Where Shall We Meet

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week, back for a second time, is Alastair Campbell, who is co-host of The Rest Is Politics with Rory Stewart. His new book is Persevilience: The Word the World Needs Now, which went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list. In it he coins a word for “the ability of an individual...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Last year, according to PEN America, nearly 12,000 book bans took place in US public schools. Our guest this week is Marc Levy, who wrote The Bookshop of Forbidden Books. He is the author of twenty-seven other novels published in fifty languages. With more than fifty million copies sold, he is the m...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is Anne Applebaum, who is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She is a historian of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. She also hosts The Atlantic's podcast Autocracy in America with Peter Pomerantsev....

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is Carissa Véliz, who is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI and Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford University. She works on privacy, digital ethics and the ethics of AI, and her new book argues that AI has become the new Ora...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is James Manyika, who is Senior Vice President of Research, Labs, Technology and Society at Google and Alphabet. He joined Google in 2022 in a newly created role reporting to Sundar Pichai, and has spent the years since arguing that AI's largest contribution may turn out to...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the where shall we meet podcast. Our guest this week is Xavier Collins who is the CEO and Co-founder of Wonder Studios, an AI-native creative studio redefining how film, advertising, and music video content is made. Based in London, Xavier founded Wonder alongside CCO Justin Hackney with a clear thesis: that the most valuable creat...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. This is the first time we have a returning guest. We talk about Maria Popova’s new book Traversal, which to be honest defies summary. Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyz Twitter: @whrshallwemeet Instagram: @whrshallwemeet

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is Nick Potter, who is a consultant Osteopath at King Edward the VII hospital, in London. He researches “Bendy Bodies, Bendy Brains”: studying the relationship between hypermobility, ADHD, anxiety, and nervous-system regulation He is the author of The Meaning of Pain: A Radical N...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest today is Dr Amanda Parkes. Amanda calls herself a fashion scientist - she has a PhD from the MIT Media Lab, where her research bridged computer science and material science, and dual Stanford degrees in mechanical engineering and art history. She has spent fifteen years trying to answer a...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is Jimmy Wales. He is an internet entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that launched in 2001, creating a radically collaborative model that allows anyone to contribute to and edit what has become the world’s largest free encyclopedi...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Welcome to the third season of the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Quick housekeeping, in the show notes you will find a link to send us a voice note, should you feel the urge. Our guest today is Samantha Harvey who is a British novelist and a senior lecturer in creative writing at Bath Spa University. Her Phd centred on writing philosophical fi...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest this week is Joscha Bach. He is a German cognitive scientist, artificial-intelligence researcher and philosopher of mind who consistently bridges the gap between what human intelligence is and what machines could become. He has an MA in computer science and a PhD in cognitive science. Over the course of his career he has held resear...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest this week is Natalie Batalha. Natalie is professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz where received her PhD. Previously, she was a research astronomer in the Space Sciences Division of NASA Ames Research Center . She held the position of Science Team Lead on the Kepler Mission , the first mission capable of finding Eart...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest this week is Jacinda Ardern. She became the world's youngest female head of government at age 37. Ardern served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023, earning global admiration for her empathetic and decisive leadership through crises like the Christchurch attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic. Her trademark “be kind”...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest this week is Kim Stanley Robinson, also know as Stan. He is an American science fiction writer best known for his Mars trilogy of novels. Over his career he has published over 20 books. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, and political themes, featuring scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including th...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest this week is Alain de Botton. Alain is a London based writer and psychotherapist. His first book, Essays in Love was published when he was 23 years old and went on to sell two million copies. His books emphasise philosophy's relevance to everyday life. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anx...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest this week is Rutger Bregman. Rutger is a Dutch historian and author. His books Humankind: A Hopeful History and Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There were both Sunday Times and New York Times Best Sellers and have been translated in 46 languages. The Guardian described him as 'the Dutch wunderkind of new ideas', wh...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest this week is Howard Covington. Howard is a Cambridge graduate in physics and maths. He has been a banker, a co-founder and chief executive of New Star Asset Management, and a trustee of the Science Museum. He’s also been and chair of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, The Alan Turing...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Paul Bennett is a designer. For 23 years he worked at design and innovation powerhouse IDEO, where he was Chief Creative Officer and then co-CEO. There he was responsible for content excellence across the whole firm, and was active in developing and publishing new thinking in the field of human-centered and design-led innovation. Today, Paul...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Dr Carine Minne is Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis at England’s High Security Hospital, Broadmoor. She was also based at The Portman Clinic, London for three decades - an out-patient psychotherapy clinic for people suffering from problems of violence and sexual paraphilia - both under the NHS public heal...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest today is Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he is also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science . He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness Oxford University Press. Anil is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2019-2024), which...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest today is Laura Clarke. She is the CEO of ClientEarth . She was recognised as one of the most influential climate business leaders globally in Time magazines top 100 climate list. Her background is in diplomacy and environmental advocacy. Laura was British High Commissioner to New Zealand, Governor of the Pitcairn Islands, High Commi...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest today is Sam Harris. Sam is the host of the Making Sense Podcast and an the author of five New York Times best sellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). His writing and public lectures cover a...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest today is Suzanne O'Sullivan, the author of the book The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far . Suzanne is a neurologist, clinical neurophysiologist, and writer. She has been a consultant since 2004 and has been at The National Hospital for Neurology and The Epilepsy Society since 2011. Her specia...

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message! Our guest today is Nick Lane, who offers fresh insights on the theories of the origins of life. He is a Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. Nick’s research is on the way that energy flow has shaped evolution over 4 billion years, using a mixture of theor...