How To Academy show

How To Academy

Summary: How To Academy is an organisation for people who think big. From Nobel laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners, we invite the world’s most influential voices to London to share new ideas for changing ourselves, our communities, and the world.

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Podcasts:

 George Saunders – Lessons in Writing and Life | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 01:00:08

What makes great stories work? What can they tell us about our world today? How can they make us better readers and how can we write them ourselves? George Saunders is one of the undisputed masters of American letters; a novelist, storyteller and essayist whose wisdom and insight have been rewarded with the highest accolades in literature. In a rare treat for authors and storytellers of all forms, he shares his insights from teaching some of the best young writers in America. Drawing on the works of Russian masters, he reminds us that the process of writing is as much a craft as it is a quality of openness and a willingness to see the world through new eyes.

 Matthew d’Ancona – Why The Old Politics Is Useless and What We Can Do About It | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:57:08

Political journalist Matthew d'Ancona's issues a call to arms to challenge this age of political extremism, lazy populism and democratic torpor. The old tools of political analysis are obsolete - they have rusted and are no longer fit for purpose. We've grown lazy, wedded to the assumption that, after ruptures such as Brexit, the pandemic, and the rise of the populist Right, things will eventually go 'back to normal'. Award-winning political writer Matthew d'Ancona joins us with an invitation to think afresh: to seek new ways of challenging political extremism, bombastic populism and democratic torpor on both Left and Right. In this week's How To Academy Podcast, he will propose a new way of understanding our era and plots a way forward. With rigorous analysis, he argues that we need to understand the world in a new way, with a framework built from the three I's: Identity, Ignorance and Innovation.

 Isabel Allende – The Soul of a Woman | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:53:37

Isabel Allende has been a feminist her whole life. From a young age she rebelled against male authority, after seeing her mother Panchita abandoned by her husband and left to provide for three small children. While growing up in Chile in her grandparents’ house, Isabel realised early on that the women in her family, from matriarch to housemaid, were at a disadvantage compared to the men, treated as subordinates with no voice. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, Isabel rode the first wave of feminism. While working at the newly launched feminist magazine, Paula, her journalism challenged the patriarchal mores imposed on women regarding sex, money, discriminatory laws, drugs, virginity, abortion, prostitution, alcoholism to name a few. In this week's How To Academy podcast, Isabel shares stories from her life as a feminist with broadcaster Belle Donati.

 Ian McEwan – A Life In Literature | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 01:07:30

The country’s most prolific and celebrated novelist reflects upon a life in literature. Since his rise to literary acclaim almost forty years ago for the dazzlingly grotesque short stories that earned him the moniker “Ian Macabre”, to his present-day voyages into the uncharted territories of climate change and Artificial Intelligence, one thing has remained consistent across Ian McEwan’s astonishing oeuvre: the exacting precision with which he can simultaneously dissect both the mysteries of the human psyche and the tribulations of our age. With a gift for creating scenes of heart-stopping anxiety, from the kidnapping that opens A Child in Time to Enduring Love’s iconic balloon ride gone wrong, drawing characters whose romantic longing and realistic flaws are recognisably our own, and exploring philosophical and moral ambiguities that speak to both to our time and to the great quandaries of life, Ian McEwan has proven himself time and again to be the foremost literary novelist of his generation. Whether you’re an aspiring novelist seeking to learn the craft from a veritable master of the form, a lifelong reader of his seminal novels, or simply intrigued to hear from one of the most exciting cultural figures working in any field or discipline, this is an unmissable opportunity to look inside the imagination of an author of the first order.

 Rowan Hooper – How to Spend a Trillion Dollars | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:30:20

If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. In this week’s How To Academy Podcast, New Scientist senior editor and evolutionary biologist Rowan Hooper explores how $1 trillion could be used to change the course of human history: from creating artificial life to colonising the moon, helping in the fight against climate change to lifting millions out of poverty. It’s the ultimate thought experiment and a powerful reminder of the power of science and economics to shape our collective future.

 Derren Brown – How To Be a Little Happier | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 01:02:06

Since he introduced us to his singular and inimitable brand of psychology, stagecraft and magic in 2000, Derren Brown has played Russian Roulette on live television, convinced middle-managers to commit armed robbery in the street, led the nation in a séance and exposed psychic and faith-healing charlatans. His live shows astonish audiences across the country and have captivated the West End and Broadway. He joined How To Academy to teach a lesson none of us can afford to miss: what we can do to be a little happier and less anxious in a difficult world.

 Adam Grant and Tim Harford – The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 01:02:41

Research shows that the smarter you are the more you might struggle to update your beliefs, yet some of the most successful people, from entrepreneurs to politicians, all have one thing in common: the ability to think like scientists, continually questioning their beliefs, and to embrace being wrong. As an organisational psychologist, Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds, and our own. He is one of the world’s most-cited, most prolific, and most influential researchers in business and economics, and, as Wharton’s top-rated professor, his research is sought-after by global powerhouses such as NASA and the Gates Foundation. In this week's podcast, economist, FT columnist and author Tim Harford joins Adam to discover how we can all learn to embrace the power of knowing what we don't know.

