Podcasts about University College London

Public research university in London, England

  • 2,453PODCASTS
  • 5,253EPISODES
  • 42mAVG DURATION
  • 2DAILY NEW EPISODES
  • Sep 16, 2025LATEST
University College London

POPULARITY

20172018201920202021202220232024

Categories



Best podcasts about University College London

Show all podcasts related to university college london

Latest podcast episodes about University College London

The Modern Manager: Create and Lead Successful Teams
375: The Hidden Power of Groups That Makes Teams Succeed with Colin Fisher

The Modern Manager: Create and Lead Successful Teams

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2025 32:10


Groups are the foundation of everything we accomplish in work and life. Yet, as every manager knows, collaborating with others can be both the greatest strength and one of the hardest challenges. What makes some teams thrive while others struggle with friction and disengagement?Fortunately, this week's guest, Dr. Colin Fisher, has dedicated his career to uncovering the hidden processes that make groups effective. Colin is an associate professor of organizations and innovation at University College London's School of Management, a researcher featured in outlets like Harvard Business Review and BBC, and the author of The Collective Edge. His work sheds light on how managers can structure and guide their teams to harness the true power of collaboration.In this episode, Colin explores the dynamics that shape effective teamwork, from setting clear goals to designing the right team structure, establishing norms, and fostering psychological safety. Whether you're leading a small project team or a large organization, you'll gain practical insights on how to unlock your group's collective potential.Join the conversation now!Get FREE mini-episode guides with the big idea from the week's episode delivered to your inbox when you subscribe to my weekly email.Conversation Topics(00:00) Introduction(03:47) Why groups matter more than individual effort(07:02) The benefits of teamwork beyond accomplishing tasks(09:52) Two key levers to designing effective teamwork(13:42) Why structure matters more than pep talks(18:30) The critical elements of team composition, size, and boundaries(22:10) How to set goals that are clear, challenging, and consequential(26:50) Establishing effective norms for communication and psychological safety(29:21) About Colin's book and where to find more resources(31:05) [Extended Episode Only] Resetting your team's culture when things feel stuckAdditional Resources:- Get the extended episode by joining The Modern Manager Podcast+ Community for just $15 per month- Read the full transcript here- Follow me on Instagram here - Visit my website for more here- Upskill your team here- Subscribe to my YouTube Channel hereKeep up with Colin Fisher- Follow Colin on X (Twitter) here- Connect with Colin on LinkedIn here- Follow Colin on Instagram here- Visit Colin's website here- Check out his book The Collective Edge hereBonus: Meeting Makeover guidebookIn lieu of a guest offer this week, I'm offering members of Podcast+ access to my brand-new Meeting Makeover guidebook. It's a step-by-step workbook that empowers you to finally fix your bad meetings once and for all.To get this bonus and many other member benefits, become a member of The Modern Manager Podcast+ Community.---------------------The Modern Manager is a leadership podcast for rockstar managers who want to create a working environment where people thrive, and great work gets done.Follow The Modern Manager on your favorite podcast platform so you won't miss an episode!

The FOX News Rundown
The Challenge Of Curbing Political Violence

The FOX News Rundown

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2025 32:31


On September 10th, during an event at Utah Valley University, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking in front of a crowd of thousands. In the hours after the shooting, many Americans speculated on why it happened. The alleged shooter was later identified as Tyler Robinson, who mentioned to a family friend that he was responsible for the death of Kirk. Retired FBI special agent and CEO of The Brunner Sierra Group, Daniel Brunner, joined the Rundown to discuss what went into the FBI's investigation and catching Kirk's killer.    A new study finds a 42% drop in reading for fun in the U.S. over the past 20 years. That decline is disturbing to some, as reading can be beneficial to one's mental health, sleep habits, and general well-being. Dr. Jessica Bone, senior research fellow in statistics and epidemiology at University College London, explains what's driving the decline in reading, why this trend is problematic, and how we can reverse this trend.  Plus, commentary from the host of “Tomi Lahren is Fearless" on Outkick, Tomi Lahren. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Washington – FOX News Radio
The Challenge Of Curbing Political Violence

From Washington – FOX News Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2025 32:31


On September 10th, during an event at Utah Valley University, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking in front of a crowd of thousands. In the hours after the shooting, many Americans speculated on why it happened. The alleged shooter was later identified as Tyler Robinson, who mentioned to a family friend that he was responsible for the death of Kirk. Retired FBI special agent and CEO of The Brunner Sierra Group, Daniel Brunner, joined the Rundown to discuss what went into the FBI's investigation and catching Kirk's killer.    A new study finds a 42% drop in reading for fun in the U.S. over the past 20 years. That decline is disturbing to some, as reading can be beneficial to one's mental health, sleep habits, and general well-being. Dr. Jessica Bone, senior research fellow in statistics and epidemiology at University College London, explains what's driving the decline in reading, why this trend is problematic, and how we can reverse this trend.  Plus, commentary from the host of “Tomi Lahren is Fearless" on Outkick, Tomi Lahren. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tony Robinson's Cunningcast
We're back with …. New Discoveries at STONEHENGE

Tony Robinson's Cunningcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2025 44:03


Cunningcast is back and Tony is kicking off his new series with one of his favourite subjects, Stonehenge, where new discoveries show that once again this ancient site is throwing up new evidence. Tony has invited his old friend, leading archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, to discuss the Altar Stone's Scottish origins and its implications for understanding the monument's significance.Also joining the chat is top geologist Jane Evans, whose new research has revealed the fascinating story of an ancient cow's journey from Wales to Stonehenge. Through isotope analysis, Jane has uncovered insights about the Stonehenge cow's diet and origins, leading to broader implications about our ancient communities and their interactions.Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson | Instagram @sirtonyrobinsonProducer: Melissa FitzGerald With Mike Parker Pearson Professor of British Later Prehistory, University College London. He specialises in British and European prehistory from the Neolithic to the Iron Age; Stonehenge and the British Neolithic; the Beaker people of Bronze Age Europe; the archaeology of the Western Isles (Outer Hebrides); the archaeology of Madagascar and the Indian Ocean; the archaeology of death and burial; public archaeology and heritage. Parker Pearson, M. 2023. Stonehenge: a brief history. London: Bloomsbury Publishing | https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350192263 Parker Pearson, M., Bevins, R.I., Bradley, R., Ixer, R.E., Pearce, N.J.G. and Richards, C. 2024. ‘Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources'. Archaeology International 27: 113–37 | https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ai/article/id/3293/ Professor Jane Evans Geologist whose early career focused on using isotope methods for dating rocks. She later turned her expertise toward archaeology, pioneering the use of isotopes to study past human migration. Now retired, she holds honorary professorships in archaeology at the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester and is an Honorary Research Associate at the British Geological Survey. Throughout her career, Jane has used the chemical signatures preserved in human remains to reveal where people came from and how they moved across landscapes. Her work has been central to major discoveries — from uncovering stories at Stonehenge and identifying Viking remains near Weymouth, to contributing to the investigation of King Richard III. Evans, J., Pashley, V., Wagner, D., Savickaite, K., Buckley, M., Madgwick, R. and Parker Pearson, M. In press. Sequential multi-isotope sampling through a Bos taurus tooth to assess comparative sources in strontium and lead. Journal of Archaeological Science | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440325001189Follow us:Instagram @cunningcastpod | X @cunningcastpod | YouTube @cunningcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Radically Genuine Podcast
200. Psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff Exposes the Antidepressant Lies & Chemical Imbalance Myth

Radically Genuine Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2025 84:01


Joanna Moncrieff is a British psychiatrist and academic. She is Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London and a member of the Critical Psychiatry Network. She is the author of The Myth of the Chemical Cure and The Bitterest Pills, which are considered central texts in the critical psychiatry movement. Moncrieff is critical of mainstream psychiatry's medical model of mental illness. Professor Moncrief's 2022 paper in molecular psychiatry didn't just make waves, it created a tsunami. Leading a systemic review of five decades of research, she and her team definitively demonstrated what no one had dared to state so clearly that there's no convincing evidence that depression is caused by a serotonin imbalance or any chemical imbalance at all. This paper became one of the most widely read scientific papers in modern history, ranking in the top 5 % of all research ever tracked. The world took notice because the world needed to know. Her groundbreaking new book, Chemically Imbalanced, The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth, meticulously documents how an entire medical narrative was constructed without scientific foundation marketed to billions and defended by institutions that should know better.https://joannamoncrieff.com/2022 paper in molecular psychiatry on Serotonin Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth Dr. Roger McFillin / Radically Genuine WebsiteYouTube @RadicallyGenuineDr. Roger McFillin (@DrMcFillin) / XSubstack | Radically Genuine | Dr. Roger McFillinInstagram @radicallygenuineContact Radically GenuineConscious Clinician CollectivePLEASE SUPPORT OUR PARTNERS15% Off Pure Spectrum CBD (Code: RadicallyGenuine)10% off Lovetuner click here

All About Art
Running the ONLY student-led gallery in the UK with Eleanor Getting and Amelia Stallworthy

All About Art

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2025 48:39


Welcome to another episode of All About Art! In this episode, I sat down with Eleanor Getting and Amelia Stallworthy, who directed the Norman Rea gallery, the only student-run gallery in the UK which is located at the University of York.I speak to Eleanor and Amelia about how running this gallery at uni has positively impacted their careers now, and what it means to gain professional experiences early on. We talk about the ins and outs of how a student-run gallery functions, looking at how they got into their leadership roles and what it looked like when they were in them.This episode is produced in the hopes that maybe, if you are a student listening in, or if you are working at a university, that this can inspire more people to think about starting these initiatives that give tools to students BEFORE they graduate from their degrees in arts subjects.  Thank you Eleanor and Amelia for coming on the podcast!You can follow Eleanor on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/eleanorxgetting/You can follow Amelia on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/theartprin/You can check out the Norman Rea Gallery here: https://www.normanrea.com/YOU CAN SUPPORT ALL ABOUT ART ON PATREON HERE: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/allaboutart⁠FOLLOW ALL ABOUT ART ON INSTAGRAM HERE: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/allaboutartpodcast/⁠ ABOUT THE HOST:I am an Austrian-American art historian, curator, and writer. I obtained my BA in History of Art at University College London and my MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths, University of London. My specializations are in contemporary art and the contemporary art market along with accessibility, engagement, and the demystification of the professional art sector.Here are links to my social media, feel free to reach out:Instagram⁠ @alexandrasteinacker   ⁠Twitter ⁠@alex_steinacker⁠and LinkedIn at ⁠Alexandra Steinacker-Clark⁠This episode is produced at Synergy https://synergy.tech/the-clubhouse/the-podcast-studio/ COVER ART: Lisa Schrofner a.k.a Liser⁠ ⁠⁠www.liser-art.com⁠ and Luca Laurence www.lucalaurence.com 

EETimes On Air
Neurons Close the Loop from Insect Perception to Action

EETimes On Air

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2025


Professor Barbara Webb from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland​ uses physical robots to validate neural mechanisms in crickets, ants, and bees. In this episode of Brains and Machines, she talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about her work. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D'Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

The BMJ Podcast
Starvation in Gaza is a multi-generational disaster

The BMJ Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2025 36:45


In today's episode: Rethinking how we measure the harm caused by the  arms industry The life long, and multigenerational, impact of starvation in Gaza What is the appropriate focus on prevention in general practice?   The BMJ's international editor, Jocalyn Clark talks about a new series we've just published - examining the arms industry as a commercial determinant of health. Jocalyn also speaks to Mark Bellis, from Liverpool John Moores university about why he thinks it's time we take the impact of the arms industry on health seriously. The blockade on food reaching Gaza is in place again, risking more starvation. Elizabeth Mahase, clinical reporter for the BMJ, has been finding out about the acute, chronic, and generational impact on the palestinian population. She speaks to Jonathan Wells, professor of anthropology and paediatric nutrition at University College London, and Tessa Roseboom, professor of early development and health at the University of Amsterdam, Marie McGrath former head of the Emergency Nutrition Network, and Chris McIntosh, humanitarian response advisor for the charity, Oxfam. Finally, an analysis we published earlier this year made the case that "tsunami" of preventative care is destabilised the work of GPs. Helen Macdonald was at the Preventing Overdiagnosis conference and spoke to some of the authors - Minna Johansson, associate professor at University of Gothenberg, Stephen Martin, professor at UMass Chan Medical School, and Iona Heath, retired GP and former president of the RCGP.   Reading list Arms industry as a commercial determinant of health Starvation is a lifelong sentence: Gaza's civilians must be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law Sacrificing patient care for prevention: distortion of the role of general practice  

Coaching for Leaders
748: What Really Matters for Team Success, with Colin Fisher

Coaching for Leaders

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2025 38:23


Colin Fisher: The Collective Edge Since his days as a professional jazz trumpet player, Colin Fisher has been fascinated by group dynamics. Today, he is an Associate Professor of Organizations and Innovation at University College London's School of Management, researching the hidden processes of helping groups and teams in situations requiring creativity, improvisation, and complex decision-making. He is the author of The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups (Amazon, Bookshop). Most of us assume that the best thing we can do for our teams is to be a great coach as they're working together. That absolutely helps, but the research says that only 10% of group effectiveness is what we do once the team is underway. In this conversation, Colin and I explore how to get a lot better at the other 90%. Key Points The house always wins. If the structure isn't right for the team to succeed, little else matters in the long run. Leaders tend to put a majority of their attention on coaching teams in progress instead of the more significant work at the start of structuring and launching teams. Work on fixing structural problems before you focus on fixing the process. 60% of group effectiveness is determined by structure, 30% by the launch, and 10% by expert coaching. Critical for structure is the team goal being clear, important, and challenging. Be sure to document it. Negotiate roles, tasks, and jobs to support structure. Determine early how to articulate progress and highlight small wins. Ask yourself if the group has the right people to achieve the objective. Deep diversity that supports the goal is essential. Surface discussions about norms at the start, especially related to communication and storage of information. At a team launch, articulate why everyone is there, discuss key norms, and schedule a midpoint to reflect and align. Resources Mentioned The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups (Amazon, Bookshop) by Colin Fisher Interview Notes Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required). Related Episodes How to Create Team Guidelines, with Susan Gerke (episode 192) How to Generate Quick Wins, with Andy Kaufman (episode 496) How to Increase Team Performance Through Clarity, with David Burkus (episode 657) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

From The Green Notebook
Turning Groups into Teams: Lessons for Leaders with Dr. Colin Fisher

From The Green Notebook

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2025 64:40


Send us a textAuthor and researcher Dr. Colin Fisher joins Joe to unpack the invisible forces that shape teams—and why leaders ignore them at their own risk.From his book The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups Dr. Fisher shows how group dynamics are always at play, whether in a locker room, a boardroom, or on the battlefield. Together, he and Joe explore why the myth of the lone genius persists, why synergy is real but rare, and how leaders can deliberately build trust, structure, and norms that drive high-performing teams.In this episode, Joe and Colin explore:Why the Sorting Hat—not Voldemort—might be the real villain of Harry PotterHow the “lone genius” narrative hides the reality of collaboration behind breakthroughsWhat synergy really means and why structure—not speeches—is the leader's most powerful toolThe difference between relational trust and task-based trust, and why the latter makes teams excelHow group norms emerge, and why they can drive both excellence and dysfunctionWhy psychological safety is about the freedom to disagree, not surface-level harmonyHow power changes leaders' relationships with others—and why who you surround yourself with mattersWhether you're leading a squad, running a company, or just trying to understand the groups you're part of, this episode will change how you see teamwork—and give you tools to lead with intention.Since his days as a professional jazz trumpet player, Dr. Colin M. Fisher has been fascinated by group dynamics. As Associate Professor of Organizations and Innovation at University College London's School of Management, Colin's research has uncovered the hidden processes of helping groups and teams in situations requiring creativity, improvisation, and complex decision-making. He has written about group dynamics for both popular science and management audiences, and his work has been profiled in prominent media outlets such as BBC, Forbes, NPR, and The Times. Originally from Redmond, Washington, he now lives in North London with his wife and two children.A Special Thanks to Our Sponsors!Veteran-founded Adyton. Step into the next generation of equipment management with Log-E by Adyton. Whether you are doing monthly inventories or preparing for deployment, Log-E is your pocket property book, giving real-time visibility into equipment status and mission readiness. Learn more about how Log-E can revolutionize your property tracking process here!Meet ROGER Bank—a modern, digital bank built for military members, by military members. With early payday, no fees, high-yield accounts, and real support, it's banking that gets you. Funds are FDIC insured through Citizens Bank of Edmond, so you can bank with confidence and peace of mind. 

Addiction Audio
Nonmedical and medical ketamine use with Owen Bowden-Jones and Arun Sahai

Addiction Audio

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2025 20:09


In this episode, Dr Elle Wadsworth speaks to Professor Owen Bowden-Jones from Central North-West London NHS Foundation and Mr Arun Sahai from Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals NHS Trust, both in the UK. The interview covers an editorial they wrote with Professor Paul Dargan on responses to non-medical and medical ketamine use, including concerns about the increasing harms from illicit ketamine and excitement about the potential therapeutic value of ketamine. We apologise for the sound quality at points during this episode, but we promise its worth the listen! · Ketamine and its uses [01:15]· Why ketamine is listed as an essential medicine by the World Health Organisation [01:59]· The differing uses of ketamine: an essential medicine, a novel therapeutic drug, and a recreational drug [3:00]· Ketamine's damage to the urinary tract and the liver [04:30]· Available treatments for the physical harms of ketamine [07:45]· Whether substance use treatment services in the UK are fit-for-purpose when it comes to ketamine [11:06] · Some of the reasons why is ketamine a popular drug now [15:38]· The potential therapeutic value of ketamine for many disorders [17:29]· The importance of communicating information to people who use ketamine [19:19]About Arun Sahai: Mr Arun Sahai, PhD, FRCS (Urol), BSc (Hons.), is a Consultant Urological Surgeon in Functional urology (bladder dysfunction, incontinence, uro-neurology and urinary tract reconstruction) at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals NHS Trust and an Honorary Reader within King's College London. He is the current chair of the section of functional and reconstructive urology at the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS). He is the lead for undergraduate education in surgery for King's College London. His research interests include various aspects of benign bladder dysfunction and prostate cancer survivorship. He is active in both commercial and non-commercial clinical trials and has published more than 100 peer reviewed international papers and more than 15 book chapters. About Owen Bowden-Jones: Professor Owen Bowden-Jones CBE is a Consultant in Addiction Psychiatry at the CNWL Club Drug Clinic, London and an Honorary Professor at University College London. In 2010, Owen founded the CNWL Club Drug Clinic, an innovative service offering treatment for emerging drug problems, including novel psychoactive substances and club drugs. National roles include President of the Society for the Study of Addiction, Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Policy Fellow at the University of Cambridge, trustee at the charity Student Minds and Registrar at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Owen is the past-Chair of the Faculty of Addictions at the Royal College of Psychiatrists and was previously a national clinical adviser to Public Health England. Original editorial: Responding to medicinal and non-medicinal ketamine use https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70075The opinions expressed in this podcast reflect the views of the host and interviewees and do not necessarily represent the opinions or official positions of the SSA or Addiction journal. The SSA does not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of the information in external sources or links and accepts no responsibility or liability for any consequences arising from the use of such information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do Good To Lead Well with Craig Dowden
Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups with Colin Fisher

Do Good To Lead Well with Craig Dowden

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2025 57:25


Step into the fascinating world of group dynamics with our special guest, Colin Fisher, an associate professor at University College London and the creative mind behind the upcoming book, "The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups." Drawing from his rich experiences in research and consulting, Colin shares how groups can achieve greatness that far exceeds individual contributions. He highlights the importance of treating groups as unique entities, crucial for problem-solving and enhancing collaboration in daily and professional settings.Explore the secrets behind effective team composition as Colin guides us through the critical elements of social sensitivity, skill diversity, and intrinsic motivation. We underline the importance of forming teams with members who are socially aware and genuinely invested in their tasks. The discussion delves into empathy's role in team performance, offering actionable insights for leaders striving to build more cohesive and dynamic teams.We also tackle the complexities of remote and hybrid work environments and stress the importance of psychological safety, enabling team members to challenge norms without fear. From enhancing trust and communication to fostering adaptability, this conversation provides an evidence-informed roadmap for anyone seeking to unlock the full potential of their teams.What You'll Learn- Effective team composition through social sensitivity, skill diversity, and intrinsic motivation- The role of empathy in team performance and strategies for building cohesive, dynamic teams- The power of curiosity and inquiry in welcoming diverse perspectives and enhancing team dynamics- Challenges and opportunities in remote and hybrid work environments, emphasizing psychological safety and adaptability- Strategies for maximizing team clarity, alignment, and trustPodcast Timestamps(00:00) - The Power of Group Dynamics(15:09) - Effective Team Composition Through Social Sensitivity(20:21) - Improving Team Dynamics Through Inquiry(31:11) – Leading Remote and Hybrid Teams(42:16) - Maximizing Team Clarity and Alignment(50:31) - Dynamic Team Charters and Coaching InsightsKEYWORDSPositive Leadership, Group Dynamics, Team Success, Social Sensitivity, Intrinsic Motivation, Empathy, Remote Work, Psychological Safety, Building Trust, Improving Team Communication, Team Building, Establishing Clear Goals, Maximizing Alignment, Elevating Curiosity, Active Listening, Continuous Communication, CEO Success

Psychologists Off The Clock: A Psychology Podcast About The Science And Practice Of Living Well

Why do some groups spark energy and creativity while others feel draining and tense? Taking on this topic, we sit down with Colin Fisher, the author of The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups. We dig into what really sets groups apart from one-on-one partnerships, how social norms and psychological safety shape the way groups function, and why synergy can feel so unpredictable yet incredibly powerful.Colin shares stories and research from his book, busting some common myths about group dynamics, the risks of trying to “sort” people into roles, and how relaunching a team can reset unhealthy patterns. From jazz improvisation to Nobel Prize-winning teams, this conversation is packed with insights and practical takeaways for anyone who wants to get the most out of working and living with others.Listen and Learn: What makes a group different from a one-on-one relationship, and why does that difference matter?Why relying on “sorting hat” thinking like personality tests or rigid categories can limit group success and fuel unhelpful divisionsWhy we often overlook the power of groupsCan you spot the invisible norms shaping your group before they push you toward extreme or unhealthy behaviors?How can bringing in new perspectives or encouraging psychological safety keep your group balanced and open-minded?What is psychological safety?How can groups achieve that magical sense of synergy?Creating high-performing teamsRelaunching groups to reset unhealthy patterns and improve team dynamicsResources:Colin's Book: The Collective Edge: https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780593715345 Colins Website: https://colinmfisher.com/ Colin's Substack: https://colinmfisher.substack.com/Connect with Colin on Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinmfisher?originalSubdomain=ukhttps://www.instagram.com/trumpetfisher/ Undoing Project by Michael Lewis: https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780393354775 Work, Parent, Thrive by Yael Schonbrun: https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9781611809657 Social Intelligence Test: https://socialintelligence.labinthewild.org/mite/About Colin FisherSince his days as a professional jazz trumpet player, Colin Fisher has been fascinated by group dynamics. As Associate Professor of Organizations and Innovation at University College London's School of Management, Colin's research has uncovered the hidden processes of helping groups and teams in situations requiring creativity, improvisation, and complex decision-making. He has written about group dynamics for media outlets including BBC, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, NPR, and The Times. Related Episodes215. How to Change with Katy Milkman234. The Power of Us with Dominic PackerSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

SuperPsyched with Dr. Adam Dorsay
#280 Understanding Groups & Teams | Colin Fisher, PhD

SuperPsyched with Dr. Adam Dorsay

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2025 38:36


In this episode of SuperPsyched, Dr. Adam Dorsay interviews Dr. Colin Fisher, a professor at University College London's School of Management and author of 'The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups.' They discuss the dynamics of effective teams, debunk common myths about group work, and explore both the benefits and pitfalls of group dynamics. Key topics include the myth of the lone genius, the optimal size of a group, conformity pressures, and the dangers of polarization. Examples from sports, music, and corporate management illustrate their points. The conversation delves into the psychology behind team building and offers practical advice for fostering more successful and mindful group interactions.00:00 Welcome to SuperPsyched00:47 Introducing Dr. Colin Fisher03:45 The Myth of the Lone Genius05:17 Optimal Group Sizes and Social Loafing08:21 Real-World Examples of Group Dynamics19:29 Lessons from the Dream Team and Scream Team28:08 The Dark Side of Group Dynamics34:37 Final Thoughts and TakeawaysHelpful Links:Dr. Colin FisherThe Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups Book

Social Science Bites
Victor Buchli on Life in Low-Earth Orbit

Social Science Bites

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2025 15:52


As an anthropologist, Victor Buchli has one foot in the Neolithic past and another in the space-faring future. A professor of material culture at University College London, his research has taken him from excavations of the New Stone Age site at Çatalhöyük, Turkey to studies of the modern suburbs of London to examinations of life on -- and in service to -- the International Space Station. It is in that later role, as principal investigator for a European Research Council-funded research project on the "Ethnography of an Extraterrestrial Society," that he visits the Social Science Bites podcast. He details for interviewer David Edmonds some of the things his team has learned from studying the teams -- both in space but more so those on Earth -- supporting the International Space Station. Buchli describes, for example, the "overview effect." The occurs when which people seeing the Earth without the dotted lines and map coordinates that usually color their perceptions. "When you look down," he explains, "you don't see borders, you just see the earth in its totality, in a sense that produces a new kind of universalism." He also reviews his own work on material culture, specifically examining how microgravity affects the creation of things. "It is the case within the social sciences, and particularly within anthropology, that gravity is just assumed. And so here we have an environment where suddenly this one single factor that controls absolutely everything that we do as humans on Earth is basically factored out. So how does that change our understanding of these human activities, these sorts of human institutions?" Buchli has written extensively on material culture, serving as managing editor of the Journal of Material Culture, founding and managing editor of Home Cultures, and editor of 2002's The Material Culture Reader and the five-volume Material Culture: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. Other books he's written include 1995's Interpreting Archaeology, 1999's An Archaeology of Socialism, and 2001's Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past.

Mind-Body Solution with Dr Tevin Naidu
Karl Friston & Mark Solms: Is it Possible to Engineer Artificial Consciousness?

Mind-Body Solution with Dr Tevin Naidu

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2025 92:38


Professors Karl Friston & Mark Solms, pioneers in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and theoretical biology, delve into the frontiers of consciousness: "Can We Engineer Artificial Consciousness?". From mimicry to qualia, this historic conversation tackles whether artificial consciousness is achievable - and how. Essential viewing/listening for anyone interested in the mind, AI ethics, and the future of sentience. Subscribe to the channel for more profound discussions!Professor Karl Friston is one of the most highly cited living neuroscientists in history. He is Professor of Neuroscience at University College London and holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Zurich, University of York and Radboud University. He is the world expert on brain imaging, neuroscience, and theoretical neurobiology, and pioneers the Free-Energy Principle for action and perception, with well-over 300,000 citations. Professor Mark Solms is director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital (Departments of Psychology and Neurology), an Honorary Lecturer in Neurosurgery at the Royal London Hospital School of Medicine, an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, and the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. TIMESTAMPS:(0:00) - Introduction (0:45) - Defining Consciousness & Intelligence(8:20) - Minimizing Free Energy + Maximizing Affective States(9:07) - Knowing if Something is Conscious(13:40) - Mimicry & Zombies(17:13) - Homology in Consciousness Inference(21:27) - Functional Criteria for Consciousness(25:10) - Structure vs Function Debate(29:35) - Mortal Computation & Substrate(35:33) - Biological Naturalism vs Functionalism(42:42) - Functional Architectures & Independence(48:34) - Is Artificial Consciousness Possible?(55:12) - Reportability as Empirical Criterion(57:28) - Feeling as Empirical Consciousness(59:40) - Mechanistic Basis of Feeling(1:06:24) - Constraints that Shape Us(1:12:24) - Actively Building Artificial Consciousness (Mark's current project)(1:24:51) - Hedonic Place Preference Test & Ethics(1:30:51) - ConclusionEPISODE LINKS:- Karl's Round 1: https://youtu.be/Kb5X8xOWgpc- Karl's Round 2: https://youtu.be/mqzyKs2Qvug- Karl's Lecture 1: https://youtu.be/Gp9Sqvx4H7w- Karl's Lecture 2: https://youtu.be/Sfjw41TBnRM- Karl's Lecture 3: https://youtu.be/dM3YINvDZsY- Mark's Round 1: https://youtu.be/qqM76ZHIR-o- Mark's Round 2: https://youtu.be/rkbeaxjAZm4CONNECT:- Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Podcast: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/mindbodysolution- YouTube: https://youtube.com/mindbodysolution- Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu- Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu=============================Disclaimer: The information provided on this channel is for educational purposes only. The content is shared in the spirit of open discourse and does not constitute, nor does it substitute, professional or medical advice. We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of listening/watching any of our contents. You acknowledge that you use the information provided at your own risk. Listeners/viewers are advised to conduct their own research and consult with their own experts in the respective fields.

Somewhere on Earth: The Global Tech Podcast
When the Internet turns against you – Online abuse and AI privacy risks

Somewhere on Earth: The Global Tech Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2025 30:26


The Internet is unsafe if you're LGBTQ+ in Africa – and Big Tech isn't helping Being online should be empowering - but for LGBTQ+ communities across Africa, it's often dangerous. A new survey from digital rights group Access Now reveals how queer people are suffering harassment, threats, and abuse across social platforms. Instead of offering protection, major tech companies are turning a blind eye, leaving millions vulnerable. On this episode, we speak to Jaimee Kokonya, Africa Campaigner at Access Now, about the reality of digital life when simply logging on can put your safety at risk. Your AI browser extension could be spying on you Those handy AI browser assistants might be giving away more than they promise. A team at University College London has revealed that some of these popular extensions are quietly collecting highly sensitive data, including medical information and even social security details. We speak with Dr Anna Maria Mandalari, senior author of the study, about how these tools trade privacy for convenience, which extensions failed the test, and the one that actually passed. If you've installed one of these add-ons, you'll want to hear this before your next click. The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell and the studio expert is Ania Lichtarowicz. More on this week's stories: Digital Rights LGBTQ+ Africa Rainbow-burning: how social media companies increase risks for LGBTQ+ people in Africa AI web browser assistants raise serious privacy concerns Production Manager: Liz Tuohy Editor: Ania Lichtarowicz For the PodExtra version of the show please subscribe via this link: https://somewhere-on-earth-the-global-tech-podcast-the-podextra-edition.pod.fan/ Follow us on the socials: Join our Facebook group Instagram BlueSky   If you like Somewhere on Earth, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify   Contact us by email: hello@somewhereonearth.co Send us a voice note: via WhatsApp: +44 7486 329 484   Find a Story + Make it News = Change the World Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

KONCRETE Podcast
#328 - NASA Space Psychologist: What Astronauts Really See in Upper Orbit | Iya Whiteley

KONCRETE Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2025 185:08


Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Dr. Iya Whiteley is a space psychologist, training developer for astronauts and innovative baby book designer and illustrator. Iya's baby books attempt to give newborn babies the best possible start on our unique planet Earth. Iya is also a director of the Centre for Space Medicine at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London. SPONSORS https://harrys.com/danny - Get Harry's Trial Set for only $8 + a free gift. https://trueclassic.com/danny - Upgrade your wardrobe and save on True Classic today. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS https://x.com/iyawhiteley Toolkit for a Space Psychologist: https://a.co/d/1uOkag1 Earth Designs: Cosmic Baby Book: https://a.co/d/ilmOb34 FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Space psychology 09:48 - UFOs & Navy pilots 20:19 - Disabled children with telepathic abilities 35:34 - Cognitive engineering with pilots & firefighters 044:11 - Rapid knowledge transfer for surgeons 054:32 - Why airline crashes spiked in 2000 01:04:12 - Why pilots are the most depressed people 01:13:38 - Training astronauts for mars & moon missions 01:23:55 - Astronauts are learning telepathy for space 01:33:02 - We are born with more than 5 senses 01:50:18 - Psychological evaluations on astronauts 02:00:04 - Synesthesia 02:05:40 - #1 predictor of a child's success in life 02:16:30 - Creating a universal Earth language 02:20:11 - Most effective cure for depression 02:29:53 - Iya's involvement with aerospace contractors 02:40:17 - Astronauts with UFO experiences 02:47:24 - Breath work Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Talking Indonesia
Clara Siagian - Rusunawa and the State

Talking Indonesia

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2025 45:41


While Jakarta's eviction politics have often dominated headlines and grassroots campaigns, the experiences of those who have been relocated to rusunawa (social housing) complexes have remained largely invisible. Yet these families reveal how Indonesia's vision of urban modernity is being literally built into the architecture of everyday life, changing the ways people connect with each other and build their lives. In this episode of Talking Indonesia, host Tito Ambyo explores these tensions with guest Dr Clara Siagian, whose ethnographic research uncovers how social housing design enforces specific values of respectability on the urban poor - from banning certain cooking methods to restructuring family life itself. Clara Siagian did her PhD at the Australian National University and is senior researcher at the Center on Child Protection and Wellbeing at Universitas Indonesia as well as a postgraduate researcher at the University College London. Her research examines urban governance, childhood policy, and development through the perspectives of marginalised populations. In 2025, the Talking Indonesia podcast is co-hosted by Tito Ambyo from RMIT, Dr Elisabeth Kramer from the University of New South Wales, Dr. Jacqui Baker from Murdoch University and Dr Jemma Purdey from the Australia-Indonesia Centre.

Somewhere on Earth: The Global Tech Podcast
Your digital life is under threat. And the dangers are not always who you think.

Somewhere on Earth: The Global Tech Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2025 2:23


This week on Somewhere on Earth; The Global Tech Podcast… When the Internet turns against you. We hear how LGBTQ+ communities across Africa are being targeted with horrific abuse on social platforms – while Big Tech looks the other way. We speak to Access Now's Jaimee Kokonya on why being online is an act of bravery. And… is your AI assistant spying on you? Research from University College London shows some popular browser extensions are harvesting your most sensitive data. Professor Anna Maria Mandalari reveals which extensions failed the test, which one passed, and how to protect yourself. The tech stories that matter with Gareth Mitchell and Ania Lichtarowicz. Out this Tuesday at 2100BST. Subscribe to “Somewhere on Earth” wherever you get your podcasts. https://open.spotify.com/show/65YZwVfA03MSdZ3198yLdb https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/somewhere-on-earth-the-global-tech-podcast/id1713408769   Search for the PodExtra edition for even more in-depth analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Inside Story Podcast
Will Western nations face consequences for their stance on Gaza?

