The creator of the word ‘meme’ and of the hugely influential ‘selfish gene’ model of evolution, he is the epitome of the truly public intellectual – a scientist whose ideas have proven extraordinarily influential both within his own discipline and far, far beyond. In this week’s episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Richard shares his reflections on perhaps the most important and puzzling topic in all of human existence: the meaning of life. Credit for Richard Dawkins’ Portrait to Frederic Aran...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Hannah MacInnes meets author, influencer and activist Layla Saad, whose Instagram challenge #MeAndWhiteSupremacy encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Aug 19, 2022•32 min
Since he introduced us to his singular and inimitable brand of psychology, stagecraft and magic in 2000, Derren Brown has played Russian Roulette on live television, convinced middle-managers to commit armed robbery in the street, led the nation in a séance and exposed psychic and faith-healing charlatans. He joined How To Academy to teach a lesson none of us can afford to miss: what we can do to be a little happier and less anxious in a difficult world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...
Aug 15, 2022•1 hr 9 min
The New Yorker’s Patrick Radden Keefe is America’s most celebrated living reporter. He documented the hunt for the drug lord Chapo Guzman and the tragic personal history of the Harvard educated neurobiologist turned mass shooter Amy Bishop. He wrote a definitive, revelatory account of the Troubles in Say Nothing; investigated the strange convergence of espionage and hair metal in his blockbuster podcast Winds of Change; and most famously – exposed the role of the Sackler family in the US opioid ...
Aug 12, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Acclaimed science writer Philip Ball joins us to explore the rich diversity of thinking minds – from human to other mammals, insects, computers and plants. In conversation with filmmaker David Malone, he illuminates how many different ways there are to think and engage with the world. Science has begun to have something to say about the properties of mind. And the more we learn about the minds of other creatures, from octopuses to chimpanzees, to imagine the potential minds of computers and alie...
Aug 09, 2022•1 hr 3 min
We live in an age when the pursuit of authenticity – from living our 'best life' to eating artisan food – matters more and more to us, but where the forces of inauthenticity seem to be taking over. Policy expert and author Alice Sherwood joins us to argue that, although our counterfeit culture is shaped by the most powerful forces of evolution, economics, and technology, we can still come together to reclaim reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Aug 02, 2022•1 hr•Season 7Ep. 15
Daniel Pink, the New York Times bestselling author of When and Drive and one of the world’s leading thinkers on business, creativity and human behaviour, says it’s time to forget everything we think we know about regrets. He believes that regret is our most misunderstood emotion – and can in fact be the pathway to our best life. It’s a subject he investigates in-depth in his new book The Power of Regret: and he joined Hubertus Kuelps, Pictet’s Head of Communications and Branding, to share his id...
Jul 26, 2022•37 min•Season 7Ep. 14
In 1953, a group of prisoners of war who had fought against the communist invasion of South Korea were released. They chose - apparently freely - to move to Mao's China. Among those refusing repatriation were twenty-one American GIs. Their decision sparked alarm in the West: why didn't they want to come home? What was going on? Soon, people were saying that the POWs' had been 'brainwashed'. Was this something new or a phenomenon that has been around for centuries? Today, brainwashing is almost t...
Jul 22, 2022•40 min•Season 7Ep. 14
For girls and young women these are shifting times: never before have they had so much freedom and choice; but never before have they had so many demands placed upon them - by themselves as well as others. Dr Tara Porter pulls together everything she has learnt to provide accessible explanations and suggestions for teenagers, young women, and their parents on topics including exams, friendship, families and love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jul 19, 2022•59 min•Season 7Ep. 13
In June 1992 Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously. He joined Channel 4 Europe Editor Matt Frei live on stage in London to tell the story of what happened as the handover approached, and share his assessment of recent events in the city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jul 15, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Every week there are 150 avoidable deaths in England; tragedies that could have been prevented if we were better at learning from mistakes. As the former Secretary of State for Health and current Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, Jeremy Hunt believes it is possible to reduce the number of preventable deaths in the NHS to zero – in the process saving money, reducing backlogs and improving working conditions. In this episode of the podcast, he shares insights from his new manif...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 1
Bonnie Wright and Evanna Lynch rose to fame as Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter series, and now use their public platforms to help change the world for the better. As an ambassador for Greenpeace, Bonnie Wright has dedicated her life to advocating for climate justice – using her influence to draw attention to the most serious environmental issues of our time, from plastic pollution to fossil fuels. In conversation with Evanna, she joined us live on stage in London tell us abou...
