The Bottom Line

Few things in working life are as familiar or as dreaded as presentations, but done well they can persuade and even inspire. So what are the tricks to getting them right?

From nerves to narrative, Evan Davis explores how structure, delivery and storytelling shape the way ideas land, and why clarity and connection matter more than ever.

And is there still a role for the much-maligned PowerPoint slide?

Evan is joined by:

Abi Eniola, practitioner, RADA Business;

Production team:

Producer: Osman Iqbal

Cyber criminals have seriously damaged some household names recently - M&S, Co-op, North Face, Harrods - but what really happens behind the scenes when a business is hacked?

Evan Davis speaks to the former head of information security at Royal Mail about the major attack it suffered in 2023 - from the initial alert and the eye-watering ransom demand, to the media leak and the long, slow rebuild.

Plus, how should you negotiate with hackers, how sophisticated have they become, and how do they choose their victims?

Evan is joined by:

Jon Staniforth, former Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Royal Mail;

Production team:

Producer: Simon Tulett

Discussing pay is one of society’s big taboos - it’s just not the done thing to ask other people what they earn. And it can be even more hush-hush in the workplace - we’re not told to keep quiet, but somehow everyone does. And yet, most of us would love to know what our colleagues earn.

So would lifting the lid on salaries trigger resentment and frustration, or be a tool for fairness and accountability? Evan Davis explores the pros and cons of pay transparency — from closing gender pay gaps to boosting retention – and speaks to one boss who’s tried a radical approach.

Is it the next frontier in corporate accountability, or does the culture of secrecy still serve a purpose?

The definitive business podcast from the BBC.

President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports have shaken up the global economic order, but why have so many brands turned to China to make their products in the first place, and how exactly do they do it?

Evan is joined by:

Nick Grey, founder and CEO, Gtech;

Production team:

Producer: Simon Tulett

Richard Farleigh grew up poverty-stricken in outback Australia as one of eleven children. When he was an infant, he was taken into care and spent most of his childhood in a foster home. A love of puzzles, a determination to prove himself, and some teachers who believed in his abilities, helped him gain a scholarship to university. From there he became a successful investment fund manager, eventually retiring at 34 to become an entrepreneur, and later an angel investor. The former dragon talks to Evan Davis about his new book Humble Stumbles, and how some of his early entrepreneurial decisions didn’t work out quite as well as he’d hoped.

Production team:

(Photo credit: Visual Marvels)

The child of immigrant parents to Australia, Erinch was taught to want a stable life. He was having a successful career at Proctor and Gamble, but one day had a realisation that this was not what he wanted to be doing with his life. Now Erinch is a business and enterprise lead at the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, and designs businesses so they follow a social or ecological purpose. The social enterprise expert talks to Evan Davis about how he dealt with discovering his values were not aligning with his career path and what he did next.

Production team:

After 14 years of having a successful career in media, Sophie found herself unemployed. She thought with her skills and experience finding a new role would be easy, but it was the opposite. After struggling with applications and repeated denials, Sophie decided she wanted to change the process of applying for a job. The employment specialist talks to Evan Davis about how she’s trying to change the way recruitment works with her business Pollen Careers.

Production team:

(Photo Credit: Sophie O’Brien)

At a time when coding and IT was in its infancy, Sir Kenneth fortuitously took a computer class to get out of cross country running; that choice would shape the rest of his life. From an internship at IBM, he later went on to a senior position at Wang laboratories, but then was fired after an unsuccessful management buyout. He eventually struck out on his own and founded two merchant banks. The entrepreneur talks to Evan Davis about the moment he was fired after trying to engineer a management buyout, and then what happened next.

Production team:

When a family member gets sick, it can mean major changes to our lives. For Chris May, it meant he needed a role that could be done entirely from home. He quit his job, and created his own enterprise doing management consulting. One of the contracts he had after that was to create a report on the standards of north London hospitals. Instead of just a report, Chris created an entire database, and his work snowballed from there. The health technology entrepreneur talks to Evan Davis about how he eventually created the database for the entire NHS.

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