Shelf Healing

David Fox of MOXI Health and Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown join me to discuss physical and mental wellbeing in the workplace.
We talk about what wellbeing is and how to define it and why it's important to be self aware of our physical and emotional states. understand the consequences of stress and poor wellbeing. We discuss stress, it's effects, and the addictive nature of the fight or flight response.  We also talk about the importance of sick days and how stress and low wellbeing can be contagious. All in all this is an excellent panel on the importance of good wellbeing in life and in the workplace. We need functioning people who feel good in order to have good wellbeing.
David Fox is a physiotherapist and Founder and CEO of MOXI Health.
Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown is Professor of Public Health at Warwick University.

Things from the episode:
MOXI Health
Catalyst Physio
WEBWMS (The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scales)
Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown
David Fox
Stressaholic: 5 Steps to Transform Your Relationship with Stress  by Heidi Hanna

I chat with the lovely Nadya Menuhin this week all about theatre, playwriting, and agenting. We discuss favourite books, mental health, the power of theatre and so much more in a fabulous interview. There's even some fun squirrel facts at the very end.

Nadya's twitter
Hive Mind project

Authors and works mentioned:
Authors
David Sedaris
Jeanette Winterson
A. M. Homes
Rachel Cusk
Max Frisch
André Breton
Simon Stevens
Christopher Hampton
Simon McBurney
Yuval Noah Harari
Joseph Conrad

Works
Graceling  by Kristin Cashore
Santaland Diaries  by David Sedaris
Written on the Body  by Jeanette Winterson
This Book Will Save Your Life  by A. M. Homes
Homo Faber  by Max Frisch
Nadja  by André Breton
Art  by Yasmina Reza
Sapiens  by Yuval Noah Harari
Homo Deus  by Yuval Noah Harari
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

I chat with Jonny Geller, literary agent and CEO of Curtis Brown. We talk all about agenting and the stresses attached to it, what books Jonny likes to read (and re-read!) and why as well as about the benefits on mental health of a large literary agency and the difficulties of agenting in a pandemic.
(Jonny's picture by Dean Belcher)

Link to Curtis Brown Group - Literary Agency
Link to Jonny's twitter
Link to Curtis Brown twitter

List of authors and works mentioned:
Authors:
Susanna Clarke
Taschen (Publisher)
Gustav Flaubert
Marcel Proust
Ivan Turgenev
Gabriel García Márquez
Tracy Chevalier
David Nicholls
Matthew Syed
John le Carré
William Boyd
David Mitchell
Jane Austen
Anton Chekhov

Works:
Yes, but is it Good for the Jews?  by Jonny Geller
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell  by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi  by Susanna Clarke
Anna Karenina  by Leo Tolstoy
One Hundred Years of Solitude  by Gabriel García Márquez
A Fine Balance  by Rohinton Mistry
Girl with a Pearl Earring  by Tracy Chevalier
Short stories by Chekhov

Our first Work & Life episode sees me chatting with Michael Chivers about his global journey in HR. How Michael learned to ask 'how can we help?' and focused in on the importance of caring for employees as an HR Director for companies such as Sony and Maersk. We also discuss the difficulties of funding performance by results and the ways in which human wellbeing can be lost in a results driven business model.

Trailer for the new Work & Life wellbing podcast from UCL 

In this Shelf Healing interview we chat to Clare Balding, author, broadcaster, and advocate for women in sport. We talk about books that help us understand ourselves better, the power of animals and animals in books, audio and walking, and getting around to reading newspapers.

Link to Clare's website
Link to Clare's twitter

Links to charities, people, and podcasts mentioned in the episode:
Strength and Learning Through Horses
Ted the Assiantance Dog
Ebony Riding School
RDA (Riding for the Disabled)
Fortunately
Economist Radio 

Authors and works mentioned in the podcast:
Heroic Animals by Clare Balding
How to Win a Life Without Losing Yourself by Dr Pippa Grange
The Long Win: The search for a better way to succeed by Cath Bishop
The Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding
After You've Gone by Maggie O'Farrell
One Day by David Nicholls
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Triumps and Turbulence by Chris Boardman
A Few Wise Words
The History of the World in 100 Animals by Simon Barnes

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

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

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

This week our guest is Dr Douglas Cowie, senior lecturer in creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. We talk about the therapeutic effects of reading and writing, Moby Dick, and how everyone approaches texts differently and gets different things out of them.

Link to Doug's website

List of texts and authors mentioned:
Authors:
WH Auden
John Berryman
Patrick Kavanaugh
Eve L Ewing
Herman Melville

Texts:
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Dream Song by John Berryman
Black Girl Magic the second BreakBeat Poets anthology
“what I mean when I say I'm sharpening my oyster knife” by Eve L Ewing 

In this Shelf Healing interview we chat to Deborah Alma, poet and founder of The Poetry Pharmacy. We discuss bibliotherapy, poetry, prescribing poems, and wellbeing, and what literature Deborah reaches for to improve mental health. This week I am joined by a guest co-host, Sara Cheraghlou.

Link to The Poetry Pharmacy website
Link to Deborah's twitter account 

Authors and works mentioned in the podcast:
Authors:
Tove Jansson
Seamus Heaney
Derek Walcott
John Keats
William Shakespeare
Esther Morgan

Works:
The Moomin books by Tove Jansson
Love After Love by Derek Walcott
Postscript by Seamus Heaney
Grace by Esther Morgan
East Coker by TS Eliot

In this Shelf Healing interview we chat to Ian Evans, UCL's Publishing MA and DIS reserach students' administrator. We discuss reading, graphic novels, the effects of lockdown on Ian's reading habits, and what literature he reaches for to improve his own mental health.

Link to Ian's twitter account

Books and authors mentioned in the podcast:
Authors:
Alan Moore
John Higgs
James Roberts
Oliver Burkeman

Books:
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jerusalem by Alan Moore
Watchmen by Alan Moore
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
Prometheo by Alan Moore
The Bible
Stranger Than We Can Imagine by John Higgs
Watling Street by John Higgs
The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye  by James Roberts
A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done by Oliver Burkeman
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman