Daron Acemoglu, the newly minted Nobel prize laureate in Economics and distinguished Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), debunks for us some long-standing assumptions about technology, productivity, and shared prosperity. Benefits do not automatically tickle down from industry to workers. Distributive gains take inclusive institutions and a calibrated approach that creates greater competition, changes the norms in the industry, and deals specifically with...

Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of the Science journals, talks to us about major trends in science and how they affect us all. He begins by saying that populism and polarisation are taking hold of science. Belonging to a group – be it political, faith-based or any other – becomes more important than the truth and scientific fact. Taking refuge in the laboratory and its rationality is no longer an option. Science needs to...

Mark Esposito, Professor at Hult International Business School and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, joins us today to discuss crisis and resilience. He dissects the concrete markers of a resilient system and discusses what helps it withstand (and possibly thrive in) turmoil. The number of shocks will only increase, hence it is high time to in-build agility and implicit fragility into our systems. When it comes to governance and decision-making, there is a lot of...

Juliet Schor, Sociology Professor at Boston College and a bestselling author, says the traditional approaches to work need redesigning. The case she makes is for a reduction of the workweek from five to four days with no pay cut. Juliet has been trialling it around the world – including Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, the UK and the US – and brings concrete data on its benefits for both the employees and the companies. Employees report less stress, lower burnout rates, improved...

Charles Landry, author and president of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival, talks to us about how the public sector has been weakened from within through consistent reduction in its capacities and expertise. Cuts in analytical, foresight and strategic entities have not gone unfelt in crises. Under pressure to deliver, the public sector has been increasingly reaching to the market and outsourcing work. Spending and over-reliance on external consultants have, expectedly, mounted. Equally...

Manuel Muñiz, the Provost of IE University in Madrid and the former Spanish Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, talks to us about the massive shifts our societies, economies and systems of governance are undergoing. The changes may be not as visual – no one is tearing down a wall – but they are as significant as what has happened at the end of the Cold War with the undoing of the international order, fracturing of the social contract, and the hollowing of the middle class leading to the...

Mariana Mazzucato, professor at University College London and a bestselling author, explains how the current systems are geared towards the pursuit of dysfunctional – i.e., financialised, consumption-led, climate-damaging – growth. They are also designed to fail, operating in a fixing and reactive rather than proactive mode. The present crises are clear lessons for all.  The direction has to change and the systems require re-shaping to fit that purpose. Mazzucato does not stop at diagnosing...

Dani Rodrik, Professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the visionary who predicted the risks of unfettered globalisation, tells us how we need to collectively change course. The old narratives and policies have not aligned with the expectation that all boats would be lifted. New solutions are needed to shore up the middle class and deliver on the promise of shared prosperity. He says that the services sector is the policy answer. It is the rising source of good, green, human,...

Much guilt for the erosion of public trust in science is laid at the feet of social media. Does data support such fears? Homero Gil de Zuñiga Navajas and Brigitte Huber conducted a 20-country study that looked into this relationship and they say… “it’s complicated”. Social media news use is positively related to trust in science, yet worries about echo chambers and polarization are real. They also say that there is little fake news on social media, but it’s the concentration and effects that...

Peter Gluckman, the President of the International Science Council and the former Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, came on to discuss how polarisation has infiltrated science and is tearing up the public trust in it. He says that the acceptance (or rejection) of scientific conclusions has become an ideological badge of identity. Social media only adds to it, overloading the public with (mis)information we are not yet equipped to navigate. There are many solutions,...

Mark Howden, a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, talks about trust in climate science. How vital is this trust for our collective policies and climate trajectory? Why have we ended up polarizing and politicising climate science to such levels? Can we de-escalate? Mark has answers. Listen closely to his discussion with UNESCO’s Iulia Sevciuc on these and so much more.

Gil Eyal, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, talks to us about trust in science, trust in expertise, and the slow demise of such. He explains that not all science is equal and neither is public trust in it. Regulatory science is what underpins policy and collective decision-making, yet this is exactly what the public mistrusts the most. Why? It has a lot to do with the distributional effects of regulatory science (as often, there are winners and losers), the politicization of...

