Since the dawn of humanity monsters have loomed large in our collective imagination. But why do frightening beasts hold such a powerful grip on us? Natalie Lawrence has always loved monsters. Her passion that took her all the way to Cambridge, where she completed a phD in the history of early modern monsters that informs her new book, Enchanted Creatures. Now she joins us on the podcast to delight your adult brain and inner child alike. When does an animal become a monster? Why should anyone sti...
Nov 01, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the last five centuries, humankind has brought change to every inch of the Earth, in a story of environment and empire, of genocide and ecocide, of the expansion of human freedom and its costs. Asking whether humanity can now summon the collective wisdom to save itself, Professor Sunil Amrith joins the podcast to share a history of environmentalism from the perspective of social justice. Arguing for an empathetic approach to climate usage, Professor Amrith shares why environmentalism is ill-s...
Oct 29, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Harvard Professor and Ukrainian-born historian Serhii Plokhy joins the podcast to reveal the resilience and courage of the Ukrainian workers held hostage inside Chernobyl under Russian occupation. As hours stretched into weeks of hostility with no help from the outside world, the crew members' critical decisions alone prevented another nuclear catastrophe reminiscent of the disaster three decades earlier. In a wider warning to the world, Serhii Plokhy uncovers just how unprepared we are to deal ...
Oct 21, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Soon after announcing his first campaign for presidency, Donald J. Trump declared that life “had not been easy for me”, delivering a campaign narrative around his business acumen based on his journey from talented upstart to a multi-billionaire. This narrative was a lie. Drawing on access to twenty years’ worth of Trump’s confidential tax information, business records and interviews with Trump insiders, reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig won a Pulitzer Prize for the investigations into Tr...
Oct 15, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Traumatic experiences leave their imprint on the body as well as the mind, but they need not define us. Fusing insights from thirty years at the cutting-edge of neuroscience, and with the weight of decades of experience as an active therapist, Dr van der Kolk reveals the power of our relationships – whether the intimacy of the home or in our wider communities – to both hurt and heal. In this episode, recorded live in London, Dr van der Kolk explores trauma, abuse and suicidality to reveal new ap...
Oct 11, 2024•2 hr 54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since the dawn of humanity, our sense of ourselves has been shaped by things that seem human - or nearly human - but are not. From sacrificial animals to household pets, ancient gods to future technologies like robots and AI, human ethics was, is and will continue to be profoundly influenced by its relationship with intelligences other than our own. What moral responsibility do we have toward the prey that we hunt and the machines that clean our homes? Why did medieval Europeans put pigs and cat...
Oct 07, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ambitious yet anxious? Harvard-trained clinical psychologist Dr Mary E. Anderson joined us with an actionable guide to maintaining your edge all while reducing stress and finding happiness along your journey. From understanding thoughts and behaviours that might be causing obstacles for you, such as negative forecasting and perfectionism, to building sustainable habits that can help you thrive, Dr Anderson reveals that success doesn't have to come at the expense of your wellbeing. To get an excl...
Oct 04, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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 podcastchoices.c...
Aug 30, 2024•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 
