Julia Cameron is the author, poet, and screenwriter whose book The Artist's Way is one of the most influential creativity manuals ever written. Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of many books including most famously, Eat, Pray, Love - a memoir she says would not have been written without the guidance offered by The Artist Way. At the start of the pandemic, we brought Julia and Elizabeth together virtually to celebrate the power and value of the human imagination.

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Alan Philps is the former foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph and an expert on Russian politics. He's the author of a new book called The Red Hotel, which tells the story of Moscow's Metropol Hotel and the journalists and translators who stayed there in WWII. The book reveals both the scope and sophistication of Stalin's propaganda machine and the heroism of the translators who fought to expose the truth about life in the Soviet Union. We sat down with Alan earlier this year to find out more, and to ask for his thoughts on the relevance this history has for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

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Marie Kondo became a global superstar when she introduced the world to the life-changing magic of tidying up. Now Marie joins us to share the art of kurashi – or “way of life.” She elevates her focus from the physical act of tidying to include a more holistic and personal approach to transforming our homes into spaces of calm. As a mother of three young children, Marie not only reveals a personal glimpse of her own way of living and an enhanced approach to the pursuit of joy, but also how we can find that joy for ourselves too.

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“Mourning a place is even more difficult than mourning a person,” writes Victoria Belim in The Rooster House. Her book is part-memoir, part-detective story as she returns to her birth country of Ukraine in 2014 to uncover the mystery of her missing great-uncle; but it is also a hymn to the beauty of Ukraine and a paean to her lost land. For as seasons pass and Victoria learns more about her family, she also becomes one with the land her grandmother tends and reconnects with the unbreakable spirit of Ukraine and its people. In this episode, Victoria speaks to Esme Bright about this period of self-discovery and shares her love for Ukraine’s rich history of art, craft and cooking. Their conversation touches on the nature of memory, the value of craftsmanship, how food can unite and the resilience of art in times of war.

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Leading psychiatrist Dr Pooja Lakshmin knows first-hand how toxic the wellness industry can be. In search of radical answers to her own personal experience of burnout and depression, she bought into the cult of wellness and faux “self-care” and found an industry rigged against women’s real interests. Now she joins us with an alternative framework for achieving true wellbeing. Using case studies, clinical research and actionable strategies, Dr Pooja is a leading a personal and social revolution that provides effective solutions to our society’s mental health crisis.

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Revisiting one of our favourite episodes of last year, the Booker Prize winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo shares his idiosyncratic take on the human condition.

George Saunders’ first new collection of stories in ten years is a powerful reminder of why he is widely considered to be the greatest short story writer in the English language. In Liberation Day, we meet the disillusioned employees of a Hell themed underground theme park, the artistic patrons of a dystopian near-future America, and brainwashed political protesters for hire. Mixing satirical fantasies with razor-sharp observations of human nature, Saunders’ new stories walk a fine line between comedy and pathos, realism and playfulness. He joins us on the podcast for a journey inside his creative process and dazzling imagination.

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How did the suburb of Palo Alto become the epicentre of a global tech revolution, changing not just American capitalism but the world?

Malcolm Harris was raised in Palo Alto, the heartland of Silicon Valley, home of Stanford University, and the birthplace of the digital age. We live in the world created by The Palo Alto System - a set of 19th century ideas for innovation that have subtly shaped the way that business is still done in the Valley today. Malcolm's new book Palo Alto offers a critical history of the town and its hugely influential residents. Featuring robber barons, eugenics, murder, missiles, mining, and an infamous President, this is a startling look at the making of the contemporary world.

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Our guest on this episode is Amy Shah, a physician who trained at Cornell, Columbia and Harvard. She specialises in nutrition and the mind-body connection that leads to hunger and cravings. Her new book on that subject is called I'm So Effing Hungry. She joined Hannah MacInnes earlier this year to tell us all about it.

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How do our minds build our worlds? One of the most important living thinkers in cognitive science and philosophy joined us with a grand new vision to explain our lived experience.

Hugely renowned in the cognitive sciences for the Extended Mind hypothesis, which explained the way in which tools seem to become part of ‘us’ many years before smartphones, laptops, and the internet made all of us feel one with our machines, philosopher Andy Clark is the leading researcher of Predictive Brain theory – the nearest thing we have to a unified science of the mind. With profound consequences for how we make sense of our selves and of society, this theory will forever reframe your understanding of the world we live in and the worlds we create.

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How can you make 'work' work for you? Christina Wallace is a millenial, an entrepreneur, a professor at Harvard Business School, and an expert in building a career that is both true to your values and interests and compatible with our age of constant disruption. It's the subject of her new book The Portfolio Life and of a livestreamed conversation we hosted with Christina in the spring, hosted by her friend and fellow entrepreneur DJ diDonna.

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