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The ideas interview

Conversations on the crucial issues of our era – and how to address them

  • A man in a navy blue shirt sitting at a table in his garden

    The doctor who mends broken brains: why there is room for hope after a stroke or head injury

    The neurologist Orlando Swayne doesn’t suggest everyone can recover. But he does argue that early, targeted and intense therapy can sometimes bring about life-changing improvements – and we have a moral obligation to provide it
  • A man in a blue shirt and glasses stands in front of a wall of bookshelves.

    ‘I don’t worry about a robot takeover’: AI expert Michael Wooldridge on big tech’s real dangers (and occasional blessings)

    Almost 50 years after he first got his hands on a computer, the Oxford professor still believes in the power of technology. Can his beloved game theory explain why Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs consistently misuse it?
  • Head and shoulders of a woman with bobbed grey hair wearing a blue corduroy jackets and T-shirt leaning against a tree with her head leant back and tilted

    ‘Heat, floods and droughts make men more violent to women’: Natasha Walter on eco-feminism in a world on fire

    The author has become acutely aware of how the climate crisis is affecting women – and, in her new book, she argues that it’s time for mainstream western feminists to join the dots
  • Baroness Miller, near her home in Totnes, Devon

    ‘We’d all be in the destruction zone!’ Can anything stop today’s nuclear free-for-all?

    The Lib Dems’ Sue Miller has spent most of her life trying to reduce the risk of nuclear war. And it’s not going well. Why are so few people talking about non-proliferation, let alone disarmament?
  • A woman sitting in arm chair against an off-white panelled wall, all in back with long blond/grey hair, smiling at the camera

    ‘A new world is being born’: author Rebecca Solnit on the ‘slow revolution’ the far right cannot tolerate

    It’s easy to focus on authoritarians and their petty victories. But zoom out and the picture is more encouraging, says the woman who popularised the term ‘mansplaining’, whether it’s in feminism, or the environment, or civil rights
  • Arthur Snell, in a blue shirt and dark jacket, poses for a camera in a dimly lit studio

    Relentless sun and ruthless populists: how the climate crisis will change the next 20 years

    Former diplomat Arthur Snell says a heating planet is accelerating conflict and migration – and fostering a new age of empire. Democracies are dangerously unprepared, he warns
  • Stewart Brand with his dog, Ivory, at his home in Petaluma, California

    Tech legend Stewart Brand on Musk, Bezos and his extraordinary life: ‘We don’t need to passively accept our fate’

    He was at the heart of 1960s counterculture, then paved the way for the libertarian mindset of Silicon Valley. At 87, Brand is still keen to ensure the world is maintained properly – not just today, but for the next 10,000 years
  • Social epidemiologist Kate Pickett.

    ‘I think we feel stuck’: Kate Pickett on how to build a better, fairer, less stressed society

    In her new book, the co-author of The Spirit Level gathers jaw-dropping facts about the inequality crisis in the UK – and explores creative ways to address it
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