How To Academy Podcast

Historian and Novelist Ada Palmer - Was the Renaissance Really a Golden Age? Feb 22, 2025

We remember the Renaissance as an age of human flourishing: a rebirth after centuries of misery, a return to the glories of antiquity where the culture of Greece and Rome was not only imitated but surpassed. But is that reputation deserved, or a construct of future historians with their own goals in mind? Starring Battle-Popes, necromancers, sculptors, scholars, and assassins, Ada Palmer's new book Inventing the Renaissance is a wild ride through some of the most thrilling and important events in world-history and a glimpse into the making of the modern world.

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Sunita Sah - The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes Feb 18, 2025

How can we say 'no' when it matters most? Cornell University's Dr Sunita Sah joins us to share the radical need for each of us to rediscover our core values, and shares how we can navigate a fraught world while staying true to ourselves. Exploring the balance between defiance and safety, justice and belonging, Professor Sah reveals how we can each live more authentically and make decisions that align with our vales in the moments that matter most.

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Anna Sulan Masing - Chinese and Any Other Asian Feb 14, 2025

'Chinese and Any Other Asian.' On official documents, a vast range of identities in the East and South East Asian (ESEA) population in the UK is reduced to a single vague checkbox, an act of Othering with a history several centuries in the making. Academic, poet, and journalist Dr Anna Sulan Masing seeks to change the narrative. Exploring the history of the ESEA population in the UK, which spans on the one hand Empire, violence, and appropriation, and on the other, creativity, fusion, and multiplicity, Anna Sulan reveals a multifaceted history. From how the mythos of MSG drew on the language of Victorian media on opium dens, to why we should close the chapter on Miss Saigon for good, Anna Sulan reveals the rising voices reclaiming a stolen narrative.

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Neal Stephenson – Dawn of the Atomic Age Feb 12, 2025

History and geopolitical intrigue meet fiction under the masterful skill of #1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson. He joins us with a new tale: Polostan, a vividly imagined historical epic that traces the enigmatic life of protagonist Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Her life criss-crosses some of the 20th century’s pivotal scenes, from Leningrad to the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organisation that later becomes the KGB. An expert at merging thrilling fiction with meticulous detail grounded in real historical events, Neal draws back the curtains of his new epic foretelling the dawn of the Atomic Age and marking the beginning of his new series.

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Activist, Actor and Baroness Lola Young - Defying The Odds Feb 07, 2025

Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner, well known for her work on modern slavery and climate justice. But from the age of eight weeks to eighteen years, she was moved between foster care placements and children’s homes in North London. It would take many decades before she was able to begin the search for answers to the long-standing questions that would help her make sense of her childhood.

Now she tells Hannah MacInnes the powerful story of how she defied the odds of the ‘care cliff’ to become one of the country’s most prominent activists, a story of care records, lost letters and one of the highest offices in the country. She joins us to share her insights into parliamentary reform, the role of art in politics, and why poverty is the biggest problem facing the UK today.

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Frankie Boyle Meets George Monbiot - The Fight Against Neoliberalism Feb 04, 2025

Why are are the rich getting richer? Why is prosperity moving further and further out of reach for most people? An iconoclast unafraid to speak truth to power, George Monbiot joins comedian Frankie Boyle to take on the fringe philosophy which the wealthy elite have hijacked to guard their fortunes and power. While neoliberalism permeates society, from our mental and economic wellbeing to the foundation of democracy itself, the fight to restore democracy to the people is far from over. George reveals how we can fight back.

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Neuroscientist Adam Zeman - The New Science of Imagination Jan 31, 2025

We live in the here and now much less than we tend to think. Imagination isn’t the exception in our daily lives; it’s our default setting. Far from being a faculty used only in creative endeavours, the imagination is used constantly when we reminisce, anticipate, plan, daydream and read. Yet only now are we beginning to understand exactly how it works.

From hallucination to sleepwalking, REM to delusions and the curious case of the mind’s eye, neuroscientist Professor Adam Zeman guides us through the latest science of imagination. Drawing on research in neuroscience, the study of human origins and child development, he shares how the human brain is above all else a creative, imaginative organ – and why we have evolved to share what we imagine.

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Novelist and Activist Cory Doctorow - Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley Jan 28, 2025

Whether anticipating the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in his short story Radicalised, helping the world to wake up to the grift of the social media giants through his concept of 'Enshittification', or imagining a genuinely better world to replace the dystopia of our present in novels like The Lost Cause and Walkaway, Cory Doctorow is equally accomplished as an award-winning storyteller and as an analyst of our present and near future.

His new series of noirish crime thrillers transport us into a Silicon Valley where grifters, gangsters, and plutocrats wreck chaos. Cory's decades of firsthand experience of the Valley and deep thought about the relationship between technology and power imbue every page with authenticity and insight. He joins us to reveal the crimes at the heart of the latest book, Picks and Shovels, and the real life misdemenours that inspired the novel.

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Caitlin Moran Meets Alex James - Cocaine, Crash Diets and the Return of Blur Jan 21, 2025

One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run. This is the story of what happened next.

Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex tells Times journalist and bestselling author Caitlin Moran how the band made a surprise – and emotional – return, recording an acclaimed album and playing sold-out shows around the world, from Colchester to Colombia and beyond.

Plus: how he went on a crash diet to fit back into his ‘Britpop Trousers,’ a chastening encounter with the President of Columbia, and the magical story behind She's So High.

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Yanis Varoufakis Meets Slavoj Žižek Jan 17, 2025

Erudite and comic, ironic and profound, philosopher Slavoj Žižek has travelled into territory where few of us dare to tread – and aged 75 he shows no signs of becoming less provocative. In this electric conversation with Yanis Varoufakis the pair explore whether progress is a good thing, where the new technologies of our age are taking us and why Slavoj is known as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’.

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Cosmologist Roberto Trotta - How the Stars Shaped Civilisation Jan 10, 2025

Both infinitely larger than ourselves and one of humanity's greatest commonalities, the night sky has shaped millennia of human history. Cosmologist Roberto Trotta joins us to reveal what the mysteries of the stars can illuminate about the mysteries of humankind, from our earliest origin myths to our methods of timekeeping which formed around the visibility of stars around the globe. From Babylon to the North Pole, from the beginning of time to the Neanderthals, from our own backyards to imaginations of Venus, this is a voyage across space and time.

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Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk – A Life in Writing Jan 07, 2025

Orhan Pamuk has traveled far and wide, around the world, across the page, and in the landscapes of his mind. Now he joins Erica Wagner to illuminate his craft. From his travels around the world to his reflections on fellow writers, from journal entries scrawled across the span of over a decade to the beginnings of his creative process, Orhan joins us to explore not only his artistic method, but also how daily happenings and larger currents have shaped his oeuvre.

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Neuroscientist Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston - How and Why We Should Abolish Death Dec 17, 2024

Can scientists now preserve human minds beyond death - and if so, should they? Australian neuroscientist and science communicator Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston joins us to explain the cutting-edge of his field.

The dream of immortality has existed for as long as the human imagination and until now remained just that: a dream. But neuroscientist and science communicator Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston believes that neuroscientists can, and should, use cutting-edge tools to help cheat death by preserving us until such time that we can be brought back to life. He joins us on the podcast to make a provocative case both for this nascent technology and for a future that will be worth living in, where our descedants will not scorn us but welcome us with open arms.

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Vanity Fair’s Lili Anolik - Joan Didion v. Eve Babitz Dec 13, 2024

‘Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?’ -Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972

One was the New York name on literary lips. The other, a Los Angeleno fireball with a ferocious wit and writerly ambitions. But what started off a relationship of nurture and collaboration quickly became one of the sourest relationships in literature.

This is the golden age of Hollywood, where artists and movie stars mix with writers and rock-n-rollers in drug-fuelled parties on Franklin Avenue.

Drawing on never-before-seen correspondence between Joan and Eve – letters so intimate you don’t read them so much as breathe them – Vanity Fair’s Lili Anolik reveals to Daisy Buchanan the untold true story of these two truly iconic writers.

This is a tale of Los Angeles vs New York, hedonism vs constraint, and a rivalry that burned blisteringly hot in pursuit of success.

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Lucy Hughes-Hallett - The Brief & Brilliant Life of the Duke of Buckingham Dec 10, 2024

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham: never had King James I's court seen a man of such exquisite beauty. Capturing the heart of the King, becoming his lover and right-hand man, Villiers thus found himself at the heart of court politics too. But along with his angelic face he also had a brilliant mind.

Renowned historian and biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett reveals the life of this astonishingly beautiful and clever young lord, and illuminates the tender relationship he shared with the prudent King which history has mischaracterised as a coward. From Villiers's spectacular rise, to his ultimate fall, Hughes-Hallett reveals this enigmatic life in full colour.

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Andrew Roberts - 150 Years of Winston Churchill Dec 06, 2024

Few historical figures in the British political landscape have been as monumental as Winston Churchill. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world. But what was his life really like? And what might he make of the world today?

Churchill's definitive biographer Andrew Roberts joins Matthew D'Ancona to illuminate Churchill in his full complexity, from his childhood to his closest relationships, to even his financial troubles. He also shares what Churchill might make of the greatest political crises we face today, from Ukraine to Gaza.

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Dr Guy Leschziner - A Neuroscientist's Guide to the Seven Deadly Sins Dec 03, 2024

The seven deadly sins are the vices of humankind that define immorality, the roots of all evil in the world. But do these sins really represent moral failings, or are they important and useful human functions that aid us?

In this episode of the podcast, neurologist Dr Guy Leschziner shares the evolutionary benefits of gluttony, greed, sloth, pride, envy, lust and anger. From continuing the existence of the human race to protecting against famine, he reveals a new perspective that engenders compassion and removes judgement from our interactions with each other.

Explaining why pathologising behaviour stops individuals getting the support they need, this conversation also dives into hubris syndrome, how stress during pregnancy affects brain development, and many more relevations from the cutting edge of modern neuroscience.

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Rory Stewart Meets Saad Mohseni - The Fight for a Free Press in Kabul Nov 29, 2024

In the Kabul offices of Moby Group, Afghanistan's largest media company, hundreds of men and women continue to bring programmes and news to the country even after the return of the Taliban. From talk shows to breaking news to educational programmes for young girls, the television empire that began as a small radio station continues to brave the country's shifting political landscape.

Now Moby's CEO Saad Mohseni joins Rory Stewart to reveal the dedication and complexity of maintaining a free press, and traces his own journey in the wider history of Afghanistan in peace and in war. Exploring a nation in turmoil, a country poised between despair and hope, Saad reveals a moving portrait of the Afghan people and illuminates how resilience remains.

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Dr Mithu Storoni - How To Transform the Way You Work Nov 26, 2024

We are expected to operate with industrial-era efficiency at work. But creativity and high-quality ideas can't be generated on the assembly line. So how can we curate the best mental ecosystem for learning, creativity, and problem-solving? From adapting the pace of our work to optimising moments of discovery and illumination, Dr Mithu Storoni explores the gears of our brain and what we can do to make the most of our brain power.

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Cambridge Professor David Spiegelhalter - How to Navigate Change, Ignorance, Risk and Luck Nov 22, 2024

We live in a world where uncertainty is inevitable. How should we deal with what we don’t know? And what role do chance, luck and coincidence play in our lives?

Cambridge statistician and beloved broadcaster David Spiegelhalter has spent his career dissecting data in order to understand risks and assess the chances of what might happen in the future.

In this episode of the podcast, recorded live in London with live examples with the audience, he guides us through the principles of probability, showing how it can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to pandemics and climate change forecasts, and explores how we can update our beliefs about the future in the face of constantly changing experience.

Tune in to find why we can be so confident that two properly shuffled packs of cards have never been in the exact same order, what it means to be mathematically lucky, and how a classroom of people will result in a shared birthday in this essential guide to navigating uncertainty while also having the humility to admit what we do not know.

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Psychologist Alison Fragale - How Women Can Get the Success They Deserve Nov 18, 2024

How do you balance kindness and competence in the workplace? How can you get the success you deserve, earn credit for your accomplishments, and navigate complex office politics without antagonising your colleagues?

Over decades of research, behavioural scientist Alison Fragale encountered these recurring questions from high-powered and early-career women alike, determining that many women’s workplace issues boil down to the perception of others. Now she joins us to share her insights, offering actionable strategies that can help women elevate their esteem, all while remaining authentic to themselves.

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WATCHMEN author Alan Moore - Twenty Six Letters, Infinite Worlds Nov 14, 2024

“With just 26 letters, you can create any conceivable universe.” - Alan Moore

With the rise of new technology, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality, what power remains in our more ancient forms of storytelling? Modern-day alchemist Alan Moore who transmuted comic books into literary gold joins Robin Ince to explore the enduring power of prose and the unique magic that written stories bring. To celebrate the release of Alan's new book The Great When which marks the beginning of his Long London series, Alan and Robin delve into the wonder of words, the power of art, and the enduring magic of prose fiction.

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SAPIENS author Yuval Noah Harari - Humanity in the Age of AI Nov 14, 2024

Long gone are the days when pigeons relayed our messages; now we have a flood of information at all times, from social media to artificial intelligence, all weaving narratives that shape our lives. But the rise of these new modes of information technology has the power to spread misinformation, challenge independent thought, and even threaten democracy.

Bestselling author of Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari joins Robin Ince to explore how humanity can navigate these new networks, and asks, in this constant deluge of information and misinformation, where can we find real knowledge and truth?

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Robyn Davidson - Journeys of a Lifetime Nov 09, 2024

Best-known for her journey trekking across the Australian desert, Robyn Davidson joins us to reveal a new expedition, this time into the past. From the lush tropics of Malabar to the loneliness of London, Robyn shares an illuminating portrait of her childhood, the loss of her mother, her journey as a writer, and the strange and wondrous persistence of memory.

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Award winning novelist Rebecca Kuang - Yellowface Nov 01, 2024

Aged 27, Rebecca F. Kuang is already a New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling, multiple-prize winning author of five novels, a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge, and currently finding time to squeeze in finishing a doctorate at Yale while writing three more novels she has already sold.

Now Rebecca reveals her own literary journey, and how her global sensation Yellowface strikes a deeply personal chord. From the art of crafting villains to loving one's characters, from waiting for hours at empty signings to rising to the heights of literary stardom, from newfound freedom to the insecurities that plague even the best of us, Rebecca Kuang reveals her extraordinary life to date.

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Historian of Science Natalie Lawrence - Why Monsters Matter Nov 01, 2024

Since the dawn of humanity monsters have loomed large in our collective imagination. But why do frightening beasts hold such a powerful grip on us?

Natalie Lawrence has always loved monsters. Her passion that took her all the way to Cambridge, where she completed a phD in the history of early modern monsters that informs her new book, Enchanted Creatures. Now she joins us on the podcast to delight your adult brain and inner child alike. When does an animal become a monster? Why should anyone still care about monsters in the modern world, when so many of our favourite myths are fully debunked and true enchantment is hard to come by? Are robots and dinosaurs monsters, or something different? Discover the answer to all these questions and more in this journey through thousands of years of natural – and unnatural – history…

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Yale Historian Sunil Amrith - How Humanity Reshaped the Planet Oct 29, 2024

In the last five centuries, humankind has brought change to every inch of the Earth, in a story of environment and empire, of genocide and ecocide, of the expansion of human freedom and its costs. Asking whether humanity can now summon the collective wisdom to save itself, Professor Sunil Amrith joins the podcast to share a history of environmentalism from the perspective of social justice.

Arguing for an empathetic approach to climate usage, Professor Amrith shares why environmentalism is ill-suited to headlines, and reveals the human stories that can compel us to take action. Tune in to understand why it will be the artists, not the technocrats, who determine what happens next.

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Harvard Historian Serhii Plokhy - Chernobyl Under Russian Occupation Oct 21, 2024

Harvard Professor and Ukrainian-born historian Serhii Plokhy joins the podcast to reveal the resilience and courage of the Ukrainian workers held hostage inside Chernobyl under Russian occupation. As hours stretched into weeks of hostility with no help from the outside world, the crew members' critical decisions alone prevented another nuclear catastrophe reminiscent of the disaster three decades earlier. In a wider warning to the world, Serhii Plokhy uncovers just how unprepared we are to deal with acts of nuclear terrorism.

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Pulitzer Prize winners Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig - How Donald Trump Squandered His Fortune Oct 15, 2024

Soon after announcing his first campaign for presidency, Donald J. Trump declared that life “had not been easy for me”, delivering a campaign narrative around his business acumen based on his journey from talented upstart to a multi-billionaire. This narrative was a lie.

Drawing on access to twenty years’ worth of Trump’s confidential tax information, business records and interviews with Trump insiders, reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig won a Pulitzer Prize for the investigations into Trump’s finances – and the deceptions at the core of his claims of business success.

In this episode, Buettner and Craig share insights from the school playground to the set of The Apprentice as well as never-before-seen financial records and intelligence on the relationship with his father Fred Trump, all belying the public image that took Trump all the way to the White House, and demonstrated that a lie will become truth if it is told often enough.

Can a man who has squandered fortune on money-losing businesses continue to be saved by blind luck in the future?And can Trumpism survive beyond Trump? Tune in to find out.

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Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk - When the Body Keeps the Score Oct 11, 2024

Traumatic experiences leave their imprint on the body as well as the mind, but they need not define us. Fusing insights from thirty years at the cutting-edge of neuroscience, and with the weight of decades of experience as an active therapist, Dr van der Kolk reveals the power of our relationships – whether the intimacy of the home or in our wider communities – to both hurt and heal.

In this episode, recorded live in London, Dr van der Kolk explores trauma, abuse and suicidality to reveal new approaches to recovery that move away from talking and drug therapies to heal mind, brain and body.

Tune in for a deep dive into some of the most staggering new research in the field.

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Anthropologist Webb Keane - Animals, Robots, Gods Oct 07, 2024

Since the dawn of humanity, our sense of ourselves has been shaped by things that seem human - or nearly human - but are not. From sacrificial animals to household pets, ancient gods to future technologies like robots and AI, human ethics was, is and will continue to be profoundly influenced by its relationship with intelligences other than our own. What moral responsibility do we have toward the prey that we hunt and the machines that clean our homes? Why did medieval Europeans put pigs and cats on trial, and what can the Delphic Oracle tell us about ChatGPT? Anthropologist Webb Keane takes us beyond the boundaries of the human world in this episode to answer these questions and more.

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Psychologist Mary Anderson - How to be a Happy High-Achiever Oct 04, 2024

Ambitious yet anxious? Harvard-trained clinical psychologist Dr Mary E. Anderson joined us with an actionable guide to maintaining your edge all while reducing stress and finding happiness along your journey. From understanding thoughts and behaviours that might be causing obstacles for you, such as negative forecasting and perfectionism, to building sustainable habits that can help you thrive, Dr Anderson reveals that success doesn't have to come at the expense of your wellbeing.

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David Olusoga and Alan Lester - The Truth About the British Empire Oct 03, 2024

In our turbulent times, how do we grapple with our past? Are we capable of grappling with Britain's imperial history without whitewashing? David Olusoga and Alan Lester believe that the truth matters; it matters far too greatly to be hijacked by apologists and racists. They joined us in conversation to reveal the truth about the British Empire and fight back against those who smear the integrity of professional historians; together, they reveal a new way forward in understanding the history of the nation that is honest, open, and not warped by contemporary politics.

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Psychotherapist and Bestselling Author Anna Mathur - How to Tame Your Mind's Greatest Fears Sep 28, 2024

Psychotherapist and Sunday Times bestselling author Anna Mathur joins the podcast to debunk traditional strategies to manage common worries and introduce her new approach to overcoming the ten fundamental, uncomfortable truths in life: acceptance.

Drawing upon her experience as a therapist as well as her own personal journey of grief, and training as a therapist alongside her mother, she dives into topics that many of us are afraid to face. In the episode Anna proposes that joy and heartbreak will always coexist, and that we are not built to thrive alone.

Tune in to learn how to accept rather than avoid the worries with a stranglehold on your life, and discover who you are without worry and doubt.

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Sam Leith and Amy Jeffs - Tales of Wonder, Myth and Magic Sep 24, 2024

Longtime listeners will remember the artist and folklorist Amy Jeffs from her episode exploring the medieval wilderness; her latest book Saints returns to the medieval world to explore the lives and legends of European saints -- from men raised by wolves to women communing with flocks of birds. She joined us in conversation with the author and critic Sam Leith, whose new book The Haunted Wood is a history of and reflection upon children's literature from Aesop to the modern day. Their dialogue is a must-listen for anyone of any age willing to be enchanted by the power of storytelling.

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Oliver Burkeman - How to Live a Meaningful Life in an Age of Bewilderment Sep 20, 2024

Oliver Burkeman’s global bestseller Four Thousand Weeks was a reflection upon our brief time on earth that changed lives and inspired thousands. Now armed with a meadow of playful metaphors to illustrate his philosophy, he joins the podcast to offer us a crash course in how to make the most of our lives without giving into the cult of self-help.

Sharing his cynicism of society’s overemphasis on hyperproductivity, which has held us hostage to a ‘daily productivity deficit’, Oliver shows that ‘done not perfect’ is always better. Tune in to discover why letting things happen rather than making them happen could increase your productivity, and why realising that things are worse than you imagined can be the liberating force your life needs.

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Novelist Rumaan Alam - on Wealth, Power, and Entitlement Sep 16, 2024

Barrack and Michele Obama loved Rumaan Alam's apocalyptic third novel, Leave the World Behind, so much they helped turn it into a wildly successful Netflix movie. That novel anticipated and captured the feel of life in the COVID pandemic with uncanny accuracy, and Rumaan's new book is no less attuned to the way we live now.

Entitlement is the story of Brooke, a young, ambitious Black New Yorker who finds herself in the employ of ageing billionaire-philanthropist Asher Jaffee - with unpredictable and profound consequences. Does money inevitably corrupt everyone who comes within its orbit? Is philanthropy just self-interested PR by the super-rich or a genuine force for good? How far would you go to fix your life, climb the ladder, and ascend to the upper echelons of the establishment? Rumaan joined us on the podcast to dissect all of these questions - without offering any easy answers.

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Superstar election forecaster Nate Silver - The Art of Risking Everything Sep 10, 2024

Nate Silver's remarkable career has seen him conquer many seemingly unrelated worlds: professional poker, sports journalism, and the political forecasting that made him a star of US politics. He joined us on stage in London to reveal the ideas that glue these together - an idea that helps to explain how power, business, and politics really work.

There is a new paradigm of power with global importance. This power belongs to a new class of professional risk-takers – including VCs, gamblers, tech moguls like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and crypto-kings like Sam Bankman-Fried. This class, which Silver calls “The River”, drives progress: but these individuals can also cause chaos and deepen disparity. And despite plenty of bad press, the risk-takers are winning against their counterparts in government, academia and the media…

As a professional risk taker and member of 'The River' himself, Nate Silver joined award-winning presenter Jeremy Vine to uncover how this new class is changing the landscape of politics, power, and technology as we know it.

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Stefan Stern - The Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition Sep 06, 2024

Many of us wrestle with daunting life-choice questions from time to time: what should I be aiming for? Am I being ambitious enough? Has an excess of ambition led me astray?

Stefan Stern has dedicated a lifetime to answering these questions. The FT's former management columnist, a think-tank director, and now a professor at Cass Business School, Stefan joins the podcast to investigate how ambition and success work together through the unlikely icon of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth. Whether your looking for a change of direction or emphasis on how to move forward, this meditation on the complex nature of ambition is for you.

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Mark Galeotti - Putin, Prigozhin and the Future of Russia Sep 03, 2024

Yevgeny Prigozhin emerged as one of the most dangerous warlords in the world and as one of Vladimir Putin’s chief rivals in Russia’s tumultuous political climate, exiled after leading Wagner’s attempted coup and killed in a mysterious plane crash. But what is the truth about this enigmatic figure, and the chaos unleashed across Russia by his turn against Putin? And, in the aftermath of his death, what is next for Russia in the new stage of late Putinism that Prigozhin’s life forged?

Drawing on years of research, in this episode Professor Mark Galeotti traces the rise of Russia’s most prominent non-state actor and examines the political climate that propelled a convicted gangster with no government office to the formidable role he came to occupy.

This is the essential story of Russia’s recent history. Tune in for insights into the country’s future from one of the foremost Russia experts of our time.

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Senior Jewellery Curator at the V&A Helen Molesworth - The Dazzling History of Gems Aug 30, 2024

From ancient thrones to Hollywood stars, gems have not only adorned humanity but also shaped its history. How did emeralds and rubies etch our origin stories? How did garnets embody the flickering soul or jade the tenets of living a good life? Senior Jewellery Curator at the V&A Museum Helen Molesworth reveals how gems came to embody our most cherished ideals, our most vicious battles for power, and our evolving understanding of ourselves.

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Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith - How Animal Minds Transformed Planet Earth Aug 27, 2024

Traditional stories of the evolution of life on our planet tell us that we and all other creatures on Earth were shaped by evolution. But how do minds that are shaped by evolution go on to transform nature in their own right? In the final volume of the landmark trilogy that began with Other Minds and continued with Metazoa, philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the role that animal minds - and, especially, human minds - have had on our world. If you've ever wondered why it was primates and not dolphins who developed language and culture, whether or not medical testing on animals can be ethically justified, and which aspects of Gaia theory hold up today, this episode is for you.

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Yuval Noah Harari Meets Katherine Rundell - Unstoppable Us (Summer Repeat) Aug 22, 2024

Have you ever wondered how we got here? From hunting mammoths, to flying to the moon?

Historian Yuval Noah Harari introduced millions of readers to the story of the human species with his global bestseller Sapiens. His new book Unstoppable Us is the first in a new four-book series telling that story to younger readers. Over the summer he joined children's author and essayist Katherine Rundell on stage to tell us more.

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Fern Academy Prize winner Gabriela Denise Frank - Fear and Loathing in White Collar America Aug 20, 2024

Created in collaboration with Fern Press and Tortoise Media, the Fern Academy Prize was created to discover and nurture unpublished writers who shine a light on the universal human experience and speak to the times we live in. Gabriela Denise Frank won the 2024 prize with A Self She Can Continue Living With: a tragicomic depiction of the middle manager's lot in corporate America and the soul-crushing absurdities of the white collar world. In this episode of the podcast, Gabriela reads the essay in full and offers further reflections on art, life, and writing.

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Dr Emily Leeming - The Life Changing Science of Gut Health Aug 16, 2024

A healthy gut functions like a successful company, with different roles and employees. So how do we keep these employees happy?

In this episode of the podcast, microbiome scientist and dietician Dr Emily Leeming joins us to reveal the groundbreaking new evidence between food and mood, and actionable steps for a healthier, more energising lifestyle. She reveals the impact of sedentary lifestyles on our gut, the microbiome benefits of a ten second kiss, and a disco inspired mnemonic for keeping your fibre intake on track.

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William Dalrymple and Sathnam Sanghera – British Imperialism in India (Summer Repeat) Aug 13, 2024

How did the Mughal empire – which then generated just under half the world’s wealth – come to be replaced by the first global corporate power – the East India Company? And how does the legacy of British imperialism continue to shape life and culture in Britain today? Bringing together Empireland and Empireworld author and Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera and bestselling award-winning historian William Dalrymple, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast will tell a story that is barely taught in schools or mentioned in museums but is critically important to who we are as a nation in the 21st century.

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Henry Oliver - How To Find Success in Midlife Aug 09, 2024

We're told repeatedly that if we’re going to achieve anything, we’d better do it while we’re young. But society is wrong. With armfuls of examples from from Olympic athletes, sitcom stars and titans of architecture who rewrote the rule book for midlife, writer Henry Oliver shares the lessons for seizing upon the truest versions of ourselves later in life and asks, what part of your goal can you achieve today?

Tune in to discover a range of blueprints for self-reinvention, tips for rebuilding your confidence, and the power of the word 'perhaps'.

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Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum - The Dictators Who Want to Run the World Aug 06, 2024

For the first time in history, autocracies are working together to stay in power.

Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad actor, but by sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structures, security services—military, paramilitary, police—and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation. The democratic world is in denial about how it has unwittingly helped to consolidate this new reality. What we stand to lose is our ability to dictate our own economic future and possibly our democratic systems.

Joining legendary foreign correspondent Luke Harding, historian and journalist Anne Applebaum shares how rogue states survive under sanctions, what anonymous companies mean for democracy, and what is at stake in November for America and the world beyond.

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World Record Breaking Mountaineer Lhakpa Sherpa and Filmmaker Lucy Walker Jul 31, 2024

Lhakpa Sherpa broke a record: she was the first Nepali woman to climb and descend Everest. Then she broke another: summiting for the tenth time, she had now summited the tallest peak in the world more times than any other woman. But the gruelling ascent mirrored her own journey through life: from braving her way and disguising herself as a man to become a sherpa, to finding the courage to leave a violent marriage to give her daughters a better life, Lhakpa has shown that there is no summit she cannot overcome.

In conversation with filmmaker Lucy Walker whose film Mountain Queen follows Lhakpa’s record-breaking tenth summit and illuminates her extraordinary life, Lhakpa shares her inspiring story and her lifelong dream of empowering women.

Image credit: Netflix

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Neuroscientist Patrick House - How to Make Sense of Consciousness Jul 29, 2024

Stanford neuroscientist Patrick House joins us with an introduction to the best of our current paradigms for making sense of consciousness. In conversation with Robin Ince, he weaves brain science, analogy, and philosophy into a tapestry that illuminates how the brain works and what scientists currently believe enable consciousness to reveal the strangeness of the relationship between our inner selves and our environment.

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Pioneering Biologist J Craig Venter - The Future of Life on Earth Jul 23, 2024

A household name following both the mapping of the human genome and, in 2010, the creation of the first synthetic organism, J Craig Venter is a singular figure in 21st century science: a biologist whose legacy is secure and who, at 77, still continues to push boundaries.

He joined us in conversation with David Malone to share a story that is equal parts thrilling global adventure and a journey of momentous scientific discovery: his fifteen year, 65k mile quest to map the microbiome of the oceans. Traveling in the Sorcerer II, a 100ft sailboat turned research vessel, Venter and his team discovered millions of unknown genes, thousands of unseen protein families, and new lineages of bacteria that revealed the unimaginable complexity of life on earth.

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New York Times Bestseller Paolo Bacigalupi - Money and Power in the Fantasy Renaissance Jul 19, 2024

Renowned as a pioneer of climate fiction, Paolo Bacigalupi's novels The Windup Girl and The Water Knife earned him a reputation as one of the essential speculative novelists of our time, with a prophetic gift akin to established genre masters like William Gibson and Magaret Atwood. His new novel Navola is part of a different tradition: a fantasy novel where historical realism takes precedent over the overtly imaginary, exploring the relationship between family, money, and power in a lightly disgused version of Renaissance Italy. His protagonist Davico di Regulai is the reluctant heir to a Medici-inspired banking empire and the coming-of-age story Bacigalupi tells transports us to another world where contemporary themes reasonate deeply within a thrilling, escapist narrative.

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Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell - When the Wild Things Returned Jul 16, 2024

After years of running a failing farm in West Sussex, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell decided to hand back control to nature. Slowly but surely, plants shot up, creatures crept in, and the landscape began to heal.

The area now hums with life and is home to some of the rarest species in Britain, such as peregrine falcons, turtle doves and purple emperor butterflies. Free from human intervention and monocultures, the farm has become a safe haven for nature which self-corrects and self regulates.

In this episode of the podcast they share their rewilding journey, dispel myths about the antagonism between farming and wilding, and share their hopes for the future of the movement with Hannah MacInnes.

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Neuroscientist Kelly Clancy - How Games Change Reality Jul 12, 2024

Kelly Clancy is both a neuroscientist and a physicist, and has held positions at MIT and DeepMind. She's also the author of Playing With Reality, a new intellectual history of games that explores the influence that games have played - if you'll forgive the pun - over many centuries on warfare, gambling, economics and much more. If you've ever wanted to know why chess is used as a stand-in for intelligence or what game theory really is, this episode of the podcast is for you.

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Bestselling Sociologist Sarah Thornton - Why Breasts Matter Jul 09, 2024

After years of biopsies, best-selling author Sarah Thornton made the difficult decision to have a double mastectomy. But, after her reconstructive surgery, she was perplexed: What had she lost? And gained? Blending sociology, reportage, and personal narrative with refreshing optimism and wit, her new book Tits Up has one overriding ambition―to liberate breasts from centuries of patriarchal prejudice. She sat down with Aimee Morris to tell us more.

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Stephanie Harrison - How to Get Happiness Right in a World That’s Got it Wrong Jul 05, 2024

In a society where stress and competition run rampant, how can we find a more fulfilling sense of happiness? Well-being expert and founder of The New Happy Stephanie Harrison joins us to not only address societal woes but also share what we can do about them. Drawing on her background in positive psychology, Stephanie sheds new light on prevailing concepts—from misconceptions of Maslow's hierarchy to the rat race of capitalism—and reveals how we can move away from rigid societal rhythms to find our own path towards happiness.

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Ruchir Sharma - How Capitalism Went Wrong Jul 02, 2024

What went wrong with capitalism? Drawing on his decades of experience as a world-leading investor and FT columnist, leading financial analyst Ruchir Sharma offers an insider’s perspective, offering a critique of capitalism unlike any you have heard before: that capitalism itself has been corrupted from its original inception, and that less government regulation rather than more might be our most viable solution. In conversation with the FT's Gillian Tett, Sharma dives into how we can save our free markets.

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Olympic Gold medallist and entrepreneur Mark Tuitert – How Stoic Philosophy Can Change Your Life Jun 28, 2024

For twenty years, Mark Tuitert has used the principles of Stoic philosophy to become a gold-medal winning Olympic champion athlete, successful entrepreneur, as well as to deal with the challenges in his professional and private life. Now he's here to to share what he learned.

In this episode of the podcast, the athlete lays out the practical lessons through which everyone, in any situation, can develop a Stoic mindset.

Applying principles from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus to the twenty-first century, he shares how Stoicism can change your life and help you reach your full potential.

Stoicism is not about achieving success or happiness for their own sake. It is about doing what is important to you with a focused mindset, and developing a Stoic calm and mental balance when faced with setbacks. Mark will set you on the path to mastering a Stoic mindset, helping you to apply the insights of the Stoics anywhere, anytime.

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Yanis Varoufakis - The Rise of Technofeudalism Jun 25, 2024

Welcome to technofeudalism. The owners of big tech have become the world’s feudal overlords—replacing capitalism with a new system that defies democracy and rewrite the rules of global power. But this is no dystopian story—as visionary economist Yanis Varoufakis argues, this is our world today. In conversation with Ash Sarkar, Varoufakis illuminates the dark underbelly of this new system—and reveals what we can do to thwart it.

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Bestselling Science Writer David Robson - The Laws of Social Connection Jun 21, 2024

Social connection is essential to our wellbeing, not only fuelling creativity and enriching our sense of meaning in life, but also adding years to our life span. And yet, many of us struggle to form strong and meaningful bonds. Drawing on neuroscience and cutting-edge philosophy, science journalist David Robson joins us to reveal the science of meaningful connection. From the science of first impressions, to how to move away from “frenemies” towards more supportive connections, to how to be a proactive listener and interlocutor, David reveals practical insights to help our social lives flourish.

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Naomi Klein - The Mirror World of Conspiracists and the Far-Right Jun 19, 2024

When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously.

Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre mirror world: one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and hucksters, where wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far-right propagandists.

In this episode of the podcast, Naomi joins journalist Moya Lothian-McLean to explore why our politics has become so polarised, and ask what we can do to escape this collective vertigo and get back to fighting for what really matters.

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Clover Stroud - On Home, Belonging, and Letting Go Jun 14, 2024

When her husband's work required journalist Clover Stroud to uproot from Oxfordshire to Washington DC, she began a deep and profound reflection on the many ways she was tethered to her home -- from family roots to knowledge of its ancient history, an appreciation of the local landscape to precious personal memories -- and considered what it would mean to break that tie. This lyrical and moving episode of the podcast that everyone will be able to relate to, wherever you were raised.

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Anna Funder - Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life Jun 11, 2024

If you read the major biographies of George Orwell you would be hard-pressed to know that his wife Eileen shaped his life and writing in profoundly significant ways: from saving his life in the Spanish civil war to seeding the ideas for Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The award-winning author of Stasiland Anna Funder has uncovered Eileen's story in full and joins us on the podcast to share her insights into the character and times of Eric Blair and his tempestuous first marriage.

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Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan - On Love, Memory, and History Jun 07, 2024

One of Australia's leading authors, Richard Flanagan won the Booker for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a novel informed by his father's experiences as a slave labourer in the second world war. He returns to that subject in his new book Question 7, a profound and powerful book that contemplates love and death, resilience and tragedy, and how the world shapes fiction and fiction shapes the world in turn.

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My Octopus Teacher star Craig Foster - How to be Wild Jun 05, 2024

A decade ago, living in a city and feeling exhausted and empty, Craig Foster decided to return to his birthplace—the Cape of Good Hope—and dive into the great African Sea forest each day. His daily oceanic adventures not only helped him “rewild”, but helped him come to see his own “amphibious soul” as a powerful metaphor for the human condition.

Now, in conversation with his close friend Kate Humble, he shares his insights into the wonder of the natural world. From understanding diverse species through the smallest details of their call, their tracks, and their habits, to learning how to reconnect with our most ancient common tongue—the language of wildlife—he reveals how we are all born wild, and that we have the power to reconnect with our innermost nature: nature itself.

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Charles Duhigg - How to be a Supercommunicator May 31, 2024

Who and what are supercommunicators? They’re the people who can steer a conversation to a successful conclusion. They are able to talk about difficult topics without giving offence. They know how to make others feel at ease and share what they think. They’re brilliant facilitators and decision-guiders. How do they do it? In this podcast Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg unravels the secrets of the supercommunicators, unpacking the different types of everyday conversation and pinpointing why some go smoothly while others swiftly fall apart.

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George Monbiot Meets Nish Kumar - The Secret History of Neoliberalism May 28, 2024

An iconoclast unafraid to speak truth to power, George Monbiot has been fighting for a better future for our planet for decades. In this episode, he joins comedian and podcaster Nish Kumar to share his insights into the ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives – neoliberalism.

Revealing how the network of neoliberalism 'kicks down and kisses up', George shows us how this fringe philosophy was adopted by wealthy elites and came to dominate our society and our economy. But nothing is inevitable. Although we may believe that a better world is an impossible fantasy, George and Nish show us that this could not be further from the truth - and deliver a rallying cry for all of us to fight back.

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Africa Brooke and Jameela Jamil - How To Break Free From Self-Sabotage May 23, 2024

How do we build authentic relationships with others and with ourselves when we feel like we're walking on eggshells so much of the time? In our deeply divided world, Africa joins actor and activist Jameela Jamil to share a new vision of authenticity, a third perspective in our highly polarised society. Bravery meets liberation; honesty meets openness; listening meets self-expression: Africa reveals how we can connect deeply with one another when we move beyond the confines of self-censorship and embrace the potential of a more nuanced world.

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Haemin Sunim - When Things Don't Go Your Way May 21, 2024

What do we do when 'we are given too many lemons to make into lemonade'? Zen Buddhist teacher and international bestseller Haemin Sunim joins us with lessons from his new book, When Things Don't Go Your Way, to show us how we can find happiness even when life seems to overwhelm us, and reveal how inner peace is always within reach. From how to fall asleep with greater ease to how to transcend jealousy, from reconnecting with our friends to reconnecting with ourselves, Haemin illuminates practical and meaningful ways to improve our wellbeing.

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Mo Gawdat & Alice Law - A Guide to Stress-Free Living May 17, 2024

After spending decades as a leader in tech, Mo Gawdat turned his brilliant mind towards human flourishing, and showed how we can grow from our lives' darkest moments. After the tragic death of his son Ali, Mo authored international bestseller Solve for Happy in honour of his son, and shared a formula for happiness that can be learned and adopted by all. Now he returns with Unstressable, co-authored with stress management expert Alice Law, and together they joins us for a moving conversation on managing stress and coping with trauma, revealing the resilience we develop from the most stressful moments of our life.

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James O'Brien Meets Ian Dunt - How They Broke Britain May 14, 2024

In this spirited and candid episode, the incisive LBC presenter and bestselling author James O'Brien addresses the state of the nation. In conversation with political journalist Ian Dunt, James maps the UK's hidden webs of power and shares his candid reflections on the bruisers of British politics. It's an unmissable conversation for anyone who wants to understand how we got here - and discover why a nation on its knees is not in fact a foregone conclusion.

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Slavoj Zizek Meets Ash Sarkar - A 75th Birthday Celebration May 10, 2024

Erudite and comic, ironic and profound, philosopher Slavoj Žižek has travelled into territory where few of us dare to tread – and at 75 he shows no signs of becoming less provocative. In this very special birthday podcast, he shares his life story and intellectual journey with broadcaster and journalist Ash Sarkar. A one-of-a-kind glimpse into the makings of the man widely known as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’.

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Robin Sharma Meets Ali Abdaal - How to Be Truly Wealthy May 07, 2024

In a world fixated on the conventional notion of success – marked by relentless hustle, sacrificing wellbeing and missing out on cherished moments with loved ones in the pursuit of fame and material possessions – Robin Sharma offers a life-changing new philosophy and methodology for enjoying an honestly rich life: one filled with personal power, authenticity, fulfilling work and a beautiful lifestyle that will cause you to feel like real fortune has finally smiled on you.

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George the Poet - Me Music and the War on Blackness May 03, 2024

George the Poet knows better than anybody the importance of understanding your surroundings.

Born to Ugandan parents on the St Raphael’s Estate in Neasden, north-west London, George Mpanga has always been aware of his community. It was both his teacher and his inspiration – giving him the language, the experiences, and the skills to become the person he is today.

In this episode George joins former Guardian columnist Professor Gary Younge to unveil the power dynamics that shape our world, shedding light on the forces that restrict Black creativity and put limits on Black excellence. He shares his personal path from liberalism to radicalism, and what fatherhood and Tupac have taught him along the way.

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Economist Andrew Scott — How We Can Sustain Longer, Healthier Lives Apr 30, 2024

With the majority of today's youths in the UK having more than a 50% change of living past 90, the key question becomes: how do we live well for longer? How can our health span match our growing life span? From healthy habits to the larger role which societies must play in shifting approaches to ageing and health, economist and longevity expert Andrew Scott explores the systemic impact, and potential, of our lengthening lives.

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Rebecca Boyle - The Story of Our Moon Apr 26, 2024

The moon is more than a source of majesty and wonder; it has profoundly shaped the course of life on planet Earth.

Children know the moon is a source of majesty and wonder; adults easily forget it. Journalist Rebecca Boyle never has. A science journalist specialising in space and astrophysics, she joins Aimee Morris to share the cultural history of the moon and, as Nasa prepares to return to the moon for the first time in more than fifty years, look to the future of this dazzling other world.

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Neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern and Dr Xand van Tulleken - How the Climate Crisis Affects Our Brains and Bodies Apr 24, 2024

The very real consequences of climate change are taking a toll on our humanity from the inside out: and climate anxiety is just the tip of the iceberg. From the psychiatric risks of climate stress on unborn babies, to the growing danger of neurotoxic algal blooms and brain-eating amoebas, neuroscientist and award-winning journalist Clayton Page Aldern joins Dr Xand van Tulleken to explore the harrowing effects of the climate crisis on our physical and neurological wellbeing.

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Psychotherapist Emma Reed Turrell - How to Overcome Your Blind Spots Apr 19, 2024

After 15 years of treating clients as a psychotherapist, Emma Reed Turrell has observed one recurring factor that plagues her patients: blind spots. These are gaps in our awareness that, if we let them go unchallenged, can calcify over time, cloud our judgement and affect our relationships by creating misconceptions like: ‘my needs aren’t important’ or ‘I can’t trust anyone but myself’.

In this podcast episode, in conversation with Kate Moyle, Emma shows us how to break these cycles in our minds, re-write our own stories and take back control. She reveals the four blind spots profiles – The Hustler, Gladiator, Bridge or Rock – and shows how these can show up in every day life, alongside practical tools for navigating our relationships with clarity.

Tune in to find the answers you need to reduce friction in relationships and live a happier, more fulfilled life.

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Christiana Figueres - Our Story of Nature Apr 17, 2024

Christiana Figueres' podcast Outrage + Optimism is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand the complexity of the climate situation. This podcast is a preview of their mini-series, Our Story of Nature.

In Episode 1 of the three-part series, Christiana Figueres, Isabel Cavelier Adarve and guests delve deep into the roots of humanity’s separation from nature. They explore moments where cracks may have appeared and widened, including the advent of farming and a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis. How have certain ideas shaped different cultures’ relationships with the natural world, and what are their consequences? Is our distance from nature related to other forms of separation, like colonialism? How can we nurture and narrate new stories of our relationship with nature to address 21st Century problems?

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Philip Ball – How Life Works Apr 12, 2024

Philip Ball returns to the How To Academy Podcast to share the extraordinary revelations of contemporary science and make us think again about what we think we know about how life works. Illuminating what we now know about structures as small as RNA and forces as vast as evolution, to show how both the minuscule and the massive have shaped the world we know. Probing ever-pertinent questions around individual agency, purpose, and whether we can deduce meaning from the cosmos itself, Philip invites us to ponder the wonder of life.

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Gary Stevenson – Confessions of a Trader Apr 09, 2024

Gary Stevenson was the youngest trader in the whole city, and became the most profitable one too at his bank after betting against the economy. But what happens when you bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer - and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? Gary Stevenson joins Sam Knight to explore the underbelly of Canary Wharf, revealing a world fuelled by an insatiable zeal for money, and illuminating that there just might be a way out.

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Classicists Mary Beard and Jo Quinn - Who Made The West? Apr 05, 2024

We think we know what it was like to rule – and be ruled – in the Ancient Roman world.

We think we know that Roman values and ideas formed the cornerstone of Western civilisation.

We are wrong.

In this special episode of the How To Academy podcast Cambridge’s Mary Beard and Oxford’s Josephine Quinn transport us back to the ancient world and reveal thrilling new histories of the Roman Empire and the origins of the West.

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Neuroscientist Charan Ranganath meets Robin Ince - Why We Remember Apr 02, 2024

Over twenty-five years, neuroscientist Charan Ranganath has studied the flawed, incomplete and purposefully inaccurate nature of memory to find that our brains haven’t evolved to keep a comprehensive record of events, but to extract the information needed to guide our futures. In this episode he shines new light on the influence of memory on how we learn, heal and make decisions. By examining the role that attention, intention, imagination and emotion play in the storing of memories, Prof Ranganath provides a vital user’s guide to remembering what we hold most dear.

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Harvard's Christopher Palmer - Metabolism and Mental Health Mar 26, 2024

Dr Christopher Palmer advocates a metabolic approach to mental health, focussing on the the things we put in our body as the key to how they function. Sharing insights into the generational legacy of sweeteners on mental health, alongside some of the dietary approaches that can shift our metabolic wellbeing, this conversation with Mindhealth360 founder and editor Kirkland Newman pairs cutting-edge science with practical advice and strategies to help people reclaim their mental health.

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Diplomat Christiana Figueres and former Unilever CEO Paul Polman - How to Fight the Climate Crisis Mar 22, 2024

A household name in the climate movement, Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010-2016 and led the negotiation of the Paris Accords. Ten years on from the Accords, Christiana continues her fight for our planet and our shared future. In this episode she joins former CEO of Unilever (2009-2019) Paul Polman, himself a major figure for the climate movement, to present a bold and utterly necessary call-to-action for our present and future.

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Justin Webb Meets Brian Klaas - Why Everything We Do Matters Mar 20, 2024

What if, by exploding our illusion of control, we can make better decisions and live happy, fulfilling lives?

Offering an entirely new perspective, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and random events. Unpicking our neat and tidy storybook version of events to reveal a reality far wilder and more fascinating than we have dared to consider, Professor Brian Klaas shows us in this episode the bewildering truth that but for a few incidental changes, our lives – and our societies – would be radically different.

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Neuroscientist Tali Sharot - How to See the World Anew Mar 15, 2024

We get used to dirty air, people grow to accept authoritarianism, take foolish risks, and we are more liable to believe misinformation than ever before.

Too much of a good thing might be bad news after all. Rituals and habituation cause acclimatization and indifference. So how do we keep life interesting? Exciting events, relationships, stimulating jobs and breathtaking works of art lose their sparkle after time. People stop noticing what is wonderful and they also stop noticing what is terrible.

With examples of her research, Professor Tali Sharot shares tips for how to keep life sparkling and vital, from the workplace to world news.

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Philosopher Tom Chatfield - How Technology Changes Humanity, From Fire to AI Mar 12, 2024

Philosophy Tom Chatfield loves technology and the humanities with equal passion, and has spent a lifetime thinking about our relationship to the devices we shape and that in turn shape us. Neither a luddite nor a utopian, he seeks to tell a new and more nuaunced story about the role of technology in our evolution and in our present.

Should we be frightened of the rise of AI and the extermination of desirable jobs? Are Silicon Valley stories like the Singularity legitimate possibilities for our future or only folktales for a digital age? What can the Amish teach us about when to embrace new gadgets? You'll discover the answer to these questions and more on this episode of the podcast.

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Novelist Kiley Reid - Come and Get It Mar 08, 2024

The author of the New York Times bestseller Such a Fun Age returns with a tale of campus politics, desire, and bad behaviour.

How much of yourself are you willing to trade to get what you want? Unfolding in a University of Arkansas dormitory, Kiley Reid's new novel Come and Get It is a smart, stylish and scathing investigation of our money-obssessed society.

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Neuroscientist Dr Richard Restak – How To Prevent Dementia Mar 05, 2024

Neurologist and professor Richard Restak has dedicated his life to the science of brain health. Now he returns to How To Academy to share more ways to strengthen our memory and prevent the onset of Alzheimer's. From memory tricks to new friendships, learn how to protect your memory, while making life more vivid along the way.

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Novelist and Macarthur 'Genius' Kelly Link - The Book of Love Mar 01, 2024

Kelly Link is the author of ludicrously acclaimed genre-defying short story collections including Magic For Beginners and the Pulitzer nominated Get in Trouble. Now, after almost three decades at the top of her game, she's written a novel: The Book of Love. It's very funny, smart, and already certain to be one of the books of the year for both literary and genre critics.

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Daniel Goleman - Emotional Intelligence at Work Feb 23, 2024

Multitasking is a myth. Flow states don’t equate to enlightenment. An emotionally engaged boss is best for business. In this podcast, Harvard psychologist, global bestselling author and former New York Times writer debunks the myths we’ve been told about the workplace, with practical examples of how to train your mind to focus.

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Novelist and Diplomat Ray Nayler - The Tusks of Extinction Feb 20, 2024

Ray Nayler's novel The Mountain in the Sea announced him a major new voice in speculative fiction, able to seamlessly fuse the novel of ideas and the novel of adventure. In his new novella The Tusks of Extinction, Ray continues his exploration of the science of the mind and animal communication and extends his passionate plea for deeper respect for the natural world with the story of Dr. Damira Khismatullina, an expert in elephant behaviour given the task of raising a new breed of mammoths resurrected by to occupy the Siberian steppe. Tusks confirms his place as one of the most relevant and thrilling authors of our time -- in any genre.

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Dr Gemma Newman - The Six Healing Health Habits You Need to Know Feb 16, 2024

Family doctor Dr Gemma Newman has come to understand that body, mind and soul are not separate, and that only through a ‘whole body’ treatment plan can we truly heal. From gratitude to love, from mindfulness to healthy eating, Dr Newman joins us to share free healing practices that we can adopt into our daily lives.

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Amitav Ghosh - How the Opium Trade Shaped Capitalism Feb 13, 2024

One small plant has played an outsized role in shaping the world we live in today. Engineered by the British Empire with profound consequences for India, China, and the world at large, the opium trade was a critical part of colonial history. But its influence extends far beyond the 18th and 19th centuries. In this episode of the podcast, novelist Amitav Ghosh traces the links between the trade and the origins of the world's biggest corporations and most powerful American families, and considers its relevance to the unfolding tragedy of America's contemporary opioid crisis.

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Musician James Blunt - Not Safe For Work Feb 09, 2024

The pop star James Blunt has written a memoir about his life as one of the biggest acts of the noughties: a memoir that is filthy, funny, and quite possibly a fantasy. It's called Loosely Based on a Made Up Story. He joined us for an In Conversation event with BBC 6 Music's Matt Everitt last year: a conversation that quickly became very, very, not safe for work...

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Comedian Ruby Wax - On Mental Health Feb 06, 2024

Ruby Wax joins us to share an honest and stirring portrait of the depths of her psyche. Recounting her mental health journey including through a monastery, a mental institution, and therapy, she shares her candid understanding of depression and her meaningful search for inner peace.

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Physicist Carlo Rovelli Meets Theatre-Maker Simon McBurney Feb 02, 2024

Carlo Rovelli is no ordinary scientist. With a genius for revealing the mysteries the universe to those of us without his gifts, he is the heir to Hawking, Sagan, and Feynman; and alone among the leaders of theoretical physics, he draws as much upon art, philosophy, and myth as equations and experiments to illuminate the splendour and strangeness of reality.

Now he joins one of the UK’s preeminent theatre practitioners, the wildly innovative actor, director, and founder of Complicite, Simon McBurney, to explore the most exhilarating questions in science and art.

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Psychotherapist Adam Phillips - What We Must Give Up to Feel More Alive Jan 30, 2024

Both a renowned psychotherapist and the 'best living essayist writing in English' (John Gray), Adam Phillips joins us to reflect upon what we must give up in order to feel more alive.

To give up or not to give up? The question can feel inescapable but the answer is never simple. Giving up our supposed vices is one thing; giving up on life itself is quite another. One form of self-sacrifice feels positive, something to admire and aspire to, while the other is profoundly unsettling, if not actively undesirable. There are always, it turns out, both good and bad sacrifices, but it is not always clear beforehand which is which.

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Stanford Psychiatrist and Addiction Expert Anna Lembke - The New Neuroscience of Pleasure, Pain, and Balance Jan 26, 2024

We're living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting... We've all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.

Dr Anna Lembke is here to help. Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, and an internationally renowned expert in addiction medicine treatment and education, she joins MindHealth360 Founder and Editor Kirkland Newman to share the secret of finding balance in our age of indulgence.

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Daniel Dennett v. Robert Sapolsky - Do We Have Free Will? Jan 24, 2024

Do human beings have free will?

For Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, science clearly demonstrates that free will is a powerful and dangerous illusion. Without free will, it makes no more sense to punish people for antisocial behaviour than it does to scold a car for breaking down.

But for philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, free will is not only compatible with our current scientific knowledge but justified by it. Free will underwrites our moral and artistic responsibility – and reason and self-control are both real and desirable.

Coming together to debate this question for the first time, these two intellectual giants delve deep into the science and philosophy of the mind and get to the heart of this ancient and vitally important question.

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Dr Uma Naidoo - How to Calm Your Mind With Food Jan 19, 2024

We’re in the middle of a global anxiety epidemic. But when it comes to fighting anxiety, you have more control than you think: the power is at the end of your fork. Psychiatrist and chef Dr Uma Naidoo joins us with a guide for taking back control, helping us to understand how food can be an indispensable tool in improving mental health.

This podcast is presented in partnership with MindHealth360.

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Sathnam Sanghera on the British Empire - Live at Wilderness Jan 16, 2024

Every year we host a big thinker at the music festival Wilderness and our guest in 2023 was Sathnam Sanghera, the Times journalist whose two books on the history of the British Empire - Empireland and Stolen History - have transformed the way we think about our past and present.

Sathnam returns to How To Academy on 25th January to tell us about Empireworld - his new book about the lasting impact of the Empire on other nations. A few tickets are still available on our website.

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Oxford Data Scientist Hannah Richie - Combating Climate Anxiety Jan 13, 2024

Each month our sister podcast Found in Conversation explores global affairs and innovation with world-leading thinkers. In this episode, Oxford data scientist and TED star Hannah Richie and investor Rosa Sangiorgio reveal how we can overcome the climate crisis and become the first sustainable generation in history.

If you enjoy the episode, you can subscribe to Found In Conversation on Apple or Spotify. Hannah explores the themes of this episode in more depth in her new book Not the End of the World, which is out now.

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Economist Mariana Mazzucato - The Entrepreneurial State and the Future of Innovation Jan 09, 2024

Mariana Mazzucato’s ideas have changed how governments see their role in the economy - but where do we go from here?

Regular listeners will have heard the economist Mariana Mazzucato on this podcast before -- with George the Poet on modern-day moonshot programmes to can transform the economy, and with journalist Kamal Ahmed with a searing critique of the consulting industry. She recently returned to How To Academy to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the groundbreaking book that launched her career in the public eye - The Entrepreneurial State. The book that makes the compelling case that the state is not a bureaucratic machine standing in the way of progress, but a powerful force for innovation. What does that mean for the world in 2024 and the decades to come? She joined Hannah MacInnes to tell us more.

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Psychologist Dan Ariely - Why People Are Drawn to Conspiracy Theories, and How to Help Jan 05, 2024

Dan Ariely is a superstar TED talker and a world-leading social psychologist, specialising in the study of irrational behaviour and bad decisions. His new book Misbelief is a guide to why some people adopt conspiratorial beliefs and how the rest of us can help rather than make things worse - and offer advice to help us reduce our own susceptibility to such beliefs. He joined the podcast to share his insights.

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Mary Beard and David Mitchell - On Rulers and Power Dec 22, 2023

Cambridge Professor Mary Beard has done more than anyone to bring the world of ancient Rome to life again. Comedian David Mitchell once studied history and won’t let it off the hook for the mess it’s made of everything. They came together to tell the story of our rulers -- from the emperors who ruled Britannia under the Roman occupation to the kings and queens who succeeded them and created England as we know it today.

Mary's new book Emperor of Rome and David's new book Unruly are both available from our bookshop.org page. Buy either book there and help support Primrose Hill Books, our local independent bookseller partner since 2013. You can also join us live for Mary's next How To Academy event, where she will be speaking with her fellow classicist Josephine Quinn.

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Harvard Psychologist David Rosmarin - How To Thrive With Anxiety Dec 19, 2023

Those of us who suffer from anxiety either exhaust ourselves trying to cure it or resign ourselves to a lifetime of fear and worry. What if, instead of fighting our anxiety, we could turn it into a strength?

Harvard's David Rosmarin has developed strategies to harness the power of anxiety to learn about ourselves, deepen our relationships with others, and achieve our deepest goals and dreams.

His constructive, compassionate, and evidence-based approach will not rid you of your anxiety. Instead, it will empower you to reach your fullest potential because of it.

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Hein de Haas - Debunking Myths About Migration Dec 15, 2023

Immigration is probably the most divisive and heated subject in British politics today and the same is true in many other countries, including the Netherlands - where our guest on this episode, Hein de Haas, is a Professor focused on migration and development. His new book How Migration Really Works is an eye-opener for anyone seeking an understanding of why people immigrate and what it means for their origin countries and destination countries. Neither left-wing or right-wing, the book illuminates what's really at stake when we open or close our borders.

If you enjoy the episode, pick up a copy from our bookshop and help support our local independent bookseller, Primrose Hill Books.

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Holistic Psychologist Nicole LePera - How to Heal Your Relationships Dec 12, 2023

Why are our closest relationships so often a source of more stress than solace? Whether the relationship is with a romantic partner, a parent, a child, a friend or a colleague, the dynamic is so often the same - you'd like the relationship to change for the better, yet nothing you try seems to work.

Clinical psychologist Nicole LePera, creator of the global online community The Holistic Psychologist, joins the podcast to help us revolutionise our relationships.

Her new book How to Be the Love You Seek is a guide to breaking frustrating patterns of loneliness, disconnection and resentment and learning how to build security and share compassion with others. If you enjoy this episode of the show, you can pick up a copy from our bookshop.org page and help support our local independent bookseller partner, Primrose Hill Books.

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New York Times columnist David Brooks - How to Know Others and Be Truly Seen Dec 08, 2023

In a society riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception, How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How can we foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives?

The New York Times columnist and bestselling author of The Road to Character joins Will Storr to share a practical, inspiring guide to understanding others and being understood in turn.

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Walter Isaacson - The Life of Elon Musk Dec 06, 2023

Walter Isaacson was the editor in chief of Time magazine and CEO of CNN but he's best known to the public for his incredible biographies - including Leonardo da vinci, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. He is the official biographer of Elon Musk and shadowed Musk through the saga of his purchase of Twitter. He joined us in London for a conversation with Matthew d'Ancona.

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Harvard Business School Prof. Amy Edmondson - Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive Dec 01, 2023

Amy Edmondson is one of the world's most influential organisational psychologists, a professor at Harvard Business School, and an expert on the concept of psychological safety. She joined to answer a simple, provocative question: what if it is only by learning to fail that we can truly hope to succeed?

Her new book Right Kind of Wrong doesn't tell us that failure is a problem; but it doesn't tell us to fail fast, fail often either. It tells us how to fail well. She joined Hannah MacInnes to share more.

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Performance Artist Marina Abramović Meets Tim Marlow Nov 28, 2023

Marina Abramovic is an artist who for more than fifty years has pushed her mind and body to their limits - whether walking into a fire and almost dying from smoke inhalation, being stripped and attacked while passively allowing the public to manipulate her with tools and weapons, or sitting without interruption in MOMA for more than 700 hours facing the public.

She's currently in London playing Maria Callas on stage at the English National Opera; and she's got a major retrospective of her work at the Royal Academy. We brought her together for a live ons stage interview with the director of the design museum, Tim Marlow, to talk about Nomadic Journey And Spirit of Places - her new book collecting notes, sketches, poetry, and doodles made while travelling.

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Immunologist Luke O'Neill - The Joy of Science Nov 24, 2023

Luke O'Neill is a Professor of Biochemistry at Trinity College, Dublin and one of the world's most respected immunologists, with 6 major discoveries to his name. He's also an infectiously enthusiastic broadcaster and public advocate for science. He's also a newspaper columnist and now the author of a wildly fun new history of science called To Boldly Go Where No Book Has Gone Before. He joined the How To Acadmey Podcast to tell us about his own career, and share the stories of both the most celebrated and unsung figures in the history of science.

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Stanford Professor Dr. David Spiegel - How Hypnosis Can Change Your Life Nov 20, 2023

With more than forty years of clinical and research experience investigating the mind-body connection, Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel is sought out the world over for his expertise on the therapeutic potential of hypnosis – sharing his insights with everyone from world leaders at the WEF in Davos to health podcast superstar Andrew Huberman. Now he joins How To Academy to reveal what self-hypnosis can do for you.

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Astronaut Chris Hadfield Meets Robin Ince Nov 15, 2023

A global superstar following his legendary cover version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity aboard the ISS, Colonel Chris Hadfield is also an ace fighter pilot, a veteran of two space walks, the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers, the former NASA Director of Operations in Russia, one of the most popular TED talkers of all time, an adviser to SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, and was personally asked by King Charles to help lead a new project to protect the space environment.

He joins the How To Academy Podcast to share out-of-this-world stories from his life to date, including not only his time as an astronaut but his early days as an RCAF pilot intercepting Soviet bombers in North American airspace. His new novel The Defector – the sequel to his million-selling thriller The Apollo Murders – takes us into the world of Cold War fighter pilots in a dizzying game of spies, lies, and a possible high level defection playing out across three continents. It’s a tale sizzling with the kind of detail and authenticity that only one of the world’s best fighter pilots can provide.

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Neuroscientist and Philosopher Iain McGilchrist - The Divided Brain and the Meaning of Life Nov 10, 2023

Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master and His Emissary was that rare thing: a bestselling classic of modern philosophy with genuine relevance to human life. It’s sequel, The Matter With Things, takes McGilchrist’s core insights into the nature of the mind and brain and explores their relevance for the myriad problems of modern life and civilisation.

Drawing together his insights as a scholar and practitioner of medicine, psychiatry, neuroscience, philosophy, theology and the arts, and directly addressing our contemporary malaise and the future of life on earth, McGilchrist returns to the podcast to articulate a compelling argument for a new philosophy of living.

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Philippa Gregory - 900 Years of Women's History Nov 07, 2023

For decades, Philippa Gregory has thrilled us with tales of the court and the machinations of kings, queens, and courtiers. Now she turns her attention not to the lives of our rulers but the ordinary women whose lives and accomplishments are missing from the national story: a hidden history of those who had no legal presence, no voice in government and no right to own property – but still ruled, governed, and made fortunes.

Highlighting the drive, ingenuity and vast contribution made, Philippa puts women back where they belong in our history – centre stage.

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Albert Read Meets Will Gompertz - Where Good Ideas Come From (and How to Have More) Nov 03, 2023

Conde Nast’s MD Albert Read is on a mission to put the imagination back at the forefront of our lives. Albert joins the podcast to examine how the imagination has evolved through the millennia, and how you can nurture and cultivate your own creativity.

His interlocutor Will Gompertz was a Director of the Tate Galleries and is now the Artistic Director of the Barbican. A household name from his time as the BBC’s first ever Arts Editor, he’s the internationally bestselling author of books distilling his insights from a lifetime of working with and learning from the world’s most creative people.

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Werner Herzog Meets Mark Kermode - A Life in Cinema Oct 31, 2023

From his early movies to his later documentaries, he has made a career out of exploring the boundaries of human endurance: what we are capable of in exceptional circumstances and what these situations reveal about who we really are. But these are not just great cinematic themes. All his life, Herzog would embrace risk and danger, constantly looking for challenges and adventures. He joins Mark Kermode to reveal the influences and ideas that drive his creativity and have shaped his unique view of the world.

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Timothy Garton Ash and Catherine Ashton - The Future of Europe (Bonus Episode) Oct 27, 2023

Every month the How To Academy team release a new episode of Found in Conversation with our friends at Pictet. In this episode, we explore the past, present, and future of the European Project with Oxford Prof Timothy Garton Ash and Baroness Catherine Ashton, former EU Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

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Arthur Brooks - How to Build the Life You Want Oct 24, 2023

A Professor at Harvard Business School specialising in happiness and leadership, Arthur Brooks joins us to share his insights into realising greater happiness, no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing upon the ideas in Build the Life You Want, his new book co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, he will offer not unrealistic promises of perfect bliss, but evidence-based tools to meet you wherever you are and make greater happiness a choice.

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Zeke Faux Meets Oliver Bullough - Inside the Wild Rise and Fall of Crypto Oct 20, 2023

Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg and the author of Number Goes Up - a wild, first hand account of his journey into the world of crypto currencies and the larger than life he met along the way - including Sam Bankman Fried, the founder of FTX. He joined us for a conversation with Oliver Bullow, the author of Butler to the World and Moneyland.

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Davina McCall and Dr Naomi Potter - How to Thrive Through Menopause Oct 18, 2023

Menopause affects every woman, and yet so many approach it with shame, fear, misinformation or silence. Why is no one talking about this? Who has the correct information? And how can we get it?

Davina McCall and Dr Naomi Potter are here to tell you the truth, so you can make informed decisions about your life and your body. By exploring and explaining the science, debunking damaging myths, and smashing the taboos around the perimenopause and menopause, Davina and Naomi will equip you to make the most informed decisions about your health and your life.

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Gordon Brown, Mohamed El-Erian, Michael Spence - Fixing the Permacrisis Oct 13, 2023

Today we face not one crisis but a cascade: sputtering growth, surging inflation, poor policy responses, an escalating climate emergency, worsening inequality, increasing nationalism and a decline in global co-operation. But though the situation seems dire, it is not yet broken beyond repair.

In this episode, we bring together former UK PM Gordon Brown, business leader and former chair of President Obama's Global Development Council Mohamed El-Erian, and Nobel laureate economist Michael Spence to share their bold new plan to fix our world.

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David Nutt - How Psychedelics Can Change Your Life Oct 10, 2023

We are on the cusp of a major revolution in psychiatric medicine and neuroscience. After fifty years of prohibition, criminalisation and fear, science is finally showing us that psychedelics are not dangerous or harmful. Instead, when used according to tested, safe and ethical guidelines, they are our most powerful newest treatment of mental health conditions, from depression, PTSD, and OCD to disordered eating and even addiction and chronic pain. Professor David Nutt, one of the world's leading Neuropsychopharmacologists, has spent 15 years researching this field and joined us at The Conduit to share his findings.

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Camilla Nord - The New Neuroscience of Mental Health Oct 06, 2023

We commonly misperceive mental health as being all in the mind, and physical pain in the body; but neuroscientist Camilla Nord’s groundbreaking research presents a new view of mental health – one that reframes mental health as an intricate, self-regulating process which is different for all of us. It's the subject of her new book, The Balanced Brain, and of this conversation with Hannah MacInnes.

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Michel Faber - Why Music Matters Oct 03, 2023

Michel Faber is one of the most acclaimed contemporary novelists in the English language; a master of the form able to move effortlessly between historical, contemporary, and futuristic settings in pursuit of emotional truth. But music, not literature, is his first love, and in his new book Listen he draws on that passion to investigate why music matters to us and how it works its magic. The owner of thousands upon thousands of records, Michel draws on an encylopedic knowledge of both mainstream and avante garde musics to get to approach that seemingly ineffable question: why do we listen?

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Dr Anders Hansen - How to Be Happier and Less Distracted Sep 30, 2023

"Don't worry, be happy", "focus on the important things", "smile more". We've all heard these platitudes, and we've all been annoyed by them. But how can we actually live a life filled with more happiness and less distraction? Psychiatric specialist and bestselling author Dr Anders Hansen believes the first step is understanding the wiring of our brains - and how modern society is built to hijack it. Anders sits down with Luke Naylor-Perrott to discuss how we can stop this hijacking, translating cutting-edge neuroscience into day-to-day tips.

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John Higgs - The KLF, the Band That Burned a Million Pounds Sep 26, 2023

John Higgs has joined this podcast to talk about William Blake, James Bond, and the Beatles - and now he's back with another iconic British cultural export: the electronic band sometimes called The KLF. He's just released the 10th Anniversary Edition of his book trying to make sense of why they set fire to a million pounds then vanished from public life. His attempt to figure out the answer takes him on a wild ride with counterculture icon Robert Anton Wilson, comic book genius Alan Moore, country superstar Tammy Wynette, and a dead sheep.

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Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross - Your Brain on Art Sep 22, 2023

For most of us, the arts are a great source of pleasure. But could making art actually be good for your brain and body?

Susan Magsamen is the founder and director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she studies how the brain and biology change when we participate in the arts. She's the author of Your Brain on Art, a new book making a powerful and persuasive case for the medicinal benefits of art. She wrote the book with Ivy Ross, Vice President of Design for Google's hardware division, and both authors joined David Malone to tell us more.

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Joyce Carol Oates - Zero Sum Sep 19, 2023

The author of 58 novels, as well as plays, poetry, non-fiction and short stories, Joyce Carol Oates is famed across the literary world for writing at a speed which leaves her contemporaries trailing in the dust. But the fact of her productivity – and the sheer challenge of keeping up with such a prodigious writer – too often masks the more significant truth: that Joyce Carol Oates may be the most original, erudite, and versatile voice in American letters. In this podcast, we dive into the stories of her new collection Zero Sum and hear her take on the strange and troubled times we live in.

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Jesse Coomer - The Power of Breathwork Sep 15, 2023

Jesse Coomer was an English professor suffering from what he called "The Modern Human Condition" - in other words, he was a mess of stress and anxiety. He learned to combat that with breath training and cold exposure, and now teaches his techniques to athletes, the military, and beyond. He's the author of a new book called The Language of Breath - it's already out in the US and comes out in the UK in October. He joined Hannah MacInnes a couple of weeks back to tell us more.

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Kristen Ghodsee and Angela Saini - Radical Experiments in the Good Life Sep 12, 2023

What can we learn from historical attempts to live together and raise children differently? Kristen Ghodsee is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Everyday Utopia, a new guide to experimental communities from the Pythagorians to the present. She talked to the journalist, author, and broadcaster Angela Saini about the past, present, and future of family life.

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Dr James Kinross - The New Science of the Microbiome Sep 08, 2023

James Kinross is a consultant surgeon at Imperial College and one of the world's leading experts on the science of the microbiome — the complex ecosystem of bacteria, viruses and other microbes inside us. In a livestream from hospital, where he had literally just finished operating, he took Hannah MacInnes on a tour of this amazing inner universe and told us what it means for our overall health and wellbeing.

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Emma Southon - Women of the Roman Empire Sep 05, 2023

Emma Southon is a podcaster and ancient historian. Her new book A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women does exactly what it says on the tin: sidestepping the sidesteps of the long list of battles, consuls and generals that normally passes for the grand narrative of Rome to focus on the lives of women - including Vestal Virgins, sex workers, empresses, poets, and saints. She turns our preconceptions about the Roman world on its head to reveal a new story of the ancient world where ordinary individual lives take centre stage.

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Rahul Jandial - How to Rewire Your Brain (Summer Repeat) Sep 01, 2023

For years Dr Rahul Jandial, a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, has transformed the lives of his neurosurgery patients by putting them through ‘brain rehab’, his specially developed boot camp for restoring brain function. In this eye-opening interview with Hannah MacInnes, he uses his expertise to show how healthy people can rewire their brains to work in a higher gear.

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David Christian - A User's Guide to the Future (Bonus Episode) Aug 29, 2023

When you get behind the wheel of a car, throw or catch a ball, change jobs, or move to a new country, you are making a series of predictions about what will happen next in your life and in the world. But what do we really mean when we talk about “the Future”? Is it something that is fixed or open? Can we genuinely know something about the world in twenty-five, fifty, or a hundred years? Are all predictions of the future equally likely to be right or wrong, and how can we make our predictions more accurate? Professor David Christian investigates.

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Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché - Nostalgia is a Weapon Aug 25, 2023

The writer Helen Macdonald is best known for the award winning memoir H is For Hawk and other distinguished works exploring our relationship to the natural world; their new novel Prophet is something very different but no less compelling - a speculative novel of ideas that will appeal to fans of literary science fiction and action thrillers as well as fans of Helen's earlier work. Written in collaboration with the Irish-American musician and writer Sin Blaché, the novel tells the story of a biochemical weapon that creates physical manifestations of nostalgic memories - with consequences that are equal parts surrealist, horrifying, and politically explosive. We caught up with both authors last week and took the plunge into this thrilling new work of imaginative fiction.

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Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Gilbert - The Path to Higher Creativity (Summer Repeat) Aug 22, 2023

Julia Cameron is the author, poet, and screenwriter whose book The Artist's Way is one of the most influential creativity manuals ever written. Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of many books including most famously, Eat, Pray, Love - a memoir she says would not have been written without the guidance offered by The Artist Way. At the start of the pandemic, we brought Julia and Elizabeth together virtually to celebrate the power and value of the human imagination.

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Alan Philps - Stalin's Disinformation War Aug 18, 2023

Alan Philps is the former foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph and an expert on Russian politics. He's the author of a new book called The Red Hotel, which tells the story of Moscow's Metropol Hotel and the journalists and translators who stayed there in WWII. The book reveals both the scope and sophistication of Stalin's propaganda machine and the heroism of the translators who fought to expose the truth about life in the Soviet Union. We sat down with Alan earlier this year to find out more, and to ask for his thoughts on the relevance this history has for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

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Marie Kondo - Kurashi at Home (Summer Repeat) Aug 15, 2023

Marie Kondo became a global superstar when she introduced the world to the life-changing magic of tidying up. Now Marie joins us to share the art of kurashi – or “way of life.” She elevates her focus from the physical act of tidying to include a more holistic and personal approach to transforming our homes into spaces of calm. As a mother of three young children, Marie not only reveals a personal glimpse of her own way of living and an enhanced approach to the pursuit of joy, but also how we can find that joy for ourselves too.

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Victoria Belim - The Resilience of Art in Times of War Aug 11, 2023

“Mourning a place is even more difficult than mourning a person,” writes Victoria Belim in The Rooster House. Her book is part-memoir, part-detective story as she returns to her birth country of Ukraine in 2014 to uncover the mystery of her missing great-uncle; but it is also a hymn to the beauty of Ukraine and a paean to her lost land. For as seasons pass and Victoria learns more about her family, she also becomes one with the land her grandmother tends and reconnects with the unbreakable spirit of Ukraine and its people. In this episode, Victoria speaks to Esme Bright about this period of self-discovery and shares her love for Ukraine’s rich history of art, craft and cooking. Their conversation touches on the nature of memory, the value of craftsmanship, how food can unite and the resilience of art in times of war.

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Dr Pooja Lakshmin - Sustainable Strategies for Real Self-Care Aug 08, 2023

Leading psychiatrist Dr Pooja Lakshmin knows first-hand how toxic the wellness industry can be. In search of radical answers to her own personal experience of burnout and depression, she bought into the cult of wellness and faux “self-care” and found an industry rigged against women’s real interests. Now she joins us with an alternative framework for achieving true wellbeing. Using case studies, clinical research and actionable strategies, Dr Pooja is a leading a personal and social revolution that provides effective solutions to our society’s mental health crisis.

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Booker Prize winner George Saunders - Liberation Day (Summer Repeat) Aug 04, 2023

Revisiting one of our favourite episodes of last year, the Booker Prize winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo shares his idiosyncratic take on the human condition.

George Saunders’ first new collection of stories in ten years is a powerful reminder of why he is widely considered to be the greatest short story writer in the English language. In Liberation Day, we meet the disillusioned employees of a Hell themed underground theme park, the artistic patrons of a dystopian near-future America, and brainwashed political protesters for hire. Mixing satirical fantasies with razor-sharp observations of human nature, Saunders’ new stories walk a fine line between comedy and pathos, realism and playfulness. He joins us on the podcast for a journey inside his creative process and dazzling imagination.

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Malcolm Harris - How Palo Alto Conquered the World Aug 02, 2023

How did the suburb of Palo Alto become the epicentre of a global tech revolution, changing not just American capitalism but the world?

Malcolm Harris was raised in Palo Alto, the heartland of Silicon Valley, home of Stanford University, and the birthplace of the digital age. We live in the world created by The Palo Alto System - a set of 19th century ideas for innovation that have subtly shaped the way that business is still done in the Valley today. Malcolm's new book Palo Alto offers a critical history of the town and its hugely influential residents. Featuring robber barons, eugenics, murder, missiles, mining, and an infamous President, this is a startling look at the making of the contemporary world.

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Dr Amy Shah - How to Manage Hunger and Cravings Jul 28, 2023

Our guest on this episode is Amy Shah, a physician who trained at Cornell, Columbia and Harvard. She specialises in nutrition and the mind-body connection that leads to hunger and cravings. Her new book on that subject is called I'm So Effing Hungry. She joined Hannah MacInnes earlier this year to tell us all about it.

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Andy Clark - How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality Jul 25, 2023

How do our minds build our worlds? One of the most important living thinkers in cognitive science and philosophy joined us with a grand new vision to explain our lived experience.

Hugely renowned in the cognitive sciences for the Extended Mind hypothesis, which explained the way in which tools seem to become part of ‘us’ many years before smartphones, laptops, and the internet made all of us feel one with our machines, philosopher Andy Clark is the leading researcher of Predictive Brain theory – the nearest thing we have to a unified science of the mind. With profound consequences for how we make sense of our selves and of society, this theory will forever reframe your understanding of the world we live in and the worlds we create.

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Christina Wallace - How To Futureproof Your Career Jul 21, 2023

How can you make 'work' work for you? Christina Wallace is a millenial, an entrepreneur, a professor at Harvard Business School, and an expert in building a career that is both true to your values and interests and compatible with our age of constant disruption. It's the subject of her new book The Portfolio Life and of a livestreamed conversation we hosted with Christina in the spring, hosted by her friend and fellow entrepreneur DJ diDonna.

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Booker 2022 winner Shehan Karunatilaka - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida Jul 18, 2023

Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet gay, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him.

Fusing fury with comedy, mordant wit and disturbing truths, Shehan Karunatilaka’s wildly energic tour de force The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida has catapulted its author in the first order of world literature. He joins us to share the stories behind this extraordinary testimony to one of the darkest times in modern history.

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Emma Gannon - The Meaning of Success Jul 14, 2023

Do you think you'd be happier if you won the lottery? Do you spend your days scrolling, thinking everyone else is living life better than you? Have you ever got a long-awaited promotion and thought 'Oh. Is that it?'

Emma Gannon had everything she'd longed for: a string of successful books to her name, a thriving portfolio career, speaking engagements around the world. She was also burned out and confused at why she felt unhappy, yet still striving for more.

After taking a deep look at her own journey, and interviewing many other successful people on her podcast Ctrl, Alt, Delete, she has realised that our overly celebrated and traditional version of success is making us lonely, unfulfilled and dispirited. Now she has worked out a way to do things differently.

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Richard Dawkins - Live at Wilderness Festival 2022 Jul 11, 2023

How To Academy is back at Wilderness Festival this August, where we will be hosting the journalist and author of Empireland Sathnam Sanghera on his new history of the British Empire aimed at younger readers: Stolen History. In anticipation we wanted to share our event from last year's Wilderness, this time with the scientist and author of groundbreaking books including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins.

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Viorica Marian - The Power of Language Jul 07, 2023

Viorica Marian joins us to explore how crucial multilingualism is to human flourishing. Her new book, The Power of Language, distils her research to share how language shapes our self-conception, our decisions, and the society we create. From the politics that underlie whether we categorise a language as a “language” or a “dialect”, to the ways language has shaped our identities or been employed to discriminate, to how maths and poetry too can be understood as languages, this episode illuminates the unimaginable power of the languages we speak.

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Peter Heather - Will the West Fall Like Rome? Jul 04, 2023

What can we learn about the decline of the west from the fall of the Roman Empire? Was decline inevitable for Rome and is it inevitable for the US too? Historian Peter Heather is the co-author of Why Empires Fall, a new book exploring the parallels between the 5th century and the 21st. He joined Luke Naylor Perrott to explore what new lessons we can learn from ancient history.

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Lorraine Candy - How to Have a Magnificent Midlife Jun 30, 2023

Lorraine Candy is the go-to voice for a generation of women seeking information and guidance. Now the bestselling author of Mum, What’s Wrong With You? and co-host of chart-topping podcast Postcards from Midlife joins How To Academy for a witty, compelling, honest and reassuring guide to living a magnificent midlife. Drawing together advice from experts and her own personal experiences, Lorraine will help you feel less alone and embrace this liberating and transformational new stage of life.

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Scott Shapiro - The Dark Art of Hacking Jun 27, 2023

Scott Shapiro is a professor at Yale who teaches the philosophy of law. He is also a hacker, and the author of a new history of hacking, cybersecurity and cyberwar called Fancy Bear Goes Phishing. In it, he sets out to answer three questions: why is the internet so insecure? how do hackers exploit its vulnerabilities? And what can we do about it? If you've ever wondered whether hackers are all savants with black hoodies who can break into the pentagon from their basements, Scott is here to disabuse you of that notion, and reveal that the truth is a whole lot more interesting.

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James Comey - The Pursuit of Justice in a Divided America Jun 23, 2023

Since he was fired by Trump for refusing to bend the knee, the former FBI director James Comey has become one of the most insightful and authoritative defenders of American democracy and the institutions of American justice. James has just released a new novel inspired his experience prosecuting the mafia in new york: Central Park West. It's a wild ride, sizzling with crime, corruption, and conspiracy. He joined us in London at the Conduit for a conversation with the club's founder, Paul van Zyl. He talked to Paul about his new calling as a novelist following a long career in the pursuit of justice, and shared his insights into the state of america today.

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Gretchen Rubin - How to Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life Jun 20, 2023

Our guest on this episode, Gretchen Rubin, writes bestselling books about the routes we can take to find happiness and fulfilment; in the process she's become part of the zeitgeist, even appearing as an answer on Jeopardy!. Her latest book is Life in Five Senses; a guide to using getting out of our heads so we can appreciate all that the world around us has to offer. She joined us in conversation with Hannah MacInnes.

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William Dalrymple and Sathnam Sanghera - British Imperialism in India Jun 16, 2023

How did the Mughal empire – which then generated just under half the world’s wealth – come to be replaced by the first global corporate power - the East India Company? And how does the legacy of British imperialism continue to shape life and culture in Britain today? Bringing together Empireland author and Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera and bestselling award-winning historian William Dalrymple, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast will tell a story that is barely taught in schools or mentioned in museums but is critically important to who we are as a nation in the 21st century.

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Richard Ford - A Life in Literature Jun 13, 2023

Our guest on this episode Richard Ford is one of the masters of American literary fiction. Frequently compared to Updike, Faulkner and Hemingway; he's the author of The Sportswriter, Let Me Be Frank With You, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Independence Day - all of which chart the life of his imperfect everyman Frank Bascombe.

Ford's new novel Be Mine is the last of the Frank Bascombe books and finds his protagonist in his later years embarking on a trip to Mt Rushmore with his terminally ill son.

In this conversation with Esme Bright, Ford reflects on the responsibility of the writer, the politics of language and the prospect of happiness in an imperfect world.

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Andre Solo - How To Thrive as a Sensitive Person Jun 09, 2023

Have you ever been told you're too sensitive? What if we told you that being sensitive wasn't a weakness, but a superpower? Our guest on this episode Andre Sólo is a researcher, and editor-in-chief of the website Highly Sensitive Refuge. He is the co-author of a number of scientific papers on the subject and of a new book: Sensitive: The Power of a Thoughtful Mind in an Overwhelming World, which makes the case for the advantages of a sensitive soul and shares his insights for how to thrive as a sensitive person. He joined the writer and broadcaster Julia Wheeler to tell us more.

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Susie Alegre - Protecting Freedom of Thought in the Digital Age Jun 06, 2023

Susie Alegre is a leading human rights barrister and a pioneer of digital human rights in the age of AI and big tech. In her book Freedom to Think, she explores the basis upon which we have a right to our own ideas and opinions - and how we can protect that right in an age of digital surveillance and ever more advanced forms of propaganda. She spoke to us about the history of thought control, connecting the dots between Socrates, Galileo, witch trials and the contemporary world.

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Sarah Knight - How to be an Adult and Get Treated Like One Jun 01, 2023

Sarah Knight made her name as the author of the sensational anti-self help book The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**K and has sold more than 3 million copies of that book and others in the series. Her latest is called Grow the F**K Up - how to be an adult and get treated like one. We hosted her in conversation with Hannah MacInnes. Expect bad language and good advice.

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M. John Harrison - Living in an Age of Fantasy May 29, 2023

As a member of the 1960s science fiction New Wave, M. John Harrison worked with authors like Michael Moorcock and JG Ballard to he helped turn generic entertainment into serious and even avante garde literature. His latest book, Wish I Was Here, subverts and breaks apart the conventions of life writing with the same restless unbridled spirit that powered his award-winning novels Climbers, Light, Nova Swing and most recently, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. He sat down with us to explore the nature of self, the desire for escape, and why we are living in an age of fantasy.

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Alastair Campbell Meets Beth Rigby - Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How You Can Help Fix It May 23, 2023

Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair's communications chief and is now one of the UK's most sought after political commentators; The Rest is Politics, his podcast with Rory Stewart, is essential listening for anyone who wants a fresh perspective on what's going on in Westminster. Alastair's new book is But What Can I Do?, a guide to how all of us can get involved in fixing politics. He joined us live on stage in conversation with Sky News political editor Beth Rigby to tell us more.

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Thomas Hertog - Stephen Hawking's Final Theory of the Universe May 19, 2023

Thomas Hertog was Stephen Hawking's PhD student and went on to become a leading cosmologist in his own right. He and Hawking developed a radical new theory concerning the origins of time itself: answering the biggest question imaginable - why does our universe have the laws of physics that it does? This would prove to be Hawking's final scientific theory and at Hawking's request Thomas wrote a book on the subject: On The Origin of Time. In this episode of the podcast, Thomas sits down with us to reveal how it all began...

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Ruby Wax Meets Julia Samuel - I'm Not As Well As I Thought I Was May 16, 2023

These days, trying to stay sane in a completely chaotic world makes life incredibly difficult, especially if you're struggling with your mental health. While searching for inner peace and equanimity amidst global chaos, Ruby realises that, ultimately, the most challenging gauntlet we all must face is ourselves. Joined by psychotherapist and author Julia Samuel, Ruby returns to How To Academy for an honest and raw journey into the depths of her psyche, and a stark exploration of what trauma can do to someone.

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Fiona Buckland - How to Change Your Life May 12, 2023

What makes a fulfilling life, and how can we live one? Life coach Fiona Buckland explores the overwhelming world we live in and the stressors and temptations that pull us away from understanding ourselves. She reveals how we can return to ourselves to create not just a life well-lived, but a life suffused with meaning.

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Justin Gregg - What Animal Intelligence Tells Us About Human Stupidity May 10, 2023

What if human intelligence is more of a liability than a gift? According to the animal cognition expert and author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal Justin Gregg, there's an evolutionary reason why human intelligence isn't more prevalent in the animal kingdom. Simply put, non-human animals don't need it to be successful. In conversation with comedian and science communicator Robin Ince, Justin highlights features seemingly unique to humans and compares them to our animal brethren. The picture he paints will forever change how you look at life on earth.

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Robin Ince Meets Chris van Tulleken - Why We Can't Stop Eating Stuff That Isn't Food May 05, 2023

Over the past 150 years, we have entered a new ‘age of eating’ where most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances: Ultra-Processed Foods.

In this episode award-winning broadcaster, practicing NHS doctor and leading academic Dr Chris van Tulleken joins Robin Ince to reveal the disastrous effects of Ultra-Processed Food on our health - the subject of his new bestseller, Ultra Processed People.

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Mick Herron - Slow Horses, Bad Actors May 02, 2023

Thriller writer Mick Herron is the heir to John Le Carre - the author of the wildly acclaimed Slough House espionage novels. The TV adaptation named after the first in the series, Slow Horses, is one of the best shows around - no mean feat in our golden age of TV drama. It stars Gary Oldman as Herron's Falstaffian protagonist Jackson Lamb. The latest Slough House novel, Bad Actors, has just come out in paperback. Mick sat down with Hannah MacInnes live on stage a couple of weeks back to tell us more.

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Eleanor Janega - Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society Apr 28, 2023

Why did the ideal medieval woman have a pot belly and small feet? Which days of the week was sex permitted? Why did the transgender sex workers of London steal men's clothes? Eleanor Janega has the answers. She teaches medieval and early modern history at the London School of Economics. She's also the creator of the blog Going Medieval and the author of The Once and Future Sex, a new book exploring the ideals of womanhood in the medieval period. She tells Luke Naylor Perrott more in a NSFW podcast that's funny, provocative, and depressingly relevant to the present.

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Alexa Hagerty - Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains Apr 25, 2023

Anthropologist Alexa Hagerty spent years working with forensic teams and victims’ families to investigate crimes against humanity in Latin America. In this harrowing and deeply personal conversation with Luke Naylor-Perrott, she explores what science can tell us about atrocities and resistance, grief and care, ritual and justice.

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Adam Gopnik - The Mystery of Skill and Mastery Apr 21, 2023

The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik is a master literary stylist, acclaimed as one of wisest and most insightful figures in American journalism. But was he already too advanced in years to master other skills - including those that require as much of the body as they do of the mind? He studied with a boxer, a dancer, a driving instructor, a fine artist and more in pursuit of the secrets of mastery.

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Microsoft President Brad Smith - Tools and Weapons Apr 18, 2023

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith hosts conversations with leaders in government, business, and culture that explore the world’s most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society. In this episode, Strive Masiyiwa, a pioneer of Africa’s telecoms industry and influential global tech tycoon, discusses his work to ensure that all 1.3 billion+ Africans get access to digital infrastructure, close the digital skills gap, and invest in the continent’s young entrepreneurs to find innovative solutions for healthcare and food insecurity. Follow or subscribe to Tools and Weapons at https://news.microsoft.com/tools-and-weapons-podcast/

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Richard Restak - The Neuroscience of Strengthening Your Memory Apr 14, 2023

Octogenerian neurologist Ricard Restak is living proof that a declining memory is not an inevitable fact of ageing. A professor at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dr Restak has dedicated his life to the science of brain health, and joins the podcast with evidence-based tools and techniques drawn from a lifetime of research and practice.

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Luke Turner - Men at War Apr 11, 2023

Journalist Luke Turner spent his childhood idolising Spitfires and Lancaster Bombers. Now, as an adult, he explores the human lives behind the machines. Who goes to TankFest - and who plays the SS? Are we more obsessed with war machines than living human beings of flesh and blood? How did tank commanders grieve for their crews? What would it have been like to kill someone with a bayonet? Why did Quentin Crisp say Blitz era London like "a paved double bed"? Why was the war a time of queer liberation - only to be followed by a period of horrifying persecution afterwards? How did WWII military medicine lead to gender transitioning surgery? Find out the answers and more in an account of the War like none you've heard before.

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Curtis Sittenfeld - Romantic Comedy Apr 07, 2023

Curtis Sittenfeld has made a name for herself as one of America’s most exciting writers and her novels Prep, American Wife and Rodham have been hailed as modern classics. Her latest novel, Romantic Comedy, follows a scriptwriter who has given up on romance with Sittenfeld's trademark warmth and intelligence. In this episode, she speaks to Esme Bright about the pitfalls and pleasures of romantic comedies, celebrity obsession in the US, why everyone wants to be the main character on TikTok, and what separates cheese from romance.

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Julian Baggini - How to Think Like a Philosopher Apr 04, 2023

Julian Baggini is a philosopher who disavows jargon in favour of a clear and accessible approach to the tenets of philosophical enquiry. He joins us with a a guide to the habits and practices of philosophical thought that can make a difference to our daily lives. Why is a good driver like a good thinker? Should we really 'question everything' as free thinkers? How can we live a good life for ourselves and those around us? Is winning an argument more important than being right? Find out from one of the most eloquent and level-headed voices in British philosophy today.

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Dr Shilpa Ravella - The New Science of Inflammation Mar 23, 2023

Inflammation has traditionally been thought of as the body's response to injury and foreign microbes. But as the threats we face have evolved, what if it were now the root cause of modern disease? New science has revealed low-level, smouldering inflammation, simmering quietly and undetected, behind everything from heart disease and cancer to mysterious autoimmune conditions. A doctor at the forefront of this field, Shilpa Ravella joins How To Academy to explain what we know of this elusive phenomenon.

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Vex King and Kaushal - Get Closer to Love Mar 21, 2023

Do you love your partner but want to rekindle that ‘in love’ feeling? Do you go on plenty of dates but can’t seem to click with the right person? Do you keep having the same conflicts with your partner? The bestselling author of Healing is the New High Vex King and his wife Kaushal have the answers. Drawing on their own relationship, they joined us in London to share practical guidance for learning to love authentically and unconditionally.

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Amantha Imber - How to Use Time Wisely Mar 17, 2023

As one of Australia's most influential behavioural scientists, Amantha Imber's advice is in-demand everywhere from Disney to Google. She's an expert in helping people do their best work without burning out, ensuring that the third of our waking lives we spend in the office is both impactful and meaningful. She joins the podcast to share her insights into the way you think about and use your time: the subject of her new bestselling book, Time Wise. From dealing with imposter syndrome to knowing when and how to say 'no', her hacks and tricks are unmissable for anyone who wrestles with the challenges of a modern working life.

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Sir Tony Robinson Meets Peter Frankopan - How a Changing Climate Shaped Civilisation Mar 14, 2023

Peter Frankopan’s ground-breaking history, The Silk Roads, brought a dazzling new perspective to the story of humankind; its sequel, The New Silk Roads, mapped China’s emerging global empire. He joined us to share the story of how the climate has shaped the rise and fall of civilisations across time with actor and presenter Sir Tony Robinson. Discover how harvests built empires, drought fanned the flames of war and storms and floods buried civilisations...

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Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington - How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Democracy Mar 10, 2023

In conversation with former Editorial Director of BBC News, Kamal Ahmed, world-renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato and her collaborator Rosie Collington expertly debunk the myth that consultancies always add value to the economy. Presenting a wealth of original research, they argue for investment and collective intelligence within all organizations and communities, and for a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good.

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Nicholas Humphrey - The Invention of Consciousness Mar 08, 2023

We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But what does this magical dimension of experience amount to? What’s it for, and why has it evolved? Humphrey's solution implies that phenomenal consciousness, far from being primitive, is a relatively late and sophisticated evolutionary development. The implications, for the existence of sentience in nonhuman animals, are startling and provocative.

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Bernie Sanders Meets Frankie Boyle - It's Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism Mar 02, 2023

An underdog who became an international icon, unafraid to speak truth to power and defend ordinary people against vested interests and the billionaire class, Bernie Sanders is more than a politician: he is an inspiration to anyone unwilling to accept a system fuelled by uncontrolled greed. Senator Sanders joins comedian and bestselling author Frankie Boyle live on stage at How To Academy to demand fundamental economic and political change.

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Blake Morrison - The Power of Art in Grief Feb 28, 2023

Thirty years ago the poet and critic Blake Morrison forged the way for a new genre of confessional memoir with his groundbreaking book And When Did You Last See Your Father?. His new memoir Two Sisters is an even more poignant and profound exploration of family and human frailty, fusing personal storytelling with an examination of sibling relationships in history and literature. Esme Bright sat down with Blake to find out more.

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Caroline Dodds Pennock - How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe Feb 24, 2023

Our guest on this episode, Caroline Dodds Pennock, is the UK's only Aztec historian. Countless books have been written about Europeans in the Americas in the age of Discovery but Caroline's new book On Savage Shores is the first to tell the story of the tens of thousands of indigenous Americans who came to Europe: as enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants and traders. She sat down with Luke Naylor Perrott to tell us more.

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Ray Nayler - What Octopuses and AI Teach Us About Consciousness Feb 21, 2023

Ray Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea is a speculative novel about the possibilities of interspecies communication that draws deeply upon contemporary philosophy and neuroscience, as well as his extensive experience working in central and south east Asia.

Mountain tells the story of Dr Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist invited by a shadowy tech company to the Con Dao archipelago in Vietnam to investigate whether a colony of octopuses have developed language and culture. It's a novel blending high adventure and big ideas and will thrill anyone with an interest in discovering modern answers to that most ancient of questions: what makes us human?

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Tracey Shors - A Neuroscientist's Guide to Trauma Feb 17, 2023

Distinguished neuroscientist Tracey Shors has dedicated her life to explaining how the mind and body respond to stressful events we can’t control – from difficult childhoods to bereavements, stressful jobs to pregnancy. Some dissipate with time; while other, long-term stresses – like the experience of the pandemic - can change the structure of our brains.

Now, drawing on years of research into the long and short-term effects of stress and trauma, she joins the podcast to share her insights into strengthening our resilience and improving difficult symptoms.

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Mervyn King Meets Martin Wolf - The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism Feb 14, 2023

We are living in an age when economic failings have shaken faith in global capitalism. Political failings have undermined trust in liberal democracy and in the very notion of truth. The ties that ought to bind open markets to free and fair elections are being strained and rejected, even in democracy's notional heartlands. Some now argue that capitalism is better without democracy; others that democracy is better without capitalism. What can be done? In this episode of the podcast, Martin Wolf and Mervyn King consider the present and future of our political and economic framework.

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Julia Samuel Meets John and Julie Gottman - How to Make Love Last Feb 10, 2023

What can science tell us about why love lasts? Why do some couples stay together forever, while others fall apart? Is there a formula for building a relationship that endures the test of time? Widely regarded as America’s leading relationship experts, Drs John and Julie Gottman have studied love for more than fifty years. In conversation with eminent psychotherapist and author Julia Samuel, they share ideas for realising deeper intimacy.

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Daniel Finkelstein Meets Adam Wagner - The Freedoms We Lost in the Pandemic Feb 08, 2023

On 26 March 2020, a new law appeared. In 11 pages, it locked down tens of millions of people, confined us to our homes, banned socialising, closed shops, gyms, pubs, places of worship. It restricted our freedoms more than any other law in history, justified by the rapid spread of a deadly new virus. A state of emergency was declared, lasting for 764 days, during which time ministers brought in over 100 new restrictions, almost never debated, increasingly confusing the public, and some - we would find out - stained with corruption.

Adam Wagner was described in the House of Lords as ‘the only person in the country who can make sense of [the COVID-19] regulations’. In conversation with peer and Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein, he tells the startling story of the state of emergency which became an emergency state and how extreme measures caused constitutional chaos.

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Tom Rob Smith - Antarctica and Apocalypse Feb 03, 2023

One of the outstanding storytellers of his generation, Tom Rob Smith is best-known for his historical thrillers and acclaimed work as a screenwriter. His new novel Cold People exploring the history of colonialisation and the future of genetic engineering through the lens of speculative fiction. Alien occupiers force the last remanants of humanity to begin a new civilisation in the one place on Earth they cannot survive: Antartica. What will remain of human nature and morality when threatened with the prospect of extinction? Do scientists still need ethics, and who should decide?

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Morgan Levine - How to Reverse the Ageing Process Jan 31, 2023

Research suggests that only 10-30% of our lifespan is determined by our genetics. This means that the vast majority of how we age is directly related to choices we make everyday - how and what we eat, exercise and sleep quality, to name a few. Dr Morgan Levine, Head of the Ageing in Living Systems Lab at Yale University, joins the podcast to share her insights into the cutting-edge developments in the science of aging and longevity.

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Nouriel Roubini - Megathreats That Imperil the World's Future Jan 27, 2023

Former White House economic advisor Nouriel Roubini joins the podcast for a frightening glimpse into the world’s future. From the worst debt crisis the world has ever seen, to governments pumping out too much money and causing inflation, to borders that are blocked to workers and many shipments of goods, to the rise of a new superpower competition between China and the US, to pandemics and climate change that strike directly at our most populated cities, to the threat to jobs coming from AI, we are facing ten causes of disaster.

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Dr Gabor Maté - Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture Jan 24, 2023

Illness and trauma are defining how we live. 45% of Europeans suffer high blood pressure, and nearly 70% of Americans take at least one prescription drug. The renowned physician, addiction expert and author Gabor Maté joined us live on stage in London to dissect the underlying causes of this malaise - physical and emotional, and connect the dots between our personal suffering and the pressures of modern-day living. Over four decades of clinical experience, Dr Gabor Maté has found that the common definition of 'normal' is false: virtually all disease is actually a natural reflection of life in an abnormal culture, as we grow further and further apart from our true selves.

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Maria Ressa - How to Stand Up to a Dictator Jan 20, 2023

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize, TIME Person of the Year, and countless further accolades, her work tracking disinformation networks seeded by her own government, spreading lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate, has landed her in trouble with the most powerful man in the country: President Duterte. Now, hounded by the state, she has multiple arrest warrants against her name. In this episode of the podcast, Maria joins us to tell the story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts, and how an invisible atom bomb has exploded online that is killing our freedoms.

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Alan Moore - The Magic of Storytelling Jan 17, 2023

Few figures make such a seismic impact on their artistic medium that they transform its reputation from childish pulp entertainment to a vital and exhilarating creative form, capable of exploring the great mysteries of metaphysics, science, and the human spirit – but Alan Moore is one. A modern-day alchemist who transmuted comic books into literary gold, his works not only inspired a later generation of authors who are now household names, from Neil Gaiman to Susanna Clarke, but filmmakers, artists, and storytellers in every medium. He joined us to celebrate Illuminations, his first ever collection of short stories.

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Katy Milkman Meets Annie Duke - How To Quit Jan 13, 2023

We are often told that the secret to success is hard work, determination, and hours of practice. But in a fast-changing world, what if the really crucial skill is knowing when to stick at something and when to change track and walk away?

Former pro poker player turned decision making expert Annie Duke joins Wharton School economist Katy Milkman to make the under-appreciated case for quitting and also shows you how to get really good at it.

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Felix Flicker - The Magic of Matter Jan 09, 2023

Arthur C Clarke famously declared that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Felix Flicker joins the podcast to make that case, sharing some of the wonders that his own field of condensed matter physics has revealed and offering a glimpse of breathtaking new technologies to come. If you've ever wanted to know about the *real* magical properties of crystals, how to make sense of the quantum realm, or why mirrors reverse you from left to right but not top to bottom, this episode has the answers.

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Jools Holland and Mark Cooper – Celebrating Thirty Years of Music and Mayhem Dec 20, 2022

Join Jools Holland and Mark Cooper as they recount their journey hosting and producing the incredible show, Later... with Jools Holland. Passion for music has never shone brighter: listen to Jools and Mark as they pull back the curtain on classic performances to reveal that the show is just as magical, if even more chaotic, than you imagined.

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Sathnam Sanghera – Marriage Material Dec 16, 2022

Acclaimed author of Empireland and The Boy with the Topknot Sathnam Sanghera takes us on a journey to a fictional cornershop where a story of three generations unfolds. Love, loyalty and betrayal merge within immigrant histories; from breaking Asian stereotypes to discussing the amazing women who inspired his new novel, Sathnam Sanghera tells all in this moving conversation.

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Chelsea Manning – Information is Power Dec 13, 2022

In 2010, Chelsea Manning, working as an intelligence analyst in the United States Army in Iraq, disclosed classified military documents that she had smuggled out via the memory card of her digital camera. The army sentenced her to thirty-five years in prison. The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released. From her struggles as an adolescent, to her decision to send classified documents to WikiLeaks, to her journey ever since, join Manning as she shares her life story.

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Meik Wiking – Hygge, Home, and Happiness Dec 09, 2022

When Meik Wiking introduced the world to the Danish art of Hygge in 2016 he gave us a revolutionary new way of nurturing happiness at home. Now the internationally bestselling author of The Little Book of Hygge and The Art of Making Memories joins us to share fresh insights into making our homes into a sanctuary – somewhere to be ourselves, to unwind and create special memories. No matter how much space you have or what your budget is, Meik shows how you can use colour, light and space to create your happy place and celebrate cosiness the Danish way.

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Marie Kondo – Kurashi At Home Dec 06, 2022

Marie Kondo became a global superstar when she introduced the world to the life-changing magic of tidying up. Now Marie joins us to share the art of kurashi – or “way of life.” She elevates her focus from the physical act of tidying to include a more holistic and personal approach to transforming our homes into spaces of calm. As a mother of three young children, Marie not only reveals a personal glimpse of her own way of living and an enhanced approach to the pursuit of joy, but also how we can find that joy for ourselves too.

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Lost Realms – An Epic New History of Britain from the Romans to the Vikings Dec 02, 2022

As Tolkien knew, Britain in the ‘Dark Ages’ was an untidy mosaic of kingdoms – an age of saints and gods and miracles, of giants and battles and the ruin of cities. Leading historian Thomas Williams explores those lands and peoples who fell by the wayside: the lost realms of early medieval Britain. From the Scottish Highlands to the Cornish coastline, from the Welsh borders to the Thames Estuary, he will uncover the forgotten life and untimely demise of realms that hover in the twilight between history and fable.

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The Pursuit of Growth is a Disaster for Our Country and Our Planet Nov 29, 2022

From Westminster to Beijing, politicians and economists believe growth is the path to progress and prosperity. But are they blindly leading us towards catastrophe? Join us as we debate one of the most important ideas in the history of the modern world – one that a growing number of advocates believe is no longer fit for purpose.

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Harry Sidebottom - The Mad Emperor Heliogabalus Nov 23, 2022

The teenage emperor Heliogabalus was a polyamorous, sex positive, trans person who began life as a refugee; he was also a profiligate, irresponsible, bloodthirsty, fundementalist tyrant who built a gold statue of himself and murdered his own tutor. In this episode of the podcast we explore the decadence of the Roman empire through the lens of the life of an almost forgotten, remarkable young man and ask whether it is ever right to make heroes or villains from historical actors.

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Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Song of the Cell Nov 18, 2022

The literary heir to Oliver Sacks and Paul Kalanithi, a scientist and doctor with the eloquence and humanitarian sensibility of a philosopher-poet, Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee’s work answers the question of what it means to be alive. He joined Adam Rutherford live on stage in London to tell a story that is both panoramic and intimate, taking us on a journey from the first days of the Scientific Revolution into the present day and beyond: the story of cells.

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Danielle Keats Citron - How to Protect Dignity and Identity in the Digital Age Nov 15, 2022

Law Professor and MacArthur fellow Danielle Citron takes the conversation about technology and privacy out of the boardrooms and op-eds to reach readers where we are - in our bathrooms and bedrooms; with our families and our lovers; in all the parts of our lives we assume are untouchable - and shows us that privacy, as we think we know it, is largely already gone. In this episode of the podcast, she shows us the way to fight back and build a better protected future.

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Live Debate: "Now is the Time to Make Peace in Ukraine" Nov 11, 2022

Support for the policy of arming Ukraine remains hugely popular. Zelensky is a hero to millions and has become an icon, while many of us in the UK wear the Ukrainian flag with pride. But dissenting voices from across the political spectrum question whether a Ukrainian victory is truly possible, or whether a compromise with Putin is the only way to end the multiple global crises, from surging inflation to the energy emergency, and to bring back the world from the brink of nuclear war.

Are they right to seek an end to the conflict? Or is the very idea a betrayal of the ideals of liberal democracy – a weakening of resolve that will serve the interests of dictators and tyrants, signalling a retreat of Western power with serious consequences from the Baltics to Taiwan?

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Joyce Tyldesley - The Life, Death, and Afterlife of Tutankhamun Nov 09, 2022

The pharaohs ruled Egypt for two and a half thousand years but none continue to excite the world's imagination like Tutankhamun. Joyce Tyldesley is a leading Egyptologist whose career was directly inspired by an early encounter with the legacy of that famous teenager. Now she joins the podcast to share his story and explore his enduring legacy.

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Yuval Noah Harari Meets Katherine Rundell - Unstoppable Us Nov 01, 2022

Have you ever wondered how we got here? From hunting mammoths, to flying to the moon?

Historian Yuval Noah Harari introduced millions of readers to the story of the human species with his global bestseller Sapiens. His new book Unstoppable Us is the first in a new four-book series telling that story to younger readers. Over the summer he joined children's author and essayist Katherine Rundell on stage to tell us more.

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George Saunders - Liberation Day Oct 28, 2022

George Saunders' first new collection of stories in ten years is a powerful reminder of why he is widely considered to be the greatest short story writer in the English language. In Liberation Day, we meet the disillusioned employees of a Hell themed underground theme park, the philanthropists of a dystopian near-future America, and brainwashed political protesters for hire. Mixing satirical fantasies with razor-sharp observations of human nature, Saunders' new stories walk a fine line between comedy and pathos, realism and playfulness. He joins us on the podcast for a journey inside his creative process and dazzling imagination.

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Geena Davis - Dying of Politeness Oct 25, 2022

At the age of three Geena Davis announced to her parents she was going to be an actor. With a slew of iconic film and television roles now under her belt, as well as numerous awards including two Oscars, she has surpassed her childhood dreams in ways she never could have imagined. In this episode of the podcast, the actor and advocate offers a surprising and touching account of her journey to fight for herself and ultimately live a bolder, freer, more authentic life.

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Kate Summerscale - The History of Phobias and Manias Oct 23, 2022

'Fascinating ... Phobias and manias create a magical space between us and the world' Malcolm Gaskill, author of the No 1 bestseller, The Ruin of All Witches

'A new book from Summerscale is always a treat ... Her sub-title might echo Neil MacGregor, but this reads more like a book by Oliver Sacks, with dashes of Roald Dahl' Spectator

Our phobias and manias are contradictory and multiple: deeply intimate, yet forged by the times we live in. Discover how our fixations have taken shape, from the Middle Ages to the present day, as bestselling author Kate Summerscale deftly traces the threads between the past and present, the psychological and social, the personal and the political.

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Kate Mosse - Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries Oct 20, 2022

Kate Mosse has dedicated her life to promoting women’s stories – through her award-winning fiction, plays and essays, the creation and leadership of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and most recently, her phenomenally successful social media campaign, #WomanInHistory.

In conversation with the writer Erica Wagner, she joins the podcast to share the stories of women whose incredible achievements helped build the world, and yet have been routinely omitted from the history books.

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Amy Jeffs - Tales of the Medieval Wilderness Oct 14, 2022

Amy Jeffs brings legends of the medieval world to life through art, music, and the written word. Her debut book Storyland retold Britain's myths of origin for modern audiences, captivating us with stories of heroes and adventure from the Middle Ages. The sequel, Wild, transports us into the wilderness, giving voice to marginalised and forgotten figures - women, outcasts, monsters - and reveals Amy's own journeys across the rugged landscapes of the British isles.

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Irvine Welsh - Confessions of a Novelist Oct 11, 2022

Junkie, DJ, punk, pill popper, petty criminal, binge drinker, screenwriter, TV repairman: Irvine Welsh has lived more lives than the average man of letters and survived to tell the tale. In his hallucinogenic fiction, God turns men into flies as punishment for wasting their lives, babies and ravers swap bodies, and tapeworms tell stories about the humans in whose guts they reside.

The most important Scottish novelist of his generation joins How To Academy to take us inside his life and world, and offer a preview of The Long Knives, the second in his hugely acclaimed CRIME trilogy.

This episode contains lots of swearing. If you would prefer a beeped version please visit our website.

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Stephen Fry Meets Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now Oct 04, 2022

In anticipation of our next in-person live event with Steven Pinker in conversation with Richard Dawkins, we wanted to share a previous appearance from 2019, in conversation with actor and broadcaster Stephen Fry.

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Clover Stroud - The Red of My Blood Sep 30, 2022

A few weeks before Christmas, Clover Stroud’s sister Nell Gifford, founder of Gifford’s Circus, died of breast cancer, aged forty-six. Just days before, she had been given years to live. Nell’s sudden death split Clover's life apart. Clover charts her fearless passage through the first year after her sister's death.

This is the story of what life feels like when death interrupts it, and about bearing the unbearable and describing an experience that seems beyond words.

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Dr Gabor Maté - Why We Get Sick Sep 27, 2022

Dr Gabor Maté will return in-person to How To Academy next month. In anticipation, we're sharing our podcast interview recorded on his last visit in 2019. Find out how you can join us at Gabor's next talk at howtoacademy.com.

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John Higgs - Bond, the Beatles, and the British Psyche Sep 23, 2022

60s Britain produced not only the most biggest band in the history of music, but the most successful movie character of all time.

In this episode of the podcast, cultural historian and novelist John Higgs investigates how and why the Beatles and James Bond defined our aspirations and fantasies, and the role they continue to play in shaping British identity. Why did the Beatles really split up? Is Daniel Craig's James Bond "superwoke"? And how did these twin icons of British culture change the way we think about ourselves? John answers all these questions and more.

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Dr Ellen Vora - The Anatomy of Anxiety Sep 21, 2022

Backed by the latest scientific research and her own clinical work, Dr Ellen Vora offers a fresh, much needed look at mental health, offering actionable strategies for managing our moods.

Dr Vora challenges the conventional view of anxiety as a mental disorder, suggesting instead that much of what we call anxiety begins in the body. Rather than our troubled thoughts creating physical symptoms, she argues that many types of anxiety are the result of states of imbalance in our bodies, whether blood sugar crashes, caffeine highs or sleep deprivation.

Her clinical observation shows this type of anxiety is far more preventable than we may realise, responding almost immediately to straightforward adjustments to diet and lifestyle. And other forms of anxiety, when listened to and honoured instead of suppressed, can be seen as a course correction to help nudge us back to a more balanced life.

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Adrian Hon - How Corporations and Governments Use Videogames to Control Us Sep 16, 2022

The creator of the wildly successful running app Zombies, Run! and a columnist for the prestigious videogame industry magazine EDGE, Adrian Hon makes games that make real world activities more rewarding and fun.

He joins the podcast not to celebrate the gamification of real world activities, but warn us against the abuse of these techniques -- from corporations using games to exploit and control their workers to governments gamifying the rights of and privileges of their citizens.

And not all gamification is imposed upon us by authorities. From terror attacks to far right conspiracy theories, elements of gamification have spread into political extremism with horrifying and tragic consequences.

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Cornelia Parker Meets Carlo Rovelli - The Hidden Nature of Things Sep 13, 2022

One of Britain's most acclaimed visual artists, Cornelia Parker's sculptures challenge our sense of what an artwork can be.

Both an eminent theoretical physicist and a bestselling author, Carlo Rovelli has not only advanced humanity's understanding of its place in the cosmos but made the revelations of physics intelligible to the rest of us, in books such as The Fabric of Reality, The Order of Time, and his latest, Helgoland,

This episode of the podcast brings the two together with science filmmaker David Malone for a journey into the hidden depths of reality.

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Mark Bergen - Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to Global Domination Sep 09, 2022

In conversations about the role of Big Tech in the spread of misinformation and propaganda, YouTube rarely receives the same attention as Facebook, Twitter, and its parent company Google. But alongside the cat videos and video game streamers, counteless extremists have found a found on the platform - and their actions sometimes have real-world, life-and-death consequences.

In this episode of the podcast, Bloomberg News journalist Mark Bergen tells the story of YouTube: how it upended traditional media, created stars of everyday people, and grew into a ruthless advertising conglomerate with little regard for its impact beyond the bottom line.

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Charlotte Fox Weber - A Journey Into Human Desire Sep 07, 2022

The lives and problems of psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber's clients vary, but all are united by a common question: what do I really want?

In this episode of the podcast Charlottes brings us behind the closed doors of her practice. She reveals how she gently guides her clients towards a deeper understanding of themselves, she invites them - and us - to find a fuller way of living.

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Melanie Joy - How to Get Relationships Right Sep 02, 2022

Relationships are complicated. Yet it's an unfortunate reality that while most of us have to learn complex geometry that we'll probably never use, we don't get a single formal lesson in how to relate to others.

In conversation with David Malone, Melanie Joy reveals the common psychological dynamics that underlie all kinds of relationships. Understanding these dynamics can enable you to make all your relationships healthier and more resilient, and help you contribute to creating a better world.

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David Mitchell - Dishonesty is the Second Best Policy (Summer Repeat) Aug 30, 2022

Lying is probably as old as human language itself – an inevitable consequence of humanity’s greatest superpower. And comedian, Observer columnist and Peep Show star David Mitchell lies quite often (mostly about whether he is free to come to social events). But even he never expected to live in the post-truth age.

In conversation with broadcaster and journalist Hannah MacInnes, he joins us to rail against the times with the characteristic wit, warmth, originality and insight we’ve come to expect.

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Glennon Doyle - How to Find Yourself (Summer Repeat) Aug 26, 2022

There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, and overwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this?

Glennon Doyle joined the How To Academy to show us that another way is possible.

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Richard Dawkins - The Meaning of Life (Summer Repeat) Aug 22, 2022

The creator of the word ‘meme’ and of the hugely influential ‘selfish gene’ model of evolution, he is the epitome of the truly public intellectual – a scientist whose ideas have proven extraordinarily influential both within his own discipline and far, far beyond.

In this week’s episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Richard shares his reflections on perhaps the most important and puzzling topic in all of human existence: the meaning of life.

Credit for Richard Dawkins’ Portrait to Frederic Aranda @fredericaranda

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Layla Saad - How to Fight White Supremacy (Summer Repeat) Aug 19, 2022

Hannah MacInnes meets author, influencer and activist Layla Saad, whose Instagram challenge #MeAndWhiteSupremacy encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviours.

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Derren Brown - How To Be a Little Happier (Summer Repeat) Aug 15, 2022

Since he introduced us to his singular and inimitable brand of psychology, stagecraft and magic in 2000, Derren Brown has played Russian Roulette on live television, convinced middle-managers to commit armed robbery in the street, led the nation in a séance and exposed psychic and faith-healing charlatans. He joined How To Academy to teach a lesson none of us can afford to miss: what we can do to be a little happier and less anxious in a difficult world.

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Patrick Radden Keefe - True Stories of Killers, Grifters, and Crooks Aug 12, 2022

The New Yorker’s Patrick Radden Keefe is America’s most celebrated living reporter. He documented the hunt for the drug lord Chapo Guzman and the tragic personal history of the Harvard educated neurobiologist turned mass shooter Amy Bishop. He wrote a definitive, revelatory account of the Troubles in Say Nothing; investigated the strange convergence of espionage and hair metal in his blockbuster podcast Winds of Change; and most famously – exposed the role of the Sackler family in the US opioid crisis.

He joined the podcast with more stories of secrets and lies.

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Philip Ball - How to Make Sense of Inhuman Minds Aug 09, 2022

Acclaimed science writer Philip Ball joins us to explore the rich diversity of thinking minds – from human to other mammals, insects, computers and plants. In conversation with filmmaker David Malone, he illuminates how many different ways there are to think and engage with the world.

Science has begun to have something to say about the properties of mind. And the more we learn about the minds of other creatures, from octopuses to chimpanzees, to imagine the potential minds of computers and alien intelligences, the more we can begin to see our own.

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Alice Sherwood - How to Fight Back Against Counterfeit Culture Aug 02, 2022

We live in an age when the pursuit of authenticity – from living our 'best life' to eating artisan food – matters more and more to us, but where the forces of inauthenticity seem to be taking over. Policy expert and author Alice Sherwood joins us to argue that, although our counterfeit culture is shaped by the most powerful forces of evolution, economics, and technology, we can still come together to reclaim reality.

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Daniel Pink - The Power of Regret Jul 26, 2022

Daniel Pink, the New York Times bestselling author of When and Drive and one of the world’s leading thinkers on business, creativity and human behaviour, says it’s time to forget everything we think we know about regrets. He believes that regret is our most misunderstood emotion – and can in fact be the pathway to our best life. It’s a subject he investigates in-depth in his new book The Power of Regret: and he joined Hubertus Kuelps, Pictet’s Head of Communications and Branding, to share his ideas.

This episode of the How To Academy Podcast is part of the Found in Conversation series we co-produce each month with the team at Pictet. Find Found in Conversation on Apple or Spotify.

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Daniel Pick - a New History of Thought Control Jul 22, 2022

In 1953, a group of prisoners of war who had fought against the communist invasion of South Korea were released. They chose - apparently freely - to move to Mao's China. Among those refusing repatriation were twenty-one American GIs. Their decision sparked alarm in the West: why didn't they want to come home? What was going on?

Soon, people were saying that the POWs' had been 'brainwashed'. Was this something new or a phenomenon that has been around for centuries? Today, brainwashing is almost taken for granted - built into our psychological and political language, rooted in the way we think about minds and societies. Historian of science Daniel Pick joins the podcast to reveal how we got to this point, and why.

Find out more about the Hidden Persuaders research group at Birkbeck here.

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Tara Porter - A Psychologist's Guide to Life for Girls and Young Women Jul 19, 2022

For girls and young women these are shifting times: never before have they had so much freedom and choice; but never before have they had so many demands placed upon them - by themselves as well as others. Dr Tara Porter pulls together everything she has learnt to provide accessible explanations and suggestions for teenagers, young women, and their parents on topics including exams, friendship, families and love.

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Chris Patten - The Future of Hong Kong Jul 15, 2022

In June 1992 Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously. He joined Channel 4 Europe Editor Matt Frei live on stage in London to tell the story of what happened as the handover approached, and share his assessment of recent events in the city.

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Jeremy Hunt - The Future of the NHS Jul 12, 2022

Every week there are 150 avoidable deaths in England; tragedies that could have been prevented if we were better at learning from mistakes.

As the former Secretary of State for Health and current Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, Jeremy Hunt believes it is possible to reduce the number of preventable deaths in the NHS to zero – in the process saving money, reducing backlogs and improving working conditions. In this episode of the podcast, he shares insights from his new manifesto for the future of the health service, thinking through everything from technology to culture.

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Bonnie Wright - How to Nurture Yourself and the Planet Jul 08, 2022

Bonnie Wright and Evanna Lynch rose to fame as Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter series, and now use their public platforms to help change the world for the better. As an ambassador for Greenpeace, Bonnie Wright has dedicated her life to advocating for climate justice – using her influence to draw attention to the most serious environmental issues of our time, from plastic pollution to fossil fuels. In conversation with Evanna, she joined us live on stage in London tell us about Go Gently, her new book of practical advice for reducing your environmental impact and helping to ensure a sustainable future for planet Earth.

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Francesco Dimitri - The Search for Wonder Jul 06, 2022

Born in Puglia, Italy and now resident in London, Francesco Dimitri is a member of an extremely exclusive club -- authors who write and publish in a language that is not their mother tongue. His latest novel Never the Wind is a magical realist fable about family, belonging and coming of age set his native Puglia and will appeal hugely to fans of Susanna Clarke, Eleanor Ferrente and Neil Gaiman. In this episode of the podcast, he reflects on the differences between Italian and British literary culture, the power of reading, and the importance of finding magic and mystery in ordinary life.

There is some swearing in this episode; if you would prefer a beeped version, you can find it on our website.

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Suzie Sheehy - The Matter of Everything Jul 01, 2022

For millennia, people have asked questions about the nature of matter. In the twentieth century, this curiosity led to an unprecedented outburst of scientific discovery that changed the course of history.

In this episode of the podcast, accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged these ground-breaking experiments. Pulling physics down from the theoretical and putting it in the hands of the people, this podcast celebrates human ingenuity, creativity and curiosity: a powerful reminder that progress relies on the desire to know.

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Michael Ignatieff - Finding Solace in Dark Times Jun 28, 2022

As a young historian at Cambridge and Oxford, he did not rest in the ivory tower but brought his erudition on the great stories and crises of the day, travelling widely and becoming one of our most celebrated broadcasters and influential public intellectuals. Later, he returned to his native Canada to become leader of the Liberal Party: a scholar whose commitment to democratic ideals earned him widespread admiration on the global stage. Now he joins the podcast to reflect upon a philosophical question touching upon each of our lives: how do we console one other and ourselves in an age of unbelief?

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Ken Liu - Storytelling is Our Most Important Technology Jun 24, 2022

The winner of major genre awards including the Nebula, the Hugo, and the World Fantasy Award, Ken Liu is an author and futurist whose fictions both interrogate the social consequences of new technologies, and investigate the value of concepts we do not typically think of as technology but ought to, including law, language, and even storytelling itself.

In this episode of the podcast he outlines his vision for speculative fiction's purpose and value, and previews the ideas in the Dandelion Dynasty, a fantasy series investigating the foundational myths of nationhood through a science fictional extrapolation of the engineering and social structures of East Asian antiquity.

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Susan Cain - How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole Jun 21, 2022

Some of us inhabit a bittersweet state instinctively, others avoid it as much as we can; some of us arrive there when we reach a certain age, or after facing life’s trials and triumphs. But we will all experience the bittersweet at some point in our lives.

What are the powers of a bittersweet, melancholic outlook? And why has our culture been so blind to its value? Following a trail of centuries-old artistic and wisdom traditions as well as contemporary psychology and management research, Susan Cain joins us to explore how bittersweetness is the key to leading a full and satisfying life.

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Jane McGonigal - How to See the Future Coming Jun 17, 2022

Futurist Jane McGonigal creates games that predict and simulate hard to imagine futures. In this episode of the podcast, she teaches us to think like futurists and become more resilient to future shocks – both in our personal lives and when we are faced with unfolding global events. She shows us that 'unimaginable' events aren't unimaginable before they happen. It is possible to see them coming and feel ready for anything, even things that seem impossible today.

By learning to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable we can better plan for a future we'd like to see. And by seeing what's coming faster, we can become more optimistic agents of change.

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Colm Toibin and Terence Killeen - Ulysses Unbound Jun 14, 2022

One hundred years since its publication confirmed James Joyce as one of the greatest writers in the English language and a fearless creative genius willing and able to reimagine the possibilities of literature for the modern age, Ulysses has become an undisputed canonical classic.

In this episode of the podcast, Ireland’s greatest living novelist, Colm Toibin, and its foremost Joyce scholar, Terence Killeen, come together to celebrate this complex, controversial masterpiece, offering new and vital insights that will delight layman readers and seasoned Joyceans alike

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Alice Roberts - Buried Jun 10, 2022

Alice Roberts trained as a physician, and now employs her scientific knowledge to uncover new evidence about the history of Britain, combining scientific and historical insights to determine who we are and where we came from. She joins us to shed fresh light on how we lived in the so-called Dark Ages by examining the stories of the dead. What did people think about mortality? How did they feel about loss? What did they believe came after death? Find out in this in-depth exploration of Buried, her new history of Britain in the first millenium.

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Rory Stewart - The State of the Nation Jun 06, 2022

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Malaysia, commissioned in the Black Watch when only a teenager, Rory Stewart’s career bears little resemblance to the typical 21st century career politician. After serving as a diplomat in Indonesia, the Balkans and Iraq, a foundation director in Afghanistan, and as Secretary of State for International Development, he left frontline politics altogether to work on a charitable project in Amman, Jordan. He joins to share his thoughts on Boris Johnson's government in this time of perpetual crisis, and explore the challenges facing politicians of all affiliations today.

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Pandora Sykes Meets Tina Brown - The Inside Scoop on the House of Windsor May 31, 2022

In her New York Times bestselling biography of Princess Diana, The Diana Chronicles, former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown wrote the definitive account of the extraordinary life and tragic death of the Princess of Wales. In this episode of the podcast, she joins Pandora Sykes to reveal how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana's blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet.

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Sam Knight - The Premonitions Bureau May 27, 2022

In 1966, John Barker, a dynamic psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, established the Premonitions Bureau to investigate psychic visions. He found a network of hundreds of correspondents, from clerks to ballet teachers – including two unnervingly gifted “percipients”. The New Yorker’s award-winning Sam Knight joins us with an enthralling true story of madness and wonder, science and the supernatural – a journal to the most powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind.

Sam joins How To Academy in-person on the 7 June in conversation with the author of The Big Short and Flashboys, Michael Lewis. Find out more and get your tickets at howtoacademy.com

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John Cleese Meets Iain McGilchrist - On Consciousness and Creativity May 24, 2022

A creative pioneer whose genius has placed him alongside Chaplin, Keaton, and his fellow Pythons as one of the greatest British comedy talents of all-time, John Cleese’s name is synonymous with the very best popular culture our country has ever produced. From the subversive satire of Life of Brian and existential absurdity of The Meaning of Life to the precision-engineered farce and observational brilliance of Fawlty Towers and A Fish Called Wanda, his work is a testament to the power of the human imagination to change the way we see the world.

Dr Iain McGilchrist is an intellectual icon whose singular vision has deeply affected Cleese and thousands more across the globe. Few if any works of neuroscience or philosophy have the power to evoke as much passion and infuse the lives of readers with as much meaning as The Master and His Emissary – an extraordinarily original and powerful investigation of the role of the mind and brain in shaping our experience that encompasses nothing less than the entire history of human culture and thought.

We brought Cleese and McGilchrist together to explore the place of consciousness in our lives and culture, drawing both upon The Matter With Things, McGilchrist’s bravura new work of neuroscience and philosophy, and Cleese’s lifelong practice of creativity at the highest level.

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Minnie Driver - Managing Expectations May 20, 2022

Minnie Driver joined us live on stage in London to tell transport us from her unconventional childhood to subsequent fame, sharing poignant stories and laugh-out-loud anecdotes from her life and career. It is a tale of acclaim, loss, fortitude and fortune: in short, the story of being human.

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Owen Jones Meets Michael Lewis - The Fifth Risk May 17, 2022

Next month Michael Lewis will join us in-person in London for a live, on-stage event exploring his life and work from Liar's Poker through to the present day. In anticipation, this episode of the podcast revisits his last appearance on the How To Academy stage, in conversation with the Guardian's Owen Jones. Together they explore the corrosion of the federal government under the Trump administration - the subject of Michael's book The Fifth Risk.

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Robin Ince Meets Neal Stephenson - Termination Shock May 13, 2022

With fans including Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Peter Thiel, no living fiction author has more influence among the elite technologists shaping our world. His ideas inspired Google Earth, Second Life and the Xbox, and Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook after Stephenson’s concept of the Metaverse, dedicating his company to the mission of creating a future inspired by Stephenson’s speculative vision. Now the legendary speculative novelist turns his attention to the cliamte crisis. In converastion with comedian and broadcaster Robin Ince, Neal sounds sounds a clarion alarm, ponders potential climate solutions and risks, and share his insights into the future of life on earth.

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Eliot Higgins - We Are Bellingcat May 10, 2022

How did a collective of self-taught internet sleuths end up solving some of the biggest crimes of our time?

Eliot Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat, an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists using open-source and social media investigation to probe some of the world’s most pressing stories. He joins us to tell the story of how they created a whole new category of information gathering, galvanising citizen journalists across the globe to expose war crimes and pick apart disinformation, using just their computers.

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The Metaverse - Hype or Hyperreality? May 06, 2022

For forty years humans have dreamed of persistent virtual worlds. Today, video games and their peripherals are pushing the boundaries of digital immersion, whether in the form of imaginary play spaces like Roblox and Second Life, or rich sensory augmentations that affect our experience of the physical world. But what will become of the Metaverse and cyberspace? And in our era of rapid and accelerating change, how can we accurately imagine and forecast future – to include both dazzling new technologies like VR and AR and wider social trends?

Starring in this episode Found In Conversation are David Chalmers, Professor of Philosophy at New York University and the author of Reality Plus; Jane McGonigal, game designer, futurist and author of Imaginable; and Shaniel Ramjee, a Senior Investment Manager in the International Multi Asset & Strategy team at Pictet. The host of the conversation is Clara Bertrand.

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Ann Patchett - These Precious Days May 03, 2022

A literary alchemist, Ann Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: essays that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. In this episode of the podcast, she explores her latest collection, These Precious Days. Offering a unique perspective on themes as diverse as failure, family, Snoopy the dog, children, publishing, teaching, and the actor Tom Hanks, join us for a dive into one of the most extraordinary minds at work in American letters today.

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Robin Ince Meets Richard Dawkins Apr 29, 2022

Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown, magical spaces? In conversation with comedian, author and broadcaster Robin Ince, scientists and science writer Richard Dawkins explores two interweaving forms of wonder of flight: both in its literal form, the dream we all share of soaring in the skies, and flights of the mind, enabled through science, ideas, and imagination.

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Ed Miliband - How to Fix Our World Apr 26, 2022

For the past four years, Ed Miliband has been discovering and interviewing brilliant people all around the world who are successfully tackling the biggest problems we face, transforming communities and pioneering global movements. In this podcast, he draws on the most imaginative and ambitious of these ideas to provide a vision for the kind of society we need. He presents an inspiring array of real solutions to the toughest and most urgent of these problems, and argue that the key to success is to raise our sights and think big.

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Dispatches from Afghanistan Apr 22, 2022

Bringing together leading Afghan politician and women’s rights advocate Fawzia Koofi, who was a member of the recent delegation negotiating peace with the Taliban; Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent Christina Lamb; and award-winning war correspondent and New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson, this podcast explores both the transformation of everyday life in Afghanistan and the major humanitarian and political questions presented by the new status quo.

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Matthew Green - A Journey Into the Shadowlands Apr 19, 2022

From Old Winchelsea to Skara Brae, Matthew Green transports us to Britain's shadowlands - the once thriving towns and cities that are now lost to time and memory.

Drowned by storms. Buried by sand. Requisitioned by the army. One of Britain's most exciting young historians, Matthew Green has travelled the British Isles in search of the remnants of settlements that once adorned the nation's map - until nature, disease, politics or economics reduced them to ruins. In this episode of the podcast, he shares stories of medieval boomtowns, an ancient settlement that predates the pyramids, and many more highlights that cannot be found in any contemporary tourist's guidebook. In the face of climate change and other major historical forces, this tour of Britain's shadowlands serves as a powerful reminder of the transcience not only of our own lives, but of the manmade world itself.

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Julia Samuel - Every Family Has a Story Apr 11, 2022

Our family relationships fundamentally influence our health and happiness -- but we think too narrowly about the impact of our families on our lives.

In this episode of the podcast, bestselling psychotherapist Julia Samuel turns from her acclaimed work with individuals to draw on her sessions with a wide variety of families. She explores a range of common issu

Uncovering how deeply we are influenced by our families, she offers a moving and reassuring meditation that, amidst trauma and hardship, will tell us unforgettable stories of forgiveness, learning and love.

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Philip Oltermann - The Stasi Poetry Circle Apr 08, 2022

In 1982, East Germany's fearsome secret police - convinced that writers were embedding subversive messages in their work - decided to train their own writers, weaponising poetry in the struggle against the class enemy.

Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Stasi files, digging up lost volumes of poetry from musty basements, and tracking down the surviving members of the circle to uncover the little-known story of this famously ruthless intelligence agency's obsession with literature. In this episode of the podcast, he joins us to reveal what he discovered.

Praise for Philip Oltermann's The Stasi Poetry Circle:

'A magnificent book . . . at once touching, exquisite, devastating and extraordinary.' - Philippe Sands

'A vivid, funny, and imperturbable portrait of Soviet Russia's most loyal satellite.' - Nell Zink

'Grippingly well-written' Anthony Quinn, Observer

'Oltermann's own prose is fast-moving and lucid, with a enjoyably pulpy, hardboiled quality' Telegraph

The podcast is presented in partnership with Surfshark. Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/HOWTOPOD - Enter promo code HOWTOPOD for 83% off and 3 extra months free.

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Simon Sebag Montefiore and Luke Harding - The History of the Ukraine-Russia Conflict Apr 05, 2022

The concept of a shared, single heritage and culture is central to Vladimir Putin’s justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But what is the true story of the two nations, and how can it illuminate the nature of the conflict? This episode of the podcast brings together historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, whose books on Russia include The Romanovs and Stalin - The Court of the Red Tzar, and award-winning foreign correspondent Luke Harding, who was expelled from Russia by the Kremlin in 2011 in the first act of its kind since the end of the cold war. Together they reflect on the deep roots of the conflict and share their insights in the ongoing invasion.

The podcast is presented in partnership with Surfshark. Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/HOWTOPOD - Enter promo code HOWTOPOD for 83% off and 3 extra months free.

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Max Porter - Why Art Should Challenge Us Apr 01, 2022

Max Porter broke new ground with his highly-original debut Grief is a Thing With Feathers, and firmly established himself as a major literary talent with his second novel Lanny. The cult author joined us to explore his latest and most ambitious novel yet: The Death of Francis Bacon, a collection of 'verbal paintings' depicting the final moments of the artist’s life. What responsibility does an author owe to their subject, and to their audience, in the age of the Internet? Is culture becoming less tolerant of ambiguity? How far can a novelist experiment before commercial considerations kick in? Max answers all these questions and more -- and gives us a breathtaking performance from the new novel quite unlike any literary reading you've ever heard.

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Alan Moore and B. Catling - The Power of Imagination Mar 29, 2022

Few figures make such a seismic impact on their artistic medium that they transform its reputation from childish pulp entertainment to a vital and exhilarating creative form, capable of exploring the great mysteries of metaphysics, science, and the human spirit – but Alan Moore is one.

A modern-day alchemist who transmuted comic books into literary gold, his works not only inspired a later generation of authors who are now household names, from Neil Gaiman to Susanna Clarke, but filmmakers, artists, and storytellers in every medium. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez quotes him online; the Occupy and Anonymous movements adopt the mask of his hero V; and Time magazine honours Watchmen as one of the 20th century’s greatest works of literature.

A sculptor, poet, performance artist and professor at Oxford’s Ruskin School, Brian Catling’s creativity transcends any given form. Late in his career he turned his attention to the novel, reimagining its possibilities from the ground up to produce one of the most startling rich and strange works of fantasy ever produced: The Vorrh.

Now he returns to the literary world with Hollow: the mesmerising tale of a band of mercenaries journeying through the grotesque, monstrous landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch to deliver an oracle to the monastery at the foot of the Tower of Babel.

Coming together to celebrate the magic of human creativity, this unmissable conversation will restore your faith in the power of art to transform life.

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Olia Hercules and Alissa Timoshkina - #CookForUkraine Mar 25, 2022

Food writers Olia Hercules and Alissa Timoshkina have been friends since university and together they have come together to launch #CookForUkraine - a campaign whichaims to raise awareness and funds through a shared appreciation of the rich tradition of Ukrainian cooking with supper clubs, events and encouraging people to share recipes, along with the stories behind the dishes. In its first weeks they have whipped up an extraordinary amount of support from everyone from Jamie Oliver to Nigella Lawson as well as numerous restaurants and institutions.

Here they talk to Hannah MacInnes about the campaign, about the war and the tragic impact it is having on both the people of Ukraine and of Russia, on their families and friends, the strong cultural ties between the two countries, their rich culinary traditions and much more.

Please head to their website and justgiving page at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/cookforukraine to find out more and to donate.

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Yanis Varoufakis Meets David Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything Mar 21, 2022

What if everything we thought we knew about the origins of human civilisation is a myth?

In their book The Dawn of Everything, the late David Graeber and his collaborator David Wengrow tell an ambitious and revelatory new history of the world – one that overturns the notion of Rosseau’s innocent Noble Savage and the ‘nasty, brutish and short’ lives of Thomas Hobbes alike.

In this episode of the podcast, Wengrow joins former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to transform your understanding of our past and offer a powerful, playful, and extraordinarily original vision of our future.

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Paul Craddock - The Surprising History of Organ Transplants Mar 18, 2022

Medical historian Dr Paul Craddock joins the How To Academy Podcast to takes us on a journey from sixteenth-century skin grafting to contemporary stem cell transplants, uncovering stories of operations performed by unexpected people in unexpected places. Bringing together philosophy, science and cultural history, this podcast explores how transplant surgery constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal and machine, and continues to do so today.

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Suzanne Simard - Finding the Mother Tree Mar 15, 2022

Raised in the hardy forest communities of British Columbia, scientist Suzanne Simard overturned conventional beliefs in proving that trees and plants are connected underground by an immense web of fungal mycelia, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful entities that sustain the forest.

She joins author and traveller Sophy Roberts to tell the story of a lifetime spent uncovering startling truths about trees: their perceptions, behaviours, healing capacities, language, memory and wisdom. Simard's landmark work has been immensely influential, revealing the complex cycle of forest life - on which we rely for our existence - and offering profound lessons about resilience and kinship.

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Jon Ronson and Brian Klaas - On Psychopaths and Power Mar 08, 2022

In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, author and documentarian Jon Ronson and political scientist Brian Klaas investigate the relationship between power, psychopathy, and corruption. Drawing on the insights from Jon's widely acclaimed book The Psychopath Test and Brian's new book Corruptible, for which he met some of the world's most reviled and dangerous leaders, this is a provocative and revelatory journey into what power is and who gets to wield to it.

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Salena Godden Meets Yrsa Daley-Ward - How to Know Yourself Feb 28, 2022

Yrsa Daley-Ward’s work explores all parts of the human condition, but especially those we don’t tend to speak of: mental health, sexuality, love, grief and addiction. Her words have resonated with hundreds of thousands of readers around the world: through her acclaimed books of poetry and memoir, bone and The Terrible and through her powerful writing for Beyoncé’s cultural touchstone Black Is King.

In conversation with acclaimed novelist and poet Salena Godden, Yrsa joins the How To Academy Podcast to offer a compelling invitation for self-renewal. How can we remove our filters, and see and feel more of who we really are behind the preconceived notions of property and manners we've accumulated with age? Find out from one of the most celebrated young voices in contemporary culture.

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Jameela Jamil and Michael Schur - How to be Perfect Feb 21, 2022

How can we live a more ethical life? This question has plagued people for thousands of years, but it's never been tougher to answer than it is now, thanks to challenges great and small that flood our day-to-day lives and threaten to overwhelm us with impossible decisions and complicated results with unintended consequences.

The Good Place was the smash hit Netflix comedy that made moral philosophy fun. Now the series creator, Michael Schur and its star Jameela Jamil join us with a foolproof guide to making the correct moral decision in every situation you ever encounter, anywhere on earth, forever.

This episode includes some unfiltered swearing. If you would prefer a bleeped version, you can find it on our website.

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Adam Rutherford - The Troubling History of Eugenics Feb 14, 2022

In the Victorian era, in the shadow of Darwin's ideas about evolution, a new full-blooded attempt to impose control over our unruly biology began to grow in the clubs, salons and offices of the powerful. It was enshrined in a political movement that bastardised science, and for sixty years enjoyed bipartisan and huge popular support. Eugenics was vigorously embraced in dozens of countries. It was also a cornerstone of Nazi ideology, and forged a path that led directly to the gates of Auschwitz. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, bestselling author, geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford tells the story of this dangerous pseudoscience, and investigates its modern day legacy: the prospect of tinkering with the DNA of our unborn children to make them smarter, fitter, stronger.

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William Dalrymple and Sathnam Sanghera - British Imperialism in India Feb 08, 2022

How did the Mughal empire – which then generated just under half the world’s wealth – come to be replaced by the first global corporate power - the East India Company? And how does the legacy of British imperialism continue to shape life and culture in Britain today? Bringing together Empireland author and Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera and bestselling award-winning historian William Dalrymple, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast will tell a story that is barely taught in schools or mentioned in museums but is critically important to who we are as a nation in the 21st century.

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Fi Glover and Jane Garvey - Did I Say That Out Loud? Feb 01, 2022

Fi Glover and Jane Garvey are radio legends. Already major BBC stars in their own right, their podcast together, Fortunately… with Fi and Jane has grown from a cult following to become one of the nation’s most loved and celebrated shows. Described in their own words as a “podcast in which two women exchange random thoughts, occasional pleasantries, fatuous double-entendres, real-life challenges, and often sudden bursts of something approaching wisdom”, this witty, refreshing take on the drama and hilarity of the modern world has been an anchor and a lifeline for so many of us during the pandemic, coming to represent the best that British broadcasting has to offer.

Just before Christmas, Fi and Jane joined us live on stage in London, sharing the wit and wisdom for which they have won the nation's hearts.

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John Preston - The Rise and Fall of Robert Maxwell Jan 25, 2022

In February 1991, Robert Maxwell made a triumphant entrance into Manhattan harbour aboard his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, to complete his purchase of the ailing New York Daily News. Crowds lined the quayside to watch his arrival, taxi drivers stopped their cabs to shake his hand and children asked for his autograph. But just ten months later, Maxwell disappeared from the same yacht off the Canary Islands, only to be found dead in the water soon afterward. As his empire fell apart, long-hidden debts and unscrupulous dealings came to light: and soon his reputation was in tatters.

Journalist and author John Preston has interviewed everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Peter Mandelson, from Alistair Campbell to Nicholas Coleridge; seeking to uncover the true Robert Maxwell. On this week's podcast, he joins us to deliver a definitive account of his extraordinary rise and scandalous fall.

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Claire Fuller - Unsettled Ground Jan 18, 2022

Described by The Times as a modern Daphne de Maurier, Claire Fuller’s writing is beautifully dark and vividly atmospheric. Her fourth novel, Unsettled Ground, follows the lives of two adult twins whose world is upturned after the death of their mother. After surviving for years off-grid and at the mercy of the seasons in their secluded cottage, the twins are tumbled into the present and forced to confront their change of circumstance and long-ignored family secrets.

Unsettled Ground is at once a haunting study of our society's resistance to the unconventional and a sensitive portrait of familial love. Claire shares with us how writing the novel has changed her perception of modern life and asks why contemporary fiction has lost sight of the realities of rural poverty.

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Marcus du Sautoy Meets Steven Pinker - Why Rationality Matters Jan 10, 2022

In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorising?

In conversation with mathematician and Oxford Professor Marcus du Sautoy, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. Offering a guide to the tools of rationality,

Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight, this podcast will enlighten, inspire and empower.

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Bexy Cameron - How to Escape a Cult Jan 06, 2022

Bexy was raised in a secret commune deep in the British countryside. At 10, she was placed on Silence Restriction, forced to be silent for a whole year. Even from an early age, she knew what was happening was not right. At the age of 15, she escaped, leaving behind her parents and 11 siblings. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, she tells us her family came to be part of the Children of God, and how she found the courage to get out.

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Pandora Sykes Meets Emily Ratajkowski Dec 21, 2021

Emily Ratajkowski has established herself as a multifaceted talent. As a model, she has appeared on the covers of major fashion magazines and is currently the face of L’Oréal’s hair care line Kerastase. As an actress, she has appeared in films including David Fincher’s Gone Girl and alongside Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty. Ratajkowski is also outspoken politically, continually using her platform to advocate for her political beliefs, having campaigned for Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020.

She joined How To Academy live on stage in London to explore the themes of her essay collection My Body in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Pandora Sykes. Investigating the culture's fetishization fo female beauty and its obsession and contempt for women's sexuality, this is an must-hear discussion for everyone concerned with the dynamics of gender and power in the modern world.

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Paul Bloom - The Surprising Secret of Happiness Dec 14, 2021

A good life involves more than just pleasure. Suffering is essential too.

It seems obvious that pleasure leads to happiness - and pain does the opposite. And yet we are irresistibly drawn to a host of experiences that truly hurt, from the exhilarating fear of horror movies or extreme sport, to the wrenching sadness of a song or novel, to the gruelling challenges of exercise, work, creativity and having a family.

In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, pre-eminent psychologist Paul Bloom explores the pleasures of suffering and explains why the activities that provide most satisfaction are often the ones that involve greatest sacrifice. He will argue that embracing this truth is the key to a life well lived.

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Philip Pullman Meets Iain McGilchrist - The Meaning of Life Dec 06, 2021

Philip Pullman’s novels are a testament to the power of the human imagination and a celebration of our capacity for wonder, proving to millions of readers across the globe that enchantment still has a profound role to play in our age of reason.

It is an ethos shared by the neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, whose book The Master and His Emissary was that rare thing: a bestselling classic of modern philosophy with genuine relevance to human life.

In this podcast, the two men will come together to explore The Matter With Things, McGilchrist’s ground-breaking sequel to The Master and His Emissary and the culmination of a lifetime of thought.

How does the brain produce our experience of the world? What role do science, reason, and imagination play in the search for truth – and how much should we trust each of these paths to knowledge? On this week's show you'll hear new answers to these ancient questions - and many more.

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Fatima Bhutto Meets Noam Chomsky Nov 30, 2021

'For the left, elections are a brief interlude in a life of real politics, a moment to ask whether it's worth taking time off to vote . . . Then back to work. The work will be to move forward to construct the better world that is within reach.' – Noam Chomsky

A giant of both 20th and 21st century intellectual life, Noam Chomsky’s influence on the development of linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science cannot be overstated; but it is as a political thinker, activist and social critic that his ideas have made the most impact outside of the academy.

In conversation with the author Fatima Bhutto, he joins us live to shed light on the world in 2021, sharing his insights into the post-pandemic world, exposing the catastrophic nature and impact of authoritarian policies on people and the planet, and exploring the dynamics of our dog-eat-dog society.

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Robin DiAngelo and Beverly Daniel Tatum - Conversations About Race Nov 23, 2021

What we can do to have better conversations with our children and with each other about race, and build a better world?

Beverly Daniel Tatum and Robin DiAngelo have dedicated their lives to anti-racist education. The bestselling authors of, respectively, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and White Fragility, their insights are essential for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of race in the United States and beyond. In the age of Trump, Black Lives Matter, and increasingly polarisation, they join the How To Academy Podcast with an urgent call to embrace courage, lifelong commitment and accountability in the struggle for equality.

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Greg Jenner - How to Find the Comedy in History Nov 16, 2021

Chief historian of the BBC's Horrible Histories TV show and the host of chart-topping podcast You're Dead to Me, Greg Jenner is a master in the art of turning the messiness of history into whip-smart comic entertainment.

He joined us to explore his favourite historical questions and their often surprising answers - as submitted by the general public. From chariot racing to bank robbery, Egyptian mummies to Monty Python, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast is a ride through some of the wildest and weirdest episodes in ten thousand years of human civilisation.

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Jane Goodall - A Survival Guide for an Endandgered Planet Nov 10, 2021

World-renowned ethologist and conservationist Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a UN Messenger of Peace, has spent more than a half-century warning of our impact on our planet. From her famous encounters and research into the wild chimpanzees in the forests of Gombe which began more than sixty years ago and continues to this day, to her tireless campaigning for the environment in her late eighties, Jane has become the godmother to a new generation of climate activists. She joined the How To Academy Podcast to teach us how to find strength in the face of the climate crisis.

Photo attibution: Vincent Calmel

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Richard Powers - Why Stories Matter Nov 02, 2021

Few works of literature have the power to change who we are and how we conceive our place in the universe – but Richard Powers Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning masterpiece The Overstory is one. For Barack Obama, Powers ‘changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it’; for Emma Thompson, The Overstory was a ‘the best book I've read in 10 years… a lodestone’; for Ann Patchett, it was simply ‘one of the best novels, period’. This year's follow-up, the Booker shortlisted Bewilderment, is no less profound; an acclaimed exploration of the fragility of life on Earth that dares to ask the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?

Richard joined us on stage in London in conversation with broadcaster Razia Iqbal to explore why storytelling matters. In an age of impending ecological catastrophe, how can the novel help us to grow our empathy for one another and expand our awareness and love of the natural world?

This podcast was produced in association with the Conduit.

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Bernard-Henri Lévy - Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope Oct 26, 2021

Bernard-Henri Levy is one of the world’s most esteemed philosophers and public intellectuals; but his understanding of philosophy is anything but theoretical. A humanitarian activist of deep conviction, for fifty years he has reported from the sites of human rights abuses and humanitarian crises that fail to receive global attention or an active response, shedding light on urgent stories that Western media and governments have chosen to ignore. He joined us on stage in London to issue a stirring rebuke to indifference and an exhortation to level our gaze at those most hidden from us.

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Kate Bowler - The Meaning of Life Oct 19, 2021

Kate Bowler had always accepted the modern idea that life is an endless horizon of possibilities. As many of us do, she saw life as a series of choices that, if made correctly, would lead us to a place just out of reach.

But then, aged just thirty-five, Kate was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. She was forced to ask one of the most fundamental questions of all: How do we create meaning in our lives when the life we hoped for is put on hold?

In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Kate explores how to navigate life with the knowledge that it could end at any moment. As we struggle to decipher what constitutes a meaningful existence in this strange new world, at a time when our lives have never been further from our control, Kate will demonstrate how we can find meaning without having to pretend that life is always getting better.

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Stephen Fry Meets Steven Pinker - The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress Oct 12, 2021

In anticipation of Steven Pinker's return to How To Academy later this month, this episode of the podcast revisits his conversation with Stephen Fry on stage in London in 2018.

The challenges we face today are formidable, including inequality, climate change, Artificial Intelligence and nuclear weapons. But the way to deal with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a mythical idyllic past; it's to treat them as problems we can solve, as we have solved other problems in the past. In conversation with actor and author Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker makes the case for an Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century, urging us to use our faculties of reason and sympathy to solve the problems that inevitably come with being products of evolution in an indifferent universe.

We will never have a perfect world, but - defying the chorus of fatalism and reaction - we can continue to make it a better one.

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James Nestor - the Art and Science of Breathing Oct 04, 2021

In this week's podcast, science writer and Sunday Times bestselling author James Nestor joins us with a guide that will forever change the way you think about health and wellbeing. We breathe 25,000 times a day: yet as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly - with grave consequences for our health. James travelled the world to discover the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. He shared his story with Hannah MacInnes.

You will never breathe the same again.

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Bonus Episode: With Reason - Learning from our Ancestors, with Alice Roberts Sep 25, 2021

In this special bonus episode by our friends at New Humanist magazine and the Rationalist Association, Professor Alice Roberts takes us through important archaeological discoveries to help us better understand life in Britain today.

About With Reason:

From New Humanist magazine and the Rationalist Association, With Reason is a podcast offering intelligent thinking for turbulent times. Interviews with thinkers who speak to our age – on subjects including religion, race, politics, sex, tech, work and much more. Find it on Apple, Spotify, Google, or their website.

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Fiona Shaw - A Life on Stage and Screen Sep 21, 2021

From My Left Foot to Harry Potter, Fleabag to Killing Eve, Fiona Shaw is an integral presence in the Irish and British screen drama of the last three decades; and in collaboration with the foremost directors of our time – from Deborah Warner to Nicholas Hytner – is universally renowned as one of the most outstanding and distinguished stage actors of her generation.

Whether in her ground-breaking performance as Shakespeare’s Richard II or her unforgettable turn as Brecht’s Mother Courage, as Euripides’ Medea or Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, her work is experimental, provocative, and risk-taking, daring audiences to reassess what they thought they knew about theatre and the human condition.

In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, she explores her life and work with writer and broadcaster Matthew Stadlen.

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Rutger Bregman and Philippe Sands - Are Humans Naturally Good? Sep 14, 2021

Philippe Sands meets Rutger Bregman, one of the greatest young thinkers of our time, to hear a new story of human nature that places our capacity for kindness, not selfishness, at its heart.

It’s a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.

In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, human rights lawyer and award-winning author Philippe Sands QC meets the bestselling Dutch historian and viral superstar Rutger Bregman to hear a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good.

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Dennis Duncan - Index, a history of the Sep 06, 2021

In this week's podcast, literary scholar Dennis Duncan takes us into the secret world of the index and reveals how it transformed the way we read and process knowledge forever.

Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office and made us all into the readers we are today.

From the library of Alexandria to the coffee houses of Georgian London, an d with a cast including Plato, Sherlock Holmes, and Norman Mailer, this witty history of an invaluable and underappreciated tool is sure to delight bibliophiles everywhere.

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Mary Portas - How to Thrive in the New Kindness Economy Aug 30, 2021

Mary Portas loves business. Fundamentally, she lives and breathes it. What she loves best about it is making businesses work. But in this week's podcast, she argues that we’ve been doing it wrong. In 2021, it’s not only possible to build healthy businesses that do less bad and add more good – it’s a commercial imperative.

Rampant consumerism has been driving the economic machine and we have put the pursuit of profit above all else. Over the past thirty years the business of what we buy has been dominated by the biggest, fastest and cheapest. But those values no longer resonate. We've come to realize that more doesn't equal better. How we live, buy and sell is changing. The post-pandemic era is all about care, respect and understanding the implications of what we're doing.

This 'Kindness Economy' is a new value system where in order to thrive businesses must understand the fundamental role they play in the fabric of our lives. They need to add, not just grow, balancing commerce with social progress. Because we don't just want to buy from brands - we want to buy into them.

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Gordon Brown – How to Change the World Aug 24, 2021

It is time for a new era of global order. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown joins us with authoritative solutions to the greatest challenges of our age.

Gordon Brown knows more than most politicians about how to handle an international crisis. As Prime Minister during the 2008 financial crisis he played a major role in steering the global response and driving the recovery; and as the UN’s Special Envoy for Global Education he is one of the world’s most prominent and influential frontline diplomats, working to widen access to education and break the poverty cycle.

In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, he joins Tom Fletcher, former diplomat and Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, to share his insights into the major crises of the 21st century.

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Anish Kapoor - a Life in Art Aug 16, 2021

An icon whose spectacular works occupy a liminal space between sculpture, engineering and architecture, Anish Kapoor is one of the world’s most ambitious living artists.

The first living artist to take over the Royal Academy with a record-breaking blockbuster exhibition, the recipient of a Turner Prize, a knighthood, the LennonOno Prize for Peace, the $1 million Genesis Prize, an Oxford doctorate and the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, Anish Kapoor holds the rare status of an artist both revered by critics and overwhelmingly loved by the public.

From Chicago’s Cloud Gate to the London Olympic Park’s Orbit, the Rockefeller Center’s Sky Mirror to Paris’s Leviathan, Kapoor’s sculptures resonate with mythic significance, belonging to a tradition and a way of thinking that extends back to the great wonders of the world.

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Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green - The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine Aug 09, 2021

On New Year’s Day 2020, Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University, read an article about four people in China with a strange pneumonia. Within two weeks, she and her team had designed a vaccine against a pathogen that no one had ever heard of. Less than 12 months later, vaccination was rolled out across the world to save millions of lives from Covid-19.

In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Professor Gilbert and her colleague Dr Catherine Green, who led on the manufacturing of the vaccine, join us to separate fact from fiction and explain how they made a highly safe vaccine in record time with the eyes of the world watching.

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Charles Yu - Interior Chinatown Aug 03, 2021

Willis Wu mostly gets to play Generic Asian Man. If he is lucky, sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son. For now he is a bit player: but he dreams that one day he will be offered the most coveted role someone who looks like him might aspire to: Kung Fu Guy.

A coruscating satire of race, assimilation and Hollywood, Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown is both a groundbreaking experimental novel and a deeply personal and affecting family story heralded as one of the best books of 2020. A New York Times bestseller and the winner of the 2020 National Book Award, the novel confirms Yu as one of America's most exciting young authors.

In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, he explores the history of Chinese culture in the US, how his personal experiences as a first generation Taiwanese-American shaped the narrative, and what his own time in Hollywood has taught him about the art of storytelling.

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Mike Rothschild - The Rise of QAnon Jul 26, 2021

In 2017, President Trump made a cryptic remark at a gathering of military officials, describing it as ‘the calm before the storm’-then refused to explain himself to puzzled journalists. But on internet message boards, a mysterious poster called ‘Q Clearance Patriot’ began an elaboration all of their own.

In this week's podcast, Mike Rothschild explores his new book, The Storm Is Upon Us. With families torn apart and with the Capitol under attack, he argues that mocking the madness of QAnon will get us nowhere. Instead, he argues that QAnon tells us everything we need to know about global fear after Trump-and that we need to understand it now, because it’s not going away.

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Lisa Taddeo and Hadley Freeman - Madness, Transgression, and Power Jul 19, 2021

Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women was a world-wide sensation – forever changing how we think about women and desire. A bestseller in the US and the UK, “Book of the Year” for more than thirty of the most respected media titles, including the FT, Times and Time magazine, an instant classic beloved by cultural icons including Gillian Anderson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Gilbert, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a global phenomenon.

Now Lisa’s debut novel Animal is set to do the same for how we think about madness and trauma. Animal opens with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head of an unrequited lover and becomes a road-trip to California, centring on a woman who is driven to extremes by the violence of her past. In this episode of the podcast, Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman explores the inspiration behind this brazen and daring fictional debut.

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Daniel Kahneman - Why We Make Bad Judgments Jul 12, 2021

The quality of professional judgments have a huge and lasting impact on all of our lives: the decision of an A&E doctor treating a patient, a teacher grading a paper, or a high court judge delivering a sentencing should not be a matter of personal taste. And yet there is huge, unwanted variability across human judgment.

Bias has long been the star of the show when it comes to errors in decision making. Now Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein and Olivier Sibony have uncovered a critical and overlooked factor: noise. Noise explains why police officers show greater leniency towards offenders who have the same name as they do; why doctors prescribe more drugs at the end of the day than at the beginning; why judicial sentences tend to be more severe in hot weather; and why stock-market performance is affected by sunshine.

In conversation with Diana Fox Carney, Kahneman, Sunstein and Sibony reveal how noise and bias both shape our thought processes – and the remedies we can take to make far better decisions and judgments.

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John Higgs - William Blake vs the World Jul 05, 2021

Join us for a wild journey through culture, science, philosophy and religion to better understand the mercurial genius William Blake. Taking us on wild detours into unfamiliar territory, John Higgs places the bewildering eccentricities of a most singular artist into context. The journey begins with us trying to understand him, but we will ultimately discover that it is Blake who helps us to understand ourselves.

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Katrine Marcal and Caroline Criado Perez - Mother of Invention Jun 28, 2021

Every day, extraordinary inventions and innovative ideas are side-lined in a world that remains subservient to men.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. From the beginning of time, women have been pivotal to our society, offering ingenious solutions to some of our most vexing problems. More recently, it is women who have transformed the way we shop online, revolutionised the lives of disabled people and put the climate crisis at the top of the agenda.

For too long we have underestimated the consequences of sexism in our economy, and the way it holds all of us – women and men – back. In conversation with author and activist Caroline Criado Perez, Katrine Marçal sets the record straight and shows how, in a time of crisis, the ingenuity and intelligence of women is that very thing that can save us.

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Bill Clinton and James Patterson - The President's Daughter Jun 22, 2021

Drawing on his first-hand knowledge of life in the White House, global geopolitics and the upper echelons of power, Bill Clinton teamed up with one of the world’s best-known and best-selling authors, James Patterson, to tell the story of the most thrilling, frightening, and plausible tale of an American presidency yet devised. ‘Meticulous in its portrayal of Washington politics, gripping in its pacing, and harrowing in its depiction of the perils of cyberwarfare' (Ron Chernow), The President Is Missing was heralded as both a heart-pounding thrill ride and an authentic look inside the mind of the leader of the free world. Now President Clinton and James Patterson are back with a new novel: The President's Daughter. In this week's podcast, they share insights into their creative process and reflections on the world in 2021.

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Sir David Hare - A Life in Theatre Jun 08, 2021

Sir David Hare is renowned across the English-speaking world as the finest political storyteller alive today. In our age of blockbuster musicals and CGI superheroes, his oeuvre stands as a testament to the power of theatre and cinema to capture and even transform the soul of a nation. A student in that extraordinary year, 1968, Hare quickly emerged as a writer of courage, heart and coruscating satirical talent, fusing human drama with grand political narratives to map the convulsions of the post-war years.

Whether depicting the crumbling institutions of church and state, ruthlessly mocking media tycoons, or engaging in a forensic analysis of the Suez Crisis and WMD debacle, his plays are not cold, calculating social commentary but a barometer of our age, revealing who we are and may become with a rare depth of romantic feeling. And his BAFTA winning, Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated screenplays – undisputed modern classics such as The Hours, The Reader and Damage – have brought his vision to a global audience.

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Ginny Smith - The Neuroscience of Everyday Life Jun 02, 2021

How do we learn? Why we do sleep, or fall in love? Can we trust our memories? In this week's podcast, neuroscience expert, author and presenter Ginny Smith explores the latest science of the mind and brain to answer the big questions about human behaviour.

From adrenaline to dopamine, our lives are shaped by the chemicals that control us. They are the hormones and neurotransmitters that our brains run on, and science writer Ginny Smith is here to explore the role they play in all aspects of our experiences. In this week's podcast, author Ginny Smith explores what these tiny molecules do: what roles do cortisol and adrenaline play in memory formation? How do hormones and neurotransmitters affect the trajectory of our romantic relationships?

It's an eye-opening tour through the amazing world inside our heads.

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Maggie O'Farrell - The Life of Hamnet Shakespeare May 24, 2021

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.

The winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 and a Sunday Times bestseller, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, she explores how she came to write this remarkable novel, including insights into her hands-on research into the life in Elizabethan England - from learning falconry to mudlarking along the Thames.

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Michio Kaku - The Quest For Theory of Everything May 17, 2021

Michio Kaku takes Robin Ince on the mind-bending ride through the twists and turns of an epic scientific journey: the quest to find a Theory of Everything.

Einstein dedicated his life to seeking this elusive Holy Grail, a single, revolutionary 'god equation' which would tie all the forces in the universe together, yet never found it. Some of the greatest minds in physics took up the search, from Stephen Hawking to Brian Greene. None have yet succeeded.

In this conversation with author, comic and science broadcaster Robin Ince, renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku shares the story of a mystery that has fascinated him for most of his life. The object of the quest is now within sight: we are closer than ever to achieving the most ambitious undertaking in the history of science. If successful, the Theory of Everything could simultaneously unlock the deepest mysteries of space and time, and fulfil that most ancient and basic of human desires – to understand the meaning of our lives.

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Anna Ploszajski - Finding Meaning Through Making May 10, 2021

Sitting at the intersection of art, science, and history, this week's podcast reveals fresh perspectives and fascinating insights into our material world.

Scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials: But most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon of glass.

Anna Ploszajski is here to change that. A materials scientist and engineer, she has journeyed into the domain of makers and craftspeople to comprehend how the most popular materials really work. With knowledge accumulated over generations through hands-on trial and error, these experimenters and tinkerers understand the materiality of objects far better than any scientist with a textbook. She joins us to share what she discovered, revealing the story of materials through making and doing.

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George Saunders – Lessons in Writing and Life Apr 26, 2021

What makes great stories work? What can they tell us about our world today? How can they make us better readers and how can we write them ourselves? George Saunders is one of the undisputed masters of American letters; a novelist, storyteller and essayist whose wisdom and insight have been rewarded with the highest accolades in literature. In a rare treat for authors and storytellers of all forms, he shares his insights from teaching some of the best young writers in America. Drawing on the works of Russian masters, he reminds us that the process of writing is as much a craft as it is a quality of openness and a willingness to see the world through new eyes.

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Matthew d’Ancona – Why The Old Politics Is Useless and What We Can Do About It Apr 19, 2021

Political journalist Matthew d'Ancona's issues a call to arms to challenge this age of political extremism, lazy populism and democratic torpor. The old tools of political analysis are obsolete - they have rusted and are no longer fit for purpose. We've grown lazy, wedded to the assumption that, after ruptures such as Brexit, the pandemic, and the rise of the populist Right, things will eventually go 'back to normal'. Award-winning political writer Matthew d'Ancona joins us with an invitation to think afresh: to seek new ways of challenging political extremism, bombastic populism and democratic torpor on both Left and Right. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, he will propose a new way of understanding our era and plots a way forward. With rigorous analysis, he argues that we need to understand the world in a new way, with a framework built from the three I's: Identity, Ignorance and Innovation.

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Isabel Allende – The Soul of a Woman Apr 12, 2021

Isabel Allende has been a feminist her whole life. From a young age she rebelled against male authority, after seeing her mother Panchita abandoned by her husband and left to provide for three small children. While growing up in Chile in her grandparents’ house, Isabel realised early on that the women in her family, from matriarch to housemaid, were at a disadvantage compared to the men, treated as subordinates with no voice. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, Isabel rode the first wave of feminism. While working at the newly launched feminist magazine, Paula, her journalism challenged the patriarchal mores imposed on women regarding sex, money, discriminatory laws, drugs, virginity, abortion, prostitution, alcoholism to name a few. In this week's How To Academy podcast, Isabel shares stories from her life as a feminist with broadcaster Belle Donati.

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Ian McEwan – A Life In Literature Mar 29, 2021

The country’s most prolific and celebrated novelist reflects upon a life in literature. Since his rise to literary acclaim almost forty years ago for the dazzlingly grotesque short stories that earned him the moniker “Ian Macabre”, to his present-day voyages into the uncharted territories of climate change and Artificial Intelligence, one thing has remained consistent across Ian McEwan’s astonishing oeuvre: the exacting precision with which he can simultaneously dissect both the mysteries of the human psyche and the tribulations of our age. With a gift for creating scenes of heart-stopping anxiety, from the kidnapping that opens A Child in Time to Enduring Love’s iconic balloon ride gone wrong, drawing characters whose romantic longing and realistic flaws are recognisably our own, and exploring philosophical and moral ambiguities that speak to both to our time and to the great quandaries of life, Ian McEwan has proven himself time and again to be the foremost literary novelist of his generation. Whether you’re an aspiring novelist seeking to learn the craft from a veritable master of the form, a lifelong reader of his seminal novels, or simply intrigued to hear from one of the most exciting cultural figures working in any field or discipline, this is an unmissable opportunity to look inside the imagination of an author of the first order.

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Rowan Hooper – How to Spend a Trillion Dollars Mar 22, 2021

If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. In this week’s How To Academy Podcast, New Scientist senior editor and evolutionary biologist Rowan Hooper explores how $1 trillion could be used to change the course of human history: from creating artificial life to colonising the moon, helping in the fight against climate change to lifting millions out of poverty. It’s the ultimate thought experiment and a powerful reminder of the power of science and economics to shape our collective future.

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Derren Brown – How To Be a Little Happier Mar 15, 2021

Since he introduced us to his singular and inimitable brand of psychology, stagecraft and magic in 2000, Derren Brown has played Russian Roulette on live television, convinced middle-managers to commit armed robbery in the street, led the nation in a séance and exposed psychic and faith-healing charlatans. His live shows astonish audiences across the country and have captivated the West End and Broadway. He joined How To Academy to teach a lesson none of us can afford to miss: what we can do to be a little happier and less anxious in a difficult world.

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Adam Grant and Tim Harford – The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know Mar 08, 2021

Research shows that the smarter you are the more you might struggle to update your beliefs, yet some of the most successful people, from entrepreneurs to politicians, all have one thing in common: the ability to think like scientists, continually questioning their beliefs, and to embrace being wrong. As an organisational psychologist, Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds, and our own. He is one of the world’s most-cited, most prolific, and most influential researchers in business and economics, and, as Wharton’s top-rated professor, his research is sought-after by global powerhouses such as NASA and the Gates Foundation. In this week's podcast, economist, FT columnist and author Tim Harford joins Adam to discover how we can all learn to embrace the power of knowing what we don't know.

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Ethan Kross – How to Harness the Voice Inside Your Head Mar 01, 2021

We all have a voice in our head that we tune into from time to time for guidance, ideas and wisdom. Except sometimes, this voice leads us down a rabbit hole of negative self-talk and endless rumination which undermines our performance at work, interferes with our ability to make good decisions, and negatively influences our relationships. Since we aren’t going to stop talking to ourselves— and, frankly, we don’t want to, since the voices in our heads have valuable things to say—it’s important we learn to use our introspection effectively. Drawing on more than twenty years of ground-breaking research, University of Michigan Psychologist Ethan Kross joined Matthew Stadlen to reveal the life-changing potential of a mind constructively channelled.

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George the Poet Meets Mariana Mazzucato – a Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism Feb 22, 2021

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, capitalism was stuck. It had no answer to the different challenges facing the world – from those related to health to digital privacy to the climate crisis. Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s ‘moonshot’ programmes that successfully co-ordinated public and private sectors to put a man on the moon, Mariana Mazzucato calls for the same level of boldness and experimentation to be applied to the biggest social and political issues of our time. In conversation with George the Poet, she joins the podcast to argue that we need to rethink the capacities and role of government within the economy and society, and above all recover a sense of public purpose.

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Toby Ord – Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity Feb 15, 2021

We live during the most important era of human history. In the twentieth century, we developed the means to destroy ourselves – without developing the moral framework to ensure we won't. This is the Precipice, and how we respond to it will be the most crucial decision of our time. In this week's podcast, Oxford moral philosopher Toby Ord explores the risks to humanity's future, from the familiar man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war, to the potentially greater, more unfamiliar threats from engineered pandemics and advanced artificial intelligence. Can we protect the legacy of the hundred billion who have come before us, and secure a future for the trillions that could follow? What can we do, in our present moment, to face the risks head on?

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Owen Jones Meets Claudia Rankine Feb 08, 2021

How can we best approach one another across our differences? The first and only poet to write a New York Times bestseller, the winner of every significant literary prize in the United States, and recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant”, Jamaican-born Claudia Rankine is an icon of contemporary American letters. In this conversation with Guardian columnist Owen Jones, she explores her own prejudices and those of others, and celebrate vulnerability, openness and the willingness to be wrong. It’s an urgent call to enter into conversations which could offer humane pathways through this moment of division.

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Iain McGilchrist – The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning Feb 01, 2021

A tour de force of neuroscience and philosophy, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary speaks to everyone searching for happiness, meaning and understanding in the modern world. For millennia humans have speculated upon the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Why did evolution lead to humans and many other animals developing two cerebral hemispheres, separated by a groove? No neuroscientist would dispute that there are significant differences; but until now, no-one has understood why. Dr Iain McGilchrist has an empirical answer to this question – and his ideas have profound consequences for how humans understand themselves and their place in the world. This conversation between Dr McGilchrist and science journalist David Malone explores how the competition between the two hemispheres has shaped civilisation and progress and now, in our hyper-rationalist age, threatens to undermine the deepest and most sacred human values.

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Malcolm Gladwell - How to Make a Good First Impression Jan 25, 2021

From Blink to Outliers, Revisionist History to David and Goliath, no-one challenges our shared assumptions and invites us to rethink human nature like Malcolm Gladwell. Named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers, his ideas have passed into common currency and made him one of the most recognisable and beloved public intellectuals of our time. He is uncannily tuned into the zeitgeist, able to fuse scholarly insights, human stories and a global perspective to illuminate truths about our world that were otherwise destined to remain hidden. In conversation with Hubertus Kuelps, Malcolm explores the theme of his latest book, Talking to Strangers: how can we make a good impression? This podcast is the latest episode of Found in Conversation, a podcast brought to you by the Pictet Group in partnership with How To Academy.

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Caitlin Moran – More Than a Woman Jan 18, 2021

‘First, you have to learn how to be a woman. Then middle age arrives, and you realise you have to become … more than a woman. To those around you, you’re now the Fourth Emergency Service.” – Caitlin Moran Caitlin Moran was home-educated on a Wolverhampton council estate and went onto become the most iconic columnist and critic of her generation. From How to Be a Woman to Moranifesto, How to Build a Girl to Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves, her game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy and becoming a woman is above all things a cry ‘to live a full, open-hearted, joyous life’ (Sunday Times). She joins the How To Academy Podcast for a riotous, heart-felt celebration of all those middle-aged women whose stories never get made into TV shows, or movies - but who, none-the-less, keep the world turning. As Caitlin says, “Take up your space, dude – you’ve earned it.”

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Simon Schama – The World in 2021 Jan 11, 2021

The events of 2020 have upturned the order of the world, and the medical, economic and political crises we face will not fade quietly as the new year begins. Though so much of the present moment feels strange and unprecedented, there is wisdom in heeding to George Santayana’s famous proverb that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. To help ensure that we do not fall foul of the prophecy, Simon Schama joined How To Academy to share his insights into the past and near future. A natural storyteller with a deep grasp of human psychology and the broader forces that shape our world, Schama reflected upon the lessons history holds for the coming year in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Matthew Stadlen.

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Richard Dawkins – The Meaning of Life Dec 09, 2020

“My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. That's never far from my thoughts, that sense of amazement.” – Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins has done more than any other scientist to promote and celebrate the origins of life on Earth. The creator of the word ‘meme’ and of the hugely influential ‘selfish gene’ model of evolution, he is the epitome of the truly public intellectual – a scientist whose ideas have proven extraordinarily influential both within his own discipline and far, far beyond. In this week's episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Richard shares his reflections on perhaps the most important and puzzling topic in all of human existence: the meaning of life. Credit for Richard Dawkins' Portrait to Frederic Aranda @fredericaranda

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Yanis Varoufakis Meets Owen Jones Nov 30, 2020

Whether exposing Britain’s powerful elites in The Establishment or defending the white working class in Chavs, fighting for equality and social justice as a Guardian columnist and broadcaster, Owen Jones may be the most influential and widely respected political journalist of his generation. In conversation with world-renowned economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, he gives an unflinchingly honest, insider’s account of Labour’s electoral defeat in 2019 – and explores where the Left can go next in the new world we find ourselves in. We have the opportunity to build a fairer country and a more equal world, but if our time is to come, then we must learn from our past.

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Len Mlodinow and Robin Ince – The Life of Stephen Hawking Nov 23, 2020

An icon of the last fifty years, Stephen Hawking seems to encapsulate genius. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, his colleague and collaborator Leonard Mlodinow offers an intimate account of this giant of science in conversation with comic and broadcaster Robin Ince. The two met in 2003, after Stephen asked Leonard if he would consider writing a book with him. As they spent years working on A Briefer History of Time followed by The Grand Design, they forged a deep connection and Leonard gained a greater understanding of Stephen's daily life and struggles -- as well as his compassion and humour. Together they obsessed over the perfect sentence, debated the physics, and occasionally punted on Cambridge's waterways with champagne and strawberries. In time, Leonard was able to finish Stephen's jokes, chide his sporadic mischief, and learn how the hardships of his illness helped forge that unique perspective on the universe. Weaving together their shared story with a clear-sighted portrayal of Hawking's scientific achievements, Mlodinow creates a beautiful portrait of Stephen Hawking as a brilliant, impish and generous man whose life was not only exceptional but also genuinely inspiring.

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Philip Lymbery - How to Live Sustainably in a Changing World Nov 16, 2020

Our meat and dairy intensive diets are destroying the planet. In this week's podcast, animal welfare environmentalist Philip Lymbery shares the new science of living sustainably and makes a powerful case for changing how we eat. From vegan alternatives to free range pasturised meat, cultured meat to precision fermentation, Philips considers the new dietary habits, technological innovations and political developments that could change the way we farm and eat and make a seismic impact on the climate crisis.

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Jung Chang – Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China Nov 09, 2020

They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled through a hundred years of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the centre of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history. Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the ‘Father of China’, Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao’s vice chair. Little Sister, May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kaishek, first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China and a major political figure in her own right Big Sister, Ei-ling, became Chiang’s unofficial main adviser–and made herself one of China’s richest women. All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak. They remained close emotionally, even when they embraced opposing political camps and Ching-ling dedicated herself to destroying her two sisters’ worlds. In this episode of the How To Academy podcast, internationally bestselling author Jung Chang joins us to tell their remarkable story.

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Elizabeth Gilbert Meets Julia Cameron - The Path to Higher Creativity Nov 02, 2020

For more than thirty years, Julia Cameron has helped ordinary people and world-renowned artists alike discover their passions and transform their lives. From Booker Prize winners like Anna Burns to world-famous musicians like Alicia Keys and Pete Townshend, actors like Reese Witherspoon and comedians like Russell Brand, the list of artists, innovators and creatives who cite a debt of gratitude to Julia Cameron and her bestselling creativity bible, The Artist’s Way is extraordinary. An icon to anyone who has ever dreamed of living a truly authentic life, bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert would not have written Eat, Pray, Love without The Artist’s Way to guide her. Now Elizabeth joins Julia to explore the wisdom and insight that have aided so many in their pursuit of passion, creativity and meaningful change.

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Brian Cox Meets Rebecca Wragg Sykes – The Lost World of Neanderthals Oct 26, 2020

Since their discovery over 160 years ago, Neanderthals metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins. In conversation with particle physicist and broadcaster Brian Cox, archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes reveals the Neanderthals as curious, clever connoisseurs of their world, technologically inventive and ecologically adaptable. They ranged across vast tracts of tundra and steppe, but also stalked in dappled forests and waded in the Mediterranean Sea. Above all, they were successful: survivors of over 300,000 years of massive climate change. Rebecca reveals a deeper, more nuanced story where humanity itself is our ancient, shared inheritance. It is only by understanding them, that we can truly understand ourselves.

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David Mitchell – Dishonesty is the Second Best Policy Oct 19, 2020

Lying is probably as old as human language itself – an inevitable consequence of humanity’s greatest superpower. And comedian, Observer columnist and Peep Show star David Mitchell lies quite often (mostly about whether he is free to come to social events). But even he never expected to live in the post-truth age. In conversation with broadcaster and journalist Hannah MacInnes, he joins us to rail against the times with the characteristic wit, warmth, originality and insight we’ve come to expect.

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Jess Phillips – How To Speak Truth to Power Oct 12, 2020

At a time when many of us feel the world isn’t listening, Jess Phillips is here to teach us how to get organised, speak out and fight against injustice in all its forms. Jess Phillips is no stranger to speaking truth to power. Since becoming the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley in 2015, she has earned widespread acclaim as an authentic, fearless and uncompromising force for good in British politics, unafraid to stand up against injustice no matter the cost. Now she returns to How To Academy to teach you how to dig deep, get organised, and find the courage and the tools you need to take action. In this conversation with broadcaster and journalist Matthew Stadlen, she’ll share her own experiences speaking truth to power – and share the stories of the accidental heroes who have been brave enough to risk everything, become whistle-blowers and successfully fight back. This episode features some unbeeped bad language and may not be suitable for all listeners.

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Thandie Newton Meets Gloria Steinem Oct 05, 2020

She is the most iconic American feminist of the 20th and 21st centuries: a journalist and activist whose career spanned the campaign trails of Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. As a co-founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem demonstrated a unique gift for offering hope and inspiring action – and to this day her words continue to serve as a source of guidance, humour and unity for people around the world. As the Emmy and BAFTA winning star of Westworld and The Line of Duty, alongside a cinematic slate as diverse as the Academy Award winning Crash and blockbuster Solo: a Star Wars Story, Thandie Newton is one of the most accomplished British actresses of her generation. As an activist and philanthropist, she has campaigned tirelessly to end violence against women and girls, and her TED talk exploring the role of selfhood and the bonds that connect us has been viewed over 3 million times. In this conversation hosted by author and critic Erica Wagner, Thandie and Gloria explore the extraordinary progress towards equality achieved over their lifetimes - and consider the work that remains to be done.

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Sid Meier – The Rise of Civilization Sep 21, 2020

As the inventor of an entirely new genre of entertainment, legendary video-game designer Sid Meier is a true creative pioneer a godfather to a multi-billion dollar industry. When Sid Meier designed his first computer game at the University of Michigan in the early 1970s computer-games hardly existed – and there were certainly no professional computer-game designers. In the following decades he would create some of the most famous and celebrated video-game titles ever made – including Civilization, a simulator of all of human history that has accumulated over a billion hours of play across the globe. The subject of internet memes, innumerable academic studies, critical acclaim and sometime controversy, the Civilization series has since its earliest days served as a calling card for anyone who believes that video-games are a unique, mature and culturally significant form. In this in-depth interview Sid explores his life and career at the forefront of the industry, with advice for aspiring and professional game-designers that can be equally applied by artists and creatives in all media.

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Geoffrey Robertson – Who Owns History? Sep 14, 2020

The question of whether Western nations must return the artefacts plundered under colonial rule is the most pressing issue in the art world today. From the Elgin Marbles to the return of more than twelve thousand stolen artefacts from Belgium’s Africa Museum, the cry for the restitution of cultural objects once stolen under armed force or conquest is being heard across the globe. And the call is being heard in the highest echelons of power: from President Macron’s commitment to returning hundreds of artworks acquired by force or fraud in Africa to Jeremy Corbyn’s pledge to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. Geoffrey Robertson QC has earned a formidable reputation as the UK’s leading human rights lawyer advocating in the most important legal cases of our age - from representing Salman Rushdie during the fatwa to fighting for free speech in the world-famous OZ trial. He’s helped the Greek government with legal arguments to reunite the Parthenon Marbles, and Tasmanian Aborigines in their action against the Natural History Museum for the return of the remains of their ancestors. He joins the How To Academy Podcast to delve into the debate over the Elgin Marbles, and offer a system for the return of cultural property based on human rights principles that aims to ensure the past can be experienced by everyone, as well as by the people of the country of origin.

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Roman Krznaric – How to Think Long Term in a Short Term World Sep 07, 2020

The greatest challenge facing humankind is not climate change or terrorism; it is our inability to think long term. Britain’s leading public philosopher is here to change the way we think to ensure a tomorrow. We are living in the age of now. Businesses can barely see beyond the next quarterly report nor politicians beyond the next election. Markets spike then crash in speculative bubbles. In this right here, right now society, we rarely stop to consider if we're being good ancestors. But the future depends on it. In this podcast, leading public philosopher and internationally bestselling author of Empathy and The Wonderbox Roman Krznaric explains how we lost sight of the future, and introduces simple, practical ways that we can change our thinking today to give our children, and our planet, a chance at a better tomorrow.

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Anthony David – Mental Health After COVID Aug 31, 2020

From anxiety to PTSD, the consequences of the pandemic for global mental health are profound. Neuropsychiatrist Anthony David explores what we know so far – and what we can do about it. Anthony David is one of the UK’s leading mental health professionals. As Director of UCL’s Institute for Mental Health, he has dedicated his life to treating illnesses at the edge of human understanding. Drawing on four decades of study and practice at the forefront of mental healthcare, he joins How To Academy to consider how the pandemic will impact upon the human psyche. Prof David will explore how policymakers, mental health professionals and individuals can respond to what some experts have dubbed the mental health “tsunami” anticipated after months of lockdown, hospitalisation and bereavement – and in light the coming global recession. Offering a global as well as local perspective, and taking heed of studies of mental health conducted after the closely related pandemics of SARS and MERS, this conversation with broadcaster Matthew Stadlen offers rich insights into the measures we can take to mitigate against the long-term psychological impact of the still unfolding crisis.

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Maria Konnikova – The Biggest Bluff Aug 24, 2020

When bestselling author Maria Konnikova set out to investigate the science of decision-making, she never expected to become a world-class poker player under the wing of a legend of the game. The author of two New York Times bestsellers, psychologist Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn’t even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel -- Poker Hall of Fame inductee, winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings -- and asked him to be her mentor. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance in her life had pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish what can be controlled and what can’t. Seidel was in, and soon Konnikova was down the rabbit hole with him, a journey that would lead her to the following year’s World Series of Poker. Then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel’s guidance, Konnikova began to have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read not just her opponents but far more importantly herself. She found her way to making better decisions and to a place where she could accept luck for what it is, and what it isn’t. But she also began to win. And win. She won a major title and got used to headlines like ‘How one writer’s book deal turned her into a professional poker player’. She even learned to like Las Vegas. In the end, Konnikova is a student of human behaviour, and ultimately the point of her incredible adventure was to render it into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough.

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Clive Woodward – How to Win Aug 17, 2020

Sir Clive Woodward has spent a lifetime in high-performance environments, from the rugby field to the boardroom. He gave broadcaster Matthew Stadlen a masterclass in achieving peak performance. After leading the England Rugby team to victory in the 2003 World Cup, delivering Olympic glory in 2012 as Director of Sport at Team GB, and going on to help some of the world’s biggest brands and businesses deliver peak performance, there are few if any men better qualified to teach the skills of leadership than Sir Clive Woodward. In this conversation with broadcaster and journalist Matthew Stadlen, Sir Clive distils the essence of his philosophy of leadership. Drawing on his unique perspective of the events of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, Sir Clive blends analysis, insight and anecdote to reveal how to lead the culture of a winning team – in any environment. Every individual position in rugby requires a unique set of skills, knowledge and expertise that collectively form a balanced team; the same is true in any successful business or organisation. From 1 to 15, the former England and British and Irish Lions coach identifies the key attributes and uses these defining traits to explain his collaborative 'Teamship' leadership style.

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Kiley Reid – Such a Fun Age Aug 10, 2020

Such a Fun Age is the literary sensation of the season, making the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic following overwhelming critical acclaim. Its 32 year old author Kiley Reid ‘bites into the zeitgeist then spits it out with gusto' (Stylist), offering a piercing and emphatic take on the way we live now. Exploring the intersection of money, class and race with candour, empathy and satirical insight, as well as the politics of privilege, the complicated reality of being a grown-up, and what it means to make someone family, the book announces Reid as a formidable talent and astute commentator on the values and mores of 21st century America. Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night. Seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, a security guard at their local high-end supermarket accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it right. Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend all they think they know about themselves, and each other. Don’t miss chance to meet a new voice of a generation in this week's How To Academy Podcast.

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Owen O’Kane - How to Manage Anxiety and Stress Aug 03, 2020

Psychotherapist and bestselling author Owen O’Kane was the NHS Clinical Lead for Mental Health. He joined us to explore evidence-based techniques for developing a healthier perspective. It is not necessary to sit on waiting lists and spend thousands of pounds to benefit from the insights of psychotherapy. Many of the tools from therapies including CBT, mindfulness and interpersonal therapy can be taught and practised simply and immediately. As one of the most experienced and senior therapists in the industry, Owen O’Kane is able to distil advice into concrete, jargon-free, step-by-step guide to steer you away from harmful patterns of thought and behaviour. In his Sunday Times bestseller Ten To Zen, and its sequel Ten Times Happier, he has developed a concrete plan to help you let go of what’s holding you back and move toward health and happiness. Owen grew up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, experiencing first-hand the anxiety that the conflict caused. As a Catholic, he struggled with his sexuality and even tried to cure himself at Lourdes before coming to terms with it. His understanding of the mental anguishes we face stems both from his first-hand experience and his decades of practice as a therapist. In this challenging time, he spoke to broadcaster and journalist Matthew Stadlen to reveal what we can each do to alleviate our troubled minds.

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Madeleine Albright – Hell and Other Destinations Jul 27, 2020

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright may be the most widely admired diplomat of our age; a tireless public servant whose new memoir Hell and Other Destinations is not only a record of living through history – but making it. In 2001, when Madeleine Albright was leaving office as America’s first female Secretary of State, interviewers asked her how she wished to be remembered. “I don’t want to be remembered,” she answered. “I am still here and have much more I intend to do. As difficult as it might seem, I want every stage of my life to be more exciting than the last.” In that time of transition, the former Secretary considered the possibilities: she could write, teach, travel, give speeches, start a business, fight for democracy, help to empower women, campaign for favoured political candidates, spend more time with her grandchildren. Instead of choosing one or two, she decided to do it all. For nearly twenty years, Albright has been in constant motion, navigating half a dozen professions, clashing with presidents and prime ministers, learning every day. Since leaving the State Department, she has blazed her own trail—and given voice to millions who yearn for respect, regardless of gender, background, or age. In this podcast with Hannah MacInnes, we see this remarkable figure at her bluntest, funniest, most intimate, and most serious. With stories from her life and work, and reflections upon Trump, the pandemic, and the tribulations of the 21st century, this is an unmissable chance to hear from one of the world’s most admired and respected public figures.

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Rahul Jandial – How To Rewire Your Brain Jul 20, 2020

It’s time to turn the tide against mental decline. Learn how to make your mind fitter, healthier and stronger using the insights of cutting-edge neuroscience in this week's podcast. Dr. Rahul Jandial is one of the world’s most eminent experts in the study and improvement of brain function. An award-winning, dual-trained neuroscientist and neurosurgeon, the author of ten books and a former faculty member at both Harvard and Stanford, Dr. Jandial is also a broadcaster and science communicator dubbed "world's most dashing neurosurgeon" (Variety). For years Dr Rahul Jandial, a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, has transformed the lives of his neurosurgery patients by putting them through 'brain rehab', his specially developed boot camp for restoring brain function. In this eye-opening interview with Hannah MacInnes, he uses his expertise to show how healthy people can rewire their brains to work in a higher gear.

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Richard Eyre - How to Make a Play Jul 14, 2020

The acclaimed director of stage and screen joins Matthew Stadlen for a masterclass in making theatre.

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Glennon Doyle – How to Find Yourself Jun 29, 2020

‘Glennon shows us the clearest meaning of “To thine own self be true”. It’s as if she reached into her heart, captured the raw emotions there and translated them into words that anyone who’s ever known pain or shame – in other words, every human on the planet – can relate to.’ – Oprah Winfrey There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, and overwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn't it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? Live from the US, Glennon Doyle joined the How To Academy to show us that another way is possible. The #1 New York Times bestselling author and humanitarian NGO founder is an inspiration to millions across the globe -- but for many years, she, like the rest of the us, denied her own discontent. In this talk, she’ll tell the story of how she quit living up to the world’s expectations of her and learn to be free. In this conversation with Hannah MacInnes, she describes how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honour our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts.. It’s time to quit pleasing -- and start living.

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Martin Wolf – The World After the Pandemic Jun 22, 2020

Revered by politicians, financiers and his fellow economists alike, the FT’s Martin Wolf may be the world’s most influential economic commentator. Matthew Stadlen seeks his insights. Admired across the political spectrum for his level-head, independence and lack of dogmatism, Martin Wolf is far more than an astute analyst of global economic affairs. Through his columns in the Financial Times, books and documentaries, he is an opinion-maker deeply respected by business and political leaders, whose principled advocacy of the public interest inspires policy decisions across the anglophone world and far beyond. Now, as the world economy collapses, he joins the How To Academy in conversation with How To Academy Podcast host Matthew Stadlen. The world after 2020 will be very different from the world we left. But how? Will the pandemic lead to the greatest upheaval in the social contract since the second world war, the end of globalisation, the beginning of the Asian century? Will it lead to tax rises, inflation, further austerity? Tune in and discover what the world’s preeminent financial journalist thinks about the world to come.

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Max Brooks - How To Survive a Global Catastrophe Jun 17, 2020

This week's podcast guest Max Brooks is the bestselling author of the zombie apocalypse cult classic World War Z, for which he also wrote the screenplay for the Hollywood adaptation with Brad Pitt. He is the son of Hollywood legends Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks – Max and Mel recently went viral with their #DontBeASpreader video which has had 16.1M views to date. As well as a bestselling author, Max is also a renowned global disaster preparation expert and works alongside the US government, the Atlantic Council (US global leadership and engagement in partnership with allies and partners) and lectures at West Point Military Academy on disaster preparedness. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post and beyond on everything from coronavirus and biowarfare to the form the real zombie apocalypse will come in.

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L. David Marquet – Leadership is Language Jun 08, 2020

'David Marquet is the kind of leader who comes around only once in a generation... His ideas and lessons are invaluable' – Simon Sinek Few of us realize that our language in the workplace inhibits creative problem-solving and escalates uncertainty and stress. In both high-pressure situations and everyday scenarios, in each meeting and email, we have the opportunity to empower our colleagues by using the right words. David Marquet is a man who understands first-hand the power of words to make change happen. As commander of the nuclear-powered, fast-attack submarine USS Santa Fe, he transformed the worst-performing submarine in the fleet to the best. Now he applies the same skills to businesses as an expert in leadership. In this conversation with LBC Presenter Matthew Stadlen, Marquet shows managers and leaders how to enable their team through communication. He outlines a set of principles and tools that help leaders inspire their people to take responsibility and address challenges without waiting to be told what to do, highlighting how small changes in language can lead to dramatic changes in a team's success and happiness. Praise for L. David Marquet: 'I don't know of a finer model of this kind of empowering leadership than Captain Marquet. And in the pages that follow you will find a model for your pathway'’ Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 'To say I'm a fan of David Marquet would be an understatement... I'm a fully fledged groupie. He is the kind of leader who comes around only once a generation. He is the kind of leader who doesn't just know how to lead, he knows how to build leaders. His ideas and lessons are invaluable to anyone who wants to build an organization that will outlive them'’ Simon Sinek, optimist and author of Start with Why

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Julia Ebner – Undercover With Extremists Jun 01, 2020

Frustrated by the limits of an outsider’s perspective, counter-extremism expert Julia Ebner secretly infiltrated five fanatical groups. She joined the How To Academy Podcast to reveal her journey into the darkest recesses of extremist thinking. By day, Julia Ebner works at a counter-extremism think tank, monitoring radical groups from the outside, but two years ago, she began to feel that she was only seeing half the picture. She needed to get inside the groups to truly understand them. So she decided to go undercover in her spare hours – late nights, holidays, weekends – adopting five different identities, and joining a dozen extremist groups from across the ideological spectrum. Her journey would take her from a Generation Identity global strategy meeting in a pub in Mayfair, to a Neo-Nazi Music Festival on the border of Germany and Poland. She would get relationship advice from ‘Trad Wives’ and Jihadi Brides and hacking lessons from ISIS. She was in the channels when the alt-right began planning the lethal Charlottesville rally, and spent time in the networks that would radicalise the Christchurch terrorist. On this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Julia reveals what she discovered on her terrifying and illuminating journey. She exposes how closely we are surrounded by their fanatical ideology every day, the changing nature and practice of these groups, and what is being done to counter them.

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John Browne - How to Engineer the Future May 25, 2020

Fans of Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari ought not to miss this eloquent blueprint for building a brighter future from engineer, John Browne. In conversation with Matthew Stadlen, Lord Browne argues that we need not and must not put the brakes on technological advance. Civilisation is founded on engineering innovation; all progress stems from the human urge to make things and to shape the world around us, resulting in greater freedom, health and wealth for all. Drawing on history, his own experiences and conversations with many of today's great innovators, he uncovers the basis for all progress and its consequences, both good and bad. He argues compellingly that the same spark that triggers each innovation can be used to counter its negative consequences.

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Layla Saad - How to Fight White Supremacy May 18, 2020

'She is no-joke changing the world and, for what it's worth, the way I live my life.' - Anne Hathaway How can white people challenge racism -- whether in the form of their own unconscious biases or the wider systems of white supremacy? In this week's How To Academy Podcast, Hannah MacInnes meets author, influencer and activist Layla Saad, whose Instagram challenge #MeAndWhiteSupremacy encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviours. She was looking for truth, and she got it. Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and over 90,000 people downloaded her Me and White Supremacy Workbook. Awareness leads to action, and action leads to change. Listen to this week's podcast and find out what you can do to make the world a better place.

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Brian Greene - How to Find Meaning in an Evolving Universe May 11, 2020

The bestselling author of The Elegant Universe joins the How To Academy Podcast to explore humankind’s search for purpose in the vastness of the cosmos. World-renowned for his ground-breaking discoveries in string theory, Brian Greene is also one of our most eloquent and original storytellers in science, able to transport us across the vast reaches of time and space, bringing to life breakthroughs and trials, great discoveries and profound philosophical meditations. He joined Matthew Stadlen on the How To Academy Podcast to explore the quest to understand how life and mind emerged from the initial chaos of the big bang, and how our minds, in coming to understand their own impermanence, seek in different ways to give meaning to experience.

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Julia Samuel - How to Adapt and Survive in a Time of Crisis May 01, 2020

In this unprecedented moment in global history, psychotherapist Julia Samuel joined the How To Academy Podcast to tell us how to find unknown strengths in times of difficulty and change. As the global coronavirus pandemic causes profound difficulties to our health, work, and family, Julia drew upon more thirty years of experience helping everyday people in times of uncertainty, and taught us the skills we need to adapt and hopefully thrive in this strange new normal.

