Business Daily

Ed Butler talks to historian Adam Tooze about the legacy of the global financial crisis, which peaked with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Adam Tooze is a professor at Columbia University in New York and the author of a new book Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. He argues that the reverberations of 2008 are still defining much of our political and economic life, from the rise of Donald Trump in the US to youth unemployment and economic policy in Europe.(Photo: Lehman Brothers sign being carried to an auction in London in 2010, Credit: Getty Images)

India has been developing rapidly over the past few decades. But in one way, it can still be very traditional. Women are often expected to stay at home after marriage. And that means only a quarter of Indian women are in paid work, according to the World Bank. So what's behind it? The BBC's Vivienne Nunis hears from Ajit Ranade, chief economist of Aditya Birla Group, and Radhika Kumari, founder of the Pink City Rickshaw Company, a team of female rickshaw drivers overcoming cultural barriers to break into a male-dominated field. (Picture: Pink City Rickshaw driver Pushpa in Jaipur, India. Credit: BBC)

A compelling back story is now de rigueur when it comes to selling us things, especially in the food industry; whether it's a bar of chocolate or a cup of coffee, provenance is everything. We take a trip round London's trendy Shoreditch area with man about town and marketing expert, Peter York who explains why being 'handmade by hipsters' can justify sky high prices. Down in the depths of the British Library, Polly Russell tells us how the idea of the backstory came about. We take a leisurely stroll across town to London Bridge where Tom Sellers takes time out from service at his restaurant, Story, to wax lyrical about his culinary pièce de résistance - an edible candle. Steve Sutton, a Colombian in New York insists that sourcing beans from dangerous 'red zones' is vital to his coffee business, Devoción. And what do you do if you have a product to sell but no story to tell? Simon Manchipp from Shoreditch design agency SomeOne is here to help.(Image: Confident Barista, Credit: Getty)

Sites offering wild theories, and unsupported claims, are increasingly the stuff of modern online discourse. But what's the business model that's fuelling their rise? Alex Jones, the prominent radio host, is pretty much America's best known conspiracy theorist. As well as warning of a deep state conspiracy against the President, he's also claimed that the government is controlling the weather, that demons are taking over America, and that school mass shootings including the 2012 attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 small children dead, was in fact a hoax involving child actors. Such comments, offensive to many in the US, have recently seen his shows removed from Facebook and YouTube and suspended on Twitter, saying he's violating their rules around community reporting. Apple and Spotify have also taken down his podcasts. We hear from James Bridle, the author of a book called New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future, on why conspiracy theories are flourishing in the internet age, and from Filipo Menczer, Professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University, and Charlie Warzel, a news reporter at BuzzFeed, who has been looking at how these sites can now raise tens of millions of dollars, largely by selling medications to followers. Plus Professor Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist and fake news expert at Miami University in Florida who says that conspiracy theories have now themselves become part of the mainstream.(Credit: Stevanovicigor, Getty Images)

Should cities be worried about 'overtourism'? We hear from disgruntled locals in Rome, Edinburgh and Amsterdam. The BBC's Douglas Fraser reports on the dilemmas facing Scottish tourism in the face of rising numbers and Amsterdam novelist Joost de Vries describes the impact of tourists on his home city. Can anything be done? Yes, says Xavier Font, professor of sustainability marketing at the University of Surrey.(Photo: A group of tourists in Barcelona, Credit: Getty Images)

Mining in the developing world still sparks violent protests - so what has the industry learned?Grace Livingstone reports from the Tintaya copper mine in Peru, owned by mining giant Glencore, where local people are angry over the pollution of waterways, and two protesters have been shot. Why do these things still happen? Vishala Sri-Pathma speaks to Henry Hall of mining consultants Critical Resource.Plus, meet "Dr Copper" - the copper market's reputation as a bellwether for the global economy. But why is the market price falling at a time when the world continues to boom? We ask Charlie Durant of commodities analysts CRU Group.(Picture: Miners take a break at the Cabeza de Negro copper mine in Peru; Credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images)

