Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.
In this week’s episode, we discuss:
Fruity robots
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Fieldwork Robotics, a tech start-up link linked to Plymouth University, has developed a robot that can pick 25,000 raspberries per day - 10,000 more than professional human fruit-pickers. Until now raspberries have been seen as a particularly robot-resistant fruit because of their fragility when they’re ripe. People are very good as applying just the right amount of pressure without causing damage, but robots have tended to reduce the berry to a pulp. Now, though, the balance of power is shifting.
Happiness
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has set out a national budget whose spending will be determined by what most encourages the “well-being” of its citizens. Is this a radical, progressive way forward for the country, and something the rest of the world could learn from, or nothing more than lofty ideals and slick branding?
Read more about New Zealand's well-being budget in our briefing here.
Dystopian TV
With the return of Black Mirror this week to our television screens, why is it that the near future has become so frightening? Is it a symptom of our ever more troubled times, or as technology advances increasingly swiftly, can we simply no longer imagine a time futher ahead than the next 10 years?
You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. It is produced by Matt Hill and the music is by Tom Mawby.