What To Do About...

Can you imagine your morning without coffee? You might have to. The average coffee farmer in Peru is around 65. Their children have mostly left for the city. And climate change is making every harvest harder. On the latest What to Do About…, Peter Holbrook and Lord Victor Adebowale sit down with John Steel, CEO of Cafédirect, to ask what it would take to keep coffee in our cups. Here's what came o...

Our first live episode ended in a disagreement, but that’s a good thing. Peter Holbrook was the realist. Without real change, he argued, our children face a harder world of work than we did. Meanwhile, Lord Victor Adebowale stayed the optimist. AI will force us to decide what we value in each other, and he believes people will choose each other. Our guest, HR and reward specialist Rosemary Lemon,...

This episode takes What To Do About out of the studio and into the real world. Peter and Jennifer Ogolle visit Dr. June O'Sullivan at London Early Years Foundation for the launch of their eco-pond in Camberwell, South London. June took over a failing nursery in 2018 and turned it into a thriving social enterprise where children learn about nature, biodiversity and what it means to be a citizen. Al...

What is civil society actually for, and who is it really serving? "Barely Civil" Alex Evans, writer of the Substack Barely Civil Society and self-described "recovering chief exec," joins Devi Clark, MD of Impact Hub King's Cross and SEUK board member, for a (mostly) civil conversation about charity in the UK. They dig into how attempts to de-politicise charities became political in themselves, why...

In this week's episode, host Sarah Burns takes over to ask Peter and Victor "What to do About… Themselves". Ten episodes in, and it felt like time to turn the cameras around. Every week Peter and Victor put the world's problems under the microscope, but who are the two people actually asking the questions? Where did they come from, what shaped them, and why do they care enough to keep making this...

In this week's episode, Peter and Victor ask 'What to do About… Political Policing'.Political policing – the surveillance and disruption of lawful activism – has a long and troubling history in Britain. From the undercover operations of the Special Demonstration Squad targeting war protesters and animal rights activists, to the ongoing scrutiny faced by human rights advocates today, the question o...

Forget the doom spiral. Real solutions to serious problems already exist—we've just been talking to the people building them. From food systems to apprenticeships to breaking media monopolies, hear what actually works, why it works, and how to make it work for everyone. This is our best of season one.

In this week’s episode, Peter and Victor ask ‘What to do About… the Hostile Environment’. ‘Hostile environment’ – a phrase coined by Home Secretary Theresa May in 2012, but a lived reality for many immigrants and their children in the decades before and since.   As a granddaughter of Polish immigrants and a daughter of Windrush, Dr. Wanda Wyporska can talk about the ‘hostile environment’ of Britai...

In this week’s episode, Peter and Victor ask ‘What to do About… Media Representation’. Whether entertainment media or the news, whose stories get told and who gets to tell them is a live question in British culture – who has the money and power to decide what parts of our society we get to see, and who doesn’t. That’s a problem for all of us, because the less we understand, the easier it is to man...

This week, Victor and Peter are joined by Stephen Colegrave, co-founder and executive editor of Byline Times . Selling 30,000 PRINT copies a month (yes, still a thing!) on top of tens of thousands of digital subscriptions, Byline Times is a rare success story in modern British journalism. Even more impressive is the weight its reporting carries with politicians, commentators and other journalists,...

Is the fight against racism getting better, or has it just moved to a more pervasive, invisible front line? Welcome back to What To Do About, the podcast that trades systemic hand-wringing for grounded, frontline solutions. In this episode, hosts Peter Holbrook (CEO of Social Enterprise UK) and Lord Victor Adebowale sit down with Professor Patrick Vernon OBE to talk about what it actually takes to...

In this episode of What To Do About, Peter Holbrook and Lord Victor Adebowale sit down with Lisa Stepanovic MBE, the "talent spotter" and founder of Social Arc. Lisa shares her journey from market trader to community hero, discussing the "hard yards" of economic development in East London. The conversation dives deep into the "hidden discrimination" of the British cla...

Welcome to the latest episode of "What To Do About." We aren't here to just admire the problems; we’re here to talk to the "doers" who are actually navigating the challenges of the next generation. In this episode, Peter and Victor sit down with Dr. June O’Sullivan, CEO of the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) and a leading expert on children and education. We tackle the...

Welcome to the latest episode of "What To Do About." We aren't here to just admire the problems; we’re here to talk to the "doers" who are actually navigating the challenges of the next generation. In this episode, Peter and Victor sit down with Jovan , an aspirational politician and Cambridge graduate , and Gustavo, a talented studio engineer at Sirlute Studios in Canning...

Welcome to the very first episode of What To Do About ! We’re kicking things off with a massive thank you for joining us on this journey. We aren't here to just admire the problems; we’re here to talk to the "doers" who are actually fixing things. In this episode, Peter and Victor sit down with the incredible Kresse Wesling (the force behind Elvis & Kresse) and Jennifer Ogolle (BANG Charity) t...

Stop admiring the problem and start fixing it. From luxury bags made of firehoses to the radical goal of making exploitation illegal , Peter and Victor talk nature, climate, and "net regeneration" with Kresse and Jennifer. It’s time for real action. Out this Friday.