How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment

How To Fail with Elizabeth Day is a podcast that celebrates the things in life that haven’t gone right and what we might learn from them along the way. Every week, Elizabeth’s guest explores three failures, and what these failures have taught them about how to grow and succeed, better. We’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with Elizabeth to share your failures, problems or questions - anonymously or otherwise. She'll go through these each week with the help of her very special guests. And remember: a fail shared is a fail halved. https://forms.sonymusicfans.com/campaign/how-to-fail-uk-2023/ An Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Original Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow @sonypodcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected]

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Top 10 How To Fail With Elizabeth Day Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best How To Fail With Elizabeth Day episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to How To Fail With Elizabeth Day for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite How To Fail With Elizabeth Day episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Miranda Hart - 'I always knew I’d get married at 51'

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

10/16/24 • 58 min

It’s been ten years of ‘bear with.. bear with’ but *finally* we’ve got our beloved Miranda Hart back. Due to a long-term undiagnosed chronic illness (which we talk about, of course) Miranda has been largely out of the public eye for the past decade. I was so touched to be the first person she spoke to on her return to work. We covered writing her new book (full of amazing life advice), being an introvert, medical gaslighting, body image and...wait for it... her new husband.

Miranda and I had a ball - her failures include not being a farmer’s wife, not being an athlete and not making the school choir (it turns out there was a reason for this but she only found out years later and has never spoken about it before...). So if that’s not tantalising enough for you then, quite frankly, I don’t know what is.

In my subscriber episode ‘Failing with Friends’, Miranda stayed on to answer your questions including one about farting in front of your partner. Yes, we went there.

Thank you, Miranda and welcome back, we missed you!

‘I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You’ by Miranda Hart is out now.

Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com

Production & Post Production Manager: Eric Ryan

Studio and Mix Engineer: Matias Torres Sole and Josh Gibbs

Senior Producer: Selina Ream

Executive Producer: Carly Maile

Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini

How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production.

Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts

To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected]

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2 Listeners

S14, Ep5 How To Fail: Michael Rosen

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

06/08/22 • 60 min

My sound engineer Chris is a lovely man, but he is not easily impressed. After an interview, if Chris says 'yeah, that was good' I know I've struck GOLD. Today's episode garnered TWO SEPARATE 'yeah that was good'(s) from Chris which is why I know it's a very special one. And of course it would be, because my guest is the truly wonderful Michael Rosen. He is the author of more than 200 books, including some of the most beloved children’s stories of all time. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is one of his, a book which is now (terrifyingly) over 30 years old.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, Michael was one of the first to be hospitalised. He spent 47 days in Intensive Care, some of them in an induced coma and on a ventilator. He returned home in June to discover that his poem, These Are The Hands, had become a viral anthem for NHS care workers.
He joins me to talk about all of this, as well as his failures in cricket, academia and health. In one of the most moving conversations I've ever had on this podcast, we also talk about the death of his beloved son Eddie from meningitis at the age of 18 and how Michael still feels (misplaced) guilt over what happened.
Thank you Michael for being so open and vulnerable. This is a wonderful listen - but do have tissues nearby.
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Michael's latest book, Please Write Soon: a story of Two Cousins in World War II is out now an available to order here: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Please-Write-Soon-by-Michael-Rosen-author-Michael-Foreman-illustrator/9780702303180
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Michael Rosen @michaelrosenyes

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2 Listeners

S15, BONUS EPISODE! How To Fail: Sheila Hancock on stage-fright, self-doubt and being a wartime evacuee

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

12/02/22 • 62 min

Dame Sheila Hancock is one of our most esteemed actresses: her 1966 Broadway debut in Entertaining Mr Sloane earned her a Tony nomination and on TV, she has appeared in everything from Dr Who to Kavanagh QC, in which she starred alongside her late husband, John Thaw. She has also been a semi-regular contestant on the BBC Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute since - wait for it -1967.
The 89-year-old Dame Sheila joins me to talk about her crippling stage fright, her failure to enjoy the moment, her memories of being a wartime evacuee and her critical inner voice that means she's only ever able to remember the bad reviews while forgetting all the good ones. Enjoy!
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Old Rage by Sheila Hancock is out now: https://www.waterstones.com/book/old-rage/sheila-hancock/9781526647443
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Sheila Hancock @4SheilaHancock (Twitter) @sheilahancocknews (Instagram)

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S18, Ep10 Claudia Winkleman on the joy of imperfection

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

11/01/23 • 60 min

I LOVE CLAUDIA WINKLEMAN.
There. That's it. That's your shownotes.
Well ok then... Claudia Winkleman is a broadcaster who feels like your best friend - whether she's co-hosting Strictly Come Dancing, fronting her Saturday morning BBC Radio 2 show or sending shivers down your spine as the presenter of The Traitors. And now, for our season finale, she joins me to talk about her hatred of perfect, her distaste for exercise, her introversion and her failure to live in the present. Plus: struggles with sleep, the invaluable lessons her parents' taught her and why Rembrandt (as seen with minus 15 eyesight) might be her forever style icon.
*Please note: this episode was recorded before the recent horrific events in Israel and Gaza*
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Claudia's new range of CBD beauty and wellness products with Cannaray is available to purchase here.
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You can book tickets for my March 2024 UK tour, An Audience With Elizabeth Day (lol), here.
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Claudia Winkleman @claudiawinkle

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S16, Ep1 How To Fail: Rick Astley on never growing up, never giving up and how a difficult childhood shaped his success

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

01/04/23 • 67 min

We're back for a brand new season. Well...you didn't think we were ever GONNA GIVE YOU UP did you? (See what I did there?)
My childhood self is utterly thrilled that we get to open Season 16 with the legendary Rick Astley. The singing superstar who gained worldwide fame in the 1980s with hits such as Never Gonna Give You Up and who is now being discovered by a whole new generation thanks to the viral internet phenomenon known as Rickrolling (don't worry - I didn't know what this was either: he explains it on the pod). Now 56, Astley has 8 consecutive UK top 10 hits, more than 40 million album sales and 3 million TikTok followers to his name. Besides which, he's a thoroughly nice man.
We talk about his difficult upbringing, his failure to grow up and his inability to give up drinking good wine. Prepare yourself for a lot of entertainment, some laughs, a side-order of self-deprecation and yes, a few tears too.
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My Plan To Save The Planet, the new album by Rick Astley is out now and avaiable to order here.
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Failosophy for Teens: A Handbook for When Things Go Wrong by Elizabeth Day is my first ever book for young adults and it's out TOMORROW, 5th January 2023, and available to purchase here.
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Rick Astley @officialrickastley

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S14, MID-SEASON BONUS! How To Fail: Caroline Stanbury

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

06/10/22 • 49 min

Look, anyone who knows me knows of my love for reality TV. And anyone who knows anything about reality TV realises that when you get the chance to interview a bona fide Real Housewife, you jump at it. Which is why today's special bonus episode is with Caroline Stanbury.
Now, if you're not versed in your Bravo TV herstory or your pre-Selling Sunset heritage, you might not have heard of Caroline. She first appeared on our screens in 2014 as one of the cast members of the (sadly) short-lived Ladies of London. Viewers were either riveted by her ice-maiden ways or really quite scared. I was one of the latter, but I couldn't stop watching.
This is a woman born into privilege and old English money who went on to make her name in a completely different - and some might say, antithetical - world. Now she's back on our screens as part of The Real Housewives of Dubai.
I've never interviewed anyone quite like Caroline. She is impressive almost *because of* her lack of self-reflection: she just dusts herself down and gets on with it. Which is kind of hilarious when your podcast is all about failure. But it also caused me to reflect on how rare it is to see a woman inhabit this emotional space. And I came away thinking I had things to learn from her about inner strength. This is a long way of saying: it's not a typical HTF episode. But it is a wildly entertaining one as we talk about everything from surviving divorce (and then getting married to a much younger man), failing to go to university, the loss of her first business, IVF, boarding school, the power of manifestation and yes, of COURSE, the highs and lows of reality television.
Thank you Caroline - you're one in a billion.
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Caroline's podcast Divorced Not Dead is available to listen to here: https://dearmedia.com/shows/divorced-not-dead/
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Caroline Stanbury @carolinestanbury

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2 Listeners

S9, Ep 4 How to Fail: Ruby Wax

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

09/16/20 • 61 min

I've wanted to get this guest on for ages and now - hooray! - here she is: the inimitable Ruby Wax. Ruby started out as an actress at the RSC, took a side-step into comedy and had a hugely successful television career, interviewing everyone from Madonna and Imelda Marcos to the Spice Girls. But, after living with depression all her life and a series of breakdowns, she got a Masters from Oxford University in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy and is now a mental health campaigner and author.
Ruby joins me to talk about mental health, mindfulness, job loss, how to deal with anxiety and comedy as a vehicle for truth. We chat about the influence of her late, dear friend Alan Rickman, the trauma of a difficult upbringing, the time she mortally embarrassed herself in front of Sir Paul McCartney and her spectacular failure at an audition for Saturday Night Live. Oh, and we talk about what happened when she interviewed the future President of the United States, Donald Trump, on his private jet [spoiler alert: it wasn't great].
And if you enjoyed this episode, Ruby's new book, And Now For The Good News...From the Future With Love is out TOMORROW!
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PLEASE PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK TOO, THANK YOU! Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong is available here
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To celebrate the publication of Failosophy, I am doing a LIVE show at The London Palladium. It is also live-streamed online. If you'd like to buy tickets for either option, you can do so here.
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [email protected] You can buy our fantastic PODCAST MERCH here.
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Ruby Wax @rubywax
How To Fail @howtofailpod

