When you start your day with a cup of tea or coffee you are ingesting a consciousness-altering drug, which you are quite likely to be addicted to. That drug of course is caffeine, the stimulant used by 90 per cent of people on earth, and it is one of three mind-altering molecules that bestselling author Michael Pollan has been investigating for his new book ... Show More
Today
Is the Russia–Ukraine War a Failure of Strategy? With Lawrence Freedman
In an age of grinding wars, nuclear brinkmanship, and political volatility, what does strategy really mean - and how do leaders make decisions when the world feels chaotic? In this episode, Lawrence Freedman draws on decades of scholarship and his experience as official historian ... Show More
49m 39s
Mar 13
What Is Really at Stake at the North Pole? With Neil Shea
What Do Wolves, Caribou, and Global Superpowers Have in Common? In this episode, Professor Helen Czerski speaks to journalist and author Neil Shea about the Arctic’s changing face and the struggles that its indigenous wildlife must now endure. In this expansive yet intimate revel ... Show More
48m 23s
Mar 11
Sotheby's Talks | How Do Objects Achieve Iconic Status, with Grayson Perry and Xa Sturgis
On today’s episode, an episode from our friends at Sotheby's exploring the question: How do objects achieve iconic status? Taking inspiration from the book Icons: 100 Extraordinary Objects from Sotheby’s History, published by Phaidon, the discussion explores how a work of art can ... Show More
46m 3s
Aug 2022
Gwyneth Paltrow x Michael Pollan: On Drugs
“All societies have drugs that they’re okay with and they draw these lines and they draw them in ways that can seem very arbitrary,” says Michael Pollan, New York Times–bestselling author of This Is Your Mind on Your Plants and host of the new Netflix series, How to Change Your M ... Show More
55m 10s
Aug 2022
Caffeine, the untapped potential of plants and intermittent fasting with Michael Pollan
To kick off the new podcast, I’m joined by acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan. Michael is widely known for his work demystifying the food and agriculture industry and is now opening new frontiers in the highly controversial field of plant psychedelics, and their poten ... Show More
39m 14s
Apr 2023
The mind-numbing medicine
This episode will render you oblivious, conked out and blissfully unaware. It’s about anaesthetics: those potent potions that send you into a deep, deathly sleep. Listener Alicia wants to know how they work, so our sleuths call on the expertise of consultant anaesthetist Dr Fiona ... Show More
28m 2s
Dec 2022
Can Psychedelic Therapy Reset Our Social Media Brains?
When you look at the world, it can feel like we're in a precarious moment. If you’ve listened to past episodes, you know we call this the meta-crisis — an era of overlapping and interconnected crises like climate change, polarization, and the rise of decentralized technologies li ... Show More
42m 51s