The Why? Curve

By Phil DobbieSociety & Culture Business News

The Why? Curve episodes

December 29, 2022 The Crystal Ball
In a special New Year episode, Phil and Roger quiz Martin Raymond, co-founder of The Future Laboratory, about what 2023 holds for the UK and the world. The most likely tech developments, the next health emergency, what businesses will succeed or fail .....and will it, at least, be an improvement on 2022? The hopes and the fears, the risks and the rewards of the next 12 months, all laid out for your pleasure.
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43 min
December 22, 2022 Faithless
So this is Christmas, and what have we done…… with the faith that is supposed to be the reason for all the presents and crackers and turkey? Fewer than half of us actually believe in Jesus and would call ourselves Christian. More than a third don’t adhere to any religion at all. So is the UK now “post-Christian”? And how should we adapt in a country that still, nominally, has a state church? Phil and Roger explore the issues with Abby Day, Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London.
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40 min
December 15, 2022 Fixing the productivity gap
The UK has a productivity problem. When it comes to how much output we each produce the UK is well behind our northern European counterparts, and its going from bad to worse. COVIDA hasn’t helped. According to the Office of National Statistics, public service productivity is 6.5% below the pre-coronavirus pandemic level.

Professor Philip McCann, Chair of Urban and Regional Economics at Alliance Manchester Business School at The University of Manchester, reckons productivity is a huge problem for the UK. On this week’s podcast he highlights why the UK is so different. And it’s not, as Liz Truss famously suggested, that British workers are amongst the “worst idlers in the world”. Prof McCann suggests its more to do with how we have structured our public administration.
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41 min
December 08, 2022 Say what?
Freedom of expression is supposed to be one of the most fundamental human rights, but don’t there have to be SOME limits? Especially on social media where unmediated, violent, threatening words or damaging lies can and do create real-world harm? Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has thrust all this into a big debate about what is censorship and who should be the censor. Rita Mota, Professor of Society, Politics and Sustainability at ESADE University Barcelona, tells Phil and Roger why she has co-authored an article claiming free-speech absolutism threatens human rights.
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42 min
December 01, 2022 Scots on the Rocks
Unwilling colony or vital part of the union? Scotland now knows it can't hold a new referendum unless the UK government says it can - the path to independence is blocked for the foreseeable future. So what happens next?

Will the SNP be able to press for a new vote by getting majority backing at the next election? Will the verdict of London judges provoke greater support for breaking away? Could a new Labour administration in Westminster be forced to cut a deal with the SNP? Or is the whole issue of independence now buried for a generation? Michael Keating, professor of Scottish Politics at the University of Aberdeen guides Phil and Roger through the likely outcomes
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40 min
November 24, 2022 Good COP, bad COP?
World leaders, journalists, climate campaigners – they all jetted in to the air conditioned hotels of Sharm El-Skeikh earlier this month for COP27, but was anything actually achieved. After 27 of these meetings to tackle climate change has anything actually been achieved? Are we all fiddling whilst the planet burns? Will politics and business interests determine our destiny rather than science, just as they did in the movie Don’t Look Up?

This week Phil and Roger talk to journalist Lucy Siegle, who writes and broadcasts regularly on environmental issues. Lucy is just back from COP27 and gives her thoughts on what’s been achieved this time around.
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42 min
November 17, 2022 Goodbye To The Good Friday Accord?
Northern Ireland is facing its biggest crisis since the Good Friday Accord ended the Troubles almost 25 years ago. The protocol that came out of Brexit puts the province outside the the EU but inside the customs union, so there has to be a border somewhere. But relations between nationalists and unionists have broken down over an arrangement that puts that customs border between the province and mainland Britain, and that means the Stormont government doesn’t function. So with more elections unlikely to break the deadlock, Katy Hayward, professor of political sociology at Queen’s University Belfast, tells Phil and Roger about the risks to peace between the communities and what happens next.
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40 min
November 10, 2022 Degree of Doubt
How valuable is higher education? If your degree isn’t one that’s going to help you get a good job, is it worth the huge debts you’ll be saddled with when you leave? The government wants to phase out degrees that don’t improve students’ “earning potential” - so goodbye gender studies or surf science? And what about art and literature, history and pure sciences? Chris Millward, professor of practice in education policy at Birmingham University walks Phil and Roger through what’s valuable and what isn’t in higher education.
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41 min
November 03, 2022 Ready for Sunak’s Bitter Pill?
In a couple of weeks Jeremy Hunt, this month’s Chancellor, will present his Autumn Budget, heavily overseen by Rishi Sunak, our latest Prime Minister. So what can we expect? The noises from Downing Street are suggesting we have to prepare for some bad news, with difficult choices supposedly being made about how to get the budget back on track. Does that mean more austerity? Higher Taxes? Or both? And who will feel the hurt the most.

Vicky Pryce, Chief Economic Adviser at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, suggests there’s a danger that the government will go too far, whilst hurting those who feel cuts the most. For example, increasing welfare payments in line with growth in wages rather than prices will save £13 billion per year, but who is paying the price for that? Certainly not those who got rich from asset investments when interest rates were low.

So just how does the government perform the magic balancing act of reducing debt, compensating for inflation and supporting energy costs, without slowing the economy to a trickle? Join Vicky with Roger and Phil, discussing what should be in the Hunt-Sunak budget.
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41 min
October 27, 2022 Breaking China
A display of raw power at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, as Xi Jinping has his predecessor dragged off the podium. So how much should we in the West be afraid of the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao? From the clothes we wear to the phones in our pockets, to the videos we post on TikTok, China is part of how we live our lives, so should we be concerned at the push for global dominance of the 21st century's new superpower? There's a move in Washington, London and Brussels to disengage, but is that even possible now, or are we already in too deep? George Magnus, research associate at Oxford University's China Centre, and at SOAS walks Phil and Roger through the risks and possibilities.
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47 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…