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. His books include Black 13, Pendulum and Private Moscow. But he knows about struggle. The son of an Egyptian father who worked

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

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

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

Ann Gallagher trained as a nurse during the Troubles in Belfast  before studying philosophy and moving into academia. She’s a Professor of Nursing Ethics and has written books including Slow Ethics and the Art of Care. In this podcast, she talks about the joy of nursing, the heroism of care workers during Covid, the creativity

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. He’s a Sunday Times columnist and presenter of the Radio 4 series Sideways. In this podcast, he talks about the power of diverse thinking,

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

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

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”. His books include How the World Thinks, A Short History of Truth