Tim Harford is one of Britain's best-known explainers of economics — presenter of BBC Radio 4's More or Less, author of multiple bestselling books including The Undercover Economist, and longtime columnist at the Financial Times. But as this episode makes clear, almost none of it was planned. Tim talks to Paul Johnson and Michael Kell about a career built on curiosity, accident, and a willingness to follow what genuinely interested him rather than what seemed sensible.

Tim's career in economics began with a PPE degree at Oxford, followed by a master's in economics, but then spent years in conventional institutional roles he mostly didn't enjoy: management consultancy, the Shell scenarios team, the World Bank. It was a chance conversation at Shell that prompted him to start writing what would become The Undercover Economist — and even then, the path to publication was slow and accidental, involving an FT internship, a hiring freeze, and pieces filed from Washington while technically working for the World Bank. Then in 2006, the book, the FT job and a TV series all arrived at once, after a five-year build.

In the interview, we explore how Tim thinks about the craft of economic communication: how you make difficult ideas accessible without dumbing them down, and why it matters in a world full of misleading data and confident claims. He is sharply critical of what he calls "premature enumeration" — economists who reach for data sets before they have properly understood how the world actually works. He uses the 2008 financial crisis as the example: economists modelled finance generically, without thinking like lawyers or anthropologists about the actual contracts being written and the risks being created.

We also talk about his career choices: how an honest word from a trusted mentor — who told him bluntly he was not good enough for academic economics — turned out to be one of the most valuable things anyone ever said to him. And how curiosity, rather than ambition, has been the real engine of everything he has done.

Links:

Watch this episode on YouTube

If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next

Stephanie Flanders is one of the UK's most recognisable economics voices. She grew up in a family steeped in journalism and performance — her father was the comedian and songwriter Michael Flanders, of Flanders and Swann fame — and came of age politically during the high-water mark of Thatcherism, when she first realised that if you wanted to understand politics, you had to understand economics.

That instinct took her from Oxford to Harvard's Kennedy School, to the leader-writing desk of the Financial Times, to the US Treasury under Larry Summers, to eleven years as Economics Editor of the BBC, to JP Morgan and now Bloomberg, where she is Head of Economics and Government.

In this conversation, Paul and Michael explore the full arc of that career. Paul asks what it takes to explain economics well on television, how the relationship between economics and politics has shifted — and whether the financial markets are underpricing some serious long-term risks. Michael explores the personal side: what draws someone away from a prestigious and visible job at the BBC, what Stephanie learned from working inside very different kinds of institution, and what qualities she believes have underpinned her success.

Among the things Stephanie reflects on:

• the vertigo of going live on the 10 o'clock news knowing there will always be someone in the audience who knows if you've got something wrong;
• the surprising amount of "made-up nonsense" talked around financial markets;
• why she has found it useful, in general, to assume that the world isn't conspiring against her;
• and the intellectual honesty she has most admired in the people she has learned from.

A wide-ranging, candid conversation about economics in practice, institutional life, and the craft of making complicated ideas both accurate and accessible.

Links:

Watch this episode on YouTube

If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next

Sir Steve Webb is widely regarded as one of the most effective pensions ministers Britain has ever had. In this first episode of Econ to Icon, Paul Johnson and Michael Kell sit down with the man who drove through the new state pension, helped introduce automatic enrolment, and has spent his post-political career holding the system to account from the outside. Steve is characteristically direct, self-deprecating and thoughtful throughout — on both the substance of pension policy and the more personal questions about career, identity and what it means to do work that matters.

Steve began his working life as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal, before moving into academia and then spending 18 years as a Lib Dem MP. The final five of those years were spent as Pensions Minister in the coalition government of 2010 to 2015, working alongside Iain Duncan Smith and negotiating with a sceptical Treasury to push through reforms that changed retirement income for millions of people.

In this conversation, we explore:

• How Steve got interested in economics and what drew him to pensions specifically
• What it actually takes to get a major policy reform through government — the coalition dynamics, the Treasury negotiations, and the role of personal relationships
• The triple lock, automatic enrolment, and the new state pension: how those reforms happened and why they mattered
• The WASPI issue — and Steve's candid reflection on what he would have done differently
• Losing his seat in 2015 at 49: what it felt like to lose not just a job but an identity, and how he rebuilt
• His post-political career at Royal London and now Lane Clark & Peacock — and how he used his platform to uncover £850 million in underpaid state pensions
• What economics training actually gives you when you're making real decisions under pressure
• What he's learned about career transitions, reinvention, and finding work that genuinely fits

Links:

Watch this episode on YouTube

If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next