How To Academy Podcast
329 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 days ago - ★★★★ - 26 ratingsHow To Academy is London's home of big thinking. From Nobel laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners, we invite the world’s most influential voices to share new ideas for changing ourselves, our communities, and the world. Our biweekly podcast is your chance to hear in-depth from the most exciting thinkers in global culture.
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Episodes
Rowan Hooper – How to Spend a Trillion Dollars
March 22, 2021 12:44 - 34 minutesIf you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. In this week’s How To Academy Podcast, New Scientist senior editor and evolutionary biologist Rowan Hooper explores how $1 trillion c...
Derren Brown – How To Be a Little Happier
March 15, 2021 09:13 - 1 hourSince he introduced us to his singular and inimitable brand of psychology, stagecraft and magic in 2000, Derren Brown has played Russian Roulette on live television, convinced middle-managers to commit armed robbery in the street, led the nation in a séance and exposed psychic and faith-healing charlatans. His live shows astonish audiences across the country and have captivated the West End and Broadway. He joined How To Academy to teach a lesson none of us can afford to miss: what we can do ...
Adam Grant and Tim Harford – The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
March 08, 2021 08:27 - 1 hourResearch shows that the smarter you are the more you might struggle to update your beliefs, yet some of the most successful people, from entrepreneurs to politicians, all have one thing in common: the ability to think like scientists, continually questioning their beliefs, and to embrace being wrong. As an organisational psychologist, Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds, and our own. He is one of the world’s most-cited, most prolific, and most influential researchers in bu...
Ethan Kross – How to Harness the Voice Inside Your Head
March 01, 2021 09:36 - 1 hourWe all have a voice in our head that we tune into from time to time for guidance, ideas and wisdom. Except sometimes, this voice leads us down a rabbit hole of negative self-talk and endless rumination which undermines our performance at work, interferes with our ability to make good decisions, and negatively influences our relationships. Since we aren’t going to stop talking to ourselves— and, frankly, we don’t want to, since the voices in our heads have valuable things to say—it’s important...
George the Poet Meets Mariana Mazzucato – a Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism
February 22, 2021 13:27 - 59 minutesEven before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, capitalism was stuck. It had no answer to the different challenges facing the world – from those related to health to digital privacy to the climate crisis. Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s ‘moonshot’ programmes that successfully co-ordinated public and private sectors to put a man on the moon, Mariana Mazzucato calls for the same level of boldness and experimentation to be applied to the biggest social and political issues of our time. In...
Toby Ord – Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
February 15, 2021 09:41 - 49 minutesWe live during the most important era of human history. In the twentieth century, we developed the means to destroy ourselves – without developing the moral framework to ensure we won't. This is the Precipice, and how we respond to it will be the most crucial decision of our time. In this week's podcast, Oxford moral philosopher Toby Ord explores the risks to humanity's future, from the familiar man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war, to the potentially greater, more unfamiliar th...
Owen Jones Meets Claudia Rankine
February 08, 2021 09:16 - 59 minutesHow can we best approach one another across our differences? The first and only poet to write a New York Times bestseller, the winner of every significant literary prize in the United States, and recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant”, Jamaican-born Claudia Rankine is an icon of contemporary American letters. In this conversation with Guardian columnist Owen Jones, she explores her own prejudices and those of others, and celebrate vulnerability, openness and the willingness to be wrong. It’s...
Iain McGilchrist – The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
February 01, 2021 09:21 - 59 minutesA tour de force of neuroscience and philosophy, Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary speaks to everyone searching for happiness, meaning and understanding in the modern world. For millennia humans have speculated upon the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Why did evolution lead to humans and many other animals developing two cerebral hemispheres, separated by a groove? No neuroscientist would dispute that there are significant differences; but until no...
