Bookomi's Most Wanted - Podcast TX Schedule September 2020

Kevin Dutton

An alarm call. Amidst a rising tide of religious intolerance and political extremism, it argues that by understanding the evolutionary programming of our binary brains we can overcome it, make sense of the world and in future make much subtler - and far better – decisions.

'Fascinating, important and entirely convincing.' Philip Pullman

Alastair Campbell

Every bit as direct and driven, clever and candid as he is, this is a book filled with pain, but also hope -- he examines how his successes have been in part because of rather than despite his mental health problems - postponed from May due to the pandemic with a post-script analysing our prospects post Covid-19.

Sam Harris, Philosopher, Neuroscientist, 5 X New York Times Bestseller

Harris’ search for deeper understanding of how we think has led him to engage and exchange with some of our most brilliant and controversial contemporary minds - Daniel Kahneman, Robert Sapolsky, Anil Seth and Max Tegmark - in order to unpack and understand ideas of consciousness, free will, extremism, and ethical living.

David Eagleman, Neuroscientist

From the best-selling author of Incognito and Sum comes a revelatory portrait of the human brain, based on the most recent scientific discoveries about how it continually adapts, recreates, and formulates new ways of understanding the world we live in.

Noreena Hertz

Professor Noreena Hertz has travelled the world to explore the loneliness epidemic first hand: 'renting a friend' in Japan, visiting co-habitation spaces in Israel and trying a week experienced entirely online. From the spread of social media and the rise of AI to the architecture of our cities and the growing elderly population, loneliness is a global issue that is affecting our health and financial security.

Merlin Sheldrake, Brilliant Biologist

Shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake’s vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the “Wood Wide Web,”  to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.

Samantha Cristoforetti

The story of an extraordinary journey: from gruelling years of training to daily life in space, from great events to small discoveries, from old rituals to jokes about the meaning of life. With honesty and warmth, Cristoforetti chronicles her journey to becoming an astronaut -- the many years spent travelling around the world, from Star City to Houston, always between languages and cultures, technology and nature. RECORDING 19TH AUGUST TBC

Cass Sunstein (Nudge, How Change Happens)

Policymakers emphasize "the right to know," but Sunstein takes a different perspective, arguing that the focus should be on human well-being and what information contributes to it. Government should require companies, employers, hospitals, and others to disclose information not because of a general "right to know" but when the information in question would significantly improve people's lives. 

James Hamblin

Not only might our obsession with soap-based cleanliness be exacerbating or even causing many of the skin conditions we seek to remedy or avoid, it may even be weakening our immune defences and increasing our vulnerability to allergies.

James Suzman

Charts a natural and cultural history of work. Drawing on field work at the interface between hunter gatherer societies, simple agricultural societies and the industrialised world, and integrating new insights from epigenetics, ethology, genomics, social anthropology, economics and evolutionary theory, it challenges the way we think about work today – and shows why automation may be the key to unlocking a more sustainable future.

Leonard Mlodinow

Mlodinow captures the indomitable spirit of the world-famous scientist. This deeply affecting account of a friendship teaches us not just about the nature and practice of physics but also about life and the human capacity to overcome daunting obstacles.

Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian, University of Oxford

Describing the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, the world's most famous librarian examines both the motivations for these acts--political, religious, and cultural--and the broader themes that shape this history. This was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in early Sept.

Mike Berners-Lee

From a text message to a war, from a Valentine's rose to a flight or even having a child, How Bad are Bananas? gives us the carbon answers we need and provides plenty of revelations. By talking through a hundred or so items, Mike Berners-Lee sets out to give us a carbon instinct for the footprint of literally anything we do, buy and think about. He helps us pick our battles by laying out the orders of magnitude. The book ranges from the everyday (foods, books, plastic bags, bikes, flights, baths...) and the global (deforestation, data centres, rice production, the World Cup, volcanoes, ...) 

Tim Wigmore and Mark Williams

This is a story of origins, training, luck and serendipity, as well as of sports science and cutting-edge technology. Packed with gripping personal stories and interviews, you will discover how the best athletes develop the extraordinary skills and muscle memory that allow them to perform remarkable acts without consciously thinking about them.

Christie Watson

Nurses have never been more important. We benefit from their expertise in our hospitals and beyond: in our schools, on our streets, in prisons, hospices and care homes. When we feel most alone, nurses remind us that we are not alone at all.