How are elite football clubs able to raise so much money from sponsors and merchandise to spend on the top players?Juventus just paid 100 million euros to buy Cristiano Ronaldo, a player who at 33 years old has only 2-3 years of his peak playing left. Ed Butler asks football finance expert Rob Wilson of Sheffield Hallam University to explain how they get the numbers to add up. Plus Doug Bierton of retailer Classic Football Shirts talks about the fan nostalgia over vintage sponsors, and Nathan Brew, commercial manager at the Llanelli Scarlets explains why the Welsh rugby club decided to make room on their kit for more than 20 sponsors.(Picture: Juventus new signing Cristiano Ronaldo poses with club shirt; Credit: Valerio Pennicino - Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images)

There's trouble brewing in India's tea industry. Tea production is one of India's biggest industries. But it's struggling in the face of increased competition from Africa. Rahul Tandon reports from the tea estates of Assam, where tea pickers demand higher wages, but producers worry about rising costs and falling global prices for tea.(Photo: Tea pickers in Assam, India, Credit: Getty Images)

The developing world's favourite chat app is accused of spreading malicious rumours. In India the rumours led to the lynching of people falsely accused of child abduction, while in Uganda the government has introduced a controversial tax on social media platforms to stop alleged political gossip.Ed Butler visits Kampala where he discovers how popular the app is, both for socialising and for business. Meanwhile Rahul Tandon reports from Kolkata on the unnervingly fast spread of the app across India. Plus Samantha Bradshaw of the Oxford Internet Institute explains what makes Whatsapp particularly well suited for lower income countries.(Picture: Ugandan woman with painted nails using a cell phone; Credit: Godong/UIG via Getty Images)

How is political turmoil hitting tourism and the economy in Nicaragua, and where will it all end?President Daniel Ortega has faced months of mass protests, which have been met with violence by pro-government paramilitary groups, resulting in some 275 deaths. The president has also lost the support of much of the business community.Caitlin Pierce reports from the troubled country on how the once-booming tourism sector is coping. And back in London, Ed Butler speaks to Manuela Orozco of think tank Inter-American Dialogue, and to Nicaraguan opposition leader Juan Sebastian Chamorro.(Picture: A student wearing a gas mask marches demanding the resignation of President Ortega; Credit: Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images)

Skincare is a multi-billion-dollar industry. But do skincare products really work? Vishala Sri-Pathma hears from Amy Elizabeth, a beauty expert at the shopping channel QVC, and dermatologist Dr Anjali Mahto. And Tim Caulfield, professor at the University of Alberta in Canada and author of the book Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? explains why people still buy beauty products even through they know many of their scientific claims are wrong.(Photo: Woman with clay face mask, Credit: Getty Images)

Designers and retailers have long thought of the plus size market as high-risk. Predicting what these customers will buy can be difficult, as they tend to be more cautious about styles.Making larger clothes can be more expensive; higher costs for fabric cannot always be passed on to consumers. In turn, plus-size women shopped less because the industry was not serving them well. Louise O'Reilly is one of Europe's best known plus-size models. She runs a fashion blog called Style Me Curvy, and she says women need to feel good about themselves before they will lose weight.Weight loss expert Steve Miller, who lost several stone himself and now helps others to do the same, says pandering to the overweight is bad for their health.Jacqueline Windsor, a partner at accountants PwC, says retailers may be waking up to the opportunity of styling for larger sizes. Vishala Sri Pathma presents.(Picture: plus size fashion model in blue dress outdoors. Credit: Getty Images.)

Almost all offices have them. The person whose self-belief exceeds their abilities, who belittles their co-workers, and who considers themselves so special and unique, they're left infuriated when others fail to recognise them.We're talking about the office narcissist. Tim Judge, an organisational and leadership psychologist at the Ohio State University, tells us how to spot one. Karlyn Borysenko, author of a book called Zen Your Work, found herself working for what she later realised was a narcissistic boss. She said she had to make use of a number of strategies to cope.And Don Moore, professor at the Haas Business School, says that while self confidence is ok, overconfidence destroys businesses and politics.(Picture: A woman kissing a mirror; Credit: Getty Images)