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S4, Ep4 How to Fail: Mo Gawdat

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

04/24/19 • 60 min

Just occasionally in life, you meet someone who changes your way of thinking about the world. The shift might be subtle or it might be seismic, but afterwards, you are never quite the same again.
This is what happened to me when my path crossed with that of Mo Gawdat who spoke to me about what it is to live a contented life in a way that had an immediate and practical impact on my outlook. Gawdat is the former chief business officer at Google X (Google's so-called 'moonshot factory' responsible for off-the-wall ideas such as self-driving cars and a balloon-powered internet) but for a long time in his life, despite having professional, personal and material success, he realised he wasn't happy. So he set about solving this problem by applying his scientific research skills to the issue: how can one individual be happy?
After 12 years, he developed an algorithm for happiness, eventually arriving at an equation which states simply that happiness is greater than, or equal to, your perception of the events in your life minus your expectation of how life should be. He even wrote a book about it, Solve For Happy, which became an international bestseller.
Gawdat joins me to talk about how that algorithm was put to the ultimate test when his beloved 21-year-old son Ali died in tragic circumstances. We talk about how to survive depression and grief; how happiness is like fitness; how to cope with break-ups; why social media is driving us further apart and what to do about it; why life is like a computer game; the illusion of time and why we should always, always be polite to Siri.
This episode is slightly longer than normal just because I didn't want to cut any of it. I hope you take as much from Mo's words as I have.
Solve For Happy: Engineer Your Path To Joy by Mo Gawdat is available to order here.
How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, recorded by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate Books
The Sunday Times Top 5 bestselling book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day, is out nowand is available to pre-order here.
*IMPORTANT NEWS KLAXON*
I’m doing a live How To Fail With Elizabeth Day event on 5th May at The Bridge Theatre in London with ZAWE ASHTON (who is amazing). There are still some tickets available here.
Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Chris Sharp @chrissharpaudio
4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks

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S9, BONUS EPISODE! How to Fail: Jamie Dornan

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

11/24/20 • 68 min

For our second and final bonus episode this season, I bring you the dulcet tones of actor Jamie Dornan. Most recently seen in The Fall (currently on Netflix and BBC iPlayer) playing a serial killer with an incongruously happy family life, Dornan is also well-known for starring as Christian Grey in all three of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie adaptations, which brought him to the worldwide attention of millions.
He joins me to talk about failures in acting, failures at school and a failure to sit still. We also discuss growing up in Northern Ireland at the heigh of The Troubles, male objectification, the death of his beloved mother from cancer at the age of 16 and the loss of four friends in a car crash shortly afterwards. We talk about grief, therapy and what it means to be a father. And we talk about why he walks on his tiptoes.
I think this one of my favourite ever interviews and I hope it brings you some comfort through these undoubtedly challenging times.
How To Fail will be back with a ONE-OFF SUPER SPECIAL MINISERIES at the end of the month, where I’m doing something a bit different...follow @howtofailpod on Instagram or Twitter to be the first in the know!
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I have a new book out! Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong contains two-and-bit years worth of accumulated wisdom from my fantastic podcast guests. I'd love it if you bought a copy. Also: they make EXCELLENT gifts imho.
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [email protected] You can buy our fantastic PODCAST MERCH here.
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Jamie Dornan: @jamiedornan

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S5 BONUS EPISODE! How to Fail: Philippa Perry and Sadie Jones

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

08/21/19 • 46 min

A live recording of a one-off How To Fail With Elizabeth Day special with authors Philippa Perry (The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read) and Sadie Jones (The Snakes) about How To Fail...At Families.
Recorded in front of a live audience at Foyle's bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London.
This episode is sponsored by Penguin Life, which publishes books by experts who share a passion for living well.
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Philippa Perry's The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read is available to order here.
Sadie Jones's The Snakes is available to order here.
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I am thrilled to be taking How To Fail on tour around the UK in October, sharing my failure manifesto with the help of some very special guests. These events are not recorded as podcasts so the only way to be there is to book tickets via www.faneproductions.com/howtofail
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The Sunday Times Top 5 bestselling book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day, is out now and is available here.
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This bonus episode of How To Fail With Elizabeth Day was hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Chris Sharp and Naomi Mantin and sponsored by Penguin Life. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
Sadie Jones @thatsadiejones
Philippa Perry @philippa_perry
Chris Sharp @chrissharpaudio
Naomi Mantin @naomimantin

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