How To Academy Podcast

Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women was a world-wide sensation – forever changing how we think about women and desire. A bestseller in the US and the UK, “Book of the Year” for more than thirty of the most respected media titles, including the FT, Times and Time magazine, an instant classic beloved by cultural icons including Gillian Anderson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Gilbert, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a global phenomenon.Now Lisa’s debut novel Animal is set to do the same for how we think about madness and trauma. Animal opens with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head of an unrequited lover and becomes a road-trip to California, centring on a woman who is driven to extremes by the violence of her past. In this episode of the podcast, Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman explores the inspiration behind this brazen and daring fictional debut. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The quality of professional judgments have a huge and lasting impact on all of our lives: the decision of an A&E doctor treating a patient, a teacher grading a paper, or a high court judge delivering a sentencing should not be a matter of personal taste. And yet there is huge, unwanted variability across human judgment.Bias has long been the star of the show when it comes to errors in decision making. Now Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein and Olivier Sibony have uncovered a critical and overlooked factor: noise. Noise explains why police officers show greater leniency towards offenders who have the same name as they do; why doctors prescribe more drugs at the end of the day than at the beginning; why judicial sentences tend to be more severe in hot weather; and why stock-market performance is affected by sunshine.In conversation with Diana Fox Carney, Kahneman, Sunstein and Sibony reveal how noise and bias both shape our thought processes – and the remedies we can take to make far better decisions and judgments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join us for a wild journey through culture, science, philosophy and religion to better understand the mercurial genius William Blake. Taking us on wild detours into unfamiliar territory, John Higgs places the bewildering eccentricities of a most singular artist into context. The journey begins with us trying to understand him, but we will ultimately discover that it is Blake who helps us to understand ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every day, extraordinary inventions and innovative ideas are side-lined in a world that remains subservient to men.But it doesn’t have to be this way. From the beginning of time, women have been pivotal to our society, offering ingenious solutions to some of our most vexing problems. More recently, it is women who have transformed the way we shop online, revolutionised the lives of disabled people and put the climate crisis at the top of the agenda.For too long we have underestimated the consequences of sexism in our economy, and the way it holds all of us – women and men – back. In conversation with author and activist Caroline Criado Perez, Katrine Marçal sets the record straight and shows how, in a time of crisis, the ingenuity and intelligence of women is that very thing that can save us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drawing on his first-hand knowledge of life in the White House, global geopolitics and the upper echelons of power, Bill Clinton teamed up with one of the world’s best-known and best-selling authors, James Patterson, to tell the story of the most thrilling, frightening, and plausible tale of an American presidency yet devised. ‘Meticulous in its portrayal of Washington politics, gripping in its pacing, and harrowing in its depiction of the perils of cyberwarfare' (Ron Chernow), The President Is Missing was heralded as both a heart-pounding thrill ride and an authentic look inside the mind of the leader of the free world. Now President Clinton and James Patterson are back with a new novel: The President's Daughter. In this week's podcast, they share insights into their creative process and reflections on the world in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sir David Hare is renowned across the English-speaking world as the finest political storyteller alive today. In our age of blockbuster musicals and CGI superheroes, his oeuvre stands as a testament to the power of theatre and cinema to capture and even transform the soul of a nation. A student in that extraordinary year, 1968, Hare quickly emerged as a writer of courage, heart and coruscating satirical talent, fusing human drama with grand political narratives to map the convulsions of the post-war years.Whether depicting the crumbling institutions of church and state, ruthlessly mocking media tycoons, or engaging in a forensic analysis of the Suez Crisis and WMD debacle, his plays are not cold, calculating social commentary but a barometer of our age, revealing who we are and may become with a rare depth of romantic feeling. And his BAFTA winning, Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated screenplays – undisputed modern classics such as The Hours, The Reader and Damage – have brought his vision to a global audience.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do we learn? Why we do sleep, or fall in love? Can we trust our memories? In this week's podcast, neuroscience expert, author and presenter Ginny Smith explores the latest science of the mind and brain to answer the big questions about human behaviour.From adrenaline to dopamine, our lives are shaped by the chemicals that control us. They are the hormones and neurotransmitters that our brains run on, and science writer Ginny Smith is here to explore the role they play in all aspects of our experiences. In this week's podcast, author Ginny Smith explores what these tiny molecules do: what roles do cortisol and adrenaline play in memory formation? How do hormones and neurotransmitters affect the trajectory of our romantic relationships?It's an eye-opening tour through the amazing world inside our heads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.The winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 and a Sunday Times bestseller, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, she explores how she came to write this remarkable novel, including insights into her hands-on research into the life in Elizabethan England - from learning falconry to mudlarking along the Thames. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michio Kaku takes Robin Ince on the mind-bending ride through the twists and turns of an epic scientific journey: the quest to find a Theory of Everything.Einstein dedicated his life to seeking this elusive Holy Grail, a single, revolutionary 'god equation' which would tie all the forces in the universe together, yet never found it. Some of the greatest minds in physics took up the search, from Stephen Hawking to Brian Greene. None have yet succeeded.In this conversation with author, comic and science broadcaster Robin Ince, renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku shares the story of a mystery that has fascinated him for most of his life. The object of the quest is now within sight: we are closer than ever to achieving the most ambitious undertaking in the history of science. If successful, the Theory of Everything could simultaneously unlock the deepest mysteries of space and time, and fulfil that most ancient and basic of human desires – to understand the meaning of our lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sitting at the intersection of art, science, and history, this week's podcast reveals fresh perspectives and fascinating insights into our material world.Scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials: But most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon of glass.Anna Ploszajski is here to change that. A materials scientist and engineer, she has journeyed into the domain of makers and craftspeople to comprehend how the most popular materials really work. With knowledge accumulated over generations through hands-on trial and error, these experimenters and tinkerers understand the materiality of objects far better than any scientist with a textbook. She joins us to share what she discovered, revealing the story of materials through making and doing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices