52 Insights Podcast

How did we become so incredibly unhealthy? How did obesity and diabetes become some of the most prevalent diseases of our civilisation? It is now estimated that cases of autoimmune diseases are rising between 3% and 9% a year because of our westernised diet. As soon as the western diet started leeching off white flour and sugar, people across the world became inordinately unhealthy as a consequence. How should we then, in 2022, think about health? Science journalist Gary Taubes has been reporting on the inadequacies of the nutrition science industry for decades. A bestselling author behind the recently rereleased The Case For Keto and The Case Against Sugar. Rather than take the word of science at face value, he tends to see nutrition and health science being littered with methodological sinkholes. For decades his hunch behind the causes of obesity has attracted the intense ire of the scientific community. But the nutrition and health community can at least agree on one thing with Gary; sugar has captivated us for all the wrong reasons. It has become the cornerstone of our deterioration. At the dawn of the new year, this being the first interview for 52 Insights, it is fitting to look at our health and what we put into our bodies. In this fascinating discussion with Gary, he reveals the mechanisms that lie behind the food industrial complex, how it shaped the way we eat and think and its many attached conspiracies that go with it. Ultimately many of us face a myriad of chronic illnesses if we don’t change our behaviour, and Gary gives us a glimpse of what we can do to fix this. Gary says the most important thing is not what about you put in your body but getting your thought environment right. Tune in to my latest podcast with best selling author behind the Case Against Sugar, Gary Taubes who takes me on a whirlwind tour of the sugar industry of the 20th century and what the full picture of obesity really is.

This week we’re speaking to features editor and tech reporter of Bloomberg Businessweek, Max Chafkin. He’s just released his debut book, the brilliantly researched biography, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power.  If you’ve followed the tech world in any shape or form over the last two decades, then it would be almost impossible to have avoided the name Peter Thiel. One of the most successful venture capitalists of our time, a hugely influential power broker, in the last two decades, he’s navigated his way to becoming the godfather of tech bros. His politics, his ideas permeate everything that Silicon Valley has become today. Thiel is known for playing puppet master with some of the biggest names in tech, from Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg. A shadowy entrepreneur who has aligned himself with the more conservative side of politics, he’s crafted his worldview out of a hyper-libertarian mindset. From seasteading to the apocalypse to space travel to the quest for immortality and even psychedelics. He epitomises everything that Silicon Valley has now become maligned for.  To some, Thiel is the OG troll, malevolent and someone to be very suspicious of; to others, he’s a prophet, someone not afraid to speak his mind no matter what the cost. He envisioned the left eating itself decades ago, the coming Balkanisation of the Democratic Party.  Invariably he's become one of the most influential and consequential figures in Silicon Valley; some know him as the first investor in Facebook portrayed in the iconic 2010 film The Social Network. Others as the interventionist who helped bring down Gawker in 2016.  If it all sounds a bit Cloak and Daggers to you, then that's because it is; Chafkin’s biography is an appropriate metaphor for the questionable motives behind Silicon Valley and an indication of where it could be heading.   In this wide-ranging discussion, Chafkin and I examine the power elite of Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel’s shapeshifting ideological worldview. We learn about the tight-knit and, at times, the bizarre relationship between Thiel and Elon Musk.   We also learn about Thiel’s prophetic voice on cancel culture and his future plans as a board member for Facebook, now called Meta.  Max Chafkin: The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power is out now

It remains up there as one of life's biggest mysteries, who are we really? What sits beyond the flesh-like incarnation that we inhabit day in and day out. One man, in particular, has spent his entire career looking for answers to these challenging questions: Anil Seth, a leading British researcher in the field of consciousness. Operating out of the University of Sussex in the UK as a professor in cognitive and computational neuroscience, Seth has published well over 100 academic papers on the area. You might know him as the man that has likened our reality to a type of hallucinating prediction machine. His TED talk to date has been viewed over 12 million times. He has now written his first comprehensive book on the domain - hailed as a seminal text by The Guardian- called Being You; it hopes to clarify some of the biggest complexities that plague the area and give you a refreshing and very human account of where the field sits. Studying what makes us, well, us is a difficult challenge in it itself, when the observer becomes the observed. I had the pleasure of examining how science dissects this incredibly difficult problem in this chat. Anil believes solving the issue of consciousness will come down to an incremental like elimination process where bit-by-bit we chip away at what philosophers call 'the hard problem'. However, sceptics out there think we will never solve this mystery – that's what makes this field so enchanting. Anil and I take a walk through some weighty material that includes the myriad of theories aiming to define what makes us conscious, from panpsychism to functionalism. As well as the striking parallels between this field of science and the philosophy of Buddhism. And finally, we end up in the future, discussing the moral and existential dangers that hold the Metaverse and artificial intelligence together. This is about so much more than donning a lab coat and measuring the activity in our brain; this is about breaking out of the very core beliefs we cherish, ones that have existed since time immemorial. Anil Seth's Being You is out now on Faber.

