Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says that #1 Sam Raimi's Send Help, with Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien, the tale of a work couple being stranded on a desert island, seems overfamiliar. Blending comedy and thrills, he enjoyed it in a schlocky way. #19 is 100 Nights of Hero, a bonkers movie based on a graphic novel with Richard E. Grant and Felicity Jones. Set in a parallel, colour-blind world it's about storytelling and the empowering of women. It does have a distinctive look but is all too flat and needs a stronger director and style. Far more impressive is Anniversary on Netflix. It stars Diane Lane as the matriarch of a close-knit family and is a state-of-the-nation epic with a frighteningly prescient script. There's so much going on, James had to watch it again. Very credible, often tense and with a strong cast, it's a really brilliant movie he discovered completely by accident.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Bigger Picture
Professor Tim Evans of Middlesex University says that the increasing unaffordability of daily living is something politicians won't admit to. It was masked for a time by the influx of cheap Chinese goods but no longer, pushed up by Net Zero, the minimum wage, tax rises and ever more burdensome regulations and government interventions. The costs of energy and housing are having the biggest effect, with property up by 250% since 2000. Only in the remaining free market areas is it not the case, thanks to the magic of capitalism. Less than two years after the election, Labour is now as divided and fractious as the Tories were and Tim cannot foresee the Labour Party patching things up. The electorate is increasingly reminded of the last Tory government. He also considers how Trump is rapidly reshaping our world, with his actions towards Venezuela, Cuba and Iran effectively taking some of Putin's chess pieces off the board.
Guests: Professor Tim Evans
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin reports on the Chinese village which lost power after a farmer transporting a pig to the abbatoir by drone managed to get it tangled in a power line. There's a new eVTOL single-seat aircraft available to buy next year. Network Rail is to use drones to predict crimes on train lines, though it hasn't revealed what they'll do if they spot one. Criminal gangs are using lifestyle surveys to clone pensioners' voices and then raid their bank accounts. ROLI have devised an AI music coach to teach people how to play the piano. There's a crowd-funded visual soldering iron, eyedrops to treat presbyopia and the extraordinary project The Line in Saudi Arabia is being reduced from a city 105 miles long to just 1.5 miles, which might be used to host AI data centres.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Starmer has learnt the hard way that without truth there can be no trust. But throughout society people feel that they cannot take anything at face value, and the deception and dishonesty which riddles social media are significantly exacerbating this problem. The need for a moral compass is heavily tested without faith: GK Chesterton said, 'When people stop believing in God, they'll believe in anything’. Is this really where we want to be? Background music: 'Dark Alley Deals' by Aaron Kenny
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Original Broadcast: This is Money
Student loans look like another mess that has reached a tipping point in Britain's shonky financial system. There are three different types of student loan plan that graduates could currently be on and one of them offers a particularly bad deal. Those who took out Plan 2 student loans, between 2012 and 2022, suffered fees being hiked to £9,000, face interest rates of RPI plus 3%, and have seen the repayment threshold above which they lose 9% of their income bounce around at the whim of governments. Meanwhile, lots of graduates are staring down the barrel of decades of a big extra chunk coming out of their wages, but then never actually clearing the debt before it gets written off after 30 years. As the reality bites of the student loans they signed up to at 18 — for an average post university debt of £50,000 — without properly realising the consequences, many late 20- and 30- somethings are increasingly angry. Do they have a point and what can we do? Georgie Frost, Helen Crane and Simon Lambert talk student loans, what might happen, what we could do — and who should pay for university. Plus, what does the Bank of England holding rates mean for borrowers and savers? For those who aren't losing their spare cash to a student loan and have got on the property ladder, should you overpay your mortgage? The man who got his mortgage paid off in four years — and how he did it. What on earth is happening to bitcoin, and why is it crashing? And finally, what are the rules on flexible ISAs and putting money back in?
Guests: Helen Crane
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Original Broadcast: Motley Fool Show
What’s a few hundred billion dollars in capex spending among friends? When it comes to big tech, the numbers have gotten astronomical and there’s both enthusiasm and fear about this much spending, so we try to make sense of what’s going on. Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Jon Quast discuss big tech’s $650 billion bet on AI, tThis week’s SaaS-pocalypse, playing gold, silver, and bronze, and stocks on our radar. Companies discussed: Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta Platforms (META), Coupang (CPNG), Cava (CAVA), Chipotle (CMG), Starbucks (SBUX), Portillo’s (PTLO), Texas Roadhouse (TXRH), Markel (MKL). Host — Travis Hoium; Guests — Lou Whiteman, Jon Quast.
Guests: Lou Whiteman,Jon Quast
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Original Broadcast: Motley Fool Show
Software stocks are dropping like rocks in 2026 as AI companies, including Anthropic, deliver more impressive enterprise tools. It’s reminiscent of the market’s reaction to DeepSeek in 2025 — a Chinese startup that seemed like it could deliver the same AI capabilities with a fraction of the hardware requirements. This “DeepSeek Moment” caused investors to re-think their assumptions, and the rapid rise of enterprise AI tools appears to have investors re-thinking things again. Tyler Crowe, Matt Frankel, and Jon Quast discuss which stocks may be more safe, sudden shifts in the job market, how the economy impacts our investing, and stocks on our radar. Companies discussed: CRWD, TOST, UPS, AMZN, POWL, ZS, GDDY. Host — Tyler Crowe; Guests — Matt Frankel, Jon Quast.
Guests: Matt Frankel,Jon Quast
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Original Broadcast: The Hypnotist
It's said that 'trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair', and the challenge is how to learn from that experience to re-build a capacity for trusting others in the future. This episode is based on personal relationships, but in today's fractious environment it can apply in a much broader context — even politics. The essence is to take the wisdom learnt through past experiences in order to be able to trust your own judgements more reliably for the future.
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Original Broadcast: The Business Of Film
James Cameron-Wilson says the bump up of Hamnet to #1 in the charts shows the important of award nominations. The latest Jason Statham thriller, Shelter, is #3. He's a recluse living in a lighthouse whose past comes back to bite him when he rescues a girl from the sea. It's the same old, same old, but done slightly better than usual. #10 Is This Thing On, about a stand-up comic's marriage with Will Arnett and Laura Dern, is inspired by Liverpool comedian John Bishop. But Bradley Cooper's annoying directorial style obscures and confuses the story. James recommends #38, docu-drama The Voice of Hind Rajab, which is one of the most traumatising war films he has ever sat through. He also discusses the current awards season and the London Film Critics Circle awards last weekend.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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Original Broadcast: The Financial Outlook for Personal Investors
Russ Mould of A J Bell discusses the precious metals meltdown and the ongoing volatility, with silver diving from $122 to $72. He reminds us, though, that both gold and silver are still up 9-10% in a month. Russ runs through the things that might have caused the collapse, including Trump's appointment to the Fed chair, that things had gone too far too fast, that leveraged positions were flushed out and the changes in Comex's margin requirements. But what has changed apart from the price? Nothing, really, so bears and bulls of precious metals are still likely to feel as they did before the past week. It's notable that miners have been nowhere near as volatile as the metals and we are about to see results from some of the majors. Will this be an opportunity? How indeed do you value gold and silver? Russ compares them to other commodities.
Guests: Russ Mould
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