Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

This is a download from BBC Radio 4.

Allison Wolf presents this edition of Analysis, asking whether the gap in England between

north and south will grow ever larger. I'm standing in the Silicon Valley of

the 19th century, the place that made the modern world.

I'm by a revolutionary bridge which used hydraulics to swing open and shut

in order to export modern armaments across the globe.

But it wasn't just hydraulics and armaments.

This place pioneered the modern railway engine. It was a leader in chemicals and electric light.

It was a buzz with ideas and inventions. And where am I? I'm on

Tyneside. And when you say Tyneside today people don't automatically

think about inventions and

entrepreneurship they're much more likely to think about a region in

decline a region with hardship a region with poverty and a region about which government is always trying to do something.

But should governments try to do things about regions?

Or would they be better to just leave well alone?

Oh, Southbound again. If you look at where the drivers for the Industrial Revolution came, it was often from the

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