The Week Unwrapped: Millennial politics, Japanese payments and Swedish wolves

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days. With Julia O’Driscoll, Arion McNicoll and Suchandrika Chakrabarti.

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In this week’s episode, we discuss:

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Tokyo exit payments

The Japanese government has announced that the financial incentive for families to move away from Tokyo to rural, underpopulated regions will more than triple from April. The scheme hasn’t proved particularly popular since it was first introduced in 2019, but could the lure of up to 3,000,000 yen be enough to tempt people to make the move?

Millennial politics

A long-held rule of thumb in politics is that people start their voting lives on the left-wing and move rightwards as they get older. However, according to new statistical analysis, millennials are bucking this trend – and are, in fact, getting even more left-wing as they age. Is this because the events of the past two decades have permanently moulded a generation of voters – or more a reflection on the current priorities of parties on the centre-right.

Wolf cull

This week Swedish hunters began one of the biggest wolf culls in living memory. They have been licensed to kill 75 wolves from a population of 460 – a number that conservationists say is irresponsible given the wolf’s endangered status. Hunters, and the Swedish government, say that thinning out the population will reduce conflict between the wolf population and humans.