With Reason

Racism is not an externality to British policing but is integral to its history, says sociologist and ex-youth worker, Adam Elliott-Cooper. He tells Samira Shackle about the ideas behind his book ‘Black Resistance to British Policing’. Recognising racism as far more than just interpersonal or about prejudice alone, he connects it to colonialism and the state, and highlights the role of resistance - including by women of colour who ...

What does it mean to contemplate 'motherhood' in a world that values some bodies - and some decisions - over others?  Behavioural scientist Pragya Agarwal tells Alice Bloch about her experiences as a woman of South Asian heritage - from abortion, to pregnancy, to surrogacy - and the social, historical and scientific factors that shape how we talk about motherhood. How have women been controlled and contained through histo...

Carlo Rovelli, the globally celebrated physicist and bestselling storyteller of science, talks to Niki Seth-Smith about the history - and sheer wonder - of quantum theory. How did a feverish young man named Werner Heisenberg, working alone on the North Sea island of Helgoland in 1925, develop a radical insight that would shake the world of physics? What’s its legacy for how we think about the nature of reality and perception itself...

A special episode from the How To Academy Podcast. Human rights lawyer and award-winning author Philippe Sands QC meets the Dutch historian and viral superstar Rutger Bregman to hear a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good.

How To Academy is London’s home of big thinking. In livestream and through live events, they host the world’s biggest thinkers, artists, entreprene...

For centuries, we’ve had an intuitive sense that connecting with “nature” is good for our wellbeing. But what’s the hard evidence? What exactly is “nature” anyway? Should we be wary of it being prescribed as a catch-all cure for complex problems? And what impact does nature writing itself actually have? Science writer Lucy Jones talks to Alice Bloch about her prize-winning book ‘Losing Eden’, which surveys the mass of research – fr...

Alice Roberts, one of the UK’s leading public scientists, talks to Samira Shackle about what we can learn from the burial sites of the earliest Britons, as explored in her new book ‘Ancestors’. What does our prehistory – cannibalism and all - tell us about who we are? How does the way we mark death illuminate our perspective on life? And how are genetics and archaeology shaping each other today? Plus, Alice tells Samira how she cam...

Polarisation is seen as a threat to democracy - and social media is seen as a cause. But what can be done? Does the blame really lie with tech alone? And what could the virtual public square look like if we dared to hit "reset" and redesigned our apps from scratch? A radical and counter-intuitive conversation between Chris Bail, head of the Polarization Lab at Duke University, and Samira Shackle, editor of New Humanist ma...

The poet, author and broadcaster Michael Rosen almost died of COVID-19. He talks to Samira Shackle about that experience, described in his new book ‘Many Different Kinds of Love’. They discuss the value of kindness, touch and practical atheism, and reflect on liminality in life and literature. Plus, Michael describes his anger at the “unethical and immoral” decisions made by the British government, and urges against the dangerous d...

What do we gain when we gaze at the stars? How has cosmology shaped our politics? Why take the celestial seriously? And why is awe a feeling that we can’t afford to lose? Acclaimed science writer Jo Marchant takes Niki Seth-Smith on a dazzling and surprise-filled journey through the history of science, mythology and our view of the night sky. For fans of Brian Cox, Carlo Rovelli, Robert Macfarlane and Gaia Vince.

Hosts: Ni...

In the last two decades, the UK has deported thousands of people to Jamaica, many of whom left that country as children and grew up in the UK. Luke de Noronha talks to Alice Bloch about his moving and urgent study of four such young men. How have racism and inequality shaped their lives? What hope remains? And why does language matter when we talk about ‘foreign criminals’? A conversation about borders and exclusion, citizenship an...

What’s the relationship between people’s personal faith and their political activism? What extra dimension does religion bring to social movements and to contemporary cities? How might being a person of faith shape one’s attitude to environmentalism and to caring for life beyond the self? Moving way beyond the stereotypes of the peace-loving Quaker and the evangelical conservative Christian, Alice Bloch talks to Sydney-based sociol...

In the era of #MeToo, it’s assumed that the empowered woman can and must express her desires clearly. But in ‘Tomorrow Sex Will be Good Again’, Katherine Angel argues that this an unreasonable burden to place upon women. She explains why to Niki Seth-Smith, as the two of them discuss questions such as: How do we make sex good again, while attending to power and violence? What's at risk in speaking out about sex? And how can we...

Looking back in anger at ‘Cool Britannia’ with Jason Arday 

The 1990s are remembered for Britpop and New Labour. But it was also a time of inequality and racism. Sociologist and Oasis fan Jason Arday draws on his South London teenage years to interrogate the period from an ethnic minority perspective that has for too long been neglected.

A discussion about music and identity, inclusion and exclusion, racism and r...

The co-author of ‘Work Want Work: Labour and Desire at the End of Capitalism’ on how the logic of work has crept into all we do, and how we might untangle ourselves. Will the Covid-19 pandemic offer a way out? Or will it simply increase the twin blights of under- and over-employment – not to mention our addiction to digital labour online?

For readers of David Graeber, Donna Haraway, Aaron Bastani, Paul Mason and David Frayne.

Why do we value some forms of knowledge over others? Minna Salami discusses her bold new book ‘Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone’ and its radical call to move beyond the damaging confines of the ‘euro-patriarchal’ to embrace a deeper way of knowing.

A conversation on decolonisation, iconoclasm, sisterhood, sexism and gender. For readers of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, James Baldwin and W E B Du Bois. ...

Society praises those who give, but the ‘good glow’ benefits the giver. Sociologist Jon Dean unpicks how charity operates in the real world, from the wave of Covid-19 volunteering to the new fear of ‘humblebrag’. Can effective altruism help us out of this tangled mess?

For those interested in charity, philanthropy and how to be truly virtuous. Featuring reflection on the Poppy Appeal, the NHS, Donald Trump and more.
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Will future sex tech be more inclusive? What’s at stake in the design and distribution of sex robots? And what role could they play in our relationships? Kate Devlin, author of ‘Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots’, discusses her research on technology and intimacy.
 
For fans of Blade Runner, Black Mirror, Ex Machina and anyone curious about the future of artificial intelligence, sex, love, feminism and relationships. To s...

Anthropologist Joe Webster discusses his research amongst Protestant groups in Scotland, from Brethren fishermen to the sometimes-controversial Orange Order. We talk about apocalypse and conspiracy, faith and fraternity, hate and masculinity – and why it's vital to listen to others, even if we don’t always like what we find.
 
For fans of Louis Theroux and Clifford Geertz alike. A conversation on ethics and representa...