The story of Elizabethan theatre is often told through the artistic genius of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Critic and scholar Daniel Swift has a different story to tell: that of the businessmen who dreamed of the first professional theatre, fought against civil and religious authorities to have it built, and, ultimately, fought each other. How did the Burbage family lay the foundations for a golden age of drama? Find out in this episode of the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...
May 06, 2025•40 min
Gina Rippon delves into the emerging science of female autism, asking why it has been systematically ignored and misunderstood for so long. Generations of researchers, convinced autism was a male problem, failed to recognise or study it in women. But new research is shedding light on female autism, revealing how autism is different for women and girls, and that camouflaging – hiding autistic traits to fit in – is far more widespread than we thought. From social belonging to the connection betwee...
May 02, 2025•1 hr 6 min
Slavoj Žižek, one of the most outrageous and maverick thinkers of our time, joins Robin Ince for deep dive into his life and thought. From his life and education in the former Yugoslavia under communist rule, where his master’s thesis was denounced by the authorities for being ‘not Marxist enough’ and he fought to democratise Slovenia and defend human rights, to his current position as one of the 21st century’s most renowned public intellectuals, Slavoj Žižek has travelled into territory where f...
Apr 29, 2025•1 hr 22 min
Muscle: it shapes us and allows us to shape who we want to be. Author and athlete Bonnie Tsui explores the world of muscle in all its rich personal, cultural, and biological complexity. From the intricate link between muscle and brain health, to redefining strength and societal roles, to how our muscle allows us to feel more present in our everyday life, Bonnie reveals how muscle is far more than just what we are made of. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apr 25, 2025•1 hr 6 min
Dissolving the boundaries that usually divide surgeon and patient, award-winning novelist and surgeon Gabriel Weston illuminates a new journey into the human anatomy. From the emotion of entering the operating theatre, to what an autopsy can tell us about our own humanity, Gabriel explores the moving phenomenon that is the human body, in all its life-giving wonder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apr 22, 2025•1 hr 10 min
We might know how to love deeply, but when tensions rise and miscommunication mingles with blame, how can we learn to love better? New York Times bestselling poet and author Yung Pueblo shares with Poppy Jamie his own journey through learning how to love healthily, and reveals how we can grow in our own relationships to strengthen communication, embrace the present, and reject the myth of perfection. From loving our partners to loving ourselves, Yung Pueblo illuminates the importance of compassi...
Apr 18, 2025•1 hr 13 min
How did a low budget sci-fi show widely loathed by its creators the BBC go on to become a bedrock of British culture that means the world to millions of children and adults alike? Today, the Doctor and his extraterrestrial enemies, sonic screwdriver, and magical blue box are instantly recognisable to almost anyone living on the British isles. But the story of Doctor Who is far more than the story of a family television programme that found its audience: it's the story of how folk heroes and myth...
Apr 15, 2025•52 min
In a goal-obsessed world, how can we become our best selves without falling into a rat race that leaves us feeling burnt out and unhappy? Neuroscientist and entrepreneur Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares a new guide on reaching our goals through the 'experimental mindset', a journey and practice that combines the power of curiosity with creativity and self-discovery. From debunking the myth of finding 'one big purpose' in life, to how we can be anthropologists studying the wonder of our own lives, to h...
Apr 11, 2025•1 hr 9 min
Foreign policy expert and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University, Edward Fishman, joins us to reveal the history of sanctions and the threats to economic security today. From the role of sanctions during the Cold War to economic warfare against Iran, Russia, and China, to Trump's current sanctions across the globe, Fishman reveals the power of economic warfare—and the chaos it can wreak in the wrong hands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apr 08, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Visualisation: a neurological mental training technique used by the top athletes in the world to perform at their best. Now, you can learn how to use it too. With simple and actionable steps, mental fitness expert Maya Raichoora reveals a playbook on using visualisation to reach your goals, while redefining success to encompass a deeper sense of meaning. From how to incorporate visualisation into your daily life, to how we can strengthen our character in the most trying of times, Maya reveals ho...
Apr 04, 2025•1 hr 8 min
There is a neglected history. Not a sweeping, definitive, exhaustive history of the world but something quieter, more intimate and particular. Now in this episode, journalist Annabelle Hirsch reveal that history: a single journey, picked out in 101 objects, through the fascinating, too-often-overlooked, manifold histories of women, to show that the past has always been as complicated and fascinating as the women who peopled it. From the objects you thought you knew, like the Bayeux tapestry, to ...
Apr 01, 2025•1 hr 5 min
How do we comprehend the depths of love in hindsight, and the immensity of grief? How can we say 'I love you' to a listener who is no longer alive? And how do we find forgiveness and learn to forgive ourselves? Lead singer and lyricist of Snow Patrol, Gary Lightbody, shares the raw and emotional story of grief, love, and life, upon losing his father in 2019, a journey which inspired the band's latest album, The Forest is the Path. This conversation is a testament to the power of music and to the...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr 2 min
As the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch for three decades, Kenneth Roth has dedicated his life to investigating and uncovering abuses across the globe – and pressuring offending governments to stop them. From using the power of unyielding honesty to take on the world's most brutal autocrats and their sycophants, to the resilience of civilians' search for truth even under strict censorship, Kenneth reveals the ceaseless fight for accountability and change to shape a better world. From Put...
Mar 25, 2025•1 hr 21 min
Mesopotamian civilisation filled more than half of human history: a culture with advanced mathematics and astronomy, a religion that influenced both ancient Greece and the Bible, and a literature that continues to inspire the blockbuster movies of 2025. Yet few of us today know anything about it. Taking us into the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, scholar and playwright Selena Wisnom reveals a world of gods and monsters, poets and bureaucrats that is both utterly strange and strangely ...
Mar 21, 2025•31 min
Across the headlines, we appear to be falling into a post-truth world. But the questions that most resonate with humanity—on life, death, love, and leadership—remain as pertinent as they were in the age of Socrates. Now philosopher and University of Chicago Professor Agnes Callard joins us to examine how Socratic thought can continue to guide us and ground us, breathing new life into the rigour of inquiry and the importance of truth. Get an Exclusive Incogni deal here: https://incogni.com/howtoa...
Mar 18, 2025•1 hr 12 min
Whether its the football pitch of the FIFA Women’s World Cup or the diving board of the Olympics, Dr Kate Hays is a woman who knows how to win. Now she joins us to reveal the techniques that create winning mentalities - from breathing techniques to widening the bases from which we draw confidence - that allow us to create the best performance under the greatest pressure. An essential conversation for any individual who wants to succeed, any team which wants to thrive, and anyone who wants to ful...
Mar 14, 2025•1 hr 10 min
After Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan is Courtney Love’s all-time rock’n’roll hero. Todd Almond performed Dylan’s songbook on Broadway. They join us for a deeply personal celebration of the legendary songwriter. An electrifying, bewitching singer who, in the words of The New York Times can simultaneously imbue a single sustained note with “a plea, a wound, and a threat”, Courtney Love occupies a singular place in the rockstar pantheon. Her friend and collaborator Todd Almond is a Broadway multi-hyphenate...
Mar 11, 2025•1 hr 8 min
Optimism, irrational though it might be, is central to the human psyche: it gives us an advantage both in everyday life and in the evolutionary race. Sumit Paul-Choudhury joins us to share his theory of rational optimism: possibilism. Without this optimism we would never have survived the unpredictable – and often hostile – world we evolved into. Yet optimism is not reserved for times of extremity. Its benefits manifest throughout our everyday lives: our relationships, careers, bodies and minds....
Mar 07, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Tom Holland is a storyteller whose range and erudition seem to be as unbounded as history itself. Now he brings us closer than ever to the lives of the first twelve Roman emperors. The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. Delving into his new translation of Suetonius’s Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Tom Holland joins George Osborne to illuminate th...
Mar 04, 2025•1 hr 23 min
Yes, that meeting could have been an email. And that email? Maybe it should have been a voice memo. The hidden secrets of virtual communication are many and mysterious, but CEO of Ping Group Andrew Brodsky joins us with an actionable guide on how to communicate better virtually. From how to decide between an email chain and an in-person meeting, to tips for maintaining 'eye contact' on camera, to whether using emojis can help build trust, Andrew's guide backed by extensive research reveals the d...
Feb 28, 2025•1 hr 8 min
We’re constantly told that money is the shortcut to a good life, the only type of wealth worth pursuing. But what would it mean to lead a truly wealthy life? It may involve money, but in the end, it will be defined by everything else. Entrepreneur and writer Sahil Bloom joins Chris Donnelly to reveal the five types of wealth—Time, Social, Mental, Physical, and Financial—and how a balance of all five leads to a life truly rich in meaning and satisfaction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...
Feb 25, 2025•57 min
We remember the Renaissance as an age of human flourishing: a rebirth after centuries of misery, a return to the glories of antiquity where the culture of Greece and Rome was not only imitated but surpassed. But is that reputation deserved, or a construct of future historians with their own goals in mind? Starring Battle-Popes, necromancers, sculptors, scholars, and assassins, Ada Palmer's new book Inventing the Renaissance is a wild ride through some of the most thrilling and important events i...
Feb 22, 2025•1 hr 1 min
How can we say 'no' when it matters most? Cornell University's Dr Sunita Sah joins us to share the radical need for each of us to rediscover our core values, and shares how we can navigate a fraught world while staying true to ourselves. Exploring the balance between defiance and safety, justice and belonging, Professor Sah reveals how we can each live more authentically and make decisions that align with our vales in the moments that matter most. Get an Exclusive Incogni deal here: https://inco...
Feb 18, 2025•1 hr 8 min
'Chinese and Any Other Asian.' On official documents, a vast range of identities in the East and South East Asian (ESEA) population in the UK is reduced to a single vague checkbox, an act of Othering with a history several centuries in the making. Academic, poet, and journalist Dr Anna Sulan Masing seeks to change the narrative. Exploring the history of the ESEA population in the UK, which spans on the one hand Empire, violence, and appropriation, and on the other, creativity, fusion, and multip...
Feb 14, 2025•58 min
History and geopolitical intrigue meet fiction under the masterful skill of #1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson. He joins us with a new tale: Polostan, a vividly imagined historical epic that traces the enigmatic life of protagonist Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Her life criss-crosses some of the 20th century’s pivotal scenes, from Leningrad to the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where sh...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner, well known for her work on modern slavery and climate justice. But from the age of eight weeks to eighteen years, she was moved between foster care placements and children’s homes in North London. It would take many decades before she was able to begin the search for answers to the long-standing questions that would help her make sense of her childhood. Now she tells Hannah MacInnes the powerful story of how she defied the ...
Feb 07, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Why are are the rich getting richer? Why is prosperity moving further and further out of reach for most people? An iconoclast unafraid to speak truth to power, George Monbiot joins comedian Frankie Boyle to take on the fringe philosophy which the wealthy elite have hijacked to guard their fortunes and power. While neoliberalism permeates society, from our mental and economic wellbeing to the foundation of democracy itself, the fight to restore democracy to the people is far from over. George rev...
Feb 04, 2025•1 hr 42 min
We live in the here and now much less than we tend to think. Imagination isn’t the exception in our daily lives; it’s our default setting. Far from being a faculty used only in creative endeavours, the imagination is used constantly when we reminisce, anticipate, plan, daydream and read. Yet only now are we beginning to understand exactly how it works. From hallucination to sleepwalking, REM to delusions and the curious case of the mind’s eye, neuroscientist Professor Adam Zeman guides us throug...
Jan 31, 2025•1 hr 6 min
Whether anticipating the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in his short story Radicalised, helping the world to wake up to the grift of the social media giants through his concept of 'Enshittification', or imagining a genuinely better world to replace the dystopia of our present in novels like The Lost Cause and Walkaway, Cory Doctorow is equally accomplished as an award-winning storyteller and as an analyst of our present and near future. His new series of noirish crime thril...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 5 min
One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run. This is the story of what happened next. Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex tells Times journalist and bestselling author Caitlin Moran ...
Jan 21, 2025•1 hr 13 min
