In Episode Three of Brave New World, Evgeny is joined by Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WHOOP. Together, they explore recovery, sleep, and the idea that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Ahmed explains how overtraining as a Harvard athlete led him to build his own wearable, identifying a major gap in health diagnostics at the time: measuring recovery, not just performance.

He explains what WHOOP tracks - sleep quality, strain, heart rate variability (HRV), recovery, and stress; dives into why seven hours in bed can still mean poor sleep; and why consistency of bedtime and wake time often matters more than raw hours.

Evgeny and Ahmed get practical on health trends, address the criticism that wearables culture a state of analysis paralysis and how to use metrics as a tool, not a verdict.

This episode was produced by Message Heard and The Standard.

Producer: Florence de Schlichting

Production Coordinator: James Cox

Production Manager: Kirsty McLean

Video Editor: Nani Wenani

The Standard team:

Joe Bromley

Will Rogers-Coltman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Evgeny sits down with Professor Tim Spector and Dr Federica Amati - two of the leading scientific voices behind personalised nutrition company ZOE - to rethink everything we’ve been told about food.

From the myth of “good” and “bad” fats to calorie-counting obsessions, Tim and Federica uncover why so much of our nutritional advice is outdated, over-simplified - and in some cases, actively harmful. They unpack how ultra-processed foods and constant snacking damage our gut, why breakfast is not magically the most important meal of the day, and how time-restricted eating might be the key to optimising your daily health.

At the core of their discussion is a simple idea: eat for your gut microbes.

This episode was produced by Message Heard and The Standard.

Producer: Florence de Schlichting

Production Coordinator: James Cox

Production Manager: Kirsty McLean

Video Editor: Nani Wenani

The Standard team:

Joe Bromley

Will Rogers-Coltman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the first episode of Season 4 of Brave New World.

This time, Evgeny is joined by Steven Bartlett to talk about mindset, ambition and the future. He shares how he manages “a million tabs” without burning out, why self-empathy boosts performance, and how a humiliating paddle match taught him a breakthrough lesson on failure.

He opens up about growing up in poverty and shame, the influence of his mum, and why the biggest entrepreneurial lesson he learned was simply: have an idea, then do it.

Steven unpacks the thinking behind his book Just F**ing Do It, the neuroscience of hard things, his obsession with 1% gains, and why his company has a “Head of Failure.”

The conversation expands to happiness, arrival fallacy, AI, humanoid robots, the future of work, the creator economy, and why he’d homeschool his future kids to double down on uniquely human skills.

This episode was produced by Message Heard and The London Standard.

Producer: Florence de Schlichting

Production Coordinator: James Cox

Production Manager: Kirsty McLean

Video Editor: Nani Wenani

The Standard team:

Joe Bromley

Will Rogers-Coltman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.