The Why? Curve

By Phil DobbieSociety & Culture Business News

The Why? Curve episodes

February 06, 2025 Deeply Seeking - China’s AI Challenge
Have you tried DeepSeek? China’s new, cheap artificial intelligence app has startled Sillicon Valley. It’s wiped billions from the worth of some of big tech’s biggest names - Nvidia, Microsoft, Google - because it seems to be able to do what they can’t, quicker and better. So is this the wake-up call western tech needed, or a threat to our assumptions about AI leadership, or even a fraud engineered by the government in Beijing? Dr Daniele D’Alvia, lecturer in Banking and Finance Law at Queen Mary University of London - he takes Phil and Roger through the technical and financial implications of DeepSeek
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37 min
January 30, 2025 WFH No More?
Emails on the beach - we all left the office in 2020, and some of us never went back. But is business calling time now on working from home? Is it part of the problem for UK productivity? Are we working as hard when we can Zoom in from the sofa? Or is hybrid working, Tuesday to Thursday in the office, the new normal? Abigail Marks, Professor of the Future of Work at Newcastle University speaks to Roger and Phil… from her living room
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36 min
January 23, 2025 Trump - How Crazy Will It Get?
The 47th president of the United States has begun his administration with a rush of executive orders intended to change the direction of the US. Some seem destructive but predictable - moving against undocumented migrants and re-leaving the Paris Climate Accord. Others just MAGA crowd-pleasers - declaring there are only two genders and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. But what does freeing the people who assaulted police officers in the Capitol on January 6 suggest about justice under Trump? What does leaving the World Health Organisation say about America's place in the world? Will the US become a very different sort of country in the next four years, or will it all be reversed with a disillusioned electorate and a Democrat victory in 2028? Phil and Roger get the picture from Dr Thomas Gift, Associate Professor of Political Science at UCL, and founding Director of the UCL Centre on US Politics.
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38 min
January 16, 2025 The Sick Men of Europe
France and Germany are the pillars of the EU, the strongest economies and most stable democracies - except they’re not: Paris and Berlin are caught in crisis, with their political systems failing to produce effective leadership, and their economic models generating debt and recession. Can the EU and its key members find a way to unite nd prosper, as Russia presses on its eastern flank? Dr Simon Toubeau, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Nottingham University sets out to Phil and Roger how Europe’s major players can turn the corner.
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37 min
January 09, 2025 Starmer Stuck - Labour’s Poor Start
Labour’s first six months in office has been something of a disappointment, with rows about pensioners’ energy payments, farmers’ inheritance tax and a budget that satisfied nobody. So is it unreasonable expectations from a party in government for the first time in 14 years, or a weakness of leadership in a time of crisis? Phil and Roger ask Rohan McWilliam, Professor of Modern British History at Anglia Ruskin University what Keir Starmer can do to make it all work in 2025.
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39 min
January 02, 2025 What May Kill You in 2025
Alien invasion? AI takeover? A new pandemic? Nuclear war? The list of dangers to mankind is long, so what could ACTUALLY bring the curtain down on planet Earth this year, and what is the likelihood? Are we more at risk from our own folly, or from natural disasters about which we can do little? Haydn Belfield of the Cambridge University Centre for the Study of Existential risk takes Phil and Roger through the chances of global cataclysm
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40 min
December 26, 2024 An Epidemic of Loneliness?
More people living on their own, fewer social connections - is the UK facing an epidemic of loneliness? And not just among the elderly. Young people are reporting higher levels of social isolation, too. And there’s evidence loneliness can damage your health. So is it down to social media replacing face-to-face interactions? Or are people happier now to admit the problems we have always had? Phil and Roger get the latest research on loneliness from Louise Arseneault, Professor of Developmental Psychology at Kings College London.
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36 min
December 19, 2024 A New Age In Syria
A sudden change in Syria. The men with beards and guns, labelled terrorists by the West, have seized power from a murderous dictator. Is this a recipe for peace in a war-blighted land? Can the US and Europe do business with the new rulers in Damascus? Will Russia have to withdraw? And could the redrawn map of the region lead to the end of a seemingly endless cycle of violence? Phil and Roger discuss all this with Michele Groppi, senior lecturer in defence studies at King’s College London, and president of the ITSS think tank in Verona
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42 min
December 12, 2024 Workplace Abuse
Rape, sexual assault, bullying - the list of allegations of abuse by powerful men in some of Britain’s most important institutions keeps growing. Many of the claims go back decades, with victims scared to bring complaints because they could lose their jobs. And many allegations were ignored or buried by the organisations. So why did the Church of England, the BBC, Harrods and the others fail to act? What needs to change in corporate culture to allow bosses and stars to be challenged? David Collinson, Professor of Leadership & Organisation at the University of Lancaster Business School tells Phil and Roger what can and should be done.

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39 min
December 05, 2024 Why Is Africa Left Behind?
40 years since Band Aid - the lyrics and attitudes have dated badly, but the problem is still there. Africa remains desperate and underdeveloped and the only part of the world regularly threatened by famine, civil war and military coups d’etat. Why is this continent not thriving despite its vast natural resources and talent? Why do so many of its best and brightest choose to emigrate? Phil and Roger explore the question of Africa’s failure to move to the levels of development and wealth seen in Asia and the Middle East, speaking to Dr Emmanuel Mensah, assistant professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics.
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43 min

About The Why? Curve

From the publisher's feed

Each week Phil Dobbie and Roger Hearing get to grips with one issue that impacts our lives. It could be economic, social, technological or geopolitical. Whatever the subject, they'll talk to the…