Content warning: Please be aware that this episode refers to topics such as suicide, suicidal ideations, methods of suicide and overdose. In Episode 9 of the series, Professor Belinda Lennox sits down with Professor Seena Fazel , Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist. Here, they discuss Oxford’s long history of suicide research, and Professor Fazel’s work identifying high-risk populations, particularly those who have been through th...
Sep 21, 2023•36 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Content warning: Please be aware that this episode refers to topics such as suicide, suicidal ideations and depression. In the eighth episode of the series, Professor Belinda Lennox speaks to Ben West, mental health campaigner, best-selling author and social media influencer. In 2018, Ben unexpectedly lost his brother to suicide. In this conversation, Ben shares his journey as a campaigner for mental health awareness, suicide prevention, and his work to fundamentally change how we approach menta...
Sep 14, 2023•28 min•Season 4Ep. 8
In the seventh episode of the series, Professor Lennox is joined by Cynthia Germanotta and Dr Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes from Born This Way Foundation , and Professor Mina Fazel from Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry, to examine how to best help support the mental health of young people. Cynthia Germanotta is President and Co-Founder of Born This Way Foundation and Global Goodwill Ambassador for Mental Health at the World Health Organization. Cynthia co-founded Born This Way Foundation with her ...
Sep 08, 2023•50 min•Season 4Ep. 7
In Episode 6 of the series, Professor Belinda Lennox is joined by Benjamin Perks, from UNICEF, Sabine Rakotomalala, from the World Health Organization, and Dr Jamie Lachman , Dr Isang Awah and Stephanie Eagling-Peche from Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention. Here, they discuss the impact of trauma on mental health, how to protect children during a crisis and the resources developed collaboratively between Oxford, the WHO and UNICEF for the Parenting for Lifelong Health programm...
Aug 31, 2023•57 min•Season 4Ep. 6
In Episode 5 of the series Professor Lennox sits down with Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre , Fellow at Harris Manchester College and Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the Saïd Business School . During their conversation they look at recent research findings from the Wellbeing Research Centre that examine the role of the workplace in overall life satisfaction. Here, they also discuss the surprising findings on how social elements, office a...
Aug 24, 2023•36 min•Season 4Ep. 5
In Episode 4 of the series Professor Lennox is joined by Sir John Kirwan (known to most as JK), a former New Zealand rugby player and co-founder of workplace wellbeing technology platform Groov. They discuss how JK’s own experiences with depression informed his extensive mental health advocacy work and led to the founding of Groov , with a mission to impact mental wellbeing globally by helping businesses to improve employee wellbeing and performance. Here, they also look at ways people can build...
Aug 17, 2023•40 min•Season 4Ep. 4
In the third episode of the series Professor Lennox sits down with Professors Cathy Creswell and Polly Waite to talk about how anxiety affects young people and the complex picture that makes up the risk factors for developing mental health disorders. They also look at the effective new treatments being developed, and the work being done to make them as accessible as possible. Cathy Creswell is Professor of Developmental Clinical Psychology and holds a joint position in Oxford’s Departments of Ex...
Aug 10, 2023•44 min•Season 4Ep. 3
In the second episode of the series Professor Lennox is joined by Professors Marian Knight and Fiona Alderdice to examine how mental illnesses impact women and families in the postnatal period, and the power of speaking out. Professor Marian Knight is the Director of Oxford’s National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) and Honorary Consultant in Public Health with Public Health England. Professor Fiona Alderdice is Senior Social Scientist at Oxford’s National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) a...
Aug 03, 2023•49 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Episode 1: Brain injury and rehabilitation In the first episode of the new series, host Professor Belinda Lennox talks to Jenny Clarke, CEO and co-founder of the charity SameYou . SameYou’s vision is to transform the way brain injury survivors and their loved ones are supported through emotional, mental health and cognitive recovery services, and was founded following Jenny’s daughter Emilia’s experiences of brain injury and recovery. They are joined by Professor Heidi Johansen-Berg , Director o...
Jul 27, 2023•37 min•Season 4Ep. 1
Peter interviews the Oxford scientists working at the forefront of research into Disease X - a pathogen which the World Health Organization added to their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases in 2018 to represent the hypothetical cause of our next pandemic... This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating pandemics humanity has experienced. Peter and his colleagues will d...
Dec 20, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Peter begins the final episode of the series in 2014, at the onset of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Whilst that pandemic officially ended in 2016, this virus has caused a brutal outbreak nearly every year since. After his discussion at the start of the series about whether Ebola may have been the disease that caused the Plague of Athens, has Peter arrived back where he started? This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researche...
Dec 13, 2020•50 min•Season 3Ep. 10
In the ninth episode of our History of Pandemics season, Peter leaves the perils of influenza behind, only to discover an entirely new virus: HIV. Many of you may remember the emerging panic that became the media narrative around HIV and the disease it can lead to, AIDS, and in this episode Peter follows the story from the beginning, with medical experts who’ve worked on the front line of this pandemic since the early days. This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Profess...
Dec 13, 2020•52 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Peter arrives in the twentieth century, during the last years of the Great War, to a pandemic which you may have read a lot about during the early coverage of our current COVID-19 outbreak. After the Black Death, the so-called ‘Spanish’ Flu has one of the most famous monikers of any pandemic, but does it deserve such notoriety? This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating p...
Dec 13, 2020•47 min•Season 3Ep. 8
In this episode, Peter discusses a controversial outbreak... So-called 'Russian' Flu is either the first influenza pandemic we’ll be discussing, or it wasn’t the flu at all. It was either a disease which emerged from and then devastated the country it was named after, or an outbreak which the Russian people barely noticed at the time. It either deserves its place as the seventh pandemic we’re covering in the series, or it’s the pandemic that never was, an outlier in our historical narrative… Thi...
Dec 13, 2020•46 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Peter makes it to the nineteenth century to discuss the achievements of John Snow - a man who either played a central role in the history of epidemiology, or was just one of many trying to tackle that centuries’ foremost threat; cholera. Peter discusses Snow's role, water pump handles, and how we may very well still be experiencing this devastating pandemic today. This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the ...
Dec 13, 2020•38 min•Season 3Ep. 6
We'll be publishing the second half of our History of Pandemics series next week; featuring episodes on Cholera, the pandemic that wasn't, the so-called Spanish Flu, HIV/AIDS, and the West African Ebola outbreak. In the meantime, here's a short message from Oxford's Professor Sir John Bell on the importance of learning from past pandemics. Please do continue to enjoy our first five stories, from the Plague of Athens to Smallpox, and tell everyone you know about the show! You can find out more at...
Dec 06, 2020•2 min
Welcome to the eighteenth century, at a point when Europe is going through another major smallpox outbreak, a disease that by this point has been plaguing populations around the globe for centuries. Peter will discover why milkmaids may be to central to the story of vaccination, how smallpox features in popular contemporary literature and what Napoleon thought of an English physician called Edward Jenner. This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican a...
Nov 29, 2020•43 min•Season 3Ep. 5
In the final plague episode of the series, Peter talks to his guests about the last major outbreak of this horrific disease in seventeenth-century England. Along the way they dispel some myths – for example it wasn’t the Great Fire of London that finally defeated the disease – and he drops in on one of the outbreaks most famous commentators – Samuel Pepys. Stay tuned to the end for a bonus conversation on Shakespeare’s experience during the plague outbreaks which led up to this final Great Plagu...
Nov 29, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Peter arrives in the fourteenth century and meets history's most notorious plague outbreak. The Black Death is a gruesome name well-matched with a grim disease, and as you'll find out, it's not just the name which has survived to the modern period... This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating pandemics humanity has experienced. Peter and his colleagues will discuss ten ma...
Nov 29, 2020•45 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Welcome to the Eastern Roman Empire in the sixth century. This time, Peter discusses a plague that historians and medical experts agree was likely the first plague pandemic humanity experienced. You may not have heard much about the emperor Justinian I, or why he’s got a plague outbreak named after him, but by the end of this episode you’ll hear just how devastating and long-lasting this pandemic was. This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he...
