Fearless Diversity

It’s Christmas. It’s almost the end of the year and it’s the latest episode of Fearless Diversity. Rachel and Simon polish off the twelve days of Christmas with their final six key issues of 2025.  In place of geese, swans, maids, ladies, lords, pipers and drummers, they surprised themselves to discover nuance, ethical dilemmas, previously unthought thoughts and a continuation of their honest...

In this week’s episode, Rachel and Simon pull on their Christmas jumpers and look back at a year of fearless diversity. But instead of a partridge, turtle doves, French hens, calling birds, gold rings and geese, their first “Six Days of Christmas” are: 📌 The Employment Rights Bill 📌 The surge in ADHD, autism and wider mental health diagnoses 📌 What really happened to the so-calle...

Tearing Down the Wall: A Fearless Diversity Look at Fairness   Three kids, a wall, and those famous different-sized “equity” boxes. Helpful metaphor or the reason that to so many leaders and colleagues think the boxes look like unfairness?   In this episode of Fearless Diversity, Rachel and Simon start with that much-used cartoon and end up somewhere much more interesting: how do we...

In this special Fearless Diversity episode, we press pause on the culture war and lean into a quieter kind of courage: listening. Rachel and Simon are joined by Jacqui Gavin BEM, a trans woman, former civil servant and long-time equality campaigner, for a deeply human conversation about growing up as Scott in 1970s Scotland, beginning transition as a teenager, and what it means to describe be...

“A crisis of trust at the BBC”  The BBC is weathering one of the fiercest storms in its modern history. The now-infamous Prescott memo, an “egregious” Trump edit, open rows over coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict, and bitter battles about sex and gender have left Britain’s national broadcaster facing accusations of bias from every direction. But is this just another skirmish in the Beeb’s l...

On November 1st at about 7o’clock a man, now identified as Anthony Williams, is alleged to have stabbed eleven people on a train from Doncaster to Kings Cross. The grainy footage showed that he was black. And up went a racist balloon. Long before anyone knew anymore about him, the tweets were out. He was a terrorist, an asylum seeker……and from others that he was “British born”.   This we...

When HR leaders become the organisation’s emotional shock absorbers, who absorbs the shock for them and how do we keep culture lawful, human, and high performing? In a post-pandemic world of blurred boundaries, rising neurodiversity needs and intensifying polarisation, HR leaders are being asked to carry it all: grief, grievance, and the governance. In this episode, we explore how to move from pro...

CRISIS OF TRUST: HOW TO FIX WHAT'S BROKEN IN BRITAIN'S BOARDROOMS, BEDROOMS AND BEYOND   Trust is in dangerously short supply these days. From politics to once-dependable institutions and even within close-knit teams, confidence is fast evaporating. Trust is easy to lose and hard to earn. It’s built over time but lost in an instant - whether in personal relationships, businesses or in the cor...

This week, Simon & Rachel get gloriously uncomfortable. It’s a rollicking debate with sharp edges, full-throttle disagreement in part, and one very live question who’s it actually worth arguing with anymore?   Simon’s just back from the Battle of Ideas, where he shared space with people he vehemently disagrees with and has mixed feelings as a result. Rachel, on the other ha...

Fearless Diversity: Identity, Civility, and the Courage to Disagree   At a time when public debate feels less like dialogue and more like a contest over whose feelings matter most, Simon and Rachel take a breath, and a stand, for nuance, empathy, and civility.   Because identity whether shaped by sex, gender, class, ethnicity, or belief has become both the lens through which we see the w...

Recorded on Tuesday 7 October 2025, this episode confronts the murders at Heaton Park on Yom Kippur and the sharp rise in antisemitism in the UK. We name the harm plainly and we hold the line between free speech and incitement. We don’t posture; we do the hard work of sense-making. We explore why silence from institutions and politicians corrodes trust, how slogan-chanting lands as eradication to...

In this episode of Fearless Diversity, Rachel Cashman - the fearless facilitator - and Simon Fanshawe - the diversity dissident - tackle one of the most contentious policy revivals in years: the return of the digital ID card.    From dinner parties to football terraces the argument is dividing Britain.  Are ID cards a slick, modern tool to cut red tape and to create a sens...

Simon and Rachel wade into flags, patriotism and nationality.   At the moment flags are everywhere – at football matches, street parties, protests, Pride and, lately, at the heart of raging debate about what it means to be British. This week we try and understand the hope, the pride and the worry wrapped up in every St George’s Cross and Union Jack.   A flag isn’t just a flag. For s...

Fearless Diversity — Series Two Premiere   Title: “Words, Violence, and the Tribe: Beyond the Workplace” Series Two is here.  Rachel Cashman, your Fearless Facilitator, and Simon Fanshawe, the Diversity Dissident, are back. This season we’re stepping past the office door. Fearless Diversity now lives in  life and work  because the tensions shaping our feeds, families, and frien...

In the week that Parliament decided to give the vote to sixteen year olds, welcome back to Fearless Diversity, the podcast where age isn’t just a tick-box in the census, it’s the parent, the baby, and the teenage activist in the room. Join Simon, your resident digitally Bewildered Baby Boomer, living proof that you can survive a childhood without Wi-Fi or oat milk and Rachel stuck between Mil...

Let’s Be Honest: The conversation on immigration is neither neat nor simple. So in this episode, Rachel and Simon wade straight into the mess of history, aspiration, personal fear, good intentions and the fear of getting it wrong which make it so complicated. Simon unpacks the historical waves of immigration since the War and the reaction which exposes public ambivalence and ingrained biases, caug...

After explosive scenes at Glastonbury and two alarming reports detailing “cancellation” and fear sweeping through both publishing and the arts, Fearless Diversity dives into the complex world of artistic freedom, censorship and public outrage. Simon wrestles with whether there are any limits to what artists can say and whether Rod Stewart should just shut up about Gaza and Farage, and stick to sin...

PIP PIP Hooray - Disability: People, Potential, and the Art of the Possible   Welcome to Fearless Diversity the podcast that tackles the tricky bits of life in work and has the conversation that you want to. This week Simon and Rachel dive into disability after the huge public, media and Parliamentary furore about welfare reform and the implications for disabled people receiving Personal...

Let’s face it: conversations about race make even the most fearless among us uneasy, awkward or just very nervous. In this episode of Fearless Diversity, Simon Fanshawe (Diversity Dissident) and Rachel Cashman (Fearless Facilitator) dive headlong into the silence, discomfort, and tiptoeing that surrounds race at work and in everyday life. Prompted to record this episode by the publication of Baron...

Join Simon Fanshawe, the Diversity Dissident, and Rachel Cashman, the Fearless Facilitator, as they boldly dive into one of everyone's least favourite topics:  Failure ! With wit, honesty, and plenty of personal anecdotes (Rachel fails daily, Simon hourly!), they tackle why failing isn't just inevitable, but essential for growth.   From Edison’s famous quip about discovering "10,000 ways...

Get ready to tackle another hot topic with Simon and Rachel as they have the conversations you want to In this episode, they're diving deep into the question: What exactly do we mean by free speech , especially at work?   From academic freedom and artistic expression to controversial workplace debates and social media snafus, Rachel and Simon fearlessly (and humorously) navigate the delicate...

Hold on tight as Simon and Rachel tackle a red-hot question: Are your employees still just employees, or are they morphing into activists? From baked beans to workplace tussles about toilets (a subject that disproportionately is vexing employers and their staff right now!) and drag pantos at Christmas parties, this conversation has everything, and a few surprises. Find out why Rachel was kettled b...

In our second episode on the Supreme Court Judgement on the meaning of sex in the Equality Act, Rachel and Simon again explore the complexities. The re-statement of the law by the Court is crystal clear. But the reaction has ranged from the practical and sensible to the defiant and the downright defamatory. And from some people who should know better. Why did one of the leading law firms in t...

Why are you consulting? Why thinking about Parking Schemes will help you to do it well – honestly! Work is not a democracy? Don’t be kind, be clear. How do you make staff feel genuinely involved while being straight forward that it’s you who will take the final decision? How do you keep those who don’t agree with your decision on side? How do you say ‘No’. Can you cope with not being liked? All th...

What is A Woman? The Supreme Court judgement of April 16th has sent shockwaves through the national conversation about women's rights, where trans people stand, what single sex services and sports mean and what are the actual obligations for employers and organisations to their staff and the public. The noise is incredibly loud… So, if you need some calm about all this, listen to Rachel and Simon’...