The Inside Story Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2025 24:45


Led by the US, Western weapons and support have been central to Israel's genocide in Gaza. UK and EU relations with Israel remain essentially unchanged despite the war. Is this complicity? And could there be legal consequences for Western nations and their leaders? In this episode: Michael Lynk, Former UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Yara Hawari, Co-director, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. Ralph Wilde, Professor, International Law, University College London. Host: Adrian Finighan Connect with us:@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook

Fun Kids Science Weekly
INFINITY OR NOT: Where the Universe Actually Ends! ✨

Fun Kids Science Weekly

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2025 28:09


It’s time for another adventure into the world of science on the Fun Kids Science Weekly! In this episode, we answer YOUR questions, dive into the science of recycling, and explore the most advanced computer in the world. First up, we learn about how Coral Reefs in Australia have suffered their worst bleaching on record, then discover about the most advanced computer in the world launched in Oxford. Finally Nina Jones from Kent Wildlife Trust joins Dan to unpack why our unusually hot summer is causing migrating birds to arrive too early. Next, it's time for your questions... Marley wants to know why do you wake up when you die in your dream, and Dr Francisco Diego from University College London answers Atlas’ question: ‘Is there an end to the universe’ In Dangerous Dan, we meet a new exotic and dangerous creature, revealing the secrets of its deadly abilities. In Battle of the Sciences, we dive into science behind recycling with the team behind the Talking Rubbish podcast. What do we learn about?· Coral reefs in Australia suffering their worst bleaching on record· The world's most advanced computer in Oxford· How hot weather is causing birds to arrive too early· The end of the universe· And in Battle of the Sciences… the science behind recycling All on this week’s episode of Science Weekly!Join Fun Kids Podcasts+: https://funkidslive.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

All About Art
Redefining Artist Management with Valeria Szabó Facchin, Founder of Studio Expanded

All About Art

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2025 70:39


Episode 78 of ‘All About Art': Redefining Artist Management with Valeria Szabó Facchin, Founder of Studio ExpandedIn this episode, I sat down with Valeria Szabó Facchin, Founder of Studio Expanded, a new artist management agency redefining the art ecosystem.I speak to Valeria about her previous professional experiences, notably as Founding Director of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation and how this impacts how she approaches business now. We delve into what it means to be an artist manager - from choosing the artists she works with, to liaising with partners and developing sustainable strategies for the creatives on her roster. We speak about the importance of understanding everything about an artist's career and practice when working with them, to thinking about potential collaborations and opportunities for them, and so much more.Thank you Valeria for coming on the podcast! You can follow Studio Expanded on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/studio_expanded_/You can check out Studio Expanded here: https://www.studioexpanded.com/YOU CAN SUPPORT ALL ABOUT ART ON PATREON HERE: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/allaboutart⁠FOLLOW ALL ABOUT ART ON INSTAGRAM HERE: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/allaboutartpodcast/⁠ ABOUT THE HOST:I am an Austrian-American art historian, curator, and writer. I obtained my BA in History of Art at University College London and my MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths, University of London. My specializations are in contemporary art and the contemporary art market along with accessibility, engagement, and the demystification of the professional art sector.Here are links to my social media, feel free to reach out:Instagram⁠ @alexandrasteinacker   ⁠Twitter ⁠@alex_steinacker⁠and LinkedIn at ⁠Alexandra Steinacker-Clark⁠This episode is produced at Synergy https://synergy.tech/the-clubhouse/the-podcast-studio/ COVER ART: Lisa Schrofner a.k.a Liser⁠ ⁠⁠www.liser-art.com⁠ and Luca Laurence www.lucalaurence.com Episode Production: Paul Zschornack

BBC Inside Science
Why wasn't the Russia mega earthquake as damaging as previous ones?

BBC Inside Science

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2025 28:20


A massive 8.8 magnitude mega earthquake off Russia's east coast sent tsunami waves into Japan, Hawaii and the US west coast this week. While more than two million people across the Pacific were ordered to evacuate, there were no immediate reports of any fatalities. After recent devastating tsunamis like the ones that hit Fukushima in 2011 and the Boxing Day disaster of 2004, we speak to Environmental Seismology lecturer at University College London, Dr Stephen Hicks, to ask why this quake didn't cause anywhere near the same amount of harm.After the Lionesses successfully defended their UEFA European Women's Championship, Marnie Chesterton is joined by Professor of Sports Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University, Steve Haake, to looks at the role data analysis and Artificial Intelligence is now playing in football and other sports.We hear about fascinating new research from primatologist Professor Cat Hobaiter at the University of St Andrews into what we can learn about our evolution by studying how apes eat alcoholic fermented fruit.And Marnie is joined by technology broadcaster Gareth Mitchell to hear about the week's brand new scientific discovery news, and for a musical homage to the satirical songwriter and mathematician Tom Lehrer, who died this week at the age of 97.Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producers: Clare Salisbury, Dan Welsh, Jonathan Blackwell Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

The Dissenter
#1142 Gül Salali: Social Dynamics, Culture, Mental Health and Physical Health in Hunter-Gatherers

The Dissenter

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2025 71:50


******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenterPayPal: paypal.me/thedissenterPayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuyPayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9lPayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpzPayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9mPayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on******Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoBFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Gül Salali is Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London. Her research focuses on human behavior and health using evolutionary approaches. Since 2013, she has been conducting fieldwork in the Congo rainforest studying Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers. Some of her most recent research projects include: social learning and cultural evolution; evolutionary approaches to health-related behavior and mental health; and hunter-gatherer diet, health and physical activity.​ In this episode, we start by talking about the transition from small-scale human groups to large-scale ones, and cumulative culture. We discuss Dr. Salali's work on the Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers, future discounting, Global WEIRDing, the social organization of hunter-gatherers, mental health in hunter-gatherers and industrialized societies, physical health, and alcohol consumption among hunter-gatherers. Finally, we talk aboutchildcare networks and learning to parent.--A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, VALENTIN STEINMANN, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, TED FARRIS, ROBINROSWELL, KEITH RICHARDSON, HUGO B., JAMES, JORDAN MANSFIELD, AND CHARLOTTE ALLEN!A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, NICK GOLDEN, CHRISTINE GLASS, IGOR NIKIFOROVSKI, AND PER KRAULIS!AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

The Leading Voices in Food
E281: Is ultra-processed food still food?