Malcolm Gladwell - How to Make a Good First Impression
January 25, 2021 09:32 - 41 minutesFrom Blink to Outliers, Revisionist History to David and Goliath, no-one challenges our shared assumptions and invites us to rethink human nature like Malcolm Gladwell. Named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers, his ideas have passed into common currency and made him one of the most recognisable and beloved public intellectuals of our time. He is uncannily tuned into the zeitgeist, able to fuse scholarly insights, human stories and a glo...
Caitlin Moran – More Than a Woman
January 18, 2021 09:39 - 1 hour‘First, you have to learn how to be a woman. Then middle age arrives, and you realise you have to become … more than a woman. To those around you, you’re now the Fourth Emergency Service.” – Caitlin Moran Caitlin Moran was home-educated on a Wolverhampton council estate and went onto become the most iconic columnist and critic of her generation. From How to Be a Woman to Moranifesto, How to Build a Girl to Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves, her game-changing take on feminism, the patriarchy a...
Simon Schama – The World in 2021
January 11, 2021 19:55 - 1 hourThe events of 2020 have upturned the order of the world, and the medical, economic and political crises we face will not fade quietly as the new year begins. Though so much of the present moment feels strange and unprecedented, there is wisdom in heeding to George Santayana’s famous proverb that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. To help ensure that we do not fall foul of the prophecy, Simon Schama joined How To Academy to share his insights into the past and near fut...
Richard Dawkins – The Meaning of Life
December 09, 2020 12:41 - 1 hour“My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. That's never far from my thoughts, that sense of amazement.” – Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins has done more than any other scientist to promote and celebrate the origins of life on Ea...
Yanis Varoufakis Meets Owen Jones
November 30, 2020 10:54 - 1 hourWhether exposing Britain’s powerful elites in The Establishment or defending the white working class in Chavs, fighting for equality and social justice as a Guardian columnist and broadcaster, Owen Jones may be the most influential and widely respected political journalist of his generation. In conversation with world-renowned economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, he gives an unflinchingly honest, insider’s account of Labour’s electoral defeat in 2019 – and explores wh...
Len Mlodinow and Robin Ince – The Life of Stephen Hawking
November 23, 2020 12:15 - 1 hourAn icon of the last fifty years, Stephen Hawking seems to encapsulate genius. In this episode of the How To Academy Podcast, his colleague and collaborator Leonard Mlodinow offers an intimate account of this giant of science in conversation with comic and broadcaster Robin Ince. The two met in 2003, after Stephen asked Leonard if he would consider writing a book with him. As they spent years working on A Briefer History of Time followed by The Grand Design, they forged a deep connection and L...
Philip Lymbery - How to Live Sustainably in a Changing World
November 16, 2020 11:32 - 52 minutesOur meat and dairy intensive diets are destroying the planet. In this week's podcast, animal welfare environmentalist Philip Lymbery shares the new science of living sustainably and makes a powerful case for changing how we eat. From vegan alternatives to free range pasturised meat, cultured meat to precision fermentation, Philips considers the new dietary habits, technological innovations and political developments that could change the way we farm and eat and make a seismic impact on the cl...
Jung Chang – Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China
November 09, 2020 11:02 - 57 minutesThey were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled through a hundred years of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the centre of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history. Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the ‘Father of China’, Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao’s vice chair. Little Sister, May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kaishek, first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China and a major political figure in her...
Elizabeth Gilbert Meets Julia Cameron - The Path to Higher Creativity
November 02, 2020 08:55 - 59 minutesFor more than thirty years, Julia Cameron has helped ordinary people and world-renowned artists alike discover their passions and transform their lives. From Booker Prize winners like Anna Burns to world-famous musicians like Alicia Keys and Pete Townshend, actors like Reese Witherspoon and comedians like Russell Brand, the list of artists, innovators and creatives who cite a debt of gratitude to Julia Cameron and her bestselling creativity bible, The Artist’s Way is extraordinary. An icon to...
Brian Cox Meets Rebecca Wragg Sykes – The Lost World of Neanderthals
October 26, 2020 09:22 - 1 hourSince their discovery over 160 years ago, Neanderthals metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins. In conversation with particle physicist and broadcaster Brian Cox, archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes reveals the Neanderthals as curious, clever connoisseurs of their world, technologically inventive and ecologically adaptable. They ranged across vast tracts of tundra and steppe, but also stalked in dappled forests and waded in the Mediterranean Sea. Above all, the...
David Mitchell – Dishonesty is the Second Best Policy
October 19, 2020 17:17 - 1 hourLying is probably as old as human language itself – an inevitable consequence of humanity’s greatest superpower. And comedian, Observer columnist and Peep Show star David Mitchell lies quite often (mostly about whether he is free to come to social events). But even he never expected to live in the post-truth age. In conversation with broadcaster and journalist Hannah MacInnes, he joins us to rail against the times with the characteristic wit, warmth, originality and insight we’ve come to expe...
Jess Phillips – How To Speak Truth to Power
October 12, 2020 19:13 - 1 hourAt a time when many of us feel the world isn’t listening, Jess Phillips is here to teach us how to get organised, speak out and fight against injustice in all its forms. Jess Phillips is no stranger to speaking truth to power. Since becoming the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley in 2015, she has earned widespread acclaim as an authentic, fearless and uncompromising force for good in British politics, unafraid to stand up against injustice no matter the cost. Now she returns to How To Academy t...
Thandie Newton Meets Gloria Steinem
October 05, 2020 09:43 - 1 hourShe is the most iconic American feminist of the 20th and 21st centuries: a journalist and activist whose career spanned the campaign trails of Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. As a co-founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem demonstrated a unique gift for offering hope and inspiring action – and to this day her words continue to serve as a source of guidance, humour and unity for people around the world. As the Emmy and BAFTA winning star of Westworld and The Line of Duty, alongside a cinema...
Sid Meier – The Rise of Civilization
September 21, 2020 09:00 - 40 minutesAs the inventor of an entirely new genre of entertainment, legendary video-game designer Sid Meier is a true creative pioneer a godfather to a multi-billion dollar industry. When Sid Meier designed his first computer game at the University of Michigan in the early 1970s computer-games hardly existed – and there were certainly no professional computer-game designers. In the following decades he would create some of the most famous and celebrated video-game titles ever made – including Civiliza...
Geoffrey Robertson – Who Owns History?
September 14, 2020 08:26 - 35 minutesThe question of whether Western nations must return the artefacts plundered under colonial rule is the most pressing issue in the art world today. From the Elgin Marbles to the return of more than twelve thousand stolen artefacts from Belgium’s Africa Museum, the cry for the restitution of cultural objects once stolen under armed force or conquest is being heard across the globe. And the call is being heard in the highest echelons of power: from President Macron’s commitment to returning hund...
Roman Krznaric – How to Think Long Term in a Short Term World
September 07, 2020 12:20 - 41 minutesThe greatest challenge facing humankind is not climate change or terrorism; it is our inability to think long term. Britain’s leading public philosopher is here to change the way we think to ensure a tomorrow. We are living in the age of now. Businesses can barely see beyond the next quarterly report nor politicians beyond the next election. Markets spike then crash in speculative bubbles. In this right here, right now society, we rarely stop to consider if we're being good ancestors. But the...
Anthony David – Mental Health After COVID
August 31, 2020 08:23 - 1 hourFrom anxiety to PTSD, the consequences of the pandemic for global mental health are profound. Neuropsychiatrist Anthony David explores what we know so far – and what we can do about it. Anthony David is one of the UK’s leading mental health professionals. As Director of UCL’s Institute for Mental Health, he has dedicated his life to treating illnesses at the edge of human understanding. Drawing on four decades of study and practice at the forefront of mental healthcare, he joins How To Academ...
Maria Konnikova – The Biggest Bluff
August 24, 2020 08:30 - 1 hourWhen bestselling author Maria Konnikova set out to investigate the science of decision-making, she never expected to become a world-class poker player under the wing of a legend of the game. The author of two New York Times bestsellers, psychologist Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn’t even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel -- Poker Hall of Fame inductee, winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings -- and asked him to be her mentor. She had face...
Clive Woodward – How to Win
August 17, 2020 09:32 - 46 minutesSir Clive Woodward has spent a lifetime in high-performance environments, from the rugby field to the boardroom. He gave broadcaster Matthew Stadlen a masterclass in achieving peak performance. After leading the England Rugby team to victory in the 2003 World Cup, delivering Olympic glory in 2012 as Director of Sport at Team GB, and going on to help some of the world’s biggest brands and businesses deliver peak performance, there are few if any men better qualified to teach the skills of lead...
Kiley Reid – Such a Fun Age
August 10, 2020 08:43 - 57 minutesSuch a Fun Age is the literary sensation of the season, making the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic following overwhelming critical acclaim. Its 32 year old author Kiley Reid ‘bites into the zeitgeist then spits it out with gusto' (Stylist), offering a piercing and emphatic take on the way we live now. Exploring the intersection of money, class and race with candour, empathy and satirical insight, as well as the politics of privilege, the complicated reality of being a grown-up,...
Owen O’Kane - How to Manage Anxiety and Stress
August 03, 2020 08:13 - 1 hourPsychotherapist and bestselling author Owen O’Kane was the NHS Clinical Lead for Mental Health. He joined us to explore evidence-based techniques for developing a healthier perspective. It is not necessary to sit on waiting lists and spend thousands of pounds to benefit from the insights of psychotherapy. Many of the tools from therapies including CBT, mindfulness and interpersonal therapy can be taught and practised simply and immediately. As one of the most experienced and senior therapists...
Madeleine Albright – Hell and Other Destinations
July 27, 2020 07:53 - 1 hourFormer Secretary of State Madeleine Albright may be the most widely admired diplomat of our age; a tireless public servant whose new memoir Hell and Other Destinations is not only a record of living through history – but making it. In 2001, when Madeleine Albright was leaving office as America’s first female Secretary of State, interviewers asked her how she wished to be remembered. “I don’t want to be remembered,” she answered. “I am still here and have much more I intend to do. As difficult...
Rahul Jandial – How To Rewire Your Brain
July 20, 2020 08:14 - 43 minutesIt’s time to turn the tide against mental decline. Learn how to make your mind fitter, healthier and stronger using the insights of cutting-edge neuroscience in this week's podcast. Dr. Rahul Jandial is one of the world’s most eminent experts in the study and improvement of brain function. An award-winning, dual-trained neuroscientist and neurosurgeon, the author of ten books and a former faculty member at both Harvard and Stanford, Dr. Jandial is also a broadcaster and science communicator d...
Richard Eyre - How to Make a Play
July 14, 2020 07:30 - 40 minutesThe acclaimed director of stage and screen joins Matthew Stadlen for a masterclass in making theatre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Glennon Doyle – How to Find Yourself
June 29, 2020 08:30 - 1 hour‘Glennon shows us the clearest meaning of “To thine own self be true”. It’s as if she reached into her heart, captured the raw emotions there and translated them into words that anyone who’s ever known pain or shame – in other words, every human on the planet – can relate to.’ – Oprah Winfrey There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us fe...
Martin Wolf – The World After the Pandemic
June 22, 2020 09:31 - 1 hourRevered by politicians, financiers and his fellow economists alike, the FT’s Martin Wolf may be the world’s most influential economic commentator. Matthew Stadlen seeks his insights. Admired across the political spectrum for his level-head, independence and lack of dogmatism, Martin Wolf is far more than an astute analyst of global economic affairs. Through his columns in the Financial Times, books and documentaries, he is an opinion-maker deeply respected by business and political leaders, w...
