Brain Food

Amelia Torode's Three stimulating diversions

The Ogilvy strategy chief shares three things she does to keep her thoughts flowing

By Creative Salon

25 November 2025

Runna

I am fascinated, inspired and slightly obsessed with the running coach app Runna. I think Runna is a forerunner of AI-enabled personalized learning. The AI and data intelligence is remarkable. It doesn't just give me a generic training plan – I feel it truly knows me, understanding my fitness level, adapting to my progress, and supporting me through every run. The app learns continually, adjusting my program based on how I'm performing, constantly analysing and optimizing my training.

For my last half marathon, I set myself a goal of 2 hours. Runna built a personalized plan around this, balancing speed intensity, recovery runs, and stretching. As I trained, Runna analysed my progress and told me I could finish faster than I had thought, adjusting the plan to aim for 1:50. I crossed the finish line in 1:50:57.

Runna got me thinking about goal power and how we set goals and achieve or exceed them. I know my teens would benefit from an individual AI coach to get them through their GCSEs! I think about how AI agents will be our professional work coaches, helping us learn more, aim higher and achieve faster than we ever imagined. We are just at the beginning.

Handbrake Off: The Athletic FC's Arsenal Podcast

I am evangelical about how deeply I believe that strategy is a team sport. Understanding how brilliant sports teams function allows me to reframe how I think about work and our strategy team, and obviously sports teams don't come more brilliant than Arsenal (in my opinion!). Handbrake Off is quite simply the best Arsenal podcast there is.

The psychology of teams fascinates me. Some teams with extraordinary individual players fail to gel (PSG with Mbappe, I'm thinking of you), whereas others with less standout players become world beaters. I want us to win the Champions League of strategic excellence!

Handbrake Off gets under the skin of teamwork. I also love that it's not a boys-club affair. Amy Lawrence, the respected football journalist and lifelong Gooner, is probably the most expert of the four hosts and brings an empathy and perspective that always engages me.

Finnish Sauna Culture

I absolutely love Finnish sauna culture and have spent time working and holidaying in Finland precisely to experience more of them. There is something incredibly special about how saunas are central to Finnish heritage, everyday life and cultural identity. 90% of Finns sauna at least once weekly. It's one of the world's great levellers—inside a sauna, everyone is equal. Famously, all Finnish embassies have a sauna for ambassadors to conduct Sauna Diplomacy with counterparts worldwide. (I have had a birthday party inside the Finnish Embassy’s diplomatic sauna but that’s another story)

In 2020, UNESCO inscribed Finnish sauna culture on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognizing it as an "integral part of the Finnish way of life, promoting mental and physical well-being, equality and social cohesion."

Saunas are multi-generational, with children having their first sauna as infants. Most houses and apartment blocks have saunas where families spend evenings together. Too hot for mobiles, the sauna is one of few places where people truly disconnect from technology and reconnect with others. I would love to see how we can integrate that culture into our own lives, personal or professional.