The Leading Voices in Food

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2025 47:42


Lots of talk these days about ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Along with confusion about what in the heck they are or what they're not, how bad they are for us, and what ought to be done about them. A landmark in the discussion of ultra-processed foods has been the publication of a book entitled Ultra-processed People, Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food. The author of that book, Dr. Chris van Tulleken, joins us today. Dr. van Tulleken is a physician and is professor of Infection and Global Health at University College London. He also has a PhD in molecular virology and is an award-winning broadcaster on the BBC. His book on Ultra-processed People is a bestseller. Interview Summary Chris, sometimes somebody comes along that takes a complicated topic and makes it accessible and understandable and brings it to lots of people. You're a very fine scientist and scholar and academic, but you also have that ability to communicate effectively with lots of people, which I very much admire. So, thanks for doing that, and thank you for joining us. Oh, Kelly, it's such a pleasure. You know, I begin some of my talks now with a clipping from the New York Times. And it's a picture of you and an interview you gave in 1995. So exactly three decades ago. And in this article, you just beautifully communicate everything that 30 years later I'm still saying. So, yeah. I wonder if communication, it's necessary, but insufficient. I think we are needing to think of other means to bring about change. I totally agree. Well, thank you by the way. And I hope I've learned something over those 30 years. Tell us, please, what are ultra-processed foods? People hear the term a lot, but I don't think a lot of people know exactly what it means. The most important thing to know, I think, is that it's not a casual term. It's not like 'junk food' or 'fast food.' It is a formal scientific definition. It's been used in hundreds of research studies. The definition is very long. It's 11 paragraphs long. And I would urge anyone who's really interested in this topic, go to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization website. You can type in NFAO Ultra and you'll get the full 11 paragraph definition. It's an incredibly sophisticated piece of science. But it boils down to if you as a consumer, someone listening to this podcast, want to know if the thing you are eating right now is ultra-processed, look at the ingredients list. If there are ingredients on that list that you do not normally find in a domestic kitchen like an emulsifier, a coloring, a flavoring, a non-nutritive sweetener, then that product will be ultra-processed. And it's a way of describing this huge range of foods that kind of has taken over the American and the British and in fact diets all over the world. How come the food companies put this stuff in the foods? And the reason I ask is in talks I give I'll show an ingredient list from a food that most people would recognize. And ask people if they can guess what the food is from the ingredient list. And almost nobody can. There are 35 things on the ingredient list. Sugar is in there, four different forms. And then there are all kinds of things that are hard to pronounce. There are lots of strange things in there. They get in there through loopholes and government regulation. Why are they there in the first place? So, when I started looking at this I also noticed this long list of fancy sounding ingredients. And even things like peanut butter will have palm oil and emulsifiers. Cream cheese will have xanthum gum and emulsifiers. And you think, well, wouldn't it just be cheaper to make your peanut butter out of peanuts. In fact, every ingredient is in there to make money in one of two ways. Either it drives down the cost of production or storage. If you imagine using a real strawberry in your strawberry ice cream. Strawberries are expensive. They're not always in season. They rot. You've got to have a whole supply chain. Why would you use a strawberry if you could use ethyl methylphenylglycidate and pink dye and it'll taste the same. It'll look great. You could then put in a little chunky bit of modified corn starch that'll be chewy if you get it in the right gel mix. And there you go. You've got strawberries and you haven't had to deal with strawberry farmers or any supply chain. It's just you just buy bags and bottles of white powder and liquids. The other way is to extend the shelf life. Strawberries as I say, or fresh food, real food - food we might call it rots on shelves. It decays very quickly. If you can store something at room temperature in a warehouse for months and months, that saves enormous amounts of money. So, one thing is production, but the other thing is the additives allow us to consume to excess or encourage us to consume ultra-processed food to excess. So, I interviewed a scientist who was a food industry development scientist. And they said, you know, most ultra-processed food would be gray if it wasn't dyed, for example. So, if you want to make cheap food using these pastes and powders, unless you dye it and you flavor it, it will be inedible. But if you dye it and flavor it and add just the right amount of salt, sugar, flavor enhancers, then you can make these very addictive products. So that's the logic of UPF. Its purpose is to make money. And that's part of the definition. Right. So, a consumer might decide that there's, you know, beneficial trade-off for them at the end of the day. That they get things that have long shelf life. The price goes down because of the companies don't have to deal with the strawberry farmers and things like that. But if there's harm coming in waves from these things, then it changes the equation. And you found out some of that on your own. So as an experiment you did with a single person - you, you ate ultra-processed foods for a month. What did you eat and how did it affect your body, your mood, your sleep? What happened when you did this? So, what's really exciting, actually Kelly, is while it was an n=1, you know, one participant experiment, I was actually the pilot participant in a much larger study that we have published in Nature Medicine. One of the most reputable and high impact scientific journals there is. So, I was the first participant in a randomized control trial. I allowed us to gather the data about what we would then measure in a much larger number. Now we'll come back and talk about that study, which I think was really important. It was great to see it published. So, I was a bit skeptical. Partly it was with my research team at UCL, but we were also filming it for a BBC documentary. And I went into this going I'm going to eat a diet of 80% of my calories will come from ultra-processed food for four weeks. And this is a normal diet. A lifelong diet for a British teenager. We know around 20% of people in the UK and the US eat this as their normal food. They get 80% of their calories from ultra-processed products. I thought, well, nothing is going to happen to me, a middle-aged man, doing this for four weeks. But anyway, we did it kind of as a bit of fun. And we thought, well, if nothing happens, we don't have to do a bigger study. We can just publish this as a case report, and we'll leave it out of the documentary. Three big things happened. I gained a massive amount of weight, so six kilos. And I wasn't force feeding myself. I was just eating when I wanted. In American terms, that's about 15 pounds in four weeks. And that's very consistent with the other published trials that have been done on ultra-processed food. There have been two other RCTs (randomized control trials); ours is the third. There is one in Japan, one done at the NIH. So, people gain a lot of weight. I ate massively more calories. So much so that if I'd continued on the diet, I would've almost doubled my body weight in a year. And that may sound absurd, but I have an identical twin brother who did this natural experiment. He went to Harvard for a year. He did his masters there. During his year at Harvard he gained, let's see, 26 kilos, so almost 60 pounds just living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But how did you decide how much of it to eat? Did you eat until you just kind of felt naturally full? I did what most people do most of the time, which is I just ate what I wanted when I felt like it. Which actually for me as a physician, I probably took the breaks off a bit because I don't normally have cocoa pops for breakfast. But I ate cocoa pops and if I felt like two bowls, I'd have two bowls. It turned out what I felt like a lot of mornings was four bowls and that was fine. I was barely full. So, I wasn't force feeding myself. It wasn't 'supersize' me. I was eating to appetite, which is how these experiments run. And then what we've done in the trials. So, I gained weight, then we measured my hormone response to a meal. When you eat, I mean, it's absurd to explain this to YOU. But when you eat, you have fullness hormones that go up and hunger hormones that go down, so you feel full and less hungry. And we measured my response to a standard meal at the beginning and at the end of this four-week diet. What we found is that I had a normal response to eating a big meal at the beginning of the diet. At the end of eating ultra-processed foods, the same meal caused a very blunted rise in the satiety hormones. In the 'fullness' hormones. So, I didn't feel as full. And my hunger hormones remained high. And so, the food is altering our response to all meals, not merely within the meal that we're eating. Then we did some MRI scans and again, I thought this would be a huge waste of time. But we saw at four weeks, and then again eight weeks later, very robust changes in the communication between the habit-forming bits at the back of the brain. So, the automatic behavior bits, the cerebellum. Very conscious I'm talking to YOU about this, Kelly. And the kind of addiction reward bits in the middle. Now these changes were physiological, not structural. They're about the two bits of the brain talking to each other. There's not really a new wire going between them. But we think if this kind of communication is happening a lot, that maybe a new pathway would form. And I think no one, I mean we did this with very expert neuroscientists at our National Center for Neuroscience and Neurosurgery, no one really knows what it means. But the general feeling was these are the kind of changes we might expect if we'd given someone, or a person or an animal, an addictive substance for four weeks. They're consistent with, you know, habit formation and addiction. And the fact that they happened so quickly, and they were so robust - they remained the same eight weeks after I stopped the diet, I think is really worrying from a kid's perspective. So, in a period of four weeks, it re-altered the way your brain works. It affected the way your hunger and satiety were working. And then you ended up with this massive weight. And heaven knows what sort of cardiovascular effects or other things like that might have been going on or had the early signs of that over time could have been really pretty severe, I imagine. I think one of the main effects was that I became very empathetic with my patients. Because we did actually a lot of, sort of, psychological testing as well. And there's an experience where, obviously in clinic, I mainly treat patients with infections. But many of my patients are living with other, sort of, disorders of modern life. They live with excess weight and cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes and metabolic problems and so on. And I felt in four weeks like I'd gone from being in my early 30, early 40s at the time, I felt like I'd just gone to my early 50s or 60s. I ached. I felt terrible. My sleep was bad. And it was like, oh! So many of the problems of modern life: waking up to pee in the middle of the night is because you've eaten so much sodium with your dinner. You've drunk all this water, and then you're trying to get rid of it all night. Then you're constipated. It's a low fiber diet, so you develop piles. Pain in your bum. The sleep deprivation then makes you eat more. And so, you get in this vicious cycle where the problem didn't feel like the food until I stopped and I went cold turkey. I virtually have not touched it since. It cured me of wanting UPF. That was the other amazing bit of the experience that I write about in the book is it eating it and understanding it made me not want it. It was like being told to smoke. You know, you get caught smoking as a kid and your parents are like, hey, now you finish the pack. It was that. It was an aversion experience. So, it gave me a lot of empathy with my patients that many of those kinds of things we regard as being normal aging, those symptoms are often to do with the way we are living our lives. Chris, I've talked to a lot of people about ultra-processed foods. You're the first one who's mentioned pain in the bum as one of the problems, so thank you. When I first became a physician, I trained as a surgeon, and I did a year doing colorectal surgery. So, I have a wealth of experience of where a low fiber diet leaves you. And many people listening to this podcast, I mean, look, we're all going to get piles. Everyone gets these, you know, anal fishes and so on. And bum pain it's funny to talk about it. No, not the... it destroys people's lives, so, you know, anyway. Right. I didn't want to make light of it. No, no. Okay. So, your own experiment would suggest that these foods are really bad actors and having this broad range of highly negative effects. But what does research say about these things beyond your own personal experience, including your own research? So, the food industry has been very skillful at portraying this as a kind of fad issue. As ultra-processed food is this sort of niche thing. Or it's a snobby thing. It's not a real classification. I want to be absolutely clear. UPF, the definition is used by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization to monitor global diet quality, okay? It's a legitimate way of thinking about food. The last time I looked, there are more than 30 meta-analyses - that is reviews of big studies. And the kind of high-quality studies that we use to say cigarettes cause lung cancer. So, we've got this what we call epidemiological evidence, population data. We now have probably more than a hundred of these prospective cohort studies. And they're really powerful tools. They need to be used in conjunction with other evidence, but they now link ultra-processed food to this very wide range of what we euphemistically call negative health outcomes. You know, problems that cause human suffering, mental health problems, anxiety, depression, multiple forms of cancer, inflammatory diseases like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's and dementia. Of course, weight gain and obesity. And all cause mortality so you die earlier of all causes. And there are others too. So, the epidemiological evidence is strong and that's very plausible. So, we take that epidemiological evidence, as you well know, and we go, well look, association and causation are different things. You know, do matches cause cancer or does cigarettes cause cancer? Because people who buy lots of matches are also getting the lung cancer. And obviously epidemiologists are very sophisticated at teasing all this out. But we look at it in the context then of other evidence. My group published the third randomized control trial where we put a group of people, in a very controlled way, on a diet of either minimally processed food or ultra-processed food and looked at health outcomes. And we found what the other two trials did. We looked at weight gain as a primary outcome. It was a short trial, eight weeks. And we saw people just eat more calories on the ultra-processed food. This is food that is engineered to be consumed to excess. That's its purpose. So maybe to really understand the effect of it, you have to imagine if you are a food development engineer working in product design at a big food company - if you develop a food that's cheap to make and people will just eat loads of it and enjoy it, and then come back for it again and again and again, and eat it every day and almost become addicted to it, you are going to get promoted. That product is going to do well on the shelves. If you invent a food that's not addictive, it's very healthy, it's very satisfying, people eat it and then they're done for the day. And they don't consume it to excess. You are not going to keep your job. So that's a really important way of understanding the development process of the foods. So let me ask a question about industry and intent. Because one could say that the industry engineers these things to have long shelf life and nice physical properties and the right colors and things like this. And these effects on metabolism and appetite and stuff are unpleasant and difficult side effects, but the foods weren't made to produce those things. They weren't made to produce over consumption and then in turn produce those negative consequences. You're saying something different. That you think that they're intentionally designed to promote over consumption. And in some ways, how could the industry do otherwise? I mean, every industry in the world wants people to over consume or consume as much of their product as they can. The food industry is no different. That is exactly right. The food industry behaves like every other corporation. In my view, they commit evil acts sometimes, but they're not institutionally evil. And I have dear friends who work in big food, who work in big pharma. I have friends who work in tobacco. These are not evil people. They're constrained by commercial incentives, right? So, when I say I think the food is engineered, I don't think it. I know it because I've gone and interviewed loads of people in product development at big food companies. I put some of these interviewees in a BBC documentary called Irresistible. So rather than me in the documentary going, oh, ultra-processed food is bad. And everyone going, well, you are, you're a public health bore. I just got industry insiders to say, yes, this is how we make the food. And going back to Howard Moskovitz, in the 1970s, I think he was working for the Campbell Soup Company. And Howard, who was a psychologist by training, outlined the development process. And what he said was then underlined by many other people I've spoken to. You develop two different products. This one's a little bit saltier than the next, and you test them on a bunch of people. People like the saltier ones. So now you keep the saltier one and you develop a third product and this one's got a bit more sugar in it. And if this one does better, well you keep this one and you keep AB testing until you get people buying and eating lots. And one of the crucial things that food companies measure in product development is how fast do people eat and how quickly do they eat. And these kind of development tools were pioneered by the tobacco industry. I mean, Laura Schmidt has done a huge amount of the work on this. She's at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in California. And we know the tobacco industry bought the food industry and for a while in the '80s and '90s, the biggest food companies in the world were also the biggest tobacco companies in the world. And they used their flavor molecules and their marketing techniques and their distribution systems. You know, they've got a set of convenience tools selling cigarettes all over the country. Well, why don't we sell long shelf-life food marketed in the same way? And one thing that the tobacco industry was extremely good at was figuring out how to get the most rapid delivery of the drug possible into the human body when people smoke. Do you think that some of that same thing is true for food, rapid delivery of sugar, let's say? How close does the drug parallel fit, do you think? So, that's part of the reason the speed of consumption is important. Now, I think Ashley Gearhardt has done some of the most incredible work on this. And what Ashley says is we think of addictive drugs as like it's the molecule that's addictive. It's nicotine, it's caffeine, cocaine, diamorphine, heroin, the amphetamines. What we get addicted to is the molecule. And that Ashley says no. The processing of that molecule is crucially important. If you have slow-release nicotine in a chewing gum, that can actually treat your nicotine addiction. It's not very addictive. Slow-release amphetamine we use to treat children with attention and behavioral problems. Slow-release cocaine is an anesthetic. You use it for dentistry. No one ever gets addicted to dental anesthetics. And the food is the same. The rewarding molecules in the food we think are mainly the fat and the sugar. And food that requires a lot of chewing and is slow eaten slowly, you don't deliver the reward as quickly. And it tends not to be very addictive. Very soft foods or liquid foods with particular fat sugar ratios, if you deliver the nutrients into the gut fast, that seems to be really important for driving excessive consumption. And I think the growing evidence around addiction is very persuasive. I mean, my patients report feeling addicted to the food. And I don't feel it's legitimate to question their experience. Chris, a little interesting story about that concept of food and addiction. So going back several decades I was a professor at Yale, and I was teaching a graduate course. Ashley Gerhardt was a student in that course. And, she was there to study addiction, not in the context of food, but I brought up the issue of, you know, could food be addictive? There's some interesting research on this. It's consistent with what we're hearing from people, and that seems a really interesting topic. And Ashley, I give her credit, took this on as her life's work and now she's like the leading expert in the world on this very important topic. And what's nice for me to recall that story is that how fast the science on this is developed. And now something's coming out on this almost every day. It's some new research on the neuroscience of food and addiction and how the food is hijacking in the brain. And that whole concept of addiction seems really important in this context. And I know you've talked a lot about that yourself. She has reframed, I think, this idea about the way that addictive substances and behaviors really work. I mean it turns everything on its head to go the processing is important. The thing the food companies have always been able to say is, look, you can't say food is addictive. It doesn't contain any addictive molecules. And with Ashley's work you go, no, but the thing is it contains rewarding molecules and actually the spectrum of molecules that we can find rewarding and we can deliver fast is much, much broader than the traditionally addictive substances. For policy, it's vital because part of regulating the tobacco industry was about showing they know they are making addictive products. And I think this is where Ashley's work and Laura Schmidt's work are coming together. With Laura's digging in the tobacco archive, Ashley's doing the science on addiction, and I think these two things are going to come together. And I think it's just going to be a really exciting space to watch. I completely agree. You know when most people think about the word addiction, they basically kind of default to thinking about how much you want something. How much, you know, you desire something. But there are other parts of it that are really relevant here too. I mean one is how do you feel if you don't have it and sort of classic withdrawal. And people talk about, for example, being on high sugar drinks and stopping them and having withdrawal symptoms and things like that. And the other part of it that I think is really interesting here is tolerance. You know whether you need more of the substance over time in order to get the same reward benefit. And that hasn't been studied as much as the other part of addiction. But there's a lot to the picture other than just kind of craving things. And I would say that the thing I like about this is it chimes with my. Personal experience, which is, I have tried alcohol and cigarettes and I should probably end that list there. But I've never had any real desire for more of them. They aren't the things that tickle my brain. Whereas the food is a thing that I continue to struggle with. I would say in some senses, although I no longer like ultra-processed food at some level, I still want it. And I think of myself to some degree, without trivializing anyone's experience, to some degree I think I'm in sort of recovery from it. And it remains that tussle. I mean I don't know what you think about the difference between the kind of wanting and liking of different substances. Some scientists think those two things are quite, quite different. That you can like things you don't want, and you can want things you don't like. Well, that's exactly right. In the context of food and traditional substances of abuse, for many of them, people start consuming because they produce some sort of desired effect. But that pretty quickly goes away, and people then need the substance because if they don't have it, they feel terrible. So, you know, morphine or heroin or something like that always produces positive effects. But that initial part of the equation where you just take it because you like it turns into this needing it and having to have it. And whether that same thing exists with food is an interesting topic. I think the other really important part of the addiction argument in policy terms is that one counterargument by industrial scientists and advocates is by raising awareness around ultra-processed food we are at risk of driving, eating disorders. You know? The phenomenon of orthorexia, food avoidance, anorexia. Because all food is good food. There should be no moral value attached to food and we mustn't drive any food anxiety. And I think there are some really strong voices in the United Kingdom Eating Disorder scientists. People like Agnes Ayton, who are starting to say, look, when food is engineered, using brain scanners and using scientific development techniques to be consumed to excess, is it any wonder that people develop a disordered relationship with the food? And there may be a way of thinking about the rise of eating disorders, which is parallel to the rise of our consumption of ultra-processed food, that eating disorders are a reasonable response to a disordered food environment. And I think that's where I say all that somewhat tentatively. I feel like this is a safe space where you will correct me if I go off piste. But I think it's important to at least explore that question and go, you know, this is food with which it is very hard, I would say, to have a healthy relationship. That's my experience. And I think the early research is bearing that out. Tell us how these foods affect your hunger, how full you feel, your microbiome. That whole sort of interactive set of signals that might put people in harmony with food in a normal environment but gets thrown off when the foods get processed like this. Oh, I love that question. At some level as I'm understanding that question, one way of trying to answer that question is to go, well, what is the normal physiological response to food? Or maybe how do wild animals find, consume, and then interpret metabolically the food that they eat. And it is staggering how little we know about how we learn what food is safe and what food nourishes us. What's very clear is that wild mammals, and in fact all wild animals, are able to maintain near perfect energy balance. Obesity is basically unheard of in the wild. And, perfect nutritional intake, I mean, obviously there are famines in wild animals, but broadly, animals can do this without being literate, without being given packaging, without any nutritional advice at all. So, if you imagine an ungulate, an herbivore on the plains of the Serengeti, it has a huge difficulty. The carnivore turning herbivore into carnivore is fairly easy. They're made of the same stuff. Turning plant material into mammal is really complicated. And somehow the herbivore can do this without gaining weight, whilst maintaining total precision over its selenium intake, its manganese, its cobalt, its iron, all of which are terrible if you have too little and also terrible if you have too much. We understand there's some work done in a few wild animals, goats, and rats about how this works. Clearly, we have an ability to sense the nutrition we want. What we understand much more about is the sort of quantities needed. And so, we've ended up with a system of nutritional advice that says, well, just eat these numbers. And if you can stick to the numbers, 2,500 calories a day, 2300 milligrams of sodium, no more than 5% of your calories from free sugar or 10%, whatever it is, you know, you stick to these numbers, you'll be okay. And also, these many milligrams of cobalt, manganese, selenium, iron, zinc, all the rest of it. And obviously people can't really do that even with the packaging. This is a very long-winded answer. So, there's this system that is exquisitely sensitive at regulating micronutrient and energy intake. And what we understand, what the Academy understands about how ultra-processed food subverts this is, I would say there are sort of three or four big things that ultra-processed does that real food doesn't. It's generally very soft. And it's generally very energy dense. And that is true of even the foods that we think of as being healthy. That's like your supermarket whole grain bread. It's incredibly energy dense. It's incredibly soft. You eat calories very fast, and this research was done in the '90s, you know we've known that that kind of food promotes excessive intake. I guess in simple terms, and you would finesse this, you consume calories before your body has time to go, well, you've eaten enough. You can consume an excess. Then there's the ratios of fat, salt, and sugar and the way you can balance them, and any good cook knows if you can get the acid, fat, salt, sugar ratios right, you can make incredibly delicious food. That's kind of what I would call hyper palatability. And a lot of that work's being done in the states (US) by some incredible people. Then the food may be that because it's low in fiber and low in protein, quite often it's not satiating. And there may be, because it's also low in micronutrients and general nutrition, it may be that, and this is a little bit theoretical, but there's some evidence for this. Part of what drives the excess consumption is you're kind of searching for the nutrients. The nutrients are so dilute that you have to eat loads of it in order to get enough. Do you think, does that, is that how you understand it? It does, it makes perfect sense. In fact, I'm glad you brought up one particular issue because part of the ultra-processing that makes foods difficult for the body to deal with involves what gets put in, but also what gets taken out. And there was a study that got published recently that I think you and I might have discussed earlier on American breakfast cereals. And this study looked at how the formulation of them had changed over a period of about 20 years. And what they found is that the industry had systematically removed the protein and the fiber and then put in more things like sugar. So there, there's both what goes in and what gets taken out of foods that affects the body in this way. You know, what I hear you saying, and what I, you know, believe myself from the science, is the body's pretty capable of handling the food environment if food comes from the natural environment. You know, if you sit down to a meal of baked chicken and some beans and some leafy greens and maybe a little fruit or something, you're not going to overdo it. Over time you'd end up with the right mix of nutrients and things like that and you'd be pretty healthy. But all bets are off when these foods get processed and engineered, so you over consume them. You found that out in the experiment that you did on yourself. And then that's what science shows too. So, it's not like these things are sort of benign. People overeat them and they ought to just push away from the table. There's a lot more going on here in terms of hijacking the brain chemistry. Overriding the body signals. Really thwarting normal biology. Do you think it's important to add that we think of obesity as being the kind of dominant public health problem? That's the thing we all worry about. But the obesity is going hand in hand with stunting, for example. So, height as you reach adulthood in the US, at 19 US adults are something like eight or nine centimeters shorter than their counterparts in Northern Europe, Scandinavia, where people still eat more whole food. And we should come back to that evidence around harms, because I think the really important thing to say around the evidence is it has now reached the threshold for causality. So, we can say a dietary pattern high in ultra-processed food causes all of these negative health outcomes. That doesn't mean that any one product is going to kill you. It just means if this is the way you get your food, it's going to be harmful. And if all the evidence says, I mean, we've known this for decades. If you can cook the kind of meal, you just described at home, which is more or less the way that high income people eat, you are likely to have way better health outcomes across the board. Let me ask you about the title of your book. So, the subtitle of your book is Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food. So, what is it? The ultra-processed definition is something I want to pay credit for. It's really important to pay a bit of credit here. Carlos Montero was the scientist in Brazil who led a team who together came up with this definition. And, I was speaking to Fernanda Rauber who was on that team, and we were trying to discuss some research we were doing. And every time I said food, she'd correct me and go, it is not, it's not food, Chris. It's an industrially produced edible substance. And that was a really helpful thing for me personally, it's something it went into my brain, and I sat down that night. I was actually on the UPF diet, and I sat down to eat some fried chicken wings from a popular chain that many people will know. And was unable to finish them. I think our shared understanding of the purpose of food is surely that its purpose is to nourish us. Whether it's, you know, sold by someone for this purpose, or whether it's made by someone at home. You know it should nourish us spiritually, socially, culturally, and of course physically and mentally. And ultra-processed food nourishes us in no dimension whatsoever. It destroys traditional knowledge, traditional land, food culture. You don't sit down with your family and break, you know, ultra-processed, you know, crisps together. You know, you break bread. To me that's a kind of very obvious distortion of what it's become. So, I don't think it is food. You know, I think it's not too hard of a stretch to see a time when people might consider these things non-food. Because if you think of food, what's edible and whether it's food or not is completely socially constructed. I mean, some parts of the world, people eat cockroaches or ants or other insects. And in other parts of the world that's considered non-food. So just because something's edible doesn't mean that it's food. And I wonder if at some point we might start to think of these things as, oh my God, these are awful. They're really bad for us. The companies are preying on us, and it's just not food. And yeah, totally your book helps push us in that direction. I love your optimism. The consumer facing marketing budget of a big food company is often in excess of $10 billion a year. And depends how you calculate it. I'll give you a quick quiz on this. So, for a while, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was by far the biggest funder of research in the world on childhood obesity. And they were spending $500 million a year to address this problem. Just by which day of the year the food industry has already spent $500 million just advertising just junk food just to children. Okay, so the Robert V. Wood Foundation is spending it and they were spending that annually. Annually, right. So, what's, by what day of the year is the food industry already spent that amount? Just junk food advertising just to kids. I'm going to say by somewhere in early spring. No. January 4th. I mean, it's hysterical, but it's also horrifying. So, this is the genius of ultra-processed food, of the definition and the science, is that it creates this category which is discretionary. And so at least in theory, of course, for many people in the US it's not discretionary at all. It's the only stuff they can afford. But this is why the food industry hate it so much is because it offers the possibility of going, we can redefine food. And there is all this real food over there. And there is this UPF stuff that isn't food over here. But industry's very sophisticated, you know. I mean, they push back very hard against me in many different ways and forms. And they're very good at going, well, you're a snob. How dare you say that families with low incomes, that they're not eating food. Are you calling them dupes? Are you calling them stupid? You know, they're very, very sophisticated at positioning. Isn't it nice how concerned they are about the wellbeing of people without means? I mean they have created a pricing structure and a food subsidy environment and a tax environment where essentially people with low incomes in your country, in my country, are forced to eat food that harms them. So, one of the tells I think is if you're hearing someone criticize ultra-processed food, and you'll read them in the New York Times. And often their conflicts of interest won't be reported. They may be quite hidden. The clue is, are they demanding to seriously improve the food environment in a very clear way, or are they only criticizing the evidence around ultra-processed food? And if they're only criticizing that evidence? I'll bet you a pound to a pinch of salt they'll be food-industry funded. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that a little more. So, there's a clear pattern of scientists who take money from industry finding things that favor industry. Otherwise, industry wouldn't pay that money. They're not stupid in the way they invest. And, you and I have talked about this before, but we did a study some years ago where we looked at industry and non-industry funded study on the health effects of consuming sugar sweetened beverages. And it's like the ocean parted. It's one of my favorites. And it was something like 98 or 99% of the independently funded studies found that sugar sweetened beverages do cause harm. And 98 or 99% of the industry funded studies funded by Snapple and Coke and a whole bunch of other companies found that they did not cause harm. It was that stark, was it? It was. And so you and I pay attention to the little print in these scientific studies about who's funded them and who might have conflicts of interest. And maybe you and I and other people who follow science closely might be able to dismiss those conflicted studies. But they have a big impact out there in the world, don't they? I had a meeting in London with someone recently, that they themselves were conflicted and they said, look, if a health study's funded by a big sugary drink company, if it's good science, that's fine. We should publish it and we should take it at face value. And in the discussion with them, I kind of accepted that, we were talking about other things. And afterwards I was like, no. If a study on human health is funded by a sugary drink corporation, in my opinion, we could just tear that up. None of that should be published. No journals should publish those studies and scientists should not really call themselves scientists who are doing it. It is better thought of as marketing and food industry-funded scientists who study human health, in my opinion, are better thought of as really an extension of the marketing division of the companies. You know, it's interesting when you talk to scientists, and you ask them do people who take money from industry is their work influenced by that money? They'll say yes. Yeah, but if you say, but if you take money from industry, will your work be influenced? They'll always say no. Oh yeah. There's this tremendous arrogance, blind spot, whatever it is that. I can remain untarnished. I can remain objective, and I can help change the industry from within. In the meantime, I'm having enough money to buy a house in the mountains, you know, from what they're paying me, and it's really pretty striking. Well, the money is a huge issue. You know, science, modern science it's not a very lucrative career compared to if someone like you went and worked in industry, you would add a zero to the end of your salary, possibly more. And the same is true of me. I think one of the things that adds real heft to the independent science is that the scientists are taking a pay cut to do it. So how do children figure in? Do you think children are being groomed by the industry to eat these foods? A senator, I think in Chile, got in hot water for comparing big food companies to kind of sex offenders. He made, in my view, a fairly legitimate comparison. I mean, the companies are knowingly selling harmful products that have addictive properties using the language of addiction to children who even if they could read warning labels, the warning labels aren't on the packs. So, I mean, we have breakfast cereals called Crave. We have slogans like, once you stop, once you pop, you can't stop. Bet you can't just eat one. Yeah, I think it is predatory and children are the most vulnerable group in our society. And you can't just blame the parents. Once kids get to 10, they have a little bit of money. They get their pocket money, they're walking to school, they walk past stores. You know, you have to rely on them making decisions. And at the moment, they're in a very poor environment to make good decisions. Perhaps the most important question of all what can be done. So, I'm speaking to you at a kind of funny moment because I've been feeling that a lot of my research and advocacy, broadcasting... you know, I've made documentaries, podcasts, I've written a book, I've published these papers. I've been in most of the major newspapers and during the time I've been doing this, you know, a little under 10 years I've been really focused on food. Much less time than you. Everything has got worse. Everything I've done has really failed totally. And I think this is a discussion about power, about unregulated corporate power. And the one glimmer of hope is this complaint that's been filed in Pennsylvania by a big US law firm. It's a very detailed complaint and some lawyers on behalf of a young person called Bryce Martinez are suing the food industry for causing kidney problems and type two diabetes. And I think that in the end is what's going to be needed. Strategic litigation. That's the only thing that worked with tobacco. All of the science, it eventually was useful, but the science on its own and the advocacy and the campaigning and all of it did no good until the lawyers said we would like billions and billions of dollars in compensation please. You know, this is an exciting moment, but there were a great many failed lawsuits for tobacco before the master settlement agreement in the '90s really sort of changed the game. You know, I agree with you. Are you, are you optimistic? I mean, what do you think? I am, and for exactly the same reason you are. You know, the poor people that worked on public health and tobacco labored for decades without anything happening long, long after the health consequences of cigarette smoking were well known. And we've done the same thing. I mean, those us who have been working in the field for all these years have seen precious little in the ways of policy advances. Now tobacco has undergone a complete transformation with high taxes on cigarettes, and marketing restrictions, and non-smoking in public places, laws, and things like that, that really have completely driven down the consumption of cigarettes, which has been a great public health victory. But what made those policies possible was the litigation that occurred by the state attorneys general, less so the private litigating attorneys. But the state attorneys general in the US that had discovery documents released. People began to understand more fully the duplicity of the tobacco companies. That gave cover for the politicians to start passing the policies that ultimately made the big difference. I think that same history is playing out here. The state attorneys general, as we both know, are starting to get interested in this. I say hurray to that. There is the private lawsuit that you mentioned, and there's some others in the mix as well. I think those things will bring a lot of propel the release of internal documents that will show people what the industry has been doing and how much of this they've known all along. And then all of a sudden some of these policy things like taxes, for example, on sugared beverages, might come in and really make a difference. That's my hope. But it makes me optimistic. Well, I'm really pleased to hear that because I think in your position it would be possible. You know, I'm still, two decades behind where I might be in my pessimism. One of the kind of engines of this problem to me is these conflicts of interest where people who say, I'm a physician, I'm a scientist, I believe all this. And they're quietly paid by the food industry. This was the major way the tobacco industry had a kind of social license. They were respectable. And I do hope the lawsuits, one of their functions is it becomes a little bit embarrassing to say my research institute is funded [by a company that keeps making headlines every day because more documents are coming out in court, and they're being sued by more and more people. So, I hope that this will diminish the conflict, particularly between scientists and physicians in the food industry. Because that to me, those are my biggest opponents. The food industry is really nice. They throw money at me. But it's the conflicted scientists that are really hard to argue with because they appear so respectable. Bio Dr. Chris van Tulleken is a physician and a professor of Infection and Global Health at University College London. He trained at Oxford and earned his PhD in molecular virology from University College London. His research focuses on how corporations affect human health especially in the context of child nutrition and he works with UNICEF and The World Health Organization on this area. He is the author of a book entitled Ultraprocessed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food. As one of the BBC's leading broadcasters for children and adults his work has won two BAFTAs. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

