# Fix The Budget! — Podcast Brief
**Runtime:** ~20 minutes
**Tenet:** AI + Clarity
**Format:** Solo narration with live demo description
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## Cold Open (30 seconds)
> "Everyone's an armchair Chancellor — until they actually try it. I built a simulator that lets you run the UK's finances. Within 30 seconds, I'd triggered a bond market panic. Here's what that taught me about democracy, empathy, and why we're all terrible at fiscal policy."
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## Segment 1: The Problem (4 min)
**Setup:** Why do people complain about government budgets without understanding them?
Key points:
- The micro-macro fallacy — household budget logic doesn't work for sovereign currency issuers
- Abstract numbers create abstract anger — £100bn is meaningless
- The empathy gap — cuts are numbers until they close your local hospital
**Quote:** "Every armchair Chancellor has an opinion. None of them have opened the Red Box."
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## Segment 2: The Simulation (8 min)
**Deep Dive:** Walking through the simulator mechanic by mechanic.
1. **The Red Box Onboarding**
- Drama before data: "The previous government has fled. The Treasury is yours."
- Making users feel weight before they touch controls
2. **The Sankey Flow**
- Visual money flow from taxes to services
- Making invisible infrastructure visible
3. **The Empathy Algorithms**
- £1bn NHS cut = 45,000 more on waiting lists
- Every number has a human translation
4. **The News Ticker**
- AI-generated headlines that scream at you
- "HOSPITALS REJOICE" then "MARKETS IN PANIC"
- No right answers, only trade-offs
5. **The Bond Vigilantes**
- Run deficit too high → borrowing costs spike
- Real lesson from the 2022 Truss mini-budget
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## Segment 3: The Lesson (5 min)
**Application:** What can listeners steal from this?
1. **Progressive Disclosure** — Don't overwhelm. Build mental models first.
2. **Narrative Volatility** — Abstract dashboards don't create urgency. Stories do.
3. **Empathy Algorithms** — Every business metric should have a human translation.
4. **Citizen Panels** — What if you let your customers "vote" on your roadmap?
**Quote:** "The closer you get people to the core of the business, the more invested they feel."
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## Segment 4: The Bigger Picture (3 min)
**Outro:** Democracy's participation problem.
- When I was a journalist, I ran community news conferences
- Readers shaped our editorial agenda
- Same principle: participation creates investment
- What if government had a "GitHub for policy" where citizens could submit pull requests?
**Tease:** Coming up — we're building an Internal Communications simulator next. Stay tuned.
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## Quotable Moments
- "Every armchair Chancellor has an opinion. None of them have opened the Red Box."
- "Abstract numbers create an empathy vacuum."
- "There's no winning in government. Only trade-offs."
- "The closer you get people to the core of the business, the more invested they feel."
- "Participation creates investment."
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`#podcast` `#fix-the-budget` `#civic-tech` `#AI` `#Clarity`