Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy

“I don’t write fiction to preach my politics,” says Kiley Reid - an American author whose debut novel “Such a Fun Age” was longlisted for the 2020 Booker prize. The book gained recognition for its themes on race, privilege, and social dynamics in modern America.

Fast forward to 2024, and Reid’s second novel, “Come and Get It” delves even further into the heart of societal complexities. It’s based in a US campus and centred around money and wealth - who has it and who wants it - and the impact it has, on even the most personal of relationships. 

In this episode of Ways to Change the World, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Kiley Reid about the importance of finding stability whilst being a writer, the impact of having a theatre background on her writing, and her thoughts on being social media savvy as an author.

Produced by Silvia Maresca and Shaheen Sattar.

How do you measure a business’s success? For James Timpson, CEO of the Timpson’s Group, it comes down to two things: the satisfaction of its staff, and what it gives back to society.

His employees only have to “put money in the till and look the part”; for the rest, they have complete authority to do whatever they think is right to offer a quality service to customers. This “upside-down” style of management doesn’t mean the business is not profitable - quite the opposite, in fact.

In this episode of Ways to Change the World, the boss of the shoe-repair, key-cutting and dry-cleaning group tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy the secrets behind his unconventional leadership style and why fostering a culture of kindness, giving ex-prisoners a second chance and cultivating a happy workforce are key to Timpson’s ethos.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving independent senator in US congressional history and has brought income inequality, poverty and the “uber-capitalist” status quo into focus throughout his decades-long career. He nearly became the Democrats’ candidate for president, twice, and has recently been backing Joe Biden against Donald Trump, warning that Trump’s re-election could be the end of American democracy.

In his latest book, “It’s Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism”, he presents his vision of what would be possible through a progressive agenda - one that would challenge the “corrupt” economic order that allows just 1% of super-rich to control more wealth than the rest of society, and where a decent standard of living for all is not an impossible dream.

In this episode of Ways to Change the World, the US Senator tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy why the US should stop its funding for Netanyahu’s “horrific war against the Palestinian people”, why a second Trump victory could foment right-wing movements across the world with disastrous consequences, and why taking on the ruling class is a necessary but “long, long process”.

Produced by Silvia Maresca, Shaheen Sattar and Alice Wagstaffe.

Crystal Hefner was 21 when she first entered the infamous Playboy Mansion in October 2008. Within months, she ascended its hierarchy to become the top girlfriend of Hugh Hefner, who was 60 years her senior, and went on to marry him in 2012.

But she quickly discovered the house was not the glittering sanctuary she had believed, nor Mr Hefner’s Playboy was the place of freedom, expression and empowerment it professed itself to be. Crystal only left the mansion when Hefner died, aged 91, in 2017.

Having made a promise to the Playboy tycoon to ‘only say good things’ about him, for years Crystal suppressed the truth of what really happened behind closed doors at the Mansion, and the lasting trauma it caused her. Now she's written a book, "Only Say Good Things", about her experiences.

In this episode of Ways to Change the World, she tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about life at the Playboy Mansion as one of Hugh’s three live-in girlfriends, how he made her ‘feel small and afraid for so long’, and why she’s finally decided to speak out.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

The past year has been a time of climate firsts, mainly for the wrong reasons. 2023 was the hottest year on record - with devastating wildfires, catastrophic flooding, ongoing loss of biodiversity and carbon emissions continuing to rise. But is there any hope for the possibility for a better future?

Well, there is in fact room for ‘cautious optimism’ says environmental scientist, Dr Hannah Ritchie, whose book Not the End of the World offers a data-based analysis of environmental problems and their solutions. Her view stems from the significant strides made in human progress across the world, and the advancements of technology, especially within renewable energies.

Today on Ways to Change the World, she tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy how her work taught her that there are more reasons for hope than despair about the climate and the planet we live on - and why a truly sustainable world can still be within reach.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

Ella Mills is the best-selling food writer and founder of Deliciously Ella, the food blog-turned-brand which she created in 2012 after a sudden debilitating illness led her to overhaul her diet and turn to plant-based foods as a way to get better.

Since then, Mills has become a key player in bringing healthy food to the mainstream, with a brand whose 100 plant-based, additive-free products are now sold in all major UK supermarkets, and whose revenue is estimated to be £20 million. But this huge success has come with vicious trolling and personal attacks online - and it’s only now that Mills has finally come to terms with it.

Today on Ways to Change the World, she tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about the story behind Deliciously Ella, why a change in our diets towards more fresh, plant-based foods cannot happen unless the government steps in, and acknowledging the difference between her privilege and her business success.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

Despite being 76 years old, Arnold Schwarzenegger shows no signs of stopping.

The bodybuilding champion turned Hollywood star turned US politician, now in the ‘fourth act’ of his life, has reinvented himself into a motivator, and written a book, ‘Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life’, about guiding people to achieve a ‘happy, successful, useful life’, inspired by his singular American experience.

Today on Ways to Change the World, Arnold Schwarzenegger tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy how he can ‘be useful’, why world leaders are failing to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict and why America needs a new candidate to enter the presidential race.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

From 2019 to 2021, Samuel Kasumu was the most senior Black advisor in Downing Street, and was widely referred to as Boris Johnson’s racism advisor, working alongside the former Prime Minister during the first half of the Covid pandemic.

Kasumu left Downing Street in April 2021, amid the fallout from a UK government report that dismissed institutional racism. It wasn’t until after leaving his position, he says, that he realised how much of an ‘outsider’ he was, as a Black, working-class man who did not go to Oxbridge.

In this week’s episode of Ways To Change the World, he talks to Krishnan Guru-Murthy about the reasons why he first joined the Tory party aged 19, the role of special advisors in No 10 and why culture wars inside Downing Street made the downfall of Boris Johnson ‘inevitable’.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

Keith Allen has been many things. The father of popstar Lily and Game of Thrones actor Alfie Allen, he was also a TV presenter, theatre actor, the man behind two hit football anthems (the Fat Les ditty “Vindaloo” and New Order’s “World in Motion”, both of which he co-wrote) and a handful of small roles in cult movies (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 24 Hour Party People).

Growing up, he was a troublemaker; he’d spent time in Borstal, was thrown out of drama school, even sent to prison. 

Now in his 70s, as he prepares to star in a new musical called Rehab, he looks back on the moments that have made up his rollercoaster life and career with Krishnan Guru-Murthy, on this week’s episode of Ways to Change the World.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

Song credits:

'Vindaloo' / Fat Les

'World in Motion' / New Order

Billy Porter started singing in church when he was about five years old, and growing up saw performance as a lifeline out of the trauma and rejection he experienced as a Black gay man.

The multi-hyphenate star won a Grammy and a few Tonys since his breakout role on Broadway with 2013's Kinky Boots, and was the first openly gay Black man to win a lead acting Emmy for his role in the drama series Pose in 2019. Now Porter is returning to mainstream music with his fifth studio album, Black Mona Lisa, which he hopes will continue to craft an empowering legacy for the queer youth of colour.

Today on Ways to Change the World, he tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about the challenges he faced due to homophobia in the music industry in the '90s, the harsh reality of being an actor in the golden age of streaming and what success means to him.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

Being an astronaut is a job like no other. Of the estimated 100 billion people who have ever lived, only 628 people in human history have left Earth.

Tim Peake is one of them. A former test pilot who served in the British Army Air Corps, he was the first British astronaut to ever walk in space, and completed his six-month Principia mission to the International Space Station with the European Space Agency when he landed back on Earth in June 2016.

Today on Ways to Change the World, he tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about his journey to becoming an astronaut, his time on the ISS and the crucial role of Elon Musk and SpaceX in future space missions.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

Caster Semenya has never doubted that she was a woman. It wasn’t until her athletics career started to take off that the now two-time Olympic Games gold medallist and a three-time World Athletics Championships gold medallist faced any questions over her gender. Called a ‘threat to the sport’ and ‘not woman enough’, she has become the most visible DSD (difference in sex development) athlete today, and found herself at the centre of the debate around the newly drawn line between gender and sport.

In this episode of Ways to Change the World, she tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about her experiences as an athlete with a difference in sex development, her tumultuous journey to the top of the athletics world, and what being a woman means to her.

Produced by Silvia Maresca

It is nearly two weeks since Israel launched its ground offensive into Gaza and more than a month since it began intensive air strikes against Hamas, following the brutal attacks in Israel in which more than 1,400 people were killed.

ActionAid is one of the many charities responding to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and its UK CEO Halima Begum is urging countries that finding a humanitarian solution is paramount, with thousands of civilians dead and the majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents having been displaced.

Today on Ways to Change the World, Halima Begum tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about her journey from youth activism to NGO work, the West’s ‘moral responsibility’ to humanitarian aid and the need for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine war.

Produced by Silvia Maresca.

Carlo Rovelli has devoted large parts of his life to explaining to the general public what appears on the surface to be the unexplainable - and his bestselling science books saw him dubbed 'the poet of modern physics’.