 Ethan Kross – How to Harness the Voice Inside Your Head | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:58

We all have a voice in our head that we tune into from time to time for guidance, ideas and wisdom. Except sometimes, this voice leads us down a rabbit hole of negative self-talk and endless rumination which undermines our performance at work, interferes with our ability to make good decisions, and negatively influences our relationships. Since we aren’t going to stop talking to ourselves— and, frankly, we don’t want to, since the voices in our heads have valuable things to say—it’s important we learn to use our introspection effectively. Drawing on more than twenty years of ground-breaking research, University of Michigan Psychologist Ethan Kross joined Matthew Stadlen to reveal the life-changing potential of a mind constructively channelled.

 George the Poet Meets Mariana Mazzucato – a Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:55:40

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, capitalism was stuck. It had no answer to the different challenges facing the world – from those related to health to digital privacy to the climate crisis. Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s ‘moonshot’ programmes that successfully co-ordinated public and private sectors to put a man on the moon, Mariana Mazzucato calls for the same level of boldness and experimentation to be applied to the biggest social and political issues of our time. In conversation with George the Poet, she joins the podcast to argue that we need to rethink the capacities and role of government within the economy and society, and above all recover a sense of public purpose.

 Toby Ord – Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:45:30

We live during the most important era of human history. In the twentieth century, we developed the means to destroy ourselves – without developing the moral framework to ensure we won't. This is the Precipice, and how we respond to it will be the most crucial decision of our time. In this week's podcast, Oxford moral philosopher Toby Ord explores the risks to humanity's future, from the familiar man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war, to the potentially greater, more unfamiliar threats from engineered pandemics and advanced artificial intelligence. Can we protect the legacy of the hundred billion who have come before us, and secure a future for the trillions that could follow? What can we do, in our present moment, to face the risks head on?

 Owen Jones Meets Claudia Rankine | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:54:54

How can we best approach one another across our differences? The first and only poet to write a New York Times bestseller, the winner of every significant literary prize in the United States, and recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant”, Jamaican-born Claudia Rankine is an icon of contemporary American letters. In this conversation with Guardian columnist Owen Jones, she explores her own prejudices and those of others, and celebrate vulnerability, openness and the willingness to be wrong. It’s an urgent call to enter into conversations which could offer humane pathways through this moment of division.

 Iain McGilchrist – The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:55:44

A tour de force of neuroscience and philosophy, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary speaks to everyone searching for happiness, meaning and understanding in the modern world. For millennia humans have speculated upon the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Why did evolution lead to humans and many other animals developing two cerebral hemispheres, separated by a groove? No neuroscientist would dispute that there are significant differences; but until now, no-one has understood why. Dr Iain McGilchrist has an empirical answer to this question – and his ideas have profound consequences for how humans understand themselves and their place in the world. This conversation between Dr McGilchrist and science journalist David Malone explores how the competition between the two hemispheres has shaped civilisation and progress and now, in our hyper-rationalist age, threatens to undermine the deepest and most sacred human values.

 Malcolm Gladwell - How to Make a Good First Impression | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:37:24

From Blink to Outliers, Revisionist History to David and Goliath, no-one challenges our shared assumptions and invites us to rethink human nature like Malcolm Gladwell. Named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers, his ideas have passed into common currency and made him one of the most recognisable and beloved public intellectuals of our time. He is uncannily tuned into the zeitgeist, able to fuse scholarly insights, human stories and a global perspective to illuminate truths about our world that were otherwise destined to remain hidden. In conversation with Hubertus Kuelps, Malcolm explores the theme of his latest book, Talking to Strangers: how can we make a good impression? This podcast is the latest episode of Found in Conversation, a podcast brought to you by the Pictet Group in partnership with How To Academy.

 Caitlin Moran – More Than a Woman | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:56:48

‘First, you have to learn how to be a woman. Then middle age arrives, and you realise you have to become … more than a woman. To those around you, you’re now the Fourth Emergency Service.” – Caitlin Moran Caitlin Moran was home-educated on a Wolverhampton council estate and went onto become the most iconic columnist and critic of her generation. From How to Be a Woman to Moranifesto, How to Build a Girl to Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves, her game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy and becoming a woman is above all things a cry ‘to live a full, open-hearted, joyous life’ (Sunday Times). She joins the How To Academy Podcast for a riotous, heart-felt celebration of all those middle-aged women whose stories never get made into TV shows, or movies - but who, none-the-less, keep the world turning. As Caitlin says, “Take up your space, dude – you’ve earned it.”

 Simon Schama – The World in 2021 | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:36

The events of 2020 have upturned the order of the world, and the medical, economic and political crises we face will not fade quietly as the new year begins. Though so much of the present moment feels strange and unprecedented, there is wisdom in heeding to George Santayana’s famous proverb that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. To help ensure that we do not fall foul of the prophecy, Simon Schama joined How To Academy to share his insights into the past and near future. A natural storyteller with a deep grasp of human psychology and the broader forces that shape our world, Schama reflected upon the lessons history holds for the coming year in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Matthew Stadlen.

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