Are you ready for a Monzo business bank account? It's made to help you navigate cash flow and tax season.

Perfect for bosses with a growing business, freelancers searching for financial freedom,

side hustlers juggling 9-5s with 5-9s, and over 350,000 businesses

already with us.

Sails through your business banking, apply for an account in minutes. Search Monzo Business.

Tees and sees apply.

Soul traders or limited company directors in the world. I'm John Batcher visiting with the author Adrian Woolridge who is also Badgett at the Economist magazine Adrian Waldidge. His new book is The Aristocracy of Talent,

how meritocracy made the modern world. It's incredibly, presciently up to date, but we are exploring how we got here. The word meritocracy isn't

until the middle of the 20th century. However, the search for who is capable of giving good governance, who can we depend upon, who will

live out his reign, includes nepotism, patronage, and venality. And I note rather than look at the negatives, I want to make clear that there were successes.

I wrote down three, Adrian.

Thomas Cromwell, Adam Smith, well that's enough, those two would be enough for

any country.

So patronage and nepotism had its advantages.

Was it attractive to the kings?

Did it make them worry that they were having to choose people outside of their family

for leadership?

Sure. outside of their family for leadership?

So it's very important to remember that in pre-modern society jobs were not things that individuals earned on merit necessarily.

There were things that were given away by the ruling classes through a system of patronage.

But the ruling classes quite often give jobs to people who are completely useless.

But if they'd only given jobs to people who are completely useless, society would have collapsed.

...