SpaceBase Podcast
Building New Zealand's Satellite Capability while Addressing the Space Debris Problem: An Interview with Ben Taylor

SpaceBase Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2025 37:29


An interview with Dr. Ben Taylor, a seasoned scientist, engineer, and project manager with over 15 years of experience delivering full-lifecycle space missions across the UK, Europe, and now Aotearoa New Zealand.Ben is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Te Pūnaha Ātea – Space Institute at the University of Auckland, and Co-Founder of Frond Space Systems, a startup offering compact and reliable end-of-life and deployable satellite systems.Previously, Ben held leadership roles at the Surrey Space Centre and University College London, where he helped design, build, test, and operate CubeSats like ALSat-Nano, InflateSail, and RemoveDebris — missions that pushed the boundaries of small satellite technology and active debris removal. He's also contributed to radiation detection research and calibration for the Galileo program, and has delivered presentations at major international space conferences.Ben holds a PhD in Space Science from the University of Surrey, is a certified project management professional, and has been interviewed by major media outlets on cutting-edge space topics.Hosts:  SpaceBase Founder Emeline Paat-DahlstromResourcesAuckland Programme for Space Systems - University of AucklandUniversity Nanosat Program - US Air ForceSupport the show

Woman's Hour
Gender pay gap, 'Spicy' fiction, Is rugby safe? Labubu dolls

Woman's Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 26, 2025 57:23


A new report, published yesterday, says Britain's gender pay gap has been understated for two decades, casting doubt on the accuracy of official figures. It's news that might have big implications for women in the workplace and policymakers, from the Bank of England to ministers, who rely on these figures to make big economic decisions. Alex Bryson is Professor of Quantitative Social Science at University College London and worked on this research and Amy Borrett is a data journalist at the Financial Times. They join Nuala McGovern to discuss.Have you heard of 'spicy' fiction? Now worth £53 million annually, it's a genre that's booming, with sales of romance fiction up 110% between 2023 and 2024 in the UK. And it's mainly women reading these erotic novels, giving them chilli ratings depending on the level of explicit content, and sharing their across Instagram and TikTok. So, what's driving this trend? Nuala is joined by author Emma Lucy, who writes spicy fiction, and Stylist journalist Shahed Ezaydi to find out more.If you've been watching any of the Women's Rugby World Cup you may have seen ‘high tech mouthguards being used. They will now flash red — signally potentially high impacts, requiring players to have a head injury assessment - a move aimed at improving player safety. So just how safe is it for women to play rugby? What are the risks of getting injured, and what is being done to mitigate those risks? We hear from Fi Tomas, women's sports reporter at the Telegraph, Dr Izzy Moore, reader in human movement and sports medicine at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Welsh Ruby Union injury surveillance project lead, and Dr Anna Stodter, senior lecturer in sport coaching at Leeds Beckett University, former Sottish International player, who also coaches the university team.With queues leading out of the shops and reports of thefts, we look at the lengths to which some women will go to get their hands on the latest style must-have, Labubu dolls.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Kirsty Starkey

It’s not that simple
PHYSICS, with Helen Czerski

It’s not that simple

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 26, 2025 34:49


In this interview, physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski demonstrates that physical patterns are all around us and explains how they shape our daily lives, connecting human life with the planet's life.For the researcher at University College London, understanding the world means investigating these invisible patterns, especially those affecting the ocean: how the wind transfers energy to the waves, how sound travels through water to reveal hidden objects and how gases circulate between the ocean and the atmosphere via gas bubbles at the surface of the ocean.In the North Atlantic, for example, the ocean is inhaling carbon dioxide, taking it out of the atmosphere, while in the tropics, it is exhaling it, releasing it back into the atmosphere. «There is a natural balance between the two», insists Helen. «And what is really useful about this is that we remove that gas from the atmosphere, where otherwise it would have contributed to global warming», she explains.«These tiny processes, breaking waves and bubbles at the surface of the ocean, may not seem particularly significant», she adds, «but if we measure all the respiration constantly taking place across the planet, we see that the ocean is actually doing us a huge favour».Those very same gas bubbles revolutionised fishing. Sonar systems, which send sound into the ocean, use them to locate fish. If a fish has a gas bubble in its swim bladder – as most fish do –the sound travels differently through the animal. However, the specialist warns, «this has contributed to overfishing and impacted biodiversity in the oceans».«The key takeaway from all my work is how incredibly interconnected systems are. In the natural world, what happens in one place has impacts in other places», affirms Helen Czerski, citing how even a whale's urine influences the balance of ecosystems.«Whales feed in the Arctic and migrate to the tropics to mate. While mating, they don't eat, but still produce urine, which deposits nitrogen on tropical islands», explains the BBC presenter. In places like Hawaii, meanwhile, they take shelter on reefs to rear their calves and end up fertilising these environments, which are not naturally nutrient-rich.But this movement of nutrients has been under threat since industrial whaling began. «We removed one of the mechanisms that made the rest of the system work», and if humanity continues to remove other parts, through overfishing and introducing pollutants to the ocean, «it's not just a chain that we'll be breaking, but a whole web of interactions», she maintains.For the time being, Helen Czerski assures that the planet still has the capacity to resist, but recognises that the balance between human life and that of the planet is changing. «I think we have an enormous problem, but also that we have the means to solve it». What we cannot do, however, is carry on dragging our feet –we must act.More on the topic:Helen Czerski's website Helen Czerski's publications (University College of London)«The fascinating physics of everyday life», (TED Talk)«Climate change: A possible future» (Documentary, FFMS) «On the trail of whales, orcas and dolphins in Portuguese waters» (Latest, FFMS)

Fast Keto with Ketogenic Girl
BREAKING: Landmark New Study on Weight Loss and Ultra-Processed Foods with Dr. Samuel Dicken

Fast Keto with Ketogenic Girl

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 25, 2025 82:17


IQBAR is offering our special podcast listeners 20% OFF all IQBAR products, plus get FREE shipping. To get your 20% off, text VANESSA to 64000. That's VANESSA to sixty-four thousand. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. In today's episode, Vanessa sits down with Dr. Samuel Dicken, Research Fellow at University College London's Centre for Obesity Research and lead author of the UPDATE Trial — the longest and most rigorous clinical study to date comparing ultra-processed (UPF) vs. minimally processed (MPF) diets. This landmark trial revealed a game-changing finding:

Woman's Hour
Stalking & heart disease, Cellist Laura van der Heijden, Periods

Woman's Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 25, 2025 54:25


Sussex-born cellist Laura van der Heijden won the BBC Young Musician of the Year at the age of 15 in 2012. She's now been named as the Royal Philharmonic Society's Instrumentalist of the Year and will be the Artist in Residence at this year's Lammermuir Festival in Scotland. Laura tells Kylie Pentelow about her repertoire, her love of the outdoors, and plays live in the studio.Women who've been stalked, or had to take out a restraining order, have a much higher chance of suffering a heart attack or stroke, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It followed a group of over 66,000 women across 10 years, and found those who'd been stalked were 41% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, with those who'd taken out a restraining orders 71% more likely to have heart problems. Kylie talks to Dr Audrey Murchland, one of the lead researchers who carried out the study, about their findings.Paula Byrne, Jane Austen's biographer and also a novelist, has spent 25 years researching and writing about the iconic author. In this 250th anniversary year of Austen's birth, she joins Kylie to talk about her new novel, Six Weeks by the Sea, which is her first fictional treatment of Austen and tells the story of how she imagines the most famous romance writer of all time first fell in love.New government guidance on sex education coming in next year doesn't include specific information on how children should be taught about menstruation, despite a new study showing children don't get enough lessons on the subject. Researchers from University College London claim children get at most two sessions on periods and they say boys and girls should be taught about it together. The study was led by Professor Joyce Harper from the UCL Institute for Women's Health. She joins Kylie along with Tina Leslie from the charity Freedom for Girls, which provides period education.Presenter: Kylie Pentelow Producer: Andrea Kidd

Tech Won't Save Us
Why Countries Must Fight For Digital Sovereignty w/ Cecilia Rikap

Tech Won't Save Us

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2025 59:38


Paris Marx is joined by Cecilia Rikap to discuss how countries' dependence on US tech companies is harming them and why they need to get serious about digital sovereignty.Cecilia Rikap is Associate Professor in Economics at University College London and Head of Research at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.Also mentioned in this episode:Cecilia (and Paris!) worked on a report offering a roadmap to reclaiming digital sovereignty.The UK Labour Party forced the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority to step down earlier this year to promote its pro-growth agenda.A Microsoft executive told a French Senate committee that it could not guarantee data sovereignty if the US government requested information stored on its servers in Europe.Alexandre de Moraes is the Brazilian judge pushing back against big tech.The US is sanctioning judges from the ICC (as well as Alexandre de Moraes)Support the show

Start Making Sense
Why Countries Must Fight For Digital Sovereignty | Tech Won't Save Us

Start Making Sense

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2025 59:38


Paris Marx is joined by Cecilia Rikap to discuss how countries' dependence on US tech companies is harming them and why they need to get serious about digital sovereignty.Cecilia Rikap is Associate Professor in Economics at University College London and Head of Research at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Radio Naukowe
#263 Technologie kwantowe – tu każdy rok otwiera nową epokę | prof. K. Pawłowski, prof. M. Szymańska

Radio Naukowe

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2025 50:31


Jeszcze nie osiągnęliśmy „kwantowej supremacji”, jak do tej pory komputer klasyczny jest w stanie pobijać urządzenia kwantowe – mówi w odcinku prof. Marzena Szymańska z University College London. Przy czym warto podkreślić tu słowo: jeszcze. W ostatnich latach mamy zauważalne przyspieszenie w dziedzinie technologii kwantowych, które najpewniej będzie rewolucyjne. Trwa wręcz wyścig o to, komu uda się rozwinąć je najlepiej i najpełniej.– Europa obudziła się. Kilka lat temu był taki słynny manifest naukowców, tak zwany Quantum Manifesto, w którym właśnie wskazano, że jeżeli nic nie zostanie zrobione, to może być za późno. Europa zaczęła finansować w sposób przemyślany i strategiczny kwantowe technologie – podkreśla prof. Krzysztof Pawłowski, dyrektor Centrum Fizyki Teoretycznej PAN. Wspólnie z prof. Szymańską, pracują nad powołaniem w ramach CFT Centrum Modelowania dla Technologii Kwantowych. Zespół ma rozwijać metody opisu skomplikowanych układów kwantowych i udostępniać je w formie otwartego oprogramowania. W dłuższej perspektywie centrum zajmie się również certyfikacją urządzeń kwantowych. – To wcale nie jest takie proste zadanie, żeby stwierdzić, jakie stany kwantowe ten komputer kwantowy czy inne urządzenie kwantowe naprawdę wytwarza – mówi prof. Pawłowski.Co ważne, chociaż liczne firmy chwaliły się już zbudowaniem komputera kwantowego, to taki „prawdziwy” jeszcze nie istnieje. – W dziedzinie używa się pojęcia „uniwersalny komputer kwantowy”, czyli taki, który byłby w stanie rozwiązać każdy problem, jeżeli się go odpowiednio zaprogramuje. Takiego uniwersalnego komputera kwantowego jeszcze nie ma, ale są urządzenia, które są w stanie rozwiązać pewną klasę problemów, czyli można to tak luźno nazwać: symulatory kwantowe – wyjaśnia prof. Szymańska. Na tych można pracować już dziś, oczywiście jeśli się potrafi, bo jest cały osobny dział nauki o programowaniu na urządzenia kwantowe.Obszary, w których kwantowe rozwiązania są szczególnie obiecujące, to m.in. różnego rodzaju modelowanie: działania leków, nowych materiałów, wojskowość, diagnostyka.W odcinku rozmawiamy o brakującej polskiej strategii kwantowej, o tym, czy kiedyś będzie można kupić kwantowy laptop, a także nieśmiało przebąkujemy, czy ze sztucznej inteligencji opartej o komputer kwantowy może wyłonić się świadomość.

All About Art
Hot Take / Art Break: Is the 50/50 Split Between Artists and Galleries Justified?

All About Art

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2025 15:17


✍️ Inspired by a recent essay by Damien Davis in Hyperallergic, the latest Hot Take / Art Break episode of the All About Art Podcast explores if the 50/50 split between artists and galleries is justified, or if it needs rethinking.For this episode, I cover what Davis writes in the article, as well as the reactions of others in the art world that I saw on social media - along with comments such as “If you cant afford being an artist, do something else.” (which had my BLOOD boiling!) -----YOU CAN SUPPORT ALL ABOUT ART ON PATREON HERE: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/allaboutart⁠FOLLOW ALL ABOUT ART ON INSTAGRAM HERE: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/allaboutartpodcast/⁠ ABOUT THE HOST:I am an Austrian-American art historian, curator, and writer. I obtained my BA in History of Art at University College London and my MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths, University of London. My specializations are in contemporary art and the contemporary art market along with accessibility, engagement, and the demystification of the professional art sector.Here are links to my social media, feel free to reach out:Instagram⁠ @alexandrasteinacker   ⁠Twitter ⁠@alex_steinacker⁠and LinkedIn at ⁠Alexandra Steinacker-Clark⁠COVER ART: Lisa Schrofner a.k.a Liser⁠ ⁠⁠www.liser-art.com⁠ and Luca Laurence www.lucalaurence.com

Heal Endometriosis Naturally With Wendy K Laidlaw
#168 - Dr Bimbi Fernando - The Healing Power of Kindness

Heal Endometriosis Naturally With Wendy K Laidlaw

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2025 59:47


In this week's Podcast, Wendy K Laidlaw speaks with Dr. Bimbi Fernando, who is a Consultant Transplant Surgeon, Associate Professor at University College London, and the author of his new book called The Forgotten Compass. From the chaos of the Covid pandemic frontlines, Dr. Bimbi Fernando shares how kindness from others became a surprising compass during those extremely challenging times. Together, Wendy & Dr Bimbi explore how the global pandemic became a catalyst for emotional reconnection, community appreciation, and a renewed commitment to highlight kindness acts in both medicine and everyday life. Dr. Fernando reflects on the emotional toll of transplant surgery and the profound ripple effects of organ donation, and how a simple moment (standing with his family on the doorstep during the “Clap for Carers”) shifted his worldview forever. You'll hear about: The emotional awakening sparked by the pandemic Why kindness is more than a virtue - it's a vital life skill Dr Bimbi's Sri Lankan roots and the legacy of generosity in his family How self-kindness and imperfection can lead to deeper healing His vision for a purposeful retirement and a more compassionate healthcare model This is a powerful episode for anyone seeking hope, connection, or a reminder that kindness (to yourself first - and then others), is both healing and transformative. You can learn more and read about Dr Bimbi's book "The Forgotten Compass". Available from Amazon.co.uk https://amzn.to/3HnrVsB   #DrBimbiFernando, #HealingThroughKindness, #TheForgottenCompass, #KindnessMatters, #CompassionInMedicine, #WendyKLaidlaw #TheEmotionologist #EmotionologistPodcast, #EmotionalHealing, #CovidFrontlineStories

Aphasia Access Conversations
Episode 131: Math + Aphasia: A Conversation with Tami Brancamp and Dave Brancamp

