Outcry mounts over a fatal ICE shooting in Minnesota. The U.S. seizes a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic. And the White House doubles down on plans to acquire Greenland.
What kind of state does the UK find itself in as we start 2026? That’s the question Tim Harford and the More or Less team is trying to answer in a series of five special programmes.
In the fourth episode, we’re searching for answers to these questions:
Are one in four pensioners millionaires?
Is England’s education system performing better than Finland’s? And how does it compare to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Are our prisons going to run out of space?
Is the weather getting weirder?
Get in touch if you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Contributors:
Heidi Karjalainen, Senior Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies
Harry Fletcher-Wood, Director of Training at StepLab
John Jerrim, Professor of Education and Social Statistics at University College London
Cassia Rowland, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Government
Friederike Otto, Professor of Climate Science at Imperial College London
Credits:
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producers: Lizzy McNeill, Nathan Gower, Katie Solleveld and Charlotte McDonald
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound mix: Sarah Hockley and Neil Churchill
Editor: Richard Vadon
In this episode, Damian Thompson joins R. R. Reno on The Editor's Desk to talk about his recent essay, “Canterbury Fails,” from the December 2025 issue of the magazine.
President Trump claims Venezuela stole American oil. Is that true? We trace Venezuela's oil industry from its 1920s birth through nationalization and then collapse. Today on the show, how did the Venezuelan oil industry get to a point where it’s barely pulling from its reserves? And will anything change now?
There are 435 members of the House of Representatives — and after the resignation of Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and the passing of California Representative Doug LaMalfa, the GOP’s majority is down to 218. It’s thin, even without discussing the number of Republicans that are going to leave office to retire, run for other positions, or just get away because being in Congress sucks right now. At the same time, Congress is struggling to get much done — whether it’s about healthcare, the President’s war powers, or more routine topics like permitting reforms. So what does all of this mean for Congress in 2026? To find out, we spoke to Burgess Everett. He’s the Congressional bureau chief at Semafor.
Want more business storytelling from us? Check our weekly deepdive show, The Best Idea Yet: The untold origin story of the products you're obsessed with. Listen for free to The Best Idea Yet: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/
About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.
Paris Marx is joined by Karen Hao to discuss how Sam Altman’s goal of scale at all costs has spawned a new empire founded on exploitation of people and the environment, resulting in not only the loss of valuable research into more inventive AI systems, but also exacerbated data privacy issues, intellectual property erosion, and the perpetuation of surveillance capitalism.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. This episode originally aired in June 2025.
Indian Bengali writer Amitav Ghosh has been writing about empire, the environment, and other subjects for the past 25 years. Now, he has gathered some of his essays into a new collection called Wild Fictions, which asks big questions about the way humans are connected to other forms of life. In today’s episode, Ghosh joins NPR’s Scott Simon for a conversation that touches on climate change as a problem of politics, culture, and imagination. They also discuss an idea central to Ghosh’s thought: that anthropocentrism is responsible for our current planetary crisis.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday
After the Trump administration launched a massive Immigrations and Customs Enforcement operation in Minnesota, protesters gathered to defend immigrant neighbors. Renee Nicole Good, a mother of a six year old, showed up with her wife and dog to film altercations between officers and community members. What happened next changed everything.
Guest: Jon Collins, senior reporter on the Minnesota Public Radio News race, class and communities team.
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.