For the final Bigger Picture with Simon Rose, Professor Tim Evans of Middlesex University looks back over the past 12 years of the programme. Into the good category, he places the advances in technology in areas like medicine, the digital world and the AI revolution. This will give a huge uplift to developing countries. As to the bad, that would include the polarisation of political life as the state hollows itself out from the inside, with taxes at an all-time high and services getting ever worse. Tim highlights the number of people under 40 abandoning the NHS, who believe they won't get a state pension for them and who see their future not in Britain but abroad. The ugly is the ever increasing indebtedness of the world's most advanced democracies and the rising authoritarianism which threatens the underpinning of our open society.

Guests: Professor Tim Evans

Published: Mon 6 July 2026