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How To Make Sense of Consciousness Apr 20, 2020

How do our brains produce the magic show of conscious experience? The question remains one of the universe's unsolved mysteries -- and this week's podcast guest, Anil Seth, is working on the answer. This week's guest Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. In his work he seeks to understand the biological basis of consciousness by bringing together research across neuroscience, mathematics, AI, computer science, psychology, philosophy and psychiatry. Matthew Stadlen caught up with him backstage at How To Academy's annual How to Change the World conference to find out more.

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Mervyn King - How to Make Decisions for an Unknowable Future Apr 14, 2020

Many of the world’s problems stem from the false belief that we can accurately predict the future. Can we make better decisions by acknowledging radical uncertainty? In this week's podcast, Mervyn King and John Kay build a powerful case. Uncertainty pervades the big decisions we all make in our lives. How much should we pay into our pensions each month? Should we take regular exercise? Expand the business? Change our strategy? Enter a trade agreement? Take an expensive holiday? We do not know what the future will hold. But we must make decisions anyway. So we crave certainties which cannot exist and invent knowledge we cannot have. But humans are successful because they have adapted to an environment that they understand only imperfectly. Throughout history we have developed a variety of ways of coping with the radical uncertainty that defines our lives. Mervyn King and John Kay know about the pressures of decision-making in the highest echelons of power. They’ve spent their lives and careers making decisions that reverberate across British society -- and beyond. As Governor of the Bank of England, King was responsible for the financial stability of the nation. And as a company director, FT columnist and Oxford Said Professor in the country, Kay’s decisions and opinions have been felt across the business world and wider economy for decades. In this eye-opening podcast interview with economist Linda Yueh, they highlight the most successful – and the most short-sighted - methods of dealing with an unknowable future. They will show how the prevalent methods of our age fall short, giving us a false understanding of our power to make predictions and leading to many of the problems we experience today.

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BONUS EPISODE - Global GoalsCast Apr 06, 2020

The How To Academy Podcast presents an episode of one of our favourite shows: the Global GoalsCast. The climate challenge is sprawling and extraordinarily complex. It is too much for any individual to hold all of it in their head. That knowledge void has become a major political obstacle to effective climate action (SDG 13) as we fill it in paralyzing ways, from denial to apocalyptic fear. The best way to learn that we can curb climate change is to do it. So Global GoalsCast co-host Edie Lush sat down with John Sterman, professor of Management at MIT, to solve the climate crisis on his ClimateInteractiv model of the world’s climate and economy. Edie tried everything from energy efficient homes to a steep tax on carbon in a search for solutions that would hold global temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). How did she do? Listen to this special two-part episode of Global GoalsCast, timed to coincide with the United Nations Climate Summit and the global journalism effort to increase awareness of the climate challenge, #CoveringClimateNow.

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William Gibson – How to Create the Future Mar 30, 2020

He coined the word ‘Cyberspace’ and envisioned the Internet and Virtual Reality before they ever existed. Now, in this week's How To Academy Podcast, William Gibson turns his prophetic eye to the 21st century. He is the prophet who first envisioned our fluid, hyperconnected, hallucinatory world; the internationally bestselling author whose visions of the near future reveal the strangeness of our contemporary moment as much as they illuminate potential worlds to come. But William Gibson is more than a thinker anticipating possible futures: an inspiration to successive generations of innovators, his searing imagination has not only defined the cyberpunk literary genre but shaped our reality. Advertising agencies inspired by his fictious company Blue Ant now manage global accounts; designer labels produce luxury fashions based on the clothing worn by his characters. U2 based an album on his 6 million selling debut, Neuromancer – and technologists from Tokyo to Silicon Valley are devoted to realising his ideas. Many people claim to understand the age of Trump and Brexit, global pandemics and climate change – but no-one else shares William Gibson’s ability to cut through the noise and synthesise a unique and powerful vision of the present and near future. In this interview, we hear in-depth form one of the most potent analytical minds of our age.

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Elif Shafak – How to Build Bridges in an Age of Division Mar 23, 2020

Author and activist Elif Shafak is the most widely read female writer in her home nation of Turkey -- but her fight against populism and tribalism is urgent no matter where you live. She joined Matthew Stadlen on the How To Academy Podcast to explore our turbulent present and make an impassioned defence of tolerance and humanitarian values. In an age where the vision of a pluralistic, democratic global village no longer feels like possible, she explores how we can escape our echo chambers and work together to forge a better future. Elif writes in both Turkish and English, and has been published in 48 languages. Her most recent novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was nominated for the Booker Prize. She has been longlisted for the Orange Prize, MAN Asian Prize; the Baileys Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award, and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize. She is a TED Global speaker, a member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy in Davos and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). She has been awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2010 by the French government.

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Ai Weiwei – Human Rights in the 21st Century Mar 16, 2020

Ai Weiwei is living proof that creativity can change our world for the better. Raised in a labour camp and later beaten, surveilled and imprisoned on trumped-up charges by the Chinese state, Ai Weiwei has dedicated his life to the struggle against corruption and oppression of all kinds. As a conceptual artist and activist fighting for justice, he has become an icon in his own lifetime, renowned world-wide for his work promoting freedom of thought and expression, compassion, and humanitarian values. For one unmissable night at the How To Academy, Weiwei was joined in conversation by Kenneth Roth, CEO of Human Rights Watch – an NGO investigating and reporting abuses in five continents. From the Syrian Civil War to the Rohingya Crisis, US immigration to the South Sudan Conflict, the lawyers, journalists and country experts of Human Rights Watch help hold abusers to account and bring justice to victims. Weiwei and Kenneth were hosted by Helene Cooper, Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times and herself a refugee to the United States, having fled a military coup in Liberia aged 14.

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Paul Krugman – Politics, Economics and the Fight for a Fairer Future Mar 09, 2020

For more than forty years Nobel laureate, bestselling economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has fought for a fair, just and liberal future. Widely considered the voice of 21st century liberal thought both in the United States and across the globe, Paul Krugman combines the erudition and insight of a renowned scholar with the immediate relevance, clarity and originality of thought expected of a columnist at the New York Times. A former professor at LSE, Princeton, Yale and MIT, perhaps the world’s leading theorist of international trade relations, and a passionate advocate of a fairer and more democratic world, he joined the How To Academy Podcast to share his insights into the Trump administration and beyond.

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Erling Kagge and Ben Saunders - How to Be a Polar Explorer Feb 24, 2020

Two of the greatest living adventurers meet Hannah MacInnes to reflect on what motivates their journeys across the polar ice. Bringing together two record-breaking polar explorers –Norwegian Erling Kagge and his British counterpart Ben Saunders – this podcast offers a profound and illuminating meditation on the life of a polar explorer. The first man ever to reach the North and South Poles unsupported and the first to conquer both the Poles and Mt. Everest, a Cambridge educated philosopher, international art dealer, lawyer, politician, publisher and bestselling author, Erling Kagge’s achievements belie his faith in the sacred value of silence and solitude in the modern age. Joining him in the podcast is Ben Saunders, whose accomplishments include skiing solo to both poles and leading The Scott Expedition – the longest human powered journey in human history. 'After having put my shoes on and let my thoughts wander, I am sure of one thing - to put one foot in front of the other is one of the most important things we do.' – Erling Kagge

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Joseph Stiglitz - How to Save American Capitalism Feb 17, 2020

How can we escape our age of discontent? In this week's podcast, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz challenges us to throw off the free market fundamentalists and reclaim our democratic power. We all the sense that something has gone wrong with the American economy – with consequences that continue to reverberate across the globe. But just how did a few corporations come to dominate entire sectors, leading to skyrocketing inequality and sluggish growth? How did the financial industry write its own regulations, the tech companies accumulate reams of personal data without oversight, and the government negotiate international trade deals against the interests of workers? Joseph Stiglitz is America’s preeminent economic thinker. A Nobel laureate, bestselling author, advisor to Clinton and former chairman of the World Bank, he joins the How To Academy Academy Podcast to answer the question of why the economy is rigged in favour of elites - and rally us around a new vision of capitalism that puts people ahead of profits.

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Lisa Taddeo and Hadley Freeman On Sex and Desire Feb 10, 2020

Nearly a decade in the making, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a global phenomenon. Hailed instantly as a feminist classic, this staggering work of nonfiction is the result of thousands of hours spent in the company of its subjects – three women whose lives reveal profound and previously unspoken truths about life and love, womanhood and desire. Lisa joins the How To Academy Podcast to tell the Guardian's Hadley Freeman how Three Women came to be.

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BJ Fogg - How to Hack Your Habits Feb 03, 2020

Never make a New Year’s Resolution again after hearing this podcast from the world’s most renowned expert in forming new habits –Stanford behavioural scientist, BJ Fogg. There are entire worlds of advice on how to lose weight, how to sleep better, how to perform better on the job, how to have better sex, and every other aspect of human behaviour you might wish to change in the New Year. But we all know from bitter experience that none of these new habits last beyond February. The week's How To Academy Podcast will help you finally keep the promises you have made to yourself. BJ Fogg is the legendary Stanford researcher whose class inspired the founder of Instagram and whose ideas are cited by almost every guru of habit formation and behavioural change – from Tim Ferris to Robert Sutton. He joined Matthew Stadlen to introduce a simple method empirically proven to create results for all behavioural issues – from weight loss and better sleep to quitting smoking and exercising more.

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Eric Schmidt - How to Make a Trillion Dollars Jan 27, 2020

In this week’s episode, Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, VP Jonathan Rosenberg and Director of Executive Communications Alan Eagle present a blueprint for farsighted leadership. They are among the most influential CEOs on the planet – bona fide icons of the digital age. But what else do Jeff Bezos, Sheryl Sandberg, Sundar Pichai, Marissa Meyer and Steve Jobs have in common? They all learned to lead from the legendary coach and business executive, Bill Campbell. His mentoring of some of the most successful modern entrepreneurs has helped to create well over a trillion dollars in market value, and played an instrumental role in the growth of many of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies. Google’s senior leaders Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle experienced first-hand how the man fondly known as Coach Bill built trusting relationships, fostered personal growth-even in those at the pinnacle of their careers, inspired courage, and identified and resolved simmering tensions that inevitably arise in fast-moving environments. They joined Matthew Stadlen on the How To Academy Podcast to tell us more about Bill’s ideas and methods, and honour his legacy.

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Life Lessons From Gina Miller Jan 20, 2020

“There are times when I’ve gone back and cried, and I do think at times, ‘Is it worth it?’ But I have to carry on fighting because it can’t become a normalised thought pattern in our society that a woman of colour is not bright enough, can’t make her own money, can’t be successful, or is told she has made it on her back. I will stand up as long as I can.” – Gina Miller Gina Miller has taken the government to court not once but twice – and won. In the face of abuse and threats -- including a crowdfunded campaign to sponsor her assassination -- she has risen to become an icon to anyone who believes in transparency, democracy and the rule of law. Her life story is one of extraordinary resilience, and her courage is an inspiration whether we are striving to change the future of British politics or facing very different trials. Sent to England from Guyana to study aged 10, she worked as a teenage chamber maid when currency controls left her cut off from her family’s support. Aged 24, she gave birth to a daughter with brain damage, and after her first marriage ended, became a single mother. She was assaulted at law school and today faces death threats online and on the street. Letters are sent to her home telling her that her children are ‘mongrels’. Yet faced with a lifetime of hardship and flagrant abuse she has risen to become perhaps the most influential and inspirational activist of our age. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, Gina draws on a lifetime of fighting injustice and looks at the moments that made her; the trauma, failures and successes that gave her the confidence in her voice, the ability to know how to use it and the strength not to let others diminish it, even when it came at incredible cost. To those who say one person cannot make a difference, Gina Miller is irrefutable proof that you can.

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Hilary Cottam - How to Revolutionise the Welfare State Jan 13, 2020

Imitated and envied across the globe, the British welfare state was once revolutionary. But in 2020, our society faces urgent challenges that can only be solved with new and highly innovative solutions. In this week's podcast, social designer and WEF Young Global Leader Dr. Hilary Cottam meets Matthew Stadlen to reveal her vision of a system that puts human connection first.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson - Reflections from an Astrophysicist Jan 06, 2020

He is the world’s most beloved scientist – an inspiration for all who seek understanding, meaning and truth in the vastness of the cosmos. Now Neil deGrasse Tyson joins the How To Academy Podcast to ask: what is our place in the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson has dedicated his life to exploring and explaining the mysteries of our universe. As Director of the Hayden Planetarium, the host of Cosmos and StarTalk, a New York Times bestselling author and owner of one of the 200 ‘most followed’ Twitter accounts on the entire planet, he might just be the most influential scientist alive today. Every year, Professor Tyson receives thousands of letters – from students to prisoners, scientists to priests. Some seek advice, others yearn for inspiration; some are full of despair, others burst with wonder. His replies are by turns wise, funny, and mind-blowing. In this podcast, Neil shares his favourite ideas from decades of correspondence - exploring issues from atheism to aliens, racism in America to the cosmic perspective on human life.

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Chetna Gala Sinha - How to Fight Global Poverty Dec 16, 2019

On this week's podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets activist and microfinance pioneer Chetna Gala Sinha, whose work in rural India empowers some of the world's poorest women. When Chetna Gala Sinha moved from her home town of Mumbai to rural Mhaswad as a young economics graduate, she saw first-hand how lack of access to banking facilities deprived local women of the opportunity to employ their entrepreneurial skills and lift themselves out of poverty. Since then, she has dedicated her life to creating the financial, technological and educational infrastructure needed by women in rural India to support themselves -- and been acknowledged the world over as one of the most influential activists of her generation. Today the Mann Deshi Bank manages millions of dollars and the Mann Deshi Foundation educates hundreds of thousands of women in business skills -- with profoundly significant consequences. In our turbulent age, it is easy to become sceptical about the power of one person to make a difference in the world. This week's podcast is proof that they can. Apologies for the occasionally bumpy sound in this week's episode.

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Rory Stewart - The Truth About Politics Dec 07, 2019

In this week’s podcast, independent politician and London Mayoral candidate Rory Stewart tells Hannah MacInnes what he's discovered about British democracy in his time an MP and minister. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Malaysia, commissioned in the Black Watch when only a teenager, a bestselling author and Professor at Harvard, Rory Stewart’s career bore little resemblance to the typical 21st century career politician - and that before he being fired by the Conservative Party for rebelling against a hard Brexit. In this conversation, he gives us the inside scoop on how government works - and how it doesn't.

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Matthew Syed - A Radical Blueprint for Creative Problem-Solving Dec 02, 2019

Where do the best ideas come from? In this week’s podcast, Matthew Syed takes Matthew Stadlen on a fascinating journey through the new science of creative problem-solving. It’s time to think again about where the best ideas come from. Individual intelligence and homogenous teams are fine for addressing simple problems -- but groupthink can spell disaster for more complex tasks. That’s why Times columnist and former Olympian advocates a brave new idea: Cognitive Diversity. In this week’s podcast, he reveals how cognitive diversity strengthens any company, institution or team, providing a powerful new tool for creative problem-solving that breaks down echo chambers and gives a competitive advantage to leaders willing to listen. What’s the difference between the herd mentality and the wisdom of crowds? Why are so few problems solved in meetings? What do the CIA’s failings before 9/11, a communications breakdown on Mount Everest, and the differences between American and Japanese scientists have in common? You’ll discover the answers to all these questions and many more in this week’s How To Academy Podcast.

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Speeches That Changed the World Nov 25, 2019

For this week's podcast, Hannah MacInnes and bestselling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore assembled an all-star cast to bring to life history's greatest speeches - from conquerors and revolutionaries, activists and athletes, dreamers and killers. You'll meet Elizabeth I and Genghis Khan, Muhammad Ali and Winston Churchill, Greta Thunberg, Martin Luther King and many more - with insights from Simon revealing how these powerful speeches enlighten our past, enrich our present and inspire - and hold warnings for - our future. The cast includes Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones, Four Weddings and a Funeral); Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, Star Trek: Discovery); Paapa Essiedu (Hamlet, RSC); Kate Phillips (Wolf Hall, The Crown), and Jade Anouka (Cleaning Up, Trauma).

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How to Stop Facebook From Destroying Democracy Nov 18, 2019

Roger NcNamee was Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor in the first days of Facebook. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, he explains why he's now devoted to stopping the behemoth he helped to create. If you had told Roger McNamee three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund's bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg. Still a large shareholder in Facebook, he had every good reason to stay on the bright side. Until he simply couldn't. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, Roger tells Matthew Stadlen about his reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world's most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing.

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Marie Forleo - How to Create Unstoppable Success Nov 11, 2019

With nothing more than passion, a laptop and a dream, Marie Forleo created a digital empire that inspires millions. She’s the star of the award-winning show MarieTV, with over 47 million views, and the author of a new guide to high achievement that Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert says ‘will change lives’. Named by Oprah as a thought leader for the next generation, Marie presents her award-winning online show, Marie TV and podcast to her 1.5 million fans around the world. She is the founder of B-School, a transformative online business school and she has mentored young business owners at the Richard Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship. MarieForleo.com is one of Forbes magazine's Top 100 Websites for Entrepreneurs and her work has appeared in Inc. magazine, Women's Health and Entrepreneur among others. She joined the How To Academy Podcast to teach us what she’s learned on her path to success. In conversation with journalist Hannah MacInnes, Marie teaches us to train our brains to think more creatively and positively – especially in the face of setbacks.

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Jonathan Safran Foer - How to Save the Planet Nov 04, 2019

The climate crisis is the single biggest threat to human survival. And it is happening right now. We all understand that time is running out - but do we truly believe it? Caught between the seemingly unimaginable and the apparently unthinkable, how can we take the first step towards action, to arrest our race to extinction? Jonathan Safran Foer is on a mission to demystify climate change. His ability to spin beauty, wit and insight from tragedy in novels like 'Everything is Illuminated' and 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' have seen him lauded as the most gifted storyteller of his generation. And his ‘shocking, incandescent, brilliant’ (Times) bestseller 'Eating Animals' shifted attitudes away from industrialised farming and meat-eating for good. He joined Matthew Stadlen on stage at How To Academy to bring the climate crisis to life – and offer us a way out. They explored how the task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves - with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. But we have done it before and we can do it again. Collective action is the way to save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat, and don't eat, for breakfast… Praise for Jonathan Safran Foer: 'Should be compulsory reading. A genuine masterwork. Read this book. It will change you' Time Out 'Everyone who eats flesh should read this book' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall 'Universally compelling. Jonathan Safran Foer's book changed me' Natalie Portman 'Gripping [and] original. A brilliant synthesis of argument, science and storytelling. One of the finest books ever written on the subject of eating animals' Times Literary Supplement 'Horrifying, eloquent, timely' Spectator 'If you eat meat and fish, you should read this book. Even if you don't, you should. It might bring the beginning of a change of heart about all living things' Joanna Lumley

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Dr. Gabor Maté - When the Body Says No: The Costs of Hidden Stress Oct 28, 2019

Learn how to prevent and heal illnesses related to hidden stress with the help of acclaimed physician Dr. Gabor Maté. Can a person literally die of loneliness? Is there a connection between the ability to express emotions and Alzheimer’s disease? Is there such a thing as a “cancer personality”? One of the world’s most sought after and celebrated physicians, Dr. Gabor Maté is the leading expert on the role the mind-body connection plays in illness and health. Drawing on scientific research and the author’s decades of experience as a practicing physician, he joined journalist Hannah MacInnes to explore the role that stress and emotions play in an array of common diseases, including arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and multiple sclerosis. "Gabor Maté’s connections―between the intensely personal and the global, the spiritual and the medical, the psychological and the political―are bold, wise and deeply moral. He is a healer to be cherished." -- Naomi Klein

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Juliet Stevenson - How To Be An Actor Oct 17, 2019

This week's How To Academy Podcast is a masterclass with one of the greatest British actors of her generation: Juliet Stevenson. Best known for film work including TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY, EMMA and MONA LISA SMILE, acclaimed for her work on the stage including DEATH OF A MAIDEN (ROYAL COURT), MEASURE FOR MEASURE (RSC) and HAPPY DAYS (Young Vic), she joined Matthew Stadlen to impart what she's learned about the art, craft and business of acting over four decades.

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Rory Sutherland - How to Be Less Rational (and More Brilliant) Oct 14, 2019

In this week’s How To Academy podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets advertising legend Rory Sutherland for a lesson in using the power of psychology to make ideas, products and businesses triumph. In our data-driven age, businesses usually try to use logic, algorithms and theory to drive sales and solve problems. But there’s a problem with this rational approach: humans are innately illogical, and make unconscious decisions based largely on our emotions. What if there was a deeper, underlying logic to explain our irrational selves? How can leaders tap into this ‘psycho-logic’ to drive their brands, products and businesses to global success? Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland’s has the answer. His inimitable flair and polymath’s curiosity has made him a TED Talk superstar with over 6.5 million views, a globally sought-after keynote speaker, and a Radio 4 regular with two acclaimed radio series under his belt. In this podcast, he presents his ground-breaking theory of creative alchemy. Blend cutting-edge behavioural science, jaw-dropping stories and a touch of branding magic, Rory shows why the demand for logic is stifling our ability to solve problems – and presents a startlingly original set of tools for finding creative solutions.

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Melinda Gates - How to Empower Women Oct 07, 2019

In this week's podcast, Melinda Gates makes a timely and necessary call to action for women’s empowerment. For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, you need to stop keeping women down. In this moving and compelling conversation with journalist Hannah MacInnes, Melinda shares lessons she’s learned from the inspiring people she’s met during her work and travels around the world – the people who’ve given focus and urgency to her life. She will help us to see ways in which we can all lift women up – wherever we live.

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John Humphrys - How to Make the News Sep 19, 2019

For the last 33 years, John Humphrys has held politicians to account as the host of our most popular news programme - Radio 4's Today. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, Matthew Stadlen - a man who is himself no stranger to asking tough questions of those in power - sat down with him to explore what John has learned from a lifetime at the forefront of current affairs in the UK.

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Marcus du Sautoy - AI and the Secret of Creativity Sep 16, 2019

In Episode 9 of the How To Academy podcast, the nation’s most loved science communicator, Oxford mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy, explores the potential of artificial intelligence to think creatively. From driving cars to writing legal contracts, new developments in AI are shaking up the status quo, as we find out how many of the tasks humans engage in can be done equally well, if not better, by machines. But can machines be creative? Will they soon be able to learn from the art that moves us, and understand what distinguishes it from the mundane? What will it mean to be human when an algorithm can paint like Rembrandt, compose like Mozart, and write like Shakespeare? In this podcast, Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy examines the nature of creativity with science filmmaker David Malone. How much of our emotional response to art is a product of our brains reacting to pattern and structure? Exactly what does it mean to be creative in mathematics and art, language and music? Will a computer ever compose a symphony or write a prize-winning novel? And if so, would we be able to tell the difference?

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Giles Coren - A Man For All Seasons Sep 09, 2019

In Episode 8 of the How To Academy Podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets restaurant critic and raconteur Giles Coren, for a freewheeling and hilarious conversation about truth, love and clean cutlery. Giles Coren is a man of many talents. A restaurant critic, Times columnist, TV presenter, and award-winning novelist, his taste, wit and inability to suffer fools have made him an icon to anyone who values great writing and clever opinions. He is perhaps the ultimate dinner party guest; and though we cannot offer supper with Giles in a world-class restaurant, How Academy proudly presents the next best thing: Giles in conversation with LBC’s Matthew Stadlen, on the subject of supper in world-class restaurants. Giles reflects on the most delicious, ethical and sustainable dining experiences in the UK - alongside a rambunctious and laugh out loud review of his relationships, career and life to date.

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Michael Pollan - How to Change Your Mind Aug 28, 2019

Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? In Episode 7 of the How To Academy podcast, Michael Pollan tells Matthew Stadlen about his journey to the frontiers of the human mind. For twenty years the author and activist Michael Pollan has been writing about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect, including, most famously, in his acclaimed books on the ethics and ecology of food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire. That path recently led him to investigate the role of mind altering drugs in humans culture - from shamans and magic mushroom hunts to the pioneering labs mapping our brains - and to put himself forward as a guinea-pig. In this podcast, LBC presenter Matthew Stadlen asks Michael about his dive into this extraordinary world, taking a tough but open-minded approach to the promises and perils of the new science of psychedelics.

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Elizabeth Gilbert - On Life and Love Aug 19, 2019

From the dive bars of the Lower East Side to the beaches of Bali, the Connecticut Christmas Tree farm where she was raised to the Mumbai ashram where she sought solace after a difficult divorce, Elizabeth Gilbert is a world traveller whose unending search for answers to life’s biggest questions have made her the voice of a generation. Aged 34, she left her home, husband and career to travel alone across the world; her chronicle of that journey became EAT, PRAY, LOVE, an international bestseller so popular TIME magazine declared her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Since then she has produced one critically acclaimed bestseller after another. From COMMITTED, her memoir about making her peace with the institution of marriage, to BIG MAGIC, a book encapsulating her the joyful spirit she brings to her creative work, her works resonate profoundly with all of us who wish to confront heartbreak, tragedy and desperation with openness, imagination and wisdom. In celebration of the release of her new novel CITY OF GIRLS, she joined the How To Academy to explore her life to date. In this conversation with journalist Hannah MacInnes, she considered her thoughts on genius and creativity, sex and adventure, wonder and fear, leaving no stone unturned in her remarkable story.

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Preet Bharara - An Insider's Guide to Crime in America Aug 05, 2019

In Episode Five of the How To Academy Podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets Preet Bharara, the former US district attorney who successfully prosecuted some of the most high-profile crimes in America. Along the way he gained notoriety as the ‘Sheriff of Wall Street’, was banned from Russia by Vladimir Putin and earned the distinction of being one of the first federal employees fired by Trump. In this wide-ranging conversation Preet takes us into the gritty, tactically complex, often sensational world of America’s criminal justice system – and gives us his inside take on the Mueller Report and President Trump.

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David Wallace-Wells - How To Survive Climate Change Jul 29, 2019

Once a generation an environmentalist dares to speak truth to power with such force that they cannot be silenced. In Episode 4 of the How To Academy Podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets David Wallace-Wells, whose terrifying vision of unfolding climate catastrophe may just be the wake-up call we need to save the future. Climate change is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. In this podcast, David presents a sober, scientific but utterly terrifying vision of the unfolding 21st century. What will it be like to live on a pummelled planet? What will it do to our politics, our economy, our culture and sense of history? And what action can we all take, today, to minimise the damage?

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The Gendered Brain Debate Jun 25, 2019

In this week's podcast, two giants of cognitive science - neuroscientist Gina Rippon and psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen - go head-to-head to debate one of the most contested and controversial ideas in the history of science: do men and women have essentially different brains? Setting this debate has potentially far-reaching consequences for the future of medicine and mental health treatment, the workplace and society as a whole. But do studies claiming to show differences between the brains of men and women actually uncover an inconvenient truth? Or are they merely attempts to justify the sexist status quo? It’s time to accept that brains should not be ‘sexed’, says Gina Rippon. It’s misleading to attribute any differences in behaviour, abilities, achievements, or personality to the possession of either a female brain or a male brain. And she argues that new techniques can prove it. After centuries of ingrained neurosexism, neuroscience’s cutting-edge breakthroughs should at last liberate us from outdated misunderstandings of what our brains can and cannot do. Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen takes a different perspective. Whilst he agrees that individuals’ brains should not and cannot be ‘sexed’, he reminds us that group studies of males and females do reveal differences on average: Men on average are better at analysing systems and women on average are better at empathising with people. And he marshals evidence from studies of prenatal hormones and genetics that these traits have both biological and cultural roots.

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Cass Sunstein - How To Make Change Happen Jun 25, 2019

In this podcast, the bestselling author of Nudge, Professor Cass Sunstein, presents a ground-breaking guide for anyone who wishes to fuel – or block – transformative social change. Sometimes all it takes to change society is for one person to decide they will no longer remain silent. A child announces that the emperor has no clothes. A woman tweets, #MeToo. Suddenly, a taboo collapses for the better – or for the worse. Once white nationalism was kept out of the mainstream media and politics; now it is in the White House. Social movements can begin when rage is released – or quietly, with millions of people nudged into making different decisions until, without noticing, we live with a new status quo. Bringing together behavioural economics, psychology, politics and law, Cass Sunstein and LBC Presenter Matthew Stadlen explore Cass’s career new science of social movements. What can we as individuals do to harness the power of social movements to make change happen? What kinds of interventions make a difference, and what kind lead to bans and mandates? How can we overcome social division, cause transformative cascades, and employ political parties as a force for good?

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Simon Sinek - How to Lead in the 21st Century Jun 25, 2019

In this episode of the How To Academy podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets Simon Sinek – perhaps the 21st century’s most acclaimed thinker in the field of business leadership. Simon Sinek’s Start With Why concept changed the face of modern business. Over 35 million people have watched his TED talk on how great leaders inspire everyone to take action, and millions more have read his books Find Your Why and Leaders Eat Last. In 2016, his insightful analysis of millennials at work was seen by more than 200 million people in the first month alone. He joined How To Academy to present his latest insights to LBC presenter Matthew Stadlen.

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