The Week Unwrapped podcast: whales, TV and the flight of a princess
Why has Japan resumed commercial whaling? What led Princess Haya to flee? And why is watching TV about to get a lot more expensive?
Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.
In this week’s episode, we discuss:
Whaling
In the face of condemnation from the international community, Japan resumed commercial whaling this week. But with Japanese palates having long since moved on and the industry barely staying afloat without government subsidy, one question is being asked: what’s the point?
Read our briefing on Japanese whaling here.
The price of TV
This week NBC said it would not renew Netflix’s right to stream the American version of The Office, which is the most popular show on the streaming service - it accounts for 7% of all Netflix use. That’s because NBC is launching its own video-streaming service featuring its archive of programming - and so are many other big TV producers: the BBC and ITV are about to launch Britbox, a subscription service based on their archives, and Disney, Warner and Apple are planning their own players and their own big-budget shows. What that means is that anyone wanting access to either brand new hits or comforting old favourites is going to have to pay a lot more for the privilege.
The flight of a princess
Princess Haya of Dubai has reportedly fled to London with her two children in order to seek a divorce from her husband, Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum. In recent years, two of the sheikh’s daughters have unsuccessfully attempted to escape what they described as an ultra-controlling regime – and neither has been seen since. Does Princess Haya know more than she is letting on?
You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. It is produced by Matt Hill and the music is by Tom Mawby.
