Alec is the co-founder and co-CEO of the Institute for Progress. The IFP is dedicated to to accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity’s future. Alec and co-founder Caleb Watney are supported by prominent progress thinkers such as Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collinson. We discuss the competing interests that prevent physical infrastructure such as power lines, or cafe “parklet” structures from being easily built. Alec explains how using a framework bo...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr 29 min
Chris Stark is the Chief Executive of the UK’s Climate Change Committee. The committee is an independent statutory body which advises the UK and developed governments on emissions targets and preparing for and adapting to the impacts of climate change. I think he is one of the most important and thoughtful thinkers on climate change policy today. We discuss what is most misunderstood about climate policy, the likely co-benefits and the scale of investments needed especially in the UK in replacin...
Feb 07, 2022•1 hr 15 min
David Spiegelhalter is an expert on medical statistics. He was the president of the Royal Statistical Society and is Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence communication. He is also a World Champion, in a version of pool called Loop and hosts his own podcast, Risky Talk . David has a new book out (with Anthony Masters), COVID by Numbers, which is an excellent book on COVID statistics. This follows his previous bestseller, the Art of Statistics. David discusses what was most surprising ...
Jan 11, 2022•1 hr 11 min
Steve Uwin is a theatre director and writer. Amongst many accomplishments he has been the artistic director of the Rose theatre, founder of ETT, English Touring Theatre. He is also chair of the charity Kids, which provides services to children with disabilities. We speak about whether we need language to be human and what non-verbal people teach us. We chat on how theatre has developed over the decades and Steve’s appreciation of Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble. We touch on Steve’s experience o...
Jan 05, 2022•1 hr 15 min
Zeke Hausfather is a climate scientist and energy systems analyst whose research focuses on observational temperature records, climate models, and mitigation technologies. He spent 10 years working as a data scientist and entrepreneur in the cleantech sector, where he was the lead data scientist at Essess, the chief scientist at C3.ai, and the cofounder and chief scientist of Efficiency 2.0. He also worked as a research scientist with Berkeley Earth, was the senior climate analyst at Project Dra...
Nov 22, 2021•1 hr 12 min
Aella is perhaps most famous on twitter for shining a light on the life and economics of Camgirls and escorts; and asking challenging questions. But her independent research is larger than that and has encompassed reporting on LSD and psychedelics use, circling, the nature of faith, and enlightenment. She grew up homeschooled in a fundamental Christian household before leaving home at 17. The transcript and conversation includes adult themes and mild profanity from Aella and is recommended 18+. ...
Nov 14, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Jason Mitchell is Co-Head of Responsible Investment at Man Group. He was a hedge fund manager and he is a poet. He’s a deep thinker on all things sustainable and finance. He hosts a brilliant podcast on sustainability, A Sustainable Future. We chat on his poetry and how he witnessed refugees in the Mediterranean sea.And what poetry has taught him. “rescued by our boat one morning, the man asked me, is it true what they tell us, the traffickers, about these waters, that the sea has no bottom? I t...
Nov 08, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Dan Goodley is a professor of disability studies and education at the School of Education, University of Sheffield. Dan co-directs iHuman, which sits at the intersections of Critical Disability Studies and Science and Technology Studies. iHuman is addressing ome significant questions of contemporary society including: what does it mean to be human? Dan has written the thought provoking book: Disability and Other Human Questions. We chat about who and how do we decide who gets to be human? I pose...
Nov 01, 2021•1 hr 7 min
Bec Hill is an actor, comedian and writer famous for flip charts with misheard music lyrics. She has a wide array of talents including as a writer, a recent children’s book series: Horror Heights, The Slime and hosting make-away takeaway for children's ITV. She has her own podcast A Problem Squared which she co-hosts with Matt Parker. We speak about the use of arts and craft in comedy and thinking about children’s comedy. How she found acting as a “straight actor” in David Finnigan’s Kill Climat...
Oct 24, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Meaghan Kall is an epidemiologist at what used to be known as Public Health England but is now the UK Health Security Agency. She and her colleagues have been working flat out for two years producing some of the world's best COVID data. We speak about annoying and funny COVID myths. She gives her view on COVID vaccine waning, Long COVID and risk in children; and how we are going to come to terms with COVID as an endemic disease (think about managing flu, although with different outcomes). We div...
Oct 11, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Clare Montagu was the Chief Operating Officer of one of London’s largest hospice groups, Trinity Hospice. Before that, she was a UK government minister special advisor. We talk about the challenges and joys of running a hospice. Much of great hospice care is looking after people in their own homes and in the community. Hospice care goes beyond the medical. For instance, letting a patient die in the garden under a tree because that’s their wish. This is care a hospital can not give. The hospice i...
Oct 03, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Jonathan Wolff is the Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy . Before he was Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Arts and Humanities at UCL. He is currently developing a new research programme on revitalising democracy and civil society. His other current work concerns equality, disadvantage, social justice and poverty, as well as applied topics such as public safety, disability, gambling, and the regulation of recreational drugs. He has had a long-standing interest in health and...
Sep 26, 2021•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Economist Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy, Cambridge University. She co-directs the Bennett Institute, where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity. Her work has touched innovation, technology and intangibles; sustainability, inequality and measuring beyond GDP. We discuss the challenges of the current narrowness in economics both in terms of the diversity of people it attracts and the paucity of wider ranging interdisciplinary thinking. Diane’s 19...
Aug 31, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Mark Ravenhill is one of our greatest living theatre makers. I claim this in part because of the length of his writing career, 25 years+ and still going strong, and in part because of the variety of form and type of work. His work has extended into directing and performing Mark will be co-artistic director (with Hannah Price) of the Kings Head theatre where he is outlining plans to portray stories that would fly under the rainbow flag (an allusion to multitude types of queer stories out there). ...
Aug 23, 2021•1 hr 33 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Sally Phillips is well known for her award winning acting, writing and comedy. She had roles in 'I'm Alan Partridge', 'Smack the Pony', 'Green Wing', and 'Miranda'; and in the US, Veep. In 2016 she fronted the documentary 'A World Without Down's Syndrome?' (BBC2). I think she should also be better known for her disability rights advocacy. We talk about types of clowning and why the clown always says ‘yes’; the challenges of older women roles in the entertainment industry and discuss the differen...
Aug 18, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 13
How does individual shareholder activism work? How does personal agency and systems change work together in a theory of change? How do we become change makers? What did Catherine's mother teach me? Catherine is Chief Executive of ShareAction. She coordinates civil society activism to promote responsible investment Catherine was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2014. ShareAction campaigns have significantly altered corporate strategy and government policy. For in...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Tassos Stevens is artistic director of Coney. The transcript of the podcast here. Prior to Coney, he did a doctorate in Psychology, won the inaugural James Menzies-Kitchin Award for theatre directors, did the NT Studio Directors Course, ran the ROAR platform to support new work and new artists on the London fringe, and also worked as critic, teacher, many flavours of researcher, salesman, and chef. We chat about pivotal moments of theatre and explore what interactive and immersive mean for theat...
Jul 18, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Matt Clancy is a progress fellow at Emergent Ventures. He teaches at Iowa State University and writes on Substack a newsletter called New Things Under the Sun , which you should subscribe to if you are interested in anything innovation related. Matt has also synthesised many of the emerging studies on remote working. Transcript and video links here. We discuss whether progress has been stagnating and the importance of moral and social progress as well as technological. Whether small team or larg...
Jul 15, 2021•2 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Short introduction to Ben Yeoh Chats. If you are curious about the world this show is for you. I have extended conversations across humanities and science with artists, philosophers, writers, theatre makers, activists, economists and all walks of life. Episodes include: -What is like to go to Columbia University at 15 and be valedictorian with Leopold Aschenbrenner? -What should worry us about gamification with philosopher Thi Nguyen ? -What sparks invention with innovation historian, Anton Howe...
Jul 01, 2021•57 sec
Lee Simpson is a founder member of Improbable (theatre makers and improvisers), a long time Comedy Store Player (since the 1980s) and one of Paul Merton's Impro Chums. He’s also been a croupier, cinema projectionist and breakfast show DJ. He’s written plays, appeared in sit-coms and in some films, been on some Radio 4 panel shows and once did a very poor poodle act at the London Palladium. That vast range highlights two strong threads one in the world of improv and another in the world of theatr...
Jun 29, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 9
I had an excellent chat with Leopold Aschenbrenner. Leopold is a grant winner from Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures. He went to Columbia University, aged 15, and graduated in 2021 as valedictorian. (Contents below ↓ ↓ ). He is a researcher at the Global Priorities Institute, thinking about long-termism. He has drafted a provocative paper encompassing ideas of long-termisim, existential risk and growth. For some of our conversation we were joined by phantom Tyler Cowen imagining what he might thin...
Jun 23, 2021•1 hr 48 min•Season 1Ep. 8
I chat with C. Thi Nguyen who used to be a food writer and is now a philosophy professor at University of Utah. Thi thinks about trust, art, games, and communities. We discuss his first book, Games: Agency as Art. The book is about how games are the art form that work in the medium of agency. We chat about the difference between play and games and wider games philosophy. Thi worries about the problems on trusting experts, if oneself is not an expert and how none of us are experts in most domains...
Jun 20, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Anton Howes on innovation history, the improving mindset and progress studies. Anton Howes is an innovation historian and policy thinker, we have a fascinating wide ranging conversation on innovation. Transcript and video available here. We discuss raising the prestige of innovators today, but consider it easy to say but harder to enact. Anton argues for the benefits of a “great Exhibition” as a direct mechanism to inspire an “improving” mindset - the type of mindset that leads to innovation. An...
May 21, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Tom Gosling was a partner at PwC, and an advisor to boards around executive pay and incentives, governance, and strategy. He's currently an Executive Fellow at London Business School and helps steer the work of the purposeful company collaboration. Tom speaks about the benefits of purpose and the risk of corporate puff. We touch on audit reform and the challenges of regulation. We discuss the importance of democractic process and the role of government compared to the role of business. We underr...
May 16, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Jonathan Meth is a dramaturg, extraordinaire, director, curator, very involved in the European theatre and disability arts. He's a lecturer at Goldsmiths. He's worked with many of the major theatre organizations in Britain, and he's a fascinating theatre thinker. We speak about dramaturgy and theatre as playwright lead and theatre as colloboration lead. We discuss disability arts and a little about what autism has taught us. Jonathan looks at theatre funding and infrastrucutre and what it might ...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Rishi Dastidar and I chat about life, poetry, writing and poets always having another job. Rishi gives advice on how to be a poet, embracing Insta poets and whether last lines are harder than first lines, or second books harder than first books; and why we love lists and why we need to pay more attention to verbs. He is open to offers from companies seeking a Chief Poetry Officer. A fascinating and wide ranging chat from this leading British poet. Transcript at the blog here with video. Links to...
Apr 28, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 3
I chat to Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl, about her love of birding touching upon birdsong and the mysteries of migration. We discuss accessibilty to nature, activism what in birding terms is a “lifer” and how to “pish”. There’s a transcript (unedited) here plus links to topics we talk about. Links: Black2Nature , Charity fighting for equal access to nature for Visible Minority Ethnic people. Mya-Rose Craig’s website. Get Birding , podcast....
Apr 15, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 2
We discuss the award winning book, Fathoms: the world in the whale by Rebecca Giggs. Our conversation covers seeing the history of humanity through the lens of the whale, activism movements, and the poetic in writing. Whales as an extractive industry and why the book is not prescriptive in what we might do. We play overrated/underrated. Rebecca rates: cicadas, snails, worms and plankton. We end with the process of writing. Why mechanical keyboards might help, and writing in bursts. Rebecca's ess...
Apr 11, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 1
