Professor Colin Mayer is a leading voice on the role of business in society. I met up with him to discuss what we can reasonably expect business to contribute to our societies today, and the compelling idea that businesses should focus on making a “just” profit that takes into account the full costs of the business they undertake. Professor Mayer makes the case for that in thinking this way, companies stand to improve profitability over the longer term, performing better through alignment of the different stakeholders attached to a company.

In this episode, I am joined by Irene Tinagli, the Italian politician and economist who has served as a member of the European Parliament since 2019. Irene has recently published, as Chair of the Special Committee, an important new report on the growing housing crisis in the European Union. Irene’s report highlights the systemic nature of this crisis, and outlines a set of practical choices and interventions that she argues will start to solve the issue, drawing from her experience studying different regional approaches across the European continent.

In this episode, I am joined by bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson ("Stan") and Oxford Professor Anette Mikes to discuss how we can use storytelling to imagine and create the futures that we want to see. Science fiction writers create imaginary worlds as frames for the stories they tell and Stan has been interested in how he as a science fiction writer can use his art to imagine better climate futures for humanity. In his bestselling book The Ministry for the Future, he explores the fictional Ministry for the Future that exists to act as an advocate for the world's future generations of citizens. Professor Anette Mikes discusses Stan’s work in the context of her own interpretation of Stan’s vision, the Oxford Ministry for the Future, an initiative bringing together storytellers with academics interested in climate change. This conversation opens up new ideas and thinking on how we can increase our agency in designing a more responsible planetary future.

In this episode, I discuss the wonderful story of the recent unearthing of the first known organisational chart, the one created by Scottish engineer Daniel McCallum for the New York and Erie Railroad Company in 1855. What is so intriguing is its structure – resembling a plant or a tree, complete with roots (the board) the trunk (main functions) and the branches (specific locations) and even the leaves (specific people). This org chart structure remained the dominant concept for around 70 years until the 1920s when hierarchical (top down) charts started to be created by the forerunner to IBM. Trust scholar and author-turned-creative-design-archeologist Rachel Botsman talks us through how she found this artefact and its resonance and relevance to governance structures today.

In this episode, I am delighted to be in conversation with Tom Hale, a Professor at Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government, discussing his recent book "Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing Across Time". In this book, Tom sets out why long problems are hard to govern, exploring the knotty question of how we can manage transgenerational problems effectively and fairly before setting out some ideas as to possible solutions. It is a brilliant and thoughtful book, and I am delighted to be able to get into it in this episode. Our discussion is set against the wider focus of Tom’s academic work at Oxford which seeks to explain how political institutions evolve – or not – to face the challenges raised by globalisation and interdependence with a particular emphasis on environmental, economic and health issues.

This episode covers macro trends driving financial innovation, the role of the tech companies and how they are taking on the banks with their data supremacy and technical depth, and what we as consumers might expect to see in terms of new products and services in 2025. It features a discussion with two titans of the financial world. Bob Wigley, Chair of UK Finance is someone who brings a lifetime of experience and wisdom from his various leadership positions at global investment banks over the past 30 years. Bob helps us decode what is being discussed behind the closed doors in the world’s financial capitals and sets out where he believes innovation will most immediately be evident to us as consumers. And, Oxford’s Professor Pinar Ozcan brings her sharp mind and factual insights to help explain the strategies being pursued by the tech companies and how they are innovating to integrate the many different financial functions in ways that simplify, streamline, improve efficiency and reduce transaction costs.

This episode is all about the world of social impact. With Government budgets under pressure all over the world, businesses are increasingly being asked to step up to address social issues. This episode looks at the key current themes under debate – from how different organisations are structured to deliver social impact, what’s happening in the world of mega philanthropy, and what social impact looks like in practice. It features three brilliant experts – Oxford University’s Professor Marya Besharov, the London School of Economics Professor Stephan Chambers, and the HALO Trust’s Lucy Reeve.

In this eighth episode, joining our host Rupert Younger is Bill Browder, bestselling author and emerging markets investor turned human rights campaigner, after his friend and lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered by the Russian state for trying to expose corruption in Russian companies. After that, Bill Browder started a campaign which has resulted in the Magnitsky Act, a law now in force in over 30 jurisdictions around the world including the US, EU and the UK which enables the assets of persons connected with human rights abuses and corruption to be seized. His battle is told powerfully in two books – “Red Notice” and “Freezing Order”, while this podcast summarizes his story and sets out what Browder is working on now.

The art business is big business. Since Covid started to abate, we have as citizens re-embraced culture at scale, visiting museums and galleries in droves. This is powering the global culture market to an estimated US$580bn in 2023, making art a very large market indeed. In this episode, we dig behind the scenes to find out the origins of museums, the role of corporations in the art market, and what is happening in the world of mega-galleries in a world of AI and Augmented Reality.

Interviewees: Dr Paul Roberts, Research Keeper of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum; Laurence Aliquot, Director of Promotions, Marketing and Cultural Partnerships at Intesa Sanpaolo; Melanie Gerlis, Art Market Writer & Columnist, Financial Times.

Status matters to all of us. It is a foundational part of what it means to be human. Status provides us with the ability to sense make, to de-mystify some of the complex signals that we see all around us, all the time. In this episode, we discuss status in the context of ostentation, travelling back in time to assess how bling – ostentatious displays of wealth – worked in Roman times, drawing the conclusions that people 2000 years ago were playing the same games that we play today.

Interviewees: Dr Michael Jensen, Professor of Strategy at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan; Dr Paul Roberts, Research Keeper of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum; Dr Joanne Berry, Professor of Classics at the University of Swansea.