Isabel Allende shares the story of Emilia del Valle, her unforgettable new heroine on a treacherous, life-changing journey during the Chilean Civil war of 1891. Past and present merge in this conversation, as Isabel explores how her new heroine—who reminds us of Isabel herself— confronts the tyranny and injustice of her time. As tyranny and injustice bleeds into the present, Isabel shares her convictions on today's oppressions, and illuminates how the power of storytelling gives voice to the silenced, the innocent, and to our common humanity.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We are surrounded by bold claims and quick fixes for ‘boosting’ our immune health. But one thing the science is clear on is that everyone’s immune system is unique – what is good for one person may not work well for another. So how do we separate the bogus claims from the useful advice? Head of Life Sciences and Professor of Immunology at Imperial College, Daniel Davis, helps us sort the facts from the fiction.

From the genetics of immune health to the myth of Vitamin C, from evidence-backed studies on chronic stress to the gaps in knowledge on sleep and microbiome health, Daniel reveals what scientists do know for certain—and what still needs more answers—to help us make informed choices for ourselves.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The hosts of the blockbuster podcast We Can Do Hard Things share a fresh guide to being alive and answer life's most difficult questions.

Every day, Glennon Doyle spirals around the same questions: Why am I like this? How do I figure out what I want? How do I know what to do? Why can’t I be happy? Am I doing this right?

The harder life gets, the less likely she is to remember the answers she’s spent her life learning.

In a particularly difficult year, Glennon was diagnosed with anorexia, her sister Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her wife Abby’s beloved brother died. For the first time, they were all lost at the same time. So they asked each other, their dearest friends, and 118 of the world’s most brilliant wayfinders, among them, Jane Fonda, Brandi Carlile, Esther Perel and Ocean Vuong what wisdom might help others find their way. Now they share their discoveries.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A louche slacker and a restless wanderer, an Englishman most at home abroad, a comic genius and a whip smart critic of art and culture: Geoff Dyer is a literary colossus, an original voice whose writings circulate around his favourite themes – sex, death, drugs, spirituality, travel, and boredom – while also being utterly different to one another. Now he joins Fat White Family's Lias Saoudi to reflect on his own coming of age, from discovering his early love for reading to his years spent at grammar school, and tracing his enduring dedication to literature through the years.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, neoliberalism, with its belief in the virtues of markets and competition, seemed to have triumphed. But in the decades that followed, neoliberalism had a problem: the rise of social movements, from civil rights and feminism to environmentalism, were now proving roadblocks in the road to freedom, nurturing a culture of government dependency, public spending, political correctness and special pleading.  Neoliberals needed an antidote.

They found it in nature. Historian Quinn Slobodian explains how neoliberal thinkers drew on the language of science to embed the idea of ‘competition’ ever deeper into social life, to reinstate a hierarchy of gender, race and cultural difference, and to advocate cultural homogeneity as essential for markets to truly work.

Reading and misreading the writings of their sages, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, they forged alliances with racial psychologists, neoconfederates, ethnonationalists that would become known as the alt-right.

Insightful, provocative and expertly-researched, this conversation provides a timely and essential understanding of modern geopolitics.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How can we live a good life? Perhaps a good life is hard to define, but as bestselling author Rolf Dobelli reveals, we can learn how to cultivate a good life through habits to avoid—from watching too much news to 'winging' your way through the week. Merging stoicism and no-nonsense practicality, Rolf shares how we can live rationally and meaningfully, nurturing healthy relationships and habits with those around us and ourselves.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bestselling author, artist, and the Observer’s agony aunt Philippa Perry joins cartoonist Becky Barnicoat for a conversation about the highs and lows of raising small children.  From the unglamorous reality of post-partum to the tumult of baby supplies, from the challenges of bedtime to the comically dishevelled appearance of new parenthood, discover the deeply strange new world of  parenting, ruled by a tyrannical tiny leader, growing bigger and more loved by the day.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today Lorna Tucker is a feted documentary maker whose subjects include Vivienne Westwood and Katherine Hepburn — a life she could not have imagined as a young woman who fled a troubled home to live on the streets. Once a thief, sex worker, and drug addict, estranged from her family and in trouble with gangs and the police, her memoir Bare will make you see a hidden world for the first time and change the way you think about the most vulnerable members of society.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the far-right violence that broke out in the summer of 2024 to the hatred directed at Muslims in public life during the Gaza conflict, anti-Muslim racism is dangerously out-of-control. Fed by a network of media outlets, think tanks, commentators, and even the entertainment industry, Islamophobia not only passes the dinner table test but is also Britain’s bigotry blind spot. For too many, Muslims don’t matter.

But that's not stopping Baroness Warsi. Having made her career by speaking up and standing out, she once again fearlessly urges us to change course, dismantle toxic bigotry, and stop the surge towards populism - before it's too late.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While many of us are sleeping, another world awakens in the night hours. Author Dan Richards reveals the thrumming life of the night, from night shifts on postal trains to the art of focaccia, from the rhythm of shipping forecasts to the humanity which society often fails to recognise in homelessness. Dan illuminates the nighttime world, and explores the deeply personal relationship we each have with the night hours.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices