At the end of 2021, we feature some of the topics covered during the year by Professor Tim Evans of Middlesex University. In conversation with Simon Rose, Tim discussed the tensions in eastern Europe and why Germany is so beholden to Putin's Russia, the death of the Californian Dream, Ed Balls' examination of the crisis in the UK care system, science's Replication Crisis and why Lord Frank Field was ahead of his time in his ideas on unemployment benefit.