Radical with Amol Rajan

Sophie Pender grew up on council estates in North London, became the first in her family to go to university, trained as a corporate lawyer - then walked away from a six-figure salary to fight Britain’s class problem. She’s the founder of ‘The 93% Club’, a network for state-educated students and professionals, named after the proportion of people in Britain who go to state schools. But Sophie argu...

For this week’s Q&A, Amol is joined by the economist, author, Labour peer, and happiness champion Lord Richard Layard. In their previous conversation, Lord Layard outlined his radical idea; that government policymaking should be decided first and foremost by how it impacts overall happiness and wellbeing. Now, he answers your questions on the NHS and mental health, how we should measure succes...

This week, Amol sits down with Lord Richard Layard, the author, economist, and Labour peer who has spent decades making the case for happiness and wellbeing. He successfully helped implement talking therapy to the NHS, and was a key figure in persuading the UK government to measure wellbeing. But he wants to go further - in this conversation, Lord Layard outlines why he wants happiness to become t...

Oisín Rogers takes your questions on how pubs can not only survive, but thrive. In the main episode we heard Oisín’s radical ideas about why he thinks pubs are essential not just for our history and identity, but also for the problems of the modern age. Today, Oisín considers the old-fashioned pub customs some people cherish and others find faintly terrifying: no laptops, no swearing, no sprawling...

The British pub has played a huge part in our lives for hundreds of years: it’s a place to eat, drink, grieve, flirt, celebrate and put the world to rights. Yet thousands have disappeared, and many more are fighting to stay open. This week, Amol speaks to Oisín Rogers, co-founder of The Devonshire in Soho. For Oisín, saving pubs isn’t just about nostalgia - it’s about defending the everyday places...

This week, Shiv Malik, the man behind the proposals for ‘Forest City 1’, takes your questions. He’s a former investigative journalist turned campaigner: instead of writing another book about Britain’s housing crisis, he’s trying to build his way out of it. Forest City is his ambitious pitch for Britain’s first new city in more than 50 years: a million-person settlement east of Cambridge, with arou...

This week, Amol is joined by the author and journalist Shiv Malik, to discuss his plan to build a new mega-city from scratch in East Anglia. In 2010 Shiv Malik wrote a book called the Jilted Generation, which argued that anyone born since 1979 has been robbed of their future because of how expensive home ownership has become. Now, he’s dedicating his life to a plan for a new city that he thinks wi...

Kate Raworth believes that mainstream economists have got it wrong for decades. For her, reducing everything to a simple measure of gross domestic product and increasing that number every year is a huge mistake that is harming both people and planet. In 2017 she proposed a radical alternative in a book called ‘Doughnut Economics’. It proposes a new economic model that priortises social and environ...

What if growth wasn’t the main goal for economic prosperity? Kate Raworth, the author and economist behind Doughnut Economics, tells Amol why she thinks that measuring success by GDP growth is unsustainable, immoral, and an unfit economic model for the 21st century. Kate’s thesis goes against centuries of economic consensus and has radical ideas for how to overhaul the system by prioritising natur...

This week, Amol is joined by Ben Cohen, one half of the team behind Ben & Jerry's ice cream, who stopped by on his way to the South by Southwest festival to answer your questions. They include queries on whether ethics is more important to business success than a good product? Can companies be trusted to fulfil corporate responsibilities without government oversight? And how does he square his...

Amol is back from his stint in the Celebrity Traitors castle. This week, while in town for the South by Southwest festival, Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's drops by the Radical studio to talk about what took his ice cream company from a single store in rural America into a billion-dollar business. Ben Cohen argues that most corporations have trained people to believe profit and purpose are from separ...

The FT’s John Burn-Murdoch stands in for Amol, joined this week by the immunologist and geneticist Professor Sir John Bell. After talking about the radical change being ushered in by successive medical breakthroughs on the main podcast, Sir John takes your questions on implications of this profound change. Will we see only wealthy people being able to benefit from these revolutionary treatments? W...

This week, John Burn-Murdoch sits in for Amol to speak to Professor Sir John Bell, one of Britain’s leading medical scientists, about the huge (and often undiscussed) medical breakthroughs changing how we live, age and die. Medical advances have already added 12 years to average life expectancy in the UK in the last 50 years. But the next revolution may be even more radical: earlier cancer detecti...

Oli Dugmore is in for Amol this week, and he's joined by Andy Cato to answer your radical questions about the regenerative farming movement. Before becoming a farmer, Andy was a successful musician and DJ as one half of Groove Armada. He sold the rights to his back catalogue to pursue a career in agriculture, pioneering regenerative farming methods though his company, Wildfarmed. In this episode,...

This week, guest host Oli Dugmore, speaks to Andy Cato, one half of electronic music duo Groove Armada and a leading advocate for regenerative farming. Andy argues that modern agriculture is reaching a breaking point. He says that a reliance on chemical farming has degraded our ecosystems, taken agency away from farmers, and made us over reliant on fragile international trade systems. Through rege...

With Amol away, Eliza Filby, who an author and historian specialising in generational change, steps in for this week’s Q&A on young women and the “femosphere”. Jilly Kay, Professor of media and communications studies at Loughborough University, coined the term “femosphere”), and is here to answer your questions on the divide between young men and women, what role social media algorithms might...

Reid Hoffman is one of the founding fathers of the modern technology industry – an early investor and champion of the world of AI and the co-founder of the largest professional network in the world, LinkedIn. In this episode, he answers your questions on whether tech leaders understand the scale of their responsibility over the job market, how politicians will deal with the potential repercussions...

Are young men and women being pushed further apart? Recent polling by Merlin Strategies for the New Statesman suggests a growing divide: Gen Z women are less likely than their male peers to describe themselves as “happy”, “ambitious”, “excited” or “fulfilled, and only 35% of women under 25 say they have a positive view of men. Professor of Media and Communications at Loughborough University, Dr Ji...

This week, Amol is joined by the tech billionaire Reid Hoffman. Hoffman is best known for creating the largest professional network in the world, LinkedIn, and revolutionising the world of work. His radical idea is that he wants to do it again with a rapid adoption of AI in the workplace in a way that is safe and ethical. The question is, how? In this episode we ask one of the world’s richest men...

Amol puts your questions, queries, and concerns about AI to Matt Clifford, co-founder of Entrepreneurs First and former AI adviser to Number 10. Matt is a strong advocate for Britain’s rapid uptake of AI to boost the economy, but what are the risks? We asked him about capitalism, tech stifling creativity, universal basic income, how the UK government deals with the speed of AI development, and wha...

This week, Amol speaks to Matt Clifford, co-founder of Entrepreneurs First and former AI adviser to Number 10. Matt’s radical idea is simple; he wants to make Britain wealthy again by supercharging economic growth. He argues that economic stagnation has left the UK with flat living standards and wages. In short, he says, Britain needs a pay rise - and the way to get it is through a rapid adoption...

This week, Amol puts your questions to the businesswoman Emma Grede - from opportunity and motivation, to how dyslexia can contribute to our work ethic and the way we approach tasks. Emma Grede is the co‑founder of Skims, created with her husband Jens and Kim Kardashian, and the CEO and co‑founder of Good American, a fashion label known for its focus on inclusivity. She also serves on the board of...

This week, the entrepreneur Emma Grede challenges ‘old thoughts’ about work-life balance, money, motherhood and success. She argues that focus, trade-offs and relentless effort matter more than comfort. From growing up in East London to building global businesses, she makes the case that opportunity still exists, if you’re willing to chase it. But are her ideas liberating - or just unforgiving? Em...

Amol puts your Radical questions to Adrian Wooldridge, a Bloomberg columnist and author of ‘Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism’. They discuss individualism and society, a decline in support for the centre ground, the potential dangers of nostalgia, and how the political centre could engage young people. GET IN TOUCH  * WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480  * Email: radical@bbc.co.uk Ep...

This week, the columnist and author Adrian Wooldridge joins Amol to argue that liberalism is not only the best ideology for the future, but that it’s also under serious threat. Wooldridge sees populist movements on the right and identity-focused politics on the left as potentially fatal to liberal principles. The once dominant post-war philosophy has had a bad rap recently, so why should we bring...