Arts & Ideas

What does trade set in motion beyond the exchange of goods? Anne McElvoy explores the movement of commerce across time as a carrier of habits, ideas, ambitions and influence, as well as of material things. From the early modern world, where trade was entangled with colonial expansion and shaped by unequal, sometimes unexpected encounters, to the supply chains and diplomatic negotiations of the present, this discussion asks how economic exchange has also mediated cultural contact. Alongside rivalry and wealth, how has trade given rise to its own languages of civility, reciprocity and trust?
Guests include:
Nandini Das is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Oxford University and author of This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England
Jeremy Hunt is a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the author of Can We Be Rich Again?
Soumaya Keynes is an economist and columnist at the Financial Times and the author of How to Win a Trade War
Professor Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School
Dr Lauren Working is a Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at York University and author of A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England
Producer: Ruth Watts

Shahidha Bari investigates the child’s-eye view of the world. From navigating AI, to living through war, to the joys of reading, what makes children’s perspectives so distinctive? With writer Katherine Rundell, psychotherapist Josh Cohen, nature writer and novelist Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, historian Emma Butcher, and psychologist Nomisha Kurian.
Producer: Luke Mulhall

How has the figure of the outsider or eccentric has been used to explore English culture, history, politics, and our relationship with nature and the countryside? Matthew Sweet discusses, including a re-reading of Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1926 novel Lolly Willowes, in which a middle aged woman leaves her suburban life behind to become a witch. With philosopher Charles Foster, literary historian Jade Munslow Ong, political philosopher Sophie Scott Brown, and psychotherapist Mark Vernon.
Producer: Luke Mulhall

300 years after the publication of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Matthew Sweet looks at satire, past and present. How can satirists reflect critically and humorously on political events in an age of social media saturation and at a time when reality can seem stranger than fiction?
He is joined by:
Andrew Hunter Murray, comedian, writer and host of Radio 4's The Naked Week. His new book is Bad Deeds.
Jan Ravens, actor and impressionist, known for her work on Spitting Image and Radio 4's Dead Ringers
Rosie Holt, actor and comedian. Rosie's shows Churchill's Urinal and Rosie Holt: The Illegal Aliens have landed! will both be at Edinburgh Festival.
Tom Peck, Parliamentary sketch writer for The Times
and
Siôn Parkinson, artist, Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and 2026 AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker.
Producer: Eliane Glaser

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the concentration, distribution and morality of wealth now and look back at An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published by the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith in 1776, which gives an early account of what builds nations' wealth and introduced concepts such as free markets, the division of labour, and productivity.
Our guests for this episode of BBC Radio 4's Friday night ideas discussion programme are:
Vicky Pryce, economist and business consultant and co-author of Mismanaged Decline What Politicians Won’t Tell You About the Economy
Maha Rafi Atal, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Glasgow. The University is holding a series of events to mark the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations.
Dafydd Daniel, Lecturer in Divinity at the University of St Andrews
Allister Heath, business journalist
Hettie O'Brien, Guardian writer and author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself
Producer: Eliane Glaser
You can hear another discussion about searching for economic solutions in the most recent episode of Start the Week, Radio 4's Monday morning discussion programme where Tom Sutcliffe was joined by Mariana Mazzucato, Jeremy Hunt and Patrick Foulis.