Ratio Talks

Caroline Knowles is an academic and writer, exploring unusual but important issues. For example, in this episode of Ratio Talks she reflects on lessons from her book Serious Money based on a walk through, as she puts it, plutocratic London, talking to people who have more money than most of us can imagine. This isn’t a book that equates great fortune with joy. Severe and multiple advantage, as I call it, turns out to be about as much fun as severe and multiple disadvantage.

In the podcast, I ask Caroline if some of the downside of disadvantage -shame, backing away from society, social isolation- apply to those who live a life of abundance. What marks the two groups apart is the impact on the places they live. One of Caroline’s academic collaborators drew the map below representing the distribution of English ‘high net work individuals’ -those with more than a million dollars of disposable income. As I say in the podcast, these people literally screw up the map of the country. Caroline has followed up this themes with a new book, Uneasy Streets, which shows how Chinese money is reshaping urban life in Britain. Serious Money was published by Allen Lane. The diagram is from Roger Burrow’s article (with colleagues) Welcome to Pikettyville?: Mapping London's Alpha Territories, Sociological Review, 2016.

My guest on Ratio Talks this week has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in public health. He worked with Michael Marmot in his early efforts to translate research on health inequalities in public policy. I have enjoyed many conversations with Jason about how we recover the innovative zeal of early 20th Century public health leaders with their steadfast focus on the power of ‘we’. Jason has sought to apply this thinking as public health lead in three London boroughs, and in important reviews of public policy such as his report of learning from the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people in 2017.

Jason was public health lead in the London Borough of Newham, and he has published his reflections in a new book Same Storm Different Boats, available, as they say, in all good bookstores.

We are joined by Libby Sallnow, lead author of the Lancet Commission on The Value of Death, and Professor at the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department at University College London.

In the conversation, we refer to Jacqueline Rose’s The Plague, a collection of essays on inequalities in and lack of respect for death.

This episode of Ratio Talks is timed to coincide with the launch of the new nine year strategy for the Lloyds Bank Foundation. The episode is a continuation of the conversation with Matt Hyde, CEO of the Foundation. There are reasons for deep scepticism when it comes to philanthropy and strategic change (especially in the U.K.) But Matt has spent his first 18 months at Lloyds listening to his colleagues, to grantees and to people in communities around England and Wales. The result is a radical change in thinking, giving and collaborating.

Matt sets out some of the main tenets of the strategy in the podcast and then we spend some time kicking the tyres to see if it is ready for the road. We are particularly fortunate to be joined at the end by Patrick McCarthy, former President of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the largest philanthropy working with children in the United States, Patrick is a big Matt Hyde fan, and that encourages him to be robust in his analysis of the strategy.

The Foundation is inviting people in England and Wales to contribute. If you have ideas about the strategy, ways it could be improved, things you are doing that may be relevant, or people and organisations that can help take the work forward, Matt would love to hear from you.

Matt Hyde is the guest for the next two episodes of Ratio Talks. Matt is CEO of the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales, but made his name leading federations and confederations that allow power to remain with local actors. In this episode, Matt talks about his upbringing, how it shaped his outlook on civil society, and how this played out in his leadership of the National Union of Students, and The Scout Association. He also describes the story behind The Big Help Out, which will be running again this year from the 5th to the 8th of June.

We are fortunate also to be joined by Dame Julia Cleverdon, Chair of the National Lottery Community Fund, and old friend of Matt, to reflect on and draw out some broader themes from the conversation.

In the next episode of Ratio Talks, Matt reflects on the new strategy for the Lloyds Bank Foundation, the day after its public launch.

This week’s podcast is a little different. It is a live recording at Ratio’s home in Somerset House with Celestin Okoroji and Jolyon Miles-Wilson, founders of the research centre Just Knowledge. Ratio has incubated Just Knowledge in its first year, although as I note in my introduction, with two Wellcome grants to their name I am beginning to feel as if they are incubating me. It is a good feeling!

Celestin and Jolyon are technically gifted, but their work is also fundamental to how we navigate the changing world of machines and data. Bottom line, Celestin and Jolyon are seeking to put data into the hands of people in the communities from which the data are drawn. They see people in datasets as the best people to interpret data, and advise on the policy implications. It is a radical position. And it is fundamental to the relationship between state, civil society and capital that has emerged as a dominant theme in Ratio’s work.

In the conversation Celestin and Jolyon refer to several studies and data sets. They include:

* their paper on Stop and Search data

* the publicly accessible dataset generated by their work

* a report on their ⁠work in Northumberland Park, North London

* The residents of Northumberland Park made a submission to the planning process based on Just Knowledge’s work. There is a discussion in the podcast about this response of Haringey Council. You can find the councils response here. The DM Final Officer Report Document dated 12/12/2025 is the relevant document.

Celestin made an error attributing a report for Tottenham Hotspur to McKinsey when, in fact, it was prepared by EY. The report is available here.

Special thanks to Nik Paget-Tomlinson who recorded the event and engineered the podcast, and to our home at Somerset House for providing such a wonderful venue for the event.

This is the final episode in our series On Religion. The series was co-produced with Chine McDonald from Theos and Liz Slade from the Unitarians, and it is Chine and Liz who bring the series to a close.

In the episode we reference a lot of other writers in this space, as well as some art. They include:

Markus Bockmuehl who edited The Cambridge Companion to Jesus.

Gillian Rose author of Love’s Work published by Penguin in 1995.

Chine referred to this comprehensive survey of religious and spiritual attitudes in the U.K.

You can listen to Andy Burnham’s Theos Annual Lecture for 2025 here.

This is Christ on the Cross by Francisco de Zurbarán, a source of meditation for me on regular visits to the Art Institute of Chicago in another life.

The series feels unfinished. Later in the year, I will see if the abundance of learning that came out of the conversations settles into some sort of pattern. If it does, I will try and get that pattern onto paper.

I am going to hand over Relational Social Policy substack to a series of pieces that bring together, in summary form, what I have learned in the last eight years about the power of relationships between people, and between peoples.

The regular conversations with people whose work informs a relational social policy will go out on the Ratio Substack. It will start with a couple of my colleagues, Celestin Okoroji and Jolyon Miles-Wilson who have established a new research centre, Just Knowledge, to democratise data.

Clare Farrell is my guest on the podcast this week, the penultimate episode in the series On Religion. Clare is co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, known as XR.

Non-violent resistance lies at the heart of XR, and Clare notes how those drawn to the movement, and especially those able to train on civil resistance are often explicitly religious or spiritual.

In the podcast Clare refers to the work of Catholic theologian Carmody Grey, and in particular this lecture What Do We Want To Sustain? She has also drawn on the work of Buddhist psychologist John Vervaeke, and to this series of conversations and lectures. Both Clare and series collaborator Liz Slade are part of the Hard Art Collective that has experimented with new ways of thinking about religion.

Clare’s latest work includes the Humanity Project, a collaboration with Nick Gardham, and the Do-tank Absurd Intelligence.

Nick Spencer is the guest for this episode of Ratio Talks, part of the series On Religion. Nick is Senior Fellow at the think tank Theos and well known for his books on science and religion including The Landscapes of Science and Religion, Playing God, and Magisteria.

In the episode, we also refer to Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion.

The discussion includes a reference to the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee on the teaching of evolution in schools. David Runciman’s podcast Past, Present, Future devotes an entire episode to the trial and is well worth a listen.

Liz Slade, co-creator of this series On Religion, gives her reflections on Nick’s work at the end, and refers to Unitarian Church member and the man who discovered oxygen Joseph Priestley.

Nick’s next book Christianity and the Future of Welfare is due out with Cambridge University Press in 2026.

The podcast this week is in the safe hands of Chine McDonald from the think-tank Theos. Chine continues the series On Religion by bringing together her colleagues Jagbir Jhutti Johal, Joy Madeiros and Laura Marks to talk about the Women’s Faith Forum. Jagbir is Professor or Religion at the University of Birmingham. Joy is Founding Director of Oasis UK, a group of organisations delivering education, housing, health, anti human trafficking and a wide range of local community projects. Laura is a social activist, policy adviser, and writer.

This week’s contributor to the Ratio Talks series On Religion is Liz Slade from the Unitarians. Liz helped shape the series.

The Unitarians have been a radical force within and outside of organised religion. Joseph Chamberlain’s work to bring utilities under municipal control in Birmingham in the 1870s, to take just one example, was in part inspired by the liberal traditions of the Unitarian Church he attended.

Liz is leader of the Unitarians at a turning point in their history. On the one hand church attendance is declining. On the other hand, a new generation are seeking spiritual outlook and meaning in life, and some find in the Unitarian Church a space that can adapt and be shaped to accommodate new ideas.

In the podcast, we explore what this means for the future of organised religion more broadly.

Simon Duffy from Citizens Network and a man of faith, joins the podcast to reflect on the conversation with Liz.