How To Academy Podcast
by How To Academy
How To Academy is London's home of big thinking. From Nobel laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners, we invite the world’s most influential voices to share new ideas for changing ourselves, our communities, and the world. Our biweekly podcast is your chance to hear in-depth from the most exciting thinkers in global culture.
Episodes
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Roisin Kiberd – Beauty and Normality in the Age of Consumption
What does it actually mean to be beautiful? And where did our ideas of beauty and normality come from? In this episode of the podcast, writer Roisin Kiberd traces the surprisingly violent history of Botox, unpacks why blonde hair carries centuries of loaded meaning, and uncovers the secretive...
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Neuroscientist Adrian Owen – How to Maximise Your Brain’s Superpower
What are executive functions and why are they so important? In this episode of the podcast, world-renowned neuroscientist Dr Adrian Owen unpacks how executive functions drive everything over the course of our lives, allowing us to create and retrieve memories, understand our own and others’...
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Historian Hallie Rubenhold - The Silenced Women of Dr Crippen
On 1 February, 1910, vivacious music-hall performer, Belle Elmore, suddenly vanished from her north London home, causing alarm among her circle of female friends– the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild– who demanded an immediate investigation. They could not have known what they would...
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Historian Lindsey Fitzharris: Dr Joe Bell, the Man Who Inspired Sherlock Holmes
One of the most remarkable and progressive physicians of the Victorian age, Dr Joseph Bell's incredible powers of deductive reasoning astonished his students -- including the young Arthur Conan Doyle. Oxford-trained medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals what Sherlock Holmes owes to the…
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Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor Meet David Olusoga - End Times Fascism
Author and journalist Naomi Klein and writer and activist Astra Taylor join Historian David Olusoga to explore how apocalyptic visions of the future are working to justify the present-day costs of AI – from energy and water-hungry data centres to job displacement and mass surveillance. Naomi and...
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Vedic Meditation Teacher Jillian Lavender — How to Find Clarity
Sometimes life can feel like a lot. Even on a good day you will experience stress and fatigue. The nature of modern living guarantees it. However, the problem is not that we think too much, but that our nervous systems are too wound up to rest. In this episode of the podcast, leading vedic...
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Daron Acemoglu Meets Martin Wolf– What Happened to Liberal Democracy?
Why is liberal democracy losing public confidence—and what would it take to renew it? Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu joins Financial Times chief economics commentator Martin Wolf to discuss. Liberalism offered a glittering promise of shared prosperity, equality, democratic values…
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Philosopher Lani Watson – The Power of Asking Questions in a World That Wants Answers
From an early age we learn to stop asking questions, judged and rewarded for the answers we give, not the questions we ask. In this episode, Lani Watson traces the hidden life of the question – from school, to therapy, to dating. Drawing on research across psychology, philosophy and neuroscience,...
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David Duchovny Meets Gina Gershon: About Time
David Duchovny has spent three decades refusing to stay in one lane. Two-time Golden Globe winner, four-time Emmy nominee, New York Times bestselling novelist, musician with three studio albums, filmmaker whose directorial debut premiered at Tribeca: the range is, by any measure, unusual. What...
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Bonus Episode: New Frontiers with Miriam Margoyles, Reece Sheersmith, Damien Lewis and more...
This week we have a guest appearance from our friends at John Murray, who have curated a curated a collection of some of the best historians, memoirists, academics, critics and national treasures publishing on their 2026 non-fiction list to introduce and share clips from their current and…
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Natasha Polisczuk Meets Louisa Young – The Golden Hours
In this episode, Louisa Young joins journalist and editor Natasha Poliszczuk to discuss the making of The Golden Hours, the sixth Cazalet novel. Louisa explains what it takes to inherit half a million words and fifty-five characters, why some of them had unfinished business she felt compelled to…
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Bestselling Mindset Coach Ben Crowe – How to Change Your Life
Having worked with top athletes and sportspeople, leading tech and finance corporations, and the World Health Organisation, Ben Crowe is one of the world's most in-demand mindset coaches. In this episode of the podcast, he reveals simple-yet-profound perspective shifts that will change the way…
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Bestselling Novelist China Mieville – On Grief, Ghosts, and Empire
The central figure of the New Weird, an unofficial movement fusing science fiction, fantasy, and horror with a literary sensibility, China Mieville is equally known for his award-winning, internationally bestselling novels, which include Perdido Street Station, The City and the City and The Last...
