Hello! Why are people reluctant to talk about the nation of England? And does this really matter? This week we’re getting stuck into the debate around English identity. John Denham, director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics and former Labour cabinet minister, discusses the importance of embracing Englishness and proposals for new ...…

Hello! With all eyes on Br***t, a surprising and encouraging trend has slipped under the radar over the past few years: polls indicate that attitudes to immigration are getting significantly more positive. This week we’re joined by Sunder Katwala from British Future and Rosie Carter from Hope Not Hate to work out what’s been going on. Sunder an ...…

Hello! Oh I do like to be beside the seaside, Oh I do....BUT, 11 million people live in coastal communities across the UK but for too long they’ve been getting a bad deal. This week we’re exploring the New Economic Foundation’s plans for a major coastal industrial strategy: the ‘Blue New Deal’. We’re joined by Fernanda Balata from the NEF to ex ...…

Hello! Facebook, Amazon, Ed and Geoff… some empires are in the public interest, some not so much.... In this episode we explore an idea gaining traction in the US: using competition laws to break up the tech giants. From the Open Markets Institute, we’re joined by the ‘Captain America of anti-trust’ Barry Lynn and former anti-trust enforcer Sal ...…

Hello! What can we do about the scandal of growing in-work poverty in the UK? This week we hear inspiring stories from campaigners both here and across the pond who have pushed employers to end low pay. Tyree Johnson from Fight for $15 talks about winning a $15 minimum wage in Illinois. The Living Wage Foundation’s Lola McEvoy tells us how we c ...…

Hello! Do you know where your pension is being invested? The divestment movement has a simple idea: persuade pension funds and others to get out of fossil fuels to meet the climate emergency. Its grown from a student campus campaign to one involving trillions of dollars worth of assets. We discuss divestment and shareholder engagement with Adam ...…

Hello! It's taken us 70+ episodes but we're diving into the question of drink--our country's (unhealthy) relationship with alcohol, which is costing billions of pounds a year and ruining lives. Angela McShane, alcohol historian at the Wellcome Trust, gives us a fascinating history lesson, then Jon Ashworth MP, Shadow Health Secretary, tells us ...…

Hello! Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to Iceland they go. Geoff and Ed went for a weekend and came back with tales aplenty to be cheerful about. World-leading gender equality six-hour working day experiments, punk rockers turned politicians and stories of trolls, elves and the ‘hidden people’. Hear the lessons we should learn from the Icelandic P ...…

Hello! We got out of Geoff's loft and onto Parliament Square to join the many thousands of young people worldwide protesting about climate change and we also talk about what could be a big part of the answer: A Green New Deal (GND). We explain what it is and how it seeks to put economic and social justice at the heart of the fight against clima ...…

Hello! What should we do about the gaping inequalities in our society and the top 1 percent? Can we get them to pay more tax and how? We hear from a member of the top .01% US entrepreneur Nick Hanauer who wants radical measures aimed at people like him and Rutger Bregman, author and historian, who went viral when he called out ‘Davos man’ a cou ...…

Hello! This week we're looking into the chasm in our divided nation and wondering if there is a way to bridge the gap...if anyone can help it’s our guests. Jo Hiley who worked for Hope Not Hate helped bring together people from Brixton in London and Boston in Lincolnshire, divided by Brexit, but united by much else. Ciaran O'Connor & John Wood ...…

Hello! Around 7% of the population is educated in private schools but they are disproportionately represented at top universities and in society's most coveted professions. What is the impact of private schools on our overall education system and our society and what, if anything could or should be done about it? David Kynaston, author of new b ...…

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 ac ...…

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 spea ...…

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 Ni ...…

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 ...…

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 ...…

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 's ...…

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 bett ...…

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 wou ...…

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 ...…

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 ...…

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 p ...…

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 bec ...…

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 t ...…

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. ...…

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 ...…

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 ...…

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 ta ...…

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 ...…

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 ...…

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 ...…

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 st ...…

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 Schnei ...…

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 le ...…

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. ...…

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 ...…

Hello! We're getting technical in this episode, we're finding out why many are claiming blockchain to be the technology which could free us from monopolies and grant us better democracy. Samer Hassan, researcher at Harvard University and UCM in Madrid, and Alice Casey, Head of New Operating Models, Nesta, join us and get us up to speed with wha ...…

