Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes
An interview series with journalist Pandora Sykes, about the myths, anxieties and trends of modern life.
Episodes
We need to talk about postpartum psychosis, with Catherine Cho
So many women experience a postpartum mental disorder after having a baby. For me, it was postnatal depression. For Catherine Cho, it was postpartum psychosis.
You might not have thought about postpartum psychosis before. Certainly, I had no idea before I read Catherine’s memoir, that 1-2 in every 1000 women will be affected by it. So why isn’t it being talked about more? Or even, at all?
In
Decolonising beauty, with Afua Hirsch
I’m really interested in talking about the gnarly parts of the beauty industry - where things like tanning and hair removal actually come from. In the last series, Jessica DeFino debunked many myths about make-up and skincare. This season, I talk to journalist, author and broadcaster Afua Hirsch about beauty’s colonialist ideals and how she sought to break up with them.
Afua talks about reconnec
The myth of the sociopath, with Patric Gagne
What does the term ‘sociopath’ mean to you? Serial killer? Social outcast? Or wait - is that a psychopath?
Patric first told her story in a column for the cult Modern Love series, titled ‘He Married a Sociopath: Me’. After the piece received an enormous response, Patric wrote a probing memoir about a life spent searching for answers: Why didn’t she feel guilt or shame like other people? Why did
How tech flattened personal taste, with Kyle Chayka
The homogenisation of popular culture is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. In my 2020 book, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? (which spawned this very podcast), I wrote an essay called Get The Look - inspired by a wildly successful Zara polkadot dress - about how internet culture is encouraging young women to dress as facsimiles of one other.
So I was really excited to talk
Why you might be languishing, with Corey Keyes
Feeling demotivated? Aimless? Without meaning, or purpose? According to sociologist and psychologist Corey Keyes, you could be languishing.
In this episode, I talk to the renowned pioneer of mental wellbeing about his theories of languishing and flourishing, the subject of a thought-provoking new book. Corey explains why so many of us are languishing, how it’s different from burnout and depressi
How to have a more meaningful social life, with Priya Parker
Welcome to the last episode of Series 3! I really hope you have enjoyed the series and it’s given you some pause for thoughts. Don’t forget to rate and review the show on iTunes to help other people find me.
Priya Parker is a conflict resolution strategist, based in the States and the author of a 2018 book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. I’ve wanted to speak to her since I
The expectation effect, with David Robson
Can the way you think about your body, change the way it works? Can a positive outcome about ageing, actually cause you to live longer?
I’ve been curious about the mind-body axis for a while, and then I read The Expectation Effect by the award-winning science journalist and author, David Robson about how our expectations can shape our experience - and I was fascinated.
Using dozens of jaw-drop
The myth of the ‘baby brain’ with Chelsea Conaboy
Did you find yourself scrambling for words, losing your keys, forgetting basically everything, when you had a baby? Perhaps you witnessed it in your best friend, your sibling, your partner. The jokes about how women are lobotomised by motherhood are damaging and misogynistic - the term ‘baby brain’ used to keep women in their place - but how was i to reconcile that knowledge with a brain that felt
What we get wrong about sleep, with Russell Foster
Tired all the time? Worried you’re not getting the fabled ‘8 hours’ ? You’re not alone: we’ve become a nation of orthosomniacs. But panic not, because sleep scientist Russell Foster is here to help.
The University of Oxford neuroscientist and the author of a new book, Life Time, is a world leading expert on circadian rhythms, also known as: the body clock. And guess what? The whole 8 hours a ni
The many myths of fast fashion, with Venetia La Manna
I’ve been wanting to do an episode on the many myths of fast fashion since I wrote an essay titled Get The Look, for my 2020 essay collection (which this podcast series first spun off from). And Venetia La Manna, a presenter and podcaster campaigning against fast fashion and advocating for more mindful consumption, is the ideal guest to explore this issue with. She regularly organises protests aga
What we get wrong about knife crime, with Gary Younge
What do you know about knife crime? It’s something that happens in gangs and on the streets. It’s something you’ve never had to worry about. Right?
Gary Younge is an author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the university of Manchester. Formerly an editor at large of the guardian newspaper, he has written 5 books including Another Day In The Death of America, which chronicled the live
The myth of gendered emotion, with Praga Agarwal
Professor Pragya Agarwal is a data and behavioural scientist, a visiting professor of social inequities and injustice at Loughborough University and the founder of a research think tank, The 50% Project. She is also the author of five books, most recently Hysterical: Exploding The Myth of Gendered Emotions.
In this episode, we talk about whether women really do cry more; the myth of the hysteri
What we get wrong about dementia, with Wendy Mitchell
There are 50million people living with dementia worldwide. By 2050, it’s likely to rise to 152 million. But how much do you know about dementia? When it’s a disease so rapidly on the rise, why aren’t we talking more about it?
Wendy Mitchell is a former NHS worker who was diagnosed with young-onset dementia at the age of 58. She’s written two books: Somebody I Used To Know and What I Wish People
The myth of good skin, with Jessica DeFino
Jessica DeFino is not your regular beauty journalist. After finding her pieces were regularly rejected from newspapers and magazines for being too incendiary, or dissing beauty brands who advertised, she founded her newsletter, The Unpublishable, where, in her own words she “dismantles beauty standards, debunks marketing myths and explores how beauty culture impacts people”. It now has 40,000 read
The nuances of grief, with Cariad Lloyd
I'm so pleased to bring you this s2 bonus episode sponsored by Sage Appliances, with Cariad Lloyd, which we recorded in front of a live audience a month ago. Cariad is a comedian and writer and the creator of the cult podcast, Griefcast, where she interviews famous people (usually comedians) like Robert Webb, David Baddiel and Sara Pascoe about the human experience of death and grief, and which h
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.c
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 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
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
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
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 Sh
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/Exci
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 Pan
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
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 (an
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 parentho
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 o
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 K
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 societ
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
Comedy for good, with Joe Lycett
Doing It Right is a new podcast series that delves into the way we live our lives. My very first guest is the comedian and TV presenter, Joe Lycett. He joins me to discuss consumer activism, parking tickets, his BAFTA nomination and why comedy should "punch up" not down. In collaboration with Penguin Audio.
How Do We Know We're Doing It Right is out now in both hardback and audiobook, narrated by