Aphasia Access Conversations

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2025 56:40


In this episode you will discover: Math IS Language - It's in Our Wheelhouse Math has syntax (order of operations), semantics (number meanings), and involves memory and executive function - all areas SLPs already assess and treat. If you can help with language, you have transferable skills for math therapy. Start Simple with What You Have You don't need special materials or extensive math training. Use a deck of cards, dice, and real-life examples like restaurant receipts. Make numbers "friendly" (round $18.72 to $20) and let clients show you multiple ways to solve problems. Address Your Own Math Anxiety First Most SLPs feel uncomfortable with math, but clients need this support for life participation (paying bills, calculating tips, telling time). Acknowledge your discomfort, start with basics you DO know, and remember - if you avoid it, you can't help your clients who want to work on it. If you've ever felt your palms get sweaty when a client asks for help with numbers, this conversation is for you. Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Katie Strong, a faculty member at Central Michigan University where I lead the Strong Story Lab. I'm today's host for an episode that might just change how you think about math anxiety - both your own and your clients'. We're featuring Tami Brancamp and Dave Brancamp, who are doing pioneering work at the intersection of aphasia and mathematics. Before you hit pause because you're having flashbacks to algebra class, stay with me! This research shows us that the language of math is exactly that - language - which puts it squarely in our wheelhouse as SLPs. We'll explore how to support our clients with aphasia who are struggling with everyday math tasks like counting change, telling time, or balancing a checkbook. And yes, we'll tackle the elephant in the room: addressing our own math insecurities so we can show up confidently for our clients. Let me tell you about our guests. Tami Brancamp is an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine and founder of the Aphasia Center of Nevada. Her research focuses on identity in aphasia and rehabilitating everyday math skills. Dave Brancamp spent over 15 years as a junior high math teacher and later became Director of Standards at the Nevada Department of Education. Together, they co-founded Aphasia + Math, where they're exploring how language and mathematics intersect for people with aphasia. Okay now let's get this Aphasia + Math conversation started! Katie Strong: Tami and Dave, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited for you to be here today.   Dave Brancamp: Thank you.   Tami Brancamp: We are both super excited to have a chance to talk about things that are different, right?   Katie Strong: Right. I do have to say, I don't know if it was a rash, but I did get a little bit nervous coming into the conversation, because I think I may be one of those SLPs that feel a little bit uncomfortable with math.   Tami Brancamp: Well, this SLP also is uncomfortable with math, so we can be uncomfortable together. And we'll let the math dude guide us through some of the things.   Dave Brancamp: And it will be fun. By the time you're done, I want to see that smile that you have on your face.   Katie Strong: Well, let's jump in and have you share a little bit about how you came to researching aphasia and math.   Tami Brancamp: Well, I have loved working with people who have aphasia since the beginning of my graduate studies. And then probably, like most of us, there's a few clients who've really hit your heart. One of them, I don't recall her name, and that's okay, but she had a stroke, had aphasia. She had had great recover physically, and her language was quite good, some anomia. But she's a banker, and she could not process numbers, and she was angry. I'm a newbie, I didn't understand the emotional piece of stroke survivor, aphasia. can't do my job well. But she was angry, and I felt so helpless. I didn't know what to do to help her. You know, I could pull a workbook off the shelf or something, but it didn't feel right. You know, she could do calculations, but couldn't do her job. And I always felt so very, very helpless over the years.   And the other part that came to start looking at this was teaching in a speech pathology program, undergrad and grad. And in class, maybe we're doing an averaging or something to get a score. I'm not sure if we start talking math, and I would see these students, and their eyes would just like, pop up, like, “Oh my gosh, she's asking me to do math.” And like, deer in the headlights. So I'm like, “What is this?” Every semester, I would do kind of an informal survey when we would do a little bit of math, and I say, “Okay, so how many of you don't do math? Raise your hand or are afraid of math?” And it would be at least two thirds to three quarters of the class every single semester, and I'm like, “Okay, there's something here.” Like, if I'm afraid of math, how am I going to help my clients remediate that in an efficient way? Right? I'm going to avoid it. If I can, I'll go do other things that are important.   So those were, like, the two big things, and then happened to be married to a math dude. And I wondered why are we not combining our skill sets? Because I would come home and I would share with Dave. I'm like “Dave, the majority of my students are afraid to do math or uncomfortable doing math.” And it's not complicated math. We're not talking quadratic equations or things I don't even know what they mean anymore. And we would talk about it a little bit, and we talk about math attitudes and perceptions and how we develop our math skills. And I'm like, “There's something here.”But I was never taught, how do you remediate number processing? Calculations? right? But yet, I would have multiple clients say, “Hey, Tammy, I can't do numbers.” “Yeah, how do I do this?” And there really wasn't anything the literature that told me how to do it. So, I would talk to Dave, and then, just over the years, I'm like, “Okay, we need to do something with this. We really do.” And I don't know what that means, because I'm not most comfortable with math, it is not my passion. We're very opposite. I think I shared like, Dave has math and fun in the same language, and then in the same sentence, I'm like, “they don't go together in my brain.” So we're very, very opposite. But you know, you can speak for yourself how you grew up and you had to learn how to embrace math, and having good teachers helped when we were younger, and having poor teachers or teachers with different attitudes also left a lasting impression. But when you think about it, whether it's, you know, cooking, driving, banking, living, going to grocery store, restaurants, everything we do all the time, it all involves numbers to some impact, you know, to some effect. And our folks with aphasia, again, not everybody, but the majority of them, will still have an impact with acalculia, difficulty processing numbers and calculating and transcoding, you know, saying, saying the numbers. So, we started to look at it.   I did have a had a gift of time with Audrey Holland. So that was my beautiful, like, for many of us, a mentor, you know, she had her three-pronged stool, like the different parts of aphasia. And Dave and I started dividing it up, like, what were the parts we thought involve, you know, aphasia and numbers. And we did think about the math and language math skills, making it fun, but also those influencing elements, like attitudes and perceptions. So, we started just like, “How do we look at this?” Because it's really overwhelming just from the beginning, you know, and just pulling that workbook off the shelf didn't do it for me. You're allowed to speak on that. (Laughter)   Dave Brancamp That's one of my passions, obviously, the whole math side. But pulling a workbook is an unfortunate because if someone starts to practice something wrong, they'll repeat that practice, and now it's very difficult to get them to correct a habit, basically that you've formed. And sometimes it's like that nails on a chalkboard? That's what it feels like to me when I hear it. I'm like, “Oh, don't do that.” Because if they're doing it wrong, like, 20 times, 10 times, even then it performs a habit that's real hard for them to go, “Well, but I thought I got them all right.”   Katie Strong: Yeah.   Dave Brancamp: Because I think we can all go back to math and you come up unless it was something really, really difficult in at least in our early years of math. We all came up with an answer. And that's how it feels on a worksheet that might have like just adding single digit numbers, if you make an error, you won't know until someone either corrects it or asks you, “How did you get there?” And to me, that's where it became more important. And then I had to learn how to do what do you call it? aphasia friendly language, you know? So, math folks usually speak in short sentences, so that helps. But we'll run a whole bunch of sentences together. If I give you the best example. I know we're going to talk a little bit about that math perception quiz, the difference between us on that question, I think it says “I would prefer to do an assignment in math rather than write an essay.” I'm the person to give me that math assignment. 100%. Tammy is like, give me the essay!   Katie Strong: And I have to say I'm right there with Tammy.   Tami Brancamp I think so, as speech pathologists, we learned about the pedagogy of language and language development. We can analyze it. We can treat it. We can assess it. And then I talked to Dave, and he goes, “Well, there's this whole math I know there's a math pedagogy, and there's this whole developmental progression of how we learn math.” But “Really, okay, well, I've never learned that, right?” “No, you learn this before you learn that.” We lived it, we just weren't overtly taught it. Or how you know, if there's an error in a calculation, that means that there's some challenges in this part of your developmental math abilities. Like, “Huh, okay, well, that kind of sounds like language to me, a little bit.” They do go together.   Katie Strong: Yeah, yeah. So, I love to maybe ask a little bit about this. As we've pretty clearly stated, many SLPs feel uncomfortable with math and their own math skills.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah.   Katie Strong: And we, probably many of us, have avoided it in our own education.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah.   Katie Strong: So I love this idea that there's the language of math, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and why it should fit right within our scope of practice as SLPs.   Tami Brancamp: A long time ago, I remember how many years ago I came across an article by Seron 2001 in Aphasiology. And he or she, I actually don't know, stated that math should be part of the SLPs practice. I started looking at 20 years later, and it still wasn't (a part of our practice). So, something's really amiss. What are we missing? When we talk about the language, there is a syntax in math. Dave calls it order of operations. And I don't even know what the PEMDAS.   Dave Brancamp: PEMDAS.   Tami Brancamp: PEMDAS, right?   Dave Brancamp: You what scares most people about that? Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. The left to right. I mean, that's the part people left off.   Tami Brancamp: But, ah, yeah, that kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it?   Katie Strong It does. It's ringing a very faint bell.   Dave Brancamp: It's like, oh no, we're not going to do that.   Tami Brancamp So there is a syntax. There's an order of operations, how we put mathematical equations together. Just like how we put sentences together. There's semantics, right? There's word meaning. We have a little sign for you. It won't translate audio, but we'll talk about it. So, in math, and you use the word or the number, the orthographic representation 2, right? Yes. And then we spell it TWO. We also spell it TO and TOO. And then, if you say, “Okay, we also have a two in the number 12, right?” They have to be able to transcode that and a two in the number 20, the two zero. The two in all those locations has different meaning, right? So, it does have semantics.   The other parts, I think, were important, was memory and executive function. Executive function permeates mathematics in so many ways. So, when we think about our stroke survivors, those are areas that are and can be impacted. Information processing. How much can they hold in memory of being presented with language, and in this case, language and numbers.   So, I think for me, it just, it really is integrated. I also thought, too, when we were looking, I was looking at the neuroscience of it, and there's some shared neuro space that works for math and language. They're not fully disassociated, so I found that really fascinating as well.   Katie Strong Yeah, it really is, as I've been thinking about our conversation and just looking into things a little bit, it really makes sense. And even just thinking about just thinking about a word problem in math, certainly, there's that language component that may be a little less intimidating for SLP clinicians that aren't typically working in practice. But I so appreciate you both bringing this conversation out into the light and doing this work, because I can think of a significant number of clients that I've worked with that have also expressed challenges in all sorts of different ways of math. And sometimes I've been able to maybe support it a little bit, and other times I haven't. And I, you know, whether it's me just avoiding it and saying, “Oh, we could work on all of these other things or we can work on this math thing”  or, you know, it's just frustrating, I think, to not have really the tools to be able to know how to support it.   Our podcast, really focuses on the Life Participation Approach to Aphasia, which really emphasizes a person-centered approach. Like I'm the client I want to choose what I want in my life and what I want to work on. And so, I'm just wondering if you might be able to talk through a little bit about how math skills fit into LPAA framework.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, we were talking about that, and there's one particular client who has multiple PhDs before his stroke. He has family, adult children. And he's like, “Tammy.” And we were Dave and I were piloting some work together. And he's like, “Guys, I want to take my family to dinner. I want to pay the bill and the tip.” I'm like, “Okay, dude, I got an app for that.” And he's like, “No, I want to do it myself.” So that, to me, is life participation. If a person is fine with an app, let's make it so and work on something else.   Katie Strong: Yeah. Tami Brancamp: But his case, it was so important to him. I'm like, “Okay, here we go.” How do we how do we work on figuring out the tip? Now, does it have to be an exact percent? No, Dave likes to teach it more like there's some more strategies to get to the tip.   Another client I wanted to share, and sometimes too, when we think about assumptions. So, the data on how many people with aphasia also have math difficulties, numeracy difficulties is wide ranging. It's so big. So you can't even really say what percent. But I also had an assumption. I have a gentleman who I've worked with off and on for a very long time. He's nonfluent aphasia and also has apraxia of speech, and so we're working a lot on his language and his speech. And I said, “So how's your math?” “It's fine. You know, I own my own business and I have somebody help, but it's fine.” I'm like, in my head, hmm, I don't think so. I wonder, because the severity of his aphasia and his ability to transcode so like, see a number and then say the name or say the numbers he wants to say, was really impacted. So, we were doing a pilot study during the pandemic online, and so Dave and I were working with this one gentleman. And I think you why don't you do the story because I don't remember you gave him homework or something. A home program.   Dave Brancamp: There's a math game called Krypto.   Tami Brancamp: Oh, Krypto.   Dave Brancamp: So you put five cards down. And each one has its value, you know. And so your listeners just so they know, like when the Jack would fall, that would be 11, and so the Ace automatically took a one, the Queen would be, you know, 12, and the King 13. So five cards different values, or they could be the same value didn't matter, and then one more card became like a target. You had to figure out an equation. So, some big, nice math term there to that you'd add, subtract, multiply, divide to equal this last card.   Now they could do with just two cards, three cards, four cards or five would be ideal. So, they had some room for success. And this gentleman, we had some hard numbers that were there. And, you know, he had done a couple, and was rolling right through. And I kept looking over at Tami and I am like, "He's got his math. His math is really good.”   Tami Brancamp: His ability to calculate.   Dave Brancamp: And then we hit one that was really hard, and we're both looking (each other). And the next thing, you know, this gentleman, not to scare anybody, but makes a complex fraction, making a fraction over another fraction to solve. And you can see right now, right Tammy. Tammy is like, “What are you doing?” I'm like, “Yeah, yeah, no, let's go for it. Let's go for it.” And next thing you know, we were able to solve it by doing two complex fraction with another number. And he solved the problem. And I looked at Tammy said, “This man has no math problems.” Tami Brancamp:  And I said, “Boys, I'm out. I'm out. You all just continue playing with your numbers. Have a good time.” That's not a comfort zone for me. It's also not the focus we're doing with aphasia in math. But it was something he was capable to do, and I also could see within him, he was super excited that he could do this.   Katie Strong: Yeah   Dave Brancamp: And he wanted to show his wife. He wanted to show other people, he was like, “Look at this. Look at this.” You know, I was like, “Yeah, there's a lot happening.”   Tami Brancamp: But he could not read the equation. Okay, so there's the aphasia language issue.   Katie Strong: Right.   Tami Brancamp: Transcoding. He could do the calculations without difficulty.   Katie Strong: Amazing.   Tami Brancamp: But those are the those are really fascinating. And while we were piloting, we had a group of, I don't know, five or six people with aphasia, and each one had their own. They're all on the non-fluent side, but everybody had their own combination of language difficulty and number processing difficulty. We did notice what one client we worked with who had more cognitive impairment along with language and hers, her processing was much more different than pure aphasia and the acalculia issues. So, it's really interesting to see. It's definitely not cookie cutter, right? Just like aphasia therapy.   Katie Strong: Right.   Tami Brancamp: Every person's got their unique strengths and challenges. And I'm going to say similarly, I think with the math. Where in the brain was the injury? What is their background? What are their interests and passions? All of that plays in just like in aphasia.   Katie Strong: I love bringing up though their prior experience with math too is so important. We think about that from a language standpoint, but we really don't consider that. Or I will speak for myself, I don't typically consider that when I'm learning about somebody and their strengths.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah.   Dave Brancamp: You think like to go back to your language, like the word “sum” S-U-M, is what we'd use in math for adding, but it has the same sounding as “some” S-O-M-E and so right there, there's some language difficulty that could come out. So often we will have flash cards with the plus symbol so that they and can associate words and just so that you feel better on it, too.   Most of us, when we'd heard subtraction probably used an unfortunate phrase of what's called “takeaway”.  Well, that's not what happens from a mathematical point. So, us in the math side, cringe and are like, “Oh well, the numbers don't get taken away. They're still there.” They got, you know, replaced is what we would call them. And so the word of difference, you know, where you live in a different town than we do, so that's what we associate but difference is how we do subtraction. So those little, simple nuances that I had to also remember too because I taught junior high, which most of them were fairly comfortable with their, you know, at least their basic skills. And I'd heard those terms where suddenly, you know, Tammy would bring up to me, “You're gonna have to help us out with that” because that it's easy for you to say that it's causing a problem and that makes us then, you know, have those moments of pause that you're like, “Oh yeah, you're right. I've got to do that.”   Tami Brancamp: Just a little aside on that with we just finished a pilot study with two groups of people doing online intervention. So that background of knowledge, you know, say you got 10 people in a group, and you could see the people who go, “Oh yeah, I remember that. I remember that math language.” You're getting, the nodding like, “Oh yeah, that's right.” And then there's others who have like, “I don't understand what he's saying.” The look. So, it's really fascinating to make sure that we pay as much attention to that background as we do in language.   Katie Strong: Yeah. Interesting, interesting.   Dave Brancamp: I don't know if you want to go down that path, but like when we hit time, you know, which is an element that folks aphasia really want to work with, right? And yet, it's a whole different concept mathematically, because we are used to in almost all the countries we work with of things from, you know, basically what we call base 10 or zero to 100 zero to 10, we can play time is in elements of 12. And so, like you might say it's a quarter past, you know, like one, that's not a 25 it's written as 1:15. And you know, what does that mean? And, oh, I don't know. I don't know how I'm supposed to be at the bus stop or the doctor appointment or whatever they may be going to.   Katie Strong: Right, right.   Dave Brancamp: And a lot of our groups found that to be a huge help, you know. And as much as we all laugh, you probably at least most of us remember when we were in elementary school having little clocks that we might play with.   Katie Strong: Right   Dave Brancamp:  We call them our Judy clocks from when we were as teachers. But it's like, as simple as those are, those are what you need to bring back and go, “Let's take a look at what you know, because it's a quarter of the circle, and that's where it got its name from.”   Tami Brancamp: But it's one over four, like 1/4 one quarter.   Dave Brancamp: But that's not how we'd write it in time. It's actually whatever the hour is and the 15, and you're like, “Where'd that come from?” So, it was very fascinating to watch, and especially when we did some work with some of the clinicians, are just like, “Oh, you're kidding. I didn't even think about that.” It's because we knew it. we transition it naturally and not thinking, “Oh my gosh, my brain now has to re-picture this”. So.   Katie Strong: It is fascinating.   Tami Brancamp: And that you can see how much language is involved.   Tami Brancamp: Huge. Huge.   Katie Strong: Yeah, well, I'm excited to talk about the projects and research that you've been doing. You gave us kind of a teaser about these online groups. Should we start there?   Tami Brancamp: Maybe, we aren't there. We haven't analyzed all the data…   Katie Strong: I'm curious.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, that'll be a teaser. We are working with our partner, Carolyn Newton. She's in London, and she is at University College London. She's done some work in mathematics and aphasia, and also her doc students, so we're working with them. They did all the assessment with my students. And then Dave and I did intervention. We had two groups. We had, like, a Level 1 and a Level 2. Everybody had aphasia. And we did group intervention primarily because Dave and I have been working with Lingraphica and Aphasia Recovery Connections Virtual Connections.   Katie Strong: Yep.   Tami Brancamp: Since March of 22, we've been doing it every single month.   Katie Strong: Amazing.   Tami Brancamp: We had some time off. Yeah, but you know, what's so crazy is that we average about 38 people who come on to do the session.   Katie Strong: Wow!   Tami Brancamp: Oh, I know, with a range like 19 to 50 people.   Katie Strong: That is amazing, but such a testament that people are interested in this topic.   Tami Brancamp: That's what made us keep pushing forward. Because if that many people show up, there's an interest and there's a need.   Katie Strong: Right.   Tami Brancamp: You know? But how do we how do we help is the challenge. We are in the process of analyzing, did we could that group in the way that we did it, like twice a month over three months? Would that impact change? They could hold it at the end of the treatment. And then we also did 30 days later, so we'll see. And then we also did some we did the math, attitudes and perceptions.   Katie Strong: I took it so maybe give people a little bit of background on what this is.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah. So this is a we looked at a lot of different tools, and this one is called, what is it called Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory. And it was designed for adults, college age, students and adults. There's a lot for children. But this is like, really, you know, what do you think about math in terms of you like it, you don't like it. Is it important? Not important. And so there is a lower number means that you are less confident, less familiar.   Dave Brancamp: You might not like it. You might not like it as much.   Katie Strong: And it might give you a rash.   Tami Brancamp: (Laughs) It might give you a rash!   Dave Brancamp: I'm sorry.   Tami Brancamp:  Right, all the things that it does. It's up to a point of 200 Do you want to share what your score was?   Katie Strong: Well, I didn't calculate it. I just did the ABCDE, but I'm gonna guess it's in the lower like 25th. Tami Brancamp: Yeah.   Dave Brancamp: So let me ask you, what was your last math class?   Katie Strong: It was a statistics class in my PhD program.   Dave Brancamp: And how did that class make you feel? Were you like, “Oh, I'm so excited to go!” or like, “Oh my gosh, I just got to get this done.”   Katie Strong: I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. I tried hard, and I just kept, I think I kept telling myself it was hard and I couldn't do it, and it just and it was.   