How To Academy Podcast

As a young historian at Cambridge and Oxford, he did not rest in the ivory tower but brought his erudition on the great stories and crises of the day, travelling widely and becoming one of our most celebrated broadcasters and influential public intellectuals. Later, he returned to his native Canada to become leader of the Liberal Party: a scholar whose commitment to democratic ideals earned him wi...

The winner of major genre awards including the Nebula, the Hugo, and the World Fantasy Award, Ken Liu is an author and futurist whose fictions both interrogate the social consequences of new technologies, and investigate the value of concepts we do not typically think of as technology but ought to, including law, language, and even storytelling itself. In this episode of the podcast he outlines hi...

Some of us inhabit a bittersweet state instinctively, others avoid it as much as we can; some of us arrive there when we reach a certain age, or after facing life’s trials and triumphs. But we will all experience the bittersweet at some point in our lives. What are the powers of a bittersweet, melancholic outlook? And why has our culture been so blind to its value? Following a trail of centuries-o...

Futurist Jane McGonigal creates games that predict and simulate hard to imagine futures. In this episode of the podcast, she teaches us to think like futurists and become more resilient to future shocks – both in our personal lives and when we are faced with unfolding global events. She shows us that 'unimaginable' events aren't unimaginable before they happen. It is possible to see them coming an...

One hundred years since its publication confirmed James Joyce as one of the greatest writers in the English language and a fearless creative genius willing and able to reimagine the possibilities of literature for the modern age, Ulysses has become an undisputed canonical classic. In this episode of the podcast, Ireland’s greatest living novelist, Colm Toibin, and its foremost Joyce scholar, Teren...

Alice Roberts trained as a physician, and now employs her scientific knowledge to uncover new evidence about the history of Britain, combining scientific and historical insights to determine who we are and where we came from. She joins us to shed fresh light on how we lived in the so-called Dark Ages by examining the stories of the dead. What did people think about mortality? How did they feel abo...

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Malaysia, commissioned in the Black Watch when only a teenager, Rory Stewart’s career bears little resemblance to the typical 21st century career politician. After serving as a diplomat in Indonesia, the Balkans and Iraq, a foundation director in Afghanistan, and as Secretary of State for International Development, he left frontline politics altogether to work on a...

In her New York Times bestselling biography of Princess Diana, The Diana Chronicles, former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown wrote the definitive account of the extraordinary life and tragic death of the Princess of Wales. In this episode of the podcast, she joins Pandora Sykes to reveal how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana's blazing celebrity rip...

In 1966, John Barker, a dynamic psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, established the Premonitions Bureau to investigate psychic visions. He found a network of hundreds of correspondents, from clerks to ballet teachers – including two unnervingly gifted “percipients”. The New Yorker’s award-winning Sam Knight joins us with an enthralling true story of madness and wonder, sci...

A creative pioneer whose genius has placed him alongside Chaplin, Keaton, and his fellow Pythons as one of the greatest British comedy talents of all-time, John Cleese’s name is synonymous with the very best popular culture our country has ever produced. From the subversive satire of Life of Brian and existential absurdity of The Meaning of Life to the precision-engineered farce and observational...

Minnie Driver joined us live on stage in London to tell transport us from her unconventional childhood to subsequent fame, sharing poignant stories and laugh-out-loud anecdotes from her life and career. It is a tale of acclaim, loss, fortitude and fortune: in short, the story of being human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Next month Michael Lewis will join us in-person in London for a live, on-stage event exploring his life and work from Liar's Poker through to the present day. In anticipation, this episode of the podcast revisits his last appearance on the How To Academy stage, in conversation with the Guardian's Owen Jones. Together they explore the corrosion of the federal government under the Trump administrati...

With fans including Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Peter Thiel, no living fiction author has more influence among the elite technologists shaping our world. His ideas inspired Google Earth, Second Life and the Xbox, and Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook after Stephenson’s concept of the Metaverse, dedicating his company to the mission of creating a future inspired by Stephenson’s speculative vision....

How did a collective of self-taught internet sleuths end up solving some of the biggest crimes of our time? Eliot Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat, an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists using open-source and social media investigation to probe some of the world’s most pressing stories. He joins us to tell the story of how they created a w...

For forty years humans have dreamed of persistent virtual worlds. Today, video games and their peripherals are pushing the boundaries of digital immersion, whether in the form of imaginary play spaces like Roblox and Second Life, or rich sensory augmentations that affect our experience of the physical world. But what will become of the Metaverse and cyberspace? And in our era of rapid and accelera...

A literary alchemist, Ann Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: essays that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. In this episode of the podcast, she explores her latest collection, These Precious Days. Offering a unique perspective on themes as diverse as failure, family, Snoopy the dog, children, publishing, teaching, and the...

Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown, magical spaces? In conversation with comedian, author and broadcaster Robin Ince, scientists and science writer Richard Dawkins explores two interweaving forms of wonder of flight: both in its literal form, the dream we all share of soaring in...

For the past four years, Ed Miliband has been discovering and interviewing brilliant people all around the world who are successfully tackling the biggest problems we face, transforming communities and pioneering global movements. In this podcast, he draws on the most imaginative and ambitious of these ideas to provide a vision for the kind of society we need. He presents an inspiring array of rea...

Bringing together leading Afghan politician and women’s rights advocate Fawzia Koofi, who was a member of the recent delegation negotiating peace with the Taliban; Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent Christina Lamb; and award-winning war correspondent and New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson, this podcast explores both the transformation of everyday life in Afghanistan and the major humanitaria...

From Old Winchelsea to Skara Brae, Matthew Green transports us to Britain's shadowlands - the once thriving towns and cities that are now lost to time and memory. Drowned by storms. Buried by sand. Requisitioned by the army. One of Britain's most exciting young historians, Matthew Green has travelled the British Isles in search of the remnants of settlements that once adorned the nation's map - un...

Our family relationships fundamentally influence our health and happiness -- but we think too narrowly about the impact of our families on our lives. In this episode of the podcast, bestselling psychotherapist Julia Samuel turns from her acclaimed work with individuals to draw on her sessions with a wide variety of families. She explores a range of common issu Uncovering how deeply we are influenc...

In 1982, East Germany's fearsome secret police - convinced that writers were embedding subversive messages in their work - decided to train their own writers, weaponising poetry in the struggle against the class enemy. Journalist Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Stasi files, digging up lost volumes of poetry from musty basements, and tracking down the surviving members of the circ...

The concept of a shared, single heritage and culture is central to Vladimir Putin’s justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But what is the true story of the two nations, and how can it illuminate the nature of the conflict? This episode of the podcast brings together historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, whose books on Russia include The Romanovs and Stalin - The Court of the Red Tzar, and...

Max Porter broke new ground with his highly-original debut Grief is a Thing With Feathers, and firmly established himself as a major literary talent with his second novel Lanny. The cult author joined us to explore his latest and most ambitious novel yet: The Death of Francis Bacon, a collection of 'verbal paintings' depicting the final moments of the artist’s life. What responsibility does an aut...

Few figures make such a seismic impact on their artistic medium that they transform its reputation from childish pulp entertainment to a vital and exhilarating creative form, capable of exploring the great mysteries of metaphysics, science, and the human spirit – but Alan Moore is one. A modern-day alchemist who transmuted comic books into literary gold, his works not only inspired a later generat...