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PODCAST

BRAINLAND

Brainland the podcast navigates the boundary between neuroscience, the arts and humanities with the occasional wander off piste. It began as a neuro-historical exploration of the background to the Brainland the opera but quickly spread its wings. A Brainland Collective production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

science performing arts

All Episodes

1:07:57

OH FOR THE WINGS OF A DOVE: From choirboy to Operatic...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/08/30

In this specially extended episode of the podcast we speak with Jonathan Dove, one of the most performed contemporary opera/classical composers working today. He talks about his first steps in music, making up tunes on the piano well before taking formal lessons, his organ playing in church, often improvising, and the great contribution of London schools' music provision to his education. Jonathan tells us of his years he worked as an accompanist and arranger, particularly for operas, before

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51:02

RE-ANIMATING FREUD: Sigmund at the movies

BRAINLAND ·

2025/08/26

In this podcast we talk about the way Freud has been depicted in the movies, particularly the 1962 John Houston film 'Freud: The Secret Passion'. Ian discusses Houston's complicated relationship with the star, Montgomery Clift, Sartre's early involvement with the script, the film's 'film noir' feel, Jerry Goldsmith's music, with a detour into avant garde composers work on horror films. Ian characteries the film as a big game movie about the unconscious and we go on to discuss the 2011 David

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48:18

NEUROCINEMATICS: Cinema creators in the act of creation.

BRAINLAND ·

2025/08/22

Finnish film director Pia Tikka began studying the psychology and later the neuroscience of film making 25 years ago and is currently studying the experience and process of cinematographers and film editors.she talks about how writings of Soviet film maker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein has been particularly influential, particularly following his later interactions with neuropsychologist Luria, Gestalt psychologists and developmental psychologist Vigotsky. Pia talks about her concept of 'enactive

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41:45

WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS: Life, loss and musicology.

BRAINLAND ·

2025/08/15

In this podcast, Emily talks about how she came to write 'While the music lasts', her very personal account of her response to the death of her father, one of the key inspirations for her career choice. Her book documents how for several months after his death she avoided music as it made her angry and how eventually her musicologist training helped her navigate that period. This included an in depth look at the musical Boulanger sisters, the younger of whom died at 24. Emily talks about her father

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52:28

RE-ANIMATING FREUD: The Neuropsychoanalyst can see...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/08/12

Mark Solms is a clinical neuropsychologist, neuroscientist and psychoanalyst. In this wide-ranging conversation Marks talks about his career path and the influence of a brain injury in family member when Mark was a child. Mark talks about Freud's pre-psychoanalytic work as a neuroscientist and neurologist and his own ongoing retranslation of Freud's neuroscientific writing. We discuss Mark's discovery of the brain lesions that supress dreams (not those relating to REM sleep) and how this lead to his

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35:17

NEUROPSYCHIATRY REVISITED: The lost tribes.

BRAINLAND ·

2025/08/05

In this podcast Hugh Rickards reads his unpublished essay, 'The Lost Tribes of Neuropsychiatry', raising a number of interesting issues relating to neuropsychiatric services in the UK, and their lack. We chew over some of the issues raised including causes for the abandonment of poeple with chronic mental disorders arising directly from brain disease or damage, and whether the still small discipline of neuropsychiatry has facilitated this. Hugh talks about the historic shift away from the brain in

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52:07

YOUR BRAIN ON VISUAL ART: Exploring the world of...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/07/29

In this conversation we survey the field of contemporary visual neuroaesthetics. After defining terms, Ed talks through a current project by way of illustration before discussing the so-called 'aesthetic triad', dopamine and opioids, prediction models and computational neuroscience. We talk about neuro-investigation including recent techniques for processing an applications of EEG, a much more portable tool than fMRI and other scans.Participants:Ed Vessel, Eugene Surovitz Assistant Professor,

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53:37

TODAY IS ALWAYS YESTERDAY: Contemporary art through...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/07/09

In this wide ranging conversation Michael Asbury discusses the history of Brazil and the way contemporary art has interrogated the legacies of colonialism, slavery, treatment of indigenous peoples and management of natural resources, and, more recently, demonisation by right wing political figures. We also take a deep dive into the concept of 'anthropophagia' and the multi media 'Tropicalia' movement. Artists discussed including Meirelis, Oticica, Obá, Bispo do Rosario and the influence of art

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45:42

EXPANDING MINDSCAPES: A psychedelic world tour.

