Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.
To get six free issues of The Week magazine and a moleskine notebook visit theweek.co.uk/offer and enter promo code: pod25
In this week’s episode, we discuss:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sporting head injuries
At the age of 42, former England rugby player Steve Thompson says he can’t remember a thing about winning the World Cup in 2003. Diagnosed with early onset dementia he has now joined a group of players, all under the age of 45, bringing legal proceedings against the game’s governing body over what they claim is a failure to protect them from concussions. The matter raises many questions, including an existential one: can a sport continue, knowing some players may suffer long-term harm?
Boycotting France
In the week that a French court convicted several accomplices of the gunmen involved in the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, many majority-Muslim nations are organising a boycott of French businesses and products. Their beef is with Emmanuel Macron’s rhetoric about “radical Islamist separatism” - and his determination to enforce a very French idea of secularism.
Green revolution
Farmers in countries including the US and China are using facial recognition technology to identify and monitor pigs, cows and even crop plants, as part of the global push to make the industry more productive and sustainable. With UK farming practices also facing a major shake-up under new government plans, what other seeds are being sown for a greener agricultural future?
You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped on the Global Player, Apple podcasts, SoundCloud or wherever you get you get your podcasts.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.