With the COP26 global climate conference coming up later this year, we’re going to spend the next five episodes of the podcast looking at some of the biggest climate issues – starting this week with greenwashing. Last month 20 young people and scientists attempted to occupy London’s Science Museum. They were protesting the fact that a new exhibition on the climate crisis was being sponsored by Shell. Protestors accused Shell of using their sponsorship to ‘greenwash’ its reputation. The occupation ended after the museum swiftly called 40 police officers out to remove them. Greenpeace has recently said that we’re living in “a golden age of greenwashing” and the Treasury set up a new group to clamp down on the practice in the financial sector. But what is greenwashing? Why are companies like Coca Cola and H&M suddenly desperate to prove their green credentials? And is it lulling us into a false sense of security that we’re tackling the climate crisis? Ayeisha is joined by Alice Bell, director of communications at Possible and author of the upcoming book, Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis which is available to pre-order now: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/our-biggest-experiment-9781472974778/ ----- Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Throughout the spring, hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched, signed petitions, and spoke out against the catchily-titled Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Critics say the Bill would curb our freedom of speech and assembly by giving the police new powers to crack down on protest. The Bill was successfully delayed - but it’s due to resurface in Parliament next week. So what’s actually in the Police Bill? How will it affect Black and other people of colour? And why is the government pushing it through Parliament now? Ayeisha is joined by Zehrah Hasan, barrister, & founding member and director of Black Protest Legal Support and Becka Hudson, PhD researcher at UCL and Birkbeck, and criminal justice campaigner. -Read Who dreamt up the police bill? The police, of course by Same Knights https://novaramedia.com/2021/03/25/who-dreamt-up-the-police-bill-the-police-of-course/ -Find out more about Black Protest Legal Support and follow them on Twitter https://blackprotestlaw.org/ @blkprotestlegal -Follow Legal Sector Workers United (UVW) on Twitter @LSWUnited -For updates on Kill the Bill actions, follow Sisters Uncut @SistersUncut and Black Lives Matter UK @ukblm -Find out more about the 4FRONT project https://www.4frontproject.org/ ----- Music by Candlegravity, used under Creative Commons licence. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

This week, the front page of the Daily Mail screamed “Outrage as Oxford students plan to axe queen”. In reality, a group of postgrads voted to take down a portrait of the queen in a single common room, in a single Oxford college, because of the portrait’s association with the UK’s colonial history. Whether it’s the interior decor of student common rooms or athletes taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter, by the time you listen to this podcast, new outrages are constantly emerging. How did we get here? In the middle of a pandemic, why do these debates take up so much media space? And how should progressives respond? The Weekly Economics Podcast is back and for the first episode of the new series, Ayeisha is joined by Hanna Thomas Uose, principal consultant at Align and David Wearing, senior teaching fellow at SOAS and associate lecturer at Birkbeck. -Read the report "Divide and Rule: How the 'culture wars' are a reactionary backlash constructed to distract us, and how to respond" by NEON and Align https://neweconomyorganisers.org/divide-and-rule-how-the-culture-wars-are-a-reactionary-backlash-constructed-to-distract-us-and-how-to-respond/ -For similar themes, listen back to the Weekly Economics Podcast on the future of conservatism https://neweconomics.org/2019/07/weekly-economics-podcast-the-new-prime-minister -Watch Akala discussing knife crime on GMB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvS78MlAXAQ -Read the Parekh Report by the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain https://www.runnymedetrust.org/companies/29/74/Future-of-Multi-Ethnic-Britain-The.html -Grab a copy of David's book "AngloArabiaWhy Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain" https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509532032 ------ Music by Blue Dot Sessions under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

There’s a new president in the Oval Office and he’s ready to make some changes. Joe Biden wants the start of his presidency to be defined by rejoining the Paris climate agreement, vaccinating the country against Covid-19, and pulling the American economy out of a crisis. But will this be enough to tackle the problems that led to the Trump presidency? Is Biden too concerned about building bridges with the Republican Party? And is America finally ready to start taking the climate emergency seriously? In the final episode of this series, Ayeisha is joined by Kate Aronoff, staff writer at the New Republic, and author of the upcoming book Overheated: how capitalism broke the planet - and how we fight back. Kate's book is out in the UK on the 13th May: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kate-aronoff/overheated/9781568589473/?lens=bold-type-books ----- Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

There are just eight months left until the UK hosts the UN Climate Conference. And despite Boris Johnson’s insistence that we will have a green recovery from the pandemic, in the last month there have been a number of climate related controversies, including around the construction of a new coal mine in Cumbria, the Leeds Bradford airport expansion, and plans to cut air passenger duty on domestic flights. Why can’t the economic status quo deal with the climate emergency? What has the fresh attention on climate actually achieved? And what can the pandemic teach us about the climate crisis? In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Laurie Laybourn-Langton, co-author of the new book Planet On Fire, and NEF trustee. -Planet on Fire by Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton is out on the 20th April, you can preorder a copy on the Verso website: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3702-planet-on-fire -Find out more about Laurie's work here: https://laurielaybourn.com/ -Head to the Common Wealth website to read about all the work Mathew Lawrence is doing on democratic ownership: https://www.common-wealth.co.uk/ ----- Music by Christian Bjoerklund and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Last week a video circulated of 800 people queuing for a food bank in Wembley. Volunteers at the London Community Kitchen said that the number was not uncommon. In Rishi Sunak’s recent budget, he announced that the furlough scheme and the temporary £20 increase to universal credit would continue until the autumn. But even with these measures, it’s obvious that huge numbers of people in the UK are struggling. Furlough has held back a wave of unemployment - but what happens when the scheme ends? Will some jobs not come back after the pandemic? And what about the estimated 3 million people who’ve fallen through the cracks of the government’s Covid support? In this episode Ayeisha is joined by NEF CEO Miatta Fahnbulleh and Sonali Joshi, co-founder of Excluded UK. -For more on NEF's work around strengthening our social security system, head to our website: https://neweconomics.org/campaigns/living-income -More on info about Excluded UK available on their website https://www.excludeduk.org/excluded-uk-an-inclusive-alliance-for-the-excluded ----- Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

