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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

Every success story you’ve ever been told is incomplete. How To Fail with Elizabeth Day is the part they leave out.

Each week, Sunday Times #1 bestselling author Elizabeth Day sits down with someone extraordinary – and asks them about the moments that didn’t go according to plan and how these failures shaped them.

Kate Winslet on body image. Malala Yousafzai on rewriting her story. Pamela Anderson on refuting shame. Phoebe Waller-Bridge on creativity. Salman Rushdie on survival. Emilia Clarke on fame. What happens when the people you most admire stop performing and start telling the truth? Five hundred episodes in, we’re still finding out.

With sold-out nights at the London Palladium and Sydney Opera House, millions of listeners worldwide, and a British Podcast Award to its name, How To Fail is one of the UK’s most successful podcasts. And yes, we’re aware of the irony.

Pick an episode. Start anywhere.

An Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment production.

All guest booking is managed from an official Sony Music email address.

Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow @sonypodcastsTo bring your brand to life in this podcast, email podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Copyright: © Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment

Latest Episodes:

S1, Ep7 How to Fail: David Nicholls Aug 22, 2018

Show notes

David Nicholls, bestselling novelist, critically acclaimed screenwriter, aspiring piano player and thoroughly nice man, joins How To Fail to talk about his myriad failures. You might not expect the author of One Day, which sold five million copies and was adapted into a film starring Anne Hathaway, to have much of an acquaintance with failure, but Nicholls insists there’s plenty to discuss.
We touch on his failure to be an actor for 10 years (he was always the understudy; never the main part), the anxiety that comes with success, the challenges and beauty of fatherhood and his failure to drive a car competently above 40 miles per hour.
We also talk about his Booker-longlisted novel, Us, and his brilliant TV adaptation of the Edward St Aubyn Patrick Melrose novels starring Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as the time he acted with Dame Judi Dench.
Despite all his achievements, Nicholls admits he still feels ‘very thin-skinned’ which is partly why he left Twitter after accidentally getting into a row with Stephen Fry (trust me, it’s a good story) and why, when a critic once said ‘No-one turns to David Nicholls for great sex scenes’ he felt he had to defend himself. So listen in to find out how to write sex. Or maybe how not to write sex. One or the other.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Moorish @moorishhumous
Chris Sharp @chrissharpaudio

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S1, Ep6 How to Fail: Gina Miller Aug 15, 2018

Show notes

Political activist Gina Miller is best known for one major victory when she successfully took the government to court over the triggering of Article 50 to leave the European Union. But in this week’s How To Fail, she discusses the failures that led her to that point. In a frank and honest conversation with host Elizabeth Day, Gina talks about failing to graduate from law school, surviving an abusive marriage, raising a daughter with special needs and building up her emotional resilience so that when it came to the crunch, she was able to find the strength to take a stand for what she believed in. Now that she has been catapulted into the unforgiving glare of the public limelight, Gina faces a daily barrage of death threats and racist abuse. She talks about how she handles this and how her unlikely heroes, Iggy Pop and Bruce Lee, have got her through even the darkest times.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Gina Miller’s memoir, Rise, is published by Canongate on 30th August 2018.
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Gina Miller @thatginamiller
Moorish @moorishhumous
Canongate @canongatebooks

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S1, Ep5 How to Fail: Olivia Laing Aug 08, 2018

Show notes

This week on How To Fail, we’re joined by the brilliant writer Olivia Laing. Her three critically-acclaimed works of non-fiction, To The River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City, have explored themes of alcoholism, loneliness and suicide (and yet somehow manage to be deeply uplifting to read). Her recent debut novel, Crudo, has everyone from Jilly Cooper to Viv Albertine in veritable ecstasies.
Olivia talks to us about losing her way in her 20s, how the torture of romantic break-ups has ultimately led to some of her greatest creative work and about what it’s like to be made redundant from a job you love. Along the way, we discuss gender fluidity, whether women are conditioned to self-deprecate, getting married at 40, why being raised by lesbians made Olivia less susceptible to patriarchal assumptions about What Men Want. We also debate whether Brighton has more dogs on strings than the average British city (spoiler alert: Elizabeth thinks that yes, it definitely does).
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Crudo by Olivia Laing is out now, published by Picador
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Olivia Laing @olivialanguage
Moorish @moorishhumous
Picador @picadorbooks

