How To Academy Podcast

Emily Ratajkowski has established herself as a multifaceted talent. As a model, she has appeared on the covers of major fashion magazines and is currently the face of L’Oréal’s hair care line Kerastase. As an actress, she has appeared in films including David Fincher’s Gone Girl and alongside Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty. Ratajkowski is also outspoken politically, continually using her platform to advocate for her political beliefs, having campaigned for Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020. She joined How To Academy live on stage in London to explore the themes of her essay collection My Body in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Pandora Sykes. Investigating the culture's fetishization fo female beauty and its obsession and contempt for women's sexuality, this is an must-hear discussion for everyone concerned with the dynamics of gender and power in the modern world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A good life involves more than just pleasure. Suffering is essential too. It seems obvious that pleasure leads to happiness - and pain does the opposite. And yet we are irresistibly drawn to a host of experiences that truly hurt, from the exhilarating fear of horror movies or extreme sport, to the wrenching sadness of a song or novel, to the gruelling challenges of exercise, work, creativity and having a family. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, pre-eminent psychologist Paul Bloom explores the pleasures of suffering and explains why the activities that provide most satisfaction are often the ones that involve greatest sacrifice. He will argue that embracing this truth is the key to a life well lived. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Philip Pullman’s novels are a testament to the power of the human imagination and a celebration of our capacity for wonder, proving to millions of readers across the globe that enchantment still has a profound role to play in our age of reason. It is an ethos shared by the neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, whose book The Master and His Emissary was that rare thing: a bestselling classic of modern philosophy with genuine relevance to human life. In this podcast, the two men will come together to explore The Matter With Things, McGilchrist’s ground-breaking sequel to The Master and His Emissary and the culmination of a lifetime of thought. How does the brain produce our experience of the world? What role do science, reason, and imagination play in the search for truth – and how much should we trust each of these paths to knowledge? On this week's show you'll hear new answers to these ancient questions - and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

'For the left, elections are a brief interlude in a life of real politics, a moment to ask whether it's worth taking time off to vote . . . Then back to work. The work will be to move forward to construct the better world that is within reach.' – Noam Chomsky A giant of both 20th and 21st century intellectual life, Noam Chomsky’s influence on the development of linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science cannot be overstated; but it is as a political thinker, activist and social critic that his ideas have made the most impact outside of the academy. In conversation with the author Fatima Bhutto, he joins us live to shed light on the world in 2021, sharing his insights into the post-pandemic world, exposing the catastrophic nature and impact of authoritarian policies on people and the planet, and exploring the dynamics of our dog-eat-dog society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What we can do to have better conversations with our children and with each other about race, and build a better world? Beverly Daniel Tatum and Robin DiAngelo have dedicated their lives to anti-racist education. The bestselling authors of, respectively, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and White Fragility, their insights are essential for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of race in the United States and beyond. In the age of Trump, Black Lives Matter, and increasingly polarisation, they join the How To Academy Podcast with an urgent call to embrace courage, lifelong commitment and accountability in the struggle for equality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chief historian of the BBC's Horrible Histories TV show and the host of chart-topping podcast You're Dead to Me, Greg Jenner is a master in the art of turning the messiness of history into whip-smart comic entertainment. He joined us to explore his favourite historical questions and their often surprising answers - as submitted by the general public. From chariot racing to bank robbery, Egyptian mummies to Monty Python, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast is a ride through some of the wildest and weirdest episodes in ten thousand years of human civilisation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

