Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

How to be sad, with Helen Russell

Helen Russell is a journalist, podcaster and author of How To Be Sad, a part memoir/ manifesto which argues that we can’t talk about happiness, without making space for sadness. But why are we so scared of being sad? We discuss ‘warm glow giving’, what we can learn about sadness from the Russians and why "money can't buy you happiness" isn't quite right.

Buy How To Be Sad, here: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Helen-Russell/How-to-be-Sad--Everything-IVe-Learned-About-Getting-Happi/24958621

Re-thinking self-care, with Pooja Lakshmin

Pooja Lakshmin MD is a psychiatrist and writer, specialising in women's mental health. The founder of digital women's health platform Gemma, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times, where she writes about wellness and self-care (amongst other subjects) about which she is currently writing a book. We talk about what the business of wellness gets wrong, what real self-care looks like and the difference between burnout and despair. 

Follow Pooja's work, here: https://www.instagram.com/womensmentalhealthdoc/

 

Gemma's first all digital course on dealing with mom guilt, martyr-mode, and perfectionism can be found here: https://gemmawomen.com/unloadmomguilt 

The lonely economy, with Noreena Hertz

Noreena Hertz is an economist and thought leader and the author of The Lonely Century, a fascinating and sprawling study of the epidemic of loneliness. We discuss why loneliness is higher in cities where people walk faster, how robots can be a force for good in social care and how to reconnect communities.

Buy The Lonely Century here: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Noreena-Hertz/The-Lonely-Century--A-Call-to-Reconnect/24115876

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora

Introverts and Extroverts, with Arthur Brooks

Arthur Brooks is a social scientist, Harvard professor and author of multiple books, who writes a column for The Atlantic about happiness. After his column on introverts and extroverts caught my attention (I am fascinated in personality theories), I rung him up to discuss why introverts fared better during the pandemic and what extroverts and introverts can learn from one another. Plus, we take a little detour into why 'more' isn't always better. You can read that column here: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/05/introverts-extroverts-happiness-gap-pandemic/618925/

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora

What the law gets wrong, with Alexandra Wilson

Alexandra Wilson is a criminal and family law barrister, the founder of Black Women In Law and the author of Black & White: a young barrister’s story of race and class in a broken justice system. We discuss the bar’s diversity and access problem, Stop & Search, the over-representation of black people in prisons and what we get wrong when we talk about knife crime. Plus, she drops some deliciously archaic nuggets about the process of becoming a barrister.

Buy In Black and White https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Alexandra-Wilson/In-Black-and-White--A-Young-Barristers-Story-of-Race-and-/25680126

 

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora

Could a 4-day week ever work? with Alex Pang

Alex Pang is a futurist and tech consultant who has spent twenty years studying our relationship with work. In Shorter, he argues that you get more done, when you work less. We discuss the problem with open-plan working, why 90% of meetings are an absolute waste of time and how a 4 day week (which means, yup, a 3 day weekend) could be better for the climate, the economy and public health.

Buy Shorter here https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Alex-Soojung-Kim-Pang/Shorter--How-Working-Less-Will-Revolutionise-the-Way-your/24502730

 

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora

Understanding autism, with Naoise Dolan

Naoise Dolan is the author of the best-selling novel Exciting Times, who explores through her journalism what it means to be neurodiverse and what allistic people often misunderstand about autism. We discuss hidden disabilities, the problem with 'likeability' and why it would benefit us all to live in an Ask Culture world.

Buy Exciting Times here: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Naoise-Dolan/Exciting-Times--Longlisted-for-the-Womens-Prize-for-Fiction-2021/24617649

 

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora

Let‘s talk about sex, with Amia Srinivasan

Amia Srinivasan is the Chichele Professor of social and political theory at Oxford University and the author of thought provoking new collection of essays, The Right To Sex. We talk about incel culture, The metric of ‘fuckability’, dating apps, and why banning porn is not the answer.

Buy The Right to Sex here: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Amia-Srinivasan/The-Right-to-Sex/24711982

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora

Trusting your gut, with Stacey Dooley

Stacey Dooley is a broadcaster and presenter, known for making more than 80 documentaries for the BBC on subjects including spy cam sex in South Korea, child abuse in the Philippines, female suicide bombers in Nigeria and sex slavery in Islamic State. She is also the 2018 winner of Strictly Come Dancing and the presenter of a make-up competition, Glow Up. In short: you can't box Dooley in. In the season finale of Doing It Right, I interview one of the most famous women in British media about what makes a good documentary, the importance of trusting your gut and learning from your mistakes in the public eye. 

Thank you so much for listening to the series! I really enjoyed making it and I hope you squirrelled away some helpful nuggets about how to navigate and metabolise modern life, courtesy of my brilliant guests.

How Do We Know We're Doing It Right is out now in both hardback and audiobook, narrated by Pandora.

Yoda wasn‘t chill all the time, with Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton is a philosopher who has written on work, sex, leisure, architecture - and every other subject in between. I first discovered Alain's work in the early noughties, when I inhaled his debut novel, Essays in Love, which he wrote aged just 23 and which sold over 2 million copies. Whether you're a fellow fangirl, or new to his philosophy, you're in for his treat - Alain's pragmatism (and his vast bank of wisdom) are so extremely comforting and clarifying in these muddling times. We discuss the difference between interior and exterior progress, the perils of instant gratification and why no-one is Yoda, all of the time. Not even Alain.

How Do We Know We're Doing It Right is out now in both hardback and audiobook, narrated by Pandora.