by Benjamin Yeoh
Ben Yeoh chats to a variety of thinkers and doers about their curiosities, ideas and passions. If you are curious about the world this show is for you. I have extended conversations across humanities and science with artists, philosophers, writers, theatre makers, activists, economists and all walks of life. Disclaimer: Personal podcast, no organisational affiliation or endorsement.
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🇺🇲
Publishing Since
4/11/2021
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May 28, 2026
<p>Art historian and author Matt Lodder joins Ben Yeoh to explain why tattoo history is not a niche subject, but a way into art history, class, colonialism, gender, fashion, technology, archives, and the stories societies choose to preserve or forget.</p><p>Matt argues that tattoos have often been misunderstood because the historical record overrepresents people whose bodies were monitored: sailors, soldiers, prisoners and other surveilled groups. Meanwhile, tattooing among women, the middle classes, queer communities and “ordinary” people was often hidden under clothing, poorly documented, or preserved only in private archives.</p><p>The conversation moves from Matt’s childhood fascination with tattooing to the art-historical questions that animate his work. Rather than asking only whether tattoos are “art”, why people get tattooed, or what a tattoo “means”, Matt asks what tattoos reveal about style, taste, authorship, technology, reception and power.</p><p>They discuss myths around Captain Cook, the strange archival afterlives of tattooed skin, the invention of electric tattooing, Instagram’s acceleration of trends, AI-generated tattoo aesthetics, eye tattooing, and why museums still struggle to preserve an art form carried on living bodies.</p><p>It is a conversation about tattoos, but also about how culture gets remembered, flattened, misread and rediscovered.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2026/5/28/matt-lodder-on-tattoos-memory-and-the-history-written-on-skin" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Transcript: https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2026/5/28/matt-lodder-on-tattoos-memory-and-the-history-written-on-skin</a></p><p><br></p><p>Takeaways:</p><ul><li><p>Tattoo history is a way of reading wider human history, because tattoos sit at the intersection of image, body, identity, fashion, technology and social judgement.</p></li><li><p>Many tattoo myths persist because archives preserve the bodies of people who were surveilled, while more private or ordinary tattooing often left fewer records.</p></li><li><p>Matt pushes against the narrow question of whether tattoos are “art”, arguing that art history is more useful when it asks about style, authorship, taste and reception.</p></li><li><p>Tattooing was not simply “discovered” by Europeans through Captain Cook. That story reflects later colonial myth-making more than historical reality.</p></li><li><p>Instagram has not changed the basic fact that people copy visual culture, but it has radically accelerated the life cycle of tattoo trends.</p></li><li><p>AI tattoo imagery is technically influential, but Matt is sceptical of its aesthetics and ethics, especially when it shortcuts artistic authorship.</p></li><li><p>Matt’s practical advice: ask tattooed people who did the work, look at healed portfolios, choose artists by style, and do not treat people’s bodies as public property.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p></li></ul><p><br></p>
May 8, 2026
<p>What if medicine could protect us against many respiratory viruses at once? In this episode of <strong>Ben Yeoh Chats</strong>, Ben speaks with <strong>Brian Wang</strong>, Programme Director at <strong>ARIA</strong>, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency. Brian leads ARIA’s <strong>Sustained Viral Resilience</strong> programme, which is exploring whether we can harness the <strong>innate immune system</strong> to create a new kind of preventive medicine.</p><p>Brian explains why most people think about immunity through antibodies, vaccines and the adaptive immune system, while the innate immune system is broader, faster and potentially better suited to broad-spectrum protection. The challenge is that innate immunity has historically been harder to understand and harder to engineer safely.</p><p>Ben and Brian discuss whether sustained innate immuno-prophylactics, or <strong>SIPs</strong>, could one day provide months of protection against flu, RSV, coronaviruses and future pandemic threats from a single dose. They also explore AI for biology, synthetic biology, pandemic preparedness after COVID, medical regulation, the UK science base, and ARIA’s model for funding high-risk research.</p><p>A conversation about innate immunity, preventive medicine, pandemic resilience, AI in biology, and how breakthroughs actually happen.</p><p><a href="https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2026/5/8/brian-wang-on-innate-immunity-aria-and-a-new-kind-of-preventive-medicine" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Link to transcript: https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2026/5/8/brian-wang-on-innate-immunity-aria-and-a-new-kind-of-preventive-medicine</a></p><p><br></p><p>Contents</p><p>00:40 What we misunderstand about the immune system<br>02:04 Could one medicine protect against many viruses?<br>03:55 Innate versus adaptive immunity<br>06:18 Why innate immunity was overlooked<br>16:36 Breakthroughs in innate immunology<br>21:09 Why start with respiratory viruses?<br>25:47 How ARIA funds frontier science<br>29:27 Promising approaches to SIPs<br>34:13 AI for biology and its limits<br>38:15 Brian’s path to ARIA<br>39:16 Pandemic preparedness after COVID<br>44:03 Overrated / underrated<br>47:27 The UK science ecosystem<br>50:15 Medical regulation<br>53:31 GLP-1s and wider biomedical discovery<br>56:47 Upcoming ARIA calls<br>01:02:10 Advice for scientists and builders</p>
April 21, 2026
<p>Dan Wang joins Ben Yeoh for a conversation about culture, ambition, and what different societies choose to value. </p><p>They discuss why Silicon Valley can feel thinner-skinned and less culturally alive than it once did, why London remains rich in artistic life but struggles to build homes, infrastructure, and energy; and why China’s extraordinary physical capacity has come with tighter limits on cultural expression. </p><p>Along the way, they get into AI hype and real-world harms, censorship, food culture, neurodiversity in tech, opera, Shakespeare, theatre, writing craft, and Dan’s advice for ambitious young people. </p><p><a href="www.thendobetter.com/arts/2026/4/21/dan-wang-silicon-valley-culture-londons-building-crisis-and-chinas-cultural-squeeze" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Link to transcript and episode site: www.thendobetter.com/arts/2026/4/21/dan-wang-silicon-valley-culture-londons-building-crisis-and-chinas-cultural-squeeze</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapters</strong><br>00:00 Intro: Dan Wang and Breakneck<br>00:21 Why Tech Lacks Humour<br>02:09 Silicon Valley and the Arts<br>05:28 London Versus California<br>08:31 China, Censorship, and Culture<br>12:56 Food Culture in China and America<br>18:58 AI Hype, Doom, and Real Harms<br>23:04 Energy, Permitting, and AI Bottlenecks<br>30:58 Why Britain Struggles to Build<br>34:28 Neurodiversity in Silicon Valley<br>37:04 Cadets, Discipline, and Rule-Breaking<br>39:15 Philip Glass, Mozart, Verdi, and Wagner<br>42:04 The Most American Shakespeare<br>44:06 King Lear and Political Collapse<br>45:31 What Dan Learned From the Book Tour<br>48:09 Retyping Great Writers<br>52:56 Reading Plays Aloud<br>55:46 Why Arcadia Matters<br>58:29 Do Playwrights Write Differently?<br>01:01:38 Overrated, Underrated, Correctly Rated<br>01:08:00 Markets Versus Real Value<br>01:09:37 What Dan Is Reading Now<br>01:10:21 Advice for Your Twenties<br>01:13:24 Closing</p>
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Ben Yeoh chats to a variety of thinkers and doers about their curiosities, ideas and passions.
If you are curious about the world this show is for you.
I have extended conversations across humanities and science with artists, philosophers, writers, theatre makers, activists, economists and all walks of life.
Disclaimer: Personal podcast, no organisational affiliation or endorsement.
This podcast updates bi-weekly.
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