Lex Gillette is a blind Paralympics champion in the long jump category. He started losing his sight aged seven and despite ten different surgeries at the age of eight doctors told him there was nothing they could do. At school his coach introduced him to long jump, which he excelled at, collecting medals at all levels. He is the current world record holder in this field. He won the gold medal for long jump in the last Paralympics championship, which was in 2019 in Dubai. He's also a motivational...
Nov 19, 2020•30 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Martha Lane Fox is an entrepreneur and internet activist who first made her name with lastminute.com. She’s had a fascinating and varied career, revolutionising the Karaoke industry, and helping the UK government transform its digital service. She is a director of Twitter and Non Executive Director of Chanel, Chancellor of the Open University, and in 2013 she became a crossbench peer in the UK House of Lords. Martha talked to Aleks about having success in the early days of the internet, how she ...
Nov 05, 2020•29 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Ytasha Womack is an award-winning author, filmmaker, independent scholar, and dance therapist. She is a leading expert on Afrofuturism, the imagination, and its applications. Ytasha frequently lectures on the subject across the world. Her book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture is the leading primer on the subject and taught in colleges and universities. Afrofuturism is also a Locus Awards Nonfiction Finalist. Ytasha directed the Afrofuturist dance film A Love Letter to ...
Oct 22, 2020•33 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Roman Mars is an American radio producer and host of the podcasts 99% Invisible, which has been telling stories about design and the things that shape our world for a decade. Both have been credited with defining a new movement of independent radio and podcast creators thanks to their innovative approach to storytelling. Roman talks to Aleks about his upbringing, about how a group of people he went to college with turned out to be some of the most talented people working in radio today, and abou...
Oct 08, 2020•32 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Lemn Sissay is a poet, performer, and chancellor at the University of Manchester. His work ranges from volumes of poetry and plays to documentaries, and an autobiography. He’s been awarded an MBE for services to literature by the Queen, and in 2019 won the PEN Pinter Prize, given to writers who take an “unflinching, unswerving” view of the world. Lemn talks to Aleks us about his childhood spent with a foster family who rejected him at the age of 12. He speaks about spending five years in four di...
Sep 24, 2020•38 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Futurist, designer and filmmaker Anab Jain talks to Aleks Krotoski about the wild world of future-oriented thinking, our hyper-connected planet, and about an anthropologist and a mushroom that inspired much of her work. ---------- Anab Jain is a designer, futurist, filmmaker, and writer. She develops tools that help people ask the right kinds of questions for living today, and tomorrow. These are questions about wonderful and alarming things: Self-driving cars, dying bees, making blind people se...
Jun 10, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Theatre director and producer Jude Kelly talked to Aleks about growing up in ‘50s Liverpool, finding and fostering revolutionary theatre, and about a woman many refer to as ‘The Mother of Modern Theatre’. Jude Kelly is a British theatre director and producer. She has directed more than a hundred plays and her work has appeared at the Royal Theatre Company, London’s West End, and the Châtelet in Paris. She was 26 years old when she took on the role of Artistic Director at the Battersea Arts Centr...
May 27, 2020•28 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Aleks Krotoski talks to L'Oréal's Rachel Weiss about bringing together her two great loves, make-up and technology, and about being an early adopter of podcasting, blogging, online dating, and beauty-blogging. She also talked about her undying love of a musical innovator and icon, who she considers her secret mentor. Rachel Weiss leads strategy, growth and innovation at L'Oréal USA. She looks out for new digital business ventures and partnerships, which involves working closely with VC firms and...
May 13, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Aleks Krotoski talks to Facebook's Anna Higgs about finding your way up the rickety climbing frame to success in a creative field, why she was sneered at at film school, and about an inspirational movie giant who produced some of the most iconic movies ever made. Anna is a producer and executive working in the intersection between film and digital storytelling. Throughout her career she has worked across every realm of storytelling… Commercial, arthouse cinema, short-films, and innovative digita...
Apr 29, 2020•35 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Aleks Krotoski chats to innovator and visionary Beth Comstock about the giants that shaped her career. Beth Comstock's mission is to understand what’s next, navigate change and help people and organizations do the same. By cultivating a habit of seeking out new ideas, people and places, she built a career path from storyteller to chief marketer to GE Vice Chair. In nearly three decades at GE, she led efforts to accelerate new growth and innovation, initiated GE's digital and clean-energy transfo...
Apr 15, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Coming soon, Standing on the Shoulders. Aleks Krotoski chats to innovators and visionaries about what they’ve learned from the inspirational giants that shaped their lives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 12, 2020•3 min
