Podcasts

Steve Caplin casts his eye over pothole-fixing drones, a robot chef, vegan-friendly fake meat, carrots impersonating avocados, an app to solve quadratic equations, a new pocket tool he's dying to have and the plane where you won't be able to see out of the windows IF you're in first class.

Another month and another set of mixed messages about the state of the housing market is revealed. First-time buyers who have a deposit and home movers in the North are doing fine. But London is on the ropes and second and third movers are staying put, bringing the market to a standstill. In this week’s This is Money podcast, editor Simon Lambert, assistant editor Rachel Rickard Straus and money broadcaster Georgie Frost get into the aural attic to unbox the facts. The villain of the piece, they agree, is stamp duty. It used to be a 1% tax on purchases but it got tweaked into a giant cash cow for the Treasury by successive Chancellors. Stamp duty is stalling the market and needs to change but how? Also on the show: Paddington Bear 50p Gate.

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: AT&T completes its acquisition of Time Warner; Comcast increases its offer for 21st Century Fox’s assets, setting the stage for a battle with Disney; Etsy shares soar on a hike in fees; And IHOP flips pancakes for burgers.

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.