Can AI takeover from the traditional job interview? Ed Butler speaks to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of business psychology at University College London and chief talent scientist at Manpower, about the shortcomings of the traditional interview, and to Kevin Parker, CEO of HireVue - a firm that employs artificial intelligence to conduct remote video interviews for major companies. And Victoria McLean, boss of CityCV, defends the face-to-face interview.(Photo: A robot job interviewer, Credit: Getty Images)

Young people may be turning their backs on the traditional TV set, but is it stimulating a golden age of drama?Netflix, YouTube and Amazon are better at grabbing our attention via our phones and computers than the screen sitting in the corner of our living rooms. Manuela Saragosa asks how this is transforming the creativity of TV-making, whether it is leading to unhealthy binge-viewing, and if it will kill off the job of the TV channel scheduler.Programme features Christoph Klimmer of TV streaming service Xstream, and Amanda Lotz of the University of Michigan. Produced by Laurence Knight.(Picture: Abandoned TV; Credit: tacojim/Getty Images)

Millennials are the first generation set to be worse off than their parents. Daniel Tomlinson, economic researcher at the Resolution Foundation in the UK, explains. But one notable exception to the trend is Norway. The BBC's Maddy Savage reports from Oslo. And are things really getting worse? Hear why there are reasons for optimism from Gregg Easterbrook, author of a book called It's Better Than It Looks.(Photo: A fishing cabin in Norway, Credit: Getty Images)

Businessman Bill Browder was singled out by Russian President Vladimir Putin, at his summit with US President Donald Trump, as a "person of interest".In an extended interview, Manuela Saragosa asks the man who was once the biggest foreign fund manager in Russia how he came to incur Mr Putin's ire, and about his campaign to get Western nations to pass a "Magnitsky Act" imposing sanctions and visa restrictions on Russian individuals. Plus Dr Florian Otto of political risk consultancy Maplecroft explains what Mr Browder's case can tell us about the risks of doing business in Russia.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Bill Browder testifying to the US Senate; Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Engineers showcase new technologies to help women return to work after maternity leave - but why is the engineering profession itself so male-dominated?Jane Wakefield attends a breast pump hackathon at MIT, speaking to businesses venture capitalists and campaigners such as Catherine D'Ignazio from Make The Breast Pump Not Suck. Jane also hears from engineers Emma Booth of Black & Veatch and Isobel Byrne Hill of ARUP about their experiences of returning to a very male-dominated industry after the birth of their own children, and the importance of networks such as The Women's Engineering Society.(Picture: Woman holds up smart breast pumps; Credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

Recording artists and industry figures discuss the impact of the streaming revolution. Edwin Lane reports on how emerging artists are looking to streaming services like Spotify to help them build a fanbase. Manuela Saragosa hears from recording artist Verite on how she makes a living from streaming revenues alone, and Conrad Withey, the boss of a company called Instrumental, explains how streaming data can help record companies discover new talent.(Photo: A phone displaying Spotify in front of old vinyl LPs in a Paris record shop, Credit: Getty Images)

What responsibility do corporates have to promote LGBTQ rights in countries where homosexuality is still illegal, or gay people are widely persecuted?Ed Butler speaks to Mark McLane, the global head of diversity and inclusion at Barclays, one of the sponsor's of London's pride march this week about what his company is doing in the many countries in which it operates, including the US, where legislation still limits LGBTQ rights. And Nigerian actor Bisi Alimi tells his personal story of why he had to flee his home country because of his sexuality, and why he is now lobbying multinational firms to do more to protect gay and lesbian staff in Nigeria.(Picture: Ugandan men hold a rainbow flag during the annual gay pride in Entebbe, Uganda; Credit: Isaac Kasamani/AFP/Getty Images)

Abbreviated books, short-form TV, time-management gurus - has the cult of speed gone too far and is it time to slow everything down?Ed Butler speaks to two business people hoping to cash in on our ever more hectic lives: Holger Seim co-founded Blinkist, which offers boiled down versions of long-form non-fiction books, while Perrin Chiles runs Adaptive Studios, which produces TV mini-dramas squeezed into slots that can be as short as 10 minutes.But rebellion is afoot in the form of Carl Honore, whose unabbreviated book, In Praise of Slowness, pushes back against our culture's supposed need for speed.(Picture: People rush through Manhattan, New York City; Credit: Georgijevic/Getty Images)

Could blockchain technology solve the global problem of food fraud? Rahul Tandon reports on a meat scandal in India and Manuela Saragosa speaks to Jessi Baker, the boss of Provenance, a company that uses the blockchain to make supply chains more transparent, and to Chris Elliott from the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen's University in Belfast in the UK.(Photo: Cow farming in the UK, Credit: Getty Images)

Coal fires used to beat the bitter cold of Mongolian winters blanket capital city Ulaanbaatar with smog in the winter, the BBC's Roger Hearing finds, when he meets residents from the Ger District.Typical sanitation is makeshift and in the form of latrines, says Choikhand Janchivlamdan, a sanitation expert at the Green Initiative. This can lead to the spread of disease. Lost livestock due to harsh winters and a desire for better education is leading people to the city, she says. As people move to the city from the countryside, the problem gets worse as no new sewage systems are built.Tserenbat Namsrai, Mongolia's environment minister, plans to introduce smokeless fuel in a bid to combat pollution and introducing more electric heating.Robert Ritz, a US professor who lives in the city, says PM2.5 particulates - that's atmospheric particulate matter that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres - kill thousands of people per year.

Two companies dominate the global eyewear industry - and now they are merging into a glasses behemoth. What does it mean for the bespectacled public?Manuela Saragosa investigates the story behind these two anonymous giants - Italian fashion frames designer Luxottica, and French lens-maker Essilor - with the help of American eyewear retail pioneer E Dean Martin, and Gordon Ilett of the UK's Association of Optometrists. And she asks the European Commission why they were happy to wave through their merger earlier this year. Producer: Laurence Knight.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Glasses model frames - black silhouettes isolated on white; Credit: Alxyzt/Getty Images)

The gigantic Oyu Tolgoi copper mine will certainly make some people rich, but how many of them will be Mongolian? Ed Butler speaks to the BBC's Roger Hearing, who is at the mine, fresh from taking a taxi ride hundreds of metres below ground. He has been delving into who will profit more from this vast project in the middle of the Gobi Desert - the Mongolian state or mine operator Rio Tinto. Meanwhile, above ground, the BBC's Joshua Thorpe speaks to some disgruntled herdsmen.(Picture: Mongolian herdsman; Credit: BBC)

The UK still doesn't know what kind of future trading relationship it wants with the EU, more than two years after voting to leave and with less than nine months left to go.Ed Butler and BBC politics correspondent Rob Watson explore the difficult choices that London politicians still refuse to face up to. Audrey Tinline looks at one of the most vexing issues in the negotiations - the Irish border. And Ed speaks to Allie Renison of UK business lobby group, the Institute of Directors, about what kind of a deal her member companies would like to see.(Picture: British Prime Minister Theresa May stands at an EU press conference podium; Credit: JP Black/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Germany is booming, yet some commentators suggest the nation's loss of confidence on the football pitch may mirror economic angst back home.A shortage of skilled workers, inadequate public investment, a failure to grasp new technologies - these are just some of the criticisms that Germans level at their own economic performance. And at the heart of it is a political crisis over the influx of migrants - something many economists say is sorely needed in this ageing nation. Anna-Katarina Noryskiewicz reports from Berlin, plus presenter Rob Young speaks to Gabriel Felbermayr, director of the Ifo Centre for International Economics in Germany.(Picture: A German fan looks dejected following defeat in the 2018 World Cup; Credit: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Harley Davidson and Mid Continent Nail Corp are some of the US employers being hammered by America's escalating tariffs spat with its biggest trade partners.Manuela Saragosa asks Vanessa, the author of The Girl On A Bike blog, what Harley fans like her make of the company's decision to move some motorcycle manufacturing from the US to Thailand in order to dodge new EU retaliatory tariffs. James Glassman of Mid Continent explains how the blow from the US President's steel import tariffs may flatten his company altogether in a county that voted 79% for Mr Trump. Plus former US trade advisor Pippa Malmgren explains why it may be wrong-headed for her government to try to address the country's perennial trade deficit in the first place.(Picture: Hammer and nail; Credit: kutaytanir/Getty Images)

Millions of Syrians, including children as young as 10, are employed illegally in Turkish factories and shops - working long hours, underpaid and without insurance or legal rights. There is talk of an entire lost generation of child workers, missing out on school because their families need them to earn.Ed Butler reports from Istanbul, where he meets a family of garment factory workers who say they are paid less than Turkish colleagues for their 10-12 hour days. He also meets some highly educated professionals, who have been reduced to taking on much lower skilled work since fleeing the civil war in their home country. But does their plight evoke pity among their Turkish hosts? Or resentment that cheap Syrian labour is undercutting their own wages? And what can be done to improve lives, and get their kids out of work and back into school? Ed visits the Turkish charity Hayata Destek (Support to Life) to get some answers.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: A young Syrian refugee in Istanbul; Credit: Raddad Jebarah/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Does the US President mix his business with his politics? And is this anything unusual in Washington DC?Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, a non-profit watchdog in Washington DC, gives a summarised list of the alleged conflicts of interest of this administration, while Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, explains that contrary to popular expectation, almost none of the best performers among the first 44 US Presidents have been businessmen.Plus Professor Martin Gilen of Princeton University tells Ed Butler that the evidence suggests that the influence of money over modern US politics has become as great as during the Gilded Age of robber barons of a century ago.(Picture: Donald Trump at the Trump International Hotel In Washington DC; Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Is kidnapping really that lucrative, and why are some countries, such as Mexico, plagued by the crime?Ed Butler speaks to one kidnap victim from Mexico City, as well as Ioane Grillo, a journalist based there who has spent years studying the phenomenon. Kidnapping consultant Carlos Seoane explains what to do if you receive that dreaded phone call announcing that a loved one has been taken hostage. And Anja Shortland of Kings College London talks us through the logic behind kidnap insurance.(Picture: A woman sits on a dirt road near Tijuana in Mexico after crashing her car while fleeing from would-be kidnappers; Credit: The Washington Post/ contributor/Getty Images)

If you have ever bought something in an online shop or been to a restaurant, chances are you’ve read a review for it, apparently written by a customer. And chances are you’ve also spotted more than a few suspicions ones, which stand out for their unqualified and lavish praise while being unusually free of personal details, or perhaps because they appear as a diatribe of awfulness designed to put you off forever. Who wrote those? In fact, there's a whole industry surrounding fake reviews - and it matters because more and more of us are buying things online and relying on other people's online advice to make the right choice. Freelance journalist Oobah Butler talks to us about his entire fake restaurant in London, James Kay, at review site Tripadvisor, tells us how they try to weed out inventions such as Oobah’s and brand reputation consultant Simon Wadsworth lays on tips for consumers and businesses.(Picture: Customer review rating. Credit: Getty)

Would you invest in North Korea? US President Donald Trump raised the idea at his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. His vision of a private condo on a North Korean beach is probably a long way away, but there are plenty of other countries lacking investment. Paul Domjan, global head of research at Exotix, an investment firm and research agency, explains what a frontier market is.Byung-Yeon Kim, professor of economics at Seoul National University, tells us how North Korea’s economy works.(Picture: A woman carries a boxed flat-screen television on her back as she crosses a road in Pyongyang. Credit: Getty Images.)

Colourism is a more insidious form of racism, and harms the prospects of finding work and love for people with darker skin around the world.Natasha Pizzey reports from Mexico and Daniel Gallas reports from Brazil on the efforts to fight back against the prejudice against skin tone, which often emanates from within the same ethnic community as the victims. Meanwhile, Ed Butler speaks to Sunil Bhatia, a professor of human development at Connecticut College in the US, who has studied the rise of this phenomenon around the world.(Picture: Two young black women with contrasting skin tones; Credit: PeopleImages/Getty Images)