More London 2025 speakers announced - EXPLORE IN BIG IDEAS
HowTheLightGetsIn brings together voices from across philosophy, science, politics, and the arts to explore the questions that define our times. With thought-provoking conversations and fresh perspectives, the festival invites new ways of understanding the world around us.
The speaker lineup for HowTheLightGetsIn London 2025 is taking shape - explore the thinkers and visionaries already announced.
"We have to believe that things can be better, or we give up."
Alastair Campbell is one of the most important voices in modern British politics. Best known for his role as chief spokesman and strategist under Tony Blair, Campbell now works predominantly as a writer and broadcaster, remaining a leading thinker on the centre-left.
Campbell is co-host of the award-winning podcast The Rest is Politics alongside Rory Stewart. He has also recently written But What Can I Do?, in which he explores why politics has gone wrong, and suggests what each of us can do to overthrow a broken political system and make one that works for everyone.
"...immensely able, fearless, loyal servant of the cause he believes in" — Tony Blair
"Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can't explain what was not observed."
Fearlessly critical of the scientific mainstream, Sabine Hossenfelder is a groundbreaking theoretical physicist who specialises in the foundations of science. She is a leading science communicator, best-selling author and researcher. Her recent books include Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, and the New York Times's Best Selling Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions.
Hossenfelder is the creator behind the popular YouTube channel "Science without the gobbledygook," which has amassed over one million subscribers. Her writing has featured in some of the world's top publications including Scientific American, New Scientist, and Nautilus.
“A physicist who is utterly fearless, completely honest, and quite funny.” — Peter Woit, mathematical physicist
"Humans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals."
One of Britain’s most provocative thinkers, John Gray is a political philosopher known for dismantling liberalism and exposing the illusions of human progress. Former Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, Gray has challenged orthodoxy across the political spectrum with a body of work that ranges from critiques of Enlightenment rationalism to meditations on the limits of secular humanism.
He is the bestselling author of Straw Dogs, The Silence of Animals, and Seven Types of Atheism as well as a frequent contributor to The Guardian, New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement. Gray’s sharp insights and contrarian stance continue to shape contemporary debates on ethics, politics, and the future of humanity.
"One of the most important thinkers alive." — The Times
“Consciousness is the way information feels when it’s being processed in certain complex ways.”
Max Tegmark is a Swedish‑American MIT physicist and cosmologist, president and co‑founder of the Future of Life Institute, and bestselling author of Our Mathematical Universe and Life 3.0. He is celebrated for championing the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, proposing that reality isn’t merely described by math—it is math itself.
Tegmark also pioneered the notion of consciousness as a state of matter, framing subjective experience in terms of information theory.
"All of us...should ask ourselves what can we do now to improve the chances of reaping the benefits of future AI and avoiding the risks...Tegmark's thought-provoking book will help you join it" — Stephen Hawking
"Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense."
Awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on black holes, Roger Penrose is a world-renowned mathematician and physicist. In recent years, he has investigated the relationship between physics and the mind, famously arguing that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in solving the mysteries of human consciousness.
Penrose has made numerous appearances on media such as BBC, Closer to Truth, and The Joe Rogan Experience. In 1994, he was knighted for his services to science.
"He is one of the very few people I've met in my life who, without reservation, I call a genius" — Lee Smolin
"Push on, but smile inwardly at the madness."
Martha Fiennes is an award-winning film director, writer, and producer, best known for her films Onegin and Chromophobia. Her directorial debut was lavished with praise, including winning the London Film Critic's Choice Newcomer of the Year and the Tokyo International Film Festival award for Best Director.
She has since pivoted to AI generated art, exploring the boundaries of technology and aesthetics. Her work, Yugen, featured the actor Salma Hayek Pinault and opened at the Venice Film Festival. It was later exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, Christies' New York and the Science Museum.
"Fiennes'...first feature film claimed a place alongside her famous siblings in this country's cultural pantheon." - Telegraph
“A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.”
