What is France up to in North Africa? Could virtual characters help treat psychosis? And do Americans work harder than Europeans? Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days. With Rebecca Messina, Irenie Forshaw and Abdulwahab Tahhan.
Image credit: Ludovic Marin / AFP / Getty
The Week Unwrapped - with Olly Mann
404. Macron in Morocco, avatar therapy and Europe vs the US
It's the weekending Friday the 1st of November, and this is the Week Unwrapped. In the past seven days we've seen the Chancellor Rachel Reeves revealing £40 billion of tax rises, the Spanish Prime Minister announcing three days of national mourning following devastating flash floods around Valencia and polls suggesting Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the final stages of their election campaigns. You can read all you need to know about everything that matters in the Week magazine, but we're here to bring you some stories that passed under the radar this week. You can use not making headlines right now, but with repercussions for all our lives. I'm Oli Mann, and let's unwrap the Week. And joining me today from the Week's digital team we have Rebecca Messina and I really need for sure, and we welcome back all the way from Hong Kong, refugee podcaster, turned lecturer, Abdul Wahhab to Han. Now remember remember the 5th of November, are you guys going to be watching the fireworks, the U.S. election coverage or a bit of base? I've placed a bet with my friend that if Trump loses he buys me dinner and I think he's going to lose, so I'm looking forward to my free dinner. Okay, I think I'd have it the other way, I think if he won you should have some consolation prize. Rebecca, you're up first, what do you think this week should be remembered for? Well, this was the week that France is on taunt with Morocco, got a whole lot more than I have ever heard of. As I stand here in front of you, I take full measure of how my visit is part of a century old history that has created a true community of destiny between our countries, a dialogue that goes back to the dawns of memory. French President Macron, addressing the Moroccan Parliament on Tuesday, in the style of a politician out of Star Wars there, Rebecca, it sounded very dramatic. Why? Yeah, it was a very sort of polite way of saying the history of colonization and now we also fall out all the time. But yeah, Macron was in Morocco this week for a state visit that concluded on Wednesday afternoon at the invitation of King Mohammed VI and this is marking, a lot of commentators saying this is marking, a kind of reset of relations between the two countries, which haven't been so great in recent years. But that tone was very much not in evidence this week. There were French and Moroccan flags intertwined along the thoroughfares of Rabat. There were receptions, there were ceremonies. Macron not only brought his wife, giving it kind of the flavour of a proper state visit, he also bought three members of his cabinet showing just how seriously Paris is taking this. He brought the economy minister, he brought the interior minister, which is a little bit controversial because he has seen as being a big hard line on immigration, which is one of the sticking points between France and Morocco. And he also bought the culture minister, Rashid Adati, who is France's most prominent politician of Moroccan origin. And to what end? What did they achieve? Oh, you won't believe what they achieved, Ollie. They achieved an awful lot actually, it has to be said. Even though there was a lot of pomp and ceremony, they did actually get a lot done most notably, Macron and King Mohammed signed 22 agreements at the Royal Palace on Monday, covering a huge range of sectors. Basically, a massive package of sort of mutual investment, there's infrastructure deals, there's a deal for total energy, one of the major French energy firms, to start production of green hydrogen in Morocco. So this wasn't just sort of showing off this new era of warmer relations, there was actual hard cold cash behind it too. Yes, but Irene, this might be being welcomed by Morocco, but not everyone in Africa is pleased about this. Yeah, so Macron's visit to Morocco is going to be closely scrutinised by Algeria. France's endorsement of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara went down really badly. And in response, Algeria withdrew its ambassador from Paris. The Algerian president has already postponed his visits to France several times, and now with these kind of increasingly tense relations, it looks like he's going to be counselling the trip altogether. What do you think is the real politics in this then, Abdul, to use a French phrase? I mean, is it that basically France is choosing Morocco over Algeria, so it sort of doesn't matter how Algeria reacts? France is looking to strengthen its ties with Morocco, especially with the influence of China and Russia, China is seeing Africa, the African continent as a place for expansion. With the Belt and Road Initiative focusing on infrastructure, development trade, resources, Russia is expanding in Africa as well through the Wagner Group in Libya, in a lot of places in southern Africa as well. And you've got the Arabs, of course, like the United Arab Emirates, expanding in Africa as well through South Sudan and supporting special militia there. So France now has kind of not a forkrope, but kind of needs to decide what to do. So Algeria is trying to distance itself from its past colonial ties with France. So France decides to go over all in Morocco and gain some attraction there for probably future