How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is a podcast that celebrates the things that haven’t gone right. Every week, a new interviewee explores what their failures taught them about how to succeed better.
Episodes
Wednesday Aug 01, 2018
Wednesday Aug 01, 2018
This week, journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera joins How To Fail and kicks off by saying how flattered he was to be asked to contribute to a podcast on failure because he hates hearing nice things said about himself. So that’s good.
As well as discussing his failure to take a compliment, Sathnam talks movingly about growing up in a household where both his father and his sister had schizophrenia. At first, he tried to run away from accepting it and then when that didn’t work, he wrote a brilliant, award-winning memoir called The Boy With the Topknot which was later adapted for the BBC. (Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling is a fan).
Sathnam talks about his social failure at university (and his inability to get a girlfriend for three years), as well as his failure to learn an instrument, his failure to score a high Uber rating and his failure to read back his own handwriting moments after he’s written something down.
Along the way, we cover his childhood job in a Wolverhampton sewing factory, the modern tendency to confuse anxiety with serious mental health issues, grief and how he coped with the death of his best friend, heartbreak, success, the concept of 'negative mindfulness', racist dogs and Sathnam’s undying love for George Michael and Club Tropicana.
We also spend longer than necessary trying to remember the common colloquial phrase 'prepare for the worst, expect the best' which is embarrassing given that we both make a living from words.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
The Boy with the Topknot is published by Penguin and available to buy here.
Sathnam Sanghera’s website is here.
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam
Moorish @moorishhumous
Wednesday Jul 25, 2018
Wednesday Jul 25, 2018
This week’s guest on How To Fail with Elizabeth Day is memoirist, podcaster and journalist Dolly Alderton. Dolly, the co-host of the utterly fantastic The High Low podcast and author of the brilliant Sunday Times bestseller Everything I Know About Love, talks about being rejected from Bristol University (and still feeling resentful of anyone she meets who went there), being ‘compassionately’ fired from a job she didn’t really want and what happens when you don’t meet the love of your life, even when you think you’re going to.
Along the way, we talk about the horror of being a teenager, internalised misogyny, the pressure for women to look good (‘I try very hard to remember that I’m not disappointing anyone if I don’t look perfect,’ says Dolly), sensitivity, people-pleasing, narcissism, discomfort zones, the brilliance of female friends and why it’s sometimes good to have a thin skin.
We also discuss Made in Chelsea (Dolly used to be a story producer) and her efforts to invent a new game show, where you would win your dream home but it wouldn’t have any doors. Sounds amazing. Not sure why it never got commissioned.
Note: this episode contains the phrase ‘absolute rotters’ used in a non-ironic way.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Dolly Alderton @dollyalderton
The High Low @thehighlowshow
Moorish @moorishhumous
Wednesday Jul 18, 2018
Wednesday Jul 18, 2018
Sebastian Faulks, bestselling novelist and author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, joins How To Fail to talk about his failure to win the Booker Prize (“the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous”), his sense of social isolation at boarding school and a period of depression at university he feels he has never fully recovered from. Along the way, he talks about what it really means to be a “successful” writer and whether it matters what other people think, as well as the time he failed his driving test and got bowled out having scored 98 at cricket (two separate occasions, thankfully). Then there was the painful occasion he baked a soufflé and it failed to rise, a cooking faux pas that haunts him still. And if that’s not enough to whet your appetite, feel free to download and subscribe in order to hear Elizabeth being sternly reprimanded by Sebastian for her misuse of the word “saga”.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Moorish @moorishhumous
Sebastian Faulks @sebastianfaulks
Friday Jul 13, 2018
Friday Jul 13, 2018
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, creator and star of Fleabag, writer of Killing Eve, superstar feminist and human embodiment of a Star Wars droid, joins How To Fail to talk about how she failed at her 20s (but got lots of brilliant material from the terrible dates she endured), failing at drama school, terrible auditions (including one for Downton Abbey) and how her female best friend is quite possibly the love of her life. She also talks about emotional vulnerability, why women fail at anger and about finding glory in one’s mistakes. There’s a great exchange about whether women should be open about whether or not they want children and a whole segue into the desirability of alabaster foreheads. Oh, and we cover the time Phoebe met Meryl Streep and embarrassed herself horribly, in what might be one of the greatest celebrity anecdotes of all time involving apple crumble.
How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp
How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Moorish @moorishhumous
DryWrite @DryWrite
Fleabag @Fleabag
Killing Eve @KillingEve