BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts.

Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, The Traitors Uncloaked.

But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's Saturday bonus episodes,

The Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Rylan, and comedy specials

from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffle and Rommashranganathan. However, and maybe I'm biased,

it's really all about the traitors uncoaked. So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and

podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the Arts and Ideas podcast with me and Mikhailvoy.

So what did you get done this week?

At home or in the office, were your efficiency levels at a bustling peak?

Or did you get that strange feeling you were busy doing something,

but there was still an awful lot left to do on the to-do list.

I was feeling virtuously post-productive after being at the World Economic Forum at Davos the previous few days.

And that's a setting where the theme of making economies more able to withstand the twists and turns of head-spinning geopolitics is the stuff of daily chatter among the leaders and business titans gathered in the Swiss Alps.

This week I caught up on meetings of various productive value, did a bit of actual journalism and even managed the tax return in the nick of time.

But what does the public conversation about productivity get wrong,

leave out or downgrade,

as we worry about the national economic malaise

and the so-called productivity puzzle?

We'll be taking a very free-thinking look at that.

Wider than textbook economics, you'll be happy to hear to whether

an exploration of insect behaviour can help us get our efficiency act together and how all this

links up with experiences of pregnancy, a highly productive state. But to find out more, let me introduce

...