Tim Minshall is an expert in manufacturing and innovation. He is the inaugural Dr John C Taylor professor of innovation at the University of Cambridge, the head of the Engineering Department’s Institute for Manufacturing and a fellow of Churchill College.

Importantly too, he has published a new book. Your Life is Manufactured: How we make things, why it matters and how we can do it better does exactly what it says on the front cover, working as a primer for our complex global manufacturing system and illustrating how we make, move, and consume the materials we extract, grow, or create.

In this episode we discuss: different nations' attitude to manufacturing; Covid’s effect on global supply chains; how he treated a hospital like a factory during the pandemic; tariffs; lettuces; why reducing waste has led to fragility in our global system; manufacturing and trade-offs; the effect war has on innovation; not being a fan of GDP; the history of the shipping container; material change and the kettle; silicon and the digital revolution; creating too much data and AI; making things more sustainably; green hushing; and saving the planet through manufacturing.

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Seetal Solanki describes herself as a materials translator and has been in the vanguard of material thinking since she launched her practice, Ma-tt-er, in 2015.

Three years later she produced the hugely influential book, Why Materials Matter, and she has gone on to work with a variety of brands, including Nike, Selfridges and Potato Head in Bali, as well as teaching at institutions such as Central Saint Martins (where, incidentally, she graduated from the Textile Futures MA) and the Royal College of Art.

Her latest project saw her joining forces with designer Jorge Penades in Madrid for Uprooted, an exhibition that explored Spain’s olive oil industry.

In this episode, we talk about: helping people build a relationship with materials; why she’s working with olive tree roots; interviewing materials; her fascination with cookery (and her love of a cheese soufflé); growing up in Leicester and feeling rejected from her home city; the spiritual side of materials; being ‘broken’ by Central Saint Martins as a student; material discrimination; how her practice was built on frustration; and why she’s in a hopeful place.

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Callum Robinson makes all sorts of things out of wood, as well as being the creative director of Method Studio, the company he established with his wife, Marisa Giannasi, 15 years ago.

In 2024, he published a fascinating, lyrical memoir. Ingrained: The making of a craftsman, tells the story of his lifelong fascination with his material of choice, his relationship with his woodworker father, and running a small business in straightened times.

Essentially, it’s a pean to the joy and importance of making things with your hands and to nature itself.

In this episode we talk about: converting an old saw mill into his workshop; publishing Ingrained; the relationship between writing and making; getting into a ‘flow’ state; growing up with wood and how it makes him feel ‘at home’; the material’s ability to ‘radiate nostalgia’; why elm is ‘the tenacious, swaggering dandy of the forest’; the danger of woodworking; machine tool vertigo; his pivotal relationship with his father; opening his own store; and re-training his hands.

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