Mind games galore...
This week, Derren Brown offers a boot camp for the brain, there’s sci-fi drama with Glow’s Betty Gilpin, and conversations around menopause
DERREN BROWN’S BOOT CAMP FOR THE BRAIN
Self-dubbed ‘psychological magician’ Derren Brown is as charismatic and manipulative in audio form as he is on his TV and stage shows as he attempts to explain the many ways our brains trick us.
It’s not our fault, he assures us, that we sometimes make bad decisions we know we will regret or concoct great plans we never act on.
It’s all down to the way our little grey cells don’t always work in our best interests.
This is both worrying and fascinating as Brown tackles flaws such as our inability to multi-task – even though our over-confident brains convince us this is an in-built skill – and how we are often unable to recognise our own mistakes.
These are of course human frailties that he has brilliantly exploited for our entertainment for many years but in this podcast he offers ways of recognising them and making improvements.
WHERE TO START: In The Myth of Multi-tasking, Brown demonstrates how hard it is for our brains to do more than one thing at the same time by inviting listeners to take part in a number of experiments. An Audible exclusive.
RED FRONTIER
It’s been three years since Commander Taylor Fullerton (Glow’s Betty Gilpin) lost her crew to a strange virus in 2049 and found herself stranded on Mars.
Three episodes into the new fiction podcast Red Frontier and she has removed the identification chip in her hand and appears to be hiding something. Will the second crew, that has just landed on the planet, suffer the same fate? So far Gilpin, excellent as ever, has carried the show, but it will be interesting to see how co-star Charlie Barnett’s (Russian Doll, Tales of the City) character pans out.
WHERE TO START:
With the 50-second trailer. A Spotify exclusive.