But the quantum gravity researcher is as comfortable discussing his own work on black holes, as he is talking about recent politics such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, on the grounds that, like in scientific research, every issue has different facets and cooperation is key to finding a solution.

Today on Ways to Change the World, Carlo Rovelli tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about his search for ‘white holes’ and how science can bridge different global narratives in the geopolitical arena.

Produced by Silvia Maresca

The climate crisis is the biggest single issue affecting us all - but for some, the impact will be, and already is, far greater than for others.

This is the principle of climate justice, that sees the causes and consequences of climate change as inextricably linked with social inequality - and that activist Mikaela Loach has made the focus of her work.

Today on Ways to Change the World, Mikaela Loach tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy why we need to reframe our understanding of the climate crisis in order to tackle its root causes, and why only through “active hope” and collective action can we radically transform our world for the better.

Produced by Silvia Maresca

The world is witnessing an epochal shift, according to Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis: from the now-dead capitalism, to “technofeudalism”.

In his latest book, the former Greek politician - who in 2015, at the height of the Greek debt crisis, was catapulted from academic obscurity to Minister of Finance - argues that insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies in the wake of the financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic have ended up supercharging big tech's hold over every aspect of the economy. And capitalism's twin pillars - markets and profit - have been replaced with big tech's platforms and rents; while we, the “cloud serfs”, increase these companies’ power with every online click and scroll.

Today on Ways to Change the World, Yanis Varufakis tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy how the world is grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power, and why Britain and the EU are “irrelevant” compared with the “fiefdoms” of US and Chinese tech firms.

Produced by Silvia Maresca

"You're categorised as not being particularly intelligent or able," says Jason Arday, an autistic Sociologist who became Cambridge University's youngest black professor. 

Jason Arday was unable to speak until he was 11 and could not read or write until he was 18. As a PE teacher in 2012, he wrote a list of goals he wanted to achieve. One of them was to be a professor at Oxford or Cambridge University.

Today on Ways To Change The World, Jason Arday tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about his journey with Autism, learning to read and write at the age of 18, and why racial profiling is limiting people’s ability to achieve their dreams.

Produced by Silvia Maresca and Shaheen Sattar

At 14, Lemn Sissay inked his initials into his hand with a homemade tattoo. He didn’t write LS, but NG, for Norman Greenwood, which he thought was his name. Except that it wasn’t. His real identity had been withheld from him since he was born.

Born in Wigan to an Ethiopian mother, Lemn Sissay was raised in care; first in a foster family and then, from the age of 12 to 18, in a string of children's homes, including the notorious Wood End assessment centre, where he was physically, emotionally and racially abused. Despite going on to become an award-winning and internationally acclaimed poet, the trauma of his harrowing childhood never left him, and has informed much of his work on and off the page.

Today on Ways to Change the World, he talks to Krishnan Guru-Murthy about growing up in the care system, finding his identity as a British and Ethiopian man, and why the care system in the UK is failing children in need.

Produced by Silvia Maresca

As the third Black woman ever to be elected as an MP, and then instated as a government Minister, Dawn Butler has been vocal on the disrespect that Black women face in politics.

As an outspoken campaigner herself, Butler was criticised in 2019 for calling Boris Johnson a liar in the House of Commons. She was subsequently asked to leave the Parliament grounds that day. 

Whilst calling for the former Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick, to resign, she ironically found herself being stopped by the police whilst driving with her friend (who is also Black). 

After facing a long battle with breast cancer in 2021, she found inspiration to write her first book, ‘A Purposeful Life’, where she draws on the repeated times she’s been called a liar after facing racism and sexism both in politics and outside of it. 

In today’s episode of Ways to Change the World, Labour MP Dawn Butler speaks to Krishnan Guru-Murthy about calling Boris Johnson a liar in Parliament, white feminism in the Labour party (and at large) and her ambitions to be the next Mayor of London. Being a Black person in a white-dominated space, she also tells us why wearing a lime-green suit in a sea of grey-suits was her way of realising you don’t have to fit in.

Produced by Silvia Maresca

“The police haven’t changed,” says American rapper Ice Cube, marking 35 years since the release of the track “F*** Tha Police” that cemented his status in musical history alongside the hip hop group N.W. A.

Ice Cube is regarded by hip-hop critics and fans as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time. He was first famous for the N.W.A album, Straight Outta Compton, then became a solo artist, actor, producer and owner of a new basketball league, BIG3.

Today on Ways to Change The World, Ice Cube tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy about his journey through 50 years of Hip Hop, his thoughts on the American government and why he thinks AI is an existential threat.

Produced by Shaheen Sattar