What makes a fulfilling life, and how can we live one? Life coach Fiona Buckland explores the overwhelming world we live in and the stressors and temptations that pull us away from understanding ourselves. She reveals how we can return to ourselves to create not just a life well-lived, but a life suffused with meaning.

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What if human intelligence is more of a liability than a gift? According to the animal cognition expert and author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal Justin Gregg, there's an evolutionary reason why human intelligence isn't more prevalent in the animal kingdom. Simply put, non-human animals don't need it to be successful. In conversation with comedian and science communicator Robin Ince, Justin highlights features seemingly unique to humans and compares them to our animal brethren. The picture he paints will forever change how you look at life on earth.

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Over the past 150 years, we have entered a new ‘age of eating’ where most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances: Ultra-Processed Foods.

In this episode award-winning broadcaster, practicing NHS doctor and leading academic Dr Chris van Tulleken joins Robin Ince to reveal the disastrous effects of Ultra-Processed Food on our health - the subject of his new bestseller, Ultra Processed People.

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Thriller writer Mick Herron is the heir to John Le Carre - the author of the wildly acclaimed Slough House espionage novels. The TV adaptation named after the first in the series, Slow Horses, is one of the best shows around - no mean feat in our golden age of TV drama. It stars Gary Oldman as Herron's Falstaffian protagonist Jackson Lamb. The latest Slough House novel, Bad Actors, has just come out in paperback. Mick sat down with Hannah MacInnes live on stage a couple of weeks back to tell us more.

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Why did the ideal medieval woman have a pot belly and small feet? Which days of the week was sex permitted? Why did the transgender sex workers of London steal men's clothes? Eleanor Janega has the answers. She teaches medieval and early modern history at the London School of Economics. She's also the creator of the blog Going Medieval and the author of The Once and Future Sex, a new book exploring the ideals of womanhood in the medieval period. She tells Luke Naylor Perrott more in a NSFW podcast that's funny, provocative, and depressingly relevant to the present.

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Anthropologist Alexa Hagerty spent years working with forensic teams and victims’ families to investigate crimes against humanity in Latin America. In this harrowing and deeply personal conversation with Luke Naylor-Perrott, she explores what science can tell us about atrocities and resistance, grief and care, ritual and justice.

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The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik is a master literary stylist, acclaimed as one of wisest and most insightful figures in American journalism. But was he already too advanced in years to master other skills - including those that require as much of the body as they do of the mind? He studied with a boxer, a dancer, a driving instructor, a fine artist and more in pursuit of the secrets of mastery.

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Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith hosts conversations with leaders in government, business, and culture that explore the world’s most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society. In this episode, Strive Masiyiwa, a pioneer of Africa’s telecoms industry and influential global tech tycoon, discusses his work to ensure that all 1.3 billion+ Africans get access to digital infrastructure, close the digital skills gap, and invest in the continent’s young entrepreneurs to find innovative solutions for healthcare and food insecurity. Follow or subscribe to Tools and Weapons at https://news.microsoft.com/tools-and-weapons-podcast/

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Octogenerian neurologist Ricard Restak is living proof that a declining memory is not an inevitable fact of ageing. A professor at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dr Restak has dedicated his life to the science of brain health, and joins the podcast with evidence-based tools and techniques drawn from a lifetime of research and practice.

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Journalist Luke Turner spent his childhood idolising Spitfires and Lancaster Bombers. Now, as an adult, he explores the human lives behind the machines. Who goes to TankFest - and who plays the SS? Are we more obsessed with war machines than living human beings of flesh and blood? How did tank commanders grieve for their crews? What would it have been like to kill someone with a bayonet? Why did Quentin Crisp say Blitz era London like "a paved double bed"? Why was the war a time of queer liberation - only to be followed by a period of horrifying persecution afterwards? How did WWII military medicine lead to gender transitioning surgery? Find out the answers and more in an account of the War like none you've heard before.

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