Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt shares a thought-provoking vision of our place in the world in the century ahead. Is Britain a minor player, marginalised by our departure from the EU and dwarfed by the rise of new economies? Or is there a major role for us to play in a rapidly changing international order? With the election of President Trump, the answer to that question matters. A world that was already becoming more dangerous has also become more unpredictable. As competition increases be...
Jul 04, 2025•1 hr 19 min
Tracing his journey through his diagnosis with ADHD, Robin Ince explores his own insecurities and discoveries along the way, from the importance of vulnerability, to finding greater meaning and happiness, to the beauty of connecting with others through shared neurodiversity. Illuminating how diagnosis can help individuals find and understand their best selves, Robin also reveals how society—from individuals to wider school systems—can change to create a more welcoming world. Learn more about you...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 23 min
Caroline Darian, daughter of Dominique Pelicot, shares with Afua Hirsch a rallying cry for change, and confronts the hidden violence that too many endure in silence. The Pelicot mass rape trial was unprecedented in scope and nature, captivating France and the world. Dominique’s daughter, Caroline Darian, shares with journalist Afua Hirsch her family’s strength and resilience in the face of Dominique’s horrific crimes and turns the tables on the abusers, placing the blame squarely at their feet a...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr 4 min
On 5 June 2022, award-winning journalist Dom Phillips was working on a book about the Amazon rainforest, alongside the indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, when they were both shot dead. They are believed to have been assassinated by one of the criminal networks whose ecological exploitation they were working to expose. A team of expert writers took up his partially completed manuscript, committed to his mission of uncovering the truth about deforestation and searching for solutions. This team was l...
Jun 27, 2025•1 hr 12 min
Isabel Allende shares the story of Emilia del Valle, her unforgettable new heroine on a treacherous, life-changing journey during the Chilean Civil war of 1891. Past and present merge in this conversation, as Isabel explores how her new heroine—who reminds us of Isabel herself— confronts the tyranny and injustice of her time. As tyranny and injustice bleeds into the present, Isabel shares her convictions on today's oppressions, and illuminates how the power of storytelling gives voice to the sil...
Jun 24, 2025•1 hr 5 min
We are surrounded by bold claims and quick fixes for ‘boosting’ our immune health. But one thing the science is clear on is that everyone’s immune system is unique – what is good for one person may not work well for another. So how do we separate the bogus claims from the useful advice? Head of Life Sciences and Professor of Immunology at Imperial College, Daniel Davis, helps us sort the facts from the fiction. From the genetics of immune health to the myth of Vitamin C, from evidence-backed stu...
Jun 17, 2025•1 hr 10 min
The hosts of the blockbuster podcast We Can Do Hard Things share a fresh guide to being alive and answer life's most difficult questions. Every day, Glennon Doyle spirals around the same questions: Why am I like this? How do I figure out what I want? How do I know what to do? Why can’t I be happy? Am I doing this right? The harder life gets, the less likely she is to remember the answers she’s spent her life learning. In a particularly difficult year, Glennon was diagnosed with anorexia, her sis...
Jun 13, 2025•1 hr 10 min
A louche slacker and a restless wanderer, an Englishman most at home abroad, a comic genius and a whip smart critic of art and culture: Geoff Dyer is a literary colossus, an original voice whose writings circulate around his favourite themes – sex, death, drugs, spirituality, travel, and boredom – while also being utterly different to one another. Now he joins Fat White Family's Lias Saoudi to reflect on his own coming of age, from discovering his early love for reading to his years spent at gra...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 11 min
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, neoliberalism, with its belief in the virtues of markets and competition, seemed to have triumphed. But in the decades that followed, neoliberalism had a problem: the rise of social movements, from civil rights and feminism to environmentalism, were now proving roadblocks in the road to freedom, nurturing a culture of government dependency, public spending, political correctness and special pleading. Neoliberals needed an antidote. They found it in nature....
Jun 06, 2025•1 hr 10 min
How can we live a good life? Perhaps a good life is hard to define, but as bestselling author Rolf Dobelli reveals, we can learn how to cultivate a good life through habits to avoid—from watching too much news to 'winging' your way through the week. Merging stoicism and no-nonsense practicality, Rolf shares how we can live rationally and meaningfully, nurturing healthy relationships and habits with those around us and ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoice...
Jun 03, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Bestselling author, artist, and the Observer’s agony aunt Philippa Perry joins cartoonist Becky Barnicoat for a conversation about the highs and lows of raising small children. From the unglamorous reality of post-partum to the tumult of baby supplies, from the challenges of bedtime to the comically dishevelled appearance of new parenthood, discover the deeply strange new world of parenting, ruled by a tyrannical tiny leader, growing bigger and more loved by the day. Learn more about your ad cho...
May 30, 2025•1 hr 18 min
Today Lorna Tucker is a feted documentary maker whose subjects include Vivienne Westwood and Katherine Hepburn — a life she could not have imagined as a young woman who fled a troubled home to live on the streets. Once a thief, sex worker, and drug addict, estranged from her family and in trouble with gangs and the police, her memoir Bare will make you see a hidden world for the first time and change the way you think about the most vulnerable members of society. Learn more about your ad choices...
May 27, 2025•30 min
From the far-right violence that broke out in the summer of 2024 to the hatred directed at Muslims in public life during the Gaza conflict, anti-Muslim racism is dangerously out-of-control. Fed by a network of media outlets, think tanks, commentators, and even the entertainment industry, Islamophobia not only passes the dinner table test but is also Britain’s bigotry blind spot. For too many, Muslims don’t matter. But that's not stopping Baroness Warsi. Having made her career by speaking up and ...
May 23, 2025•1 hr 17 min
While many of us are sleeping, another world awakens in the night hours. Author Dan Richards reveals the thrumming life of the night, from night shifts on postal trains to the art of focaccia, from the rhythm of shipping forecasts to the humanity which society often fails to recognise in homelessness. Dan illuminates the nighttime world, and explores the deeply personal relationship we each have with the night hours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
May 21, 2025•49 min
LSE’s Paul Dolan reveals how we can stop hating the people we disagree with, and how we can foster a more tolerant society. We like to think that we’re tolerant, but many of us struggle to engage with people whose opinions differ strongly from our own – even if they might have something useful to contribute to the debate. We’re all falling victim to what Professor Paul Dolan defines as beliefism. Now Paul joins us to reveal the importance of exposing ourselves to diverging opinions, and how we c...
May 16, 2025•1 hr 10 min
Our greatest living nature writer, Robert Macfarlane shares with Horatio Clare a single, transformative idea: are rivers alive? Robert Macfarlane is both the author of prize-winning bestsellers including Underland, Landmarks, and The Old Ways, and an artistic polymath whose collaborators include many of the most distinguished artists, musicians, and poets of our time, including Olafur Eliasson, Johnny Flynn, and Jackie Morris. Inspired by the activists, artists and lawmakers of the young ‘Rights...
May 13, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Neurologist and Oxford Professor Dr Masud Husain explores the intricacies of the brain, and how much our sense of self can change through brain disorders. From a woman who could not recognise the motions of her own hand, to a driven and outgoing man whose sudden stroke rendered him apathetic to all he used to care about, Dr Husain explores the bounds of the self, the need for a deeply human connection between doctor and patient, and the cutting-edge science helping people recover from even the m...
May 09, 2025•1 hr 11 min
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
