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Why is America the world's richest nation? Is it mostly because of the government, or is it thanks to entrepreneurs and businessmen?
In the second of this three-part series, Jacques reveals how fear remains one of the most powerful drivers of our spending. Visiting a neuroscience lab, Jacques hears from a consumer psychologist about how our brains are much more responsive to negative than to positive stimuli. He also meets some experts who have turned this knowledge into an art form, helping manufacturers make billions from our anxieties and insecurities. At the remote chateau of French anthropologist Clotaire Rapaille, Jacques learns how our sense of fear drives us in ways many of us do not understand - and how Rapaille's insights have helped companies sell us everything from SUVs to cigarettes. At the Beverley Hills pad of multimillionaire marketer Rohan Oza, he hears how Oza's connections to celebrities helped propel VitaminWater into the soft drink stratosphere, despite the fact that the product's health claims have been called into question. Jacques also confronts the men who say they are combating our most deep-seated fear - of age and decline. In Las Vegas, he mingles with the doctors and businessmen attending a global conference aimed at selling us ways to stay young and healthy, challenging them to justify their claims for the anti-aging business that has made them rich.
2/3 • The Men Who Made Us Spend • 2014 • Economics
Britain is on the brink of a technological revolution. Machines and artificial intelligence are beginning to replace jobs like never before. Reporter Rohan Silva looks at the workplaces already using this new technology and asks whether we should feel threatened by it, or whether it will benefit all of us. Are we ready for one of the biggest changes the world of work has ever seen?
2015 • Economics
Thursday, October 24: the Wall Street Stock Exchange crashes, the greatest economic crisis of the 20th century suddenly breaks out. The crash, fueled by frenetic speculation, and by the idea that everyone could get rich without limits, put a final stop to the euphoria of the 1920s.
If you were setting out to make a country rich, what kind of mindsets and ideas would be most likely to achieve your goals? We invent a country, Richland, and try to imagine the psychology of its inhabitants.
The School of Life • 2015 • Economics