SmallDataForum – The Small Data Forum Podcast

March 12, 2023

Hasta la vista, Auntie?

Fuelled by nothing more than Coke Zero and Fanta Limon, the Small Data Forum Podnosticators pop up for a special, flash, mini, 15-minute micropodcast, recorded during our podcast retreat in Andalucía over the weekend of 10-13 March.

Our topic? The titanic struggle emerging on the future of independent, impartial broadcasting manifested in the battle of Gary vs Suella.

For a change, Neville blows the starting whistle to get us going, passing the ball to football lovers Thomas and Sam, with a shared passion for Liverpool, Arsenal, Fulham, but probably not Brighton.

November 15, 2022November 14, 2022

Schadenfreude squared in the land of Big Tech’s woes

The 17^th century French moralist François de La Rochefoucald observed in his Maximes: “In the misfortunes of our dearest friends we always find something not wholly displeasing unto us.”

So there was more than just the tang of sweet Schadenfreude in the air during the recording of the latest episode – 63, no less – of the Small Data Forum podcast.

For some of our dearest friends from the past six years of our data-ish ramblechats put in an appearance, like the cast of a mash-up musical all jostling for attention and approbation in light of their latest misdemeanours.

August 9, 2021August 8, 2021

Veni, vidi, vaxi

As Thomas is making his usual round of introductions for this, the forty-ninth episode of the Small Data Forum podcast, he comments on Sam’s status as a published author. “Published author you too!” booms Sam, celebrating Thomas’ first-ever, peer-reviewed, academic article, written with his doctoral supervisor – and recent SDF interview guest – Darren Lilleker.

For at the very start of this month, the esteemed Journal of Public Affairs saw fit to publish “The challenges of providing certainty in the face of wicked problems: Analysing the UK government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic”, a very on-message, on-podcast, rather-more-academic-than-we-usually-are critical analysis of how the Johnson Junta has managed with the ‘wicked problem’ (technical term) of Covid.

Thomas summarises the arguments in the paper, of how Her Majesty’s Government’s response to the threat of the pandemic “has not been all that pretty”. After all the puffed-up, Cummings-laden rhetoric of the December 2019 election campaign which was supposed to be all about ‘getting Brexit done’ (“campaigning in poetry” to purloin Mario Cuomo’s phrase), Johnson’s cabinet of political pygmies has struggled to live up to the challenge of “governing in prose”.