Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

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

Some countries that have compulsory military service

are aiming to instill a healthy discipline or just teach some marketable skills.

But that is not what's behind the recent spike in the number of countries embarking on or expanding the draft.

And the pandemic has taught office workers of the world that maybe they don't need to be in the office ever.

We meet with some of the digital nomads working from anywhere but home

and the growing number of businesses helping them do it.

But first... Traders at the London Medal Exchange have what is these days an unusual way of deciding the cost of industrial metals.

Shouting. way of deciding the cost of industrial metals.

Shouting.

Eight dealers sitting in a red leather circle of sofas are trading with each other.

Matthew Chamberlain is the boss of the London Medal Exchange and a champion of the yelling-based system.

Most markets, be they stock exchanges or commodity exchanges, started out doing what we're doing,

which is called open-out cry trading. But unlike every other trading venue in Europe, we've maintained our trading ring. The trading ring at lunchtime is like looking back into a 1980s version of London's financial heart, known as the city.

Think men in suits with their blood up, a phone pressed against each ear.

For a few minutes, it's all whispers and plotting. Then it can get rowdy.

We do ask our dealers to stay seated. Now, over the years, that's evolved so that you can be

standing up as long as one part of your body is in contact with your seat. Back in the 1980s, there was a wave of reforms and deregulation called the Big Bang,

changes that made finance types pour into London.

Traders in stocks left this open outcry system behind.

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