Radical with Amol Rajan

Conversations about tomorrow, from Today.

Every week Amol Rajan talks to radicals, pioneers and innovators from all over the world. From populism and climate change, to economics and AI... How can their radical ideas help you win the future?

Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.

Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan will be published on Thursdays on BBC Sounds. It will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursdays at 11pm. Visualised versions of the podcast will also be available on BBC iPlayer and YouTube.

Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast.

Last refreshed: June 12th, 2026 at 7:46 AM ⓘ

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Episodes

The End of Endless Growth: Should We Put the Brakes on Economic Expansion? (Kate Raworth)

What if growth wasn’t the main goal for economic prosperity? Kate Raworth, the author and economist behind Doughnut Economics, tells Amol why she thinks that measuring success by GDP growth is unsustainable, immoral, and an unfit economic model for the 21st century. Kate’s thesis goes against centuries of economic consensus and has radical ideas for how to overhaul the system by prioritising nature and wellbeing. She argues that real abundance is possible, but only if we learn from nature and li...

Jun 11, 2026•1 hr 7 min

Could Ben & Jerry's Be Created Today? (Your Radical Questions with Ben Cohen)

This week, Amol is joined by Ben Cohen, one half of the team behind Ben & Jerry's ice cream, who stopped by on his way to the South by Southwest festival to answer your questions. They include queries on whether ethics is more important to business success than a good product? Can companies be trusted to fulfil corporate responsibilities without government oversight? And how does he square his ethical stance with the fact that his ice cream is an ultra processed food? * WhatsApp: 0330 123 94...

Jun 08, 2026•14 min

Business Reimagined: Should Firms Have a Purpose Beyond Profit? (Ben & Jerry’s Ben Cohen)

Amol is back from his stint in the Celebrity Traitors castle. This week, while in town for the South by Southwest festival, Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's drops by the Radical studio to talk about what took his ice cream company from a single store in rural America into a billion-dollar business. Ben Cohen argues that most corporations have trained people to believe profit and purpose are from separate worlds – while he says that a company’s values should be as important to its mission as making m...

Jun 04, 2026•58 min

How Close Are We to a Cure for Cancer? (Your Radical Questions with Professor Sir John Bell)

The FT’s John Burn-Murdoch stands in for Amol, joined this week by the immunologist and geneticist Professor Sir John Bell. After talking about the radical change being ushered in by successive medical breakthroughs on the main podcast, Sir John takes your questions on implications of this profound change. Will we see only wealthy people being able to benefit from these revolutionary treatments? What impact will the Trump administration have on the advance of medical science? And just how close ...

Jun 01, 2026•20 min

Healthcare, Reinvented: How Dramatic Medical Breakthroughs Are Quietly Changing Your Life (Professor Sir John Bell)

This week, John Burn-Murdoch sits in for Amol to speak to Professor Sir John Bell, one of Britain’s leading medical scientists, about the huge (and often undiscussed) medical breakthroughs changing how we live, age and die. Medical advances have already added 12 years to average life expectancy in the UK in the last 50 years. But the next revolution may be even more radical: earlier cancer detection, personalised vaccines, obesity drugs, AI-driven prevention and treatments that could keep us hea...

May 28, 2026•53 min

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