Dave Brancamp: So, if you think about that, for us as adults, right? Or anybody, even kids. Take our kids. Whatever your last class is, it sits with us. It's a memory we carry. And then math has its unique way of, kind of building on itself. And then it can bridge to a couple different areas and what have you, but it builds. And if your last class wasn't the most pleasant. You didn't score well, or you didn't have a teacher that you could relate with, or whatever it was, you probably don't have a real fun feeling of math. So that leads to our perceptions, right? And it's and you know, using this we've done this with some of your students as they go through soon to be clinicians, and as soon as they took it and then had us talk, they you almost want to say, “Let's take it again”, because our feeling is of that last class. But when you find out, what we'll probably do is adding, subtracting, multiplying, maybe division, not likely. But what we call basic life skills, it may change how you took the test or take the inventory, because, you know, like for me, it's still, it will never change the fact of giving a math problem over an essay. I'll give you guys the essay. I'll take the math problem. But it's just, you know, is it important your everyday life? Well, how often do you do your statistics on an everyday life? That was your last class right? Not a lot, maybe some. But it's, you know, it's becomes an interesting whatever sitting with us probably has a feeling. If we come in with a bad attitude toward what we're going to teach or share with you, no matter whether they have aphasia or if it's just us in a general setting, they're going to know you don't like this, then why should I spend time with it so we that's the My purpose is make it so that they enjoy even if it's difficult, we're going to enjoy it so that otherwise, you know, I'm already behind because you don't like it. So why should I like it?   Katie Strong: And I love that because, I mean, I know that, like hard work can be fun. I mean, in a therapy situation, hard work can be fun, but thinking about this from a math standpoint really is kind of a game changer for me.   Tami Brancamp:  One of the things, and I think we'll come back to the research a little bit. But Dave likes gamification. I don't really like to play games, right?   Dave Brancamp: You're getting better! Tami Brancamp: But you have to, you know.   Dave Brancamp: I will pick up like dice. We try to do things that we figure our folks could find rather easily. You know whether you have dice from a Yahtzee game where you can go pick them up and a deck of cards. Almost everything I do with them are one of those two. It might take a little more looking, but I'll we often use what are called foam dice so they don't make all that noise, because sometimes too much noise can be very bothersome. And then using, like, the whiteboard or something to write with helps so they can see, because sometimes you'll be playing a game and they'll have no idea of the math that's involved and why there might have been, like, a strategy or so on.   Tami Brancamp: When we do work with people using cards and dice to generate the numbers, we have activities we do and we make it aphasia friendly, but we'll also discuss, maybe after the fact, “All right, so how did you do? Where was it difficult? I want you to recognize that you were working on executive function here. You were giving it strategies and thinking and multiple steps ahead.” So that they can recognize it isn't a kid game.   Katie Strong: Yeah, just a game.” Yeah.   Tami Brancamp: It's not just a game. It's making it fun and a little bit more lighthearted. If we can lighten it, but still make it skilled intervention, I'm not in there to play games and win. But having a give and take, a little competition, some laughter, some humor, while we're doing the intervention. To me, that's a lovely session.   Dave Brancamp: One of the things Katie, we found, too, is there's not a lot of good tests out there for math to diagnose the problem. You can find out by taking the different tests, and you and Tammy know the exact names, but they'll say, “Well, Dave has a problem doing math.” But now where do I start? Is a whole different game, because they build, as we said earlier, and if I don't start at the right spot the building block, I get a sense of failure immediately, because I can't do it, whereas you need to just keep backing up, just like you do in language, you keep backing up till you find my starting point. And that's one of the areas we'll maybe talk about later, is those things we're trying to figure do we work on finding a better way to assess the math, to truly know what's Dave or your client or whoever, whatever they're doing, because sometimes it could be simply the language, like we had with the one gentleman who has great math skills.   Katie Strong: Right.   Dave Brancamp: And others could be I can't even tell the difference between these two numbers, which is larger or smaller. And so now we have to start back at what we call basic number sense. It can be anywhere in that game, and it's like, well, they can't add. Well, do we know they can't add? Or do they just not recognize that six is smaller than eight.   Tami Brancamp:  Or how did you let them tell you the answer. If you only get a verbal response versus writing response, or, you know, selecting from four choices, you know. All of those give us different information when you're when you're having to blend a language disorder and a numeracy disorder.   Dave Brancamp: Because that one gentleman, he struggles immensely with anything with a two in it, so 20s, just…so you could easily say, “Wow, there's no way this man has math skills.” I mean he's doing complex fractions. He just couldn't tell you it's one over two. It was be like, I don't know what that is called.   Katie Strong: Fascinating.   Dave Brancamp: We enjoy the game part. And one of the pieces in this last research we did that was a new thing, right? We didn't even think of it prior was what we call a home program. Taking the game we did, putting it in friend aphasia friendly language with pictures so they could practice them.   Katie Strong: Okay.   Dave Brancamp:  Because we would not see them for like a two they was every two weeks. So, some could practice. I would say our Level 1 -  our folks working on foundational sets practiced more than are more advanced. Which was very fascinating.   Tami Brancamp: What we were doing in this research, the most recent one, we would encourage people to, you know, take a photo, take a screenshot of the work we're doing. But we also did it too, and then we put it into a page with an explanation, and then we would send it so that they could, ideally practice with a family member or a friend, or by themselves. You know, that's also a variable for people, right?   Dave Brancamp: And what we found in it, they needed more pictures. In our first attempt, we didn't put as many. So we would ask them, “since you wanted this, did that help?” “Not really.” They're honest.   Katie Strong: Yeah.   Dave Brancamp: We appreciate that. And they're like, Well, what? Why didn't it like, well, it, even though we tried to make it as aphasia friendly language, it was just too much word   Tami Brancamp:  Too many words.   Dave Brancamp: Too many words. So then we started asking, “well would more pictures help?” “Yes.” So we did that. So they helped us. It was amazing to watch.   Tami Brancamp: So that research project will we can get to down the road once we figure out what was going on. What we did share with you was the survey that we did with speech language pathologists from the United States and the United Kingdom. So we thought, well, Carolyn's there, and we kind of look at math a little bit similarly. So we had 60 participants who completed the study. We want to know, like, do you treat people with aphasia who also have math difficulties? If so, what are you doing? Dave and I still wanted to look at the attitudes and perception, because I still believe that's an influencing factor. But we also wanted to get a good sense, like when you are working with people with aphasia, who have number difficulties, what difficulties are you seeing? And then what are you doing? What do you use to assess?  And what are some of the barriers? So it gave us a nice overview, and that one's out for review currently. Anywhere from like, how many of you work on numeracy difficulties? About 35% responded with rarely, and 40% responded with occasionally, and 17 said frequently. And also, there was no difference between the countries.   Katie Strong: Oh, interesting.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, I thought so too.   Katie Strong: But I also think too, you know, I mean, there really isn't a lot out there instructing SLPs on how to do this work in an evidence-based manner. So that makes a little bit of sense.   Tami Brancamp: It did, because I still felt the same way for myself, like, “Where do I go to learn how to do this?” Okay. I'm married to a math teacher, so I'm learning right? It's a lot of give and take. And Carolyn, our partner, she's very good about when we're talking about this she's like, “But not everybody has a Dave on their shoulder.” Like, “No, they do not.” Because even today, I'm still a little cautious, like if I had to go do all this solo, I have some holes that I want, and those are the things I want to help us create for future training opportunities and education continuing ed that would help clinicians who really want to do this and they have a client who wants to work with it, right?   Katie Strong: I hope that's a large number of people, because I think, you know, I think that this is really a significant challenge that I hear so often from support group members or people that I work with who have aphasia.   Tami Brancamp: I really think that's why we keep going, because we hear it from our we hear it from our clients.   Katie Strong: Yeah.   Tami Brancamp: We're not hitting it as much in acute care, for sure, rehab, you might get a little sample that is going on, but it's usually that outpatient. And then the longer term, like the they have some of the big needs met. And then we've got time to maybe look at math. But for some people, math should have been math and language together could have been hit earlier. But who's to say, you know?   Dave Brancamp: Well, you would know it best because I've asked when we first started this there would be like one, Tammy would give me one of her classes, and I would talk to them about math and absolutely deer in the headlight looks, “Oh my gosh, what are you going to do?” to by the end realizing “We're going to make this as fun as we can. We're going to use dice and cards, and we're going to do pretty much what we call foundational adding subtracting skills that they were welcome”, but you already have so much in your course to do that we just don't even have time. So that becomes this very interesting, because, you know, one of the big questions Tammy always asked me is, “Well, how can I know this pedagogical, or the reason behind?” I know they'll be able to hear but, I mean, I've done this now for 30 plus years, so there's a lot in my head that I have to figure out, how do we do this? So I can see this is the problem by how they addressed it without them having to take a whole other set of courses.   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, we can't. There is surely not room for whole courses. So it's got to be embedded in existing coursework, or continuing ed opportunities after training.   Katie Strong: Or both, right?   Tami Brancamp: Yeah, I think both. Some of those barriers that we found people saying was, you know, there's not training on it, which I agree.   Dave Brancamp: There's not the resources.   Tami Brancamp: Yes, there's not the resources. And are the tests that people use. They have some sampling of math. But my question always is, “Okay, so I give this little bit of math in my aphasia test or something else like and now, what? Well, I know what they can't do, but what does that mean? And how might I support them for relearning?” I found it more helpful to look at it from a developmental perspective. I'm going to learn a, b, c, d, and I'm going to learn x, y, z, and then it helps me understand, like, “Where might I start?” Because I don't have to go down to counting dots, right? That number sense larger, less than visually. If that's not where the client needs to be. But learning where they need to be, we need better assessments for that. I don't know if that's something we're going to be able to tackle or not. I mean, Dave spent quite a big part of his professional career, developing assessments. So, it would be logical. But there's so many pieces to do.   Katie Strong: Right? It's a big it's a big undertaking. Dave Brancamp: Well, there's so much that you gain by finding out from the client how you did the problem. It could be four plus six is what? and they write two. Well, I need to know why you think it's two. So did you think that was subtraction? Because they just didn't see the plus symbol. Well, you know? Well, then they have some good math. There's some good math there. They did the math correctly if they subtracted it. It's not the answer I'm looking for. And so could they say, you know, when you asked it if you were a person and he's like, “Katie, so if I gave you six things and gave you four more, how many your total?” Do you know what that even meant to do? These things that just gives us clues to where your math might be and for unfortunately, for a lot of us, which makes it hard for me, I feel bad that they didn't have the experience is ones and zeros have some very powerful meanings in math that unfortunately, scare a lot of folks.   Katie Strong: Yeah, right.   Tami Brancamp: I never learned the fun stuff of math, you know. There's some tricks and some knowledge and some skills that I, you know, good math teachers will teach you, and I just didn't really learn those. So, Dave's teaching me just because I were doing this together? I don't know. I kind of was thinking like what we talked a little bit about, what does the intervention look like?   Katie Strong: Yeah.   Tami Brancamp: Gamification, making it fun, not using workbooks. We're hoping that we could utilize some of the home programs that we've created, and share those as part of the teaching.   Dave Brancamp: And like the game. I think I told you that we did with that one gentleman with Krypto. It could simply be like a target number or something of that nature, but it's fun to have when we did with our both groups with Virtual Connections, or our research groups, other people could find out, like, you could solve it one way, Katie. Tammy could do it a different way, and I could do it a completely different way. And it was fascinating to watch the groups, like, I had no idea you could do it there. And that's what we need to hear So that people go, “Oh, you don't have to do it just one way.” Because I, unfortunately, and some are my colleagues, they forced, “I need you to do it x way.” It's like, “Well, okay, maybe to start. But now let's open the door to all these other ways you can, like, add a number or whatever.” And because it always fascinates me when we do, is it multiplication or subtraction? Now I forget, but one way Tammy is, like, “I never learned it that way. I always…” and, you know, it was just how she grew up. It was what you were taught.   Tami Brancamp: Well, like multiplication. When I'm multiplying multiple numbers, it's like, I'm kind of just adding multiples of things. So, how I get to the answer is very different than how Dave does, yeah, and we've had experiences with care partners, who we were doing some of the pilot work, who felt very strong that their way was the only way. Is this some generational differences? I suspect there's some of that, but it's also just, it's personality. This is how I know how to do it, and this is how it should be done. Well, not necessarily.   Katie Strong: It really mind blowing for me to be thinking about. I mean, I know that, like, you can teach things in different ways, but I just didn't really think about it from a math standpoint, because, probably because I know how to do things one way. If I know how to do it, it's probably one way, versus having more versatility in “If this doesn't work, try something else.”   Dave Brancamp: But like on a deck of cards at least the ones we use, they'll have, like a seven of diamonds. There's seven little diamonds on that card. Well, nothing else. Put your finger to them. There's nothing wrong with counting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Now, when you move over to the three, go 8 9 10, and there's your answer. They're like, “I can do that?” “I'm like, sure you can!” I can use my fingers? You know, it's, it's those, it's those little things that, unfortunately, probably for a lot of us and a lot of our clients, went through, at least in my experience, in math as we went through school, we took away those, what we call manipulatives in math, that you learn it right, bringing them back now, so that they're like, “Oh, I can do this”” So they can see it, or they can write it in a different way, or, you know, whatever it takes to help them. That's one of the pieces that's so amazing.   Tami Brancamp: We definitely support a multi modal approach. Not just one way.   Katie Strong: Which, I think the clinicians who are listening to this conversation will feel like, “Oh, I do a multi modal approach in all of the other things that I do in my interventions.” And so, you know, that makes sense.   Dave Brancamp: And that's where we saw that piece of saying that we're trying to unite math and language. The two of those do play together. You know, it's like because you just said you spend weeks and weeks with all your future clinicians training them on all these skills and language, so many of those will play out just as well in math, except to do it in a different way.   Katie Strong: Mmm. So we've talked about what the intervention might look like, and we'll be excited to see what comes out from your projects that you're in the process of analyzing but looking ahead, what excites you most about where this field could go?   Dave Brancamp: Oh my, that's the question!   Tami Brancamp: There's a lot of work to be done. It actually is…it's fun. We are wondering, you know, how might it be if it's on a one on one, a more traditional model, right for our outpatient settings, versus small groups. Katie Strong: I'll say this. I should have said it earlier, but for those of you listening, I'll put in a link to Virtual Connections and if you're interested in seeing Tammy and Dave's math Aphasia + Math.   Dave Brancamp: Yeah, it's aphasia plus math. It would be Level 1 or 2. They can come watch the whole thing. It's fascinating to watch them how they work.   Tami Brancamp: They are best teachers, yep, without a doubt.   Dave Brancamp: To your last question, “So that's with the clients?” But you know, there's been and we've talked on and we've touched on, like, “how do we help our clinicians?” And then the unfortunate side of that stool that sometimes gets forgotten is, what could we do for our caregivers? Does this help? Because we've all been taught differently. so sometimes you might look at one of the gamifications we did and went, “Oh, I can't do that. That's not how I add.” We have a very set format, or do they understand the language? Do we make it clear enough. So, you know, we're I think that's a great question, because then we get torn to just time in the day to say, “But I want to still work with my clients, but we need to help clinicians so they can help us, and don't forget the caregiver in there.” I know it's not an easy answer. It's not the it's nothing nice and smooth, but it's kind of the one that we've been really what is to what are we doing.   Katie Strong: And probably also why it this hasn't, there aren't tons of resources already developed, right? That it is complex.   Dave Brancamp: Well, and I will tie back to our attitudes. What we found, we were fortunate enough to do….     Tami Brancamp: IARC. The International Aphasia Rehab Conference. we presented there.   Dave Brancamp: So some of our beginning there's an awful lot of interest out of Australia and Europe. But Australia and Europe, and I'm not trying to sound bad or negative, but they take look at math very differently than like England and the United States for sure does. That's a natural like thought, we don't accept the term. “I don't do math well.” They don't like to say that. There's an increased interest, at least in those two areas of the world, to when we but we gotta strengthen this, this is important. So, we've found that very fascinating, that some of our folks who've drawn an interest and set out of this come out of the main countries of Europe, or from Australia, because they don't mind talking about a subject that we often go, “I'm good at this, right? Let Dave solve it.” And it's like, well, but I don't have the skill set that all of you SLPs have.   Tami Brancamp: In our earlier conversations, we touch on the fact that United States, it's okay for me to say, you know, “I don't do math, right?” It's okay, and it's sort of accepted in some cases, it's kind of a badge of honor in some ways. But if I were to say, “Oh, I can't read” you know, that's we one. We want to help if somebody admits it. But there's a personal sense of shame attached. So, in our country, I believe the perceptions are different. You have the person who's had the stroke, has survived the stroke, has the aphasia, and now also has the math difficulties. That's a lot to navigate, and I respect in our in our world, as a clinician, I can't address all of it. So following that Life Participation Approach, we're going to let our clients be our guide. Support, train, and look at where their priorities are. And it's never enough. There's never enough therapy, never enough opportunity to be in a group environment, because not everybody has access to that, you know, but I think, “Where can I make a difference?” Like, that's probably my question. Like, I can't fix the world, so let me keep backing it down, backing it down, backing it down. And if I can make a difference with 5, 10, 15, 20, people, Hey, and then let those ripples go as they go out and make a difference and learn. I think that, in itself, is powerful.   Katie Strong: Beautiful, and certainly is conjuring up Audrey here. Well, I've got one last question for you as we wrap it up. But you know, what would you say to an SLP, who's listening right now and thinking, I want to help my clients with math, but I don't know where to start.   Tami Brancamp:  So one of, I think one thing for me is you do know basic math. You know everyday math. You do know how to do this.  So one just start. You can get a little assessment. You can use the existing ones that are out there with our aphasia batteries or the Numerical Activities for Daily Living.   Dave Brancamp: I would say, a deck of cards are not hard, you know, hopefully they have or some dice, yeah, and use those to generate the numbers. Or bring in, like, when they want to do tips, we would often just bring in receipts of anything and just say, “Let's say something cost $18.72. Round it up to 20 and make it a friendly number.” So it's around 20, So it's a little bit easier for them to grab onto and hold, and it's okay to say, because we've done it in our own sets going through, “Oh, wait a minute, six plus six is not 13. Look at what I did here. I let me, let's check this and add it.” Because sometimes you'll hear just even, you know, like when any of us are doing something, you look and go, oops, I made a mistake.   Tami Brancamp: Okay, right?   Dave Brancamp: It's all right, hey, to make mistakes and say, that's what we all do. And then, you know, but I mean to me, it's if we can get, like, if you want to use one or two problems off a worksheet, use it as a driver to start discussion and say, “So what can we do?” And see if they can do anything. Because sometimes it's amazing what we'll find out is just knowing that 16 is a bigger number than just 12 is let them and then what's the difference between right there, you could figure out subtraction if they know it or not. And we often will in if they have a chance to look on the website or any of this stuff, we'll take out, like all the face cards, we'll take out the 10. Keep moving it down to numbers that they're comfortable with, like dice will only be the numbers one to six, yeah, but if I use two dice, I could make some interesting two digit numbers, right, that are in that range. So it's just things that make it so they can grab on. And then you can start adding and changing rules and some of the math games they may have seen, they just adjust them so that they have access points. The true rules of Krypto is, you must use all five cards in order to get a point. Well, we just change it usually is two, right?   Tami Brancamp: Like we do for everything we can modify.   Katie Strong: I love this. And I mean, I'm thinking, most clinics have a deck of cards and dice.   Tami Brancamp: In most households in general, not but in general, you're going to have access to those tools. We didn't want people to have to go buy crazy stuff. I think there's one challenge I do want to think about and put out there. So, our new clinicians who are graduating, let's say they're in their mid-20s, and I know there's a range they are doing online banking. How are they going to support an older adult?   Katie Strong: Oh, right.   Tami Brancamp: Very structured and rigid in their checking account. I think we have to think about some again, different ways. None of the students that I teach today, and even our own son, they don't have a checkbook. Yeah, they don't write checks. So that's gonna introduce another variable down the road, but in the meantime, cards, dice, numbers, gamification, simplifying, watching language, thinking about executive function, number of steps, how we how we speak, the instructions. Give the directions. It's language.   Dave Brancamp: And ask the client what they think or what they might have heard, because it's interesting what they would have, what we've learned from them as well.   Katie Strong: Thank you so much for being a part of our conversation today, and for the listeners, I'll have some links in the show notes for you to check out for some info on Aphasia + Math. Thank you.   Tami Brancamp: Thanks for having us.   Dave Brancamp: And thanks for playing with us too. Thank you. Katie Strong: On behalf of Aphasia Access, thank you for listening. For references and resources mentioned in today's show please see our show notes. They're available on our website, www.aphasiaaccess.org.There you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. If you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org. For Aphasia Access Conversations, here at Central Michigan University in the Strong Story Lab, I'm Katie Strong.   Resources Aphasia + Math focuses on strategies for the rehabilitation of everyday mathematics in people with aphasia. Tami and Dave focus on four pillars to support this work: Influencing Elements (math literacy, learning environment, aphasia severity); Math and Language (receptive & expressive language, cognition including executive function and  memory); Foundational Math Skills (use of linguistic and numerical symbols, lexicon, syntax, semantics); and Aphasia Friendly Math Activities (gamification in learning,  understanding math language, opportunities for communication). Their goal is to unite math and language. Contact Tami tbrancamp@med.unr.edu   Join the Aphasia + Math Facebook Community Join an Aphasia + Math session on Virtual Connections   Brancamp, T. & Brancamp, D. (2022). Exploring Aphasia + Math. Aphasia Access 24-Hour Virtual Teach-In. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mGSOJzmBJI   Girelli, L. & Seron, X. (2001). ) Rehabilitation of number processing and calculation skills. Aphasiology, 15(7), 695-71. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687040143000131 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/32888331_Rehabilitation_of_number_processing_and_calculation_skills#fullTextFileContent   Tapia, M. (1996). Attitudes toward mathematics inventory. https://www.academia.edu/29981919/ATTITUDES_TOWARD_MATHEMATICS_INVENTORY  

