I chat with Professor Gloria Mark and Tyler Shores about digital wellbeing.

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Show Notes

I chat with the marvellous Professor Gloria Mark and Tyler Shores all about the idea of digital wellbeing. We take a dive into the world of digital shorthand, how emotions can be contagious over digital media and the effects that task switching has on the brain. Tyler chats about how multitasking and busyness can be seen as a sort of badge of honour and why that is problematic, and we end up with a fun discussion on the value of boredom and what we all do with our browser tabs.

Gloria’s website
Tyler’s website

Things mentioned in the episode:
The Zeigarnik Effect (handy little article on this)
Browser tab parking (handy little study)
BBC values based wellbeing framework
The Now Habit by Neil Fiore
Tabs by Ohm-I

I chat with renowned penetration tester Tinker Secor about information security awareness, how malicious hackers think, and how he made himself incredibly ill by attempting to push through burnout. We discuss how security and safety are becoming increasingly entwined and how important it is to take care of your mental and physical health and understand the perils of burnout.

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Show Notes

I chat with Tinker Secor former US Marine and penetration tester in information security and current security tester in Industrial Control Systems and Operational Technology. We chat about the role infosec has and it’s importance as well as the pressure the work puts on staff. Tinker discusses his experience of severe burnout that lead to an FND diagnosis and how important it is for management to take care of staff. We finish up with a brief chat about how security and safety are becoming intrinsically linked in the worl of OT and how online security is an ever changing set of goalposts that many people work very hard to keep up with.

This is a great journey through the perils of burnout and trying to push through it as well as a dive into the hidden world of infosec – something we all brush up against on a daily basis without realising.

Tinker Secor on Twitter

Malware Tech on Twitter
Malware Tech blog
Dallas Hackers Association
Dallas Hackers Association Twitter
Mental Health Hackers

Philip chats about how a health scare affected his reading and how in his search for therapeutic books dealing with grief and the fear of death he found it in the most unexpected places and books. He also talks about how audio has changed how he consumes certain types of books and how it has enriched his reading life.

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Show Notes

This week I chat with Philip Connor, Commissioning Editor at Penguin Random House Audio and host of the podcast What Editors Want. We chat about how Philip’s reading habits have changed and moved more into non fiction as well as how he found himself searching for himself in books on grief and dying. The importance and suprising nature of finding representation in literature and how audio has lent itself to him rereading books and now commissioning works in audio.

Joan Didion
CS Lewis
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
The Hidden Spring  by Mark Solms
Night’s Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton
Ubik by Philip K Dick
Emmanuel Carrère
Emma Southern
Mary Beard
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
F Scott  Fitzgerald
Virginia Woolf
Vladimir Nabokov
WG Sebald
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Why I Write by George Orwell

An insightful discussion about Creative Health and UCL’s new Master of Arts and Sciences in Creative Health with two fabulous guests heavily invested in a more holistic approach to health and with a great love of the arts.

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Show Notes
This episode introduces UCL’s new MASc (Master of Arts and Science) in Creative Health.  I chat with The Rt Hon. Lord Alan Howarth of Newport CBE and Professor Helen Chatterjee MBE who have spent many years working and researching in the area of Creative Health. We discuss what Creative Health is, how it can help people, and what the new Masters degree will cover.

Links to everything mentioned in this episode
UCL MASc in Creative Health
National Centre for Creative Health
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing – Creative Health:The Arts for Health and Wellbeing
Artlift
National Academy for Social Prescribing
Creative Families
Staying Well Project

I chat with Stella and Sasha about the balance between being a Dean, being a researcher, and how the UCL faculties of Arts and Humanities and Social and Historical Sciences have coped during the pandemic. We also chat about department pets.

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Show Notes
With me today are UCL’s Dean of Arts and Humanities, Stella Bruzzi, and the Dean of Social and Historical Sciences, Sasha Roseneil.
We talk about the difficulties of balancing work and life, how research fits into the role of a Dean, the effects of the pandemic on academic life and research, and the joy of being allowed to go out swimming again. We also talk about Pebbles the Warwick campus cat, Indiana Bones UCL’s Archaeology therapy dog and how all departments should have a pet. Sasha talks about her lovely dog, and Stella talks about her two lockdown kittens. We discuss plans for returning to physical university and how important having a holiday is, especially this year.
This is an enlightening and fun episode that hopes to give insight into the inner workings of being a university Dean in a time of great change.

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Show Notes
I get the chance to chat with Dave Player, founder of Team BRIT and KartForce, and Andy Tucker, one of Team BRIT’s racing drivers all about the motosport team and the role of disability.

Team BRIT is a competitive motor racing team consisting of disabled drivers. They are a competitive racing team, not a charity, and they race against teams of able-bodied drivers on a totally level playing field — something that no other sport can offer. They aim to make racing history and take a team to the world famous Le Mans 24hr endurance race, becoming the first ever British all-disabled team to do so.

We talk about how Team BRIT has pioneered accessible driving controls that suit all of their drivers and their varying levels of disability. We also chat about the role the team has played in helping many of their drivers to rediscover themselves after injuries, become better at managing their disabilities, and how many past members have gone on to achieve great things after being part of the Team BRIT family. We visit the current and past cars Team BRIT race in and have an exciting bit of news about their upcoming season.

This episode highlights Team BRIT’s vision to support, inspire and motivate people facing physical and psychological challenges by demonstrating what can be achieved through motorsport.

If you’d like more information about Dave, Andy, and Team BRIT, check out:
Team BRIT’s website
Team BRIT’s twitter

Photo by Polly Antonia Barrowman

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Show Notes
I chat to the lovely academic librarian Megan Rosenbloom this week all about her thoughts on therapeutic reading, death positivity, researching human skin books, and how Ulysses has stayed with her and should be read as part of a community.

There is so much in this episode, brilliant ideas about librarianship along with a hidden gem of an archive open to the public. Megan’s constant journey to read all the books that she can, and how being a medical librarian affected her way of looking at books. There is book history and book anecdotes galore in this glorious extra long episode!

I would also thoroughly recommed Megan’s fantastic book Dark Archives.
Megan’s photo for this episode by Polly Antonia Barrowman.

Authors, works, and places mentioned:
Authors
Ernest Becker

Works
Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom
A Cat’s Tale: A Journey Through Feline History by Baba the Cat and Paul Koudounaris
The Dreamsongs by John Berryman
Ulysses by James Joyce

Places
The Rosenbach – museum in Philadelphia
The Huntingdon Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens – in LA

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Show Notes
David Fox of MOXI Health and Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown join me to discuss physical and mental wellbeing in the workplace.
We talk about what wellbeing is and how to define it and why it’s important to be self aware of our physical and emotional states. understand the consequences of stress and poor wellbeing.

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Show Notes
This week we chat to Professor Raymond Mar of the MAR Lab (York University, Canada). Raymond is a Professor of psychology and employs personality, social, and cognitive psychology along with neuroscience to study imaginative experiences such as engaging with fictional narratives acrossdifferent forms media. We talk all about the effects of narrative on social cognition, some surprising results of his psychology studies, and how this relatively new research area is full of interesting topics to explore.

Link to the MAR Lab published papers
Highly recommend reading some of the papers published by Raymond’s lab.
Here are a few relevant papers:
Link to Elizabeth van Monsjou & Raymond Mar’s study on shipping mentioned in the episode
Link to Raymond Mar’s article in Current Directions in Psychological Science about Stories and the Promotion of Social Cognition
Link to an article on how humour appreciation and prodution have different predictors

Works mentioned in the podcast:
Poetics by Aristotle
Short stories from The New Yorker