Highbrow Drivel

According to some studies 75% of people have experienced burnout. And according to some of my friends you can be burned out 75% of the time. In this week's episode we talk to an organisational psychologist and a comedian who used to be a social worker to get to the bottom of what burnout is, why it happens, whether it's on the rise and a much more.

Expert guest:
Dr. Brian Swider is the Beth Ayers MaCague Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor at the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida. His research focuses on how and why employees enter and exit organizations, including topics such as recruitment, employee selection, burnout, withdrawal, and turnover. You can check him out on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BrianSwider

Comedian guest:
Bryan James was a finalist in the Bath Comedy Festival New act Competition 2021. He is from the Northeast of England, but has been performing comedy  nationally in the U.K. since early 2020. Thanks to comedy sketches, and silly songs he’s got thousands of followers on Tiktok. He's also on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, so go check him out.

Making sense of sound is one of the most interesting and difficult things that our brain does constantly. So how does it work? And can you really have 'selective hearing' find out this and more on this week's episode.

Expert guest:
Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist who has done pathbreaking research on sound and hearing for more than thirty years, is Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Communication Sciences, and Otolaryngology at Northwestern University. Her book, OF SOUND MIND: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World comes out in September 2021 from MIT Press. You can learn more about the work her and her team do at the Brainvolts website as mentioned on the episode https://brainvolts.northwestern.edu/
You can find out more about her book at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675902/of-sound-mind-by-nina-kraus/

Comedic guest:
Scott Curtis is a comedian with a mission to teach new comedians and inform comedy nerds about the intricacies of stand-up comedy. He started Behind the Bits Podcast as serious talk about stand-up comedy and interviews working comedians and industry experts every week to give his listeners nuggets of stand-up wisdom. Scott won the 2020 Discover Pods Award for Best Interview Style Podcast and hosts a wacky talk show called the BTB Internet Talk Show that is live-streamed every Thursday at 7PM EST on various platforms.

Website:
www.thebtbpc.com

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/behindthebitspodcast

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/behindthebitspodcast/

Twitter:
https://www.twitter.com/thebtbpc

Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/behindthebits

TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@behindthebits64

Most of us wouldn't go to a restaurant if 42% of it was crazy expensive and 42% of its review were terrible. Yet, every year 1000's of people still get married. In this episode we discuss what marriage was, why it sucked, why we still do it and how to reimagine it in a way that works for our current values.

Comedy guest:
Sikisa is one of the funniest and  most likable comedians on the London comedy circuit.
She won the public’s vote in the 2017 BBC New Comedy Award competition, for which she was a finalist. Her TV appearances include Jonathan Ross’ Comedy Club (ITV), The Dog Ate My Homework (CBBC), Pie And A Pint (Comedy Central) and Period Dramas (BBC 3). Her radio credits include Lemonade (Radio 1) and writing for Newsjack (Radio 4). She is also developing a number of projects for TV and radio. Her debut stand up was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Leicester Comedy Festival 2020.
I highly recommend you check out her upcoming live work (when we're safely allowed back on stages). To stay up-to-date with what she's doing check out her Instagram, Twitter or Facebook pages.   

Expert guest:
Andrew Copson was appointed Chief Executive of Humanists UK in 2009, having previously been its Director of Education and Public Affairs. He is also the current President of Humanists International, a position he’s held since 2015.

His books include The Little Book of Humanism (2020) and The Little Book of Humanist Weddings (2021) with Alice Roberts; Secularism: a very short introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019); The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Humanism (2015) with A C Grayling. His writing on humanist and secularist issues has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Times and New Statesman as well as in various journals.

He has represented the humanist movement extensively on television news on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, as well as on programmes such as Newsnight, The Daily Politics, and The Big Questions. He has also appeared on radio on programmes from Today, Sunday, The World at One, The Last Word, and Beyond Belief on the BBC, to local and national commercial radio stations.

This is a downright hilarious and often surprising chat about sweat. That's right smelly, wet, sweat. We discuss why it happens, why it sucks, some of the weird (and occasionally scary) things it can do and some of the amazing things it can tell us.

Expert guest:
Sarah Everts is an award-winning science journalist and speaker from Ottawa, Canada. Her most recent project is the taboo-busting romp through the shame, stink and science of sweat in her new book 'The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration'. You can learn more about her work and the book at http://saraheverts.com/

Comedy guest:
One of the funniest men around town, Jamie Allerton's career creds include. 
2016 Liverpool Echo New Comedian Finalist 
2017 So You Think You're Funny semi-Finalist 
2018 Max Turner Finalist 
“Where the other stand up sets held the stage, he owned it. A flurry of energy with a clever routine” – Broadway Baby 

Jamie is now 1/4 of WTD Comedy, focusing on comedy events around the country, including regular live comedy at The Stags Head in Hoxton. You can learn more about what he's up to on Instagram at @allertonjamie

Can someone of sound mind commit murder? What makes someone become a murderer and what is the home security like of someone who has worked on over 100 murder cases? We discuss all that plus some of the strangest cases of the career of Dr Richard Taylor.

Expert guest:
Dr Richard Taylor is a London based Forensic Psychiatrist who has worked on over 100 murder cases in a career spanning nearly three decades. He is the author of the fantastic book 'The Mind of a Murderer.' In the book Dr. Taylor uses cases from across his career to help paint a picture of the common types of murder cases, what trends are closely linked to murder and ultimately what factors can lead to someone becoming a killer.

Comedy guest:
Cressida Wetton is an awesome London based stand-up comedian who has been a finalist in most of the countries top comedy competitions and who regular performs at some of the most exciting shows around town. 

What's hiding in our deep oceans? A whole bunch of beautiful and interesting animals it turns out. Today Dr Karen Osborne joins us to answer all our important questions on our deep oceans, what they're made up of, what it's like to study them and what it's like to live with a whale. 

Expert guest:
Dr. Karen Osborn is an award-winning zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. She specialises in the fascinating world of animals that live in the deep ocean but above the sea floor. She grew up loving animals and chose marine biology after spending a year in Pohnpei, Micronesia. She was SCUBA diving every chance she got on the lush coral reefs that surround the tropical Pacific island. Seeing the huge variety of shapes and sizes of animals that make up the reef communities made her wonder how and why that much diversity of shape came about. How do all those different animals accomplish basically the same thing - survival and reproduction - with such different bodies and ways of living?
You can learn more about her and her work here.

Resources Dr Karen recommends:
https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/deep-sea/deep-sea
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFXww6CrLAHhyZQCDnJ2g2A
https://www.mbari.org/science/midwater-research/

Comedy guest:
Jono Duffy is an Australian born comedian who currently lives in Paris, France. He spent the last 5 years living in Iceland were he worked at Eurovision, won a bunch of awards and was pretty much a C-list celeb. Jono has his own podcasts as well, 'Not in Front of my Salad' and ‘Icetralia’. He’s probably done enough things to warrant a Wikipedia page but nobody who is a fan of his work loves him enough to make one. You can find links to all the great stuff he does including his comedy special, podcast, website, Twitter and Instagram here.

What does it take to be a spy? And what can we learn from spies about how to influence people, manage risk and make good decisions? We bring Sir David Omand, former Head of UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator on the show to find out.

Expert Guest:
Sir David Omand was the first UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, responsible to the Prime Minister for the professional health of the intelligence community, national counter-terrorism strategy and "homeland security". He served for seven years on the Joint Intelligence Committee. He was Permanent Secretary of the Home Office from 1997 to 2000, and before that Director of GCHQ. He was Permanent Secretary of the Home Office from 1997 to 2000, and before that Director of GCHQ (the UK Sigint Agency). Previously, in the Ministry of Defence as Deputy Under Secretary of State for Policy, he was particularly concerned with long term strategy, with the British military contribution in restoring peace in the former Yugoslavia and the recasting of British nuclear deterrence policy at the end of the Cold War. He was Principal Private Secretary to the Defence Secretary during the Falklands conflict, and served for three years in NATO Brussels as the UK Defence Counsellor.

Comedian Guest:
Will Preston has been performing comedy since 2016 all across the UK and the US. He is a regular at the top comedy clubs on the London scene. Will is also the co-host of the Marvel Versus Marvel podcast.

Gonna be controversial, but I wouldn't be a bad boy of comedy if I didn't say it. I don't like the idea of dying. So of course, on this episode I squirm through the topic of dying, how to prepare for it or come to terms with it with the amazing Dr Panagiotis Pentaris and good friend of the show Juan Miles.

Our expert:
Dr Pentaris is an Associate Professor of Social Work and Thanatology at the University of Greenwich, England, UK, where he is also a member of the Institute for Lifecourse Development. Pentaris is a council member for the Association for the Study of Death and Society, and over the last ten years he has researched and published on death, dying, bereavement, culture and religion, social work, social policy and LGBTQIA+ issues.
He has practised social work in the field of thanatology, notably with dying children and adults, and bereaved individuals; he has practiced both internationally and nationally. Positions held include hospice social worker, independent bereavement therapist, and social policy consultant regarding end of life strategies and palliative and hospice care guidance. Dr Pentaris has two books due to be released this year. You can keep up with the latest on his Twitter.

Upcoming books
Death, grief and loss in the context of COVID-19
Dying in a transhumanist and posthuman society

Comedian guest:
The unofficial go-to co-host is back once again. Juan Miles has now been on the show 5 times and smashed it every single one of them. Juan is an Argentinian born, Berlin based stand-up comedian via Melbourne, Australia. He's one of the most wickedly funny people I know. As always, you can stay up-to-date with his news on his Instagram or Twitter.

Dawkins said that there was no room for altruism in evolution, so why are we so cooperative as a species? This week we speak to Dr Nichola Raihani is PI of the Social Evolution and Behaviour Lab. She is Professor in Evolution and Behaviour, a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Her new book 'The Social Instinct
How Cooperation Shaped the World' is out now. 

We've already discussed the scientific benefits of psychedelics. Today we look at whether that comes from magical elves, third eyes and interdimensional wisdom, or perhaps if there is a way to experience all the benefits of psychedelics without giving into mystical madness.

Our expert guest:
Dr Chris Letheby is a philosopher working on issues related to the therapeutic and transformative potential of classic psychedelic drugs. His doctoral research, conducted at the University of Adelaide, presented the first systematic analysis of psychedelic experience within the framework of 21st century philosophy of cognitive science.

He is currently (2018-2021) Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Western Australia and (2019-2022) Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Adelaide on the ARC-funded project 'Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry'. His monograph Philosophy of Psychedelics is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in the series 'International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry'.

Our comedy guest:
Rachel Hornbuckle is a wickedly funny comedian based in Brisbane after honing her skills on the London comedy circuit. Follow her on Instagram for the latest.