Transmission 2021

1/18/2021, 6:00:00 PM

The Transmission Prize rewards writers, speakers and scientists for their ideas and the way they communicate them.

Streamed Content

Lauren Bravo - How To Break Up With Fast Fashion : A guilt-free guide to changing the way you shop - for good

You probably know the statistics: global clothing production has roughly doubled in just 15 years, and every year an estimated 300,000 tonnes of used clothing ends up in UK landfill. Fast fashion is the ultimate toxic relationship. It's bad news for the planet, our brains and our bank balances. We can't go on like this; our shopping habits need an overhaul.
Author, Refinery29, Stylist and Grazia journalist, thrift-lover and reformed fast fashion addict, Lauren Bravo makes a brilliant case for How To Break Up With Fast Fashion. Hear her guilt-free guide to changing the way you shop with hundreds of ideas for how to sustainably, ethically and stylishly redefine your relationship with your wardrobe.
This has been such a big idea for us in 2020. We all wear clothes so we can all make more sustainable decisions no matter what our relationship with clothes is - and Salon London’s Helen writes this in a hand-knitted jumper having followed Lauren’s excellent advice for a year.

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Adam Rutherford- How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality

Excellent work from Adam here. Get a cup of tea, sit back and let him explain how when it comes to race he is just not going to allow genetics to be used by those who don’t understand it.
Stereotypes and myths about race are expressed not just by overt racists, but also by well-intentioned people whose experience and cultural baggage steers them towards views that are not supported by the modern study of human genetics. Even some scientists are uncomfortable expressing opinions deriving from their research where it relates to race. Yet, if understood correctly, science and history can be powerful allies against racism, granting the clearest view of how people actually are, rather than how we judge them to be.
Star of science on screen, Dr Adam Rutherford presents his vital manifesto for a twenty-first-century understanding of human evolution and variation, and a timely weapon against the misuse of science to justify racism - 'How to Argue with a Racist' - the subject of his latest Sunday Times bestselling book.

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Nimco Ali - What We’re Told Not to Talk About (But We’re Going to Anyway) : Women’s Voices from East London to Ethiopia

In our Salon with activist and author, Nimco Ali she revealed she wants to change the trajectory of human experience by ensuring FGM is ended by 2030 and that 70 million women are prevented from having this experience.
In terms of ideas - they don’t come bigger than this one, we thought, and we want to support Nimko in this in any way we can.
Following her own experience of FGM and rebuilding her relationship with her body, here Nimco shares her vision for a future without FGM, and her thoughts on how to shake the taboos around female bodies, once and for all.
And so she is calling on us all to be more rude, to be improper, to be disgusting, to talk about what our bodies do and the way they do it, and to stop letting women's questions about their bodies go unanswered, the subject of her book What We’re Told Not to Talk About (But We’re Going to Anyway), Nimco Ali has had enough of it.

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Dr Pia Callesen- Live More Think Less: Overcoming Depression and Sadness with Metacognitive Therapy

This is really interesting, a whole other way of thinking about therapy. Sometimes we as a society can go such a bundle on one idea, like CBT, that we might miss another great idea that might work better for some people. This is what we learnt at Salon London through talking to Pia about her work and we thought that was an idea we wanted to spend some time with. We hope you do too…..
So Pia’s work is metacognitive therapy which is designed to help the many, many, many of us who struggle with overthinking, those of us who endlessly analyse what we’ve said and done or the decisions we have to make. She believes that this rarely treats the stresses of our lives, instead, often we become overwhelmed; we end up feeling powerless, spiralling into sadness and even depression.
Dr Pia Callesen is a metacognitive specialist, Danish bestseller of Live More Think Less - and in this Salon, she presents her groundbreaking new research into how we can take back control of our thinking processes and stop depression in its tracks. From training our attention to leaving our negative trigger-thoughts on the conveyor belt, Pia guides us towards living better through mastering the attention we pay to our thoughts and how we act upon them.

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Carolyn Steel - Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World

We’re beginning to think that food is everything at Salon London and so Carolyn’s book was everything we wanted to hear about food in one place - plus it was packed with ideas for how we eat our way to a better future, which, trust us, really works for us.
She goes deep and to such interesting places all about food, and how we search for and consume it, how it has defined our human journey. Her research ranges from our foraging hunter-gatherer ancestors to the enormous appetites of modern cities. She shows how food has shaped our bodies and homes, our politics and trade, and our climate. Whether it's the daily decision of what to eat or the monopoly of industrial food production, food touches every part of our world. But by forgetting its value, we have drifted into a way of life that threatens our planet and ourselves.
Architect, leading thinker on food and cities, and author of Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World, Carolyn Steel draws on insights from philosophy, history, architecture, literature, politics and science, as well as stories of the farmers, designers and economists who are remaking our relationship with food in her provocative and exhilarating vision for change. It’s a great Salon and a great subject.