Alain de Botton is the bestselling philosopher redefining how we understand love, work, and meaning in the modern world. He first rose to prominence with Essays in Love, a novel-philosophy hybrid that became an international bestseller. He has since authored several bestselling works that blend literary elegance, psychological insight, and philosophical depth.
In 2008, he founded The School of Life, an organisation dedicated to developing emotional intelligence through philosophy, psychotherapy, and culture. De Botton has lectured widely, appeared in multiple television documentaries, and written for The Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, and others, consistently arguing for the power of ideas to transform how we love, work, and live.
“Alain de Botton, one of our era’s most uncommonly perceptive, lyrical, and lucid existential contemplatives.” — The Marginalian
"We have a world to win."
Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media, praised by The Guardian as “the slickest of the guerrilla news and opinion operations” in Britain. Since 2011, Novara has grown into a major platform for the new left, with Bastani regularly appearing on Newsnight and his videos reaching hundreds of thousands.
In Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto, Bastani argues that advances in technology could usher in an era of abundance, where automation frees people from work and resources are shared widely. He champions Universal Basic Income and reduced working hours as essential steps toward a society where luxury and comfort are accessible to all, challenging traditional capitalist norms and inspiring debates across the political spectrum.
"Bastani’s fully automated luxury communist manifesto is essential reading" — Theory, Culture and Society
"In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values."
Diane Abbott is a British politician and a Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since first being elected in 1987. She served in the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Home Secretary from 2016 to 2020 and is an advisor to the Privy Council. She was the first black woman elected to parliament and is the longest-serving black MP.
At the general election held on 4 July 2024, Abbott retained her seat as Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and became Mother of the House as the longest continuously serving female MP.
"Diane is a fearless trailblazer whose record of breaking down barriers, overcoming obstacles and fighting injustice is truly inspirational." --Dawn Butler MP
"Both the unlimited state and the unrestrained market have destroyed civil society, which is our world. … Civil society is something that is not the state or the market. Civil society is the world of you and I"
Phillip Blond is a political thinker and theologian who is the principal architect of 'Red Toryism'. He argues for a return to civic virtue, localism, and a more rooted understanding of society, which rejects both neoliberalism and statist socialism. Blond envisions a political realignment where economics, culture, and civic responsibility are mutually reinforcing.
He is the founder and director of the ResPublica think tank and has previously held academic positions at the University of Cumbria and Exeter. Blond has written several influential books, including Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and Radical Republic, as well as for outlets such as The Observer, the Financial Times, Prospect and The New Statesman.
"At a time when the orthodoxies of the past generation have collapsed, Phillip Blond...presents new ideas that could reshape the way we think about politics" - John Gray
"We live in a country afflicted by a senile and selfish capitalist system."
Neil Kinnock is a British political figure whose career has spanned parliament, party leadership, and the European stage. Elected MP for Bedwellty in 1970 and later becoming Labour Party leader from 1983 to 1992, he undertook the monumental task of modernising the party after its crushing electoral defeat, battling internal factionalism, confronting Militant entryism, and laying the groundwork for the eventual rise of New Labour.
After stepping down as leader, he served as Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004 and later as Chair of the British Council, remaining a passionate advocate for European cooperation, education, and public service.
"Neil Kinnock saved the Labour Party. Without him, there would have been no Blair, no 1997 landslide." — Peter Mandelson
"If an AI is a conscious being, forcing it to serve us would be akin to slavery."
Susan Schneider is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist, known for her work on the nature of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and the future of mind. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University and holds the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation.
Schneider is best known for her exploration of post-biological intelligence and the philosophical implications of machine consciousness. In her widely discussed book Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, she examines whether machines could ever truly possess consciousness, and whether humans should merge with them.
“Schneider makes a vivid and compelling case ... brimming with useful tools for thinking about the mind and its future."— David Chalmers
"The smartphone has become the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine for a wired generation."
