Understanding Society Podcast Series

What is the relationship between the arts and our mental health? Are they good for our mental health, or are happier people more likely to engage in the arts? The guests for this episode are Hei Wan (Karen) Mak, a senior research fellow in epidemiology and statistics at UCL and Nicky Goulder, CEO of Create, which puts on creative workshops in schools, day centres, prisons, and hospitals.

Do education levels affect gender roles in UK households? Do men with degrees do more childcare and housework? With guests: Barbara Okun, Professor of Demography in the Sociology Department and Demography Division at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Dr Sara Reis, Deputy Director and Head of Research and Policy at feminist economics think tank the Women’s Budget Group.

In our first episode of 2025, we look at the future care needs of an aging population in the UK, with Taha Bokhari and Abby Jitendra from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who have written a report about what our ageing population means for care, work, our benefits system and our communities.

In this episode, we discuss the effects of parenthood on job mobility and what this means for the gender pay gap with Dr. Silvia Avram, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, and Alesha De Freitas, Head of Policy, Research and Advocacy (at time of recording) at the Fawcett Society.

In this episode, one of our participants, Neil, talks about what it’s been like to be part of Understanding Society right from the beginning. What does it mean for him, and what changes has he seen in life and society since joining our predecessor, the British Household Panel Survey, in 1991?

In the first episode of a new series of Insights, Chris Coates discusses changes in the mental health of Muslims in the UK during the pandemic with Miqdad Asaria, Assistant Professor of Health Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who has researched this, and Maaria Mahmood, Director of the Muslim Youth Helpline.