Stay ConnectedAn occasional series revisiting conversations and ideas from Reasons to be Cheerful (2017-2024), formerly hosted by ex-Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, and Sony Award-winning radio presenter Geoff Lloyd.
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Copyright: © Cheerful
Hello! It’s 50 years since 1968, next year it will be 200 since the Peterloo massacre, so we are discussing the power of political protest, when they work and what it all means for today. French journalist Agnes Poirier chronicles ‘68 and after for us and Guardian columnist John Harris and American author Sarah Jaffe join us to talk about the past, present and future of political protest.
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Hello! There is occasional bad quality audio on today’s episode for which apologies (tech gremlins). We hope it doesn’t spoil your enjoyment of the finer points of Quantitative Easing! II’s a term thrown around which for many of us falls somewhere between the "Offside Rule" and "Quantum Mechanics". But it’s really important we understand it because it is having big effects. Fran Boait and Josh Ryan-Collins get us up to speed with the basics and explain why it matters, and how we could be putting QE to significantly better purposes.
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Comedian Eleanor Morton is taking parliament on the road, giving 18-year-olds an adult box, introducing freelancers discount cards and paying everyone the same no matter what job they do
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Hello! Aqua once sang "life in plastic, it's fantastic", sure... for Barbie Girl it may be but, for our natural world and ourselves, plastic is an enormous and increasingly understood problem. Catherine Conway, Founder of Unpackaged, and Julian Kirby, Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, join us to bring us hope and practical steps we can take to help put an end to all the waste and damage being done
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Comedian Rich Wilson challenges the Geoffocracy with his Richocracy full of electricity free days, big foam hands for pedestrian safety, hanging out with old people, and a novel (and very literal) way of dealing with nuisance everyday sexism
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Hello! Do you feel ignored or unrewarded by your firm? How about transferring a proportion of shares in large companies to the workers, as advocated by Labour? Could it make the difference and how does it compare to other ideas of employee ownership? Mat Lawrence and Christine Berry join us to talk us through the issues and thinking behind it.
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Comedian Hayley Ellis brings us her manifesto - drama free soap opera days, a ban on politicians dancing, snoopers headphones.
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Hello! The internet is great, Geoff can be in Salford, Ed can be at home, our guests can be as far away as a hotel room in Finland, and we can STILL get a new episode to you... but... has the internet proved to be the catalyst for the end of local journalism and the collapse of the national printed press too? Alan Rusbridger, Emily Bell, Megan Lucero & Dan Hinds bring us their thoughts on the end of the traditional gatekeepers and how we can finance good quality journalism, national and local, when so many are expecting it for free.
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Hello! How often do you get back to work after the weekend feeling like it wasn't long enough? Well, a company in New Zealand have been trialling the 4-day working week and finding that their staff are achieving as much as in 4 days as they were in 5. Andrew Barnes, Founder of Perpetual Guadian, the company undertaking the trial, and Kate Bell from the TUC join us to talk about how realistic it is that a 4-day working week could possibly allow a company to continue paying a full wage.
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Comedian Matthew Crosby revolutionises present giving, encourages teaching children to swear, gets rid of those "seen"/"read" notices and gets in a bus with Ed and Geoff to stop people arguing.
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Hello! Artificial intelligence didn't write this description (yet), but it has begun to take over some tasks that humans were responsible for. Are the humans ready, are the computers safely still under our control, what happens when they're not? Max Tegmark, author of Life 3.0, and Duncan McCann from the New Economics Foundation joined us to talk about the AI revolution, when it is coming and whether it could be put to positive benefit for society.
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Comedian Amy Gledhill advocates for tax lessons, skill swap street gatherings and law enforced service station signage.
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Hello! When the IPPR commission on economic justice took on the economy, promising prosperity and justice, they did it properly. In this episode, we talk to Michael Jacobs, its director, and Sara Bryson, a commission member about the big ideas in the report, why they're so important, and how we make them work.
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Comedian Tania Edwards brings us her ideas, a referendum about whether we should have had a referendum in the first place, some tough talk about offence, maximum wealth, and prison for hot food eaters on public transport
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Hello! This week we’re looking into the sky, the sea and all around us for our energy and talking about the good news that we see in the revolution in costs and take up of renewables around the world. And we’’ll be asking our guests Jeremy Leggett from SolarCentury and Juliet Davenport from Good Energy what more we should be doing in the UK and globally.
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Comedian Sooz Kempner addresses dressage, compensatory crisps and dips for date rejections, start school term with the rest of the rest of the film you started watching at the end of term, parental rent paying fairness, free school dinners for EVERYONE, The Purge but for one day a year men can't tweet.
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Hello! Ed and Geoff are back in the same room after their summer holidays / "lads tour". This week we hear from Saasha Celestial-One and Lindsay Boswell about the disgusting situation of food waste the country has gotten in to, despite so many below the breadline going hungry. We look at the Foodshare and Olio programmes and what they're doing to roll us back to the era of making the most of everything we have and hopefully reduce the UK throwing one-third of all food away.
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Comedian Phil Wang takes on groups of pedestrians, inconsistent bigots, Lemsip defaults, Whitewashing, eating at restaurants, Summer, saying "we" when speaking about your favourite sports team... and the School syllabus avoiding teaching about the British Empire
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