The Spark
BBC Radio 4

The Spark, back for a four-part run (13 January-3 February), aims to offer “radical solutions to the big problems we face”. Helen Lewis’ guest in this first instalment was The Tablet’s own Paul Vallely, veteran journalist, papal biographer and, of particular interest in this hunt for radical solutions, author of the recent book Philanthropy: From Aristotle to Zuckerberg.

What followed was a brisk excursus on the modern need to give. Vallely, his interest in philanthropy stirred by trips to Ethiopia to report on the famine of the 1980s and a later role advising Bob Geldof on what to do with the money raised by Live Aid, began by revealing the jaw-dropping statistic that the funds controlled by private charitable foundations now amounted to $1.5 trillion.