The Policy Nerd, by UNESCO

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 calib

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

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 agili

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

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 an

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 th

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 dir

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

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 polariz

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