Bringing together leading Afghan politician and women’s rights advocate Fawzia Koofi, who was a member of the recent delegation negotiating peace with the Taliban; Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent Christina Lamb; and award-winning war correspondent and New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson, this podcast explores both the transformation of everyday life in Afghanistan and the major humanitarian and political questions presented by the new status quo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...
Apr 22, 2022•56 min•Season 6Ep. 21
From Old Winchelsea to Skara Brae, Matthew Green transports us to Britain's shadowlands - the once thriving towns and cities that are now lost to time and memory. Drowned by storms. Buried by sand. Requisitioned by the army. One of Britain's most exciting young historians, Matthew Green has travelled the British Isles in search of the remnants of settlements that once adorned the nation's map - until nature, disease, politics or economics reduced them to ruins. In this episode of the podcast, he...
Apr 19, 2022•37 min•Season 6Ep. 20
Our family relationships fundamentally influence our health and happiness -- but we think too narrowly about the impact of our families on our lives. In this episode of the podcast, bestselling psychotherapist Julia Samuel turns from her acclaimed work with individuals to draw on her sessions with a wide variety of families. She explores a range of common issu Uncovering how deeply we are influenced by our families, she offers a moving and reassuring meditation that, amidst trauma and hardship, ...
Apr 11, 2022•58 min•Season 6Ep. 19
In 1982, East Germany's fearsome secret police - convinced that writers were embedding subversive messages in their work - decided to train their own writers, weaponising poetry in the struggle against the class enemy. Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Stasi files, digging up lost volumes of poetry from musty basements, and tracking down the surviving members of the circle to uncover the little-known story of this famously ruthless intelligence agency's obsession with ...
Apr 08, 2022•31 min•Season 6Ep. 18
The concept of a shared, single heritage and culture is central to Vladimir Putin’s justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But what is the true story of the two nations, and how can it illuminate the nature of the conflict? This episode of the podcast brings together historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, whose books on Russia include The Romanovs and Stalin - The Court of the Red Tzar , and award-winning foreign correspondent Luke Harding, who was expelled from Russia by the Kremlin in 2...
Apr 05, 2022•42 min•Season 6Ep. 17
Max Porter broke new ground with his highly-original debut Grief is a Thing With Feathers , and firmly established himself as a major literary talent with his second novel Lanny . The cult author joined us to explore his latest and most ambitious novel yet: The Death of Francis Bacon, a collection of 'verbal paintings' depicting the final moments of the artist’s life. What responsibility does an author owe to their subject, and to their audience, in the age of the Internet? Is culture becoming l...
Apr 01, 2022•44 min•Season 6Ep. 16
Few figures make such a seismic impact on their artistic medium that they transform its reputation from childish pulp entertainment to a vital and exhilarating creative form, capable of exploring the great mysteries of metaphysics, science, and the human spirit – but Alan Moore is one. A modern-day alchemist who transmuted comic books into literary gold, his works not only inspired a later generation of authors who are now household names, from Neil Gaiman to Susanna Clarke, but filmmakers, arti...
Mar 29, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Food writers Olia Hercules and Alissa Timoshkina have been friends since university and together they have come together to launch #CookForUkraine - a campaign which aims to raise awareness and funds through a shared appreciation of the rich tradition of Ukrainian cooking with supper clubs, events and encouraging people to share recipes, along with the stories behind the dishes. In its first weeks they have whipped up an extraordinary amount of support from everyone from Jamie Oliver to Nigella ...
Mar 25, 2022•43 min•Season 6Ep. 14
What if everything we thought we knew about the origins of human civilisation is a myth? In their book The Dawn of Everything , the late David Graeber and his collaborator David Wengrow tell an ambitious and revelatory new history of the world – one that overturns the notion of Rosseau’s innocent Noble Savage and the ‘nasty, brutish and short’ lives of Thomas Hobbes alike. In this episode of the podcast, Wengrow joins former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to transform your understanding...
Mar 21, 2022•59 min•Season 6Ep. 13
Medical historian Dr Paul Craddock joins the How To Academy Podcast to takes us on a journey from sixteenth-century skin grafting to contemporary stem cell transplants, uncovering stories of operations performed by unexpected people in unexpected places. Bringing together philosophy, science and cultural history, this podcast explores how transplant surgery constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal and machine, and continues to do so today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit po...
Mar 18, 2022•35 min•Season 6Ep. 12
Raised in the hardy forest communities of British Columbia, scientist Suzanne Simard overturned conventional beliefs in proving that trees and plants are connected underground by an immense web of fungal mycelia, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful entities that sustain the forest. She joins author and traveller Sophy Roberts to tell the story of a lifetime spent uncovering startling truths about trees: their perceptions, behaviours, healing capacities, language...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 6Ep. 11
In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, author and documentarian Jon Ronson and political scientist Brian Klaas investigate the relationship between power, psychopathy, and corruption. Drawing on the insights from Jon's widely acclaimed book The Psychopath Test and Brian's new book Corruptible , for which he met some of the world's most reviled and dangerous leaders, this is a provocative and revelatory journey into what power is and who gets to wield to it. Learn more about your ad choic...
Mar 08, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Yrsa Daley-Ward’s work explores all parts of the human condition, but especially those we don’t tend to speak of: mental health, sexuality, love, grief and addiction. Her words have resonated with hundreds of thousands of readers around the world: through her acclaimed books of poetry and memoir, bone and The Terrible and through her powerful writing for Beyoncé’s cultural touchstone Black Is King . In conversation with acclaimed novelist and poet Salena Godden, Yrsa joins the How To Academy Pod...
Feb 28, 2022•55 min•Season 6Ep. 9
How can we live a more ethical life? This question has plagued people for thousands of years, but it's never been tougher to answer than it is now, thanks to challenges great and small that flood our day-to-day lives and threaten to overwhelm us with impossible decisions and complicated results with unintended consequences. The Good Place was the smash hit Netflix comedy that made moral philosophy fun. Now the series creator, Michael Schur and its star Jameela Jamil join us with a foolproof guid...
Feb 21, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 6Ep. 8
In the Victorian era, in the shadow of Darwin's ideas about evolution, a new full-blooded attempt to impose control over our unruly biology began to grow in the clubs, salons and offices of the powerful. It was enshrined in a political movement that bastardised science, and for sixty years enjoyed bipartisan and huge popular support. Eugenics was vigorously embraced in dozens of countries. It was also a cornerstone of Nazi ideology, and forged a path that led directly to the gates of Auschwitz. ...
Feb 14, 2022•49 min•Season 6Ep. 7
How did the Mughal empire – which then generated just under half the world’s wealth – come to be replaced by the first global corporate power - the East India Company? And how does the legacy of British imperialism continue to shape life and culture in Britain today? Bringing together Empireland author and Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera and bestselling award-winning historian William Dalrymple, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast will tell a story that is barely taught in schools or men...
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Fi Glover and Jane Garvey are radio legends. Already major BBC stars in their own right, their podcast together, Fortunately… with Fi and Jane has grown from a cult following to become one of the nation’s most loved and celebrated shows. Described in their own words as a “podcast in which two women exchange random thoughts, occasional pleasantries, fatuous double-entendres, real-life challenges, and often sudden bursts of something approaching wisdom”, this witty, refreshing take on the drama an...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Season 12Ep. 5
In February 1991, Robert Maxwell made a triumphant entrance into Manhattan harbour aboard his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, to complete his purchase of the ailing New York Daily News . Crowds lined the quayside to watch his arrival, taxi drivers stopped their cabs to shake his hand and children asked for his autograph. But just ten months later, Maxwell disappeared from the same yacht off the Canary Islands, only to be found dead in the water soon afterward. As his empire fell apart, long-hidden de...
Jan 25, 2022•54 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Described by The Times as a modern Daphne de Maurier, Claire Fuller’s writing is beautifully dark and vividly atmospheric. Her fourth novel, Unsettled Ground , follows the lives of two adult twins whose world is upturned after the death of their mother. After surviving for years off-grid and at the mercy of the seasons in their secluded cottage, the twins are tumbled into the present and forced to confront their change of circumstance and long-ignored family secrets. Unsettled Ground is at once ...
Jan 18, 2022•37 min•Season 11Ep. 3
In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorising? In conversation with mathematician and Oxford Professor Marcus du Sautoy, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cur...
Jan 10, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 6Ep. 2
Bexy was raised in a secret commune deep in the British countryside. At 10, she was placed on Silence Restriction, forced to be silent for a whole year. Even from an early age, she knew what was happening was not right. At the age of 15, she escaped, leaving behind her parents and 11 siblings. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, she tells us her family came to be part of the Children of God, and how she found the courage to get out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoic...
Jan 06, 2022•47 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Emily Ratajkowski has established herself as a multifaceted talent. As a model, she has appeared on the covers of major fashion magazines and is currently the face of L’Oréal’s hair care line Kerastase. As an actress, she has appeared in films including David Fincher’s Gone Girl and alongside Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty . Ratajkowski is also outspoken politically, continually using her platform to advocate for her political beliefs, having campaigned for Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020. Sh...
Dec 21, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 5Ep. 27
A good life involves more than just pleasure. Suffering is essential too. It seems obvious that pleasure leads to happiness - and pain does the opposite. And yet we are irresistibly drawn to a host of experiences that truly hurt, from the exhilarating fear of horror movies or extreme sport, to the wrenching sadness of a song or novel, to the gruelling challenges of exercise, work, creativity and having a family. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, pre-eminent psychologist Paul Bloom e...
Dec 14, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 5Ep. 25
Philip Pullman’s novels are a testament to the power of the human imagination and a celebration of our capacity for wonder, proving to millions of readers across the globe that enchantment still has a profound role to play in our age of reason. It is an ethos shared by the neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, whose book The Master and His Emissary was that rare thing: a bestselling classic of modern philosophy with genuine relevance to human life. In this podcast, the two men will come together to e...
Dec 06, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 5Ep. 24
'For the left, elections are a brief interlude in a life of real politics, a moment to ask whether it's worth taking time off to vote . . . Then back to work. The work will be to move forward to construct the better world that is within reach.' – Noam Chomsky A giant of both 20th and 21st century intellectual life, Noam Chomsky’s influence on the development of linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science cannot be overstated; but it is as a political thinker, activist and social critic that h...
Nov 30, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 9Ep. 23
What we can do to have better conversations with our children and with each other about race, and build a better world? Beverly Daniel Tatum and Robin DiAngelo have dedicated their lives to anti-racist education. The bestselling authors of, respectively, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria ? and White Fragility , their insights are essential for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of race in the United States and beyond. In the age of Trump, Black Lives Matte...
Nov 23, 2021•57 min•Season 5Ep. 22
Chief historian of the BBC's Horrible Histories TV show and the host of chart-topping podcast You're Dead to Me , Greg Jenner is a master in the art of turning the messiness of history into whip-smart comic entertainment. He joined us to explore his favourite historical questions and their often surprising answers - as submitted by the general public. From chariot racing to bank robbery, Egyptian mummies to Monty Python, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast is a ride through some of the wi...
Nov 16, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 21
World-renowned ethologist and conservationist Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a UN Messenger of Peace, has spent more than a half-century warning of our impact on our planet. From her famous encounters and research into the wild chimpanzees in the forests of Gombe which began more than sixty years ago and continues to this day, to her tireless campaigning for the environment in her late eighties, Jane has become the godmother to a new generation of climate activis...
Nov 10, 2021•56 min•Season 5Ep. 20
Few works of literature have the power to change who we are and how we conceive our place in the universe – but Richard Powers Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning masterpiece The Overstory is one. For Barack Obama, Powers ‘changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it’; for Emma Thompson, The Overstory was a ‘the best book I've read in 10 years… a lodestone’; for Ann Patchett, it was simply ‘one of the best novels, period’. This year's follow-up, the Booker shortlisted Bew...
Nov 02, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 5Ep. 19
Bernard-Henri Levy is one of the world’s most esteemed philosophers and public intellectuals; but his understanding of philosophy is anything but theoretical. A humanitarian activist of deep conviction, for fifty years he has reported from the sites of human rights abuses and humanitarian crises that fail to receive global attention or an active response, shedding light on urgent stories that Western media and governments have chosen to ignore. He joined us on stage in London to issue a stirring...
Oct 26, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 18