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Mark Gevisser - The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers

In this Salon, the South African award-winning author and journalist, Mark Gevisser took us on a vital journey of epic scope, across the world's most challenging new frontiers.
Six years in the making, Mark’s work is brought together in The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers and it follows protagonists from nine countries all over the globe to tell the story of how LGBTQ+ Rights became one of the world's new human rights frontiers in the second decade of the twenty-first century. And in this extraordinary Salon, Mark explores how issues of sexuality and gender identity divide and unite the world today. We’re being played like a cheap guitar and it was so brilliant that Mark was there to shine a light on what is happening to us.

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Margaret MacMillian - War: How Conflict Shaped Us

We absolutely had to have Margaret MacMillan on the list this year. We love her work so much and the whole question of how we teach history has been a big idea for all of us and needs our attention and thought.
Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? And is war ever within our control?
Margaret MacMillan, emeritus professor of international history at the University of Oxford, professor of history at the University of Toronto and the bestselling author of books including Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity. Yes, she explores the ways in which war has influenced human society and how changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight - the subject of her new book, War: How Conflict Shaped Us.

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Hallie Rubenhold - The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Bestselling author and social historian Hallie Rubenhold is the author of The FIVE: The Untold Lives of The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper which won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize 2020 for non-fiction and is now nominated for The Transmission Prize for the place her work won in our hearts. In this extraordinary piece of work, Hallie reclaims the five women who became the Ripper’s victims and who, until her book, have never been given a voice of their own and, worse, had been disregarded by society for over 130 years.
Hear the meticulously researched stories of the five human beings whose lives were taken from them. Hallie’s incredible social history skills painstakingly gives back to Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane their own histories. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers and thanks to Hallie we are now able to know much more of their lives.
If you are a reader, you have to read this book. It will change everything you think you know about life for women in London in Victorian times.

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A Gigantic Introduction to Transmission 2021

Join Salon's Helen and Juliet as they take you through the Transmission 2021 long list.

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Russell Foster - Circadian Rhythms: A Very Short Introduction

Sleep has been such an issue this year and we were so grateful to Russell Foster for helping us go deeper into how our Circadian Rhythms play such a part. Watch this Salon (or buy his short book) to discover just how our biological clocks give order to all living things. They impose a structure that enables us to change our behaviour in relation to the time of day, month or year. They are reset at sunrise and sunset each day to link astronomical time with an organism's internal time.
But how can organisms "know" the time? And today, as many of us work inside with increasing changes in behaviour and routines, what impact does this have?
The Professor of Circadian Neuroscience and the Head of the Department of Ophthalmology at Oxford University, Russell Foster reveals what we now understand of the nature of circadian rhythms.

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Natalie Haynes - Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

We are massive fans of Natalie Haynes. So far the only speaker we have ever worked with that we have made up posters that say ‘Be More Natalie Haynes’ and carried them around with us. She has opened up our minds, hearts and spirits to the classical world and all the joys that are there for all of us, and we are truly thankful.
This year the famed classicist and Women's Prize shortlisted writer has wrenched classics away from the traditional retellings of the Greek myths and explored the remarkable women at their heart, the subject of her new book Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths.
Yes, for the first time in two thousand years, she has redressed the imbalance in the myths we know so well (Pandora, Medusa, Penelope and many more) by researching the original meaning of those women of Greek myths. In writing Pandora's Jar, Natalie has restored these mythical women to equal footing and here she explains how she breathed new life into ancient myths.
The book is also hilarious (Natalie was a stand-up and knows how to have a good laugh) so you might as well buy the book now, what else is there to do?

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Dr Dani Gordon - The CBD Bible: Cannabis and the Wellness Revolution That Will Change Your Life

Internationally-recognised CBD expert, Dr Dani Gordon, has years of clinical experience in prescribing cannabis and CBD and its many forms and in this Salon (and her book) she takes us on an entertaining and enlightening journey about the cannabis plant and its benefits. She cuts through the hype, dispels the myths, and introduces us to the fascinating endocannabinoid system in our own body.
She’s the person to go to, to understand how it could work to help with anxiety? insomnia? And to cut through all the nonsense - like can you overdose on CBD oil?
Cannabidiol, more commonly known as CBD, has become the hot new wellness ingredient, appearing in everything from oils to edibles and skincare products. Yet this brave new world of CBD and medical cannabis is full of pseudoscience, misinformation and confusion, and it’s really hard to get hold of it because of the ways our laws prevent a huge amount of research into its benefits, which we are not a fan of at Salon London.
Since we worked with David Nutt and Val Curren over 10 years ago we’ve been so interested to see what CBD could offer traditional medicine to help us live healthier lives so we were so glad to hear about Dr Dani Gordon’s work to try to get beyond the pseudoscience of CBD and to a point when it could really help so many of us - particularly those living with chronic pain.

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Stephen David Reicher - Together Apart: The Psychology of COVID-19

Want to understand the psychology of our own psychological responses to Covid-19? Prof Stephen Reicher, the Professor of Social Psychology from the University of St Andrews and behavioural science advisor during the pandemic, joined us at Salon London in June 2020 to explain the psychology of us as a group - what has brought us together to defeat the virus and what has pulled us apart from each other.
From the importance of harnessing group psychology in dealing with the pandemic and the opportunities the government have had in communicating messages - the ones that worked and the ones that didn't. Here he looks back over the messaging we have received since the start of the pandemic and explains how this has affected how we have behaved. These illuminating findings have been published as Together Apart by Stephen and three other leading international social psychologists.
Stephen has been consistently telling us that we are mostly compliant and has been a case study in how the government has only worked with the science it seems to like this year. He had to be on the Salon London longlist and we really recommend following him on Twitter if you do that to find out much more about his incredible work.

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Roman Krznaric - How to Be A Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World

This is a very good idea. We really think at Salon that everyone is looking for ways to have a legacy, to be a good ancestor and in his book, Roman has done all the work to connect us with the idea that is right for us, that can help the planet long after we’ve had all of our rich experience on it. It’s the antidote to feeling overwhelmed in our humble opinion.
Roman’s focused in such a clever, and understandable way on how we can overcome this frenetic short-termism and extend our time horizons to tackle long-term challenges from the climate crisis to threats from artificial intelligence and genetically engineered pandemics?
Leading public philosopher, Roman Krznaric shares ideas from his powerful new piece of work, The Good Ancestor: How To Think Long Term in a Short-Term World. Roman’s work is a real call to action for how we can expand our imaginations beyond the here and now. He explores many, many ideas of how you can be a good ancestor. everything from the seventh-generation thinking of indigenous peoples and politically empowered ‘guardians of the future’ to the history of the London sewers and the latest neuroscience research, he argues that we have an inbuilt capacity to become ‘cathedral thinkers’.
Plus he got previous Transmission winner Kate Raworth AND Brian Eno to come along to his Salon. Very clever, we thought.

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Dr Pragya Agarwal - Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias

Pragya’s book was right on the money for 2020. If ever there was a year for all of us trying to understand our biases this was the one and she worked so hard to get her ideas out to a wide audience and we are big fans of those authors and experts who do that work - well done, Pragya.
Her book explores if the roots for prejudice lie in our evolutionary past? What happens in our brains when our biases are activated? How has bias affected technology? If we don’t know about it, are we really responsible for it, and, if so, is there anything we can do to stop it?
Behavioural scientist, activist and author of the extraordinary book Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, Dr Pragya Agarwal unravels the way our implicit or ‘unintentional’ biases affect the way we communicate and perceive the world, and how they affect our decision making, even in life and death situations.

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Dr Jeff Rediger- Cured: The Remarkable Science and Stories of Spontaneous Healing and Recovery

What can 'medical miracles' teach us about living better? In the history of medicine, we have almost never used the tools of rigorous science to investigate remarkable recoveries from incurable illnesses. With this in mind, the world-leading Harvard medic, psychiatrist, surgeon and theologian, Dr Jeff Rediger conducted 15 years in-depth research of spontaneous remission to understand if there was anything we could learn from stories that don't fit our paradigm of one cause and one cure, the subject of his latest book: Cured: The Remarkable Science and Stories of Spontaneous Healing and Recovery.
In our Salon, he gives us a fascinating insight into this strange area where medical science and against-all-odds recoveries meet, allowing us to explore the edges of human understanding and what we can learn from what we don't know. It’s the first Salon we did in lockdown so you might have to bear with the tech, BUT if this is a subject that you like, we heartily recommend getting the book from us. Did we tell you we are an independent bookseller and we’ll send you any of the Transmission books you like?

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* Transmission 2021 Award Show *

2/25/2021, 8:00:00 PM

Join us on the 25th February for our Transmission Prize Award Show 2021 brought to you via Zarucchi.
Each year we celebrate the biggest ideas that have been on the Salon London stage in the last 12 months and this years’ 2021 Transmission Prize winner will be announced LIVE on the 25th February.
We like to do our Transmission Prize a little bit differently every year and this year to celebrate our eighth Transmission Prize we opened up our doors to the public to become the prize judges.
We’re thrilled to announce this year's shortlisted speakers are:
* Adam Rutherford - How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality.
* Natalie Haynes - Pandora’s Jar: Women in Greek Myth
* Nimco Ali - What We’re Told Not to Talk About (But We’re Going to Anyway): Women’s Voices from East London to Ethiopia
* Pia Callesen - Live More Think Less: Overcoming Depression and Sadness with Metacognitive Therapy
* Pragya Agarwal - Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias
* Roman Krznaric - The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World
On 25th February, we’ll be hearing from each of our shortlisted speakers before we announce the 2021 Transmission Prize winner - LIVE!
So make yourself a drink, pull up a chair and join us for the Award show on Feb 25th. Don’t miss the biggest night of the Salon year.

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