BRAINLAND ·

2025/06/24

In this wide ranging conversation Erika discusses the evidence for psychedelic use over millennia and world-wide. We talk about her investigation into and opportunity to speak with Humphry Osmond, the British psychiatrists who coined the term 'psychedelic', and introduced Aldous Huxley to mescaline. We roam from Canada to India, West Africa, Cold War Czechoslovakia and Sartre's bad trip before moving on to South America, the CIA and the influence of psychedelics on 60s and 70s music and art, ending

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1:03:54

IMPROV! When the process is the product

BRAINLAND ·

2025/06/18

David Escobebo has been involved in improv theatre for over 25 years, beginning in California and more recently in Chester, UK where he has recenty compelted his PhD thesis on the subject. We talk about the social and educational roots of improv is 1930s Chicago and it's evolution into performance/theatre leading to 'Second City, contrasted with the UK where it was a 'revolutionary act against theatre'. We talk about some of the leaders in the field and their views before David talk about how he

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49:14

PSYCHEDELIC OUTLAWS

BRAINLAND ·

2025/06/12

In this podcast, Joanna talks about working with and studying the patient support group 'Clusterbusters' for over a decade and their willingness to become 'outlaws' to obtain or grow illegal psilocybin to treat severe 'cluster' headaches too often after appalling treatment by the medical profession. We discuss the sociology and politics of psychedelics, and medical research generally, reflecting on the many forces that act on researchers in supposedly objective science. We also talk about the

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1:28:50

NEUROPSYCHIATRY: Second Coming or Unholy Alliance?

BRAINLAND ·

2025/06/11

In the special extended 50th episode of the podcast we bring together fourof the leading figures in Neuropsychiatry over the last 40 years for a wide ranging discussion that considers the varying definitions of neuropsychiatry, behavioural neurologyand neuropsychologyand who needs them.We discuss trailblazers in the field over the last century or so, includingSolomon Carter Fuller, an African American neuropathologist and neurologist who spent a year working with Alzheimer. Adolph Meyer, Charcot

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38:45

POETRY AND THE NEUROAESTHETICS OF SURVIVAL

BRAINLAND ·

2025/05/13

In this wide ranging conversation we talk about current views on the subject of 'aesthetics', as covering judgements well outside of the arts (choosing a partner, home etc..) and why studying brain and other physiological responses to individually meaningful poems can be a valuable research tool. We talk about the importance of piloerection responses (goosebumps-shivers) across a wide range of species and the tool Eugen and his colleagues have developed and used to measure this, alongside a range of

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57:17

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE AN ADDICT? A philosopher tells...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/05/08

If you want to get a clear view of a subject ask a philiosopher who has thought deeply about it. In this podcast, philosopher Owen Flanangan speaks frankly about his experience of addiction to alcohol and tranquillisers, 18 years on, and why he felt compelled to write about his experience and analysis of the problem. We talk about substance use and creativity, identity, social cohesive, marker of major life events and as a way to make life more interesting or tolerable. We talk about AA and NA and

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42:41

UPSIDE DOWN IN A HOOP: Processing change through...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/05/01

Tricia is a dancer, teacher and the author of two historical novels based around dance and dancers. In this podcast she talks about the experience of dancing solo and in a group and her writing. Her most recent book, and a related performance piece, is a memoir/journal of the final days of her parent that also tracks her regular attendance at a circus school alongside memories of her childhood and youth. We discuss her route into dance and the seminal influence of time spent learning contemporary in

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1:01:37

YOUR BRAIN ON DANCE: Navigating the complex world of...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/04/16

Following on from the last episode, today we consider how neurosicnetists investigate the brain in relation to dance. Peter talks about his background as a classical musician before branching into the psychology and then neuroscience of dance. He explains the complexity of the subject - the many variables at play during dance and between dancers - and what progress has been made to understand the neural basis of ance. We talk about therapeutic uses of dance and studies of social cohesion promoted by

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33:17

TRANSFORMING MENTAL STATES INTO DANCE: Evolving...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/04/01

Adrian Look, London-based choreographer and specialist in German 'Tanztheatre', talks about the origin of Tanztheatre within the 1920s Germany expressionist movement, tand aken to the next level by Pina Bausch in the modern era. Adrian talks about his unusual entry into dance, after a background of sport and philosophy. He discusses his reasons for coming to London, to be free of the over-respectful approach to the Bausch legacy, his experience as a dancer and his approach to choreography. We talk

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45:16

DECONSTRUCTING CONSCIOUSNESS: A philosophy for the...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/03/25

In this podcast philosopher Walter Veit outlines five elements of conscious experience he believes can be scientifically explored, why and when, in evolutionary terms, those elements first appeared. He explains his concept of 'pathological complexity', which of those five may have appeared first, and the ethical imperatives that underpin animal consciousness research. After talking about slugs, octopuses and corvids we end with a discussion on how his approach may assist in creating machines that

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50:19

EVOLUTIONARY BIOCHEMISTRY: New perspectives on the...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/02/21

In this podcast, Nick Lane talks about his path to research in the rarefied field of evolutionary biochemistry, before describing some of the pioneers of biochemistry and the aesthetic pleasure he takes in their experimental designs. He gives a jargon free account of the Krebs cycle, the central metabolic pathway of life and the basis of his most recent book 'Transformer'. We discuss the origin of mitochondria, the mind boggling number of chemical reactions that takes in them each second and the

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52:49

I FEEL I AM NOT IN MY PERFECT MIND: Alzheimer's and...

BRAINLAND ·

2025/02/08

In this podcast we complete the series on memory and cinema with an in-depth look at the way Alzheimer's disease/progressive cognitive impairment has been depicted in the movies this century. Raquel discusses her unusual route to studying and writing about this subject, via the work of a contemporary Spanish poet, then, before focussing on the three very different films listed below, we talk about the way different cultures represent the subject and the marked and predictable gender differences is

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64 results

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