Max Brooks - How To Survive a Global Catastrophe
June 17, 2020 09:32 - 38 minutesThis week's podcast guest Max Brooks is the bestselling author of the zombie apocalypse cult classic World War Z, for which he also wrote the screenplay for the Hollywood adaptation with Brad Pitt. He is the son of Hollywood legends Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks – Max and Mel recently went viral with their #DontBeASpreader video which has had 16.1M views to date. As well as a bestselling author, Max is also a renowned global disaster preparation expert and works alongside the US government, th...
L. David Marquet – Leadership is Language
June 08, 2020 14:43 - 47 minutes'David Marquet is the kind of leader who comes around only once in a generation... His ideas and lessons are invaluable' – Simon Sinek Few of us realize that our language in the workplace inhibits creative problem-solving and escalates uncertainty and stress. In both high-pressure situations and everyday scenarios, in each meeting and email, we have the opportunity to empower our colleagues by using the right words. David Marquet is a man who understands first-hand the power of words to make ...
Julia Ebner – Undercover With Extremists
June 01, 2020 15:28 - 1 hourFrustrated by the limits of an outsider’s perspective, counter-extremism expert Julia Ebner secretly infiltrated five fanatical groups. She joined the How To Academy Podcast to reveal her journey into the darkest recesses of extremist thinking. By day, Julia Ebner works at a counter-extremism think tank, monitoring radical groups from the outside, but two years ago, she began to feel that she was only seeing half the picture. She needed to get inside the groups to truly understand them. So s...
John Browne - How to Engineer the Future
May 25, 2020 08:20 - 37 minutesFans of Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari ought not to miss this eloquent blueprint for building a brighter future from engineer, John Browne. In conversation with Matthew Stadlen, Lord Browne argues that we need not and must not put the brakes on technological advance. Civilisation is founded on engineering innovation; all progress stems from the human urge to make things and to shape the world around us, resulting in greater freedom, health and wealth for all. Drawing on history, his o...
How to Fight White Supremacy
May 18, 2020 15:20 - 27 minutes - 18.6 MB'She is no-joke changing the world and, for what it's worth, the way I live my life.' - Anne Hathaway How can white people challenge racism -- whether in the form of their own unconscious biases or the wider systems of white supremacy? In this week's How To Academy Podcast, Hannah MacInnes meets author, influencer and activist Layla Saad, whose Instagram challenge #MeAndWhiteSupremacy encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviours. She was looking for truth, and she got it. T...
Layla Saad - How to Fight White Supremacy
May 18, 2020 15:20 - 31 minutes'She is no-joke changing the world and, for what it's worth, the way I live my life.' - Anne Hathaway How can white people challenge racism -- whether in the form of their own unconscious biases or the wider systems of white supremacy? In this week's How To Academy Podcast, Hannah MacInnes meets author, influencer and activist Layla Saad, whose Instagram challenge #MeAndWhiteSupremacy encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviours. She was looking for truth, and she got it. T...
Brian Greene - How to Find Meaning in an Evolving Universe
May 11, 2020 15:58 - 34 minutesThe bestselling author of The Elegant Universe joins the How To Academy Podcast to explore humankind’s search for purpose in the vastness of the cosmos. World-renowned for his ground-breaking discoveries in string theory, Brian Greene is also one of our most eloquent and original storytellers in science, able to transport us across the vast reaches of time and space, bringing to life breakthroughs and trials, great discoveries and profound philosophical meditations. He joined Matthew Stadle...
Julia Samuel - How to Adapt and Survive in a Time of Crisis
May 01, 2020 09:16 - 55 minutesIn this unprecedented moment in global history, psychotherapist Julia Samuel joined the How To Academy Podcast to tell us how to find unknown strengths in times of difficulty and change. As the global coronavirus pandemic causes profound difficulties to our health, work, and family, Julia drew upon more thirty years of experience helping everyday people in times of uncertainty, and taught us the skills we need to adapt and hopefully thrive in this strange new normal. Learn more about your ad...
How To Make Sense of Consciousness
April 20, 2020 09:31 - 42 minutesHow do our brains produce the magic show of conscious experience? The question remains one of the universe's unsolved mysteries -- and this week's podcast guest, Anil Seth, is working on the answer. This week's guest Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. In his work he seeks to understand the biological basis of consciousness by bringing together research across neuroscience, mathematics, AI, computer science, psychology, philosophy a...
Mervyn King - How to Make Decisions for an Unknowable Future
April 14, 2020 06:21 - 1 hourMany of the world’s problems stem from the false belief that we can accurately predict the future. Can we make better decisions by acknowledging radical uncertainty? In this week's podcast, Mervyn King and John Kay build a powerful case. Uncertainty pervades the big decisions we all make in our lives. How much should we pay into our pensions each month? Should we take regular exercise? Expand the business? Change our strategy? Enter a trade agreement? Take an expensive holiday? We do not k...
BONUS EPISODE - Global GoalsCast
April 06, 2020 10:14 - 43 minutesThe How To Academy Podcast presents an episode of one of our favourite shows: the Global GoalsCast. The climate challenge is sprawling and extraordinarily complex. It is too much for any individual to hold all of it in their head. That knowledge void has become a major political obstacle to effective climate action (SDG 13) as we fill it in paralyzing ways, from denial to apocalyptic fear. The best way to learn that we can curb climate change is to do it. So Global GoalsCast co-host Edie L...
William Gibson – How to Create the Future
March 30, 2020 08:53 - 34 minutesHe coined the word ‘Cyberspace’ and envisioned the Internet and Virtual Reality before they ever existed. Now, in this week's How To Academy Podcast, William Gibson turns his prophetic eye to the 21st century. He is the prophet who first envisioned our fluid, hyperconnected, hallucinatory world; the internationally bestselling author whose visions of the near future reveal the strangeness of our contemporary moment as much as they illuminate potential worlds to come. But William Gibson is m...
Elif Shafak – How to Build Bridges in an Age of Division
March 23, 2020 11:58 - 47 minutesAuthor and activist Elif Shafak is the most widely read female writer in her home nation of Turkey -- but her fight against populism and tribalism is urgent no matter where you live. She joined Matthew Stadlen on the How To Academy Podcast to explore our turbulent present and make an impassioned defence of tolerance and humanitarian values. In an age where the vision of a pluralistic, democratic global village no longer feels like possible, she explores how we can escape our echo chambers an...
Ai Weiwei – Human Rights in the 21st Century
March 16, 2020 11:35 - 1 hourAi Weiwei is living proof that creativity can change our world for the better. Raised in a labour camp and later beaten, surveilled and imprisoned on trumped-up charges by the Chinese state, Ai Weiwei has dedicated his life to the struggle against corruption and oppression of all kinds. As a conceptual artist and activist fighting for justice, he has become an icon in his own lifetime, renowned world-wide for his work promoting freedom of thought and expression, compassion, and humanitarian...
Paul Krugman – Politics, Economics and the Fight for a Fairer Future
March 09, 2020 11:22 - 34 minutesFor more than forty years Nobel laureate, bestselling economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has fought for a fair, just and liberal future. Widely considered the voice of 21st century liberal thought both in the United States and across the globe, Paul Krugman combines the erudition and insight of a renowned scholar with the immediate relevance, clarity and originality of thought expected of a columnist at the New York Times. A former professor at LSE, Princeton, Yale and MIT...
Erling Kagge and Ben Saunders - How to Be a Polar Explorer
February 24, 2020 12:36 - 34 minutesTwo of the greatest living adventurers meet Hannah MacInnes to reflect on what motivates their journeys across the polar ice. Bringing together two record-breaking polar explorers –Norwegian Erling Kagge and his British counterpart Ben Saunders – this podcast offers a profound and illuminating meditation on the life of a polar explorer. The first man ever to reach the North and South Poles unsupported and the first to conquer both the Poles and Mt. Everest, a Cambridge educated philosopher,...