How To Academy
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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.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It connects physical intelligence and behaviour to wider conversations about how ideas become choices, habits and action.
How To Academy Podcast turns public conversations into patient tests of an idea. Vas Christodoulou introduces a changing cast of interviewers and guests, with questions that keep abstract claims tied to consequences.
Simone Biles's artistry, then sanctioned oligarchs' bank allowances: your curiosity needs a bigger bookshelf.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded case for the arts as part of health, with the limits kept clear.
Daisy Fancourt argues that the arts can support health in ways that go beyond simple enjoyment. The strongest part is the care with which she separates broad arts participation from the sharper benefits tied to live events such as theatre, gigs, museums, and exhibitions.
A humane case for seeing mental health as changeable, social, and still open to recovery.
This episode presents Dr Gavin Francis as arguing that mental health has to be understood through culture and social context, not diagnosis alone.
A sharp look at how crime and power keep finding each other.
Mark Gagliotti frames organised crime as part of the same machinery that sustains legitimate power, not as a world apart. He moves from rural banditry to urban gangsterism and keeps the larger point in view: crime tends to grow with order, money, and the services modern…
A measured conversation about fame, exposure, and the intimate scale of reading.
Karl Ove Knausgaard talks through The School of Night with a calm, careful hand. Set in 1980s London and centered on Christian Hodland, an art student chasing fame and glory, the book sounds most alive when the conversation moves past its tentative beginnings and into what My…
A forceful conversation about wasted talent, perseverance, and why real change starts with a small committed group.
Rutger Bregman and George Monbiot frame the episode around a blunt idea: too much talent gets steered toward the safest route instead of the most useful one.
Medea becomes a careful lesson in how myth is reshaped.
How To Academy lets Natalie Haynes talk her way from the work that first won her over to the classics to No Friend To This House, her retelling of Medea.
A slow, focused conversation about reality that lets Harman's ideas unfold.
Graham Harman's ideas sit at the center of this conversation, with Waves and Stones: On the Ultimate Nature of Reality as the anchor. The discussion moves through reality, change, and the pull between flux and discreteness, with Bergson in view and Deleuze credited for helping…
A calm, practical conversation about fear, choice, and how to work with uncertainty.
Sam Conniff and Katherine Templar-Lewis treat uncertainty as a condition that can be examined, interrupted, and worked with, not just endured.
Ed Mylett interviews entrepreneurs, athletes, and leaders about the moments that changed everything.
Asian Efficiency's Tan Pham and Brooks Duncan on time management, habits, and AI tools.
Joe Hill says King Sorrow took about three years, not nine, after he spent time on novellas, short stories, comic books, and screenplays, then made family the center of his life after remarrying in 2018 and having twins.
How To Academy Podcast opens with Vas Christodoulou introducing Rebecca Kuang, whose Babel and Yellowface are named before Katabasis is described as a journey into hell.
Joanna Kavenna discusses Seven, her seventh novel, a book built around a fictional two-player board game that is more popular than chess and Go in its invented world.
Philosopher Graham Harman discusses his book 'Waves and Stones', exploring the tension between continuous and discrete views of reality across physics, philosophy, and politics.
Petra Costa links Apocalypse in the Tropics to 10 years of work on democracy, using Brazil as a metaphor for a global far-right fever and church-state conflict.
Paul Davies argues that quantum mechanics is both the most successful theory in science and still not fully understood, citing an Oxford conference where 49 of 50 people did not understand it.
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Historian Janina Ramirez joins Sir Tony Robinson to discuss her book 'Legenda', exploring the real lives of medieval women like Joan of Arc and Lady Godiva, whose stories have been shaped into national myths.
Paul Goldsmith, the neuroscientist behind The Evolving Brain, argues that “ancient brains” are trying to cope with a modern world they were not built for.
Keza MacDonald says Nintendo began as a Kyoto playing-card company in 1889, then became a toy-and-console maker by doing “interesting things with older technology.” She describes Satoru Iwata as a president who cut his own salary, backed the Wii and DS, and used 10 to 15 years of interviews to open up Nintendo’s secretive history.
Tim Minshall argues that almost every visible object, except plants, rocks, people, and animals, has been manufactured through a hidden global system.
Neuroscientist Nicholas Wright discusses his book 'Warhead', exploring how the human brain drives conflict and peace.
Novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard discusses his latest book 'The School of Night', exploring themes of artistic ambition, lack of empathy, and Faustian pacts.
John Higgs discusses his book 'Lynchian,' exploring David Lynch's unique filmmaking style, dream logic, and cultural impact.
Sam and Catherine Templer-Lewis join Edie Lush to talk through The Uncertainty Toolkit and the case for doing more while worrying less.
Vas Christodoulou opens with the idea that brains need friends, not just facts.
Natalie Haynes talks with Robin Ince about Medea and the novel she has written from it.
David Malone speaks with Dr Gavin Francis about The Unfragile Mind and how society and culture shape the way mental health gets understood.
Wayne McGregor joins Hannah McInnes live on stage to talk about We Are Movement.
Vas Christodoulou introduces Hannah Ritchie and the conversation quickly turns to the 50-question structure of her book Cleaning the Air.
Daisy Fancourt joins Hannah McInnes to talk about The Art Cure and the case for arts engagement as a health tool.
Mark Gagliotti talks about Homo Criminalis and the long history of organised crime.
Jennifer Breheny Wallace tells How To Academy Podcast that mattering is a basic human need, not a “nice to have,” and links its absence to loneliness, anxiety, depression, and anger.
Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman discuss HBO’s The Alabama Solution, a documentary about violence, secrecy, and abuse inside Alabama state prisons.
How To Academy Podcast hosts Hannah McInnis and Vas Christodoulou speak with LA-based clinical psychologist Ingrid Clayton about Fawning, a book built around the claim that there is a fourth trauma response beyond fight, flight, and freeze.
Amy Jeffs describes Old Songs as a book of 10 traditional ballads rewritten as short stories, each paired with historical commentary, Gwen Burns illustrations, and recorded melodies by Natalie Bryce.
Vas Christodoulou opens with a blunt premise.
Vas Christodoulou speaks with Oren Harman about Metamorphosis, a book that traces how humans have tried to explain dramatic post-embryonic development from Aristotle to contemporary science.
How To Academy Podcast features Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall discussing Food Intelligence, a book about why people eat what they eat and why metabolism is often misunderstood.
Bregman joins the environmentalist for a wide ranging conversation about moral ambition, wasted talent, and the pull of safer careers.
Neuroscientist Mark Sollams discusses his book arguing that Freud was fundamentally right about the human mind.
An interview with researcher Ayela Panayevsky about her book on how liberal norms are weaponized against democracies and the need for bold journalism.
Darren McGarvey discusses his book on the commodification of trauma with Nicola Sturgeon.
An interview with historian Ian Mortimer about his new book on English history and his lifelong fascination with the past.
Jimmy Wales discusses rebuilding trust in the age of misinformation with comedian Nish Kumar.
Caroline Darian shares her harrowing story of discovering her father's crimes and her journey of defiance.
Author Rolf de Belli discusses his book 'The Not To Do List' and why collecting failures teaches more about life than success stories.
Behavioral economist Paul Dolan discusses his new book 'Beliefism' about judging others based on beliefs and how to become more tolerant.
A neurologist discusses the nature of selfhood and identity based on his clinical experience and new book.
Author Diego Perez discusses his journey from addiction to meditation and the intention behind his book 'How to Love Better'.