Nature Writer and Cambridge Professor Robert Macfarlane - Is a River Alive?
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.
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1:10:41
Masud Husain - A Neurologist’s Guide to the Self and the Brain
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.
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1:11:02
Daniel Swift – Art, Commerce, and the Origin Story of William Shakespeare
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.
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40:00
Gina Rippon - How Science Failed Autistic Women
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.
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1:06:05
Robin Ince Meets Slavoj Žižek - The World In 2025
Slavoj Žižek, one of the most outrageous and maverick thinkers of our time, joins 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.
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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.
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