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MEET THE GUESTS

Businessman and founder and director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT, Iqbal Quadir, believes that introducing entrepreneurial microfinance projects into countries such as Bangladesh - where he implemented a successful mobile phone scheme - not only empowers the poor, it strengthens democracy overall.

Epidemics expert and founder of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, Stefan Kaufmann, plots the probability of new runaway pandemics and says that what we perceive as dangerous, and what actually constitutes real danger from virulent strains of diseases, are often two different things. He also discusses a new vaccine he's working on to combat tuberculosis.

Classicist and Provost of Georgetown University, USA, James O'Donnell, maintains that so-called 'barbarian' successors to the Roman Empire actually left us with a very civilized legacy, introducing important innovations to Byzantium (modern day Istanbul) such as the codification of Roman law which has left its imprint to this day.