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