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S1, Ep4 How to Fail: Sathnam Sanghera Aug 01, 2018

Show notes

This week, journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera joins How To Fail and kicks off by saying how flattered he was to be asked to contribute to a podcast on failure because he hates hearing nice things said about himself. So that’s good.
As well as discussing his failure to take a compliment, Sathnam talks movingly about growing up in a household where both his father and his sister had schizophrenia. At first, he tried to run away from accepting it and then when that didn’t work, he wrote a brilliant, award-winning memoir called The Boy With the Topknot which was later adapted for the BBC. (Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling is a fan).
Sathnam talks about his social failure at university (and his inability to get a girlfriend for three years), as well as his failure to learn an instrument, his failure to score a high Uber rating and his failure to read back his own handwriting moments after he’s written something down.
Along the way, we cover his childhood job in a Wolverhampton sewing factory, the modern tendency to confuse anxiety with serious mental health issues, grief and how he coped with the death of his best friend, heartbreak, success, the concept of 'negative mindfulness', racist dogs and Sathnam’s undying love for George Michael and Club Tropicana.
We also spend longer than necessary trying to remember the common colloquial phrase 'prepare for the worst, expect the best' which is embarrassing given that we both make a living from words.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
The Boy with the Topknot is published by Penguin and available to buy here.
Sathnam Sanghera’s website is here.
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam
Moorish @moorishhumous

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S1, Ep3 How to Fail: Dolly Alderton Jul 25, 2018

Show notes

This week’s guest on How To Fail with Elizabeth Day is memoirist, podcaster and journalist Dolly Alderton. Dolly, the co-host of the utterly fantastic The High Low podcast and author of the brilliant Sunday Times bestseller Everything I Know About Love, talks about being rejected from Bristol University (and still feeling resentful of anyone she meets who went there), being ‘compassionately’ fired from a job she didn’t really want and what happens when you don’t meet the love of your life, even when you think you’re going to.
Along the way, we talk about the horror of being a teenager, internalised misogyny, the pressure for women to look good (‘I try very hard to remember that I’m not disappointing anyone if I don’t look perfect,’ says Dolly), sensitivity, people-pleasing, narcissism, discomfort zones, the brilliance of female friends and why it’s sometimes good to have a thin skin.
We also discuss Made in Chelsea (Dolly used to be a story producer) and her efforts to invent a new game show, where you would win your dream home but it wouldn’t have any doors. Sounds amazing. Not sure why it never got commissioned.
Note: this episode contains the phrase ‘absolute rotters’ used in a non-ironic way.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Dolly Alderton @dollyalderton
The High Low @thehighlowshow
Moorish @moorishhumous

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S1, Ep2 How to Fail: Sebastian Faulks Jul 18, 2018

Show notes

Sebastian Faulks, bestselling novelist and author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, joins How To Fail to talk about his failure to win the Booker Prize (“the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous”), his sense of social isolation at boarding school and a period of depression at university he feels he has never fully recovered from. Along the way, he talks about what it really means to be a “successful” writer and whether it matters what other people think, as well as the time he failed his driving test and got bowled out having scored 98 at cricket (two separate occasions, thankfully). Then there was the painful occasion he baked a soufflé and it failed to rise, a cooking faux pas that haunts him still. And if that’s not enough to whet your appetite, feel free to download and subscribe in order to hear Elizabeth being sternly reprimanded by Sebastian for her misuse of the word “saga”.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Moorish @moorishhumous
Sebastian Faulks @sebastianfaulks

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S1, Ep1 How To Fail - Phoebe Waller-Bridge Jul 13, 2018

Show notes

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, creator and star of Fleabag, writer of Killing Eve, superstar feminist and human embodiment of a Star Wars droid, joins How To Fail to talk about how she failed at her 20s (but got lots of brilliant material from the terrible dates she endured), failing at drama school, terrible auditions (including one for Downton Abbey) and how her female best friend is quite possibly the love of her life. She also talks about emotional vulnerability, why women fail at anger and about finding glory in one’s mistakes. There’s a great exchange about whether women should be open about whether or not they want children and a whole segue into the desirability of alabaster foreheads. Oh, and we cover the time Phoebe met Meryl Streep and embarrassed herself horribly, in what might be one of the greatest celebrity anecdotes of all time involving apple crumble.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Moorish @moorishhumous
DryWrite @DryWrite
Fleabag @Fleabag
Killing Eve @KillingEve

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