How To Academy Podcast

Tom Holland is a storyteller whose range and erudition seem to be as unbounded as history itself. Now he brings us closer than ever to the lives of the first twelve Roman emperors. The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. Delving into his new trans...

Yes, that meeting could have been an email. And that email? Maybe it should have been a voice memo. The hidden secrets of virtual communication are many and mysterious, but CEO of Ping Group Andrew Brodsky joins us with an actionable guide on how to communicate better virtually. From how to decide between an email chain and an in-person meeting, to tips for maintaining 'eye contact' on camera, to...

We’re constantly told that money is the shortcut to a good life, the only type of wealth worth pursuing. But what would it mean to lead a truly wealthy life? It may involve money, but in the end, it will be defined by everything else. Entrepreneur and writer Sahil Bloom joins Chris Donnelly to reveal the five types of wealth—Time, Social, Mental, Physical, and Financial—and how a balance of all fi...

We remember the Renaissance as an age of human flourishing: a rebirth after centuries of misery, a return to the glories of antiquity where the culture of Greece and Rome was not only imitated but surpassed. But is that reputation deserved, or a construct of future historians with their own goals in mind? Starring Battle-Popes, necromancers, sculptors, scholars, and assassins, Ada Palmer's new boo...

How can we say 'no' when it matters most? Cornell University's Dr Sunita Sah joins us to share the radical need for each of us to rediscover our core values, and shares how we can navigate a fraught world while staying true to ourselves. Exploring the balance between defiance and safety, justice and belonging, Professor Sah reveals how we can each live more authentically and make decisions that al...

'Chinese and Any Other Asian.' On official documents, a vast range of identities in the East and South East Asian (ESEA) population in the UK is reduced to a single vague checkbox, an act of Othering with a history several centuries in the making. Academic, poet, and journalist Dr Anna Sulan Masing seeks to change the narrative. Exploring the history of the ESEA population in the UK, which spans o...

History and geopolitical intrigue meet fiction under the masterful skill of #1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson. He joins us with a new tale: Polostan, a vividly imagined historical epic that traces the enigmatic life of protagonist Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Her life criss-crosses some of the 20th century’s pivotal scenes, from Leningrad to the Great Depression. When a surprising revela...

Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner, well known for her work on modern slavery and climate justice. But from the age of eight weeks to eighteen years, she was moved between foster care placements and children’s homes in North London. It would take many decades before she was able to begin the search for answers to the long-standing questions that would help her...

Why are are the rich getting richer? Why is prosperity moving further and further out of reach for most people? An iconoclast unafraid to speak truth to power, George Monbiot joins comedian Frankie Boyle to take on the fringe philosophy which the wealthy elite have hijacked to guard their fortunes and power. While neoliberalism permeates society, from our mental and economic wellbeing to the found...

We live in the here and now much less than we tend to think. Imagination isn’t the exception in our daily lives; it’s our default setting. Far from being a faculty used only in creative endeavours, the imagination is used constantly when we reminisce, anticipate, plan, daydream and read. Yet only now are we beginning to understand exactly how it works. From hallucination to sleepwalking, REM to de...

Whether anticipating the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in his short story Radicalised, helping the world to wake up to the grift of the social media giants through his concept of 'Enshittification', or imagining a genuinely better world to replace the dystopia of our present in novels like The Lost Cause and Walkaway, Cory Doctorow is equally accomplished as an award-winning...

One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run. This is the story of what happened next. Taking us behind the scenes...

Erudite and comic, ironic and profound, philosopher Slavoj Žižek has travelled into territory where few of us dare to tread – and aged 75 he shows no signs of becoming less provocative. In this electric conversation with Yanis Varoufakis the pair explore whether progress is a good thing, where the new technologies of our age are taking us and why Slavoj is known as ‘the most dangerous philosopher...

Both infinitely larger than ourselves and one of humanity's greatest commonalities, the night sky has shaped millennia of human history. Cosmologist Roberto Trotta joins us to reveal what the mysteries of the stars can illuminate about the mysteries of humankind, from our earliest origin myths to our methods of timekeeping which formed around the visibility of stars around the globe. From Babylon...

Orhan Pamuk has traveled far and wide, around the world, across the page, and in the landscapes of his mind. Now he joins Erica Wagner to illuminate his craft. From his travels around the world to his reflections on fellow writers, from journal entries scrawled across the span of over a decade to the beginnings of his creative process, Orhan joins us to explore not only his artistic method, but al...

Can scientists now preserve human minds beyond death - and if so, should they? Australian neuroscientist and science communicator Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston joins us to explain the cutting-edge of his field. The dream of immortality has existed for as long as the human imagination and until now remained just that: a dream. But neuroscientist and science communicator Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston believ...

‘Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?’ -Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972 One was the New York name on literary lips. The other, a Los Angeleno fireball with a ferocious wit and writerly ambitions. But what started off a relationship of nurture and collaboration quickly became one of the sourest relationships in literature. This is the golden age of Hollywood, wh...

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham: never had King James I's court seen a man of such exquisite beauty. Capturing the heart of the King, becoming his lover and right-hand man, Villiers thus found himself at the heart of court politics too. But along with his angelic face he also had a brilliant mind. Renowned historian and biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett reveals the life of this astonishingly beau...

Few historical figures in the British political landscape have been as monumental as Winston Churchill. By the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1965, many thought him to be the greatest man in the world. But what was his life really like? And what might he make of the world today? Churchill's definitive biographer Andrew Roberts joins Matthew D'Ancona to illuminate Churchill in his full compl...

The seven deadly sins are the vices of humankind that define immorality, the roots of all evil in the world. But do these sins really represent moral failings, or are they important and useful human functions that aid us?  In this episode of the podcast, neurologist Dr Guy Leschziner shares the evolutionary benefits of gluttony, greed, sloth, pride, envy, lust and anger. From continuing the existe...

In the Kabul offices of Moby Group, Afghanistan's largest media company, hundreds of men and women continue to bring programmes and news to the country even after the return of the Taliban. From talk shows to breaking news to educational programmes for young girls, the television empire that began as a small radio station continues to brave the country's shifting political landscape. Now Moby's CE...

We are expected to operate with industrial-era efficiency at work. But creativity and high-quality ideas can't be generated on the assembly line. So how can we curate the best mental ecosystem for learning, creativity, and problem-solving? From adapting the pace of our work to optimising moments of discovery and illumination, Dr Mithu Storoni explores the gears of our brain and what we can do to m...

We live in a world where uncertainty is inevitable. How should we deal with what we don’t know? And what role do chance, luck and coincidence play in our lives? Cambridge statistician and beloved broadcaster David Spiegelhalter has spent his career dissecting data in order to understand risks and assess the chances of what might happen in the future. In this episode of the podcast, recorded live i...

How do you balance kindness and competence in the workplace? How can you get the success you deserve, earn credit for your accomplishments, and navigate complex office politics without antagonising your colleagues? Over decades of research, behavioural scientist Alison Fragale encountered these recurring questions from high-powered and early-career women alike, determining that many women’s workpl...

“With just 26 letters, you can create any conceivable universe.” - Alan Moore With the rise of new technology, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality, what power remains in our more ancient forms of storytelling? Modern-day alchemist Alan Moore who transmuted comic books into literary gold joins Robin Ince to explore the enduring power of prose and the unique magic that written stories br...