Adam Hamdy planned to become a lawyer. Instead, he worked as a strategy consultant and as a tech entrepreneur before breaking into Hollywood as a screenwriter and becoming a bestselling author of thrillers. But he knows about struggle. The son of an Egyptian father who worked as a waiter in the UK, he was once so hard up that he had to burn his own furniture. In this podcast, he talks about an accidental career, dramatic changes in direction and his attempts to help us find a vaccine.

Jackie Kay is a multi-award-winning poet, playwright and writer of memoir and fiction. She's an MBE and a CBE, Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and Chancellor of the University of Salford. But she's also the Makar, or national poet for Scotland. Every baby born in Scotland gets a poem by her in their baby basket. Through lockdown, she has brought the role to a global stage with her Makar to Makar series online. In this moving and deeply personal conversation, she talks about her own emotional struggles during the pandemic, Black Lives Matter and how poetry can help all of us.

Nikki Kanani has been picked twice by Pulse as the UK's "top up and coming GP". In 2017, she was awarded an MBE. In 2018, she was was the first woman to be appointed Medical Director of Primary Care in NHS England. And she's not yet 40! In this podcast, she talks about switching medicine to Zoom, Black Lives Matter and what it was like to take part in those Downing Street press conferences.

Suzanne Moore is known as an astute and fearless commentator on politics, society and life. She has written for publications ranging from The Mail on Sunday to Marxism Today and has been a columnist at The Guardian for more than 25 years. In this podcast, she talks about culture wars, clicktivism, the future of journalism - and what she hasn't missed.

Ann Gallagher trained as a nurse during the Troubles in Belfast before studying philosophy and moving into academia. In this podcast, she talks about the joy of nursing, the heroism of care workers during Covid, the creativity of academics and how an art exhibition in Stockholm inspired a new vision for the future of care.

Matthew Syed was the UK No 1 table tennis player and an Olympian before becoming an award-winning journalist, keynote speaker and bestselling author of Bounce, Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas. In this podcast, he talks about the power of diverse thinking, what immigrants can teach us and how we can adapt to the harsh realities of work after Covid.

Julia Samuel is one of the UK's leading psychotherapists and the bestselling author of Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving and This Too Shall Pass: Stories of Change, Crisis and Hopeful Beginnings. In this wide-ranging conversation, she talks about how to cope with losing a job, how to keep hope alive during a pandemic, the joy of kickboxing - and what to do about the "shitty committee".

Peter York is best known for his astute and acerbic observations about British culture and life. For more than 40 years, he has drawn on his background in market research to spot and analyse trends and tribes, from the Sloane Ranger to the hipster to the interior decor of dictators' homes. In this entertaining and wide-ranging conversation, he talks about the cult of authenticity, why you should never call yourself a "creative" and why corporate social responsibility is a con.

Tamara Rojo knows all about hard work. She has been dancing since she was five. She has won almost every award going for her work, including a CBE. She has spent seven years reconfiguring English National Ballet and had just moved it to a new state-of-the-art venue when the pandemic struck. But she's not giving up. In this podcast, she talks about the importance of ambition, the healing power of baking and how the arts can help us deal with AI.

What do you do when you're unemployable? Julian Baggini thinks he now is. The first in his family ever to go to university, he has spent his career writing and thinking about the big issues, but has never really had "a proper job". In this podcast, he talks about the myth of authenticity at work, the challenges and rewards of freelance life, and what we're all learning about ourselves and our values in a pandemic.