Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd

Hello! This week we continue our foray into all things Web 3.0 by taking on NFTs, or Non-Fungible-Tokens. If you’re lost already then don’t worry, so were we, until we spoke to our enlightened guests Anthony Cuthbertson from the Independent, Holly Jean Buck from Buffalo University, and Andrea Baronchelli, from City University and the Turing Institute. We uncover exactly what NFTs are, how they’re currently being used, and what potential they have for wider application across society. We discuss the environmental impact NFTs have, as well as what’s being done to mitigate this in the long run. Plus Geoff comes out of isolation and Ed needs a hobby - beyond cold water swimming of course.

Hello! This week we head for the peatlands, get in the sea, and go in search of UK's lost rainforests to explore ecosystems beyond the trees.Could restoring these habitats play a significant part in achieving net-zero? And what else needs to be done to tackle the UK's nature crisis?Joining us are Kate Jennings (with a canine cameo), Guy Shrubsole and Richard Unsworth.

Happy New Year! To start 2022, Ed and Geoff talk to one of the UK’s most acclaimed and prolific scriptwriters, Jack Thorne (Help, Kiri, His Dark Materials, The End of History, This Is England.) Jack is a co-founder of Underlying Health Condition - a pressure group campaigning for proper inclusion and representation of disabled people in the entertainment industry. Jack talks about his own experience of disability, his career, his politics, and he gives Geoff a break from being Ed’s personal TV recommendation service.Read Underlying Health Condition’s report: https://underlyinghealthcondition.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/finalised-underlying-health-condition-report-tv.pdf

Hello! Well, what a year 2021 has been... thank you for being with us throughout. Here are some of 2021's very best bits for your delectation. Best wishes from your friends at Reasons to be Cheerful HQ

As last year's Christmas AMA was such a huge success *there were no major repercussions*, we thought we'd do it again. Ed and Geoff answer (and avoid) your questions, from sandwiches of choice in the make-your-own-sandwich shop to which cabinet member Ed would prefer to take on in a royal rumble. (Guess which of those Ed answered, and which he avoided... )

In the fourth and final episode about how progressive victories were won, we're taking a look at the introduction of the national minimum wage. It feels unthinkable now that there shouldn't be a minimum rate that workers are paid, but it wasn't too long ago that hourly rates of £1 or £1.50 were commonplace. The road to a national minimum wage was long and winding but campaigning, persuasive leadership,new academic thinking all helped to create something that's becomepart of the fabric of working life in the UK.To help us understand the history of the labour market, what pre-minimum wage Britain was like, and who the key players were in the fight we're joined by historian Sheila Blackburn, Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Liverpool. We're also honoured to be joined by Margaret Beckett MP who served as Secretary of State for Trade & Industry under Tony Blair from 1997 and also by Gavin Kelly, Chair of the Living Wage Commission who joins us to talk about where the minimum and living wage conversation goes from here.Plus, Geoff asks Ed for advice on some split loyalties between his wife, and the dry cleaner.