Revered by politicians, financiers and his fellow economists alike, the FT’s Martin Wolf may be the world’s most influential economic commentator. Matthew Stadlen seeks his insights. Admired across the political spectrum for his level-head, independence and lack of dogmatism, Martin Wolf is far more than an astute analyst of global economic affairs. Through his columns in the Financial Times, books and documentaries, he is an opinion-maker deeply respected by business and political leaders, whos...
Jun 22, 2020•1 hr 10 min
This week's podcast guest Max Brooks is the bestselling author of the zombie apocalypse cult classic World War Z, for which he also wrote the screenplay for the Hollywood adaptation with Brad Pitt. He is the son of Hollywood legends Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks – Max and Mel recently went viral with their #DontBeASpreader video which has had 16.1M views to date. As well as a bestselling author, Max is also a renowned global disaster preparation expert and works alongside the US government, the A...
Jun 17, 2020•37 min
'David Marquet is the kind of leader who comes around only once in a generation... His ideas and lessons are invaluable' – Simon Sinek Few of us realize that our language in the workplace inhibits creative problem-solving and escalates uncertainty and stress. In both high-pressure situations and everyday scenarios, in each meeting and email, we have the opportunity to empower our colleagues by using the right words. David Marquet is a man who understands first-hand the power of words to make cha...
Jun 08, 2020•46 min
Frustrated by the limits of an outsider’s perspective, counter-extremism expert Julia Ebner secretly infiltrated five fanatical groups. She joined the How To Academy Podcast to reveal her journey into the darkest recesses of extremist thinking. By day, Julia Ebner works at a counter-extremism think tank, monitoring radical groups from the outside, but two years ago, she began to feel that she was only seeing half the picture. She needed to get inside the groups to truly understand them. So she d...
Jun 01, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Fans of Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari ought not to miss this eloquent blueprint for building a brighter future from engineer, John Browne. In conversation with Matthew Stadlen, Lord Browne argues that we need not and must not put the brakes on technological advance. Civilisation is founded on engineering innovation; all progress stems from the human urge to make things and to shape the world around us, resulting in greater freedom, health and wealth for all. Drawing on history, his own exp...
May 25, 2020•37 min
'She is no-joke changing the world and, for what it's worth, the way I live my life.' - Anne Hathaway How can white people challenge racism -- whether in the form of their own unconscious biases or the wider systems of white supremacy? In this week's How To Academy Podcast, Hannah MacInnes meets author, influencer and activist Layla Saad, whose Instagram challenge #MeAndWhiteSupremacy encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviours. She was looking for truth, and she got it. Thousa...
May 18, 2020•30 min
The bestselling author of The Elegant Universe joins the How To Academy Podcast to explore humankind’s search for purpose in the vastness of the cosmos. World-renowned for his ground-breaking discoveries in string theory, Brian Greene is also one of our most eloquent and original storytellers in science, able to transport us across the vast reaches of time and space, bringing to life breakthroughs and trials, great discoveries and profound philosophical meditations. He joined Matthew Stadlen on ...
May 11, 2020•34 min
In this unprecedented moment in global history, psychotherapist Julia Samuel joined the How To Academy Podcast to tell us how to find unknown strengths in times of difficulty and change. As the global coronavirus pandemic causes profound difficulties to our health, work, and family, Julia drew upon more thirty years of experience helping everyday people in times of uncertainty, and taught us the skills we need to adapt and hopefully thrive in this strange new normal. Learn more about your ad cho...
May 01, 2020•54 min
How do our brains produce the magic show of conscious experience? The question remains one of the universe's unsolved mysteries -- and this week's podcast guest, Anil Seth, is working on the answer. This week's guest Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. In his work he seeks to understand the biological basis of consciousness by bringing together research across neuroscience, mathematics, AI, computer science, psychology, philosophy and p...
Apr 20, 2020•41 min
Many of the world’s problems stem from the false belief that we can accurately predict the future. Can we make better decisions by acknowledging radical uncertainty? In this week's podcast, Mervyn King and John Kay build a powerful case. Uncertainty pervades the big decisions we all make in our lives. How much should we pay into our pensions each month? Should we take regular exercise? Expand the business? Change our strategy? Enter a trade agreement? Take an expensive holiday? We do not know wh...
