Let’s go for a walk in the park – Central Park, NYC: In an interview with Kaitlyn Zafonte of Central Park Conservancy, I discuss the benefits of walking in nature, even if you live in urban setting. And is there anywhere more urban than New York? (Yes, of course – lots of places have higher urban… Read More

Here are the top five most popular posts of the past couple of months since I started this newsletter – if you enjoy the small, medium and large slices of writing at BrainPizza – consider sharing or subscribing. There’ll be lots more writing coming in 2021… and 2021 is going to be a better year than the one we’ve… Read More

John Le Carré has died, aged 89. He was around for so long, and so productive with it, I had the sense he could go on forever. Many pieces have appeared extolling his brilliance as a writer (e.g. this, and John Banville here). I only recently really started reading him seriously: I’ll focus a little here on some psychological… Read More

All the readings are here.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had huge effects across the world, infecting more 40 million people, and resulting in the deaths of over 1.4 million people. It has caused major changes to the ways we live, work, play, socialise. We are lucky that several vaccines have been developed and tested so quickly, and with such positive outcomes –… Read More

Black holes; dad biology; Bulgarian population collapse; poor ancestors; covid vaccine explainer; Music: Tricky; Melody Gardot – all here…– sign-up at brainpizza.substack.com for regular small, medium, & large slices of writing on brains, behaviour, and everything in between#writing #writinglife #wellbeing #creativity #vaccine #COVID19 #music #dads #bulgaria

(Urban, wealth, education, ageing; Songs of the city: The Specials; Marvin Gaye; Randy Crawford) We humans have embarked an on an unprecedented quadruple experiment – one affecting just about everyone on the planet. And, remarkably, excluding academia and some rarefied policy circles, we aren’t really talking about it, or even thinking too hard about it.… Read More

(Music: Dave Brubeck; Yann Tiersen) Brain Training doesn’t work… The search is on for the brain training shortcut allowing you to perform better, stronger, faster, and for longer. We’d all like a shortcut to help us function better: one that quickly overcomes fatigue, boosts our overall performance, one that enhances learning and memory. For most of us,… Read More

This week: Bonobos and culture; Chief Inspector Maigret; Social Science Matters (+brexit); Coffee; Exercise and work performance; Music; Poetry; and a nice pic of Killiney Bay more at brainpizza.substact.com

Sign-up for my Brain Pizza newsletter: ‘Slices of writing on brains, behaviour & anything between’ – straight to your inbox (easy signup;  easy unsubscribe). Contents: A piece I originally wrote for a panel appearance* at the wonderful Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin online public series: Rethinking Democracy in an Age of Pandemic. I… Read More