Radio Davos

For half a century, Nile Rodgers has been making hit records that have touched people's hearts around the world. The creative force behind disco pioneers Chic, and some of the best known songs of David Bowie, Madonna and Beyoncé, tells us the definition of an artist: someone whose work "speaks to the souls of a million strangers". But what if generative AI can make music that's just as good? Is AI...

Theatre director Jude Kelly founded the Women of the World (WOW) Festival almost two decades ago to spur conversations about women, men and feminism. WOW is now a global phenomenon, but does the rise of online misogyny pose a threat to progress on gender equality. Jude Kelly, who spoke to Radio Davos on World Women's Day 2024, says why it is vital to include men in the conversations about an issue...

A year ago in Davos, energy - particularly the disruption to supply and prices caused by the war in Ukraine - was a top issue at the Forum's Annual Meeting and on Radio Davos we invited two experts in to set out the top lines of the energy discussion. Roberto Bocca, who heads up energy at the World Economic Forum, and John Defterios, a business professor and former CNN journalist, return this year...

What's in store for 2024? Ian Bremmer's political risk consultancy predicts an 'annus horribilis' but Exponential View's Azeem Azhar says we are in an 'incredible decade'. So is the state of the world 'glass half empty, or half full'? And in an uncertain world, Oxford University's Rachel Botsman, tells why trust is so vital, and how it can be re-built, or rather, re-earned. Guests: Ian Bremmer: ht...

The UNHCR, cares for 114 million refugees and displaced people worldwide. Filippo Grandi, the head of the United Nations refugee agency, says that number could double in a decade if the world cannot find ways to stop war. Mentioned in this episode: Refugee Employment Alliance : https://www.weforum.org/projects/the-refugee-employment-and-employability-initiative/ Read more: From fleeing war to find...

If 2023 was the year we all got familiar with generative AI, is 2024 the year when governments will act on the governance of this powerful technology? At Davos 2024 we spoke to these experts, from the industry and civil society: Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO, Center for Democracy & Technology Aidan Gomez, Co-founder and CEO of Cohere Anna Makanju, Vice President of Global Affairs, OpenAI Catch up on...

Technology is revolutionizing global commerce and investment, and digitalizing the trade ecosystem holds the potential to increase trade by nearly $9 trillion by 2026 within the G7 alone. On the eve of the World Trade Organisation's 13th Ministerial Conference, MC13 (26-29 February, 2024) in Abu Dhabi, we speak to the event's host, UAE Minister of State for Trade Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi about MC13...

"This is going to be the most transformational moment, not just in technology, but in culture and politics of all of our lifetimes." Three AI pioneers, all of them in  Time's Top-100  most influential people in AI, share their views on the past, present and future of this transformational technology. Guests : Aidan Gomez, Co-Founder and CEO, Cohere Mustafa Suleyman, Co-Founder and CEO, Inflection...

In an episode recorded before the escalation of conflict in the Middle East, we hear from two private-sector companies involved in the distribution of food, about how they manage to operate in a war zone like Yemen, which has been in a state of civil war since 2015. Guests: Mohamed Nabil Hayel Saeed, Senior Strategic Advisor, HSA Niels Hougaard, Managing Director, Tetra Pak Arabia Check out all ou...

What do social media content creators make of Davos? We speak to three YouTubers - with a collective audience in the millions - who were given full access to the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2024 to ask who they met and what stories they would be telling. Featuring: Jacob Beautemps, @BreakingLab Adanna Steinacker, @houseofadanna Gohar Khan, @goharsguide Catch up on all the action from Dav...

The World Economic Forum just held its Annual Meeting - but what impact will it have on the world beyond Davos? The people who lead the Forum's work throughout the year tackling the world's most important issues pick the highlights of the week that show how Davos 2024 will make a positive impact. And we hear clips from some of the most impactful discussions from the Congress Centre. Davos 2024 ses...