Anna Lembke is a groundbreaking psychiatrist and addiction medicine expert. She is Professor and Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University. Alongside shaping individual lives in her clinical practice, Lembke has featured on the hit Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, and has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate.
Lembke gained national recognition with her 2016 book, Drug Dealer, MD, which examined the role of medical professionals in the opioid crisis. Her more recent bestselling book, Dopamine Nation, argues that too much pleasure in the short term causes pain in the long term.
"Lembke is a whiz on why we get hooked on things - and how we can enjoy pleasurable things in healthier doses." — The Guardian
"The geometry, the content, and the fate of the universe are all intricately linked."
Priyamvada Natarajan is an award-winning theoretical astrophysicist known for her work in mapping dark matter and dark energy and gravitational lensing. She is an an astronomy and physics professor at Yale University, and the author of the bestseller Mapping the Heavens – The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos.
Natarajan was included on the TIME100 list of most influential people in the world in 2024 and was the 2025 recipient of the Dannie Heineman Prize in Astrophysics awarded by the American Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics
“A strikingly lucid account of the expansion, not just of the universe, but of the way we have tried to understand it." — New York Times
“Quite soon, as we move from genes to the proteins that they code for, and then on to the interactions between these proteins, the problems become seriously complicated.”
Denis Noble is a world-renowned biologist and Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology at Oxford University. Noble was one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960.
Noble has published over 350 articles in academic journals, including Nature, Science, PNA and the Journal of Physiology. His books include the first popular science book on the subject, The Music of Life, which has been translated into 12 languages.
"His conversational style gives readers the feeling they are with him sharing in an active process of discovery." - Eric Werner, Science
"Every aspect of our brain and body can be predicted from our environment."
Karl Friston, Professor of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London and Principal Research Fellow at the Wellcome Trust, stands at the forefront of modern neuroscience. A former President of the International Organization for Human Brain Mapping and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, Friston’s groundbreaking work has earned him prestigious honors like the Minerva Golden Brain Award, Collège de France Medal, and Glass Brain Award.
As the mastermind behind the revolutionary "free energy principle," Friston has reshaped how we understand the brain’s inner workings, showing how it constantly predicts and updates its model of the world to minimize surprise. His theory offers profound insights into the very nature of life itself. Friston's work has been invaluable to the scientific community, making him one of the most highly cited living scientists in the world.
"One of the world's leading neuroscientists [who] has developed a theory of how the brain works that also has implications for the origin and nature of life" — Sean Carroll
“The fake outrage of academic philosophy amazes me.”
Tommy J. Curry is the Personal Chair of Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh, renowned for his critical scholarship on the intersection of race, gender, and power. He was awarded the prestigious American Book Award for his groundbreaking book The Man Not, which dismantles prevailing narratives by arguing that Black masculinity is not a mimicry of white patriarchy but a unique and oppositional identity.
Curry’s work has been hailed by scholars as “required reading for all who work at the intersection of race and gender, especially in the current political milieu,” and he continues to challenge academic orthodoxy through his fierce public interventions, teaching, and edited volumes in Africana philosophy.
“Tommy Curry challenges the cozy consensus among self-conceived progressives in the humanities… required reading for anyone interested in understanding oppression or having unquestioned assumptions put to the test." —Charles W. Mills, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center
"We have known for a long time that antidepressants are not very different from a placebo."
Joanna Moncrieff is Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London and a consultant psychiatrist with the NHS. She challenges the common view that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance fixed by medication. In 2022, she led a key study questioning the serotonin theory that underpins much psychiatric treatment.
Moncrieff argues that antidepressants provide only limited benefits, mostly due to placebo effects, while ignoring the complex social and psychological causes of mental illness. Through her books—The Myth of the Chemical Cure, The Bitterest Pill, and Chemically Imbalanced—she exposes the scientific flaws and commercial forces shaping psychiatric care. Her work calls for a more critical, holistic approach to mental health beyond drug treatments.
"[Moncrieff] explains both the scientific flaws and the deliberate manipulations underlying much of today's psychiatric ideology and treatment." — Gabor Maté
"The Nobel prizes have strayed far from the vision their founder had for them, and they badly need to be reorganised."
Brian Keating is a prominent experimental cosmologist and professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his work on the BICEP experiments at the South Pole, which seek to detect primordial gravitational waves, and ripples in spacetime from the very earliest moments of the universe. His research aims to answer fundamental questions about the origin, structure, and fate of the cosmos. Keating has hosted the Clarke Center Into the Impossible podcast since 2016.
Keating’s bestselling book, Losing the Nobel Prize, offers a candid and provocative critique of the scientific establishment and the politics of big science, challenging the notion that awards define success or truth in research.
"[Keating's] project, which will give astronomers an important new tool to peer back in time to our early universe." — Mark Thiemens, University of California San Diego
"The Holy Grail is...trying to understand a theory of quantum gravity."
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is a pioneering theoretical physicist reshaping our understanding of space, time, and gravity. A first-generation Cuban-American from Chicago, she built and flew her own plane solo at 14, graduated from MIT with a perfect 5.0 GPA, and earned her PhD from Harvard, where her early work on the spin memory effect was later cited by Stephen Hawking. She has received job offers from NASA and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, and was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list twice.
Now a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute and Deputy Director of the Simons Collaboration on Celestial Holography, Pasterski leads efforts to encode the universe as a hologram, a bold step toward uniting quantum theory with general relativity.
"Her potential is off the charts." — Allen Haggerty, MIT
"The history of ideas since 1789 is an endless record of mass murder in the name of the people."
Curtis Yarvin, described as "The Philosopher Behind J.D. Vance," argues that democracy is a failed experiment and should be replaced by monarchy. A software engineer turned political theorist, Yarvin has grown his online following through his trenchant critiques of liberalism and the myth of inevitable progress.
Yarvin has profoundly influenced American politics, counting among his readers Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, and Vice-President J.D. Vance. In January, he attended Trump's inaugural gala as "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize[d] influence over the Trumpian right."
"There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin. Who's written about some of these things...I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people." — J.D. Vance
“…philosophy can harbor hopes for tyranny, but it can also pave the way toward reform and revolution.”
One of the most influential political philosophers of her generation, Seyla Benhabib is known for her groundbreaking work on democracy, human rights, and the ethics of migration and global justice. Benhabib’s work redefines what it means to belong in an age of borders and pluralism. Drawing on Kant and Habermas, she reimagines global relations as an ongoing democratic negotiation that transcends borders, with profound consequences for migrants and refugees.
Benhabib is the author of several books, including The Rights of Others, Another Cosmopolitanism, and Exile, Statelessness and Migration. In 2009, she was awarded the Ernst Bloch Prize, one of Germany’s most distinguished philosophical honors given every three years, for her work on “the contradictions of a globalized world.” Amid ongoing global debates about nation-states, citizenship, and belonging, Benhabib’s philosophy could not be more relevant.
“Outstanding services to critical theory, political philosophy and democracy research” — Theodor W. Adorno Prize
"Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there."
Julian Baggini is a philosopher and author renowned for translating deep philosophical questions into engaging, practical insights. Co-founder of The Philosopher’s Magazine and author of best-sellers such as The Godless Gospel, How the World Thinks, The Virtues of the Table, and The Ego Trick, Baggini defends Enlightenment values and champions reason, skepticism, and humanism in a complex world.
He argues that philosophy should challenge dogma and help us navigate everyday life by questioning assumptions about identity, morality, and reality. His latest book, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, uses thought experiments to provoke reflection and wonder, inviting readers to rethink what they take for granted and embrace uncertainty.