Jul 08, 2022•1 hr 16 min
Born in Puglia, Italy and now resident in London, Francesco Dimitri is a member of an extremely exclusive club -- authors who write and publish in a language that is not their mother tongue. His latest novel Never the Wind is a magical realist fable about family, belonging and coming of age set his native Puglia and will appeal hugely to fans of Susanna Clarke, Eleanor Ferrente and Neil Gaiman. In this episode of the podcast, he reflects on the differences between Italian and British literary cu...
Jul 06, 2022•33 min•Season 7Ep. 9
For millennia, people have asked questions about the nature of matter. In the twentieth century, this curiosity led to an unprecedented outburst of scientific discovery that changed the course of history. In this episode of the podcast, accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged these ground-breaking experiments. Pulling physics down from the theoretical and putting it in the hands of the people, this podcast ...
Jul 01, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 7Ep. 8
As a young historian at Cambridge and Oxford, he did not rest in the ivory tower but brought his erudition on the great stories and crises of the day, travelling widely and becoming one of our most celebrated broadcasters and influential public intellectuals. Later, he returned to his native Canada to become leader of the Liberal Party: a scholar whose commitment to democratic ideals earned him widespread admiration on the global stage. Now he joins the podcast to reflect upon a philosophical qu...
Jun 28, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Season 7Ep. 7
The winner of major genre awards including the Nebula, the Hugo, and the World Fantasy Award, Ken Liu is an author and futurist whose fictions both interrogate the social consequences of new technologies, and investigate the value of concepts we do not typically think of as technology but ought to, including law, language, and even storytelling itself. In this episode of the podcast he outlines his vision for speculative fiction's purpose and value, and previews the ideas in the Dandelion Dynast...
Jun 24, 2022•45 min•Season 7Ep. 6
Some of us inhabit a bittersweet state instinctively, others avoid it as much as we can; some of us arrive there when we reach a certain age, or after facing life’s trials and triumphs. But we will all experience the bittersweet at some point in our lives. What are the powers of a bittersweet, melancholic outlook? And why has our culture been so blind to its value? Following a trail of centuries-old artistic and wisdom traditions as well as contemporary psychology and management research, Susan ...
Jun 21, 2022•1 hr•Season 7Ep. 5
Futurist Jane McGonigal creates games that predict and simulate hard to imagine futures. In this episode of the podcast, she teaches us to think like futurists and become more resilient to future shocks – both in our personal lives and when we are faced with unfolding global events. She shows us that 'unimaginable' events aren't unimaginable before they happen. It is possible to see them coming and feel ready for anything, even things that seem impossible today. By learning to think the unthinka...
Jun 17, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 7Ep. 4
One hundred years since its publication confirmed James Joyce as one of the greatest writers in the English language and a fearless creative genius willing and able to reimagine the possibilities of literature for the modern age, Ulysses has become an undisputed canonical classic. In this episode of the podcast, Ireland’s greatest living novelist, Colm Toibin, and its foremost Joyce scholar, Terence Killeen, come together to celebrate this complex, controversial masterpiece, offering new and vit...
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Season 7Ep. 3
Alice Roberts trained as a physician, and now employs her scientific knowledge to uncover new evidence about the history of Britain, combining scientific and historical insights to determine who we are and where we came from. She joins us to shed fresh light on how we lived in the so-called Dark Ages by examining the stories of the dead. What did people think about mortality? How did they feel about loss? What did they believe came after death? Find out in this in-depth exploration of Buried, he...
Jun 10, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 7Ep. 2
Born in Hong Kong and raised in Malaysia, commissioned in the Black Watch when only a teenager, Rory Stewart’s career bears little resemblance to the typical 21st century career politician. After serving as a diplomat in Indonesia, the Balkans and Iraq, a foundation director in Afghanistan, and as Secretary of State for International Development, he left frontline politics altogether to work on a charitable project in Amman, Jordan. He joins to share his thoughts on Boris Johnson's government in...
Jun 06, 2022•56 min•Season 7Ep. 1
In her New York Times bestselling biography of Princess Diana, The Diana Chronicles, former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown wrote the definitive account of the extraordinary life and tragic death of the Princess of Wales. In this episode of the podcast, she joins Pandora Sykes to reveal how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana's blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoice...
May 31, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Season 5Ep. 31
In 1966, John Barker, a dynamic psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, established the Premonitions Bureau to investigate psychic visions. He found a network of hundreds of correspondents, from clerks to ballet teachers – including two unnervingly gifted “percipients”. The New Yorker’s award-winning Sam Knight joins us with an enthralling true story of madness and wonder, science and the supernatural – a journal to the most powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind....
May 27, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 6Ep. 30
A creative pioneer whose genius has placed him alongside Chaplin, Keaton, and his fellow Pythons as one of the greatest British comedy talents of all-time, John Cleese’s name is synonymous with the very best popular culture our country has ever produced. From the subversive satire of Life of Brian and existential absurdity of The Meaning of Life to the precision-engineered farce and observational brilliance of Fawlty Towers and A Fish Called Wanda, his work is a testament to the power of the hum...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 6Ep. 29
Minnie Driver joined us live on stage in London to tell transport us from her unconventional childhood to subsequent fame, sharing poignant stories and laugh-out-loud anecdotes from her life and career. It is a tale of acclaim, loss, fortitude and fortune: in short, the story of being human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
May 20, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 6Ep. 28
Next month Michael Lewis will join us in-person in London for a live, on-stage event exploring his life and work from Liar's Poker through to the present day. In anticipation, this episode of the podcast revisits his last appearance on the How To Academy stage, in conversation with the Guardian's Owen Jones. Together they explore the corrosion of the federal government under the Trump administration - the subject of Michael's book The Fifth Risk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...
May 17, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Season 6Ep. 27
With fans including Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Peter Thiel, no living fiction author has more influence among the elite technologists shaping our world. His ideas inspired Google Earth, Second Life and the Xbox, and Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook after Stephenson’s concept of the Metaverse, dedicating his company to the mission of creating a future inspired by Stephenson’s speculative vision. Now the legendary speculative novelist turns his attention to the cliamte crisis. In converastion wi...
May 13, 2022•57 min
How did a collective of self-taught internet sleuths end up solving some of the biggest crimes of our time? Eliot Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat, an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists using open-source and social media investigation to probe some of the world’s most pressing stories. He joins us to tell the story of how they created a whole new category of information gathering, galvanising citizen journalists across the globe to expo...
May 10, 2022•1 hr 2 min
For forty years humans have dreamed of persistent virtual worlds. Today, video games and their peripherals are pushing the boundaries of digital immersion, whether in the form of imaginary play spaces like Roblox and Second Life, or rich sensory augmentations that affect our experience of the physical world. But what will become of the Metaverse and cyberspace? And in our era of rapid and accelerating change, how can we accurately imagine and forecast future – to include both dazzling new techno...
May 06, 2022•48 min•Season 6Ep. 25
A literary alchemist, Ann Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: essays that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. In this episode of the podcast, she explores her latest collection, These Precious Days. Offering a unique perspective on themes as diverse as failure, family, Snoopy the dog, children, publishing, teaching, and the actor Tom Hanks, join us for a dive into one of the most extraordinary minds at work in American le...
May 03, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 6Ep. 24
