S1 Ep22: The economics of the Great War

Who kept the courts sitting and the streetlights lit when the state had almost no money to pay anyone?Two hundred years ago, British local government ran on unpaid labour. In a parliamentary survey of...

26 Jun 20min

Defence spending is rising whether voters like it or not. The UK has committed to 2.5% of national income and aims for nearer 3.5% over the next decade, £30bn a year for each percentage point. What do...

19 Jun 26min

In January 1860 the New York Times gave its blessing to a new machine: the sewing machine. These "iron needle-women", it wrote, were the only invention that could be claimed “chiefly for women's benef...

12 Jun 19min

Every day, billions of transactions settle between strangers who have no idea which bank the other uses. That lack of friction is not automatic. Nine-tenths of the money in daily circulation has been ...

5 Jun 27min

Someone once held a patent on the swing. A piece of wood. Two ropes. The US Patent Office granted it. How often does that actually happen, and what does it cost when the system gets it wrong? Or, how ...

29 Mai 32min

The fiat money system has survived the Great Inflation, the global financial crisis, and a pandemic. But can it survive digital currencies?Bitcoin and the blockchain solved a genuine problem in comput...

22 Mai 26min

Europe's NATO members have pledged 3.5% of GDP to rearmament. The political argument is already about which social programmes will be sacrificed to pay for this, when the government chooses guns inste...

15 Mai 21min

More than one in eight people living in the EU today was born in another country. In fourteen of the bloc's largest economies, it is closer to one in six. For ten years, the same team of researchers h...

8 Mai 25min