Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

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.

Arrival fallacy, with Raven Smith

Raven Smith is a British Vogue columnist, an Instagram personality and the author of the essay collection, Trivial Pursuits. I have long admired Raven's ability to move between the trivial and the weighty, with ease: writing about IKEA meatballs one minute, and his inability to live up to his father's idea of a black man, the next. We discuss arrival fallacy, being in 'the waiting room of parenthood' and why the little things - the trimmings of modern life - make us who we are.

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

Why do we hate change? with Julia Samuel

Julia Samuel is a psychotherapist, the founder/patron of Child Bereavement UK and the author of two acclaimed non-fiction books, Grief Works and her new one, This Too Shall Pass. A book about why human beings find it so hard to navigate change, it could not have landed at a better time: when choice has been removed and major change forced upon us, by the pandemic. We discuss why resisting change only makes its impact worse, the impossibility of ever fully 'knowing yourself' and the scourge of comparisonitis.

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

Optimism vs. hope, with Rutger Bregman

Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian with a radical new idea: what if human beings are not innately savage and selfish, but compassionate and kind? I talk to Rutger about his uplifting new book, Humankind; the difference between optimism and hope; and why we need to look beyond cultural myth to find the truth. I felt comforted and hopeful after speaking to Rutger - I hope you do, too.

 

How Do We Know We're Doing It Right is out now in both 

hardback and audiobook, narrated by Pandora.

The age of outrage, with Dotty Charles

Ashley 'Dotty' Charles is a writer and broadcaster. The first solo female to host 1Xtra Breakfast for the BBC, she is the author of a new book, which lands at the time we need it most. Outraged: Why Everyone is Shouting and No One Is Talking is about how distracted we have become in our outrage. By shouting about the little things, are we neglecting to talk about the bigger issues in modern society? We discuss the difference between performative outrage, the role of the social media provocateur and the strange case of Rachel Dolezal. 

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

Seeking inclusivity, with Sinead Burke

Sinéad Burke is a force for good. An educator and disability advocate in the field of fashion and design, she is solutions-driven in her desire to make society more inclusive. The first little person to appear on the cover of Vogue, to attend the Met Gala and to give a TED Talk, she is fast becoming one of the most important voices in conversations around social change.

 

Her book, Break The Mould: How To Take Your Place In The World, is published in October and is available for pre-order, now.

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