In our turbulent times, how do we grapple with our past? Are we capable of grappling with Britain's imperial history without whitewashing? David Olusoga and Alan Lester believe that the truth matters; it matters far too greatly to be hijacked by apologists and racists. They joined us in conversation to reveal the truth about the British Empire and fight back against those who smear the integrity of professional historians; together, they reveal a new way forward in understanding the history of t...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 21 min
Psychotherapist and Sunday Times bestselling author Anna Mathur joins the podcast to debunk traditional strategies to manage common worries and introduce her new approach to overcoming the ten fundamental, uncomfortable truths in life: acceptance. Drawing upon her experience as a therapist as well as her own personal journey of grief, and training as a therapist alongside her mother, she dives into topics that many of us are afraid to face. In the episode Anna proposes that joy and heartbreak wi...
Sep 28, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Longtime listeners will remember the artist and folklorist Amy Jeffs from her episode exploring the medieval wilderness; her latest book Saints returns to the medieval world to explore the lives and legends of European saints -- from men raised by wolves to women communing with flocks of birds. She joined us in conversation with the author and critic Sam Leith, whose new book The Haunted Wood is a history of and reflection upon children's literature from Aesop to the modern day. Their dialogue i...
Sep 24, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Oliver Burkeman’s global bestseller Four Thousand Weeks was a reflection upon our brief time on earth that changed lives and inspired thousands. Now armed with a meadow of playful metaphors to illustrate his philosophy, he joins the podcast to offer us a crash course in how to make the most of our lives without giving into the cult of self-help. Sharing his cynicism of society’s overemphasis on hyperproductivity, which has held us hostage to a ‘daily productivity deficit’, Oliver shows that ‘don...
Sep 20, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Barrack and Michele Obama loved Rumaan Alam's apocalyptic third novel, Leave the World Behind, so much they helped turn it into a wildly successful Netflix movie. That novel anticipated and captured the feel of life in the COVID pandemic with uncanny accuracy, and Rumaan's new book is no less attuned to the way we live now. Entitlement is the story of Brooke, a young, ambitious Black New Yorker who finds herself in the employ of ageing billionaire-philanthropist Asher Jaffee - with unpredictable...
Sep 16, 2024•56 min
Nate Silver's remarkable career has seen him conquer many seemingly unrelated worlds: professional poker, sports journalism, and the political forecasting that made him a star of US politics. He joined us on stage in London to reveal the ideas that glue these together - an idea that helps to explain how power, business, and politics really work. There is a new paradigm of power with global importance. This power belongs to a new class of professional risk-takers – including VCs, gamblers, tech m...
Sep 10, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Many of us wrestle with daunting life-choice questions from time to time: what should I be aiming for? Am I being ambitious enough? Has an excess of ambition led me astray? Stefan Stern has dedicated a lifetime to answering these questions. The FT's former management columnist, a think-tank director, and now a professor at Cass Business School, Stefan joins the podcast to investigate how ambition and success work together through the unlikely icon of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth. Whether your look...
Sep 06, 2024•35 min
Yevgeny Prigozhin emerged as one of the most dangerous warlords in the world and as one of Vladimir Putin’s chief rivals in Russia’s tumultuous political climate, exiled after leading Wagner’s attempted coup and killed in a mysterious plane crash. But what is the truth about this enigmatic figure, and the chaos unleashed across Russia by his turn against Putin? And, in the aftermath of his death, what is next for Russia in the new stage of late Putinism that Prigozhin’s life forged? Drawing on y...
Sep 03, 2024•1 hr 4 min
From ancient thrones to Hollywood stars, gems have not only adorned humanity but also shaped its history. How did emeralds and rubies etch our origin stories? How did garnets embody the flickering soul or jade the tenets of living a good life? Senior Jewellery Curator at the V&A Museum Helen Molesworth reveals how gems came to embody our most cherished ideals, our most vicious battles for power, and our evolving understanding of ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoic...
Aug 30, 2024•56 min
Traditional stories of the evolution of life on our planet tell us that we and all other creatures on Earth were shaped by evolution. But how do minds that are shaped by evolution go on to transform nature in their own right? In the final volume of the landmark trilogy that began with Other Minds and continued with Metazoa, philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the role that animal minds - and, especially, human minds - have had on our world. If you've ever wondered why it was prim...
Aug 27, 2024•55 min
Have you ever wondered how we got here? From hunting mammoths, to flying to the moon? Historian Yuval Noah Harari introduced millions of readers to the story of the human species with his global bestseller Sapiens. His new book Unstoppable Us is the first in a new four-book series telling that story to younger readers. Over the summer he joined children's author and essayist Katherine Rundell on stage to tell us more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Aug 22, 2024•1 hr 15 min
Created in collaboration with Fern Press and Tortoise Media, the Fern Academy Prize was created to discover and nurture unpublished writers who shine a light on the universal human experience and speak to the times we live in. Gabriela Denise Frank won the 2024 prize with A Self She Can Continue Living With: a tragicomic depiction of the middle manager's lot in corporate America and the soul-crushing absurdities of the white collar world. In this episode of the podcast, Gabriela reads the essay ...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr 19 min
A healthy gut functions like a successful company, with different roles and employees. So how do we keep these employees happy? In this episode of the podcast, microbiome scientist and dietician Dr Emily Leeming joins us to reveal the groundbreaking new evidence between food and mood, and actionable steps for a healthier, more energising lifestyle. She reveals the impact of sedentary lifestyles on our gut, the microbiome benefits of a ten second kiss, and a disco inspired mnemonic for keeping yo...
Aug 16, 2024•1 hr 7 min
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 and Empireworld 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 i...
Aug 13, 2024•1 hr 10 min
We're told repeatedly that if we’re going to achieve anything, we’d better do it while we’re young. But society is wrong. With armfuls of examples from from Olympic athletes, sitcom stars and titans of architecture who rewrote the rule book for midlife, writer Henry Oliver shares the lessons for seizing upon the truest versions of ourselves later in life and asks, what part of your goal can you achieve today? Tune in to discover a range of blueprints for self-reinvention, tips for rebuilding you...
Aug 09, 2024•1 hr 4 min
For the first time in history, autocracies are working together to stay in power. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad actor, but by sophisticated networks relying on kleptocratic financial structures, security services—military, paramilitary, police—and technological experts who provide surveillance, propaganda, and disinformation. The democratic world is in denial about how it has unwittingly helped to consolidate this new reality. What we stand to lose is our ability to dictate our ow...
Aug 06, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Lhakpa Sherpa broke a record: she was the first Nepali woman to climb and descend Everest. Then she broke another: summiting for the tenth time, she had now summited the tallest peak in the world more times than any other woman. But the gruelling ascent mirrored her own journey through life: from braving her way and disguising herself as a man to become a sherpa, to finding the courage to leave a violent marriage to give her daughters a better life, Lhakpa has shown that there is no summit she c...
Jul 31, 2024•27 min
Stanford neuroscientist Patrick House joins us with an introduction to the best of our current paradigms for making sense of consciousness. In conversation with Robin Ince, he weaves brain science, analogy, and philosophy into a tapestry that illuminates how the brain works and what scientists currently believe enable consciousness to reveal the strangeness of the relationship between our inner selves and our environment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jul 29, 2024•1 hr 6 min
A household name following both the mapping of the human genome and, in 2010, the creation of the first synthetic organism, J Craig Venter is a singular figure in 21st century science: a biologist whose legacy is secure and who, at 77, still continues to push boundaries. He joined us in conversation with David Malone to share a story that is equal parts thrilling global adventure and a journey of momentous scientific discovery: his fifteen year, 65k mile quest to map the microbiome of the oceans...
Jul 23, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Renowned as a pioneer of climate fiction, Paolo Bacigalupi's novels The Windup Girl and The Water Knife earned him a reputation as one of the essential speculative novelists of our time, with a prophetic gift akin to established genre masters like William Gibson and Magaret Atwood. His new novel Navola is part of a different tradition: a fantasy novel where historical realism takes precedent over the overtly imaginary, exploring the relationship between family, money, and power in a lightly disg...
Jul 19, 2024•56 min
After years of running a failing farm in West Sussex, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell decided to hand back control to nature. Slowly but surely, plants shot up, creatures crept in, and the landscape began to heal. The area now hums with life and is home to some of the rarest species in Britain, such as peregrine falcons, turtle doves and purple emperor butterflies. Free from human intervention and monocultures, the farm has become a safe haven for nature which self-corrects and sel...
Jul 16, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Kelly Clancy is both a neuroscientist and a physicist, and has held positions at MIT and DeepMind. She's also the author of Playing With Reality, a new intellectual history of games that explores the influence that games have played - if you'll forgive the pun - over many centuries on warfare, gambling, economics and much more. If you've ever wanted to know why chess is used as a stand-in for intelligence or what game theory really is, this episode of the podcast is for you. Learn more about you...
Jul 12, 2024•46 min
After years of biopsies, best-selling author Sarah Thornton made the difficult decision to have a double mastectomy. But, after her reconstructive surgery, she was perplexed: What had she lost? And gained? Blending sociology, reportage, and personal narrative with refreshing optimism and wit, her new book Tits Up has one overriding ambition―to liberate breasts from centuries of patriarchal prejudice. She sat down with Aimee Morris to tell us more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...
Jul 09, 2024•36 min
In a society where stress and competition run rampant, how can we find a more fulfilling sense of happiness? Well-being expert and founder of The New Happy Stephanie Harrison joins us to not only address societal woes but also share what we can do about them. Drawing on her background in positive psychology, Stephanie sheds new light on prevailing concepts—from misconceptions of Maslow's hierarchy to the rat race of capitalism—and reveals how we can move away from rigid societal rhythms to find ...
Jul 05, 2024•1 hr 8 min
What went wrong with capitalism? Drawing on his decades of experience as a world-leading investor and FT columnist, leading financial analyst Ruchir Sharma offers an insider’s perspective, offering a critique of capitalism unlike any you have heard before: that capitalism itself has been corrupted from its original inception, and that less government regulation rather than more might be our most viable solution. In conversation with the FT's Gillian Tett, Sharma dives into how we can save our fr...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 5 min
For twenty years, Mark Tuitert has used the principles of Stoic philosophy to become a gold-medal winning Olympic champion athlete, successful entrepreneur, as well as to deal with the challenges in his professional and private life. Now he's here to to share what he learned. In this episode of the podcast, the athlete lays out the practical lessons through which everyone, in any situation, can develop a Stoic mindset. Applying principles from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus to the twenty...
Jun 28, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Welcome to technofeudalism. The owners of big tech have become the world’s feudal overlords—replacing capitalism with a new system that defies democracy and rewrite the rules of global power. But this is no dystopian story—as visionary economist Yanis Varoufakis argues, this is our world today. In conversation with Ash Sarkar, Varoufakis illuminates the dark underbelly of this new system—and reveals what we can do to thwart it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 25, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Social connection is essential to our wellbeing, not only fuelling creativity and enriching our sense of meaning in life, but also adding years to our life span. And yet, many of us struggle to form strong and meaningful bonds. Drawing on neuroscience and cutting-edge philosophy, science journalist David Robson joins us to reveal the science of meaningful connection. From the science of first impressions, to how to move away from “frenemies” towards more supportive connections, to how to be a pr...
Jun 21, 2024•1 hr 4 min
When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? To find out, K...
Jun 19, 2024•1 hr 7 min
When her husband's work required journalist Clover Stroud to uproot from Oxfordshire to Washington DC, she began a deep and profound reflection on the many ways she was tethered to her home -- from family roots to knowledge of its ancient history, an appreciation of the local landscape to precious personal memories -- and considered what it would mean to break that tie. This lyrical and moving episode of the podcast that everyone will be able to relate to, wherever you were raised. Learn more ab...
Jun 14, 2024•1 hr 7 min
