Season 1
3 episodes
0 min. per episode
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A visionary disruptor battles corporate giants, risking everything to redefine industries and uncover hidden truths that shape our lives.
Episodes
In the late seventies, Henry Gadsden, the CEO of a large pharmaceutical company, told a business magazine that the industry had a problem. In treating disease, they were limiting their client base. But by reinventing illness, treating the well and making the taking of prescription drugs as everyday as chewing a stick of gum, they could medicate modern life itself. From ADHD in children to the way GPs diagnose depression in adults, we look at the deals that have transformed the way we talk about and treat mental health. But what has been their real legacy? Jacques Peretti investigates the deals struck between health professionals and pharmaceutical companies and questions whether Gadsden's dream to medicate modern life has finally been realised.
In 2015, for the first time in history, cash payments were overtaken by card and contactless transactions. But why are we turning our backs on cash? And what are we replacing it with? In this episode, Jacques explores the deals which have shaped the way we understand money. From the invention of Paypal in the nineties to the smartphone app economy that followed ten years later, this programme tells the story of how tech giants brought about the digital payment revolution and formulated a plan to one day kill cash. But is this new world of digital, hyper-fast spending in our interests? And what is really going on behind the scenes?
How did we go from clocking on and off to checking our work email in the middle of the night and working four jobs simultaneously? How did work go from being what we do to who we are? From the creation of shared values in the workplace in the 1980s to the deal that ushered in inflated executive pay and zero job security, Jacques reveals how key decisions over the past decades have revolutionised the workplace and our perception of work itself. He also looks at automation in the workplace. But will the age of the robot make our working lives easier or make us redundant as a species?
The story of how our world was changed by people we have never heard of, transforming our lives without us realising it had even happened.