Professor Carrie Lambert-Beatty is a contemporary art historian. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies at Harvard. She's the author of some of the most influential arts writing of the 21st century, including the award-winning book Being Watched, Yvonne Rainer in the 1960s and the essay, Make Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility (pdf). Carrie is also a co-editor at the illustrious arts theory...

Caroline Criado Perez is a writer, broadcaster, speaker and feminist campaigner. She successfully campaigned to put a woman on the British £10 note in 2013 and campaigned to put a statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square in 2018 thereby making Parliament Square a little bit less of a sausage fest. Her book 'INVISIBLE WOMEN: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men' was a Sunday Times #1 best seller, and won both the Financial Times Book of the Year Award and the Royal Society...

Professor Hanneke van Laarhoven is professor of translational medical oncology at the University of Amsterdam and head of the Department of Medical Oncology of the Amsterdam University Medical Center. She is a world-renowned specialist on gastrointestinal cancer, but her interests reach far beyond the body, including psychology, AI, philosophy and theology. She is also known for helping develop the first large-scale databases collecting tumour and blood samples, archives which hopefully will...

Professor Sophie Scott CBE is the Director of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, as well as the Head of their Speech Communications Group. Her research interests include the neural basis of vocal communication - how our brains process the information in speech and voices, and how our brains control the production of our voice. She is also interested in the expression of emotion in the voice, especially laughter. She is very active in the public...

Philippa Perry- or to use her proper title, Philippa, Lady Perry - is an author, psychotherapist and artist. She has written several books including a graphic novel titled 'Couch Fiction: a Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy', the #1 Sunday Times Best Seller 'The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read...' And her current book called 'The Book You Want Everyone You Love To Read...' She has presented various documentaries on British tv and during Covid she co-hosted three seasons of Grayson's Art...

Our guest today is Martin Surbeck. An assistant professor in evolutionary biology at Harvard University, Surbeck is one of the world’s foremost experts in primatology. He is interested in questions of social behavior in animals: competition but also cooperation, a skill and strategy often considered unique to humans. His main research object? Apes and monkeys, chimpanzees and bonobos especially, our cousins from 8 million years ago. Chimpanzees, as anyone who has ever been to the zoo knows,...

Catherine Ashton, or The Right Honourable, The Baroness Ashton of Upholland, LG GCMG PC was created a life peer by Tony Blair in 1999. In the Blair government she was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills, and in the Ministry of Justice. During Gordon Brown's government she became Leader of the House of Lords, Lord President of the Council, the British European Commissioner and the Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission. She was...

Andy Nyman is a multi-award winning actor, director, writer, author and magician. As an actor his credits include things such as playing Winston Churchill in ‘Peaky Blinders’, and Dan in the Oscar winning film 'Judy'. He starred in Charlie Brooker's 'Dead Set'. Has appeared on stage on Broadway and in the West End in shows such as ‘Fiddler on The Roof’, ‘Assassins’, ‘Hangmen’ and ‘Ghost Stories’, which he also wrote and directed. He is the co-creator and co-writer of several tv shows with...

Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou is a biblical scholar and broadcaster. She is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter in the UK. Her research is on ancient Israelite and Judahite religions, and portrayals of the religious past in the Hebrew Bible. Her most recent book deals with ancient constructs of God's body, it’s called ‘God: An Anatomy’. It won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for non-fiction; was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize; named a best...

Professor Bruce Hood is Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at the University of Bristol in the UK. His research focuses on cognitive development in children, spatial representation and action, the origin of adult magical reasoning from children’s natural intuitions and for the past several years has been running a course at Bristol called the Science of Happiness. Apart from his academic work, he is very well-known for his public communication of science and has appeared on...

Artist Annabel Daou was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, she is now living in New York. Her work takes place at the intersection of writing, speech, and non-verbal modes of communication. Her paper- and tape-based constructions, sound pieces, and performances explore the language of power, intimacy, and self-encounter across time and space. Her works involve friends, acquaintances, and random strangers. She has asked people questions and given them imperatives. She has read people’s palms...

Professor Joseph Koerner is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature at Harvard University, where he is also a senior fellow at the prestigious Society of Fellows. Koerner is one of the most renowned art historians and critics working today, and the world’s leading specialist on Northern Renaissance and 19th Century Art, in particular German and Netherlandish painting. He has written multiple books, amongst them...

Adam Rutherford is a scientist, writer, broadcaster and President of Humanists UK. He is a Lecturer in Biology and Society at University College London, where he teaches the history of eugenics, race science, genetics, and science communication. He is one of the UK's most well-known science communicators and in 2021 was awarded The Royal Society David Attenborough Award in recognition of his contribution to strengthening public confidence in science through radio, TV, films, talks and books,...

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