I'm Rory Stewart and I want to talk about ignorance. I will die without having read

everything that was written in classical Latin. Because ignorance isn't simply the opposite of knowledge.

It's part of what it means to be human.

Just about every game I can think of involves ignorance.

There's no adventure without ignorance. There's no there's no narrative.

The long history of ignorance from Confucius to Kianon

with me Rory Stewart,

listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast.

We're the show which digs into the numbers in the news,

and I'm Kate Lamble.

Loyal listener Alex Spalding wrote to more or less at BBC. co-dot UK about something he spotted in the Guardian newspaper, an article referencing research

from the charity Oxfam which claimed, The Average Global Markup,

the difference between the price of production and the sale price

rose from 7% in 1980 to 59% by 2020. As Alex puts it, that sounds like a lot. It suggests we're all being ripped off way more than we used to.

So, is this leap in markups accurate? Are some companies just making a bit more money?

And why might it be happening?

Oxfann told us they got their figures from analysis

by Jan Eichowd, professor of economics

at Pompeo Fabra University in Barcelona.

So we gave him a call and asked how do you even begin to calculate the average global markup,

which remember is the difference between the cost to produce one unit of something and how much it's sold for.

...