World-renowned ethologist and conservationist Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a UN Messenger of Peace, has spent more than a half-century warning of our impact on our planet. From her famous encounters and research into the wild chimpanzees in the forests of Gombe which began more than sixty years ago and continues to this day, to her tireless campaigning for the environment in her late eighties, Jane has become the godmother to a new generation of climate activists. She joined the How To Academy Podcast to teach us how to find strength in the face of the climate crisis. Photo attibution: Vincent Calmel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Few works of literature have the power to change who we are and how we conceive our place in the universe – but Richard Powers Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning masterpiece The Overstory is one. For Barack Obama, Powers ‘changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it’; for Emma Thompson, The Overstory was a ‘the best book I've read in 10 years… a lodestone’; for Ann Patchett, it was simply ‘one of the best novels, period’. This year's follow-up, the Booker shortlisted Bewilderment, is no less profound; an acclaimed exploration of the fragility of life on Earth that dares to ask the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet? Richard joined us on stage in London in conversation with broadcaster Razia Iqbal to explore why storytelling matters. In an age of impending ecological catastrophe, how can the novel help us to grow our empathy for one another and expand our awareness and love of the natural world? This podcast was produced in association with the Conduit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bernard-Henri Levy is one of the world’s most esteemed philosophers and public intellectuals; but his understanding of philosophy is anything but theoretical. A humanitarian activist of deep conviction, for fifty years he has reported from the sites of human rights abuses and humanitarian crises that fail to receive global attention or an active response, shedding light on urgent stories that Western media and governments have chosen to ignore. He joined us on stage in London to issue a stirring rebuke to indifference and an exhortation to level our gaze at those most hidden from us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kate Bowler had always accepted the modern idea that life is an endless horizon of possibilities. As many of us do, she saw life as a series of choices that, if made correctly, would lead us to a place just out of reach. But then, aged just thirty-five, Kate was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. She was forced to ask one of the most fundamental questions of all: How do we create meaning in our lives when the life we hoped for is put on hold? In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Kate explores how to navigate life with the knowledge that it could end at any moment. As we struggle to decipher what constitutes a meaningful existence in this strange new world, at a time when our lives have never been further from our control, Kate will demonstrate how we can find meaning without having to pretend that life is always getting better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In anticipation of Steven Pinker's return to How To Academy later this month, this episode of the podcast revisits his conversation with Stephen Fry on stage in London in 2018. The challenges we face today are formidable, including inequality, climate change, Artificial Intelligence and nuclear weapons. But the way to deal with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a mythical idyllic past; it's to treat them as problems we can solve, as we have solved other problems in the past. In conversation with actor and author Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker makes the case for an Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century, urging us to use our faculties of reason and sympathy to solve the problems that inevitably come with being products of evolution in an indifferent universe. We will never have a perfect world, but - defying the chorus of fatalism and reaction - we can continue to make it a better one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this week's podcast, science writer and Sunday Times bestselling author James Nestor joins us with a guide that will forever change the way you think about health and wellbeing. We breathe 25,000 times a day: yet as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly - with grave consequences for our health. James travelled the world to discover the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. He shared his story with Hannah MacInnes. You will never breathe the same again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this special bonus episode by our friends at New Humanist magazine and the Rationalist Association, Professor Alice Roberts takes us through important archaeological discoveries to help us better understand life in Britain today. About With Reason: From New Humanist magazine and the Rationalist Association, With Reason is a podcast offering intelligent thinking for turbulent times. Interviews with thinkers who speak to our age – on subjects including religion, race, politics, sex, tech, work and much more. Find it on Apple, Spotify, Google, or their website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From My Left Foot to Harry Potter, Fleabag to Killing Eve, Fiona Shaw is an integral presence in the Irish and British screen drama of the last three decades; and in collaboration with the foremost directors of our time – from Deborah Warner to Nicholas Hytner – is universally renowned as one of the most outstanding and distinguished stage actors of her generation. Whether in her ground-breaking performance as Shakespeare’s Richard II or her unforgettable turn as Brecht’s Mother Courage, as Euripides’ Medea or Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, her work is experimental, provocative, and risk-taking, daring audiences to reassess what they thought they knew about theatre and the human condition. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, she explores her life and work with writer and broadcaster Matthew Stadlen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Philippe Sands meets Rutger Bregman, one of the greatest young thinkers of our time, to hear a new story of human nature that places our capacity for kindness, not selfishness, at its heart. It’s a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, human rights lawyer and award-winning author Philippe Sands QC meets the bestselling Dutch historian and viral superstar Rutger Bregman to hear a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this week's podcast, literary scholar Dennis Duncan takes us into the secret world of the index and reveals how it transformed the way we read and process knowledge forever. Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office and made us all into the readers we are today. From the library of Alexandria to the coffee houses of Georgian London, an d with a cast including Plato, Sherlock Holmes, and Norman Mailer, this witty history of an invaluable and underappreciated tool is sure to delight bibliophiles everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary Portas loves business. Fundamentally, she lives and breathes it. What she loves best about it is making businesses work. But in this week's podcast, she argues that we’ve been doing it wrong. In 2021, it’s not only possible to build healthy businesses that do less bad and add more good – it’s a commercial imperative. Rampant consumerism has been driving the economic machine and we have put the pursuit of profit above all else. Over the past thirty years the business of what we buy has been dominated by the biggest, fastest and cheapest. But those values no longer resonate. We've come to realize that more doesn't equal better. How we live, buy and sell is changing. The post-pandemic era is all about care, respect and understanding the implications of what we're doing. This 'Kindness Economy' is a new value system where in order to thrive businesses must understand the fundamental role they play in the fabric of our lives. They need to add, not just grow, balancing commerce with social progress. Because we don't just want to buy from brands - we want to buy into them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is time for a new era of global order. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown joins us with authoritative solutions to the greatest challenges of our age. Gordon Brown knows more than most politicians about how to handle an international crisis. As Prime Minister during the 2008 financial crisis he played a major role in steering the global response and driving the recovery; and as the UN’s Special Envoy for Global Education he is one of the world’s most prominent and influential frontline diplomats, working to widen access to education and break the poverty cycle. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, he joins Tom Fletcher, former diplomat and Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, to share his insights into the major crises of the 21st century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An icon whose spectacular works occupy a liminal space between sculpture, engineering and architecture, Anish Kapoor is one of the world’s most ambitious living artists. The first living artist to take over the Royal Academy with a record-breaking blockbuster exhibition, the recipient of a Turner Prize, a knighthood, the LennonOno Prize for Peace, the $1 million Genesis Prize, an Oxford doctorate and the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, Anish Kapoor holds the rare status of an artist both revered by critics and overwhelmingly loved by the public. From Chicago’s Cloud Gate to the London Olympic Park’s Orbit, the Rockefeller Center’s Sky Mirror to Paris’s Leviathan, Kapoor’s sculptures resonate with mythic significance, belonging to a tradition and a way of thinking that extends back to the great wonders of the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On New Year’s Day 2020, Sarah Gilbert, Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University, read an article about four people in China with a strange pneumonia. Within two weeks, she and her team had designed a vaccine against a pathogen that no one had ever heard of. Less than 12 months later, vaccination was rolled out across the world to save millions of lives from Covid-19. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Professor Gilbert and her colleague Dr Catherine Green, who led on the manufacturing of the vaccine, join us to separate fact from fiction and explain how they made a highly safe vaccine in record time with the eyes of the world watching. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Willis Wu mostly gets to play Generic Asian Man. If he is lucky, sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son. For now he is a bit player: but he dreams that one day he will be offered the most coveted role someone who looks like him might aspire to: Kung Fu Guy. A coruscating satire of race, assimilation and Hollywood, Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown is both a groundbreaking experimental novel and a deeply personal and affecting family story heralded as one of the best books of 2020. A New York Times bestseller and the winner of the 2020 National Book Award, the novel confirms Yu as one of America's most exciting young authors. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, he explores the history of Chinese culture in the US, how his personal experiences as a first generation Taiwanese-American shaped the narrative, and what his own time in Hollywood has taught him about the art of storytelling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2017, President Trump made a cryptic remark at a gathering of military officials, describing it as ‘the calm before the storm’-then refused to explain himself to puzzled journalists. But on internet message boards, a mysterious poster called ‘Q Clearance Patriot’ began an elaboration all of their own. In this week's podcast, Mike Rothschild explores his new book, The Storm Is Upon Us. With families torn apart and with the Capitol under attack, he argues that mocking the madness of QAnon will get us nowhere. Instead, he argues that QAnon tells us everything we need to know about global fear after Trump-and that we need to understand it now, because it’s not going away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women was a world-wide sensation – forever changing how we think about women and desire. A bestseller in the US and the UK, “Book of the Year” for more than thirty of the most respected media titles, including the FT, Times and Time magazine, an instant classic beloved by cultural icons including Gillian Anderson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Gilbert, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a global phenomenon. Now Lisa’s debut novel Animal is set to do the same for how we think about madness and trauma. Animal opens with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head of an unrequited lover and becomes a road-trip to California, centring on a woman who is driven to extremes by the violence of her past. In this episode of the podcast, Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman explores the inspiration behind this brazen and daring fictional debut. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The quality of professional judgments have a huge and lasting impact on all of our lives: the decision of an A&E doctor treating a patient, a teacher grading a paper, or a high court judge delivering a sentencing should not be a matter of personal taste. And yet there is huge, unwanted variability across human judgment. Bias has long been the star of the show when it comes to errors in decision making. Now Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein and Olivier Sibony have uncovered a critical and overlooked factor: noise. Noise explains why police officers show greater leniency towards offenders who have the same name as they do; why doctors prescribe more drugs at the end of the day than at the beginning; why judicial sentences tend to be more severe in hot weather; and why stock-market performance is affected by sunshine. In conversation with Diana Fox Carney, Kahneman, Sunstein and Sibony reveal how noise and bias both shape our thought processes – and the remedies we can take to make far better decisions and judgments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join us for a wild journey through culture, science, philosophy and religion to better understand the mercurial genius William Blake. Taking us on wild detours into unfamiliar territory, John Higgs places the bewildering eccentricities of a most singular artist into context. The journey begins with us trying to understand him, but we will ultimately discover that it is Blake who helps us to understand ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every day, extraordinary inventions and innovative ideas are side-lined in a world that remains subservient to men. But it doesn’t have to be this way. From the beginning of time, women have been pivotal to our society, offering ingenious solutions to some of our most vexing problems. More recently, it is women who have transformed the way we shop online, revolutionised the lives of disabled people and put the climate crisis at the top of the agenda. For too long we have underestimated the consequences of sexism in our economy, and the way it holds all of us – women and men – back. In conversation with author and activist Caroline Criado Perez, Katrine Marçal sets the record straight and shows how, in a time of crisis, the ingenuity and intelligence of women is that very thing that can save us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drawing on his first-hand knowledge of life in the White House, global geopolitics and the upper echelons of power, Bill Clinton teamed up with one of the world’s best-known and best-selling authors, James Patterson, to tell the story of the most thrilling, frightening, and plausible tale of an American presidency yet devised. ‘Meticulous in its portrayal of Washington politics, gripping in its pacing, and harrowing in its depiction of the perils of cyberwarfare' (Ron Chernow), The President Is Missing was heralded as both a heart-pounding thrill ride and an authentic look inside the mind of the leader of the free world. Now President Clinton and James Patterson are back with a new novel: The President's Daughter. In this week's podcast, they share insights into their creative process and reflections on the world in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sir David Hare is renowned across the English-speaking world as the finest political storyteller alive today. In our age of blockbuster musicals and CGI superheroes, his oeuvre stands as a testament to the power of theatre and cinema to capture and even transform the soul of a nation. A student in that extraordinary year, 1968, Hare quickly emerged as a writer of courage, heart and coruscating satirical talent, fusing human drama with grand political narratives to map the convulsions of the post-war years. Whether depicting the crumbling institutions of church and state, ruthlessly mocking media tycoons, or engaging in a forensic analysis of the Suez Crisis and WMD debacle, his plays are not cold, calculating social commentary but a barometer of our age, revealing who we are and may become with a rare depth of romantic feeling. And his BAFTA winning, Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated screenplays – undisputed modern classics such as The Hours, The Reader and Damage – have brought his vision to a global audience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do we learn? Why we do sleep, or fall in love? Can we trust our memories? In this week's podcast, neuroscience expert, author and presenter Ginny Smith explores the latest science of the mind and brain to answer