The Leader | Evening Standard daily
Gaza children to be brought to UK 'in coming weeks' for medical treatment

The Leader | Evening Standard daily

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 18, 2025 15:23


The Government is working “at pace” to bring sick and injured children from Gaza to the UK for urgent medical treatment, Downing Street has said. We're joined by Dr James Smith, a British emergency physician and expert in humanitarian studies based at University College London. He worked in Gaza for 2.5 months, and assisted with the medical transfer and evacuation of patients.And in part two, author Julia Smith joins us to share her favourite walks which are close to the capital, from her book ‘Walks for each season: 26 great days out in the countryside near London'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sci-Fi Talk
Is Time Travel Possible? Insights with Dr. Amira Val Baker

Sci-Fi Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 15, 2025 17:34


Dr. Val Baker is a Scientific Research Associate at the Resonance Science Foundation. She earned an MSci in Astrophysics from University College London and a PhD in Astrophysics from Open University under Dr. Andrew Norton. Her research spans binaries, neutron stars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, AGN and exoplanets. Forward Time Travel via Relativity Einstein's special theory of relativity tells us that the faster you move, the more slowly you experience time relative to someone at rest. Precision experiments—like synchronizing atomic clocks on jets versus on the ground—confirm that high-speed travel causes measurable time dilation. Did The Avengers Get Time Travel Right in Endgame? The MCU's Quantum Approach In Endgame, the Avengers use Pym Particles to shrink into the Quantum Realm and slip through time. This nods to real ideas about spacetime shortcuts—akin to wormholes—but the film glosses over the astronomical energy and stability challenges such a method would entail in actual physics.   Start Your Free One Year Trial For Sci-Fi Talk Plus, Today.

All About Art
Working at MoMA with Ksenia Nouril, Assistant Director of the International Program

All About Art

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2025 48:46


Episode 77 of ‘All About Art': Working at MoMA with Ksenia Nouril, Assistant Director of the International ProgramIn this episode, I sat down with Ksenia Nouril, Assistant Director of the International Program at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.I speak to Ksenia about the International Program at the museum and what it's like working at such a renowned organization. We delve into how her past curatorial experiences at smaller institutions paved the way for her career, what the change was like moving from a smaller city to a metropolis, and so much more. Thank you Ksenia for coming on the podcast and welcoming me to the MoMA office while I was in New York! You can follow MoMA on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/themuseumofmodernart/You can check out MoMA here: https://www.moma.org/YOU CAN SUPPORT ALL ABOUT ART ON PATREON HERE: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/allaboutart⁠FOLLOW ALL ABOUT ART ON INSTAGRAM HERE: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/allaboutartpodcast/⁠ ABOUT THE HOST:I am an Austrian-American art historian, curator, and writer. I obtained my BA in History of Art at University College London and my MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths, University of London. My specializations are in contemporary art and the contemporary art market along with accessibility, engagement, and the demystification of the professional art sector.Here are links to my social media, feel free to reach out:Instagram⁠ @alexandrasteinacker   ⁠Twitter ⁠@alex_steinacker⁠and LinkedIn at ⁠Alexandra Steinacker-Clark⁠COVER ART: Lisa Schrofner a.k.a Liser⁠ ⁠⁠www.liser-art.com⁠ and Luca Laurence www.lucalaurence.com Episode Production: Paul Zschornack

Snoozecast
Numeration

Snoozecast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2025 32:14


Tonight, we'll read from Elements of Arithmetic, written by Augustus De Morgan and first published in 1846. De Morgan was a pioneering British mathematician and logician, remembered not only for his clear explanations but also for his sharp wit. He introduced the world to what we now call De Morgan's Laws in logic, and was the first to formally define and use the term “mathematical induction.” Because he was a Unitarian and refused to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church, he was denied a fellowship at Oxford and Cambridge. This principled stance however did not hinder his influence: he went on to become the first professor of mathematics at the newly founded University College London. His legacy is honored not only in mathematics but on the Moon itself, where a crater bears his name. Elements of Arithmetic was one of his most widely read works, offering both beginners and more advanced students a foundation in the science of numbers. Arithmetic — the study of numbers, their properties, and their relationships — forms the bedrock of mathematics, bridging the practical art of calculation with the deeper theories that underpin algebra and number theory. — read by 'N' — Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trend Following with Michael Covel
Ep. 1351: Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Trend Following with Michael Covel

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2025 54:26


My guests today are Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay. Henrietta Moore is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity and the Chair in Culture Philosophy and Design at University College London. Her work is focused on new economic models, Universal Basic Services, artificial intelligence, environmental degradation, decarbonization, displaced people, and the gender pay gap. Arthur Kay is an entrepreneur, urban designer, and advisor building solutions for sustainable cities. He is a Director at Innovo, and the Founder of Skyroom, The Key Worker Homes Fund, and Bio-bean. Kay is a Board Member of Transport for London (TfL), the Museum of the Home, and Fast Forward 2030. The topic is their book Roadkill: Unveiling the True Cost of Our Toxic Relationship with Cars. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: Social and environmental impact of cars Urban design and car-centric infrastructure Alternatives to car ownership Public transport safety and social issues Cultural attitudes toward community and individualism Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Woman's Hour
Listener Week: Testosterone, Talking to adult children about abuse, Why we dream

Woman's Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 5, 2025 57:10


Listener Week continues on Woman's Hour as we bring your stories, ideas and the issues you want to hear about to the air.Carola got in touch to ask if we could find out more about the benefits of testosterone for post-menopausal women. Dr Joyce Harper, Professor of Reproductive Science at the Institute for Women's Health at University College London, joins Nuala McGovern to discuss the evidence. When we think about children in situations of domestic abuse, it's often young children we think of - but what about adult children? We received a letter from a listener telling us about a dilemma she is facing. After previously being in an abusive relationship with the father of her four adult children, she's now considering whether to tell them that their parents' relationship was coercive. Gemma Sherrington, CEO of Refuge, and coercive control expert Dr Gemma Katz join us to discuss the issues around a parent deciding whether to be honest with their grown-up children or continue to protect them from their reality. Jess wrote in to tell us about a poem she came across on social media about the post-partum period, calling it “absolutely beautiful”. She added: “There are hundreds of comments across Instagram and TikTok of mothers feeling exactly the same way. Please check it out, I would love to hear more from this poet.” We've tracked her down and her name is Amy Williams. She joins us to perform the poem live in the studio. Listener Sarah Hutchinson wants to know more about dreams. Specifically, why she has been having more vivid, memorable dreams during the recent heatwaves, and whether women's experience of dreaming is linked to the menstrual cycle? Sarah joins Nuala along with Caroline Horton, Professor of Sleep and Cognition and director of the DrEAMSLab at Bishop Grosseteste University. And listener Heather tells us what it was like setting up one of the first dating agencies in the 1980s, aimed at helping people in rural communities find love. Presented by: Nuala McGovern Produced by: Sarah Jane Griffiths and Di McGregor

Tahoe TAP
Ep. 70 - Jessica Penman - Truckee Chamber of Commerce

Tahoe TAP

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 5, 2025 33:51


The latest episode of the Tahoe TAP podcast puts a spotlight on Truckee's business landscape with a special guest who's helping shape it — Jessica Penman, President and CEO of the Truckee Chamber of Commerce. Hosts Mike Peron and Rob Galloway kick off the episode with their signature roundup of regional happenings before diving into a fireside-style conversation with Penman, who took the helm of the Chamber in October 2022. Since stepping into the leadership role, Penman has worked to amplify the voice of Truckee's business community while promoting economic development and community engagement. During the interview, Penman shares her journey from growing up visiting Truckee on weekends and holidays to now calling it her permanent home. She brings a diverse background to the role, having previously served as Director of Community Relations for the Yountville Chamber of Commerce in Napa County. With extensive experience in marketing, sales, membership relations, and workforce development, she brings a forward-thinking approach to supporting local businesses. Penman also discusses her academic roots — holding a BA in Anthropology and Classical Civilizations from the University of Arizona and an MA in Egyptian Archaeology from University College London — and how her global experiences in Italy, Egypt, and England have shaped her community-first philosophy. Outside the office, Penman is an avid hiker and paddleboarder, often exploring the Sierra Nevada with her boyfriend and their puppy, Auggie. Listeners can tune into the full episode of Tahoe TAP to hear Penman's thoughts on community building, chamber initiatives, and what excites her most about Truckee's future. The Tahoe TAP podcast, hosted by Peron and Galloway, continues to explore the people, adventures, and culture that define life around Lake Tahoe.

TopMedTalk
Metabolic flexibility

TopMedTalk

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2025 27:30


Recorded at the Evidence Based Perioperative Medicine (EBPOM) World Congress in London this piece dives into the importance of metabolic flexibility in perioperative care. We discuss the prevalence of metabolic inflexibility in patients undergoing surgery and its impact on postoperative complications alongside insights from recent studies and potential future interventions, emphasizing the importance of recognizing metabolic inflexibility as an important factor in clinical practice. The conversation concludes with a look at how this concept extends beyond perioperative care to overall health and wellness. Presented by Andy Cumpstey with his guest John Whittle, consultant in anaesthesia, critical care and perioperative medicine at University College Hospitals and an honorary associate professor at University College London, UK. The data mentioned is here: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10207017/4/Whittle_Metabolic Flexibility as a Candidate Mechanism for the Development of Postoperative Morbidity_AOP.pdf

New Books Network
Philip Cunliffe, "The National Interest: Politics After Globalization" (Polity Press, 2025)

New Books Network

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2025 58:28


Globalization is over. With US president Donald Trump pursuing an 'America First' agenda in trade and foreign policy, everyone now recognises the urgency of defending their own country's national interest. But what is the national interest and why did it disappear from the political agenda? Will Trump restore American national interests, or will he betray them? How might we know the difference? The National Interest: Politics After Globalization (Polity Press, 2025) answers these questions. It explains how and why globalist political leaders and bureaucrats abandoned the national interest over the past thirty years. Even today, many of our elites still sneer at the concept as an anachronism in an age of global environmental collapse and 'polycrisis'. But without it, there can be no political representation, and without representation there can be no democratic accountability. The national interest can be revived as part of a strategy of nation-building and national rebirth. This book makes the case for such a revival, heralding a new era of democratic renewal and international cooperation. Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

10% Happier with Dan Harris
Stop Caring What Other People Think About You | Bruce Hood

10% Happier with Dan Harris

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2025 67:32


A happiness expert explains how to alter your ego, reduce self-consciousness, and boost “okayness”.    Bruce Hood has been a Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at Bristol University since 1999, and for the past 5 years he has been concentrating on how to make students happier. He undertook his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Cambridge followed by appointments at University College London, MIT and a faculty professorship at Harvard.    In this episode we talk about: How to define happiness How to be happy in the midst of a shitshow How to shift from being egocentric (self-focused) to allocentric (interconnected)  The impacts of social isolation (and how to avoid it) The challenge of optimism (and how to overcome it) Finding a “flow state” through meditation  How to enhance your social connections Where “true, authentic happiness” comes from Controlling attention and rejecting negative comparisons  The role of nature And much more Join Dan's online community here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel Additional Resources:  The Science of Happiness: Seven Lessons for Living Well   To advertise on the show, contact sales@advertisecast.com or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris.  

The Ethics Experts
Episode 224 - Elena Kohn

The Ethics Experts

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2025 51:35


In this episode of The Ethics Experts, Nick welcomes Elena Kohn.  After graduating from University College London and Stetson University College of Law (both with honors), Elena has been focusing her legal career in the healthcare space. She understands the challenges businesses face when navigating the ever-changing healthcare regulatory landscape. At AdventHealth, Elena is responsible for advice and counsel to several hospitals in the West Florida Division of the company in connection with healthcare legal issues, including medical staff issues, patient issues, physician contracts, practice acquisitions, Board advising, corporate matters, and federal and state laws. She has two children and loves fine-tuning her debate skills with her young daughter.For an extra challenge, she takes on her teenage son – and sometimes wins.  Connect with Elena on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenakohn/

Wall Street Oasis
UCL to Société Générale | Chat with Alkin | WSO Academy

Wall Street Oasis

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2025 24:02


With just three months left in his MEng at University College London, Alkin ditched an engineering track and sprinted into high-finance. Hear how he combined a last-minute PE internship, CFA Level I prep and WSO Academy's modeling + interview bootcamps to master derivatives, send laser-targeted cold emails and wow SocGen's X-Asset Solutions Sales team by nailing the only “impossible” technical of the day—earning the job on the spot. Perfect for late pivots who still want an elite markets seat. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------