Best Beginnings

George speaks with Matt Buttery, CEO of Triple P - the Positive Parenting Program - the world's largest evidence-based parenting programme, operating across more than 80 countries. They discuss why parenting is a public health issue, what the evidence really shows about what helps families, the 10-to-1 gap between Sure Start's peak investment and today's family hubs funding, and what 700,000 Australian families demonstrate about the power of digital delivery at scale. Matt also shares the personal story from his decade as a foster carer that first showed him the transformative power of simple, evidence-based strategies, and the question that has driven his work ever since.

Dr Dan Wuori, founder of Early Childhood Policy Solutions and author of the Grawemeyer Award-nominated book The Daycare Myth, joins Best Beginnings to make the case that separating childcare from education is a century-old myth that has cost children, families, and taxpayers an extraordinary amount. The conversation covers the neuroscience of when learning begins, what the UK's childcare expansion risks getting wrong, how to assess a childcare setting, and why we are already paying for the system children need, just in all the wrong ways.

Dr. Stephanie Culler, co-founder and CEO of Persephone Bioscience, joins George to share the findings from the My Baby Biome study, one of the largest examinations of the infant gut microbiome ever conducted in the United States. They discuss how antibiotics, C-section births and modern diet have disrupted the bacterial ecosystems babies need to develop healthy immune systems, and why even breastfed babies can be affected. Stephanie also explains what the science says parents and practitioners can actually do during the first thousand days of a child's life. Chapters: Tags:

Christian Guy, Executive Director of the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, joins Best Beginnings to talk about what it actually takes to shift a society around the earliest years of life. The conversation covers the Shaping Us framework, the ADB infant observation scale, what a visit to Reggio Emilia revealed about genuine long-term investment, why early childhood needs the urgency of climate change, and what parents most need to hear.

Professor Linda Mayes, Director of the Yale Child Study Center, joins George to explore what it really takes to change a child's story. They discuss the neuroscience of parenting, why stress overwhelms the reward of caring for a baby, how addiction co-opts the brain's reward system, and what the Minding the Baby intervention has shown about the limits and possibilities of early support. Linda also shares what decades of longitudinal research have taught her about the one thing she would bet a fortune on for every child.

Anxiety disorders are more common than depression in the perinatal period, but most parents and most clinicians still don't know it. In this episode, George speaks with Dr. Fiona Challacombe, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, on perinatal OCD, the misdiagnosis crisis, what attachment research shows about the parent-infant bond, and what effective treatment looks like.

Professor Claire Hughes, Cambridge's deputy director at the Centre for Family Research, joins Best Beginnings for a conversation shaped by more than twenty years of following the same children from the age of two. She talks about what siblings are actually doing for each other's development, why fathers' sensitivity grows through watching their partners, why the Millennium Cohort Study shows that children who like school in reception achieve significantly better outcomes a decade later, and why starting school is a bigger transition for parents than most people expect. One of the most research-rich conversations the podcast has had.

Dr Sanjiv Nichani OBE, consultant paediatric intensivist and author of Movement is Medicine, joins Best Beginnings to explain why young children's brains are evolutionarily defenceless against smartphones and social media and what the science says about the antidote. He shares what he started seeing in his own clinic, the neuroscience behind why the developing brain cannot resist addictive algorithms and why physical activity works on the brain's neurochemistry through exactly the same mechanisms as medication for ADHD and depression. He also discusses Healing Little Hearts, the charity he founded that has performed heart surgery on over 4,000 children around the world.

Season 2 of Best Beginnings starts 8 September. This trailer brings together six of the voices joining George this season, moving from the science shaping a child's biology to the systems and relationships shaping their everyday life. New guests will be confirmed throughout the season, with full episodes dropping from 8 September.

Camilla Reid, author of Pip and Posy and I Am Ready for School, joins Best Beginnings to talk about what children really need before they start school. In a wide-ranging conversation with George, she makes the case that school readiness is about confidence and self-management, not academic preparation, and explains why five minutes of shared reading a day from birth to five can add nearly 1.5 million words to a child's vocabulary. She also talks about screens, cortisol and the case for lending libraries in every early years setting.

Sally Hogg, founding director of Start Strong and founder of the 1001 Days Movement, joins Best Beginnings to explain why early childhood investment keeps cycling through without lasting change. She discusses the gap between what the British public believes about early years and what they demand from government, the "feckless parent" narrative that holds back political action, and what a new government should prioritise to make early childhood a permanent part of public infrastructure. She also reflects on building the 1001 Days Movement, working with the Royal Foundation and the Princess of Wales, and what gives her genuine optimism about the next ten years.

Lizzie Gaisman, CEO of the Richmond Project, joins George to discuss the findings from the UK's largest ever survey on how people feel about numbers and what it reveals about a confidence crisis that starts early, falls hardest on mothers and travels between generations. They cover why maths anxiety leads to real skill decline, why low-income mothers are both the most affected and the most motivated to change, and how our Everyday Maths programme is working to interrupt the cycle before children reach school age. A practical, evidence-led conversation about one of the most underweighted problems in early years.

Jodie Reed, co-CEO of Home Start UK, joins George to talk about what 9,000 trained volunteers do for over 60,000 families every year and why that work can't be replicated by statutory services. They cover why family isolation is a structural trend that didn't recover after the pandemic, what the data reveals about the families Home Start reaches, why most families will never engage with a formal parenting programme, and what Jodie's lockdown baby blind spot research found about the systems that protected families in a crisis. A clear-eyed, personal conversation about the gap between what family policy promises and what families actually need.

Dr Ingrid Katz, Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, joins George to talk about one of the most important questions in public health and early years: why don't people use support that's free and available? Drawing on 20 years of research in perinatal HIV clinics in southern Africa, she explores trust, stigma, community co-creation and the practice of humble inquiry — and what all of it means for reaching the families who need help most.

Lauren Seager-Smith, chief executive of the For Baby's Sake Trust, talks with George about the programme working at the intersection of domestic abuse and the first 1001 days of a child's life. In this episode, they discuss why pregnancy is a critical window for intervention, why working with fathers protects babies and what the evidence says about love, connection and the prevention of violence.

George spoke to Anna Heuschkel, policy researcher and early years lead at the Centre for Young Lives, about the state of childhood in England and what it will take to close the gaps. From the dismantling of Sure Start to the risks inside the government's 75% school readiness target, this is an honest conversation about what the evidence shows, why it keeps being set aside, and why getting early years policy right is one of the most consequential things government can do.

Reading enjoyment among children is at a 20-year low. Only one in three children now say they enjoy reading in their free time. So what will it actually take to reverse that decline and why does it start in the earliest years? In this episode, Babyzone CEO George Looker is joined by Laura Henry-Allain MBE, creator of Jojo and Gran Gran, the first Black British animation produced for CBeebies, National Year of Reading ambassador and one of only 49 educators worldwide named a Global Master Leader in early care and education. In this episode we talk about: The National Year of Reading and what going all in really means Why parental confidence is one of the biggest barriers to reading at home The Jojo and Gran Gran origin story and what it took to get a yes from the BBC Dyslexia, neurodiversity and a lifelong love of reading Why representation in children's books benefits every child What children understand that most adults have lost Best Beginnings is a podcast from Babyzone, the UK's fastest-growing early years charity, dedicated to giving every baby the best start in life. Subscribe for new episodes every Tuesday.

The 1001 Critical Days Foundation is one year old. In that time it has allocated £1.5 million in grant funding, published screen time guidance that has been cited internationally, supported the nationwide rollout of Dad Matters and begun advocacy work in Norway and South Africa. For Will Quince, its first ever Chief Executive, it is only the beginning. Will spent nine years as MP for Colchester and served as Minister for Early Education, holding further ministerial roles across health and welfare. He joins George Looker for this episode of Best Beginnings to talk about what the Foundation is building, why it matters and what it will take to make the case for the earliest years stick, not just in Westminster but globally. In this episode they talk about the research the Foundation has commissioned and what it reveals about the state of perinatal support in the UK, why 80% of the human brain is developed by the age of two and what that demands of policymakers, and why the birth rate data of 2026 should be a turning point for how this country invests in families. Best Beginnings is a podcast from Babyzone, the UK's fastest growing early years charity. Every week we speak to the researchers, practitioners and policymakers working to improve outcomes for babies and their families. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and if you found this useful share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Before a baby says their first word, they have already been communicating for weeks. Tracking faces, directing gaze, passing objects back and forth and waiting to see what happens next. These are not random behaviours. They are the foundations of everything language will become. Professor Paul Seedhouse is Emeritus Professor of Human Spoken Interaction at Newcastle University and one of the world's leading experts on the interaction engine: the universal communication system every human is born with that predates spoken language by almost 2 million years. In this episode Paul joins George to talk about what the interaction engine is, why every child must develop it before language can follow and what happens when they don't. They also discuss turn taking, screen time, the role of siblings and why the earliest interactions between a parent and their baby matter more than most people realise. Best Beginnings is a podcast from Babyzone about the first five years of life and why they shape everything that comes after. New episodes every Tuesday.

Sophie Livingstone MBE, CEO of Little Village and Chair of the Baby Bank Alliance, joins George Looker to talk about what essential items really mean for families experiencing poverty. From slings to high chairs, Sophie explains how practical support changes lives, why dignity is central to everything Little Village does, and what it means to design early intervention around families rather than systems. Sophie also reflects on the stigma around child poverty, the collective responsibility we all share for children's futures and what it would take to put Little Village out of business.