Episodes

  • 114: Austin Williams and Humphrey Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast

    114: Austin Williams and Humphrey Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast
    Nov 23 2024
    Austin Williams is an architect, author and podcaster who imagines our society and cities far into the future. For many years he has worked closely with Baroness Claire Fox at the Academy of Ideas, organising regular weekend-long events of debate, argument and fun. He is frequently a contradictory voice on a range of issues from climate change, sustainability and development. As one critic noted, "Austin Williams has a gift for lobbing well-directed grenades."


    Much of Austin’s latest writing has been examining how China is building cities and societies. His books include New Chinese Architecture: Twenty Women Building the Future and China’s Urban Revolution on how China is pioneering the concept of the eco-city. Austin is also a book lover who runs the Bookshop Barnie discussions at the famous Foyle’s bookshop in Charing Cross Road. These salon type discussions challenge the author to justify their work in front of an invited audience of specialists and critics. Unlike most book launches where the most challenging task for the author is to sign so many autographs, Bookshop Barnies force them to take a stand for their ideas. Among his guests have been Peter Hitchens, David Goodhart and David Aaronavitch.
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    1 hr
  • 113: Lesley Downer and Lucinda Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine SHow Podcast

    113: Lesley Downer and Lucinda Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine SHow Podcast
    Nov 10 2024
    “A terrific overview of Japan’s long and rich history that covers an astonishing amount of ground. A gem of a book that is as engaging as it is readable.” Peter Frankopan


    This week on the Goldster Magazine Show, Lucinda Hawksley will be joined by author Lesley Downer who will take us on a captivating journey into the heart of one of Asia’s most enigmatic countries, via her latest book, The Shortest History of Japan.

    Zen, haiku, martial arts, sushi, anime, manga, film, video games ... Japanese culture has long enriched our Western way of life. Yet from a Western perspective, Japan remains a remote island country that has long had a complicated relationship with the outside world. Lesley’s previous books, including The Shogun’s Queen, The Courtesan and the Samurai, and Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World, offered unique insights into a little-understood world, and with this latest title, Lesley delves even deeper into Japan’s fascinating past.

    Even at the nearest point, Japan – an archipelago strung like a necklace around the Asian mainland – is considerably farther from Asia than Britain is from mainland Europe. The sea provides an effective barrier against invasion and has enabled the culture to develop in unique and distinctive ways. During the Edo period, the Tokugawa shoguns successfully closed the country to the West. After Japan opened up to the world again, it swung in the opposite direction, adopting Western culture wholesale. Both these strategies enabled it to avoid colonization, one of the very few non-Western countries to do so, and to retain its traditions and way of life.
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    43 mins
  • 112: Professor Peter Abrahams and Humphrey Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast

    112: Professor Peter Abrahams and Humphrey Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast
    Oct 27 2024
    Peter Abrahams is fascinated in the human body. As a young man he worked with the Peace Corp in the jungles of Sarawak, went on to train as a doctor, planned to become a surgeon but got side-tracked into writing a ground-breaking book, praised by his medical peers: Clinical Anatomy of Practical Procedures. He has taught and researched around the world, a pioneer in explaining how our body is pieced together. His work includes an Apple App, Aspects of Anatomy, used worldwide by medical students and doctors. He has been designing 3D anatomy for downloading onto mobile phones as well as doing 3D printing of human prosected specimens to preserve detailed knowledge for generations to come. He used his intricate knowledge of the human body to co-curate two exhibitions for the Royal collection

    Leonardo – Mechanics of Man at the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh and Leonardo- anatomist at Buckingham Palace in London. He was also invited by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to help assess a collection of bronze statues believed to be the work of Michaelangelo. From there, he carried out the first ever in-depth scientific analysis of the anatomy of Michelangelo’s nude figures and made an anatomically labelled 3D video film for the exhibition. Peter’s latest book is the more down-to-earth TheHuman Body Colouring Book: Human Anatomy in 215 Illustrations for twelve-year-olds and over. How do our bodies work? How do all our bits fit together.
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • 111: Professor Lord Richard Layard and Humphrey Hawksely - The Goldster magazine Show Podcast

    111: Professor Lord Richard Layard and Humphrey Hawksely - The Goldster magazine Show Podcast
    Oct 20 2024
    How do we place a value on happiness? Can we measure our sense of well-being and fulfilment through science? Richard Layard is founder and former director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. He has been editor of the annual World Happiness Report which examines the state of happiness at various stages of life. Richard’s latest co-authored book is Wellbeing: Science and Policy which uses science to establish what matters most to us. The book shows how well-being can be scientifically measured, what creates it and how feeling good it can be made even better throughout the whole span of human life. In 2011, he launched a campaign called Action for Happiness, asking the question: Why can’t we all be more content? And he takes on politicians who consistently argue that people are mainly interested in the economy and their incomes.


    “It’s not the economy, stupid,” he argues. “It’s people’s wellbeing.” Richard is campaigning for a shift in how public money is spent, balancing what makes people feel good against what they believe are their material needs. “We can be happier if our individual aim is to make others happy,” he says. “Let each of us be, as best we can, a creator of happiness.” Can you measure your own happiness? Does it matter?

    To find out join the Goldster Magazine Show with Professor Lord Layard and Humphrey Hawksley
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    53 mins
  • 110: Dr Jennifer Cox and Lucinda Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast

    110: Dr Jennifer Cox and Lucinda Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast
    Oct 13 2024
    Psychotherapist Jennifer Cox believes that women are never allowed to truly express their anger, and this is making them ill. After a lifetime of being told to repress it, to hide away and fear it, anger has begun to manifest in female bodies in myriad ways that cannot be controlled. Do you agree? Jennifer has drawn her conclusions from talking to women from all walks of life and ages in her work as a therapist. The tendency of women to shrug off anger and not make a fuss is dangerous because an autoimmune condition ravages and, she witnesses the devastation daily. The symptoms include anxiety, depression, migraine and depression. Women are twice as likely as men to suffer depression and three times more likely to experience migraines. “Anger is eating us up, from the inside out,” she writes.

    “We’ve been conditioned not to recognise our rage, so it burns behind the scenes. And from there, it’s destroying us.” Last year, Jennifer founded the Women and Mad movement which gained more then 10,000 followers in the first six months. Are you angry? How do you identify it? And what do you do about it?

    To find out from a true, charismatic expert in this alarming issue join Jennifer Cox with Humphrey Hawksley on the Goldster Magazine Show...
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    41 mins
  • 109: Professor Alf Collins and Humphrey Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast

    109: Professor Alf Collins and Humphrey Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast
    Sep 29 2024
    Until last year, Professor Alf Collins was NHS England’s Clinical Director for personalised care. His mission in health and well-being is to build around an individual’s needs bringing in shared decision-making, care planning, self-management support, social prescribing and that Goldster concept of ‘rethinking medicine.” Alf worked for a decade with the Health Foundation, helping lead applied research and implementation programmes in person-centred care.

    He has researched and written widely on the changing the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals and he led on the NHS’s implementation of ‘Universal Personalised Care’ one of key initiatives to change thinking in the way we view our health. Alf has also been a community consultant for many years in pain management. How can we best live with chronic pain? Alf has honorary fellowships from the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of General Practitioners and is a Visiting Professorship in Healthcare Policy at Coventry University.
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • 108: Iain McGilchrist and Humphrey Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast

    108: Iain McGilchrist and Humphrey Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast
    Sep 15 2024
    Iain McGilchrist is a leading psychiatrist with a vast body of work and connections around the world. In his latest book The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, Iain asks blunt questions that rattle around in many of our minds. Who are we? What is the world? How can we understand consciousness, matter, space and time? Is the cosmos without purpose or value? Can we really neglect the sacred and divine? He knows how different sides of our brain work to feed into what is our character, our emotions and each of us as a person. He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise – the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains.

    Philip Pullman named The Matter with Things as his book of the year. And the questions keep coming: Is the world essentially inert and mechanical – nothing but a collection of things for us to use? Are we ourselves nothing but the playthings of chance, embroiled in a war of all against all? Why, indeed, are we engaged in destroying everything that is valuable to us? Join The Goldster Magazine Show for this fascinating conversation when Humphrey Hawksley will be talking to Iain McGilchrist at 1pm UK time on Tuesday August 13th 2024.
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    56 mins
  • 107: Liz Jensen and Lucinda Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast

    107: Liz Jensen and Lucinda Hawksley - The Goldster Magazine Show Podcast
    Sep 10 2024
    “My son’s death will never make sense to me. But it has taught me that it’s possible to find meaning, collectively and individually, in the loss of what we love.” Liz Jensen


    On 3 September, Lucinda Hawksley was joined by Liz Jensen, the best-selling author of eight novels including The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, which was adapted by Hollywood into a box-office feature film starring Jamie Dornan. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Liz Jensen was a print and radio journalist in Hong Kong and Taiwan. She then spent four years as a freelance writer, translator and sculptor in France, and ten years as a BBC producer.


    Liz, who lives in Copenhagen, has been short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Award, nominated three times for the Women’s Fiction prize, and has had her work adapted for theatre and radio, and translated into twenty languages. Much of her work revolves around the environment and impact of climate change. She is a founder member of Extinction Rebellion’s Writers Rebel, a literary movement which includes writers such as Margaret Drabble, Ben Okri, Amitav Ghosh and Zadie Smith.


    Four years ago, Liz’s life changed in an instant, with the devastating loss of her son, Raph. Known to many by the name of Iggy Fox, Raph was a leading figure of Extinction Rebellion. Following his unexpected death while filming an environmental campaign in South Africa, Liz abandoned the novel she was working on and wrote a book about grief. She will be discussing Your Wild and Precious Life: on grief, hope and rebellion on Goldster.


    Join Liz and Lucinda Hawksley to find out how, after Raph’s death, Liz rebuilt herself, reoriented her life and rediscovered the enchantment of the living world. Your Wild and Precious Life is set against the backdrop of climate and ecological catastrophe, it’s an argument for agency, legacy and the wild possibility of hope after devastation.
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    44 mins