Join us at the Edinburgh Fringe next Saturday and Sunday (4th/5th August) - we're recording live episodes at the Pleasance Grand, the epicentre of the biggest arts festival in the world. Tickets here: http://bit.ly/RTBCED Or check our social media: https://twitter.com/cheerfulpodcast https://www.facebook.com/reasonstobecheerfulpodcast See you…

Hello! This week we're talking Social Enterprise, the companies whose primary reason for existing is not profit but social or environmental purpose. Karen Lynch, CEO of Belu (formerly of Barclays) and Peter Holbrook, CEO of Social Enterprise UK, join us to tell us why social enterprise works for business and society and how we can have more of ...…

This week we’re talking education and what the big vision should be at our live show at The Politics Festival. We’re joined by Melissa Benn, author of forthcoming book Life Lessons: The Case For A National Education Service and Holly Rigby, a teacher in inner London, who make the case for a broad, lifelong education. Plus comedian Aisling Bea o ...…

Hello! This week we're back to technology, but looking at how it can benefit humanity. Through open platforms and open data, handing the power back to the population can allow some very positive outcomes. We speak to Greta Byrum, Francesca Bria and Adam Greenfield to find out how it's working around the world and what we could try here. AND Com ...…

Hello! This episode, like the companies we're talking about, is owned by everyone who works for it. Cooperative ownership allows the workers to own a stake in the businesses they're working for, allowing them more autonomy and reward for its successes and the understanding and responsibility to help when it's failing. Our guests Joe Guinan from ...…

Hello! This week we've looked up from our phones to look down at the generation of children addicted to theirs. In the wild west of the internet, children aren't as safe as you may hope and it's not just from adult content. Our guests this week Baroness Beeban Kidron, founder of 5Rights Foundation, and Dr Richard Graham, a Consultant Adolescent ...…

We're recording a live episode at Kings Place, London this Sunday (24th June) as part of the Politics Festival. We'll be talking ideas with guests including author Melissa Benn, and we'll be joined by top comedian, Aisling Bea. BOOK TICKETS HERE: http://bit.ly/rtbclive

Hello! This week we discuss the issue of "boys jobs" and "girls jobs" and how men being under-represented in care roles and women being under-represented in the sciences is a self-fulfilling prophecy taught from an early age. We're joined by scientist Nia John, Carole Easton of the Young Women’s Trust and Australian gender equality supremo Libb ...…

Hello! Could providing more services free at the point of access (like the NHS and education) relieve need and tackle inequality? Our guests Henrietta Moore and Jonathan Portes think so and we hear from academic Oded Cats on how one idea — free local transport — has worked elsewhere. AND Comedian Stuart Goldsmith wants to paint the town pink, a ...…

Hello. We started our Festival tour at ‘How The Light Gets In’ at Hay-on-Wye, joined by Doughnut Economics author Kate Raworth. Listen to a fascinating discussion about how we think about economic success, going beyond economic growth to the environment, care, fairness and everything else that matters! AND Comedian Rachel Parris wants legislati ...…

Hello! This week we went on an outing to speak to Lord David Willetts about the Resolution Foundation's new report into how to tackle the crisis in wealth, housing and life chances facing the younger generation and how to build political support for these ideas. AND Comedian sisters Flo & Joan recommend a service industry national service, scho ...…

Hello. There is a quiet crisis in our justice system: barristers striking, courts creaking, defendants being denied a fair hearing and victims being callously disregarded. It's high time to talk about what has caused it and what we do to fix it? We have best-selling (anonymous) author, The Secret Barrister, and Penelope Gibbs from Transform Jus ...…