Ben Yeoh Chats

Sally Phillips is well known for her award winning acting, writing and comedy. She had roles in 'I'm Alan Partridge', 'Smack the Pony', 'Green Wing', and 'Miranda'; and in the US, Veep.  In 2016 she fronted the documentary ' A World Without Down's Syndrome? ' (BBC2). I think she should also be better known for her disability rights advocacy. We talk about types of clowning and why the clown a...

How does individual shareholder activism work? How does personal agency and systems change work together in a theory of change? How do we become change makers? What did Catherine's mother teach me? Catherine is Chief Executive of ShareAction. She coordinates civil society activism to promote responsible investment Catherine was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Lea...

Tassos Stevens is artistic director of Coney. The transcript of the podcast here.  Prior to Coney, he did a doctorate in Psychology, won the inaugural James Menzies-Kitchin Award for theatre directors, did the NT Studio Directors Course, ran the ROAR platform to support new work and new artists on the London fringe, and also worked as critic, teacher, many flavours of researcher, salesman, an...

Matt Clancy is a progress fellow at Emergent Ventures. He teaches at Iowa State University and writes on Substack a newsletter called New Things Under the Sun , which you should subscribe to if you are interested in anything innovation related. Matt has also synthesised many of the emerging studies on remote working. Transcript and video links here. We discuss whether progress has been stagnating...

Short introduction to Ben Yeoh Chats. If you are curious about the world this show is for you. I have extended conversations across humanities and science with artists, philosophers, writers, theatre makers, activists, economists and all walks of life. Episodes include: -What is like to go to Columbia University at 15 and be valedictorian with Leopold Aschenbrenner? -What should worry us about gam...

Lee Simpson is a founder member of Improbable (theatre makers and improvisers), a long time Comedy Store Player (since the 1980s) and one of Paul Merton's Impro Chums. He’s also been a croupier, cinema projectionist and breakfast show DJ. He’s written plays, appeared in sit-coms and in some films, been on some Radio 4 panel shows and once did a very poor poodle act at the London Palladium.  T...

I had an excellent chat with Leopold Aschenbrenner. Leopold is a grant winner from Tyler Cowen’s  Emergent Ventures. He went to Columbia University, aged 15, and graduated in 2021 as valedictorian. (Contents below ↓ ↓ ). He is a researcher  at the Global Priorities Institute, thinking about long-termism. He has drafted a provocative paper encompassing ideas of long-termisim, existential...

I chat with C. Thi Nguyen who used to be a food writer and is now a philosophy professor at University of Utah.   Thi thinks about trust, art, games, and communities.    We discuss his first book, Games: Agency as Art. The book is about how games are the art form that work in the medium of agency.   We chat about the difference between play and games and wider games p...

Anton Howes on innovation history, the improving mindset and progress studies. Anton Howes is an innovation historian and policy thinker, we have a fascinating wide ranging conversation on innovation. Transcript and video available here.   We discuss raising the prestige of innovators today, but consider it easy to say but harder to enact.  Anton argues for the benefits of a “great Exhib...

Tom Gosling was a partner at PwC, and an advisor to boards around executive pay and incentives, governance, and strategy. He's currently an Executive Fellow at London Business School and helps steer the work of the purposeful company collaboration.    Tom speaks about the benefits of purpose and the risk of corporate puff. We touch on audit reform and the challenges of regulation. We dis...

Jonathan Meth is a dramaturg, extraordinaire, director, curator, very involved in the European theatre and disability arts. He's a lecturer at Goldsmiths. He's worked with many of the major theatre organizations in Britain, and he's a fascinating theatre thinker. We speak about dramaturgy and theatre as playwright lead and theatre as colloboration lead. We discuss disability arts and a little abou...

Rishi Dastidar and I chat about life, poetry, writing and poets always having another job. Rishi gives advice on how to be a poet, embracing Insta poets and whether last lines are harder than first lines, or second books harder than first books; and why we love lists and why we need to pay more attention to verbs. He is open to offers from companies seeking a Chief Poetry Officer. A fascinating an...

I chat to Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl, about her love of birding touching upon birdsong and the mysteries of migration. We discuss accessibilty to nature, activism what in birding terms is a “lifer” and how to “pish”. There’s a transcript (unedited) here plus links to topics we talk about. Links: Black2Nature , Charity fighting for equal access to nature for Visible Minority Ethnic people. Mya-Ro...

We discuss the award winning book, Fathoms: the world in the whale by Rebecca Giggs. Our conversation covers seeing the history of humanity through the lens of the whale, activism movements, and the poetic in writing.   Whales as an extractive industry and why the book is not prescriptive in what we might do.  We play overrated/underrated. Rebecca rates: cicadas, snails, worms and plankt...