Ctrl Alt Delete

Today's guest is Rhik Samadder: a writer, actor and broadcaster. He has a regular column with  The Guardian  and created their cult ‘Inspect a Gadget ’ feature. He has written for  The Observer, Men’s Health  and  Prospect  magazine, as well as being a guest, presenter and host on various radio shows. Rhik studied acting at Drama Centre London and appea...

Chelsea Kwakye is the author of the book Taking Up Space  co-authored with author and friend Ore Ogunbiyi. She is also a history graduate from Cambridge University and Taking Up Space  tackle issues of accessibility, unrepresentative curriculums, race and discrimination within university spaces. This is the second title from #Merky Books, a partnership between Pe...

Today's episode is with Sofie Hagen, a voice you many recognise from many of your fave podcasts, including The Guilty Feminist when it first launched. She also hosts her own brilliant podcasts  Made of Human ,  Secret Dinosaur Cult  and  Comedians Telling Stuff. First and foremost though, she is an award-winning stand-up comedian, author of the book  Happy Fat , ...

Today's guest is Leah Hazard, bestselling author and a NHS midwife. We recorded this episode on a sunny day in Edinburgh, in a lovely brand new suite in the Market Street Hotel - so a huge thank you to them for kindly letting us use it to record! Leah studied at Harvard and then left a career in television to pursue her lifelong interest in women’s health after the birth of her...

Lauren Mahon ​is a b​roadcaster, presenter, writer, influencer​,​ charity campaigner​ and founder of Girl vs Cancer. She is a co-host ​of the​ number one iTunes podcast You Me & The Big ​C, a podcast all about ​​'kicking cancer’s arse​'​ on BBC 5Live​ with Deborah James. Lauren won this year’s Inspirational Founder Of The Year award at the Stylist LIVE Retail...

Welcome back to Ctrl Alt Delete. This episode is a special live recording in partnership with Natwest (#ad). I recently featured in a video with NatWest and Refinery29 looking at the challenges the modern workforce faces, with a spotlight on finances. We discussed mental health, late payments and how to prepare to quit your job. So this time I wanted to ask two very knowledgeable people their thou...

Liz Ward is a personal/business coach with over 12 years experience developing and mentoring high performing individuals, from entrepreneurs in the start up world to people in corporate management roles. With a background in brand, digital and business development, her career history includes the rebrand of the Millennium Dome to The O2, then London 2012 Opening Ceremony campai...

This week's guest is Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, who alongside her husband Karim Amer, directed the new Netflix documentary THE GREAT HACK which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It's out now, and the Guardian has already given it five stars. The documentary uncovers the dark world of data exploitation online. It follows the personal stories of some key players on differe...

While I am on a very short podcast hiatus, I hope you don't mind that I will be re-posting some of my favourite episodes from over the three years. (I'm back with a bang in August!) This episode was a popular one, with Lucy Sheridan: the world’s first and only Comparison Coach. Lucy is an author and life coach who specialises in her helping her clients get over the ~compare and despair~ that...

While I am on a very short podcast hiatus, I hope you don't mind that I will be re-posting some of my favourite episodes from over the three years. Here is my episode with the brilliant Will Young. We all know Will from this Pop Idol success back in the noughties -- I was a fan then and I am now too -- but now for a different reason: his new podcast with his friend Chris Sweeney called  HOMO...

My guest today is the incredible Elizabeth Gilbert, one of my biggest inspirations​ of all time​. I turn to her work whenever feeling a bit lost. She is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, Big Magic and The Signature of All Things (plus many others). Big Magic is the book I recommen​d​ to anyone struggling with a creative project. It is really practical, fun and...

Dame Stephanie Shirley ​is tech pioneer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. She also goes by the name "Steve" which she used to sign business letters to potential clients when they were not responding to her.​ If you haven't already, go and watch her Ted Talk it is funny and moving and super interesting to hear what it was like being a woman in tech during the 60s. In 1939 ​Steve...

*Please go to charitywateruk.org/emma* My guest today is Scott Harrison, founder of Charity Water, and New York Times Bestselling Author of Thirst . Really excited for you to hear Scott's story behind setting up this incredible charity that has now raised more than 360 million dollars, provided over 9.5 million people with clean, safe drinking water.and funded over 35,000 water projects in 27 coun...

Dustin Lance Black is my guest today! Lance has been named as one of the 50 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in America for the last decade. He is an Academy Award® winning filmmaker, writer, and social activist. He won the Oscar and two WGA Awards for his screenplay MILK, the biopic of activist Harvey Milk starring Sean Penn. He was also a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equa...

My guest today is Jessica Pan, author of Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert’s Year of Living Dangerously. This is an incredibly funny and frank book all about how Jess decided to drastically change her life for a whole year. An introvert by nature, she decides to live like an extrovert for a year with the help of some experts and mentors along the way. She embraces some horrors. S...

Poorna Bell is award-winning journalist of 15 years and a digital expert having worked as UK Exec Editor and Global Lifestyle Head for Huffington Post. She currently writes for Grazia, The iPaper, The Guardian, Red magazine, and Stylist. She was recently named one of Balance magazine’s top 100 wellness personalities, a Stylist magazine Rising Star, a judge for the Mind Media Awards and British Boo...

Philippa Perry is an author, psychotherapist, factual presenter for radio and television and someone I've been a fan of ever since I read her book called How to Stay Sane back in 2012. After volunteering with the Samaritans, Philippa trained as a psychotherapist and worked in the mental health field for several years before writing her graphic novel, Couch Fiction which lays bare the process of ps...

My guest today is the hugely inspiring activist, writer, and lecturer Rachel Cargle. I recorded this episode at The Wing in New York, which was fun. I first came across Rachel's work on Instagram. She was recently on Red Table Talk a US roundtable show streamed on Facebook and hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith and Rachel's clip on white privilege went viral, and I really wanted to spread her message on...

Elizabeth Day is an author, journalist and broadcaster. She has written 4 critically aclaimed novels, including The Party which was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick. Elizabeth is a currently columnist for You magazine on the Mail on Sunday and a feature writer for numerous publications in the UK and US including The Telegraph, The Times, the Guardian, New York Magazine, the Observer, Vog...

Candice Carty-Williams is an author, culture writer and journalist based in London. Her book Queenie came out recently in the UK and US, about a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London called Queenie Jenkins, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. Oprah has called it 'brazenly hilarious" and it's been called The Black Bridget Jones. She writes regularl...

My guest today is the brilliant Anna Newton (aka @ TheAnnaEdit ) who is an award-winning online content creator and author. Her first book, the life organisation manual ‘ An Edited Life’ , was published in January 2019. She is the Millennial Marie Kondo in my eyes. She resides by the sea in Brighton, and this episode was recorded at the Komedia as part of Brighton's First Podcast Festival . It was...

Today's guest is Mrs Hinch (real name Sophie Hinchliffe) who became an overnight sensation by sharing her cleaning tips and tricks on Instagram last year, growing from 1k to 1m followers in six months. She's now at 2 million with no sign of slowing down. Her witty and entertaining Instagram Stories are part advice, part entertainment and absolutely bril...

My guest today is a slightly different one. It’s with Sarah Thompson, a 21 year pro-skater in Huntington Beach who I interviewed on International Women’s Day 2019. She campaigns for helmet safety and raises awareness of head injury after two serious consecutive concussions in 2017. No one had warned her about it or told her what to do if it happened. In the male-dominated skate community it's...

My guest today is bestselling author Caroline Kepnes. I first met the amazing @carolinekepnes in 2016 when I first interviewed her about her books YOU and Hidden Boddies aka "the Joe books". In 2017 we met up again and the casting had began for YOU to be a TV show on Lifetime! Then, Netflix wanted it too and now 40 million people have now watched it. I chatted to her about this crazy year, her boo...

Today's interview is with Erica Williams Simon (we recorded it at The Mondrian hotel in West Hollywood). She is the host of one of my favourite interview podcasts The Call, hosted currently on the Man Repeller website. She is a full blown multi-hyphenate: head of the Creator’s Lab at Snapchat, podcast host, author of the forthcoming book You Deserve the Truth , published in May, which unpicks...