

How To Academy Podcast
How To Academy
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.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Aug 5, 2019 • 39min
Preet Bharara - An Insider's Guide to Crime in America
In Episode Five of the How To Academy Podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets Preet Bharara, the former US district attorney who successfully prosecuted some of the most high-profile crimes in America. Along the way he gained notoriety as the ‘Sheriff of Wall Street’, was banned from Russia by Vladimir Putin and earned the distinction of being one of the first federal employees fired by Trump.
In this wide-ranging conversation Preet takes us into the gritty, tactically complex, often sensational world of America’s criminal justice system – and gives us his inside take on the Mueller Report and President Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jul 29, 2019 • 40min
David Wallace-Wells - How To Survive Climate Change
Once a generation an environmentalist dares to speak truth to power with such force that they cannot be silenced. In Episode 4 of the How To Academy Podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets David Wallace-Wells, whose terrifying vision of unfolding climate catastrophe may just be the wake-up call we need to save the future.
Climate change is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today.
In this podcast, David presents a sober, scientific but utterly terrifying vision of the unfolding 21st century. What will it be like to live on a pummelled planet? What will it do to our politics, our economy, our culture and sense of history? And what action can we all take, today, to minimise the damage? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jun 25, 2019 • 1h 21min
The Gendered Brain Debate
In this week's podcast, two giants of cognitive science - neuroscientist Gina Rippon and psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen - go head-to-head to debate one of the most contested and controversial ideas in the history of science: do men and women have essentially different brains?
Setting this debate has potentially far-reaching consequences for the future of medicine and mental health treatment, the workplace and society as a whole. But do studies claiming to show differences between the brains of men and women actually uncover an inconvenient truth? Or are they merely attempts to justify the sexist status quo?
It’s time to accept that brains should not be ‘sexed’, says Gina Rippon. It’s misleading to attribute any differences in behaviour, abilities, achievements, or personality to the possession of either a female brain or a male brain. And she argues that new techniques can prove it. After centuries of ingrained neurosexism, neuroscience’s cutting-edge breakthroughs should at last liberate us from outdated misunderstandings of what our brains can and cannot do.
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen takes a different perspective. Whilst he agrees that individuals’ brains should not and cannot be ‘sexed’, he reminds us that group studies of males and females do reveal differences on average: Men on average are better at analysing systems and women on average are better at empathising with people. And he marshals evidence from studies of prenatal hormones and genetics that these traits have both biological and cultural roots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jun 25, 2019 • 26min
Cass Sunstein - How To Make Change Happen
In this podcast, the bestselling author of Nudge, Professor Cass Sunstein, presents a ground-breaking guide for anyone who wishes to fuel – or block – transformative social change.
Sometimes all it takes to change society is for one person to decide they will no longer remain silent. A child announces that the emperor has no clothes. A woman tweets, #MeToo. Suddenly, a taboo collapses for the better – or for the worse. Once white nationalism was kept out of the mainstream media and politics; now it is in the White House. Social movements can begin when rage is released – or quietly, with millions of people nudged into making different decisions until, without noticing, we live with a new status quo.
Bringing together behavioural economics, psychology, politics and law, Cass Sunstein and LBC Presenter Matthew Stadlen explore Cass’s career new science of social movements. What can we as individuals do to harness the power of social movements to make change happen? What kinds of interventions make a difference, and what kind lead to bans and mandates? How can we overcome social division, cause transformative cascades, and employ political parties as a force for good? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jun 25, 2019 • 32min
Simon Sinek - How to Lead in the 21st Century
In this episode of the How To Academy podcast, Matthew Stadlen meets Simon Sinek – perhaps the 21st century’s most acclaimed thinker in the field of business leadership. Simon Sinek’s Start With Why concept changed the face of modern business. Over 35 million people have watched his TED talk on how great leaders inspire everyone to take action, and millions more have read his books Find Your Why and Leaders Eat Last. In 2016, his insightful analysis of millennials at work was seen by more than 200 million people in the first month alone. He joined How To Academy to present his latest insights to LBC presenter Matthew Stadlen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices


