Reasons Revisited

Hello! When Ed makes a promise, he makes a promise! It might take 6 years to deliver, but now we get to share the discussion with you. What does that all mean? Well, Ed met Architect Christophe Egret while on holiday and needed to finish the conversation they had about the transformative power of public space. He joins us, as does author and academic, Anna Minton, and CEO for the Project for Publi...

Hello! This week, with the release of the report from Shelter's cross-party commission (which included Ed) we're looking at the provision of social housing and the need for a transformation in how much we build and who it is for. Historian John Boughton, author of recent book Municipal Dreams, guides us from the past to the future, then we speak to members of the Commission, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi...

Hello! We've made our New Year's resolutions, donned the trainers and tracksuits and joined the hundreds of thousands of people who do parkrun to find out what all the hype is about. Can we start our New Year as runners? The Finsbury Park parkrunners (Geoff's local) tell us what it's all about, and give us encouragement, then we're joined by Nick Pearson, Chief Executive of ParkRun who tells us ab...

Hello! Greetings pod pickers! You’re in for a treat this week. It’s our "Top 10" countdown of our favourite episodes this year. If you haven’t listened to them all or even if you have, here’s a way of getting the best bits in bite sized form—-Cheerful McNuggets. With special guest introducing the whole shebang, the legend that is Tony Blackburn! How can you resist.... Hosted on Acast. See acast.co...

Hello! We gathered around Geoff's kitchen table, joined by some IRL friends, a copy of the board game Class Struggle and some topics to find the cheerful from this year. Hear Josie Rourke, Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse and director of the new film, "Mary, Queen of Scots", Chris Addison, comedian, writer, actor and director and David Runciman, Professor of Politics at Cambridge and host...

Hello! Here at Cheerful towers we're talking about how we can enable the human touch to come to the fore in public services and policy and the barriers standing in the way of the people who work in them. Our guest Julia Unwin has been thinking about kindness in public policy, Professor Anthony Costello's new book The Social Edge is about the 'sympathy groups' that transform people's life chances &...

Hello! This week we're talking Dads and the time off they have to look after their kids. Turns out more, properly paid paternity leave is better for kids, good for dads, and a very effective tool to close the gender pay gap. Unfortunately Britain lags behind.  We speak to Lars Arrhenius about how brilliant Sweden is and how it could be even better, Sam Smethers from the Fawcett Society a...

Hello! Today we speak to two autistic people about what the neurodiversity movement is and what it means to them. Penny Andrews and Georgia Harper join us to talk about their personal experience of living with autism, and how our society, employers and all of us can learn to value and benefit from neurodiversity. AND Comedian Jodie Mitchell would like to tech up the fight against men stealing wome...

Hello! The death penalty still operates in many places around the world, although the good news is the number of countries using capital punishment is falling. Sevan Doraisamy, Executive Director of Human Rights Organisation SUARAM talks about the Malaysian government’s recent announcement that it intends to abolish capital punishment and Anna Yearley and Maya Foa from Reprieve talk...

Hello! A special episode with author and all-around thinker extraordinaire and author of multi-million selling Homo Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari. He popped by to talk to us about the ongoing war of technology vs humankind, fake news and more of the 21 lessons from the 21st Century —-his new book. This includes the virtues of 60-day uninterrupted meditation... But how would you do a weekly podca...

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. Hosted o...

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 Rya...

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 do...

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. AND Comedian Hayley Ellis brings us her manifesto - dr...

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...

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&...

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...

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. AND Comedian Tania Edwards brings us her ideas, a referendum about whether we should hav...

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. AND  Comedian Sooz Kempner addresses d...

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 every...

Hello! The final of our "lads on tour" live shows. Here we talk to the Edinburgh Fringe audience about correcting the "recreational violence" cycle many young people get trapped in. Karyn McCluskey is our guest and has an extraordinary story of inspiration and success in tackling the issue. AND Comedian Luisa Omielan shares the heartbreaking story of her mothers sad death (donations welcome for He...

Hello! Private companies are collecting a lot of information about each of us, but when it comes to our health and wellbeing, that might not be such a bad thing. Mass anonymous data may be the answer to curing many health issues, and provide insights to make sure the right support is on offer for local communities. Mhaari Aitken and Anna Schneider join us to talk us through their re...

Hello! This week we ventured to Lunar festival and spoke to Hilary Cottam about the welfare state. Her new book Radical Help looks at a how the whole system could be re-designed to better support everyone in society. AND Comedian Bethany Black asks the Geoffocracy for a Pokestop, no more drinking on public transport and for men to require at least two women as chaperones if they're out past 9pm. H...

Hello! We took a trip to Latitude festival. While there Professor Simon Lewis joined us on stage to talk about the book he's co-authored called The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is the new planetary age we're in which sees Earth being fundamentally altered by human activity. He tells us what we need to do now. AND Comedian Jen Brister joins us to pitch ending peri...

Hello! We took a trip to Hebden Bridge, awarded 5th best place to live in the world, to find out how towns and villages can thrive. Lisa Nandy MP and Beth Paramor both know a thing or two about what powers places to success, and what can be done to help those which aren't. AND Comedian Debs Gatenby is all about the empathy. She pitches national service in retail, catering or concessions, enforced...