Live Events

Kit de Waal LIVE appeared live at ALSO25, courtesy of the foundation, discussing her unforgettable and gorgeously redemptive book, The Best of Everything - a novel about the love that can steal into our lives, in spite of the best laid plans.

At what point does a low mood tip over into depression? When does a distressing experience qualify as trauma? As the conversation around mental health has moved from the consulting room to the public arena, so the concept of normal is shifting. Today, we are seeing an unprecedented rise in diagnosable conditions, in waiting lists, in diagnoses, and in medication. Yet, are we really less psychologically healthy than previous generations? Drawing on his decades of clinical experience, consultant neuropsychiatrist Dr Alastair Santhouse explored the ramifications highlighted by his new research into this climate of diagnosis.

Most people hate and fear uncertainty. It causes such stress and anxiety that we often choose certain surrender over doubt, becoming passive, dependent, addicted and more anxious than ever. Artists live with uncertainty constantly but instead of waiting for the future, they run towards making it, with agency and freedom. What can we learn from them, about facing into a future that grows more uncertain daily? The extraordinary Margaret Heffernan explained why, at a time when organisations of all kinds crave innovation but complain their people lack creativity and initiative, the arts have never been so essential to our future.

In the new world order, data is the new oil. Big Tech companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources – our data – exploiting our labour and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations and discriminate against us. The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back is the subject of the extraordinary new work by LSE's Professor Nick Couldry and Professor Ulises A. Mejias'. Nick revealed how history can help us both to understand the emerging future and how to fight back.

A journey inside the human body with distinguished cardiologist, Dr Robin Choudhury, and into the human heart. Robin explored how the heart has been represented over time and across cultures and how 'scientific' understanding of heart function has developed over 2,500 years of history.

When autistic girls meet clinicians, they are often misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, personality disorders, or are missed altogether. Autism’s ‘male spotlight’ means we are only now starting to redress this profound injustice. Gina's work delves into the emerging science of female autism, asking why it has been systematically ignored for so long. Generations of researchers, convinced autism was a male problem, simply didn’t bother looking for it in women. But it is now becoming increasingly clear that many autistic women and girls do not fit the traditional, male, model of autism. Instead, they camouflage and mask, hiding their autistic traits to accommodate a society that shuns them.

The Hounding is the extraordinary new novel from Xenobe Purvis. The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbours are convinced they’re turning into dogs. Xenobe Purvis was born in Tokyo in 1990. She read English Literature at the University of Oxford, has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, and was part of the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. She is a writer and literary researcher, with essays published in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Magazine and elsewhere.

The behind-the-scenes of a four-year investigation into Andrew Tate: how did a failed reality TV star turned accused organised criminal become one of the world's most famous influencers? Part Gonzo journalism, part masculinity rabbit hole, the award-winning documentary director, producer and journalist, Jamie Tahsin took the audience on a journey to reveal the dark secrets of Andrew Tate, the machine that brought him here, and the ideology he has unleashed on a generation of young men.