Bestselling novelist Rebecca F. Kuang returns to How To Academy in conversation with Hannah MacInnes to dive into her new novel, Katabasis, inviting us on a journey to the underworld and back. From the literal and metaphorical meanings of descending to hell, to the question of eternity, to the imaginative expanse of Rebecca's literary vision in an age where freedom of expression is under threat, Rebecca illuminates the art of her craft and imagination with humour, warmth, and deeply personal contemplation.

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When Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman went into an Alabama state prison to film a revival meeting, they discover that the prisoners wanted to talk to them off-camera and share their stories; after Andrew and Charlotte left, the incarcerated men were able to use contraband mobile phones to reveal the hidden realities of prison life. Their stories included the horrifying death of prisoner Stephen Davis at the hands of guard, and a labour strike coordinated across the prisons (that is beginning again at the time of recording). 

This deeply harrowing and impactful film reveals a secret world most of us dare never to think about: in the UK, it's available to stream now on Sky.

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Do you avoid conflict? Do you tend to take the blame? Do you take care of others at the expense of yourself? Do you live in a state of hypervigilance? Fawning can appear in a plethora of different ways, it can be visible or invisible; it can manifest in our relationships to sex or money, or in the tendency to 'people-please'. But one thing remains constant: it is about finding safety in an unsafe world, often at our own expense.

Fawning expert and clinical psychologist Dr Ingrid Clayton shines a light on this under-represented but crucial piece of the trauma puzzle, bringing clarity and support. Drawing on twenty years of clinical psychology work, as well as a lifetime of insight as a recovering fawner herself, she shares tools to find meaningful, reciprocal connections – and finally be ourselves. 

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Widely heralded as the most provocative Norwegian writer since Ibsen and simply ‘one of the finest writers alive’ by the New York Times, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s five-part autobiographical novel sequence My Struggle sent him into the stratosphere of literary fame, inspiring a wave of imitators that continues to this day and cementing his place as an outspoken giant of contemporary literature.

A long-time resident in London, Karl Ove now turns his attention to the capital for the first time in The School of Night, transporting us back to 1980s Deptford and into the psyche of Kristian Hadeland, a deliciously loathsome young Norwegian willing to do anything for art and for fame. Joining us for an exclusive conversation with the author of Boy Parts, Eliza Clark, Karl Ove will take us on an unforgettable journey into the darkness of the human psyche and explore the Faustian pacts we make for artistic glory.

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A boy scout from smalltown America known for his sincere, folksy charm. A chain-smoking maverick dedicated to the pursuit of the Art Life. A womaniser with a female skewing fanbase. A Hollywood outsider who was also a mainstream celebrity. Who was the real David Lynch, and why did his bizarre, avant garde art films - from Eraserhead to Inland Empire - gain him recognition and love far beyond any of his contemporaries? The cultural critic John Higgs returns to the podcast to unpick the meaning of the adjective "Lynchian" and make sense of a man whose work is nothing less than a cultural phenomenon.

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In this episode of the podcast neuroscientist Nicholas Wright reveals how, whether we like it or not, the brain is wired for conflict – in the office or on the battlefield. Blending insights from cutting-edge research with stories from across history, Nicholas joins war correspondent David Patrikarakos to explore the past, present, and future of warfare and reveal the truth about why we fight, lose and win wars.

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The son of Stephen and Tabitha King and brother of Owen King, Joe Hill was raised in a uniquely gifted literary family and has long established a reputation of his own as a first rate storyteller across prose fiction, comics, TV and film. Drawing on influences as diverse as The Secret History, The Hobbit, and his father's dark fantasy classic The Gunslinger, his new novel King Sorrow follows six friends as their Faustian pact with the deliciously cruel eponymous dragon unravels over many decades.

Why is horror good for us? How do you write characters readers with fall in love with - and those they will love to hate? Who are the real monsters in American life? Joe Hill reveals the answers to all of these questions and more in this episode of the podcast.

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How do we understand the world and our place in it? Do our lives consist of a small number of dramatic turning points, or is there nothing but a series of gradual changes from infancy to old age? Are political elections genuinely transformational, or merely arbitrary points along a shifting cultural timeline? And in physics, how can the continuities of general relativity coexist with the discontinuities of quantum theory?

In Waves and Stones, Graham Harman shows that this paradoxical interaction – the question of whether reality is made up of sudden jumps, or is laid out along a gentle gradient with no clear divisions between the various things in the world – permeates every area of human life. What’s more, this paradox is as old as human thought itself. In exploring how the continuous and discrete relate to each other, he takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey from the philosophers of ancient Greece, through the writings of the great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, through architectural and evolutionary theory, the compatibility of religion with science, and the wave-particle duality of matter.

To explore the relationship between the continuous and the discrete, Harman shows, is to consider the very fabric of reality. With this dazzling new book, he proposes a new way of thinking about this ancient problem, with profound implications for our understanding of ourselves and the bewilderingly complex world in which we live.

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Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall reveal the insights you need to better understand what's on your dinner plate, how it got there, and why you eat it.

Award-winning health journalist Julia Belluz and internationally renowned nutrition and metabolism scientist Dr Kevin Hall will unpack the science behind our diets, metabolism, and the food systems that shape them. Together, they will explore how our food environment is the key influence on our eating behaviours, challenge popular myths about diet, and reveal why rising rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes are not failures of willpower, but symptoms of a system working exactly as designed.

In a world where misinformation thrives and our food system is stacked against us, Julia and Kevin will provide much-needed clarity to help us all make more informed choices about what we eat.

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Though well-known across Europe by name, the real lives of women such as Joan of Arc and Jadwiga of Poland have been buried under banners of nationalistic agendas that have twisted their stories through the ages. Oxford historian Janina Ramirez joins Sir Tony Robinson to illuminate the truth of these incredible women, and disentangle their real stories from the myths imposed on them through time. From Lady Godiva's real name, Godgifu, and how her eroticised image has overshadowed her real survival as a landowning woman in tumultuous times, to Joan of Arc's journey to becoming a warrior in a war-torn and plague-ravaged land, to Catherine of Siena's vivid visions and Jadwiga's reign as monarch of Poland, Professor Ramirez sheds light on truths long enshrouded by myths.

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