Writer, activist and academic, Raj Patel is one of the leading radical voices of our time. Raj follows his first book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System, with The Value of Nothing. Credit has crunched, debt has turned toxic, the gears of the world economy have ground to a halt. It’s now clear that the market doesn’t only get it wrong about sub-prime mortgages, it gets it wrong about everything.

Patel argues that we need to ask again one of the most fundamental questions a society ever addresses, and one to which very few people know or understand the answer: Why do things cost what they do? The Value of Nothing uses fundamental but forgotten economics and some cutting-edge neuroeconomics to show how the price we pay for everything - from food, to handbags, to fridges, to entertainment - is systematically distorted. Raj will be in conversation with Andrew Kelly, Director of the Bristol Festival of Ideas.

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