The We Society

Minette Batters, President of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales, represents an estimated 55,000 farmers and farm workers.  She has changed the course of history as the first woman to become president of the NFU.

Every single person in the UK owes a debt to our farmers - they ensure food is on our tables every single day, but there appears to be a dissonance in our minds of what’s on our supermarket shelves, and the producers behind our food...

Sir Andrew Dilnot is an economist who believes that statistics hold a key role in lessening inequality and making Britain fairer.  

He is now the warden of Nuffield College Oxford - a graduate college specialising in the social sciences. Before Nuffield, he was at the Institute for Fiscal Studies where he was the Director of the UK's leading independent economics research institute...

Ann Pettifor is an economist who is perhaps most famous for predicting the Global Financial Crisis two years before it happened.

But Ann is not just a savant, but a change maker. She was a core voice in the successful international campaign to cancel billions in debt accumulated by the Global South to mark the new millennium...

Neil Adger, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter, examines human movement as a strategy and adaptation to climate change.

From the Somerset levels to Chittagong in Bangladesh, he's traversed the globe to discover why some communities are more climate resilient than others.

But it’s not just physical changes that Neil has been studying...

Economist Daniel Susskind has been studying the nature of work and automation for years, long before ChatGPT entered the chat.

But Daniel's work has never been more important with AI progressing at seemingly breakneck speed. As a research professor in Economics at King's College London and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, he is one of the foremost experts on AI and work...

Vivienne Stern is the chief executive of Universities UK, a membership organisation that represents 140 UK universities. In this role, she's had to weather a raft of challenges from Brexit to the Covid pandemic. 

Host Will Hutton joins her in this conversation where they delve into just how important universities are for Britain, and how these treasured institutions can be protected for future generations...

The We Society returns on Wednesday (4 October) for Season 4. Expect to hear more conversations on ideas that shape the world we live from the world of Social Science. 

Our host, Will Hutton, is speaking to: Vivienne Stern from Universities UK, Daniel Susskind on the future of work in the age of AI, Neil Adger on the ongoing climate crisis, Ann Pettifor on global debt and many other fantastic guests...

Our host, Will Hutton, chooses some 'must listen' moments from the past three seasons featuring Hillary Clinton, Ai Weiwei, Mariana Mazzuccato, Gary Younge, and Heaven Crawley.

To listen to the full episodes, you can find them all on the We Society page on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back in the Autumn with a roster of new guests who are changing the world for the better with the help of the Social Sciences...

Novelist Ian McEwan is one of Britain's finest fiction writers whose canon of work has won him the Booker Prize amongst countless other awards and accolades. 

He joins host Will Hutton as they delve into a discussion on freedom, writing, and the importance of Social Science for human progress...

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist, a political thinker, and a seasoned broadcaster whose work mainly focuses on moral ethics and racism. 

He joins host Will Hutton in a wide-ranging discussion on racism following the publication of his latest book, Not So Black and White: A History of Race.

In this conversation, Kenan sets out his case that racism is a modern concept that emerged from a post-Englightenment world...