a trillion dollars off tech and energy stocks, and seemingly leveling the global AI playing field. But what do the shockwaves caused by DeepSeek mean for the future of AI, and indeed the future of global geopolitics?

In this episode of The Agenda, Juliet Mann speaks to Toby Walsh, Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Dr Brian Wong, Geopolitical strategist and Tech Advisor from Hong Kong University and Michael Michie co-founder of Kenyan start-up EverseTech to find out. 

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The United Kingdom starts 2025 in something of a financial mess.
 
Inflation and interest rates remain stubbornly high, and the Labour government, which swept to power in a landslide victory in July of last year, has seen support tumble after its first budget contained tax hikes and spending cuts.
 
But can UK plc trade its way out of trouble? And what might new relationships, with the US, the EU and China really look like?
 
On this edition of The Agenda, Juliet Mann is joined by Allie Renison, Associate Director at SEC Newgate and former Policy Advisor to the UK Trade Secretary, Dr. Gerard Lyons, Economist and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and Alan Winters, Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex and Founding Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory to find out.

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2024 will go down as the biggest election year in history - wth more than 2 billion people casting ballots across the globe.
 
The year also saw inflation and interest rates easing across much of the world, even while geopolitcal tensions remained high.
 
 So what might 2025 have in store?

Joining Juliet Mann to consider just that on this episode of The Agenda are Keyu Jin, Author and Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, David J. Firestein, president and CEO of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, and Rana Mitter, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

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China and the EU ended 2024 in something of a tricky situation as the row over electric vehicle tariffs threatens to undo much of the good will built up by Xi Jinping’s summer trip to Europe, and visits to Beijing by a number of EU leaders over the past 12 months. 

So with the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties coming up in May of 2025 just where do relations stand between two of the world’s biggest trading partners?

 To find out, on this edition of The Agenda, Juliet Mann speaks to John Alistair Clarke, Former Director for International Affairs at the EU Commission & former head of the EU delegation to the WTO and UN, Yin Zhiguang, Professor of international politics at Fudan University and Finnish MP and former minister of Transport, Timo Harakka.

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The curtain has now come down on the COP29 climate summit in Baku. And while a trillion dollar deal for climate financing was done at the last minute, some campaigners have called it a betrayal - as much of that figure will have to come from private financing or new sources which have yet to be agreed.
 
 To consider where the meeting really leaves us, and our planet, on this edition of The Agenda podcast, Juliet Mann speaks to Jeremy Rifkin, Author of many books including "Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe", Christine Loh, Chief Development Strategist at Institute for the Environment at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Jacopo Bencini from the Florence School of Transnational Governance and Michael Wilkins, Executive Director and  Professor of Practice at the Centre For Climate Finance And Investment at Imperial College London.

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In 1944 delegates from 44 countries gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the United States to agree on a system of economic order and global cooperation. Eighty years later, the seeds sown there for the likes of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank still dominate the world. 
 
But with the rise of countries like China and the rest of the global south, many think it's time for a substantial rethink of those Bretton Woods institutions, especially in the wake of the recent meetings of APEC, G20 and COP29.

In this special edition of The Agenda, Juliet Mann gets the opinions of Professor Marc Uzan, Executive Director and Founder of the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee.