Episode 173 – The book of the future with Tom Cheesewright

Episode 173 - The book of the future with Tom Cheesewright

The young Tom Cheesewright found his purpose in life when his mother bought him a copy of the 1979 Usborne Book of the Future. Now he’s an Applied Futurist, focusing not on teleportation or interstellar travel but on identifying what is going to take an organisation out at the knees…

Continue reading

Episode 167 – The Learning Imperative with Mark Burns

Episode 167 - The Learning Imperative with Mark Burns

‘Think about your audience. What stones do they have in their shoes? And what possibilities do they dream of?’ And with this great advice from his editor ringing in his ears, Mark Burns and his co-writer Andy Griffith planned, wrote, rewrote, tested, revised and edited their way to their final…

Continue reading

Episode 159 – PR for Humans with Mike Sergeant

Episode 159 -PR for Humans with Mike Sergeant

As a journalist, Mike Sergeant’s job was to communicate complex issues clearly and quickly. He had to find within huge geopolitical issues the human stories that listeners could connect with. Today he uses that experience to help business leaders communicate more powerfully.  Mike believes that PR is simply storytelling –…

Continue reading

Episode 111 – Unsafe Thinking with Jonah Sachs

Episode 111 - Unsafe Thinking with Jonah Sachs

“There’s this comfortable way of thinking that we’re programmed by evolution to enjoy, which is thinking in patterns. That makes life so much easier and so much more approachable, when we rely on lessons we’ve learned in the past, when we observe other people and we do the things that…

Continue reading

Episode 88 – The art of the business book with Nigel Wilcockson

Episode 88 - The art of the business book with Nigel Wilcockson

Matt Watkinson described Nigel Wilcockson, publishing director at Random House Business Books and his own editor, as the brains behind many of the best business books he’d ever read. Nigel is more modest about his role: ‘a good editor is more like a mentor… there in the background to offer…

Continue reading

Episode 86 – Storytelling and Attention with Matt Locke

Episode 86 - Storytelling and Attention with Matt Locke

Matt Locke tells a good story. He does, after all, run The Story conference, and his content studio Storythings helps businesses including Google and the BBC tell better stories. Right now he’s fascinated by attention: how we measure it, and how it’s changing. In this episode we bring all that…

Continue reading

Episode 63 – Storytelling & Reader Experience with Bernadette Jiwa

Episode 63 - Storytelling & Reader Experience with Bernadette Jiwa

‘How can I write books that people will read all the way to the end, they can open at any page and find something interesting or useful or inspiring or actionable, and they’ll come back to again?’ And with that question, Bernadette Jiwa – author of Difference: The one-page method…

Continue reading

Episode 31 – Hustle with Patrick Vlaskovits

Episode 31 - Hustle with Patrick Vlaskovits

When Patrick Vlaskovits told his dad he was writing a book called Hustle, his father was baffled: ‘Why would you want to write a book about stealing?’ And that’s part of the interesting thing about this book – it’s about giving things a name, or in this case taking back…

Continue reading