How To Academy Podcast

Each month our sister podcast Found in Conversation explores global affairs and innovation with world-leading thinkers. In this episode, Oxford data scientist and TED star Hannah Richie and investor Rosa Sangiorgio reveal how we can overcome the climate crisis and become the first sustainable generation in history. If you enjoy the episode, you can subscribe to Found In Conversation on Apple or Spotify. Hannah explores the themes of this episode in more depth in her new book Not the End of the World, which is out now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fi Glover and Jane Garvey are radio legends. Already major BBC stars in their own right, their podcast together, Fortunately… with Fi and Jane has grown from a cult following to become one of the nation’s most loved and celebrated shows. Described in their own words as a “podcast in which two women exchange random thoughts, occasional pleasantries, fatuous double-entendres, real-life challenges, and often sudden bursts of something approaching wisdom”, this witty, refreshing take on the drama and hilarity of the modern world has been an anchor and a lifeline for so many of us during the pandemic, coming to represent the best that British broadcasting has to offer. Just before Christmas, Fi and Jane joined us live on stage in London, sharing the wit and wisdom for which they have won the nation's hearts. 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

Amy Edmondson is one of the world's most influential organisational psychologists, a professor at Harvard Business School, and an expert on the concept of psychological safety.  She joined to answer a simple, provocative question: what if it is only by learning to fail that we can truly hope to succeed? Her new book Right Kind of Wrong doesn't tell us that failure is a problem; but it doesn't tell us to fail fast, fail often either. It tells us how to fail well. She joined Hannah MacInnes to share more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Described by The Times as a modern Daphne de Maurier, Claire Fuller’s writing is beautifully dark and vividly atmospheric. Her fourth novel, Unsettled Ground, follows the lives of two adult twins whose world is upturned after the death of their mother. After surviving for years off-grid and at the mercy of the seasons in their secluded cottage, the twins are tumbled into the present and forced to confront their change of circumstance and long-ignored family secrets. Unsettled Ground is at once a haunting study of our society's resistance to the unconventional and a sensitive portrait of familial love. Claire shares with us how writing the novel has changed her perception of modern life and asks why contemporary fiction has lost sight of the realities of rural poverty. 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

We are often told that the secret to success is hard work, determination, and hours of practice. But in a fast-changing world, what if the really crucial skill is knowing when to stick at something and when to change track and walk away? Former pro poker player turned decision making expert Annie Duke joins Wharton School economist Katy Milkman to make the under-appreciated case for quitting and also shows you how to get really good at it. 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

Amy Jeffs brings legends of the medieval world to life through art, music, and the written word. Her debut book Storyland retold Britain's myths of origin for modern audiences, captivating us with stories of heroes and adventure from the Middle Ages. The sequel, Wild, transports us into the wilderness, giving voice to marginalised and forgotten figures - women, outcasts, monsters - and reveals Amy's own journeys across the rugged landscapes of the British isles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Junkie, DJ, punk, pill popper, petty criminal, binge drinker, screenwriter, TV repairman: Irvine Welsh has lived more lives than the average man of letters and survived to tell the tale. In his hallucinogenic fiction, God turns men into flies as punishment for wasting their lives, babies and ravers swap bodies, and tapeworms tell stories about the humans in whose guts they reside. The most important Scottish novelist of his generation joins How To Academy to take us inside his life and world, and offer a preview of The Long Knives, the second in his hugely acclaimed CRIME trilogy. This episode contains lots of swearing. If you would prefer a beeped version please visit our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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 ideas. This episode of the How To Academy Podcast is part of the Found in Conversation series we co-produce each month with the team at Pictet. Find Found in Conversation on Apple or Spotify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 taken for granted - built into our psychological and political language, rooted in the way we think about minds and societies. Historian of science Daniel Pick joins the podcast to reveal how we got to this point, and why. Find out more about the Hidden Persuaders research group at Birkbeck here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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 culture, the power of reading, and the importance of finding magic and mystery in ordinary life. There is some swearing in this episode; if you would prefer a beeped version, you can find it on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 celebrates human ingenuity, creativity and curiosity: a powerful reminder that progress relies on the desire to know. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 question touching upon each of our lives: how do we console one other and ourselves in an age of unbelief?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Dynasty, a fantasy series investigating the foundational myths of nationhood through a science fictional extrapolation of the engineering and social structures of East Asian antiquity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Cain joins us to explore how bittersweetness is the key to leading a full and satisfying life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable we can better plan for a future we'd like to see. And by seeing what's coming faster, we can become more optimistic agents of change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices