It's episode 4 of Brain Yapping and Dean and Rachel talk about how light helps us comprehend time passing, our bodies' circadian rhythms and why being able to see a bit of green outside makes for much better shuteye. Also, there's some mention of weeing. Support the podcast by pledging as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/bookshambles

In this episode, Dean and Rachel continue their chat about Clippy, the Microsoft word assistant, and his contemporaries like Alexa,and how we may react to the “gender” they are programmed with . They also express their disparagement for spontaneous ceilidhs in muddy fields, and discuss all manner of nasty things that give us "jump scares” which can lead some of us to drastic measures with spiders. Support the show at patreon.com/bookshambles

Welcome to Brain Yapping, a brand new podcast hosted by neuroscientist and author Dr Dean Burnett and journalist Rachel England. Each week Rachel will lob a question about the human brain at Dean and with no prep, he'll try to come to some sort of scientific answer. If he doesn't know, don't worry, this is proper science, he'll fact check himself at the end of the episode. In the first instalment Rachel wonders why her brain never lets her remember to buy shower gel. Support the show, and everything at the Cosmic Shambles Network, by visiting and pledging to our Patreon at patreon.com/bookshambles

In this episode Rachel wants to know why she wants to crush Dean's children. Not literally, but in that way when you see a cute kitten you might want to hug it till it explodes. It's complicated. Dean also floats the return of Clippy from Microsoft Word. Support the show at patreon.com/bookshambles