Imagine a future where your local therapist is able to administer a small dose of a psychedelic compound to you in a controlled setting. Whatever mental health affliction your experiencing, be it addiction, anxiety or depression, your ability to gain fast, effective respite to many could be life-transformative. This is the future that atai is betting on, a German-based psychedelic inspired pharmaceutical company with a slew of drugs in current development. Co-founded by the entrepreneurial trendsetter Christian Angermayer and Florian Brand, they stand on the shoulders of giants, partly assisted by the decades of research by mavericks in white coats such as Rolland Griffiths, David Nutt and Rick Doblin. They aim to revolutionise the mental health landscape for hundreds of millions of sufferers worldwide. Having just IPO'd in what is becoming a crowded marketplace for psychedelic inspired life science companies, they are betting on psychedelic inspired compounds like ibogaine, DMT and ketamine to reinvigorate and empower large sections of society where SSRIs (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) have only done half the job. And they mean business, they count luminaries like Sam Harris, investor giant Peter Thiel and artists Diplo & One Direction's Liam Payne as backers for this juggernaut. However, the challenge for atai remains twofold, one, to dispense of the century-long stigmas and myths that cling to psychedelics and mental health but also to sell this into to a weary public. In this discussion, Florian and Christian talk me through their future roadmap, why psychedelics changed their lives and when can we expect these medicinal compounds to appear over the counter?

With our society changing so rapidly in so many ways, how do we deal with the consistent disruption that plagues us? In an ideal world, we would possess inner tools such as slowing down and breathing, listening to others, and harnessing the power of empathy to move with the times.But in times of turbulence, it always comes as no surprise that we cling to the things we know. It's where we feel most comfortable.  As someone who spends her days observing these disruptive forces in the world of finance and business, no one is better suited to think about how we respond than the editor at large of the Financial Times and renowned columnist and author Gillian Tett. Tett is uniquely suited to these times. Someone who possesses a coherent understanding of what makes us who we are. Her formative years were spent on the ground in Tajikistan studying wedding rituals. Then, in 2003 she made the unorthodox leap to a world full of opaque systems and middle-aged white men. In 2007, she raised the alarm bells about the impending 2008 financial doom that was to roll through us; the rest, as we know, is history. Whilst we're still experiencing the ethical and moral fallout of that time, I sat down with Gillian to find out where we are today. Her new book Anthorvision deals with all manners of political, financial, technological and cultural changes. How we impose these on others, and how do we make meaning from these changes. From her apartment in New York apartment, she gives us a unique insiders view of the modern world. One where bitcoin is on pace to replace fiat currency, where tunnel vision and tribal illusions are destroying the fabric of our society and where the world's power rests at the hands of the geeks and technologists. She assures us we need to think more like amateur anthropologists instead of putting our needs first, looking out the window and seeing how the other side lives. It might sound like a simple sentiment, but it's one worth being reminded of over and over. I hope you find this human exchange as uniquely helpful as I did. More info here: Internet Engineering Task Force Gillian Tett's book Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life is out now.

Without empathy, it would be very hard for any of us to live any type of productive life. In fact, we need it in order to collaborate and understand others. Right now in the world, there is said to be a dearth of compassion, they use the word polarisation. Some studies as discussed within this interview with Enni, show that empathy among college students in North America had declined 40% between the 1970s and the 2000s. Some of that is potentially attributed to an uptick in the use of technology and its detriment to connection. What does it mean to show compassion or relate to someone else’s feelings?  That forms the intellectual backdrop for Enni-Kukka Tuomala a new and talented Finnish artist/designer based out of London who has been causing quite a stir with her unique and unorthodox projects like the Empathy Echo Chamber and Forest Empathy. Her goal is to bring people closer together through spontaneity & discussion.   That was indeed the result here in this podcast, we crossed many terrains exploring the challenges we face in a polarised world, how consumerism plays on our empathy and of course that infamous 'be a cunt' game she has so wonderfully created. Working all over the world, and with a range of tools. She has earned praise from many quarters for her unconventional approach. From reworking the interior environment of the Finnish parliament to creating challenging art spaces for us to interact with. We need to have a serious rethink about how we function in private and public spaces and the rules that we have embedded within them. It is clear, we need artists and practitioners like Enni to show us a new world where meaningful exchanges are encouraged. To see more of Enni's work please check out her website. "Forest Empathy" is currently on show at the London Design Museum online exhibition "Care".

It's hard not to be inspired by the many shapeshifting transitions of the Academy-Award winning actor Matthew McConaughey. From rom-com star to critically acclaimed actor to now bestselling author & mystical Cowboy Poet. McConaughey has never been satisfied with being lumped into just one box. Just look at his rollercoaster of a career. From Cooper in the sci-fi masterpiece Interstellar to Ron Woodroof fighting for his life in Dallas buyers club or even the spellbinding cameo of Mark Hanna, who stole our attention in The Wolf of Wall Street. We have followed McConaughey on screen for decades; little did we know that he was living another life off-screen. Finding answers to some of lives deepest quandaries. McConaughey is a restless soul; if you've read his book Greenlights, in which he spent 52 days alone without electricity in the desert to write it, you will see he describes his torment viscerally in finding grace and answers underneath the gorging vapidness of Hollywood. I came out of this interview asking myself this question: Can being existential and ego-driven mutually exist in La La Land? That is something we both explore in this hour-long in-depth discussion. With so much unhealthy scrutiny around celebrities these days, it's hard to find someone so visible that can open up their hearts and without fear of reprimand. But he does here. He refuses to live in hiding, or as he says insulated, rather living his best self and learning at the same time. At 51, firm rumours are now swirling around that McConaughey will run for the Governor of Texas, using his life experience to solve what he sees as a serious trust crisis. This is one discussion where journies are invited and unpacked; from his tempestuous childhood to his thoughts on the destructiveness of fame, McConaughey challenges us all to do the work and live by our best selves. Whatever your opinion of Mcahignnhey, you cannot argue with that. This is a chat that goes to many places; predictable isn't one of them.

Bryan Fogel is probably one of the most important filmmakers alive today. The Academy-Award winning documentary maker ventures into deeply unchartered territories where no one else dares to go. Following up on his enormous success with the 2017 documentary Icarus, here Ari Stein discusses his latest offering, an examination into the heartbreaking assassination of Saudi Arabian citizen and a well-known writer for the Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi.

You get a hunch when moving through the world, that we’re an incredibly irrational species. You only have to look around us to see that almost everything around us is made up. However, It's nice to see this irrationalty laid out in such empirical terms through Lisa Feldman Barrett's ingenious work. A rigorous explorer of the brain, she is a distinguished professor at Northeastern University, among the top one per cent most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. Two books have brought her widespread acclaim, her 2017 book, How Emotions Are Made which laid out the theory that emotions have no more intrinsic value than say a nation-state or the currency you possess printed on paper. That emotions are merely just another fabricated narrative that we as humans hang onto so potently. In 2020, she followed this up with another, challenging assertion in her masterful small but insightful guidebook, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. She challenged us to overturn centuries of assumptions about the brain's evolution, one that postulated its sole evolutionary function was to think. This, she asserts is not the case, much the very opposite, rather its function to this very day is to calculate and manage the energy tradeoffs that our bodies are making day in and day out, makes sense, right? If only we could really listen to the counter-intuitive wisdom found in Feldman Barrett’s profoundly important work, then we might not be walking around the Savannah holding ourselves to such high regard. This is a profoundly important discussion which again reminds us of our earnest place in the world

Considered by some as one of the most urgent threats to democracy in the West, cancel culture and the growing radicalism behind wokeism has created a liberal vacuum. Dutch/Somalian and American intellectual Ayaan Hirsi Ali is intent on fighting back, using her fearless voice to rally against the antics of this new ideological machine. We discussed with her why this issue bares consequences for us all if left unchecked and why there is more to the Black Lives Matter movement than you think.