ties or to expand, to keep their interest in Africa. And do you think that kind of soft power move, like, you know, money, basically, rather than military, is a useful tool. Are France using it well? Well, the soft power is not only the money, but it's also the cultural and heritage identity. Morocco persists a rich cultural heritage, includes, you know, diverse influence from Arab, from Berber, from European traditions. Morocco is in Africa, but there's a lot of influence on from Muslim cultures. And there's a huge community of Moroccan community in France. So France is tapping on the community, on the Moroccan community, Moroccan and French community. So there's the culture ties to them. And then of course, there's the economic partnership, the one that you just mentioned. And that's through an infrastructure and supporting company, including my rock telecom, who are leaders in the region in intel communication and through trade agreement that allow African nations through Morocco position through Morocco to be, you know, regional economic players in Africa. But to return to what you were saying, Irene, if they are choosing Morocco over Algeria, there's actually a slightly larger French Algerian population than a French Moroccan population in France. So what could the consequences of this be at home? Yeah, Algeria already kind of annoyed about these kind of rumbling tensions that we've had about kind of Macron kind of trying to stop so much migration from North Africa. Back in kind of 2021, France kind of implemented stricter measures to manage migrant numbers and significantly cut the amount of visas issued to both Moroccan and Algerian citizens. And this kind of caused widespread outrage, not only in Morocco, but also in Algeria. Those kind of restrictions from Morocco were lifted in 2023, but the tensions are still kind of bubbling away. So Rebecca, why is the reset that you mentioned required? What is the biggest issue that Macron is trying to nullify and neutralize? Well, there's been all kind of strange incidents over the last few years. There's been some kind of weird ones. Morocco was forced to deny reports he was using Israeli spy software to spy on French politicians. But the main sticking point has been this Western Sahara thing. So it's often called Africa's last colony, Spain pulled out in 1975. But since then, it's the only territory in Africa that is not self-governing. Morocco claims it and controls most of the population centres. It's very sparsely populated, but the handful of towns that are in Western Sahara are under Moroccan control, except a very small sliver, which is under the control of what's called the Polisario Front. They claim to be the rightful representatives of the native Sorahi population. The UN recognizes it as the representative of that population, but doesn't recognize it as having sovereignty over Western Sahara. France was basically kind of trying to stay out of this for as long as possible, partly because the Polisario Front has the backing of Algeria, but now that relations with Algeria seem to have hit a little bit of a dead end. In July, France publicly said they endorsed Morocco's vision for Western Sahara, which is basically Morocco has sovereignty over it, but it operates autonomously. And France has actually now updated the maps on its government website to show Western Sahara as essentially southern Morocco. So that's kind of the big thing that Morocco is getting out of this. But France, I think it's really interesting as well, is that it's really easy to do this in light of, oh, it's a former colonial power trying to lean on an old colony to get a foothold in the region, but it's a little bit more interesting than that, because France isn't trying to get into West Africa itself. This is sort of what this boils down to is access to West Africa. It's trying to lean on Morocco's goodwill in that region. So France has tried to directly intervene in the Sahel region, which is countries basically form kind of a belt across Africa at the point where the Sahara becomes sub-Saharan Africa. And these are mostly former French colonies like Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso. And France has tried to actively sort of, since about 2010 to about 2021, France was directly intervening in those countries and trying to drive out particularly the jihadist groups there that have sort of proliferated in that region. The Sahel is now thought to be responsible for about 35% of global deaths from terrorism, but essentially a series of coups in those countries forced the French presence to withdraw. And so France has basically had to sort of quit this idea that they can directly intervene in their former colonies in West Africa. And so they are turning two countries like Morocco, not as a staging post for a French intervention in West Africa, but you kind of lean on the goodwill that Morocco has in that area and head off that interest from countries like Russia and like China. And also the story domestically in France, Abdul, has been about the rise of the far right, you know, that is who Macron is looking over his shoulder at now. Is the purpose, do you think of bringing this contentious interior minister with him over to Morocco, signaling to the French public, look, this is how we'll help curb immigration. We'll make sure that fewer people want to come to France because they'll have more to do in Morocco. Well, I think what they're trying here to do is also to tap into the diaspora, the Moroccan diaspora, that who are already in France in order to share, to show that we're here with together your French as well, you're accepted. And this is one of the problems, the crisis identity of a lot of Algerian and Moroccan people who live there, who live in France in general. But also if France wants to control the people who are coming into the region, they've got to go pretty much through Libya, but there's a huge influence of Russia and Libya through the Wagner group. And Turkey is there through allegedly Syrian rebels who are fighting for the Turkish interests in there. So I think for what Macron is trying to do is to avoid Libya altogether, Tunisia is as out of the question, Algeria, it's, you know, kind of contention and not really in a good place. So the only resource there is Morocco. So he's going all in in Morocco. And Rebecca, finally on this, why does this matter to British listeners? Yeah. Well, I think the main thing that stands out is that France is trying to bolster its presence in North Africa, not just to be nice, not just to be diplomatic, but also because of fears of what the consequences will be of this situation in West Africa and across the Sahel region does continue to deteriorate because that region is home to the major people trafficking routes from Sahel and Africa through into North Africa and then into Europe. And so a collapse of those countries, and some of them, Burkina Faso in particular, are near collapse already, would unleash a tidal wave of chaos and sends refugees spiraling out, not just into neighboring states who were already under strain, but then through North Africa and towards Europe as well. And it's an interesting thing because on one hand, Macron's trying to speak to the Moroccan and North African diaspora in France and say, this is a sign that, you know, we want to have close relationships with those countries of origin, we want to bring you closer, but also aware of bolstering European and French and particular defences against those human trafficking routes that could possibly send millions of refugees heading towards Europe. All right, up next, how technology is making it easier to listen to the voices in your head. That's after this. Okay, Arini, it's your turn. What do you think this week should be remembered for? Can meeting the voices in your head make them disappear? Just remind me, what's that key, strong, powerful statement that you want to get across today? Ah, telling them that I can do it, and he needs to stop bullying me. Absolutely. Okay, brilliant. The next thing you're going to hear is going to be the avatar. No, I want you to be around. Stay in your room. You can't tell me what to do anymore. I'm going to try and go out and do myself. Do you know? Yeah, you heard me. I'll go out and do what I want to do because you're nothing but a big bully. A video from the Health Charity Welcome demonstrating avatar therapy on Tuesday. Arini, what is avatar therapy and why is it your story this week? Yeah, so I was really fascinated to see this new research published in the journal Nature this week that's shown that digital avatars could help people with psychosis, to hear voices less often, and to reduce their distress. So clinical psychologist at King's College London worked with patients who hear aggressive and abusive voices to create computer generated versions of their kind of tormentors. And then they had a series of role play sessions with a trained therapist, which allowed patients to have conversations with their digital avatar and then push back against the abuse. And the study, which was the biggest study of this type that's taken place so far, showed that just after just a few sessions of this avatar therapy, both the distress and the frequency of the voices were said to significantly go down. And for some of these people, they've been hearing these abusive voices for years and years, and it's completely ruined their lives. And for some of them, the voices actually ended up disappearing altogether. So it's pretty life-changing stuff. Wow. How many people are we talking about? I mean, how many people suffer from acute psychosis? So according to the National Institute for Health, 50 people in 10,000 suffer from this. So the study itself included 345 participants with psychosis. That might not sound that huge, but actually the really promising results mean that now it's got the potential to be rolled out across the NHS. It could be pretty huge. Actually, the impact it ends up having. And is it a novel idea? I mean, obviously, the avatar is a technological spin on it, but the idea of actually engaging with the voices at all, because it seems to me, from a kind of layman's perspective, if I knew someone who was psychotic and said they were hearing voices, the first thing you'd probably say is don't try and ignore those voices. Those voices aren't there. Well, that's the thing. So I think that before this, clinicians kind of tended to not engage with the voices to kind of give people anti-psychotic medication and to really avoid engaging with the voices. But actually, the person who developed avatar therapy, Professor Julian Leff, who was at the time retired from University College, London, where he was a schizophrenia specialist, he realized that actually he had found that it really helped when he let his patients actually have meaningful exchanges with the voices. And it really made them feel more in control, rather than just pretending that it wasn't happening when actually this is something that is really debilitating and that they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis. So yeah, he just wanted to find a way to kind of enable this dialogue with the voices in order to reduce the distress. Abdul, how does this work? How do you take a voice that's in someone's head and turn it into an avatar? Well, you don't just turn it into an avatar, but you design a whole study. And the design of the study is not very complicated, but it was very interesting. So in order to do this study, they recruited 345 individuals, as Irene said, who already have some psychotic problems. And then they decided to put them in one of three groups. They've got the 16 marker group, 16-week group, the 32 group, and the treatment as usual group. So the 16-week group would receive the avatar brief, which is our brief session. There are shorter interventions consisting of standardized treatment approach, focusing on a set of number of sessions typically designed to be completed quickly. And they've got the 28-week intervention, which is called avatar extension. It's longer, but it's more specified and gives you a better treatment. And the researchers can focus on the patient's family health and family history and specific voices and specific problems. And the third group is the treatment as usual, which did not receive any avatar treatment. And what does the result tell us? So after 28 weeks, they've got 298 people completed this study. And they found out that using avatar for 28 weeks reduces the voices. They're very comfortable that these avatar can help getting rid of these noises. Okay, but literally, how do they build the avatars? Are you saying it's simple? But what is it? They're talking to a computer programmer. How do they make it look like the voice that people have in their head? So the patients will work with the psychiatrist to basically like how you would build a police identifying image, to build an avatar that looks like the voice in their head. Obviously, this isn't always that easy because people with psychosis, they don't always have a clear idea of what the person looks like. But they try to build it as close as possible to what it looks and sounds like. And then they use a kind of voice manipulation technology. So it could either be a really low voice like we heard in the clip, or it could be a high voice. And also the avatar, it doesn't have to be human, it could be a devil, it could be a monster, or it could be a person, and they can kind of build it exactly how they want it. And how's it talking to them? Is it powered by AI? So it's not, no, it's so well, at the moment, it's not powered by AI. So at the moment, it works as almost like a role play session. So the clinician is in a separate room, and they have a series of phrases, perhaps that the patient had told them that the voices in their head often say. So then the clinician will say those phrases and variations on those phrases. It will then go through the system, it will immediately be, the voice will be in a minute, be related and changed. But then the interesting thing is that the conversation can be paused, and then the therapist as themselves can come in with their voice and kind of gradually build up techniques for the patient to challenge the voice. Just going to make sure the therapist remembers that they're themselves when they walk back in the room and don't say let's take 10 minutes for lunch. I mean, Rebecca, what are the existing treatments like? And this kind of roleplay is this part of the scenario that exists at the moment if you leave the technology to one side or not? Well, so the primary treatment at the moment, you know, for people who are suffering with acute psychosis, schizophrenia conditions like that, are antipsychotic drugs. And there are a range of them, but they pretty much all have extensive side effects. Some of them comment to a lot of drugs, you know, fatigue, nausea, but also things like bed wetting. They also don't work or don't fully work for quite a lot of people, sometimes up to one in four. And that causes a couple of problems. Ones, it means they are often under prescribed by doctors because they are aware of those shortcomings. And it also exacerbates nonadherence by patients. That is a major issue, particularly in psychosis patients, you know, you're prone to suffering from paranoia. So they're already kind of predisposed to stopping taking their medication. If the medication also doesn't work that well and has really severe side effects, that's obviously going to increase that tendency. There's also not a lot of investment in new drugs. And part of that is because it's difficult to develop new antipsychotics. You can't test them on animals because obviously, you know, animals don't have human brains. And they're also hard to do on humans because of the placebo effect because you're relying on self reporting as to their efficiency. In some cases, antipsychotics can be combined with stuff like CBT programs that have been shown to be effective. But I think what this avatar therapy, what the breakthroughs really show us is it kind of challenges the notion that I think a lot of us have that are like, oh, you know, sort of mild mental health problems if you, if you like, you know, sort of milder forms of depression, anxiety, they can be treated with sort of real world interventions. But serious problems can only be treated with, you know, serious medications that, you know, sort of Western medicine. But there have been a lot of interesting things in the past on how conditions like schizophrenia don't have to involve aggressive and angry voices that that's very much a cultural factor and that in cultures where the idea of having voices speaking to you isn't considered as frightening and alienating and something that's set to you aside from everyone else is someone who has something wrong with them. You know, countries where it's considered more normal for people to be speaking to, say, ancestors or speaking to spirits, that the voices that individuals with schizophrenia here can actually be gentle or encouraging. And so I think what the avatar therapy shows us is that there is such a huge cultural element to this and that those non-medical interventions might actually be a crucial way of sort of relieving the suffering of the thousands of people who are suffering from psychosis. Are there risks with this, though, Abdul? We're talking about it as if this is, you know, a great panacea. One of the worries of this in here is that there were two deaths that were reported in the Avatar Extensive Group, the one who took 28 weeks and the Independent Data Monitoring and Ethics Committee determined that these incidents were unrelated to the avatar therapy, but still it shows us that this is very, very serious study. Another thing is that there is a possible relationship that in the study, some events were rated as possibly related to treatment, but these were not definitively linked to the therapy. For instance, the participants required hospital admission shortly after a treatment session, and this happened a couple of times, but it was treated as possibly related. We don't know for sure. The Avatar Extension Therapy trauma-focused elements may have led to an increased number of reported effective changes in adverse events, and these adverse events happen to almost 56 participants across the Avatar Extension Group. I think it is important to stress, though, that from the results of the study, the people who did end up harming themselves, it was very much shown that that was something that would have happened anyway. Also, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has recommended Avatar therapy as a safe and effective treatment for NHS deployment, so I think it's important to stress that the results are really promising with relatively little risk. The other thing as well that's worth highlighting is that we've talked about how the patients benefit from feeling empowered by engaging with the voices in their head, but that these conversations in Avatar therapy are very much guided. You have qualified clinicians, therapists who are leading the conversation, and as they give voice to those voices, they then adjust the dialogue. As the patients start to challenge them, they start to become less aggressive. They start to become submissive to the patient. There is obviously benefit to be had from having those conversations between patients and the voices they're hearing, but that they have to be guided by experts. Obviously, we've all heard of horrible crimes that have been committed by people who felt they had voices telling them what to do. That's the extreme end of what can happen when those conversations are allowed to run completely unsupervised. This is very much about guidance. That's something else around this Avatar therapy idea that needs to be looked at with caution, is that there are attempts to look into whether AI technology could be used to replace clinicians in future evolutions of Avatar therapy. It's really interesting. It would certainly reduce the cost. Obviously, the mental health services in the UK are under a lot of strain as it is. The idea of having individual therapists running these sessions with psychosis patients feels a bit of wishful thinking given the strain that clinicians under at the moment. That does open the door, but it does, obviously, bring a whole other can of worms. I think it's important to proceed with caution and that you're always going to need a trained healthcare professional there. You couldn't just leave somebody with an AI avatar. That's when the dangers creep in. We know, Abdul, that that's often what AI solutions do, isn't it? They offer people such a cut price alternative that, regardless of whether a clinician would recommend it, they'll hear this news that talking to your demons is a good way to have therapy. They'll just ask AI to do it for them, and then they're completely unsupervised. They're asked AI, and they're unsupervised, and there are consequences for that. A case that a mother in the US is suing an AI company because her son committed suicide after chatting to a chatpot, AI chatpot. The chatpot became increasingly romantic and close to the teenager who was only 14, and the teenager told the AI that I'm coming home, and the AI encouraged it to come home to me, my king. The AI encouraged him to commit suicide, and now the AI company is being sued, but this is very common now, AI pods to replace human emotions. You see it a lot in Asia. A lot of single people said that their AI boyfriend or girlfriend is even better than their boyfriend, their ex-boyfriends or boyfriends. They're the humans. They listen more. This is especially for men who don't listen, so the AI listened more, complimented them, and that was pretty much what they wanted, and this tells you a lot about how crappy human beings we are. If AI, all it does is to listen, just shut up and listen. That's all they need, so I don't know. That's very alarming, maybe in Asia, maybe in other places as well. I mean, to be honest, I suppose the risk that's more readily staring us in the face I read in years, that despite this research saying that it can be positive, a lot of practicing therapists do nothing about it. It's just a study they read about my carry-on administering the drugs they were before. Yeah, although it does feel that now, so I think so far, 38 people have been trained to deliver this in the UK, which doesn't sound like a lot, but I think that together with nice, recommending it as a safe and effective treatment, with this third study now in currently taking place, the third even bigger study, bringing in the AI element. There's a positive sign that actually things could be changing a bit, and there's even been the same research team, has even been looking into using avatar therapy to treat other mental health conditions, so things like eating disorders and having the avatar taking on the role of the anorexic voice, the negative anorexic voice, so I think it could be quite big. Yeah, it is fascinating. I do have a voice in my head telling me to move on. It is the producer's voice. Up next to Americans work harder than Europeans. That's after this. ♪♪♪ Abdul, you're finishing the show. What do you think this week should be remembered for? It's Thursday, the new Friday. Does the Right Honourable Lady agree that reducing the capacity of councils by 20% by allowing workers an additional paid day off every week, which is what a four-day week actually is. It's unacceptable and does not provide good value for money to taxpayers or residents. Well, Mr Speaker, I'm really proud of our employment's right, Bill, and I'm really proud to stand here as someone who says and advocates for flexible working. We don't dictate to councils how they run their services. We work with councils, and I think the Honorable Lady should be able to work out that flexible working is no threat to business, no threat to the economy. In fact, it will boost productivity. The Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rainer there answering a question in Parliament on Monday from Chemie Badenock, who might be the leader of the opposition by the time you listen to this. Abdul, what's the story? Well, the story here is that in response to criticism from Conservative Shadow, local government secretary, Chemie Badenock, as she was on Monday. About the four-day week, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rainer stated that four-day working week poses no threat to economy, advocating for a flexible working arrangement as a means to enhance productivity, particularly in local government. Badenock referenced the District Council as a model where employees reportedly delivered 100% of their work in about 80% of their hours, and she questioned whether reducing the council capacity by allowing an extra paid off would provide good value for money. Yes, I really, where are we up to with the four-day week in the UK? Because there's a lot of chat, including on this podcast, ever since the pandemic about flexible working and people insisting that their jobs aren't traditional five-day office-based jobs. But what is actually the requirement at the moment, the legislation, what's allowed, where are we up to? So back in 2022, the UK actually did the world's biggest four-day working week trial. It was run by a think tank of autonomy in the University of Cambridge, and afterwards, around 90% of companies that took part were still operating the policy a year later, and 51% ended up making it permanent. And the benefits were huge. There was better retention, people weren't as burnt out, the productivity didn't suffer. So it was a really positive study. In the US, it seems like they're a bit slower on the uptake of the four-day working week, but they have had a significant trial there as well. And there's clearly a huge appetite for a four-day working week in the US, which I think is particularly understandable, given just the huge lack of holiday they get as well. Alright, so this discussion on flexible work arrangement and working for only four days, resonate with a meme in an article where I read about Nicola Tangent, the CEO of Norway 1.6 trillion US dollars oil fund, who said that he prefers to invest in the US partly because they work harder than people in Europe. But if you look at the numbers and the numbers don't lie, I was really baffled by this because the highest working number of people, to my knowledge, is based in Asia, pretty much China, where people work 9.96, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. If you don't want to work, someone else will take the work, right? In the UK, if you look at the number of hours people work here in the UK, well, we will find that in the UK, the average hours of week was 36.4, which is slightly less than the average of Europeans, which was around 38. Less is it? Really? I am surprised by that. I guess I sort of assumed that Britain, I guess because of our politics as well, we're kind of off and halfway between mainland Europe and the US, aren't we? I sort of assumed that Brits probably work a bit harder than the French and the Germans and the Greeks. Is that wrong? Well, I think we take, yes, you are wrong because I think we take holidays a little bit more. In Greece and Poland, some of the working hours exceeded 40 hours, so they really work harder. So all the stereotypes you have in mind about lazy people in some other places in Europe, the data shows it does not exist, and they work harder than British people, according to the working hours. Now, if you want to talk about productivity and efficiency, that's completely different topic. But if you are just looking at working hours, then people in the UK, on average, work less than people across Europe. Yeah, well, is it a completely different topic, Rebecca, because that's the thing, isn't it, in budget week, which is all about trying to stimulate growth? You've got the Deputy Prime Minister saying we can have a four-day week, and that's obviously, she believes not going to limit growth. What's the situation in the US where they do have a better performing economy than us? Yeah, I mean, in the US workers average 1,799 hours per year, that's according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is a lot more than the UK, more than 200 hours per work per year more. UK workers work 1,524 hours per year on average. However, the question as to whether the US is more productive because of that is much harder to answer, because the US is not at the top of the table. This OECD data is based on a handful of developed nations. This isn't average working hours for every country in the world, but in those developed nations, the US is behind several countries, it's in fifth place, behind Mexico, Chile, Israel and Canada, and Mexico, I think, is kind of maybe an interesting one, maybe not one that you would have guessed would top the charts for a number of hours worked per year, and the reason for that is that Mexico actually has some extremely draconian working hours. The standard work week in Mexico is 48 hours a week, and it has a six-day work week, but not everybody does a six-day work week, and this gets to the notion of productivity. Mexico tops a charts number of hours worked per worker per year, but it does not anywhere near top the charts in terms of productivity, and that's because the people doing the six-day work week and doing those 48 hour weeks in Mexico are not office workers, are not white collar workers, they are people towards the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole we're talking about, you know, cleaners, factory workers, etc. So it definitely underscores the fact that there isn't necessarily a correlation between total amount of hours worked and a nation's productivity. I mean, Abdul, as we've discussed on the show before, you've lived in many different countries, who do you think is getting it right in terms of work-life balance and productivity? Which one's the best? Well, the UK is the best, of course, because I remember the first time I, my first job actually was at Starbucks, and I remember walking into Starbucks and looking at the contract, and they told me that I have paid leave, and I did not understand this concept. I literally did not understand getting paid leave, because in Syria, we did not have that. So I was really excited about it, and then I found out that a number of people came from the United States to the UK because of the 28 days of paid leave we have. So I think we got it really right, and we got it good. And the data even shows us, if you look at the United States and then the number of burnout in the United States is reported that approximately two-thirds of US employees have experienced burnout at some point, with 67% reporting that it has worsened since the pandemic. And a lot of people would think that maybe in the UK it's different, but well in the UK I think approximately 35% of working adults do not feel comfortable discussing their high stress levels. There's one more interesting thing to look at is millennials and Gen Z, and a lot of people beat down Gen Z and think they're lazy, they don't really like to work, and I looked at the burnout stress level of Gen Z and millennials, and I found out that we're pretty much the same. I mean 87% of Gen Z responded reported that experiencing some level of burnout while 85% of millennial took the same survey and reported that. So 87%, 85% not very much. I think there's a lot of stress regardless of whether you're Gen Z or millennial, but I believe having paid leave in your contract is something the UK got right. Well also, as it pertains even to the economy, Irene, which is what you know, Badenock was asking about. There's an argument, isn't there, that even if you earn less money, you're spending more money because you have more time off, you're spending more money on leisure, you might be taking many breaks in the UK, you might be going out more. And then that is good for the economy. Yeah, and I guess, I mean, I'm thinking of, I actually know someone who works for Cambridge City Council and... You're a big dinner party post. And she absolutely loves it. So she's on the four-day week, but it's something people just love to get really angry about. And it constantly feels like it's threatened that it's going to get taken away. You know, they get all of these people tweeting them saying like, "Oh, is that why my bin hasn't been picked up because you've had, you know, you're having your Friday off?" But then, you know, something had to be done. Like, it was really hard to attract people to these like low paying jobs. Staff retention rates were terrible. You have to do something. You can't just kind of the wages go down and you don't give any kind of reward. And actually, the benefits have been great. Okay. Well, I'm a freelancer. I have another job starting in a minute and I am paid by the hour. So I'm going to wrap that up there. My thanks to Abdul and Rebecca and Irene. You can follow this show for free. You can get every episode as soon as it's released. Just search for the week unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts. Then tap "follow." That's the magic formula. You can also get six free issues of the week magazine with the trial subscription. If you go to theweek.com/subscriptions. In the meantime, I've been Ollie Mann. Our music is by Tom Morby, the producer, Ollie Piers at Rethink Audio. And until we meet again, too, unwrap next week. Bye-bye.