What's Dwight from The Office doing in the metaverse? Actor Rainn Wilson joins us, in avatar form, to check out a virtual world created by the World Economic Forum that aims to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on the Arctic and the rest of the world. We also hear from Gail Whiteman, Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School, and Executive Director of Ar...

As leading figures from government, business, academia and civil society head to Davos for the Annual Meeting 2024, what are the big global challenges they will be discussing? The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report sets out the biggest issues over the short and medium terms, based on a survey of more than 1,400 global risks experts, policy-makers and industry leaders. This year, the impact...

Radio Davos is a podcast that is as wide-ranging and thought-provoking as the work of the World Economic Forum itself. Rather than being restricted to any one topic, each week it focuses on a particular issue of global importance, such as macro-economics, the environment, technology, health, social inequalities and much more - always seeking solutions to the big problems On this episode we listen...

As 2023 draws to a close and the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting approaches, we look at an issue that will be on everyone's lips in Davos: artificial intelligence. Cathy Li, head of AI at the Forum tells us about the work of the AI Governance Alliance, which has brought stakeholders together to seek the best way for humans to oversee the rapid rise of the technology. And we hear from a handf...

If you're a 'digital native' - someone who can't remember a world before the internet - you might feel you have a good idea of the role technology will play in your life and perhaps in that of future generations. But journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, author of a history of another transformative technology from more than five centuries ago - the printing press - says we can have no way yet of know...

Plastics pollution is a very visible, global environmental and health challenge, and last year the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) launched a process to draft a global treaty aimed at solving the problem. Earlier this week, delegations from all over the world met in Nairobi to work on the first full draft of a treaty that could set binding rules that would affect the production, use and...

When Professor Tom Crowther published research into the massive potential of trees to absorb more carbon than previously thought, he helped spur the Trillion Trees movement to plant, restore and conserve forests. But it also caused massive debate. As he publishes updated research, Crowther tells Radio Davos that growing trees must increase biodiversity, and not lead to monoculture plantations, and...

The concept of 'value based health care' - where patient outcomes are monitored and health care services are funded on the basis of the quality of care, rather than the quantity of procedures - has been around for a couple of decades, but has yet to become the norm. This podcast explores the potential benefits of a shift from 'volume' to 'value', to patients and to health care providers. Guests: C...

This week we're celebrating 100 episodes of our sister podcast Meet the Leader. Every week, Linda Lacina interviews leaders - of major companies, organisations, or what we might call 'thought leaders' in the fields of academia or campaign groups. If you want to know what makes these individuals tick, and what lessons we might learn from their experiences, subscribe to Meet the Leader - you can fin...

In 2003 - the a year before a 19-year-old Harvard student called Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook - Philip Rosedale launched Second Life - an online virtual world that looked set to transform the internet. Two decades later, with the Facebook company, now called Meta, and its competitors seeking to develop the metaverse, what does Rosedale see as the future of the still emerging technology? Interv...

What is the single most important thing that any individual can do to help alleviate the climate crisis? Katharine Hayhoe is the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, a distinguished professor at Texas Tech University and the author of Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. She believes that only if we all talk about climate change will humanity take t...

At the start of this year, the World Economic Forum published its annual Global Risks Report - a major survey of sentiment about what are the big things that could go wrong - in the economy, the environment, in health, cybersecurity, geopolitics - and more. In this podcast, we invite back the two guests who appeared on Radio Davos in January to talk about the report and its conclusion that the wor...

Sourcing and scaling viable innovations to decarbonize 'hard-to-abate' sectors like mining and aviation will be critical to the success of the Sustainable Development Goals. How can we leverage cutting-edge technologies and adopt novel strategies to accelerate the race to net-zero in these sectors? This is the full audio from a panel discussion at the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings 2023 h...

Gender parity has recovered to pre-pandemic levels globally, but the pace of change is stagnating. It will take an estimated 131 years to reach full parity at the current trajectory. How can we boost women's economic participation and political empowerment and achieve gender parity at all levels of society? This is the full audio from a panel discussion at the Sustainable Development Impact Meetin...