The We Society with Will Hutton

Professor Lucie Cluver has spent her career improving the lot of children, especially during times of crisis.

Whether that's the AIDS pandemic or the Covid pandemic, Professor Cluver has been at the coalface and in this episode she talks about her time working as a social worker in South Africa all the way through to her work as Professor of Child and Family Social Work at the University of Oxford

From 2010 - 2012, she ran the Young Carers Study,  which looked at the impact of being a 'young carer' on children's well-being in AIDS-affected families. Over 6000 children and 2500 caregivers were interviewed in the South African provinces making it the world’s largest study on children in AIDS-affected families.

In March 2020, when 1.9 billion children were in lockdown with their parents, she co-led the COVID-19 Emergency Parenting Response to develop evidence-based open-source resources. She worked with colleagues at international organisations including the World Bank with the knowledge that the numbers of child abuse victims rose when they sequestered with adults for long periods of time. These resources were translated into over 100 languages and disseminated to over 200 million people.

Season 4 of the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences tackles the big questions through a social science lens. Throughout this series, you'll be hearing some of the best ideas to shape the way we live.

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists and public figures from across the globe to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems.

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the We Society on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here: https://www.acss.org.uk  

Minette Batters, President of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales, represents an estimated 55,000 farmers and farm workers.  She has changed the course of history as the first woman to become president of the NFU.

Every single person in the UK owes a debt to our farmers - they ensure food is on our tables every single day, but there appears to be a dissonance in our minds of what’s on our supermarket shelves, and the producers behind our food. 

Outside of the NFU,  Minette runs a tenanted family farm in Wiltshire. Her focus has always been to leave her farm in a better state than when she inherited it, and that’s what she’s aiming to do at the NFU too. 

But there have been a handful of pretty tough hurdles in her way - Brexit, Covid, the recent energy crisis, and not mention the need to balance sustainability with farmer’s profit margins.

Season 4 of the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences tackles the big questions through a social science lens. Throughout this series, you'll be hearing some of the best ideas to shape the way we live.

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists and public figures from across the globe to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems.

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the We Society on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here:  https://Acss.org.uk  

Sir Andrew Dilnot is an economist who believes that statistics hold a key role in lessening inequality and making Britain fairer.  

He is now the warden of Nuffield College Oxford - a graduate college specialising in the social sciences. Before Nuffield, he was at the Institute for Fiscal Studies where he was the Director of the UK's leading independent economics research institute. 

A fierce advocate for statistics, he believes that data is at the heart of solving a whole raft of issues whether that’s social care,  education inequalities or faltering healthcare systems.  And the UK's social care system is on a precipice. Two-thirds of people who have used or had contact with social care said they were dissatisfied with the service they had received or witnessed, according to a recent British Social Attitudes survey. And beyond just ‘dissatisfaction’ lies damning figures - there were over 165,000 adult social care posts left vacant last year.

What can be done? And what can the stats tell us?  Season 4 of the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences tackles the big questions through a social science lens. Throughout this series, you'll be hearing some of the best ideas to shape the way we live.

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists and public figures from across the globe to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems.

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the We Society on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here: https://A

Ann Pettifor is an economist who is perhaps most famous for predicting the Global Financial Crisis two years before it happened.

But Ann is not just a savant, but a change maker. She was a core voice in the successful international campaign to cancel billions in debt accumulated by the Global South to mark the new millennium. And in 2008, she co-authored the report, A Green New Deal,  which laid out plans for better regulation of the financial system while pursuing green objectives. It's a programme that's been backed by Al Gore, Nobel Laureates in Economics, and dozens of politicians around the world. Of course, there have been critics, Donald Trump being the most high-profile.

She joins host Will Hutton as they delve into how her early years in apartheid South Africa shaped her thinking, and what changes she'd like to see happening right now amidst the worsening climate crisis.

Season 4 of the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences tackles the big questions through a social science lens. Throughout this series, you'll be hearing some of the best ideas to shape the way we live.

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists and public figures from across the globe to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems.

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the We Society on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here: https://AcSS.org.uk

Neil Adger, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter, examines human movement as a strategy and adaptation to climate change.

From the Somerset levels to Chittagong in Bangladesh, he's traversed the globe to discover why some communities are more climate resilient than others.

But it’s not just physical changes that Neil has been studying.  While climate disasters such as flooding can cause financial turmoil for a family, they can also wreak long-term psychological harm. His team at Exeter University are studying the long term effects of flooding on mental health.

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists and public figures from across the globe to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems. 

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the We Society on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here: https://AcSS.org.uk

Economist Daniel Susskind has been studying the nature of work and automation for years, long before ChatGPT entered the chat.

But Daniel's work has never been more important with AI progressing at seemingly breakneck speed. As a research professor in Economics at King's College London and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, he is one of the foremost experts on AI and work.  He joins host Will Hutton as they delve into how livelihoods are set to change in the next decade and what Governments should do to prepare.

Season 4 of the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences tackles the big questions through a social science lens. Throughout this series, you'll be hearing some of the best ideas to shape the way we live.

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists and public figures from across the globe to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems. 

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the We Society on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here: https://AcSS.org.uk

Vivienne Stern is the chief executive of Universities UK, a membership organisation that represents 140 UK universities. In this role, she's had to weather a raft of challenges from Brexit to the Covid pandemic. 

Host Will Hutton joins her in this conversation where they delve into just how important universities are for Britain, and how these treasured institutions can be protected for future generations. 

This is the first episode of Season 4 of the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences which tackles the big questions through a social science lens. Throughout this series, you'll be hearing some of the best ideas to shape the way we live. 

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists and public figures from across the globe to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems.  

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the We Society on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here: https://AcSS.org.uk

The We Society returns on Wednesday (4 October) for Season 4. Expect to hear more conversations on ideas that shape the world we live from the world of Social Science. 

Our host, Will Hutton, is speaking to: Vivienne Stern from Universities UK, Daniel Susskind on the future of work in the age of AI, Neil Adger on the ongoing climate crisis, Ann Pettifor on global debt and many other fantastic guests. So join us from Wednesday and don't forget to subscribe so you're the first to know when a new episode is released. 

Our host, Will Hutton, chooses some 'must listen' moments from the past three seasons featuring Hillary Clinton, Ai Weiwei, Mariana Mazzuccato, Gary Younge, and Heaven Crawley.

To listen to the full episodes, you can find them all on the We Society page on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back in the Autumn with a roster of new guests who are changing the world for the better with the help of the Social Sciences.

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems.   

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the We Society on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here: https://AcSS.org.uk

Novelist Ian McEwan is one of Britain's finest fiction writers whose canon of work has won him the Booker Prize amongst countless other awards and accolades. 

He joins host Will Hutton as they delve into a discussion on freedom, writing, and the importance of Social Science for human progress. 

This is the final episode of season 3 of The We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences which tackles the big questions through a social science lens and brings you some of the best ideas to shape the way we live. 

Hosted by journalist and Academy President Will Hutton, we interview some of Britain’s top social scientists to explore their evidence-led solutions to society’s most pressing problems.   

Don't want to miss an episode? Follow the show on your favourite podcast platform and you can email us on [email protected] and tell us who we should be speaking to or follow us on twitter  https://twitter.com/thewesocietypod

Find out more about the Academy of Social Sciences here: https://AcSS.org.uk