the big questions about human behaviour. From adrenaline to dopamine, our lives are shaped by the chemicals that control us. They are the hormones and neurotransmitters that our brains run on, and science writer Ginny Smith is here to explore the role they play in all aspects of our experiences. In this week's podcast, author Ginny Smith explores what these tiny molecules do: what roles do cortisol and adrenaline play in memory formation? How do hormones and neurotransmitters affect the trajectory of our romantic relationships? It's an eye-opening tour through the amazing world inside our heads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week. The winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 and a Sunday Times bestseller, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, she explores how she came to write this remarkable novel, including insights into her hands-on research into the life in Elizabethan England - from learning falconry to mudlarking along the Thames. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michio Kaku takes Robin Ince on the mind-bending ride through the twists and turns of an epic scientific journey: the quest to find a Theory of Everything. Einstein dedicated his life to seeking this elusive Holy Grail, a single, revolutionary 'god equation' which would tie all the forces in the universe together, yet never found it. Some of the greatest minds in physics took up the search, from Stephen Hawking to Brian Greene. None have yet succeeded. In this conversation with author, comic and science broadcaster Robin Ince, renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku shares the story of a mystery that has fascinated him for most of his life. The object of the quest is now within sight: we are closer than ever to achieving the most ambitious undertaking in the history of science. If successful, the Theory of Everything could simultaneously unlock the deepest mysteries of space and time, and fulfil that most ancient and basic of human desires – to understand the meaning of our lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sitting at the intersection of art, science, and history, this week's podcast reveals fresh perspectives and fascinating insights into our material world. Scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials: But most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon of glass. Anna Ploszajski is here to change that. A materials scientist and engineer, she has journeyed into the domain of makers and craftspeople to comprehend how the most popular materials really work. With knowledge accumulated over generations through hands-on trial and error, these experimenters and tinkerers understand the materiality of objects far better than any scientist with a textbook. She joins us to share what she discovered, revealing the story of materials through making and doing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What makes great stories work? What can they tell us about our world today? How can they make us better readers and how can we write them ourselves? George Saunders is one of the undisputed masters of American letters; a novelist, storyteller and essayist whose wisdom and insight have been rewarded with the highest accolades in literature. In a rare treat for authors and storytellers of all forms, he shares his insights from teaching some of the best young writers in America. Drawing on the works of Russian masters, he reminds us that the process of writing is as much a craft as it is a quality of openness and a willingness to see the world through new eyes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Political journalist Matthew d'Ancona's issues a call to arms to challenge this age of political extremism, lazy populism and democratic torpor. The old tools of political analysis are obsolete - they have rusted and are no longer fit for purpose. We've grown lazy, wedded to the assumption that, after ruptures such as Brexit, the pandemic, and the rise of the populist Right, things will eventually go 'back to normal'. Award-winning political writer Matthew d'Ancona joins us with an invitation to think afresh: to seek new ways of challenging political extremism, bombastic populism and democratic torpor on both Left and Right. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, he will propose a new way of understanding our era and plots a way forward. With rigorous analysis, he argues that we need to understand the world in a new way, with a framework built from the three I's: Identity, Ignorance and Innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Isabel Allende has been a feminist her whole life. From a young age she rebelled against male authority, after seeing her mother Panchita abandoned by her husband and left to provide for three small children. While growing up in Chile in her grandparents’ house, Isabel realised early on that the women in her family, from matriarch to housemaid, were at a disadvantage compared to the men, treated as subordinates with no voice. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, Isabel rode the first wave of feminism. While working at the newly launched feminist magazine, Paula, her journalism challenged the patriarchal mores imposed on women regarding sex, money, discriminatory laws, drugs, virginity, abortion, prostitution, alcoholism to name a few. In this week's How To Academy podcast, Isabel shares stories from her life as a feminist with broadcaster Belle Donati. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The country’s most prolific and celebrated novelist reflects upon a life in literature. Since his rise to literary acclaim almost forty years ago for the dazzlingly grotesque short stories that earned him the moniker “Ian Macabre”, to his present-day voyages into the uncharted territories of climate change and Artificial Intelligence, one thing has remained consistent across Ian McEwan’s astonishing oeuvre: the exacting precision with which he can simultaneously dissect both the mysteries of the human psyche and the tribulations of our age. With a gift for creating scenes of heart-stopping anxiety, from the kidnapping that opens A Child in Time to Enduring Love’s iconic balloon ride gone wrong, drawing characters whose romantic longing and realistic flaws are recognisably our own, and exploring philosophical and moral ambiguities that speak to both to our time and to the great quandaries of life, Ian McEwan has proven himself time and again to be the foremost literary novelist of his generation. Whether you’re an aspiring novelist seeking to learn the craft from a veritable master of the form, a lifelong reader of his seminal novels, or simply intrigued to hear from one of the most exciting cultural figures working in any field or discipline, this is an unmissable opportunity to look inside the imagination of an author of the first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. In this week’s How To Academy Podcast, New Scientist senior editor and evolutionary biologist Rowan Hooper explores how $1 trillion could be used to change the course of human history: from creating artificial life to colonising the moon, helping in the fight against climate change to lifting millions out of poverty. It’s the ultimate thought experiment and a powerful reminder of the power of science and economics to shape our collective future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. His live shows astonish audiences across the country and have captivated the West End and Broadway. 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Research shows that the smarter you are the more you might struggle to update your beliefs, yet some of the most successful people, from entrepreneurs to politicians, all have one thing in common: the ability to think like scientists, continually questioning their beliefs, and to embrace being wrong. As an organisational psychologist, Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds, and our own. He is one of the world’s most-cited, most prolific, and most influential researchers in business and economics, and, as Wharton’s top-rated professor, his research is sought-after by global powerhouses such as NASA and the Gates Foundation. In this week's podcast, economist, FT columnist and author Tim Harford joins Adam to discover how we can all learn to embrace the power of knowing what we don't know. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We all have a voice in our head that we tune into from time to time for guidance, ideas and wisdom. Except sometimes, this voice leads us down a rabbit hole of negative self-talk and endless rumination which undermines our performance at work, interferes with our ability to make good decisions, and negatively influences our relationships. Since we aren’t going to stop talking to ourselves— and, frankly, we don’t want to, since the voices in our heads have valuable things to say—it’s important we learn to use our introspection effectively. Drawing on more than twenty years of ground-breaking research, University of Michigan Psychologist Ethan Kross joined Matthew Stadlen to reveal the life-changing potential of a mind constructively channelled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, capitalism was stuck. It had no answer to the different challenges facing the world – from those related to health to digital privacy to the climate crisis. Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s ‘moonshot’ programmes that successfully co-ordinated public and private sectors to put a man on the moon, Mariana Mazzucato calls for the same level of boldness and experimentation to be applied to the biggest social and political issues of our time. In conversation with George the Poet, she joins the podcast to argue that we need to rethink the capacities and role of government within the economy and society, and above all recover a sense of public purpose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We live during the most important era of human history. In the twentieth century, we developed the means to destroy ourselves – without developing the moral framework to ensure we won't. This is the Precipice, and how we respond to it will be the most crucial decision of our time. In this week's podcast, Oxford moral philosopher Toby Ord explores the risks to humanity's future, from the familiar man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war, to the potentially greater, more unfamiliar threats from engineered pandemics and advanced artificial intelligence. Can we protect the legacy of the hundred billion who have come before us, and secure a future for the trillions that could follow? What can we do, in our present moment, to face the risks head on? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How can we best approach one another across our differences? The first and only poet to write a New York Times bestseller, the winner of every significant literary prize in the United States, and recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant”, Jamaican-born Claudia Rankine is an icon of contemporary American letters. In this conversation with Guardian columnist Owen Jones, she explores her own prejudices and those of others, and celebrate vulnerability, openness and the willingness to be wrong. It’s an urgent call to enter into conversations which could offer humane pathways through this moment of division. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A tour de force of neuroscience and philosophy, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary speaks to everyone searching for happiness, meaning and understanding in the modern world. For millennia humans have speculated upon the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Why did evolution lead to humans and many other animals developing two cerebral hemispheres, separated by a groove? No neuroscientist would dispute that there are significant differences; but until now, no-one has understood why. Dr Iain McGilchrist has an empirical answer to this question – and his ideas have profound consequences for how humans understand themselves and their place in the world. This conversation between Dr McGilchrist and science journalist David Malone explores how the competition between the two hemispheres has shaped civilisation and progress and now, in our hyper-rationalist age, threatens to undermine the deepest and most sacred human values. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Blink to Outliers, Revisionist History to David and Goliath, no-one challenges our shared assumptions and invites us to rethink human nature like Malcolm Gladwell. Named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers, his ideas have passed into common currency and made him one of the most recognisable and beloved public intellectuals of our time. He is uncannily tuned into the zeitgeist, able to fuse scholarly insights, human stories and a global perspective to illuminate truths about our world that were otherwise destined to remain hidden. In conversation with Hubertus Kuelps, Malcolm explores the theme of his latest book, Talking to Strangers: how can we make a good impression? This podcast is the latest episode of Found in Conversation, a podcast brought to you by the Pictet Group in partnership with How To Academy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

‘First, you have to learn how to be a woman. Then middle age arrives, and you realise you have to become … more than a woman. To those around you, you’re now the Fourth Emergency Service.” – Caitlin Moran Caitlin Moran was home-educated on a Wolverhampton council estate and went onto become the most iconic columnist and critic of her generation. From How to Be a Woman to Moranifesto, How to Build a Girl to Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves, her game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy and becoming a woman is above all things a cry ‘to live a full, open-hearted, joyous life’ (Sunday Times). She joins the How To Academy Podcast for a riotous, heart-felt celebration of all those middle-aged women whose stories never get made into TV shows, or movies - but who, none-the-less, keep the world turning. As Caitlin says, “Take up your space, dude – you’ve earned it.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The events of 2020 have upturned the order of the world, and the medical, economic and political crises we face will not fade quietly as the new year begins. Though so much of the present moment feels strange and unprecedented, there is wisdom in heeding to George Santayana’s famous proverb that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. To help ensure that we do not fall foul of the prophecy, Simon Schama joined How To Academy to share his insights into the past and near future. A natural storyteller with a deep grasp of human psychology and the broader forces that shape our world, Schama reflected upon the lessons history holds for the coming year in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Matthew Stadlen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. That's never far from my thoughts, that sense of amazement.” – Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins has done more than any other scientist to promote and celebrate the origins of life on Earth. 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 Aranda @fredericaranda Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whether exposing Britain’s powerful elites in The Establishment or defending the white working class in Chavs, fighting for equality and social justice as a Guardian columnist and broadcaster, Owen Jones may be the most influential and widely respected political journalist of his generation. In conversation with world-renowned economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, he gives an unflinchingly honest, insider’s account of Labour’s electoral defeat in 2019 – and explores where the Left can go next in the new world we find ourselves in. We have the opportunity to build a fairer country and a more equal world, but if our time is to come, then we must learn from our past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An icon of the last fifty years, Stephen Hawking seems to encapsulate genius. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, his colleague and collaborator Leonard Mlodinow offers an intimate account of this giant of science in conversation with comic and broadcaster Robin Ince. The two met in 2003, after Stephen asked Leonard if he would consider writing a book with him. As they spent years working on A Briefer History of Time followed by The Grand Design, they forged a deep connection and Leonard gained a greater understanding of Stephen's daily life and struggles -- as well as his compassion and humour. Together they obsessed over the perfect sentence, debated the physics, and occasionally punted on Cambridge's waterways with champagne and strawberries. In time, Leonard was able to finish Stephen's jokes, chide his sporadic mischief, and learn how the hardships of his illness helped forge that unique perspective on the universe. Weaving together their shared story with a clear-sighted portrayal of Hawking's scientific achievements, Mlodinow creates a beautiful portrait of Stephen Hawking as a brilliant, impish and generous man whose life was not only exceptional but also genuinely inspiring. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices