Sketchplanations The Podcast: Explaining the world, one sketch at a time

Sketchplanations The Podcast launches its second series in January 2024, following the show’s successful 16-part debut in 2023.

Sketchplanations is an ever-growing collection of weekly illustrations posted online, that cleverly distils big complex ideas into digestible, bite-size sketches. The topic list is limitless and includes science, behavioural economics, wellbeing, nature, psychology frameworks, business models, cognitive biases, and even domestic life-hacks.

Episodes included in Series 2: The Law of Diminishing Returns and Dunbar’s Number. Sketchplanations started as side-project for design expert, author, and father of two, Jono Hey over a decade ago and now boasts over 800 sketches.

In this light-hearted, educational, explainer podcast series, Hey joins lifelong friends Tom Pellereau (2011 The BBC Apprentice Winner and on-going business partner of billionaire Lord Sugar) and Rob Bell (Engineer & TV Presenter on BBC, Channel 5, Amazon Prime and Discovery) as they pick a new sketch from the back-catalogue and share ideas and stories around that week’s topic.

Fuelled by their collective curiosity to better understand the world and our place within it, the fact that the trio have known each other for over 25 years means that the effortless dynamic between them is honest, warm and inclusive of listeners. Whether you’re an academic, a stark pragmatist or someone who simply enjoys ear-wigging a conversation amongst pals (and occasionally an expert guest); Sketchplanations The Podcast is highly relatable, easy listening with educational take-aways.

Hey comments “The way I think about it is that sooner or later, everything I know will be out there on Sketchplanations”. He continues: “the point of Sketchplanations originally was all about the visuals, but actually it’s about the ideas - so let’s talk more about these ideas”.

Broadcaster, Rob Bell, who writes, hosts and independently produces the podcast, adds: “As a group of friends, we’ve been having the conversations heard on the podcast for years about Jono’s sketches, so as an experiment we thought we’d try recording them. It turns out people really enjoyed listening, so here we go again for series 2. I’ve been broadcasting for 15 years, but this is the first time I’ve worked with two of my best mates - it’s bloody brilliant!”.

By no means is this a self-improvement podcast, but after listening, you might just find yourself noticing and more significantly, enjoying a host of easily missable but important behaviours, objects, phenomena and language found in everyday life a little more.