Sounds About Right: Audiobooks to Help Us Understand the World

Nicolas Humphrey has been  studying the evolution of intelligence and consciousness for over 50 years. He has been a Lecturer in Psychology at Oxford, Assistant Director of the Subdepartment of Animal Behaviour at Cambridge, Senior Research Fellow in Parapsychology at Cambridge, Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research, New York, and School Professor at the London School of Ec...

I had a fascinating  conversation with John-Paul (@jpreads6. His TikTok account is one of the most prominent in an engaging  and community focused niche, black literary fiction. The books mentioned in the episodes are: Honey and Spice, by Bolu Babalola The Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson Small World by Caleb Azumah Nelson In Every Mirror She&ap...

Shane O'Mara is a Professor of Experimental Brain Research in Trinity College Dublin, and am a Principal Investigator in, and currently the Director of, the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and a member of the academic staff of the School of Psychology. I had the please of discussing with him, his latest book titled: Talking Heads: The New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our World...

I had a lovely conversation with Costa (@NotThatCosta) about all things books. His TikTok account is one of my favourite to follow to hear some fascinating book reviews and recommendations.  Fair to say that after this episode, my 'to be read list' has grown much larger! The books mentioned in this episode includes: 1984, by George Orwell Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in th...

Patrick Fagan is a Sunday Times bestselling author, and public speaker, and consults for brands and political campaigns around the world. I had the please of discussing with him, his latest book which he co-authored with journalist Laura Dodsworth titled: Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist It. Some of the topics discussed includes: How he came up with the idea of putti...

Dr Phil Whitaker  has lived in a variety of locations around the UK including Nottingham, where he studied in medicine, and Oxford, where he undertook postgraduate training in general practice. I had the please of discussing with him, his latest book titled: What Is a Doctor?: A GP's Prescription for the Future.   Using stories and case studies from across his thirty-year career as a GP,  Dr...

Arianne Shahvisi is a Kurdish-British writer and academic philosopher. Raised in Lancashire and Essex, she studied astrophysics and philosophy at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and now teaches applied philosophy at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, where her research focusses on gender, race, migration, and health. She writes regularly for the London Review of Books, and her essay...

Professor Sean F. Ennis is an economist, author and expert. He focuses on company behavior, competition and regulation.  He has developed economic market analysis for governments, academia and the private sector. After receiving a BA Hons from King’s College, Cambridge and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, he spent more than two decades working on economic and regulatory topics...

Bart Elmore is an award-winning professor and writer who investigates the impact of big business on our environment. I had the pleasure of speaking with Bart about his latest book titled: Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet . Where in the book, he uses the histories of five southern firms―Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx, and Bank...

Dr. Marcus Collins is an award-winning marketer and cultural translator with one foot in the world of practice--as the head of strategy at Wieden+Kennedy, NY--and one foot in the world of academia--as a clinical assistant professor of marketing at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. His deep understanding of brand strategy and consumer behavior has helped him bridge the academic-p...

Prof. Lewis Dartnell is a research scientist, presenter and author based in London, UK. He graduated from Oxford University with a First Class degree in Biological Sciences and completed his PhD at University College London in 2007. He now holds the Professorship in Science Communication at the University of Westminster. He has also published five books: THE KNOWLEDGE was the Sunday Times ‘New Thi...

Mary-Jane Rubenstein is Professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University, and is affiliated with the Philosophy Department and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. She holds a B.A. from Williams College, an M.Phil. from The University of Cambridge, and a Ph. D. in from Columbia University. Her research unearths the philosophies and histories of religion and scien...

She studied at Oxford and Manchester, gaining her PhD in 2000. Postdoctoral research and teaching followed, including a prestigious Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Fellowship, before she was appointed to a lectureship at Birkbeck in 2004. She became Professor of Mathematics there in 2013, and served in various management roles including as Head of Mathematics and Statistics, Ass...

William D. Eggers is the Executive Director of Deloitte’s Center for Government Insights where he is responsible for the firm’s public sector thought leadership. He also serves as a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration, a governance futures council member at the World Economic Forum, an advisory board member at What Works Cities and chairs the Leadership Council for New America....

Dr. Rank is widely recognized as one of the foremost experts and speakers in the country on issues of poverty, inequality, and social justice. His research and teaching have focused on poverty, social welfare, economic inequality, and social policy. Dr. Rank has published numerous scholarly articles. His first book, Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America, explored the conditions o...

Steven H. Miles is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Bioethics. His medical career was in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics. He is a former Maas Family Endowed Chair in Bioethics at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. Dr. Miles has published thirty chapters and more than 200 medical articles on medical ethics, human rights, tropical medicine, end of life care, and medical to...

Jeff Maynard is an author and documentary maker specialising in historical subjects. Jeff is renowned for uncovering little-known, or long forgotten historical events. His research is undertaken over many years, and he uses that research to reveal character driven stories. I spoke to him about his latest book The Frontier Below: The Past, Present and Future of Our Quest to Go Deeper Underwater Som...

David Delmar Sentíes is a professional designer and interface developer with experience working with award-winning startups, as well as established brands. Before founding Resilient Coders, he was at PayPal, leading a cross-disciplinary team of designers and coders. He helped set up PayPal's startup incubator, Start Tank, and served as its UX subject matter expert. David believes in technolog...

Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a “security guru” by The Economist. He is the author of over one dozen books—including his latest, A Hacker’s Mind—as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter “Crypto-Gram” and his blog “Schneier on Security” are read by over 250,000 people. He has testified before Congress, is...

Eleanor's current research focuses on the conceptualisation of sex and its influence on society in the medieval and early modern period. She speacialises in sexuality, propaganda, apocalypticism, urbanity, and empire, in the late medieval and early modern periods, with a particular emphasis on Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire. She holds a PhD in History and an MA in Medieval Studies from Uni...

Jon Shelton is associate professor and chair of democracy and justice studies.  He is the author of The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell University Press, 2023) and Teacher Strike! Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order , which was the winner of the International Standing Conference of the History of Education’s First Book Award in 2018...

Paul is the Co-founder of Tamarack Institute and for 20 years was the CEO/Co-CEO. He is the founder and was the director of Vibrant Communities a national network of nearly 500 cities and communities ending poverty, deepening community, building youth futures and advancing climate transitions. Prior to that Paul founded and served as the CEO of Community Opportunities Development Association (CODA...

Liz Bucar is a leading expert in religious ethics, a professor of religion at Northeastern University, and a prizewinning author. Her writing, teaching, and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—from sexual reassignment surgery to the politics of religious clothing--but generally focus on how a deeper understanding religious difference can change our sense of what is right and good. She is...

Charles Dunst is deputy director of research & analytics at The Asia Group, an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a contributing editor of American Purpose. He has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy, among other outlets. An erstwhile foreign correspondent, he has reported from Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam,...

Amy Finkelstein is the John & Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the co-founder and co-Scientific Director of J-PAL North America, a research center at MIT that encourages and facilitates randomized evaluations of important domestic policy issues. She is also the founding Editor of American Economic Review: Insights and the co-Direct...