How To Academy Podcast

How To Academy is London's home of big thinking. From Nobel laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners, we invite the world’s most influential voices to share new ideas for changing ourselves, our communities, and the world. Our biweekly podcast is your chance to hear in-depth from the most exciting thinkers in global culture.

Last refreshed: June 27th, 2026 at 12:41 PM

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Episodes

Malala Yousafzai - Finding My Way

Thrust onto the public stage at just fifteen years old after the Taliban’s brutal attack on her life, Malala quickly became an international icon — but away from the cameras and crowds, she was a young woman struggling to find her place in a world that was telling her the role she had to play. She joins Pandora Sykes to share her extraordinary story: not the one you think you know, but the one she has been waiting to tell. From transformative friendships and first love, to courage, fear, and her...

Jun 26, 2026•1 hr 20 min

Antonia Senior – The Cambridge Five and the Making of The Soviet Empire

Why did five gilded, charming men, blessed with brains, beauty, and opportunity, choose to betray their country? During their time at Cambridge University in the 1930s, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, John Cairncross and Keeper of the Queen's Pictures Anthony Blunt undertook a clandestine regime to supply British and US intelligence material to the Soviets. Thanks to his Cambridge spies, until the implosion of the spy ring in May 1951, there was barely a secret, and barely a decision ma...

Jun 23, 2026•56 min

M. John Harrison - The End of Everything

One of the leaders of British science fiction's 1960s New Wave, M. John Harrison has spent the subsequent five decades inventing new and exhilarating literary worlds that push against the boundaries of genre and expectations of the novel form. Now he returns to the post-apocalyptic milieu with The End of Everything : the story of an artist and her nephew eking out a life in a fictional Kent seaside town where reality itself has collapsed. Offering an oblique satire of life in contemporary Britai...

Jun 23, 2026•45 min

Mark Williamson – How To Live a Happier Life

What does it mean to be happy? Whilst it’s not always possible to change our circumstances, Action for Happiness founder Mark Williamson believes that we all have the potential to take action to feel better. Blending scientific insights with years of real-world experience, Mark will offer much-needed practical ways to make life happier beyond typical self-help advice, covering a wide range of themes which contribute to lifelong wellbeing. Mark’s guide to happiness will help shift our values from...

Jun 16, 2026•1 hr 2 min

Carol Cadwalladr Meets Karen Hao - Sam Altman, ChatGPT, and the Global Resistance

Karen Hao joins The Nerve's Carole Cadwalladr for an eye-watering insider account of Sam Altman’s Open AI and the burgeoning resistance against it. When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, what do we really have to be afraid of? When long-time AI expert and award-winning journalist Karen Hao began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against m...

Jun 13, 2026•1 hr 16 min

Novelist Elodie Harper – Boudicca's Daughter

Boudicca had two daughters, but history records their existence and nothing more. Sunday Times bestselling author Elodie Harper joins us to discuss her latest novel, Boudicca's Daughters , which reimagines Boudicca and her daughters from the colonised side of history, and explores the inner lives of two young women caught inside a revolution they did not choose. In this episode of the podcast, Elodie will discuss the challenge of writing characters from the historical margins, the hidden Roman B...

Jun 09, 2026•37 min

Caroline Sylge – How To Retreat

Caroline Sylge reminds us to press pause on the daily overwhelm of modern life by bringing the magic and solace of retreating into your every day. What comes into your mind when you hear the word 'retreat'? Meditation at a mountain monastery, or a trip to far-flung places? While ‘retreats’ can be misconceived as expensive, time-consuming or inaccessible, Caroline Sylge shows us that they don’t have to be. Whether it's for a long weekend, a day, or even an hour, Caroline will help you retreat who...

Jun 05, 2026•1 hr 2 min

Novelist Erica Wagner - Washington Roebling and the Art of Life Writing

Erica Wagner may be the first ever author to write both a landmark biography and a historial novel about the same person. The engineer Washington Roebling took up residence in her head when she was sixteen years old and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time; her 2017 book Chief Engineer was a cradle-to-the-grave biography giving us the facts of his life, and her new novel Wash boldly imagines his interior life, moving freely across time, space and memory to replicate the experience of s...

Jun 02, 2026•30 min

Neurologist Majid Fotuhi – How To Age-Proof Your Brain

Neurologist Majid Fotuhi is leading the charge in revolutionising how we understand human intelligence, brain health and age-related cognitive decline. By uncovering the true wonder of how the brain works and its infinite potential for growth and change, Majid will reveal how targeted lifestyle changes can prevent, treat, and even reverse cognitive decline. Following Majid’s 12-week programme, more than 80% of patients achieve exceptional improvements in memory, focus and other cognitive functio...

May 29, 2026•1 hr 8 min

Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris - On Birds, Wonder, and Loss

A great thinning of the skies is underway. Dusk and dawn are growing quiet as birdlife faces a rapid decline across the world. It does not have to be this way — but we will not save what we do not love. From how sparrowhawks' eyes change colour throughout the bird's life, to how cuckoo birds use surprising stealth as mothers, the creators of The Lost Words Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris illuminate the miracle that is birdlife, and reveal the threats which shadow these extraordinary creature...

May 26, 2026•1 hr 18 min

Jessamy Hibberd – How to Free Your Mind From Overthinking

Thinking about your life is a normal part of being human. Often, it is helpful to analyse a situation or revisit a problem in your mind, but if you find yourself constantly dwelling on your thoughts – with no sign of resolution – then it becomes a problem. In this episode of the podcast, acclaimed clinical psychologist Dr Jessamy Hibberd will show you how to break free from the cycle of overthinking. Through expert advice, and real-life examples from her clinic, Jessamy will reveal the reasons b...

May 19, 2026•1 hr 3 min

Phil Tinline - Iron Mountain and the Birth of American Conspiracy Culture

How did a 1960s spoof of Cold War technocracy become a bible for far-right militias in the present? Political journalist Phil Tinline traces the strange journey of the Report from Iron Mountain. In the mid 1960s, a group of New York satirists conceived of an ingenious hoax; a report purportedly written by government technocrats, planning for an unprecedented economic and political catastrophe: what if world peace broke out? The Report from Iron Mountain became an bestseller, its scathing indictm...

May 15, 2026•40 min

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