Human Intelligence Podcast
1) Live from Hay Literary Festival 2025
As a prelude to a new season of Human Intelligence on Radio 4 Naomi Alderman took the brand on the road. It was a road that lead to the upper Wye valley where Naomi and her guests Professor Rosalind C...Show More
2) Travellers: Aristotle
Aristotle was a philosopher, teacher, collector and all-round polymath. He was also, importantly, a traveller, who allowed new places, especially the rich biodiversity he encountered on the island of ...Show More
3) Travellers: Ida Pfeiffer
Naomi Alderman looks at the mindset and legacy of Ida Pfeiffer, a woman who changed the very idea of travel, who is allowed to do it and why. Traditionally, travelling had always had a purpose – conqu...Show More
4) Travellers: Sir Patrick Manson
Sir Patrick Manson shook the medical world when he first understood the infection route for vector-borne diseases like malaria. Naomi Alderman dissects the thinking of a scientific pioneer.In the late...Show More
5) Travellers: Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys' sequel to Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, changed the way we think about stories forever. Naomi Alderman meets a fellow novelist who put a marginalised character at the centre of the action. ...Show More
6) Travellers: The Buddha
Naomi Alderman explores the thinking of the Buddha, who, as a young prince, ventured outside the palace walls and began his journey towards enlightenment.Siddhartha Gautama lived in a life of rarefied...Show More
7) Manhattan Project: Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was an international pop star of science who urged the US government to build an atom bomb. Naomi Alderman gets into one of the most famous brains of all time.Einstein rewrote our unde...Show More
8) Manhattan Project: Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner was a world-class physicist, who saw what others could not. She recognised nuclear fission – the splitting of the atom, the powerful energy released – before anyone else. Naomi Alderman f...Show More
9) Manhattan Project: John von Neumann
Naomi Alderman dives into the amazing intellect of John von Neumann, physicist, mathematician, economist, computer scientist – a visionary who predicted the rise of artificial intelligence decades ahe...Show More
10) Manhattan Project: Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr said, 'Anyone who is not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.' Naomi Alderman investigates the remarkable insights of a scientific genius.B...Show More