Are you ready to embrace this Brave New World?

Who are the scientists, thinkers and futurists set on forging new paths for humanity? Meet them on this new podcast series which will help demystify breakthroughs and enhance everyday life

- Evgeny Lebedev

MY GREATEST inspiration growing up was my grandfather. He is still today. Vladimir Sokolov M was an ecologist, zoologist and a pioneer of the USSR's environmental movement; an early sustainability advocate who did much to advance the global interest in wildlife conservation.

As a child, I would frequently join him on field trips for months at a time, participating in scientific work along the steppes of Mongolia, deep in the Amazon Rainforest or the reefs of Vietnam.

My very first trip with him was to Chernobyl, where we went to hunt ducks with a Geiger counter to measure their radioactive levels following the 1986 disaster. I was nine at the time.

The next year, we travelled to Africa for the first time: the start of a lifelong love affair for me with the continent.

Dedushka and I camped out in the Ethiopian savannah where I helped to collect samples.

He was not the only scientist in the family. His wife, my grandmother, was a botanist and biochemist. Visiting Moscow's botanical gardens with her in the Eighties remains one of my happiest childhood memories. Their daughter, my mother, was a microbiologist at Moscow University. When I wasn't on faraway expeditions, I could often be found in her lab, observing science and discovery and constantly yearning for more.

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Bernard Marx put it thus: "I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly." I am lucky to have known such passion from a young age - and it is this passion that is behind The Standard's new podcast, named after Huxley's great book, and out tomorrow. I have long-held admiration for those eager to change the game. My guests on Brave New World are just that. Gabor Maté, who kicks things off, is transforming the way we tackle mental illness. Wim Hof, up later on, is an extreme athlete whose method of cold water immersion is providing relief for millions around the world.