how to: Academy 2i72l

Bestselling author, artist, and the Observer’s agony aunt Philippa Perry s cartoonist Becky Barnicoat for a conversation about the highs and lows of raising small children.  From the unglamorous reality of post-partum to the tumult of baby supplies, from the challenges of bedtime to the comically dishevelled appearance of new parenthood, discover the deeply strange new world of  parenting, ruled by a tyrannical tiny leader, growing bigger and more loved by the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today Lorna Tucker is a feted documentary maker whose subjects include Vivienne Westwood and Katherine Hepburn — a life she could not have imagined as a young woman who fled a troubled home to live on the streets. Once a thief, sex worker, and drug addict, estranged from her family and in trouble with gangs and the police, her memoir Bare will make you see a hidden world for the first time and change the way you think about the most vulnerable of society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the far-right violence that broke out in the summer of 2024 to the hatred directed at Muslims in public life during the Gaza conflict, anti-Muslim racism is dangerously out-of-control. Fed by a network of media outlets, think tanks, commentators, and even the entertainment industry, Islamophobia not only es the dinner table test but is also Britain’s bigotry blind spot. For too many, Muslims don’t matter. But that's not stopping Baroness Warsi. Having made her career by speaking up and standing out, she once again fearlessly urges us to change course, dismantle toxic bigotry, and stop the surge towards populism - before it's too late. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While many of us are sleeping, another world awakens in the night hours. Author Dan Richards reveals the thrumming life of the night, from night shifts on postal trains to the art of focaccia, from the rhythm of shipping forecasts to the humanity which society often fails to recognise in homelessness. Dan illuminates the nighttime world, and explores the deeply personal relationship we each have with the night hours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

LSE’s Paul Dolan reveals how we can stop hating the people we disagree with, and how we can foster a more tolerant society. We like to think that we’re tolerant, but many of us struggle to engage with people whose opinions differ strongly from our own – even if they might have something useful to contribute to the debate. We’re all falling victim to what Professor Paul Dolan defines as beliefism. Now Paul s us to reveal the importance of exposing ourselves to diverging opinions, and how we can lean into difference and create environments that are conducive to listening to one another. Well-functioning societies need and celebrate difference; Paul reveals how we can foster a more tolerant society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our greatest living nature writer, Robert Macfarlane shares with Horatio Clare a single, transformative idea: are rivers alive? Robert Macfarlane is both the author of prize-winning bestsellers including Underland, Landmarks, and The Old Ways, and an artistic polymath whose collaborators include many of the most distinguished artists, musicians, and poets of our time, including Olafur Eliasson, Johnny Flynn, and Jackie Morris. Inspired by the activists, artists and lawmakers of the young ‘Rights of Nature’ movement, Macfarlane takes us on an exhilarating exploration of the past, present and futures of this ancient, urgent concept. Transporting us from the miraculous cloud-forests of Northern Ecuador to the wounded rivers and lagoons of Southern India; and from north-eastern Quebec, where a spectacular wild river – the Mutehekau or Magpie – is being defended from death by damming in a riverrights campaign, to the fragile chalk stream that rises a mile from his house and flows through his years and days, this is a magical and radical listen that will make you rethink what you think you know about rivers and about the nature of life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Neurologist and Oxford Professor Dr Masud Husain explores the intricacies of the brain, and how much our sense of self can change through brain disorders. From a woman who could not recognise the motions of her own hand, to a driven and outgoing man whose sudden stroke rendered him apathetic to all he used to care about, Dr Husain explores the bounds of the self, the need for a deeply human connection between doctor and patient, and the cutting-edge science helping people recover from even the most extreme cases of brain disorders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The story of Elizabethan theatre is often told through the artistic genius of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Critic and scholar Daniel Swift has a different story to tell: that of the businessmen who dreamed of the first professional theatre, fought against civil and religious authorities to have it built, and, ultimately, fought each other. How did the Burbage family lay the foundations for a golden age of drama? Find out in this episode of the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gina Rippon delves into the emerging science of female autism, asking why it has been systematically ignored and misunderstood for so long. Generations of researchers, convinced autism was a male problem, failed to recognise or study it in women. But new research is shedding light on female autism, revealing how autism is different for women and girls, and that camouflaging – hiding autistic traits to fit in – is far more widespread than we thought. From social belonging to the connection between diagnosis and community, Gina illuminates the importance of better understanding the full spectrum of autistic experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Slavoj Žižek, one of the most outrageous and maverick thinkers of our time, s Robin Ince for deep dive into his life and thought. From his life and education in the former Yugoslavia under communist rule, where his master’s thesis was denounced by the authorities for being ‘not Marxist enough’ and he fought to democratise Slovenia and defend human rights, to his current position as one of the 21st century’s most renowned public intellectuals, Slavoj Žižek has travelled into territory where few of us dare to tread. The man widely known as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’ reflects on his life and our times with Robin Ince, for a chat covering cinema, sex and science. Where does America go next? What does Lacan mean today? Is progress really a good thing? The philosophical rockstar shares his take on 2025 and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Muscle: it shapes us and allows us to shape who we want to be. Author and athlete Bonnie Tsui explores the world of muscle in all its rich personal, cultural, and biological complexity. From the intricate link between muscle and brain health, to redefining strength and societal roles, to how our muscle allows us to feel more present in our everyday life, Bonnie reveals how muscle is far more than just what we are made of. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dissolving the boundaries that usually divide surgeon and patient, award-winning novelist and surgeon Gabriel Weston illuminates a new journey into the human anatomy. From the emotion of entering the operating theatre, to what an autopsy can tell us about our own humanity, Gabriel explores the moving phenomenon that is the human body, in all its life-giving wonder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We might know how to love deeply, but when tensions rise and miscommunication mingles with blame, how can we learn to love better? New York Times bestselling poet and author Yung Pueblo shares with Poppy Jamie his own journey through learning how to love healthily, and reveals how we can grow in our own relationships to strengthen communication, embrace the present, and reject the myth of perfection. From loving our partners to loving ourselves, Yung Pueblo illuminates the importance of comion and self-understanding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How did a low budget sci-fi show widely loathed by its creators the BBC go on to become a bedrock of British culture that means the world to millions of children and adults alike? Today, the Doctor and his extraterrestrial enemies, sonic screwdriver, and magical blue box are instantly recognisable to almost anyone living on the British isles. But the story of Doctor Who is far more than the story of a family television programme that found its audience: it's the story of how folk heroes and myths are made, how society and the media have transformed over sixty years, and of how works of imagination have the ability to behave in ways that are weirdly and quite specifically like living things. One of our most perceptive and original cultural commentators and an unabashed lifelong Whovian, John Higgs jumps into his TARDIS to take us on a journey through space and time all the way back to television centre in 1963... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a goal-obsessed world, how can we become our best selves without falling into a rat race that leaves us feeling burnt out and unhappy? Neuroscientist and entrepreneur Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares a new guide on reaching our goals through the 'experimental mindset', a journey and practice that combines the power of curiosity with creativity and self-discovery. From debunking the myth of finding 'one big purpose' in life, to how we can be anthropologists studying the wonder of our own lives, to how we can create new patterns and habits uniquely tailored to our goals, Anne-Laure shares the joy of finding our way, and how lasting happiness can spring from the process of discovery itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Foreign policy expert and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University, Edward Fishman, s us to reveal the history of sanctions and the threats to economic security today. From the role of sanctions during the Cold War to economic warfare against Iran, Russia, and China, to Trump's current sanctions across the globe, Fishman reveals the power of economic warfare—and the chaos it can wreak in the wrong hands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visualisation: a neurological mental training technique used by the top athletes in the world to perform at their best. Now, you can learn how to use it too. With simple and actionable steps, mental fitness expert Maya Raichoora reveals a playbook on using visualisation to reach your goals, while redefining success to encom a deeper sense of meaning. From how to incorporate visualisation into your daily life, to how we can strengthen our character in the most trying of times, Maya reveals how we can better equip ourselves to reach our goals and create the best version of ourselves along the way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is a neglected history. Not a sweeping, definitive, exhaustive history of the world but something quieter, more intimate and particular. Now in this episode, journalist Annabelle Hirsch reveal that history: a single journey, picked out in 101 objects, through the fascinating, too-often-overlooked, manifold histories of women, to show that the past has always been as complicated and fascinating as the women who peopled it. From the objects you thought you knew, like the Bayeux tapestry, to those of domesticity, pleasure (a sixteenth century glass dildo) and subjugation (a thumbscrew), we uncover together the women celebrated by history and of women unfairly forgotten by it alike through its objects and learn that progress is not a linear progression from suppression to emancipation, but beyond all, a history of trying. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do we comprehend the depths of love in hindsight, and the immensity of grief? How can we say 'I love you' to a listener who is no longer alive? And how do we find forgiveness and learn to forgive ourselves? Lead singer and lyricist of Snow Patrol, Gary Lightbody, shares the raw and emotional story of grief, love, and life, upon losing his father in 2019, a journey which inspired the band's latest album, The Forest is the Path. This conversation is a testament to the power of music and to the endurance of love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch for three decades, Kenneth Roth has dedicated his life to investigating and uncovering abuses across the globe – and pressuring offending governments to stop them. From using the power of unyielding honesty to take on the world's most brutal autocrats and their sycophants, to the resilience of civilians' search for truth even under strict censorship, Kenneth reveals the ceaseless fight for ability and change to shape a better world. From Putin and Trump, to Xinjiang, China, to Israel and Palestine, Kenneth explores the greatest challenges to human rights today, and the power we have to demand change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices