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

In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with four experts on vaccines, epidemiology, psychology, and science communication to try and understand how we created so much confusion about COVID-19, and how we can avoid doing so again when a vaccine is ready for widespread, public distribution. Also in… Read More

In 1835, at a tavern in Bavaria, a group of 120 people once met to drink from a randomized assortment of glass vials. Before shuffling them, they divided the vials into two sets. One contained distilled water from a recent snowfall and the other a solution made by collecting 100 drops of that water and… Read More

You’ve got to move more. It’s all too easy in these days at home to retreat to the couch. The truth is, we all know we need to move more, and we know we will feel the better for it. Movement is good for the brain and body, and we all know regular movement is one of the… Read More

I have an essay up on today’s Wall Street Journal. Snippet: Why does walking make us feel good? We all know that a satisfying stroll changes our outlook. Perhaps we realize it all the more today, when so many of us are hunkered down and this simple activity is a challenge. But walking is especially… Read More