App Store

Google Play

Details page - Device banner - 894x1036

Step into an infinite world of stories

Listen and read

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

When I started How To Fail, I had a list of dream guests. Kirsty Young was on it. Not only because she’s one of the greatest interviewers of all time but also because her style of broadcasting (especially during her time on Desert Island Discs) is the standard I aspire to every week on this podcast.

Her intelligence, warmth and ability to listen - both to what is being said and what isn’t - are what mark her apart. It was an honour to be allowed to ask her the questions for a change and a delight to spend time in her company because she’s FUNNY too. Truly, the ideal woman.

We talk about her self-stated failure ‘to excite her birth father enough for him to stick around’, her failure as a quiz-show host and her failure to meditate. Along the way, we touch on her experiences interviewing the great and the good…and some who were neither. We talk about her anchoring of the late Queen’s funeral and Kirsty’s ability to sum up the mood of a nation. We discuss step-parenting, the liberation of age, clickbait, living with a chronic illness and why she wishes she’d run off with a Guatemalan tribesman (but settled for love at first sight with her husband, Nick Jones, instead).

HOW TO FAIL PRESENTED BY HAYU LIVE TOUR tickets: www.fane.co.uk/how-to-fail

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 Coordinator: Eric Ryan

Studio and Mix Engineer: Matias Torres Sole and John Scott

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kirsty Young - ‘The great benefit of age? You give less of a f**k.’

It was an honour to record this episode. We overuse words such as ‘hero’ and ‘inspiration’ but Sir Chris Hoy is both. Not only is he one of Great Britain’s most successful Olympic athletes (during a record-breaking career as a sprint cyclist, he won six gold medals, one silver medal, and 11 world championships) but he’s currently living with a Stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis. In September 2023, a seemingly routine trip to the doctor’s turned into a waking nightmare when he was given between two and four years to live. His beloved wife Sarra was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis a month later. And yet, these two extraordinary people say they are lucky.

Listen to this episode if you want to feel joy, hear wisdom and learn how to live with love in the face of death. Sir Chris - you’re an amazing human being. Thank you for spending this precious time with me.

If you or someone you love is going through a mental or physical health challenge, as Sir Chris Hoy says: you are not alone. You can call the Samaritans 24/7 on 116 123.`

All That Matters by Sir Chris Hoy 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 Coordinator: Eric Ryan

Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Lawrence-Tickell and Matias Torres Sole

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sir Chris Hoy - ‘There’s no cure but I still find hope’

I’ve hand-picked some of my favourite episodes of all time to revisit this Christmas, so today’s a very special one. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was my first EVER guest on this podcast when I launched in July 2018. A year after that, almost to the day, I welcomed her back to talk about how her life had changed in the interim [spoiler alert: she’d become a global superstar].

Phoebe talks about the craziness of those 12 months, during which she wrote and starred in Fleabag 2 (described as a televisual masterpiece by...well...almost everyone), made Killing Eve (described as a televisual masterpiece by...well...almost everyone) and worked her magic on the new James Bond movie.

It was a year that, from the outside, seemed to many of us to be the epitome of success. But what failures lay underneath the surface? What about those private moments of vulnerability and self-doubt we are so rarely privy to?

Phoebe joined me to talk about three failures from that year, including her failure to connect with her family, her failure to speak up for herself and her failure to Marie Kondo her bedroom. Along the way, we discuss what makes the perfect water bottle, filming THAT final scene in Fleabag (apparently the foxes were total divas), sexuality, exhaustion and why female creators are often unfairly assumed to be writing autobiography. And yes, the Meryl Streep apple crumble anecdote makes an(other) appearance.

HOW TO FAIL PRESENTED BY HAYU LIVE TOUR tickets: www.fane.co.uk/how-to-fail

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

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Failure Throwback: Phoebe Waller-Bridge

I’m revisiting some of my favourite episodes this Christmas. This week it’s Jamie Dornan, whose episode went out when we were in deepest, darkest lockdown, on 24th November 2020. This is what I wrote at the time:

You’ll know Jamie from starring on our screens in The Fall, Fifty Shades of Grey, and more recently The Tourist. 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 height 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.

HOW TO FAIL PRESENTED BY HAYU LIVE TOUR tickets: www.fane.co.uk/how-to-fail

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

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Failure Throwback: Jamie Dornan

The final episode in our run of throwback episodes is the one and only Geena Davis - this one went out on 9th November 2022. This is what I wrote at the time:

I am obsessed with today's guest and I'm not even going to pretend otherwise. Geena Davis, the star of such seminal movies as Tootsie, Beetlejuice, Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own and the underrated classic, The Long Kiss Goodnight, TURNED UP AT MY ACTUAL HOUSE to record a witty, warm and fascinating conversation.*

We talk about her feelings of imposter syndrome and self-doubt in the early days of her career, the fact that her failure as a model led to her first film role alongside Dustin Hoffman (who gave her incredible advice on how to defend herself against the amorous advances of her male co-stars) and the revelation of being diagnosed with ADD in her 40s. Along the way, we touch on height (she's 6ft! A tall woman like me!), the #MeToo movement, representation, almost becoming an Olympic archer, being an older mother and the seismic impact her friendship with Susan Sarandon had on Davis's life. I can't wait for you all to listen.

*yes, she met my ginger cat Huxley and they got along famously.

HOW TO FAIL PRESENTED BY HAYU LIVE TOUR tickets: www.fane.co.uk/how-to-fail

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

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Failure Throwback: Geena Davis

Actor, writer and director Stephen Merchant joins How To Fail this week and is reflective, fascinating and - yes - even funny. We talk about what he learned from Ricky Gervais when co-writing The Office, on feeling rattled turning 50 and how it’s hard to fail as a stand-up comedian (but he got over it).

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 Coordinator: Eric Ryan

Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Lawrence-Tickell

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stephen Merchant: ‘Most famous people are f**cked up’

Sharon Horgan is a writer, actor and director. She has an uncanny ability to craft complex, compelling and heartfelt characters who find comedy even in the darkest of situations: just like in her hit series Bad Sisters - which has won a Peabody Award and four Emmy nominations. You’ll also know her from the BAFTA-nominated show Pulling, plus starring and writing in the critically-acclaimed shows Catastrophe and Motherland.

Her failures include dropping out of art college and drama school, a failed audition and finally - a big one - her marriage.

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 Coordinator: Eric Ryan

Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Lawrence-Tickell

Producer: Hannah Talbot

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sharon Horgan - ‘My marriage failed but it had such a positive impact on my life’

Olivier and Emmy-award-winning Dame Harriet Walter must have acting in her blood: her uncle is the legendary horror star Christopher Lee, she turned down a place at Oxford in favour of drama school, and began her career at the Royal Shakespeare Company. On screen you’ll know her from Killing Eve, Ted Lasso, The Crown or as Lady Caroline in Succession - plus films including Sense and Sensibility, Atonement and The Last Duel. On stage she’s embodied everyone from Prospero to Elizabeth I.

Her failures include failing to master the piano or music theory, failing to get roles that she auditioned for, and finally failing to cook. I absolutely loved talking to this unbelievably smart and astute woman. Enjoy!

She Speaks by Harriet Walter 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 Coordinator: Eric Ryan

Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Lawrence-Tickell

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dame Harriet Walter - ‘I wish I’d had all this attention when I was 40’

Broadcaster and author Nick Grimshaw joins Elizabeth to talk about failing his maths GCSE, failing his business and communications degree, his failure to be present, and failing at New Year’s resolutions.

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 Coordinator: Eric Ryan

Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Lawrence-Tickell

Producer: Hannah Talbot

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nick Grimshaw - 'I told The Guardian I was gay before I told my parents'

Elizabeth and Mel get into the exciting, terrifying and sometimes overwhelming world of how on earth to meet someone. We discuss online dating and IRL encounters and how to navigate it all without losing our self-esteem.

Our guest this week is the brilliant Sharmaine Lovegrove, whom many of you might already know as one of the hosts of our previous podclass, How To Write A Book. Sharmaine went through a marital separation in her early 40s and threw herself into the apps. She joins us to share her many anecdotes and first-hand accounts of dating/meeting people post-break-up. Plus: what it means to attract what you put out into the world and how to stay resilient when facing the rejection that is an inevitable part of dating.

After you’ve listened, you can get all the resources and worksheets discussed at www.thepodclass.co.uk

Mel and Elizabeth are on a mission to revolutionise the world of dating! We want to make it a safe, fun and rewarding experience for everyone. If you’d like to join us, we’ve put together our very own How To Date Good Dating Pledge, consisting of 10 simple ‘Dating Commandments’. Have a look and sign up for free now at www.thepodclass.co.uk 

If you don’t want to wait each week for new episodes join our wonderful community of subscribers where you can binge all episodes now, ad free, all at once. Follow the link to sign up:

https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/

A Daylight and Sony Music Entertainment Production.

_______________________________________________________________________

Morrisons terms & conditions

More Card T&C’s: https://www.morrisons.com/more/terms-and-conditions/

General T&C’s https://groceries.morrisons.com/content/terms-and-conditions?srsltid=AfmBOor2xSfFNVtu22I9z5plcQkO6kId8jZ3NSdAF4X4Mt8JQkhO_ylQ
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How To Date: How to meet someone

John Bishop has been a hugely successful stand-up comedian for 25 years. Yet that wasn’t his first dream, which was to play football. We discuss his failure to do so professionally, his challenges at school, the working-class upbringing that shaped him and how comedy saved his marriage when he and his wife were at the ‘decree nisi stage’ of divorce. Plus: skincare tips and why making people laugh is like stripping. Yes, really.

Tickets - priced at £25 - for ‘John Bishop: 25’ UK tour, 1 Oct - 8 Nov: johnbishoponline.com

‘Those four letters - love - are loaded with so much’ - Elizabeth and John answer YOUR questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content

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

🌎 Get an exclusive 15% discount on your first Saily data plans! Use code [howtofail] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to to https://saily.com/howtofail ⛵

Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan

Mix Engineer: Matias Torres Sole

Senior Producer: Selina Ream

Executive Producer: Carly Maile

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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Bishop - ‘I’ve always wanted someone to say: you’re good enough’

Listen and read

Other podcasts you might like ...