Podcasts

In this interview, Peter Urwin considers the ‘collective failures’ suffered by the polling industry in recent years; from their inability to predict the 2015 British general election outcome, to Brexit, to Trump. Joining him is Professor Patrick Sturgis, who discusses findings from his chairing of the British Polling Council/Market Research Society Inquiry into the 2015 General Election Polls; and in his role as Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Political Polling and Digital Media. They explore whether the same mistakes are being made by Pollsters across these different ‘failures', and whether it is getting harder to predict outcomes. Plus, they ask whether analysis of social media presents an opportunity to help capture voter sentiment – or is the media industry part of the problem?

Adam Cox speaks to mentor and business coach, Denise Mortimer, about why many women are looking online and to social channels to create businesses later on in life. While the barriers to entry are low, Denise explains that it’s never been so important to carve a niche based on genuine value in order to create visibility in the online space. More and more people are becoming life coaches, but do we really need coaches when so much self-help content is free and widely available?

“Fake news” has been sweeping the nation – or has it? Today we’re joined by Kate Andrews, News Editor at the IEA and Head of Education Dr Steve Davies. Steve argues that, unlike what many in the mainstream media would have you believe, “fake news” is nothing new. In fact, trawling through history, we see that “Fake news” has been around in innumerable ways, shapes and forms, for centuries – even millennia. There is no one kind of fake news, and Kate and Steve examine some of the major distinctions between them, particularly in regards to intention and trust in mainstream. Finally, they examine how to spot fake news – and what we can all do to halt its dissemination and create a higher standard of debate.

Political commentator Mike Indian looks at Donald Trump's recent "diplomacy", drawing North Korea back into the international fold while also undermining the recent G7 meeting and laying into supposed "allies". He also takes a look at the Government's remarkable ability to keep its Brexit show on the road in Parliament.

Steve Caplin gushes about a 3D phone (that doesn't exist), champagne designed to be drunk in space, Uber's app to stop drunk riders, paying buskers by contactless cards, robot traffic cones and an electronic nose that can tell if food has gone off. Will it replace Steve's cat?

James Cameron-Wilson reviews the UK's new box office leader, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, with most other films suffering big revenue drops as a result of its success. He also looks at the Blu-Ray release of the 60-year-old Stanley Kramer film The Defiant Ones with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier and reveals news of a movie in the making all film fans will be champing at the bit to see.

Helal Miah of The Share Centre looks at recent news from Rolls-Royce, BAT, Boohoo, AVEVA and Halma and looks ahead to expected numbers from Ashtead, Dixons Carphone, Berkeley and Telecom Plus.

Want to keep up with the latest earnings updates from the States? Well join Chris Hill and the Motley Fool Radio Show team here on Share Radio, direct from Washington DC, for news, views and analysis of the US stocks that matter. In this week's show: Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon make the case for ending earnings guidance; Howard Schultz steps down from Starbucks; Twitter joins the S&P 500; Five Below soars above expectations; And Smucker tries to get out of a jam.

Whatever happened to bitcoin? After the mania at the end of last year when the price spiked to almost $20,000, the cryptocurrency took a tumble but more noticeably attention has drained away. You need no greater sign of that than figures showing bitcoin Google searches are down 90 per cent. That adds weight to the argument that much of the late 2017 big leg-up was driven by mainstream punters jumping on the cryptocurrency bandwagon. On this week’s podcast we take a look at who’s buying, who’s holding and who might be waiting for the price to rise again and greater fool theory to deliver someone who will take their bitcoin off their hands. Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost also take a look at gold – and why people aren’t buying this traditional form of investment portfolio insurance – and the most consistent investment trusts of the past decade.

Here in the UK, we hear a great deal about the Donald Trump administration – but how do we get past the hyperbole and hysteria to figure out what’s really going on across the pond. Today we’re joined by Dr Tom Palmer, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and Vice President for International Programs at the Atlas Network. Interviewed by the IEA’s News Editor Kate Andrews, Tom discusses the President’s modus operandi, his top priorities – and the internal workings of the White House. They also evaluate the success of Donald Trump’s tax reforms – and whether his reluctance to find common cause with Democrats may make it more likely that these reforms could ultimately be overturned.