Apr 14, 2020•1 hr 6 min
The How To Academy Podcast presents an episode of one of our favourite shows: the Global GoalsCast. The climate challenge is sprawling and extraordinarily complex. It is too much for any individual to hold all of it in their head. That knowledge void has become a major political obstacle to effective climate action (SDG 13) as we fill it in paralyzing ways, from denial to apocalyptic fear. The best way to learn that we can curb climate change is to do it. So Global GoalsCast co-host Edie Lush sa...
Apr 06, 2020•43 min
He coined the word ‘Cyberspace’ and envisioned the Internet and Virtual Reality before they ever existed. Now, in this week's How To Academy Podcast, William Gibson turns his prophetic eye to the 21st century. He is the prophet who first envisioned our fluid, hyperconnected, hallucinatory world; the internationally bestselling author whose visions of the near future reveal the strangeness of our contemporary moment as much as they illuminate potential worlds to come. But William Gibson is more t...
Mar 30, 2020•33 min
Author and activist Elif Shafak is the most widely read female writer in her home nation of Turkey -- but her fight against populism and tribalism is urgent no matter where you live. She joined Matthew Stadlen on the How To Academy Podcast to explore our turbulent present and make an impassioned defence of tolerance and humanitarian values. In an age where the vision of a pluralistic, democratic global village no longer feels like possible, she explores how we can escape our echo chambers and wo...
Mar 23, 2020•47 min
Ai Weiwei is living proof that creativity can change our world for the better. Raised in a labour camp and later beaten, surveilled and imprisoned on trumped-up charges by the Chinese state, Ai Weiwei has dedicated his life to the struggle against corruption and oppression of all kinds. As a conceptual artist and activist fighting for justice, he has become an icon in his own lifetime, renowned world-wide for his work promoting freedom of thought and expression, compassion, and humanitarian valu...
Mar 16, 2020•1 hr 26 min
For more than forty years Nobel laureate, bestselling economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has fought for a fair, just and liberal future. Widely considered the voice of 21st century liberal thought both in the United States and across the globe, Paul Krugman combines the erudition and insight of a renowned scholar with the immediate relevance, clarity and originality of thought expected of a columnist at the New York Times. A former professor at LSE, Princeton, Yale and MIT, perh...
Mar 09, 2020•34 min
Two of the greatest living adventurers meet Hannah MacInnes to reflect on what motivates their journeys across the polar ice. Bringing together two record-breaking polar explorers –Norwegian Erling Kagge and his British counterpart Ben Saunders – this podcast offers a profound and illuminating meditation on the life of a polar explorer. The first man ever to reach the North and South Poles unsupported and the first to conquer both the Poles and Mt. Everest, a Cambridge educated philosopher, inte...
Feb 24, 2020•33 min
How can we escape our age of discontent? In this week's podcast, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz challenges us to throw off the free market fundamentalists and reclaim our democratic power. We all the sense that something has gone wrong with the American economy – with consequences that continue to reverberate across the globe. But just how did a few corporations come to dominate entire sectors, leading to skyrocketing inequality and sluggish growth? How did the financial industry ...
Feb 17, 2020•34 min
Nearly a decade in the making, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a global phenomenon. Hailed instantly as a feminist classic, this staggering work of nonfiction is the result of thousands of hours spent in the company of its subjects – three women whose lives reveal profound and previously unspoken truths about life and love, womanhood and desire. Lisa joins the How To Academy Podcast to tell the Guardian's Hadley Freeman how Three Women came to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoi...
Feb 10, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Never make a New Year’s Resolution again after hearing this podcast from the world’s most renowned expert in forming new habits –Stanford behavioural scientist, BJ Fogg. There are entire worlds of advice on how to lose weight, how to sleep better, how to perform better on the job, how to have better sex, and every other aspect of human behaviour you might wish to change in the New Year. But we all know from bitter experience that none of these new habits last beyond February. The week's How To A...
Feb 03, 2020•43 min
In this week’s episode, Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, VP Jonathan Rosenberg and Director of Executive Communications Alan Eagle present a blueprint for farsighted leadership. They are among the most influential CEOs on the planet – bona fide icons of the digital age. But what else do Jeff Bezos, Sheryl Sandberg, Sundar Pichai, Marissa Meyer and Steve Jobs have in common? They all learned to lead from the legendary coach and business executive, Bill Campbell. His mentoring of some of the most...
Jan 27, 2020•42 min
“There are times when I’ve gone back and cried, and I do think at times, ‘Is it worth it?’ But I have to carry on fighting because it can’t become a normalised thought pattern in our society that a woman of colour is not bright enough, can’t make her own money, can’t be successful, or is told she has made it on her back. I will stand up as long as I can.” – Gina Miller Gina Miller has taken the government to court not once but twice – and won. In the face of abuse and threats -- including a crow...
Jan 20, 2020•1 hr 7 min
Imitated and envied across the globe, the British welfare state was once revolutionary. But in 2020, our society faces urgent challenges that can only be solved with new and highly innovative solutions. In this week's podcast, social designer and WEF Young Global Leader Dr. Hilary Cottam meets Matthew Stadlen to reveal her vision of a system that puts human connection first. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Jan 13, 2020•39 min
He is the world’s most beloved scientist – an inspiration for all who seek understanding, meaning and truth in the vastness of the cosmos. Now Neil deGrasse Tyson joins the How To Academy Podcast to ask: what is our place in the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson has dedicated his life to exploring and explaining the mysteries of our universe. As Director of the Hayden Planetarium, the host of Cosmos and StarTalk, a New York Times bestselling author and owner of one of the 200 ‘most followed’ Twitter...
Jan 06, 2020•1 hr 2 min
On this week's podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets activist and microfinance pioneer Chetna Gala Sinha, whose work in rural India empowers some of the world's poorest women. When Chetna Gala Sinha moved from her home town of Mumbai to rural Mhaswad as a young economics graduate, she saw first-hand how lack of access to banking facilities deprived local women of the opportunity to employ their entrepreneurial skills and lift themselves out of poverty. Since then, she has dedicated her life to creating...
Dec 16, 2019•36 min
In this week’s podcast, independent politician and London Mayoral candidate Rory Stewart tells Hannah MacInnes what he's discovered about British democracy in his time an MP and minister. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Malaysia, commissioned in the Black Watch when only a teenager, a bestselling author and Professor at Harvard, Rory Stewart’s career bore little resemblance to the typical 21st century career politician - and that before he being fired by the Conservative Party for rebelling agai...
Dec 07, 2019•1 hr 10 min
Where do the best ideas come from? In this week’s podcast, Matthew Syed takes Matthew Stadlen on a fascinating journey through the new science of creative problem-solving. It’s time to think again about where the best ideas come from. Individual intelligence and homogenous teams are fine for addressing simple problems -- but groupthink can spell disaster for more complex tasks. That’s why Times columnist and former Olympian advocates a brave new idea: Cognitive Diversity. In this week’s podcast,...
Dec 02, 2019•33 min
For this week's podcast, Hannah MacInnes and bestselling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore assembled an all-star cast to bring to life history's greatest speeches - from conquerors and revolutionaries, activists and athletes, dreamers and killers. You'll meet Elizabeth I and Genghis Khan, Muhammad Ali and Winston Churchill, Greta Thunberg, Martin Luther King and many more - with insights from Simon revealing how these powerful speeches enlighten our past, enrich our present and inspire - and hold...
Nov 25, 2019•1 hr 23 min
Roger NcNamee was Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor in the first days of Facebook. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, he explains why he's now devoted to stopping the behemoth he helped to create. If you had told Roger McNamee three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fun...
Nov 18, 2019•1 hr 18 min
With nothing more than passion, a laptop and a dream, Marie Forleo created a digital empire that inspires millions. She’s the star of the award-winning show MarieTV, with over 47 million views, and the author of a new guide to high achievement that Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert says ‘will change lives’. Named by Oprah as a thought leader for the next generation, Marie presents her award-winning online show, Marie TV and podcast to her 1.5 million fans around the world. She is the foun...
Nov 11, 2019•1 hr 28 min
The climate crisis is the single biggest threat to human survival. And it is happening right now. We all understand that time is running out - but do we truly believe it? Caught between the seemingly unimaginable and the apparently unthinkable, how can we take the first step towards action, to arrest our race to extinction? Jonathan Safran Foer is on a mission to demystify climate change. His ability to spin beauty, wit and insight from tragedy in novels like 'Everything is Illuminated' and 'Ext...
Nov 04, 2019•1 hr 16 min
