How To Academy Podcast

Philip Pullman’s novels are a testament to the power of the human imagination and a celebration of our capacity for wonder, proving to millions of readers across the globe that enchantment still has a profound role to play in our age of reason.It is an ethos shared by the neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, whose book The Master and His Emissary was that rare thing: a bestselling classic of modern philosophy with genuine relevance to human life.In this podcast, the two men will come together to explore The Matter With Things, McGilchrist’s ground-breaking sequel to The Master and His Emissary and the culmination of a lifetime of thought.How does the brain produce our experience of the world? What role do science, reason, and imagination play in the search for truth – and how much should we trust each of these paths to knowledge? On this week's show you'll hear new answers to these ancient questions - and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

'For the left, elections are a brief interlude in a life of real politics, a moment to ask whether it's worth taking time off to vote . . . Then back to work. The work will be to move forward to construct the better world that is within reach.' – Noam ChomskyA giant of both 20th and 21st century intellectual life, Noam Chomsky’s influence on the development of linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science cannot be overstated; but it is as a political thinker, activist and social critic that his ideas have made the most impact outside of the academy.In conversation with the author Fatima Bhutto, he joins us live to shed light on the world in 2021, sharing his insights into the post-pandemic world, exposing the catastrophic nature and impact of authoritarian policies on people and the planet, and exploring the dynamics of our dog-eat-dog society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What we can do to have better conversations with our children and with each other about race, and build a better world?Beverly Daniel Tatum and Robin DiAngelo have dedicated their lives to anti-racist education. The bestselling authors of, respectively, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and White Fragility, their insights are essential for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of race in the United States and beyond. In the age of Trump, Black Lives Matter, and increasingly polarisation, they join the How To Academy Podcast with an urgent call to embrace courage, lifelong commitment and accountability in the struggle for equality.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chief historian of the BBC's Horrible Histories TV show and the host of chart-topping podcast You're Dead to Me, Greg Jenner is a master in the art of turning the messiness of history into whip-smart comic entertainment.He joined us to explore his favourite historical questions and their often surprising answers - as submitted by the general public. From chariot racing to bank robbery, Egyptian mummies to Monty Python, this episode of the How To Academy Podcast is a ride through some of the wildest and weirdest episodes in ten thousand years of human civilisation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

World-renowned ethologist and conservationist Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a UN Messenger of Peace, has spent more than a half-century warning of our impact on our planet. From her famous encounters and research into the wild chimpanzees in the forests of Gombe which began more than sixty years ago and continues to this day, to her tireless campaigning for the environment in her late eighties, Jane has become the godmother to a new generation of climate activists. She joined the How To Academy Podcast to teach us how to find strength in the face of the climate crisis.Photo attibution: Vincent Calmel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Few works of literature have the power to change who we are and how we conceive our place in the universe – but Richard Powers Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning masterpiece The Overstory is one. For Barack Obama, Powers ‘changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it’; for Emma Thompson, The Overstory was a ‘the best book I've read in 10 years… a lodestone’; for Ann Patchett, it was simply ‘one of the best novels, period’. This year's follow-up, the Booker shortlisted Bewilderment, is no less profound; an acclaimed exploration of the fragility of life on Earth that dares to ask the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?Richard joined us on stage in London in conversation with broadcaster Razia Iqbal to explore why storytelling matters. In an age of impending ecological catastrophe, how can the novel help us to grow our empathy for one another and expand our awareness and love of the natural world?This podcast was produced in association with the Conduit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bernard-Henri Levy is one of the world’s most esteemed philosophers and public intellectuals; but his understanding of philosophy is anything but theoretical. A humanitarian activist of deep conviction, for fifty years he has reported from the sites of human rights abuses and humanitarian crises that fail to receive global attention or an active response, shedding light on urgent stories that Western media and governments have chosen to ignore. He joined us on stage in London to issue a stirring rebuke to indifference and an exhortation to level our gaze at those most hidden from us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 Kate Bowler had always accepted the modern idea that life is an endless horizon of possibilities. As many of us do, she saw life as a series of choices that, if made correctly, would lead us to a place just out of reach.But then, aged just thirty-five, Kate was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. She was forced to ask one of the most fundamental questions of all: How do we create meaning in our lives when the life we hoped for is put on hold?In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, Kate explores how to navigate life with the knowledge that it could end at any moment. As we struggle to decipher what constitutes a meaningful existence in this strange new world, at a time when our lives have never been further from our control, Kate will demonstrate how we can find meaning without having to pretend that life is always getting better.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In anticipation of Steven Pinker's return to How To Academy later this month, this episode of the podcast revisits his conversation with Stephen Fry on stage in London in 2018.The challenges we face today are formidable, including inequality, climate change, Artificial Intelligence and nuclear weapons. But the way to deal with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a mythical idyllic past; it's to treat them as problems we can solve, as we have solved other problems in the past. In conversation with actor and author Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker makes the case for an Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century, urging us to use our faculties of reason and sympathy to solve the problems that inevitably come with being products of evolution in an indifferent universe. We will never have a perfect world, but - defying the chorus of fatalism and reaction - we can continue to make it a better one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this week's podcast, science writer and Sunday Times bestselling author James Nestor joins us with a guide that will forever change the way you think about health and wellbeing. We breathe 25,000 times a day: yet as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly - with grave consequences for our health. James travelled the world to discover the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. He shared his story with Hannah MacInnes.You will never breathe the same again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices