How To Academy Podcast

Latest Episodes:

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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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