Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist in London, I'm Jason Palmer.

And in New York, I'm John Fassman.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Being on a company's board of directors has long been seen as a cushy gig, a fat paycheck

for just a few meetings a year.

The reality is increasingly different.

Things are busier than ever and harder than ever to fill with the skills they need today.

An Antonio LeValdi was among the most prolific classical composers of all time, churning

out more than 500 conchertity, most have fallen into obscurity, but we'll tell you how

one of his compositions became ubiquitous.

Stop though.

In recent weeks, two stories have dominated coverage of the war in Ukraine.

The first is Bachmout, a city at the edge of the Donbass region that once held 70,000

people, but has been almost entirely flattened by Russia's 7-month effort to capture it.

The Kremlin now claims to have the city surrounded.

Over night, Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, said that his soldiers would continue

to defend Bachmout, and that no part of Ukraine would be abandoned.

The second is tanks, which types the West as sending how many and when.

Both stories are important.

Ukraine needs more and better tanks, and Bachmout's fall would be an important symbolic victory

for Russia.

But behind these stories lies a bigger and more important one, of a new phase in the war

...