How To Academy Podcast

Robin DiAngelo and Beverly Daniel Tatum - Conversations About Race

23 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Greg Jenner - How to Find the Comedy in History

16 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Jane Goodall - A Survival Guide for an Endandgered Planet

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

World-renowned ethologist and conservationist Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a UN Messenger of Peace, has spent mor...

Richard Powers - Why Stories Matter

02 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Na...

Bernard-Henri Lévy - Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope

26 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Bernard-Henri Levy is one of the world’s most esteemed philosophers and public intellectuals; but his understanding of philosophy is anything but th...

Kate Bowler - The Meaning of Life

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

 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 choi...

Stephen Fry Meets Steven Pinker - The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

12 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 o...

James Nestor - the Art and Science of Breathing

04 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 thi...

Bonus Episode: With Reason - Learning from our Ancestors, with Alice Roberts

25 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this special bonus episode by our friends at New Humanist magazine and the Rationalist Association, Professor Alice Roberts takes us through import...

Fiona Shaw - A Life on Stage and Screen

21 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Rutger Bregman and Philippe Sands - Are Humans Naturally Good?

14 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Dennis Duncan - Index, a history of the

06 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Mary Portas - How to Thrive in the New Kindness Economy

30 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 podca...

Gordon Brown – How to Change the World

24 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 a...

Anish Kapoor - a Life in Art

16 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

An icon whose spectacular works occupy a liminal space between sculpture, engineering and architecture, Anish Kapoor is one of the world’s most ambi...

Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green - The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine

09 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 pneu...

Charles Yu - Interior Chinatown

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Mike Rothschild - The Rise of QAnon

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Lisa Taddeo and Hadley Freeman - Madness, Transgression, and Power

19 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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, “...

Daniel Kahneman - Why We Make Bad Judgments

12 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

John Higgs - William Blake vs the World

05 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Join us for a wild journey through culture, science, philosophy and religion to better understand the mercurial genius William Blake. Taking us on wil...

Katrine Marcal and Caroline Criado Perez - Mother of Invention

28 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 w...

Bill Clinton and James Patterson - The President's Daughter

22 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Sir David Hare - A Life in Theatre

08 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Sir David Hare is renowned across the English-speaking world as the finest political storyteller alive today. In our age of blockbuster musicals and C...

Ginny Smith - The Neuroscience of Everyday Life

02 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Maggie O'Farrell - The Life of Hamnet Shakespeare

24 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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. ...

Michio Kaku - The Quest For Theory of Everything

17 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Everyt...

Anna Ploszajski - Finding Meaning Through Making

10 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Sitting at the intersection of art, science, and history, this week's podcast reveals fresh perspectives and fascinating insights into our material wo...

George Saunders – Lessons in Writing and Life

26 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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? G...

Matthew d’Ancona – Why The Old Politics Is Useless and What We Can Do About It

19 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Political journalist Matthew d'Ancona's issues a call to arms to challenge this age of political extremism, lazy populism and democratic torpor. The o...

Isabel Allende – The Soul of a Woman

12 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Ian McEwan – A Life In Literature

29 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The country’s most prolific and celebrated novelist reflects upon a life in literature. Since his rise to literary acclaim almost forty years ago fo...

Rowan Hooper – How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

22 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Derren Brown – How To Be a Little Happier

15 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Since he introduced us to his singular and inimitable brand of psychology, stagecraft and magic in 2000, Derren Brown has played Russian Roulette on l...

Adam Grant and Tim Harford – The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

08 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Ethan Kross – How to Harness the Voice Inside Your Head

01 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 rabbi...

George the Poet Meets Mariana Mazzucato – a Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

22 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Toby Ord – Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

15 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We live during the most important era of human history. In the twentieth century, we developed the means to destroy ourselves – without developing t...

Owen Jones Meets Claudia Rankine

08 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 signifi...

Iain McGilchrist – The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning

01 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A tour de force of neuroscience and philosophy, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary speaks to everyone searching for happiness, meaning a...

Malcolm Gladwell - How to Make a Good First Impression

25 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From Blink to Outliers, Revisionist History to David and Goliath, no-one challenges our shared assumptions and invites us to rethink human nature like...

Caitlin Moran – More Than a Woman

18 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

‘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,...

Simon Schama – The World in 2021

11 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Richard Dawkins – The Meaning of Life

09 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtaki...

Yanis Varoufakis Meets Owen Jones

30 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Whether exposing Britain’s powerful elites in The Establishment or defending the white working class in Chavs, fighting for equality and social just...

Len Mlodinow and Robin Ince – The Life of Stephen Hawking

23 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 collabo...

Philip Lymbery - How to Live Sustainably in a Changing World

16 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Our meat and dairy intensive diets are destroying the planet. In this week's podcast, animal welfare environmentalist Philip Lymbery shares the new sc...

