Podcasts

At Christmas time our thoughts often turn to a wider perspective. It is indeed a time when faith is celebrated, but many struggle to find a reconciliation between everyday life, what science teaches us about the world, and their faith. This is an attempt to make sense of it all, written by Gavin Oldham some years ago. It’s called ‘Love in Creation’.

With the help of guests, Malcolm McLean, from Barnet Waddingham, Claire Walsh, head of advice at Unbiased, Cleona Lira from 2Plan Wealth Management and Caroline Siarkiewicz from the Money Advice Service. Sarah looks at how you can get a head start on your finances in 2017

2016 has been an eventful year for investments with the FTSE recently closing above 7000, just missing out on an all time high. Sarah is taking a look back at 2016 and what investments succeeded and which ones didn't. To look back with Sarah, she is joined by, Jeremy Leaf, from Jeremy Leaf and Co estate agents, Justin Urquhart-Stewart, one of the founders of seven Investment Management, John Mulligan director of market and member relations at the World Gold Council and Claire Walsh, head of advice at Unbiased.

Over recent years, finance has been moving into the online world, most of us now bank online, we can get financial advice online, invest online and even sort out a mortgage online. So how is financial technology developing and what does the future of finance look like? To answer this Sarah is joined by Gemma Godfrey founder of Moola, Victor Trokoudes, CEO and co-founder of Plum and Chris Skinner, a writer, commentator and chairman of the Financial Services Club.

Joining Sue in the studio is David Courtier-Dutton, CEO and founder of SoundOut, a crowdfunding and predictive analytics platform for the music business. With a background in Law and property development, David takes us through his career and the musical influences that helped him along the way

The Business of Film with film critic, James Cameron Wilson looking at the biggest winners and losers at the box office this week.

Almost half of us are set to be dashing to the shops in the countdown to Christmas, spending on average £66 on finalising festivities, amounting to £1.5 billion across the UK. Jinan Rahma spoke to Sarah Willingham, entrepreneur and personal finance expert. She began by asking about what the research showed regarding our gift buying habits at Christmas.

M&S has won the prize for the most improved performance of a Christmas advert, according to new research from Kantar TNS. And this is found to be because it is a perfect blend of relevant, emotive and novel. Kantar TNS has revealed for the first time the three measures that really determine whether a campaign will be noticed and remembered by consumers for a long time.

2017: The year of ‘sofa volunteering’, vegetarianism gets bloodthirsty and the end of the World Wide Web? 2016 may go down in history as a year no-one could have predicted - but the innovation foundation Nesta publishes its agenda-setting annual predictions – the 10 giant trends, social movements and tech breakthroughs that will change our lives in 2017. Some of the charity’s previous predictions, including smellovision, are still on the drawing board but on the 5th Anniversary of the first prediction list, Director of the Innovation Lab at Nesta, Helen Goulden, explores this year’s list and which former predictions are now a part of everyday life for millions…

Annually, each woman in the UK spends 33 hours in total shopping for gifts, wrapping presents, and entertaining family and friends, amounting to 94 days over a lifetime Using the ONS Unpaid Work calculator to determine the value of this workload, Scottish Widows has found that the total value of the hours women spend preparing Christmas over their lifetime equates to £19,356 - £4,926 more than men over a lifetime. Olivia Demetriades was joined by Dr Sally Ann Law, a personal and executive coach who's been working with Scottish Widows on the report.