From the A-level algorithm scandal, to parents taking on YouTube, to making Facebook and Google pay for news, people are fighting back against the way big tech companies and governments use our data. So what are companies like Google and Facebook actually doing with our personal data? Is the pandemic being used to surrender our data to private companies? And what role can big tech workers and users play in fighting back? In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Duncan McCann, senior researcher at NEF, Carissa Veliz, associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University and Cori Crider, lawyer, investigator and co-founder of Foxglove. -You can read more about Carissa's work, including a survey she did with Siân Brooke on privacy-related negative experiences, on her website https://www.carissaveliz.com/research -Read the article in Glamour Magazine on the risks of 'sharenting' https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/child-privacy-social-media-risks -For more on some of the issues discussed, listen back to this episode of the podcast from 2019 with Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression https://neweconomics.org/2019/05/weekly-economics-podcast-algorithms-of-oppression-live -Duncan's work on data and privacy can be found on the NEF website https://neweconomics.org/profile/duncan-mccann -Watch James Bridle's TED talk on the way YouTube is targeting children with its content here https://www.ted.com/talks/james_bridle_the_nightmare_videos_of_children_s_youtube_and_what_s_wrong_with_the_internet_today -Read more about Duncan's case against YouTube for the above https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54140676 -You can preorder Carissa's book Privacy is Power now https://www.carissaveliz.com/books -Head to the Foxglove website to find out more about how Cori and others are standing up to big tech https://www.foxglove.org.uk/ ----- Music by SANMI and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

We were supposed to have cast off the shackles of EU rules around farming and fishing. Brexit was sold as a ‘sea of opportunity’. And yet, tonnes of British meat have been left rotting at European ports, while Scottish fishers have had to make a 72-hour round trip to land their catch in Denmark. The PM has said these are just “teething problems”. But are they really? What’s it been like for UK fishers and farmers since we left the EU? And is there a chance we can use Brexit to make our food system better? In this episode, Ayeisha is joined by Chris Williams, NEF Associate Fellow. -To hear more from small-scale fishers on their hopes and concerns for the industry post-Brexit, watch this video: https://neweconomics.org/2018/10/fishing-after-brexit-voices-from-the-coast -You can also listen to Chris talking to fishermen about their experiences on this Radio 4 documentary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rm92 -Find out more about the Eastbourne Fishing Quay on our website: https://neweconomics.org/2020/08/light-on-the-horizon-the-story-of-the-eastbourne-fishing-quay -If you just can’t get enough Brexit chat, make sure you revisit our Brexit episode from last series, with Marley Morris of IPPR: https://neweconomics.org/2020/10/weekly-economics-podcast-whats-going-on-with-brexit -For fishing puns and more, Chris is on Twitter at @MarineEconomics ----- Music by Blue Dot Session and Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

By the middle of January, 49 wealthy countries had administered 39 million doses of the Covid vaccine. But the world’s poorest countries had only done 25 jabs, all of them in just one country: Guinea. Not 25 million, not 25,000 - just 25. Why can’t some countries get hold of the vaccine? Why are rich countries buying more doses than they need? And are we seeing the rise of ‘vaccine nationalism’? In this episode, Ayeisha is joined by Miriam Brett, director of research and advocacy at Common Wealth and Tahir Amin, co-executive director of Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge. -For more, read Common Wealth's report on what's wrong with our IP system: https://www.common-wealth.co.uk/interactive-digital-projects/ip-infogram -And Tahir's piece for Foreign Affairs is available here: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2021-01-29/folly-hoarding-knowledge-covid-19-age ----- Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license. Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Meagre food packages for kids on free school meals. A £22bn track and trace system that isn’t fit for purpose. And people asked to travel hundreds of miles for a Covid test. What do all of these things have in common? They’ve all been outsourced to the private sector. But why are these vital services being run by the private sector? Are the allegations of cronyism true? And who’s making money out of all this? Ayeisha is joined by New Statesman’s Britain editor, Anoosh Chakelian and David Hall, founder of the Public Services International Research Unit at the University of Greenwich. For more on this area, you can listen to a previous episode we did with Cat Hobbs, director of We Own It campaign, Hilary Wainwright, co-editor of Red Pepper magazine and Sahil Dutta from Goldsmiths University on Public Ownership: https://soundcloud.com/weeklyeconomicspodcast/public-ownership-20 ----- Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone. Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF! The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org