Gloria Origgi, Director of Research at the CNRS in Paris, tells us that science is power and public trust in it is key. There is no hiding – science is now part of participatory democracy and requires changing from within towards new forms of legitimation (beyond the ivory tower of a community of peers) and inclusion of the public. Critically, she says people need hands-on help to navigate the world of experts and expertise, to understand who is the real deal and who manufactures...

Our thinking on the true value of data is not where it should be this far into the game. Maria Savona looks with us into the economic and social aspects of the equation, saying that all should be captured when it comes to data. Value concentration is a concern and redistribution should be on our collective mind. There are policy attempts to do so – listen closely for hands-on details – but much work remains to be done. There is a need to reimagine the relationship between individuals as data...

Diane Coyle, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Productivity Institute, talks to us about data value. She explains how good (or bad) we are at capturing such value and why we need to start distributing it amongst all actors involved in its co-creation. Diane tackles the key issue of whether/what share of that monetary and non-monetary value should flow back to both governments and individuals. Listen closely to her discussion with UNESCO’s Iulia...

Douglas Elmendorf, Dean of Harvard Kennedy School, tells us what it would take to reset equitably after COVID-19, how herd thinking (amongst experts and beyond) hurts us and why trust in science is to be restored if the intent is to move ahead smartly. He says that we’ve been focusing too much on efficiency and not enough on equity. That has to change. But how? Listen to his discussion with Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO’s Assistant Director General for Social and Human Sciences.

This podcast is on Universal Basic Services (UBS). The experts are Anna Coote of the New Economics Foundation and Maeve Cohen of the Social Guarantee Network. The host is UNESCO’s Iulia Sevciuc. Thread 1 untangles the agenda of UBS, going into the: Premises – what is the core of UBS and how it should be approached as a framework rather than a stand-alone policy? Targets – why are equity, sustainability and gender so tightly linked to UBS and how would UBS deliver against such...

This is a 3-part podcast on India’s quest for basic income. It discusses the basic income pilots that have been run so far and, importantly, asks what they tell about the potential of such schemes in India and perhaps in other developing countries. The expert is Sarath Davala, Chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and co-founder for India Network for Basic Income. He served as the research director for the Madhya Pradesh basic income pilot.  The host is UNESCO’s Iulia...

This is a 3-part podcast concerned with data and knowledge-based decision-making. The guest is World Bank’s Arianna Legovini. Her expertise – critical to this discussion – is in improving the impact of research on development practice and policy. The hosts are UNESCO’s John Crowley and Iulia Sevciuc. PART 1:  Data and governance Data is an instrument in and of governance. As any tool, data is as good as those handling (in this case, reading) it. So how good are we? Part 1 goes...

 This is a 3-part podcast to connect the dots between carbon price-and-dividend and universal basic income. We spot the emerging ideas and ask how we should be equity-weighting green policies. PART 1 tackles carbon price-and-dividend · Carbon tax and its (much feared) regressive aspects. · Ways to equity-weight carbon tax and the role of carbon dividends. PART 2 links carbon dividend to universal basic income · Use of carbon dividends as universal basic income. · Key...

This episode is concerned with social protection and its place in the post-COVID reset. We dissect this into issues of: · Social protection gaps – how these need fixing to counter the immediate effects of the crisis, as well as to set countries on a more inclusive pattern in the long run; · Women during the crisis – how they fell through the cracks and what is the place of gender in recovery policies; · Digital and informal economy – how COVID-19 sped up the discussion on the...

This is a 3-part podcast on new data and, particularly, if and how the private and the public sectors should be working together to advance its use for public good. The expert is World Bank’s Holly Krambeck. She founded the Development Data Partnership – a coalition between international organizations and the private sector to further responsible use of third-party data in international development. The hosts are UNESCO’s John Crowley and Iulia Sevciuc. PART 1: Worries and...

This is a 3-part podcast on universal basic income and its potential to cushion the effects of the COVID-19 crisis. The talk is concrete: · Does basic income actually hold the promise of greater equity in this reset and what is the broader policy mix we need to be thinking about; · Why should carbon tax be entertained as a financing option and what are the other sources that could fund to-scale/long-term basic income schemes; and · How solid is the data we hold on basic income and...