Does scientific, artistic or political brilliance make for investing success? It’s a timely question, with hedge funds accused of drawing talent away from the wider economy. Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth join reporter Toby Nangle, who explores the portfolios of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, John Maynard Keynes and other celebrated geniuses. What he found, including one historical wildcard, may surprise you.

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Long before modern economics, rulers such as Hammurabi faced a problem that still haunts economies today: when debts grow faster than people can repay them, the system starts to strain. His solution was radical: cancel debts entirely. Amanda H Podany joins Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth to explain what these Mesopotamian debt jubilees reveal about the ancient economy and what they might teach us about debt today.

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Gillian Tett is a columnist and member of the FT’s editorial board. She writes a weekly column covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues. She also serves as Provost of King’s College, Cambridge. Previously, she chaired the FT editorial board, and ran Moral Money, the FT’s sustainability newsletter which she co-founded. She has won Columnist of the Year (2014), Journalist of the Year (2009) and Business Journalist of the Year (2008) in the British Press Awards and three SABEW awards. She is the author of four books including Fool’s Gold, the inside story of the 2008 financial crisis.

Robin Wigglesworth  is the editor of Alphaville, the FT’s financial blog. From Oslo, Norway he leads a team of three other writers in London and New York that dig into anything deeply nerdy or plain delightful that they spot in markets, business or the global economy. Previously, Robin was the FT’s global finance correspondent, US markets editor, deputy head of fastFT, capital markets correspondent and Gulf correspondent. He is the author of Trillions, a book on the past, present and future of passive investing, and A Fabulous Debt, a history of the bond market.