Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

Apr 29 2024 31 ep. 44 mins 564

Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes Podcast artwork

An interview series with journalist Pandora Sykes, about the myths, anxieties and trends of modern life.

Society & Culture

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We need to talk about postpartum psychosis, with Catherine Cho

Apr 29 2024 49 mins

So many women experience a postpartum mental disorder after having a baby. For me, it was postnatal depression. For Catherine Cho, it was postpartum psychosis. You might not have thought about postpartum psychosis before. Certainly, I had no idea before I read Catherine’s memoir, that 1-2 in every 1000 women will be affected by it. So why isn’t it being talked about more? Or

Decolonising beauty, with Afua Hirsch

Apr 29 2024 45 mins

I’m really interested in talking about the gnarly parts of the beauty industry - where things like tanning and hair removal actually come from. In the last series, Jessica DeFino debunked many myths about make-up and skincare. This season, I talk to journalist, author and broadcaster Afua Hirsch about beauty’s colonialist ideals and how she sought to break up with them. Afua

The myth of the sociopath, with Patric Gagne

Apr 29 2024 40 mins

What does the term ‘sociopath’ mean to you? Serial killer? Social outcast? Or wait - is that a psychopath? Patric first told her story in a column for the cult Modern Love series, titled ‘He Married a Sociopath: Me’. After the piece received an enormous response, Patric wrote a probing memoir about a life spent searching for answers: Why didn’t she feel guilt or shame

How tech flattened personal taste, with Kyle Chayka

Apr 29 2024 42 mins

The homogenisation of popular culture is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. In my 2020 book, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? (which spawned this very podcast), I wrote an essay called Get The Look - inspired by a wildly successful Zara polkadot dress - about how internet culture is encouraging young women to dress as facsimiles of one other. So I was rea

Why you might be languishing, with Corey Keyes

Apr 29 2024 30 mins

Feeling demotivated? Aimless? Without meaning, or purpose? According to sociologist and psychologist Corey Keyes, you could be languishing. In this episode, I talk to the renowned pioneer of mental wellbeing about his theories of languishing and flourishing, the subject of a thought-provoking new book. Corey explains why so many of us are languishing, how it’s different from bu

How to have a more meaningful social life, with Priya Parker

Oct 26 2022 44 mins

Welcome to the last episode of Series 3! I really hope you have enjoyed the series and it’s given you some pause for thoughts. Don’t forget to rate and review the show on iTunes to help other people find me. Priya Parker is a conflict resolution strategist, based in the States and the author of a 2018 book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. I’ve wanted t

The expectation effect, with David Robson

Oct 19 2022 49 mins

Can the way you think about your body, change the way it works? Can a positive outcome about ageing, actually cause you to live longer? I’ve been curious about the mind-body axis for a while, and then I read The Expectation Effect by the award-winning science journalist and author, David Robson about how our expectations can shape our experience - and I was fascinated. Using

The myth of the ‘baby brain’ with Chelsea Conaboy

Oct 12 2022 43 mins

Did you find yourself scrambling for words, losing your keys, forgetting basically everything, when you had a baby? Perhaps you witnessed it in your best friend, your sibling, your partner. The jokes about how women are lobotomised by motherhood are damaging and misogynistic - the term ‘baby brain’ used to keep women in their place - but how was i to reconcile that knowledge wi

What we get wrong about sleep, with Russell Foster

Oct 05 2022 45 mins

Tired all the time? Worried you’re not getting the fabled ‘8 hours’ ? You’re not alone: we’ve become a nation of orthosomniacs. But panic not, because sleep scientist Russell Foster is here to help. The University of Oxford neuroscientist and the author of a new book, Life Time, is a world leading expert on circadian rhythms, also known as: the body clock. And guess wh

The many myths of fast fashion, with Venetia La Manna

Sep 28 2022 44 mins

I’ve been wanting to do an episode on the many myths of fast fashion since I wrote an essay titled Get The Look, for my 2020 essay collection (which this podcast series first spun off from). And Venetia La Manna, a presenter and podcaster campaigning against fast fashion and advocating for more mindful consumption, is the ideal guest to explore this issue with. She regularly orga