"Baggini has that rare but wonderful gift of being able to be at once profound and highly entertaining." — Alexander McCall Smith"
“The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities.”
Timothy Garton Ash is a leading British historian, political writer, and one of Europe’s most compelling chroniclers of modern transformation. He is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Known for his vivid reportage and sharp historical insight, Garton Ash has authored acclaimed works including The File, The Magic Lantern, and Free Speech, blending memoir, analysis, and frontline observation. His most recent book, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, won the Lionel Gelber Prize in 2024 and cements his place as a leading voice on Europe’s postwar evolution.
"One of Britain's leading public intellectuals." — The Spectator
"No one looking at the vast extent of the universe and the completely random location of homo sapiens within it could seriously maintain it was intentionally created for us.”
One of the world's foremost philosophers of physics, Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU and Founder and Director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. He is a member of the "Foundational Questions Institute" of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The influence of Maudlin's research in the foundations of physics, metaphysics, and logic cannot be overstated. He has reinvigorated our understanding of quantum mechanics as pointing to the counterintuitive idea of non-locality, what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." Maudlin warns that we should be wary of physical theories that contradict our direct impression of reality, especially when it comes to the nature of time.
“To make his case, he’s had to reinvent geometry.” — Wired
"Death is a malfunction of the human experience."
Zoltan Istvan is a transhumanist, futurist, entrepreneur, and former US Presidential candidate. With his bestselling book The Transhumanist Wager, and speeches at institutions like the World Bank, World Economic Forum, and the UK Parliament, Zoltan Istvan has spearheaded the effort to transform transhumanism into a thriving worldwide phenomenon. He is often cited as a global leader of the radical science movement.
Zoltan is the founder of the Transhumanist Party, the author of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights, and a frequently interviewed expert on AI and genetic editing. Zoltan has a degree in Philosophy and Religion from Columbia University and a master's degree in Practical Ethics from the University of Oxford.
"When we're all glowing, immortal orbs, we'll probably have Zoltan Istvan to thank." — Playboy
"If we are going to live in a democracy, the bulk of power needs to be with the people. And whoever has the data has the power."
Carissa Véliz is a leading philosopher of the digital age, reshaping how we think about autonomy, technology, and the invisible data architectures that govern our lives. An acclaimed ethicist, author, and professor at the University of Oxford, she is a vital voice calling for privacy to be recognized not as a luxury, but as a fundamental human right. Her groundbreaking book Privacy Is Power has become a manifesto against surveillance capitalism, arguing that personal data is not a commodity to be exploited, but an extension of ourselves.
Véliz’s work addresses digital profiling, informed consent, algorithmic bias, and the ethical design of technology. As a senior fellow at the Institute for Ethics in AI, she advises policymakers on how to ensure innovation respects human dignity. Her writing, featured in The Guardian, Wired, and The New York Times, offers clear, urgent insights into the moral challenges shaping our digital future.
“An essential guide to one of the most pressing modern issues.” — Hannah Fry
"I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world."
David Pearce is a British philosopher best known for his advocacy of the abolitionist project, the ethical vision of using advanced science and technology to eliminate suffering in all sentient life. A co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+), Pearce is the author of The Hedonistic Imperative (1995), a manifesto that argues for the use of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and neuroscience to replace the biological substrates of pain with gradients of intelligent bliss.
Pearce explores themes at the intersection of ethics, technology, and consciousness, promoting what he calls “paradise engineering,” a future in which compassion is built into our biology. His work has influenced bioethicists, transhumanists, and consciousness researchers alike.
"But it’s fallibilism, not relativism, that gives us pause by reminding us we may be wrong."
Timothy Williamson is a pre-eminent analytic philosopher and leading authority in logic, language, and metaphysics. He served as the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford from 2000 to 2023 and is currently a Senior Research and Teaching Fellow at New College, Oxford.
A Fellow of the British Academy and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Williamson has published several foundational books, including Knowledge and Its Limits, Vagueness, and The Philosophy of Philosophy. His "knowledge-first" epistemology rejected the orthodox view of knowledge in philosophy, instead arguing that knowledge is a foundational concept which cannot be broken down further.
"One of the world's leading philosophers" — Jason Stanley
"If Christianity is the truth, then all the philosophy written about it is false.”
Genia Schönbaumsfeld is a radical voice in contemporary philosophy of religion, unafraid to confront the conceptual illusions that shape modern secular and religious discourse. A leading expert on Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, she dismantles the idea that belief in God can be treated like a scientific hypothesis. For Schönbaumsfeld, faith is not about empirical claims but a “passionate commitment” that reshapes how we live and judge life itself.
In The Illusion of Doubt, A Confusion of the Spheres, and her ongoing European Research Council project The Ethics of Doubt, she argues that many contemporary debate, from conspiracy theory to militant atheism, misunderstand the nature of belief, confusing language with metaphysics. Her work urges us to question the assumptions behind what we call “truth” and “evidence,” reminding us that some forms of meaning can’t be captured by observation alone.
“A sharply argued contribution to the philosophical effort to understand religious language.” — Review of Metaphysics, on A Confusion of the Spheres
"[O]ur cosmological models have taken on creation-myth status.”
Phil Halper is a fearless science communicator and Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, known for challenging the orthodoxy of modern cosmology. In his writing and his popular YouTube series Before the Big Bang, Halper argues that the dominant Big Bang model has become less a scientific theory and more a secular creation myth, invoking the language of singularity and genesis in ways that mirror religious cosmologies.
As co-author of Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins, he explores alternative theories of the universe’s beginnings, from bouncing cosmologies to cyclical time, arguing that these alternatives are too often dismissed not on empirical grounds but because they threaten a cosmological narrative that science has grown attached to.
"In many books, early-universe cosmology is presented as established. Afshordi and Halper show nothing could be further from the truth!" — Robert Brandenberger, McGill University
"At the crucial junctures—the moments of decision-making and agenda-setting—we make sure that there’s an openness to citizens."
Dedicated to reimagining democracy as a system that truly empowers people, Hélène Landemore is a political philosopher and Professor at Yale University. As founder of Yale’s Citizens’ Assemblies research program and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, she blends deep theoretical insight with practical innovation.
Landemore challenges traditional electoral democracy by arguing for a more inclusive, deliberative model—one that better captures collective intelligence and democratic reason. Her work, including advising OpenAI’s Democratic Inputs to AI program, explores how democratic institutions can become more stable, representative, and capable of addressing today’s complex political and technological challenges.
"Hélène Landemore argues for a vision of democracy that is more faithful to popular rule, more likely to tap into democratic reason, and more stable and durable than electoral democracy." — Erica Yu, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics
"When like-minded people argue, all they do is provide each other with new reasons supporting already held beliefs."
Anthropologist Dan Sperber has reshaped how we understand human reason—not as a tool for truth seeking, but as an adaptation for persuasion. Sperber contends that what passes for rationality is in fact motivated cognition, selected over thousands of years of evolution for its power to win over others.
Sperber is the author of several books, including The Enigma of Reason. His conclusions challenge long-held and deeply entrenched Enlightenment assumptions about the mind, rationality, and culture.
"Original and provocative...likely to have a big impact on our understanding of ourselves" — Steven Pinker
“Language is not primarily about representing the world. It’s about managing social interaction.”
Nick Enfield is a professor of linguistics, renowned for his work on how language helps construct our reality. Challenging the dominant narrative that language is a transparent window into the world, Enfield’s book Language vs. Reality shows how language frames our perspectives and shapes how we relate to one another. According to Enfield, language is far better for persuasion than for objectively capturing facts.
In addition to his theoretical work, Enfield has conducted linguistics field work in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American Mind, among other outlets.
“I am happy that Nick Enfield is a linguist because there are very few scientists in the world who can match him for insights into the cultural and social nature of human language." Daniel L. Everett, Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences, Bentley University
"When Galileo invented the telescope, people didn't want to look through it...people [still] refuse to look at certain theories."
Professor Ivette Fuentes is a leading quantum physicist reshaping how we think about gravity, time, and quantum information. At the frontier of theoretical physics, Fuentes is best known for her groundbreaking work on quantum technologies designed to probe the nature of spacetime itself—where quantum mechanics and general relativity intersect.
Fuentes' work has been featured in New Scientist and brought to wider audiences through her participation in the BBC series Magic Numbers with Hannah Fry. She is also a close collaborator of Roger Penrose.
"I lost count of how many pioneering ideas [Ivette has given] with actual practical consequences in the near term" — Curt Jaimungal
"Scientists and others sometimes deride philosophy on the basis of very little, if any, evidence of what it is like."
James Ladyman is a pioneering philosopher renowned for combining rigorous natural science with deep metaphysical inquiry. A leader in philosophy of science and physics, he champions ontic structural realism, the view that reality is fundamentally relational, and defends a naturalised metaphysics that aligns with our best scientific understanding, challenging inherited intuitions that mislead us about the nature of the universe.
In Everything Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, Ladyman argues that many common metaphysical assumptions—about objects, causation, or essence—are relics incompatible with modern science. Ladyman’s fusion of analytic clarity with scientific insight reshapes how we think about reality—revealing a cosmos that is stranger and more beautiful than our unexamined instincts suggest.
“It is only rather recently that science has begun to make peace with its magical roots.”
Philip Ball is a renowned British science writer and former editor of Nature, celebrated for uncovering the poetic wonder within hard science. In over thirty books—including Critical Mass (Royal Society Winton Prize), Beyond Weird (Physics World Book of the Year), and How Life Works—he explores how science is deeply entwined with culture, politics, and imagination.
From snowflakes and biology to quantum oddities, Ball reveals hidden patterns in nature and challenges the myth of pure objectivity. His work shows how physics sheds light on society, while Beyond Weird invites us to embrace quantum’s counterintuitive logic. Winner of the Royal Society’s Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar Medal, Ball makes science urgent, beautiful, and socially relevant.
“The most cerebral of the UK’s professional science writers.” — Brian Clegg
"The future is made by the things we imagine today."
Güneş Taylor is an award-winning geneticist and pioneer of public engagement in her field. She is a training fellow at the Francis Crick Institute where her research predominantly focuses on the genetic formation of ovaries and testes. Both "an incredible science communicator" and a scientist herself, she has become a distinguished HowtheLightGetsIn host, sharing the stage with Slavoj Žižek, Richard Dawkins, Yuval Noah Harari, and more.
Güneş has debated the implications of genome editing on the Guardian's podcast Science Weekly, the UK's longest-running science podcast. In 2018, Güneş was awarded the Crick Public Engagement Prize for her efforts in the public communication of science.
"Güneş has performed a significant service to disseminating the work within her field." — Anastasia de Waal
"Preaching dogma in the name of science is a dagger at the heart of society."
Àlex Gómez-Marín is a physicist, neuroscientist, and critic of transhumanism, which he describes as “false religion” dressed in techno-scientific rhetoric. Trained in theoretical physics (PhD) and systems neuroscience, he is a professor at the Institute of Neurosciences in Alicante, Spain, and director of the Pari Center in Tuscany, Italy, where he explores the nature of consciousness, the edges of human experience, and the limitations of mainstream science.
Formerly a research fellow at the EMBL Center for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon, Gómez-Marín has gained international attention for his interdisciplinary approach to mind and meaning. His work seeks an alternative to the “unholy trinity” of mechanistic-materialist-reductionist neuroscience by integrating insights from philosophy of science, phenomenology, and wisdom traditions.
A UK First. Back To Big Thinking
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