Podcast
How To Academy Podcast
Hosted by How To Academy · EN
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.
17episodes
Episodes
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Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris - On Birds, Wonder, and Loss
5d ago01:18:05Tap to summarizeA 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 surprising stealth as mothers, the creators of The Lost Words Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris illuminate the miracle that is birdlife, and reveal the threats which shadow these extraordinary creatures. With warmth and urgency, they call upon us to remember how birds have long intersected with the histories of our ancestors, and how we can fight for a future where these wild lives continue to interweave with our own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Jessamy Hibberd – How to Free Your Mind From Overthinking
2w ago01:03:10Tap to summarizeThinking 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, acclaimed clinical psychologist Dr Jessamy Hibberd will show you how to break free from the cycle of overthinking. Through expert advice, and real-life examples from her clinic, Jessamy will reveal the reasons behind why we get stuck in overthinking patterns. Dr Jessamy will offer practical tips to increase your awareness of your overthinking habits, identify your doom spirals, and help you find healthier coping strategies that redirect your thoughts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Phil Tinline - Iron Mountain and the Birth of American Conspiracy Culture
2w ago00:40:28Tap to summarizeHow 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 written by government technocrats, planning for an unprecedented economic and political catastrophe: what if world peace broke out? The Report from Iron Mountain became an bestseller, its scathing indictment of the military industrial complex taken seriously even by those who correctly identified the document as a work of satire. Not everyone was so astute. Long after the Report was revealed to be a spoof, conspiracists refused to accept its inauthenticity, and the document mutated into a cornerstone of the far-right ideology that threatens American democracy today. In this episode of the podcast, political journalist Phil Tinline dives into the bizarre and frightening legacy of a satire that might just have been too clever for its own good. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Tom Holland Meets Armando Iannucci — What The Lives of the Caesars Can Teach Us About Politics
2w ago01:21:37Tap to summarizeTom 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. Now he shares with us his passion: Ancient Rome. The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. It was a world both familiar and utterly alien to our own. In this episode of the podcast he shares a glimpse into the inner worlds of the first twelve Roman emperors with legendary writer and director Armando Iannucci. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Freya India - The Commodification of Girls and How to Fight Back
3w ago01:02:42Tap to summarizeComing 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 personalized by algorithms designed to prey on their deepest insecurities and delivered on platforms engineered to be addictive. While previous generations of women were relentlessly sold products and procedures, girls today have become the product. In this episode of the podcast, Freya India will explore how technological and cultural shifts over the past decade have shaped the inner lives of young women and girls—from anxieties about appearance and reputation to the dynamics of friendships and romantic relationships. She will expose the ruthless commercialization of girlhood—an exploitation corporations are all too eager to profit from. Freya will also share ways for girls to reclaim their privacy, protect their dignity, and, above all, rediscover what it means to be people rather than products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Holistic Psychologist Nicole LePera – Reparenting the Inner Child
4w ago01:13:36Tap to summarizeWe 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 into patterns that feel irrational or out of character – shutting down, lashing out, people-pleasing, or self-sabotaging. Beneath those reactions lies our inner child, a younger part of us still trying to get its needs met the only way it knows how. While we can't change what happened, we can change how it lives within us and impacts our lives today. In this episode of the podcast, Cornell trained holistic psychologist Nicole LePera will guide us through how we can meet our inner child to begin repairing our oldest wounds, and to question the stories we've long believed about who we have to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Nina Allan - The Many Worlds of JG Ballard
May 100:50:00Tap to summarizeBorn into an upper-middle class family and raised in colonial Shanghai, JG Ballard's worldview was profoundly shaped by his internment by the occupying Japanese army in the Second World War — an experience that formed the basis of Empire of the Sun, the novel that brought him international fame. For his countless devoted fans his genius lies not only in this singular semi-autobiographical novel but in his outrageous, nihilistic, bravura works where cutting-edge technologies, social pathologies, and human nature collide — from 1973's Crash to his final novel Kingdom Come, which depicts the rise of the far-right in the UK. The novelist Christopher Priest began a biography of Ballard before his passing in 2024; his wife Nina Allan completed the work, in the process turning a book about Ballard's life into a tribute to both Ballard and Christopher. In this episode of the podcast, she shares her insights into both authors' lives and works and explores what they have to say to us in 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Antony Beevor – Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs
Apr 2801:04:46Tap to summarizeWhen Russia's Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she 'lived under the pressure of the prophecy'. Grigori Rasputin had no official position. A barely literate moujhik from Siberia, he had no forces at his command. He was a devoted monarchist, not a revolutionary. And yet, through his uncanny seduction of the imperial household, he contributed more than any other individual to the collapse of the greatest autocracy in the world. Now one of our foremost historians, Sir Antony Beevor, joins us to pierce the fog of fantasy and reveal an unparalleled portrait of one of history’s greatest masterminds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Ecologist Suzanne Simard - Lessons of the Forest
Apr 2401:22:06Tap to summarizeDr Suzanne Simard transformed our understanding of forests, her groundbreaking research for the Mother Tree Project revealing how the forest is a living symphony of finely honed cycles of birth, growth, death and rebirth that hold the key to protecting the natural world. In conversation with Robin Ince, Suzanne reveals this intricate interconnectedness and the luminous wonder that forests continue to inspire in human minds—and calls on us to protect these threatened ecosystems. By rediscovering our own kinship with nature, working closely with First Nations communities, and developing new understandings of sustainable forestry, Suzanne shares how we can protect and nurture these crucial networks for generations to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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James Muldoon - Love Rewired in the Age of AI
Apr 2101:05:01Tap to summarizeFrom friendship, to romance, to even therapy, AI companions are on the rise, and AI companion apps alone have now been downloaded more than 220 million times worldwide. Oxford Internet Institute researcher James Muldoon takes us on a captivating and uncanny journey to the frontier of human-computer interaction, exploring what happens to our relationships with each other as artificial intelligence enters our personal lives. “They are real to me” may be the growing sentiment, but what are the tensions and contradictions at the heart of AI companionship? James explores what it means to be human in a world increasingly dominated by these sorts of relationships—what do we gain, and what do we lose? Crucially, what can we do to fulfil other people's emotional needs so they don’t turn to AI? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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