Jung Chang – Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China

09 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled through a hundred years of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations, the three...

Elizabeth Gilbert Meets Julia Cameron - The Path to Higher Creativity

02 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For more than thirty years, Julia Cameron has helped ordinary people and world-renowned artists alike discover their passions and transform their live...

Brian Cox Meets Rebecca Wragg Sykes – The Lost World of Neanderthals

26 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Since their discovery over 160 years ago, Neanderthals metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins. In conversation with...

David Mitchell – Dishonesty is the Second Best Policy

19 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Lying is probably as old as human language itself – an inevitable consequence of humanity’s greatest superpower. And comedian, Observer columnist ...

Jess Phillips – How To Speak Truth to Power

12 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

At a time when many of us feel the world isn’t listening, Jess Phillips is here to teach us how to get organised, speak out and fight against injust...

Thandie Newton Meets Gloria Steinem

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

She is the most iconic American feminist of the 20th and 21st centuries: a journalist and activist whose career spanned the campaign trails of Bobby K...

Sid Meier – The Rise of Civilization

21 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As the inventor of an entirely new genre of entertainment, legendary video-game designer Sid Meier is a true creative pioneer a godfather to a multi-b...

Geoffrey Robertson – Who Owns History?

14 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The question of whether Western nations must return the artefacts plundered under colonial rule is the most pressing issue in the art world today. Fro...

Roman Krznaric – How to Think Long Term in a Short Term World

07 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The greatest challenge facing humankind is not climate change or terrorism; it is our inability to think long term. Britain’s leading public philoso...

Anthony David – Mental Health After COVID

31 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

From anxiety to PTSD, the consequences of the pandemic for global mental health are profound. Neuropsychiatrist Anthony David explores what we know so...

Maria Konnikova – The Biggest Bluff

24 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When bestselling author Maria Konnikova set out to investigate the science of decision-making, she never expected to become a world-class poker player...

Clive Woodward – How to Win

17 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Clive Woodward has spent a lifetime in high-performance environments, from the rugby field to the boardroom. He gave broadcaster Matthew Stadlen a...

Kiley Reid – Such a Fun Age

10 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Such a Fun Age is the literary sensation of the season, making the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic following overwhelming critical accl...

Owen O’Kane - How to Manage Anxiety and Stress

03 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Psychotherapist and bestselling author Owen O’Kane was the NHS Clinical Lead for Mental Health. He joined us to explore evidence-based techniques fo...

Madeleine Albright – Hell and Other Destinations

27 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright may be the most widely admired diplomat of our age; a tireless public servant whose new memoir Hell and O...

Rahul Jandial – How To Rewire Your Brain

20 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It’s time to turn the tide against mental decline. Learn how to make your mind fitter, healthier and stronger using the insights of cutting-edge neu...

Richard Eyre - How to Make a Play

14 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The acclaimed director of stage and screen joins Matthew Stadlen for a masterclass in making theatre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...

Glennon Doyle – How to Find Yourself

29 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

‘Glennon shows us the clearest meaning of “To thine own self be true”. It’s as if she reached into her heart, captured the raw emotions there ...

Martin Wolf – The World After the Pandemic

22 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Revered by politicians, financiers and his fellow economists alike, the FT’s Martin Wolf may be the world’s most influential economic commentator....

Max Brooks - How To Survive a Global Catastrophe

17 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week's podcast guest Max Brooks is the bestselling author of the zombie apocalypse cult classic World War Z, for which he also wrote the screenpl...

L. David Marquet – Leadership is Language

08 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

'David Marquet is the kind of leader who comes around only once in a generation... His ideas and lessons are invaluable' – Simon Sinek Few of us rea...

Julia Ebner – Undercover With Extremists

01 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Frustrated by the limits of an outsider’s perspective, counter-extremism expert Julia Ebner secretly infiltrated five fanatical groups. She joined t...

John Browne - How to Engineer the Future

25 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Fans of Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari ought not to miss this eloquent blueprint for building a brighter future from engineer, John Browne. In c...

Layla Saad - How to Fight White Supremacy

18 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

'She is no-joke changing the world and, for what it's worth, the way I live my life.' - Anne Hathaway How can white people challenge racism -- whethe...

Brian Greene - How to Find Meaning in an Evolving Universe

11 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The bestselling author of The Elegant Universe joins the How To Academy Podcast to explore humankind’s search for purpose in the vastness of the cos...

Julia Samuel - How to Adapt and Survive in a Time of Crisis

01 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this unprecedented moment in global history, psychotherapist Julia Samuel joined the How To Academy Podcast to tell us how to find unknown strength...

How To Make Sense of Consciousness

20 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How do our brains produce the magic show of conscious experience? The question remains one of the universe's unsolved mysteries -- and this week's pod...

Mervyn King - How to Make Decisions for an Unknowable Future

14 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Many of the world’s problems stem from the false belief that we can accurately predict the future. Can we make better decisions by acknowledging rad...

BONUS EPISODE - Global GoalsCast

06 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The How To Academy Podcast presents an episode of one of our favourite shows: the Global GoalsCast. The climate challenge is sprawling and extraordi...

William Gibson – How to Create the Future

30 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

He coined the word ‘Cyberspace’ and envisioned the Internet and Virtual Reality before they ever existed. Now, in this week's How To Academy Podca...

Elif Shafak – How to Build Bridges in an Age of Division

23 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Author and activist Elif Shafak is the most widely read female writer in her home nation of Turkey -- but her fight against populism and tribalism is ...

Ai Weiwei – Human Rights in the 21st Century

16 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ai Weiwei is living proof that creativity can change our world for the better. Raised in a labour camp and later beaten, surveilled and imprisoned o...

Paul Krugman – Politics, Economics and the Fight for a Fairer Future

09 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For more than forty years Nobel laureate, bestselling economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has fought for a fair, just and liberal futu...

Erling Kagge and Ben Saunders - How to Be a Polar Explorer

24 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Two of the greatest living adventurers meet Hannah MacInnes to reflect on what motivates their journeys across the polar ice. Bringing together two r...

Joseph Stiglitz - How to Save American Capitalism

17 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How can we escape our age of discontent? In this week's podcast, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz challenges us to throw off the free mar...

Lisa Taddeo and Hadley Freeman On Sex and Desire

10 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Nearly a decade in the making, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a global phenomenon. Hailed instantly as a feminist classic, this staggering work of non...

BJ Fogg - How to Hack Your Habits

03 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Never make a New Year’s Resolution again after hearing this podcast from the world’s most renowned expert in forming new habits –Stanford behavi...

Eric Schmidt - How to Make a Trillion Dollars

27 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this week’s episode, Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, VP Jonathan Rosenberg and Director of Executive Communications Alan Eagle present a blue...

Life Lessons From Gina Miller

20 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“There are times when I’ve gone back and cried, and I do think at times, ‘Is it worth it?’ But I have to carry on fighting because it can’t ...

Hilary Cottam - How to Revolutionise the Welfare State

13 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Imitated and envied across the globe, the British welfare state was once revolutionary. But in 2020, our society faces urgent challenges that can only...

Neil deGrasse Tyson - Reflections from an Astrophysicist

06 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

He is the world’s most beloved scientist – an inspiration for all who seek understanding, meaning and truth in the vastness of the cosmos. Now Nei...

Chetna Gala Sinha - How to Fight Global Poverty

16 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On this week's podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets activist and microfinance pioneer Chetna Gala Sinha, whose work in rural India empowers some of the worl...

Rory Stewart - The Truth About Politics

07 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this week’s podcast, independent politician and London Mayoral candidate Rory Stewart tells Hannah MacInnes what he's discovered about British de...

Matthew Syed - A Radical Blueprint for Creative Problem-Solving

02 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Where do the best ideas come from? In this week’s podcast, Matthew Syed takes Matthew Stadlen on a fascinating journey through the new science of cr...

Speeches That Changed the World

25 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For this week's podcast, Hannah MacInnes and bestselling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore assembled an all-star cast to bring to life history's greate...

How to Stop Facebook From Destroying Democracy

18 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Roger NcNamee was Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor in the first days of Facebook. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, he explains why he's now devoted to...

Marie Forleo - How to Create Unstoppable Success

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

With nothing more than passion, a laptop and a dream, Marie Forleo created a digital empire that inspires millions. She’s the star of the award-winn...

Jonathan Safran Foer - How to Save the Planet

04 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The climate crisis is the single biggest threat to human survival. And it is happening right now. We all understand that time is running out - but do ...

Dr. Gabor Maté - When the Body Says No: The Costs of Hidden Stress

28 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Learn how to prevent and heal illnesses related to hidden stress with the help of acclaimed physician Dr. Gabor Maté. Can a person literally die of l...

Juliet Stevenson - How To Be An Actor

17 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This week's How To Academy Podcast is a masterclass with one of the greatest British actors of her generation: Juliet Stevenson. Best known for film w...

Rory Sutherland - How to Be Less Rational (and More Brilliant)

14 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this week’s How To Academy podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets advertising legend Rory Sutherland for a lesson in using the power of psychology to mak...

Melinda Gates - How to Empower Women

07 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this week's podcast, Melinda Gates makes a timely and necessary call to action for women’s empowerment. For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates...

John Humphrys - How to Make the News

19 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For the last 33 years, John Humphrys has held politicians to account as the host of our most popular news programme - Radio 4's Today. In this week's ...