Nov 29, 2020•56 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Join Peter in 5th century Athens, a crowded city in the midst of a siege, where a devastating disease had just erupted. Our guests discuss whether this really was plague, the breakdown in law and order that began to emerge, and how the historian Thucydides survived the disease that hit his city. This episode is part of our History of Pandemics season - follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating pandemics humanity has experienced...
Nov 29, 2020•46 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Just before our third season starts we talk with Dr Peter Drobac, a global health physician and Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, and Dr Aoife Haney, Research Lecturer in Innovation and Enterprise, about the social, economic and environmental changes that may well be heading our way after our current pandemic. Coming soon... Follow Professor Peter Millican as he talks to researchers from around the world about some of the devastating pandemics humanity has experienced. Pe...
Nov 22, 2020•42 min
Originally recorded back in September 2019 at the AI@Oxford Conference held at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, this 'live' episode sees Prof. Millican joined by: Mitchell Baker (Chairwoman, Mozilla Foundation); Mike Wooldridge (Professor of Computer Science, University of Oxford); Safiya Omoja Noble (Associate Professor, University of California Los Angeles), and; Jim Wilkinson (CFO, Oxford Sciences Innovation). In it, they revisit a number of topics from the first season of Fut...
Mar 22, 2020•30 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Climate migration hit the headlines in January, when the United Nations made a landmark ruling about the legal rights of those displaced by a climate crisis. The UN High Commission for Refugees has warned that millions of people could become climate refugees in the coming years, and meanwhile, tensions over scarcity are stoking fears of conflict. With temperatures and anxieties rising, how do we prepare for changing human mobility and new kinds of conflict? Joining Prof. Millican in this episode...
Mar 15, 2020•39 min•Season 2Ep. 14
The world is getting hotter, drier, and more crowded. By 2050, there will be ten billion humans across the globe, while at the same time there may be far less land suitable for growing food. There's also a growing awareness that our diet and food choices can have a significant impact on our carbon footprint: while innovations like lab-grown foods may provide lower emission options, and new technologies may make our food supply more adaptable and robust, there are clearly many challenges ahead. P...
Mar 08, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 13
In this bonus ‘reaction’ episode, we chat to several Oxford academics who were either at, or closely following the recent events at COP 25. We ask them what (if anything) was decided at the meeting in Madrid, whether enough action was taken, and where we might go next - ahead of COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland (2020). Interviewed on this episode were Professor Fredi Otto, Professor Nathalie Seddon, Dr Helen Gavin, DPhil students Alex Clark and Lisa Thalheimer, entrepreneur Charmian Love and lawyer B...
Dec 19, 2019•22 min•Season 2Ep. 12
In this special bonus episode, originally recorded on 25th November, Professor Millican travels to the Bank of England to interview its Governor, Mark Carney. This episode was recorded before it was announced that Mark Carney will become the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance in 2020. The interview covered a range of topics, but focused in particular on the challenges that markets may need to overcome if we hope to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees C, how federal banks are work...
Dec 15, 2019•24 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Solving climate change can involve either mitigation – reducing the greenhouse gases we’re putting into the atmosphere – or adaptation – the process of adjusting to our changing environment. In the last episode of series two, we wanted to learn more about how these solutions are developing, what form they take, and where we should be applying them. We were particularly interested in the contrast between two climate change solutions: engineering approaches (such as technical methods of carbon cap...
Dec 08, 2019•59 min•Season 2Ep. 10
In 2010, Jeffrey Mazo outlined in his book ‘How global warming threatens security and what to do about it’ four ways in which climate and environmental change could produce security threats: · a general systemic weakening, · boundary disputes, · resource wars, · and by multiplying instability in already fragile or weak states. Yet so far in our second series, with conversations around energy use, international treaties and individual choices, talk of conflict has received much less attention. Is...
Dec 01, 2019•50 min•Season 2Ep. 9
To date, there have been climate change legal cases in at least 28 countries. From Greta Thunberg leading a group of young people in filing a lawsuit against five countries at the UN to the Hague Court of Appeals upholding a historic ruling against the Dutch government, increasing numbers of people are taking legal action together to demand governments do more. And with various oil and gas companies being sued by US cities for costs of climate-related damages, today on Futuremakers , we’re askin...
Nov 24, 2019•57 min•Season 2Ep. 8
