Antidoters Podcast

Hey! It’s been a while. Sorry. I’ve been hustling, business-developing, Zoom-ing, moutain walking ; web-designing, product-testing, conference-speaking, making 100s of packed-lunches ; business-planning, ad-testing, trade-marking, veruca-treating ; podcast-appearing, pitching, AI-training, picking up socks; you get the idea… As a result ScrollAware is gathering exciting momentum and appears to hav...

I’m so excited. It’s been less ‘Eureka’ and more a fog slowly clearing through the end of a telescope but after months of reading, writing and processing, my thinking has crystallised into a next professional chapter I can’t wait to write. One that hones in on the problems I care most about and draws on all my experience to date. Let’s start with a thought experiment: a short utopia in an age of d...

Something in me is shifting. It struck me as I walked out of security last month at the departures terminal and into the walkway that snakes through duty free. Every sense was immediately assaulted. Glossy images of A-listers, neon lights, huge point-of-sale booze-deals and an overwhelming scent of perfume. Three children tugged me in the directions of giant M&Ms, tech accessories and overpriced b...

Today, I’m delighted to be sharing my first guest post from a great friend of mine, Adam Nicoll. Adam is truly an ‘old soul’, and someone I hugely enjoy for his irreverent sense of humour and salty language. He pulls no punches, debatewise, has a penchant for spraying robust opinions on radio phone-ins and along with our better halves, we frequently put the world to rights over drinks. Indeed the...

Hello Strangers! Sorry for the radio silence. I’ve spent a lovely last month taking my own advice and prioritising family, plus reading to restock my mind-pantry. Because the truth is, I’d run out of spleen-venting material and feared I was repeating myself. (Perhaps it might help all our content-overwhelm if people stopped posting for the sake of it. Two ears, one mouth etc). And what a last mont...

I sat in a group team event last week, listening to a presentation about the trajectory of one of the most exciting technology companies in the world. Twenty minutes…. that was all it took before the fidgeting started, before hands (including my own), reached instinctively to check a device and you could feel the attention in the room wavering. This was not an indictment on the content or delivery...

A reading of my recent blog post on 'After Babel' - Jonathn Haidt's team's publication sharing resaerch and data around his book 'The Anxious Generation'. Entitled: A Mission for Businesses and Entrepreneurs: Help Bring Back Childhood When entrepreneurs hear about problems, they see opportunities. This is what I love about the entrepreneurial sectors I’ve spent my career in—the optimism, energy, p...

I’ve been chewing on the word ‘quiet’ recently… a simple, unassuming word. Somewhat onomatopoeic and almost apologetic.  It’s like a full stop.  Even when uttering it, it slips gently from the sides of the mouth and silence follows (a sullen one if used as a directive).  It’s certainly not a sexy word, indeed, it seems used more as a negative these days.  Is it shutting down dissension? Perhaps de...

Kirstie Allsopp - apparently the worst mother in Britain right now (for allowing her 15 year old to go interrailing), has come out swinging .  And good for her. I’m team-Allsopp.  As readers will know, I’ve long been convinced that giving kids independence as early as possible is the key to building resilience, responsibility and creativity.  Yes, there are risks - but, in my opinion (and increasi...

Ok, clickbait title aside, not * that * type of child labour…  (although outrage-fuelling journos do your worst, it’ll all help with readers, just as it did with my TedX views).  I recently came across the Harvard Grant Study findings, running since 1938, the longest longitudinal study in history.   Among such fun discoveries as the fact that ‘ageing liberals have more sex’ with ‘conservative men...

It’s been a bad week to be English after we came so near, yet so bloody far… again… in yet another major football tournament.   Whilst a fair-weather fan, I felt the depths of disappointment around me amidst a 1000-strong sea of red and white at a family festival as faces dropped and the tears flowed amongst the under 10s.  Football apparently wasn’t, and isn’t anytime soon ‘coming home’.   Englan...

It’s been a while since I’ve shared ‘my story’ (thank God). I used to do this a lot in my ‘Female Entrepreneur’ days to rooms of early-career women or invincible first-time founders. Years before ‘ 35 things I learnt by 35 ’ became popular clickbait, I had curated an entertaining monologue of anecdotes and life-lessons from across my career - something for everyone… (so thought my flattered ego). ...