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Bestselling Mythologist Amy Jeffs – The Life of King Arthur
A scholar, author, artist, and musician, Amy Jeffs is a polymath of British mythology, bringing the greatest stories of the Middle Ages to life in extraordinary books including Storyland, Wild, and Old Songs. She returns to the podcast to share a new life of King Arthur -- drawn not from…
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Time Woman of the Year Zahra Joya — The Vanishing Girl of Kabul
Zahra Joya grew up under the first Taliban regime, when girls were banned from school. For years she dressed as a boy to access the basic rights denied to her. She became a journalist in Kabul, and founded a news organisation reporting on the lives of Afghan women. In 2021, when the Taliban took...
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Kimon de Greef — A Trip into the Psychedelic Underworld
When Kimon de Greef began an investigation into the smuggling of white sage, a Californian herb popular in the wellness movement, he could not have foreseen that the story would lead him into the dark heart of the psychedelic renaissance and one of its most prominent advocates, Dr. Octavio…
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Jo Marchant – The Science and Mystery of the Present Moment
What if the present moment – the ‘now’– isn’t just a tick of the clock? We feel that the present is everything; all we can know, yet physics finds no universal 'now'. So where does that leave us – and what is the 'now' we experience? Science journalist Jo Marchant draws on state-of-the-art...
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Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon – The Future is Peace
“People have lost hope that peace is possible. Talking about peace seems too vulnerable, too naïve, too dangerous. We have resigned ourselves to this unending war as the only way forward. But we have tried this. We have tried war. The only war that is won is one that leads to peace.” On paper…
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Naomi Klein - The Mirror World of Conspiracists and the Far-Right (Summer Repeat)
As conspiracy theories, political polarisation and the blurred boundaries between truth and misinformation continue to shape our public life, Naomi Klein's prize-winning book Doppleganger (2023) feels more relevant than ever before. In this fascinating episode of the podcast, Naomi joins…
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Yuval Noah Harari – Making Sense of a World in Crisis (Summer Repeat)
In an age of uncertainty, renowned historian Yuval Noah Harari joins Ritula Shah to make sense of a world in crisis and help us better understand the perils we face. In this episode of the podcast, bestselling author of Sapiens and Nexus Yuval Noah Harari joins Ritula Shah to explore the forces...
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Mary Beard and David Mitchell – On Rulers and Power (Summer Repeat)
Cambridge Professor Mary Beard has done more than anyone to bring the world of ancient Rome to life again. Comedian David Mitchell once studied history and won’t let it off the hook for the mess it’s made of everything. In this special episode of the podcast, they join forces to tell the epic…
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Oscar-nominated Filmmaker Maite Alberdi – A Child of My Own
After experiencing multiple miscarriages and the societal shame that comes with it, recently married Alejandra fakes a pregnancy. What starts as an elaborate lie turns into a complex charade that threatens to upend her life and relationship, and ultimately unleashes a media scandal that shakes…
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Carissa Véliz– AI, Prediction, and the Fight for the Future
Today's computer scientists play the same role as the oracles of the ancient world and the astrologers of the Middle Ages. Modern predictions not only advise on war, crop output, and marriages, algorithms and statisticians now determine whether we can get a loan, a job, an apartment, or an organ...
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Cathy Haynes – How To Live By Nature's Rhythms
Today, in our clock-bound, screen-immersed world, most of us rely on machines to mark the hours. Past generations, however, would tell time by shadows shrinking, the midday glow over a mountaintop, the crowing of the rooster in the darkness. They noticed the flowers that close at noon, sensed how...
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Joe Hill Meets Frank Miller – A Life in Comics
Frank Miller transformed the way comics are told and reshaped popular culture in America and the world. In this episode of the podcast, we’ll hear about his struggles as a fresh faced seventeen year-old kid in seedy 1970s New York and his transformation of Batman from a childish has-been into the...
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Catharine Edwards - The Life of Cicero and the Fall of the Roman Republic
Rising from provincial obscurity to the highest elected office in Rome, Cicero became the greatest orator of his age. Yet Cicero was far more than a master of rhetoric. His long and turbulent life unfolded alongside the collapse of the Roman Republic. Catharine Edwards, one of the world’s…
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Suzy Hansen – Turkey in the Age of Erdoğan
In the midst of a world in upheaval, Erdoğan has remade Turkey in his own image. Once a shining portal that straddled East and West, Istanbul's streets now teem with nationalistic fervour, political repression and rampant corruption. In the old Ottoman neighbourhood of Karagumruk, journalist Suzy...
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Daniel Mendelsohn – Translating Homer's Odyssey
America’s most celebrated living classicist, Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translation of Homer’s Odyssey has been universally acclaimed as the greatest and most authentic ever to appear in English; capturing both the music and archaic grandeur of Homer while bringing to vivid life the gripping...
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Nir Eyal - The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself
Beliefs change how we see the world, how we experience suffering, and change what we are able to achieve. The defining characteristics of people who achieve their goals are persistence and the belief that they are capable of reaching what they set out to do. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology…
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Sir Roger Deakins – Reflections of a Cinematographer
Over the course of a fifty-year career, Sir Roger Deakins has proven to be the greatest artist and visionary that the craft of cinematography has ever known. In conversation with James Ellis Deakins and George MacKay, Roger shares the stories behind crafting some of the most iconic and beloved...
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Emma Southon - How Slavery Made the Roman Empire
We associate the Romans with majesty and greatness: we marvel at their straight roads and innovative underfloor heating, at the dominance of their army and navy, at the grandeur of their palaces and temples. But the Romans were also enslavers. Acclaimed historian Emma Southon reveals why we have...
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George Osborn — Video Games, Politics, and the Battle for Influence
Video games are far more than an entertainment product: they connect people across the globe, creating digital communities capable of shaping reality. And bad actors across the world are keenly aware of their power. Saudi Arabia is spending tens of billions of dollars acquiring video games...
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Therapist Emmy van Deurzen – The Philosopher’s Guide to Everyday Existence
How can we find our own direction and purpose in a world of endless possibilities? When life feels too much, is it possible to free ourselves from the concerns that weigh us down? Psychotherapist and psychologist Emmy van Deurzen looks to philosophy to offer a guide to the everyday challenges of...
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Bill Browder and Jamison Firestone: Chaos and Murder in Putin's Russia
Neither Bill Browder, a hedge fund manager, nor Jamison Firestone, a corporate lawyer ever intended to become activists fighting the Russian government. Both were building businesses in Moscow, great believers in Russia, and had front-row seats as Russia’s nascent disorderly democracy gave way to...
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Tom McTague – Britain in Europe: The Hidden History of a Revolution
How did a country go from joining the Common Market in 1973, only to leave the European Union in an explosive referendum a little over forty years later? Acclaimed political writer Tom McTague chronicles the battle of ideas, events, and personalities that led to the decision which shocked the...
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Malala Yousafzai - Finding My Way
Thrust onto the public stage at just fifteen years old after the Taliban’s brutal attack on her life, Malala quickly became an international icon — but away from the cameras and crowds, she was a young woman struggling to find her place in a world that was telling her the role she had to play.…
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Antonia Senior – The Cambridge Five and the Making of The Soviet Empire
Why did five gilded, charming men, blessed with brains, beauty, and opportunity, choose to betray their country? During their time at Cambridge University in the 1930s, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, John Cairncross and Keeper of the Queen's Pictures Anthony Blunt undertook a…
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M. John Harrison - The End of Everything
One of the leaders of British science fiction's 1960s New Wave, M. John Harrison has spent the subsequent five decades inventing new and exhilarating literary worlds that push against the boundaries of genre and expectations of the novel form. Now he returns to the post-apocalyptic milieu with…
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Mark Williamson – How To Live a Happier Life
What does it mean to be happy? Whilst it’s not always possible to change our circumstances, Action for Happiness founder Mark Williamson believes that we all have the potential to take action to feel better. Blending scientific insights with years of real-world experience, Mark will offer...
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Carol Cadwalladr Meets Karen Hao - Sam Altman, ChatGPT, and the Global Resistance
Karen Hao joins The Nerve's Carole Cadwalladr for an eye-watering insider account of Sam Altman’s Open AI and the burgeoning resistance against it. When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, what do we really have to be afraid of? When long-time AI expert and award-winning journalist Karen Hao…
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Novelist Elodie Harper – Boudicca's Daughter
Boudicca had two daughters, but history records their existence and nothing more. Sunday Times bestselling author Elodie Harper joins us to discuss her latest novel, Boudicca's Daughters, which reimagines Boudicca and her daughters from the colonised side of history, and explores the inner lives…
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Caroline Sylge – How To Retreat
Caroline Sylge reminds us to press pause on the daily overwhelm of modern life by bringing the magic and solace of retreating into your every day. What comes into your mind when you hear the word 'retreat'? Meditation at a mountain monastery, or a trip to far-flung places? While ‘retreats’ can be...
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Novelist Erica Wagner - Washington Roebling and the Art of Life Writing
Erica Wagner may be the first ever author to write both a landmark biography and a historial novel about the same person. The engineer Washington Roebling took up residence in her head when she was sixteen years old and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time; her 2017 book Chief Engineer...
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Neurologist Majid Fotuhi – How To Age-Proof Your Brain
Neurologist Majid Fotuhi is leading the charge in revolutionising how we understand human intelligence, brain health and age-related cognitive decline. By uncovering the true wonder of how the brain works and its infinite potential for growth and change, Majid will reveal how targeted lifestyle...
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Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris - On Birds, Wonder, and Loss
A great thinning of the skies is underway. Dusk and dawn are growing quiet as birdlife faces a rapid decline across the world. It does not have to be this way — but we will not save what we do not love. From how sparrowhawks' eyes change colour throughout the bird's life, to how cuckoo birds use...
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Jessamy Hibberd – How to Free Your Mind From Overthinking
Thinking about your life is a normal part of being human. Often, it is helpful to analyse a situation or revisit a problem in your mind, but if you find yourself constantly dwelling on your thoughts – with no sign of resolution – then it becomes a problem. In this episode of the podcast…
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Phil Tinline - Iron Mountain and the Birth of American Conspiracy Culture
How did a 1960s spoof of Cold War technocracy become a bible for far-right militias in the present? Political journalist Phil Tinline traces the strange journey of the Report from Iron Mountain. In the mid 1960s, a group of New York satirists conceived of an ingenious hoax; a report purportedly...
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Tom Holland Meets Armando Iannucci — What The Lives of the Caesars Can Teach Us About Politics
Tom Holland is a storyteller whose range and erudition seem to be as unbounded as history himself. Already a wildly acclaimed bestselling author, his chart-topping podcast The Rest is History, the third most downloaded podcast globally, made superstars of Tom and his co-host Dominic Sandbrook.…
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Freya India - The Commodification of Girls and How to Fight Back
Coming of age has always been a time of angst and inner turmoil, especially for girls. But today, those worries exist in a world of AR filters, TikTok “plastic surgeons,” dating apps, hookup culture, online porn, profit-driven therapy apps, and even fully customizable AI girlfriends. All of it is...
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Holistic Psychologist Nicole LePera – Reparenting the Inner Child
We all carry the imprint of our earliest years. Childhood is brief, yet its impact is lifelong. Some parts of us were met with love while other parts were met with silence, criticism, or disapproval. Many of us still protect the parts of ourselves that once felt unsafe. As adults, we often fall...
About this show
How To Academy is London's home of big thinking. From Nobel laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners, we invite the world’s most influential voices to share new ideas for changing ourselves, our communities, and the world. Our biweekly podcast is your chance to hear in-depth from the most exciting thinkers in global culture.
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