Trama
The daily drama of money and work from the BBC.
Episodi
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Brexit: An Outside View
19/11/2018 Durata: 17minWill Britain's role on the world stage be diminished by leaving the EU? Views from veteran pro-Europe UK MP Ken Clarke, Dutch writer Joris Luijendijk and Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm in Washington DC.Producer: Laurence Knight(Photo: British and EU flags at a protest in London in September 2018, Credit: Getty Images)
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Amazon's New Headquarters
16/11/2018 Durata: 18minThe online retail giant has announced that it will split its long-anticipated new headquarters between Long Island City In New York City, and Arlington, Virginia. Some 238 cities across North America had competed for the role. But many residents at the lucky winners are angry about the billions of dollars in alleged "corporate welfare" offered by their city authorities to lure Amazon in. Winner's curse?Michelle Fleury meets the protestors in Long Island City, while Edwin Lane speaks to urban studies theorist Richard Florida, Seattle-based professor of public policy Jake Vigdor, and to Vinous Ali of the British tech industry body TechUK.(Picture: Boxes with the Amazon logo turned into a frown face are stacked up after a protest against Amazon in Long Island City; Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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Green Rage
15/11/2018 Durata: 17minClimate change is an existential threat, so are civil disobedience and direct action the only way to save the planet? And is a global carbon tax the best tool to do the job?Justin Rowlatt speaks to protestors from the new and militant environmentalist movement Extinction Rebellion as they occupy the UK's Department of Energy building in protest at their government's alleged failure to tackle global warming. He also speaks to Ben Stewart of the 49-year-old campaign group Greenpeace, who have themselves been targeted by their new rivals for not being radical enough.But what policy change should they be calling for? Professor Bill Nordhaus of Yale University received this year's Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on economic models for how government's might go about taxing carbon dioxide emissions. But why does he think that so few governments are implementing it?Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Extinction Rebellion activists occupying the UK Department of Energy in London; Credit: Roger Harrabin/BBC)
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Bossy Women and Women Bosses
09/11/2018 Durata: 17minDoes increasing the number of women on a company's board boost its financial performance? It's a popular narrative, but Manuela Saragosa speaks to Professor Renee B Adams of Said Business School at Oxford University, who claims there is no evidence to support it. And she asks Gay Collins of campaigning group the 30% Club whether it even matters.Plus, how do you tell a male colleague that he's wrong without hurting his feelings? Or interact with a male employee without threatening his ego? Comedian Sarah Cooper has some tongue-in-cheek tips for the aspiring female executive.(Picture: Young businessman being disciplined by female boss; Credit: LukaTDB/Getty Images)
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Dating for Money
08/11/2018 Durata: 17minAs university tuition fees rise and rise, young female students are flocking onto online sugar dating platforms to find wealthy older men who can foot the bill. But where is the line between sugar babies and escorts - or indeed prostitution?Manuela Saragosa speaks to the founder of one such dating platform. Brandon Wade is founder and chief executive of seeking.com, which claims 10 million members worldwide. And she asks Kavita Nayar, who is researching computer-mediated intimacy and erotic labour at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, whether these young women are being exploited, or liberated.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Young woman with an older man bearing a gift; Credit: Stockbyte/Getty Images)
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Bosses, Babies and Breast Pumps
07/11/2018 Durata: 17minEngineers showcase new technologies to help women return to work after maternity leave - but why is the engineering profession itself so male-dominated? Jane Wakefield attends a breast pump hackathon at MIT, speaking to businesses venture capitalists and campaigners such as Catherine D'Ignazio from Make The Breast Pump Not Suck. Jane also hears from engineers Emma Booth of Black & Veatch and Isobel Byrne Hill of ARUP about their experiences of returning to a very male-dominated industry after the birth of their own children, and the importance of networks such as The Women's Engineering Society. This programme was first broadcast on 19 July 2018.(Picture: Woman holds up smart breast pumps; Credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
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The Offline World
06/11/2018 Durata: 17minHalf of the world's population don't access the internet, and they're missing out on economic and social benefits says Dhanaraj Thakur, research director at the Web Foundation. Satellites might provide the solution to reaching people in remote areas according to Jason Knapp from the company Viasat and Larry Smarr from the University of Southern California. Dudu Mkhwanazi, CEO of Project Isizwe, describes the benefits of access for poor townships in South Africa.(Photo: Internet users in the Ivory Coast, Credit: Getty Images)
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Death of the Dollar?
05/11/2018 Durata: 17minThe US unleashed what it calls its "toughest ever" sanctions against Iran. The Trump administration reinstated all sanctions removed under the 2015 nuclear deal, targeting both Iran and states that trade with it. They will hit oil exports, shipping and banks - all core parts of the economy.But what difference will they actually make? Ed Butler hears from Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, an outspoken policy advocate who thinks Trump's America First policies are endangering the very status of the dollar as the world's chosen reserve currency. And to explain how a reserve currency works, Ed hears from Barry Eichengreen, a well-known currency expert and professor of economics at Berkeley in California. And the programme considers whether China's renminbi, or the euro, could ever take over from the mighty dollar.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: An Iranian protester burns a dollar banknote; Credit: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
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Minnesota at the Mid-terms
02/11/2018 Durata: 17minHow is America's industrial heartland faring two years into the Trump presidency? Fergus Nicoll visits the port of Duluth in the state of Minnesota and asks farmers, shippers and miners how the US-China trade spat has affected them. Programme features interviews with Deborah DeLuca, executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority; Kelsey Johnson, president of the Iron Mining Association of Minnesota; Randy Abernathy, owner of Industrial Weldors & Machinists Inc; and farmers Matt and Sara Weik, and Brad Hovel.(Picture: Ship being loaded with iron ore at dock in Minnesota; Credit: PhilAugustavo/Getty Images)
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Could Big Data Kill Off Health Insurance?
01/11/2018 Durata: 17minAs US health insurers ask customers to wear fitness trackers, are they opening a Pandora's Box of ethical dilemmas and business threats?Ed Butler speaks to Brooks Tingle, chief executive of insurer John Hancock, which has been pioneering the controversial policy of rewarding customers willing to demonstrate that they exercise more. But Dr Michael Kurisu, director of the UCSD Center for Integrative Medicine in San Diego, asks what happens to those customers who refuse to participate? Plus the Financial Times' Undercover Economist, Tim Harford, talks us through the hazards and adversities of the insurance business, and why more information could obviate the purpose of insurance altogether.(Picture: Young man checking his fitness tracker; Credit: kali9/Getty Images)
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Who Gets to Chase the American Dream?
31/10/2018 Durata: 17minA caravan of migrants heading to the US-Mexico border has sparked more debate around immigration. Manuela Saragosa speaks to Reihan Salam, executive editor of the conservative magazine National Review, who argues that America's immigration policy has to move with the times. Aviva Chomsky, professor of history at Salem State University in Massachusetts, says the narrative of the American Dream has never been quite what it seems. (Photo: Honduran migrants heading to the US border, Credit: Getty Images)
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Bolsonaro's Economist
29/10/2018 Durata: 17minBrazil's new president Jair Bolsonaro says he doesn't know anything about the economy, so he's delegated economic reforms to a man called Paulo Guedes. Who is he? We ask the BBC's Daniel Gallas in Sao Paulo and speak to Gabriel Ulyssea, Brazilian economist and associate professor in development economics at Oxford University. And Chilean journalist Carola Fuentes tells us the story of the "Chicago Boys" - the free market economists who transformed Chile's economy under military dictatorship.(Photo: Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro celebrate in Brasilia, Credit: Getty Images)
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Buying the Midterms
24/10/2018 Durata: 18minMore than $4bn has already been raised by candidates running in the midterm elections in the United States. Ed Butler speaks to Shelia Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and Charles Myers, chairman of Signum Global Advisors, on how Wall Street is giving more money to the Democrats this year. Michael Whitney from The Intercept describes Beto O'Rourke's record-breaking fundraising in Texas. And Mike Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, discusses whether spending big on your campaign really matters.(Photo: Stickers made available to voters in Iowa, Credit; Getty Images)
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The Hunt for Stolen Artwork
19/10/2018 Durata: 17minThousands of paintings and antiques stolen by the Nazis and others remain in circulation on the art market, but just occasionally one gets returned to its rightful owner.Manuela Saragosa speaks to two grateful beneficiaries. Penny Ritchie Calder is a warden at St Olave's church in London, which recently regained the 17th century statue of noted botanist and congregant Dr Peter Turner, while Sylvie Sulitzer got back a Renoir painting that belonged to her art dealer grandfather, in both cases some 70 years after they were stolen.Professional art detective Chris Marinello of Art Recovery International guides us through the murky world of stolen artwork, while Lucian Simmons of the global auction house Sotheby's explains what the restitution department he heads is doing to identify and recover these items.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Sylvie Sulitzer poses with the recovered Renoir painting "Two Women in a Garden" in New York; Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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When to Switch Off from Work
18/10/2018 Durata: 17minIs the "always on" culture of work emails and messaging destroying our health? Should we have a legal right to switch off, like in France?Manuela Saragosa explores the world of office Whatsapp groups and the blurring work-life balance, with Professor Mark Cropley of Surrey University, occupational health psychologist Gail Kinman of Bedfordshire University, and Ellen Temperton of solicitors Lewis Silkin. Plus entrepreneur Mitul Thobhani explains why at his tech company Baytree Labs he doesn't impose any division between work and home life at all.(Photo: Woman rubbing eyes in bed while using smartphone. Credit: PRImageFactory/Getty Images)
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Will Flying Taxis Take Off?
17/10/2018 Durata: 17minCould drone technology solve our urban transport needs? Ed Butler explores the new generation of flying cars developers hope will be ferrying commuters around major cities in the next few years. Steven Tibbitts, chief executive of Zeva Aero, and Eric Bartsch of start-up VerdeGo Aero, give the sales pitch. Steve Wright, associate professor in aerospace engineering at the University of the West of England in the UK, gives the reality check.(Photo: Prototype drone taxi on display in Dubai in 2017, Credit: Getty Images)
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The Confusing Curve
16/10/2018 Durata: 17minWhen governments need to raise money, they promise a reward in return for your investment. But how much - or how little - they're promising says a lot about the country, and if investors perceive it as risky to invest in or not. But why are analysts so obsessed over something called the bond yield curve? Pippa Malmgren, policy analyst, says at the moment there's nothing to be afraid of from what the curve tells us. Russ Mould from AJ Bell on the other hand says we should be careful. We try to make sense of this confusing curve.(Image: A man stares at a confusing illustration of graphs on a blackboard. Credit: francescoch/ Getty Creative)
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Is the Internet Fit for Purpose?
15/10/2018 Durata: 17minOverrun by bots and identity thieves, does the worldwide web need a fundamental overhaul?Ed Butler reports from the Future in Review tech conference in Utah, where he speaks to two entrepreneurs offering partial solutions. Denise Hayman-Loa's firm Carii offers corporations safe spaces for secure online collaboration, while Steve Shillingford's Anonyome Labs helps citizens keep their personal data secret when active online.But do such solutions go far enough, or does the internet a complete redesign? Ed speaks to one of its original architects, Larry Smarr of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, as well as Berit Anderson, founder of the future tech media company Scout.(Picture: Tangled network cables on white background; Credit: joxxxxjo/Getty Images)
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Trump's Tax Scandal - Who Cares?
12/10/2018 Durata: 17minWhy has there been so little political fall-out from allegations by the New York Times that the US President and his family dodged hundreds of millions of dollars in tax, in some cases through outright fraud?Manuela Saragosa speaks to Susanne Craig - one of the journalists making the claims after 18 months of painstaking research. Yet the US public remains unmoved. Bloomberg editor John Authers fears for what that says about the breakdown in trust in modern Western society. Plus Pippa Malmgren, a former advisor to President George W Bush, explains why she thinks the tax investigation may represent a bigger threat to Donald Trump than the much-reported Mueller investigation.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Donald Trump; Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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Holidays in Space
11/10/2018 Durata: 17minThe private sector is muscling in on space exploration, and the biggest commercial opportunity could be tourism.Ed Butler meets the star-gazers at the Future in Review conference of tech entrepreneurs in Utah. Ariel Ekblaw, who founded the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT, discusses the logic of self-assembling space hotels. Nasa chief scientist Dennis Bushnell talks cosmic beach combing. And Chris Lewicki, head of space mining start-up Planetary Resources, explains why he thinks it makes more sense to mine water on asteroids than bring it with us from Earth.(Picture: Fictional space station with astronauts and space ships; Credit: ZargonDesign/Getty Images)