Been pondering age this week as I watched the stoic, moving interviews with D-day heroes and then observed Joe Biden, staggering, confused and slurring in recent public appearances.  Contrasting these with the coverage of young, ‘passionate’ activists disrupting campuses or destroying works of art or with all the young faces we see around us daily- eyes down in digital worlds and the generational...

This week I saw someone edit a Linkedin post because of feedback that the person they were quoting was a ‘troll’ (irrespective of the evidence within the quote);  I observed three people sharing a Piers Morgan soundbite with the careful caveat ‘ it’s rare I agree with this guy but …’ ;  I saw someone else I respect get chastised for liking an X/ tweet from a persona-non-grata; … and I had a long,...

Hands up if you’d be up for a quick drug to fix the biggest problem in your life. 🙋Unless you live under a rock, you will have heard that this is now available for one of the most sizeable ( sorry ) facing Western populations: Fat .  And the ramifications could stretch much, much further than waistlines. Thanks for reading Antidoters! Please subscribe for free to receive new posts and share to su...

Entrepreneurs are optimists by nature and masters at turning problems into solutions.  Many of the best harness counter-intuitive thinking that plays on human emotion rather than rationality - as best articulated by the Prince of behavioural interpretation Rory Sutherland ( who may or may not appreciate being verbed ).  So how can we harness his antidoter ways of thinking to solve the teen smartph...

This week I’ve been overwhelmed by ‘ bounce head ’.  My term for something every working mother will understand:  the feeling of holding more to-dos and conflicting emotions in your head at any one time than it’s possible to get down on a list; that sees your focus bounce back and forth constantly, within seconds from the most mundane lifemin to the most important family, friend or working-life pr...

Activism is in-vogue.  So much so, ‘Activist’ appears to now be a job-title according to LinkedIn and it’s perhaps no surprise given that rage has replaced sex as the hottest marketing tool (Scott Galloway is great on this here ). Maybe it never left, and arguably, we have much progress to thank it for.  The right to protest is a fundamental democratic right that most of us in the West believe in...

How does one market the certainty of death to people?  It’s tricky if not impossible given we all prefer ( need ?) to believe we’re invincible. And yet the Death Industry is the most market-robust of all, patiently residing in the shadows of the internet awaiting a google-prompt at our hour of greatest, heart-breaking need: undertakers, coffin-makers, florists, wake-providers and head-stone carver...

The self-belief industry (along with the exclamation mark) is off-the-charts thriving.  These days everything is all about soundbite self-empowerment. You-affirming slogans scream from posters on every wall, note-pad and card shop-shelf, t-shirt fronts, instagram grids and out of every music-speaker.  Riffing further on the themes of last week, is it any wonder that there’s been such a decline in...

If you think culture has become a bit ‘samey’ of late, you’re not wrong.  ‘Boring’, might be a better term.   Whether in fashion, music, film, advertising, thought-leadership or business, replication is the name of the game and ticking the buzzword-bingo boxes has become easy and predictable.:  ‘Sustainable’, ‘Diverse’, ‘Clean-living’, ‘Purpose-Driven’, ‘Productivity', ‘Mindfulness’ etc....  all s...

Have you heard of the ‘ Dartmouth Scar ’ project: a psychologist experiment investigating the impact of a victim mindset on self-perception, behaviour and well-being?  A fake scar was applied to participants’ faces and then secretly removed before an interview to create a scenario where the participants believed they had a visible scar in order to foster a victim mindset.  Nearly all displayed hei...

Not long ago, I referenced an FT article  that reported on the rapidly widening political and ideological polarisation between men and women - a global phenomenon.  It’s a worrying trend that didn’t seem to get the attention it deserved; one that concerns me - not just as a mother of boys and a girl - but as a woman who met her husband a little later (in my early 30s) and who can acutely recall th...

This was a week I’d been looking forward to for a long time.  The publication of the book ‘ The Anxious Generation:  How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness ’ by Jonathan Haidt.   Sounds cheery, doesn’t it?  ( Warning: don’t invite me down the pub any time soon if you want a pitch-free night) . (Note - all audio versions of Antidoters are now available on most...

If you had to liken your career to a role in a musical ensemble, what would it be?  A conductor, co-ordinating a multi-section orchestra (CEO/ MD)? A first violin, skilled at your specialist trade (team lead, scientist, programmer, academic)?  Or maybe the lead singer or bass in a rock band, composing and evangelising for a start-up brand with a disruptive mission (entrepreneur, inventor, product...