In this episode Stefan Sorgner, a leading academic in the growing field of transhumanist philosophy defines and talks about his route to the subject before drawing a distinction, elaborated in his upcoming book, on the difference between 'classical' and 'Euro' varieties. He stresses that, in a sense, we have been augmented humans ('cyborgs'), since we acquired the ability to create and use language, tools, clothes, fire, writing, herbs etc. all of which enable us to go beyond our basic physical and mental limitations. He talks about the importance of Nietzsche's philosophy importance for the subject and defends him against accusations of proto-fascism. He distances himself and the Euro tradition from the utopian and immortality obsessed transhumanism of Silicone Valley billionaires and from those who consider transhumanism 'the devil's work', including a leading Russian Orthodox religious leader, Steve Bannon and others. We touch on transhumanism in culture then Stefan concludes by emphasising Euro-transhumanism's aim as promoting human flourishing, safety, protection from disease and starvation for the majority, rather than more power and longevity for the few.

Participants:

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Associate Professor of Philosophy, John Cabot University, Rome, Director and co-founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies www.sorgner.de

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/

Stefan's upcoming book: Euro-Transhumanism: Twisting truth, Goodness, Beauty https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/euro-transhumanism

His book 'We have always been cyborgs': https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/we-have-always-been-cyborgs

For Stefan's other publications and work consult his website: www.sorgner.de

Music: Prelude to Act 1 of the opera Brainland composed by Stephen Brown www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Sketch by KB.

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In this episode novelist and playwright Alice Jolly talks about her latest novel, 'The Matchbox Girl'' about a neurodiverse girl and then young woman who is referred to Asperger's clinic in Vienna in the 1930s. Alice talks about her decision to use a female patient/narrator and how the book 'felt like a radio you couldn't properly tune in' until she found Adelheid, her narrator's voice. We discuss other members of the clinical team including Annie Weiss and George Frankl, both of who had to leave the clinic because they were Jewish and migrated to America. We discuss revelations about Asperger's child referrals to the clinic where the disabled were killed, a practice that wasn't public at the time but seems to have been widely known - an action at odds with the clinic sheltering a Jewish boy througout the war and the way he emphasises the social value of the patients he describes in his paper on 'autistic psychopathy'. We also touch on the appalling and discredited 'refrigerator mother' theory from the 1950s, an idea dismissed by Asperger in his 1944 paper. Great insights into the backgorund to an engaging novel.

Participants:

Alice Jolly, novelist and playwright https://alicejolly.com/wp/

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/

Alice's novel ‘The Matchbox Girl’: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/matchbox-girl-9781526681034

More on Hans Asperger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger

More on Annie Weiss and Georg Frankl: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337935440_The_Forgotten_Pioneers_The_Life_and_Work_of_Anni_Weiss_and_Georg_Frankl_updated

Music: Prelude to Act 1 of the opera Brainland composed by Stephen Brown www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Sketch by KB.

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For the first episode of season 3 your host travelled to North London to record a conversation with Dame Uta Frith whose translation of Hans Asperger’s now famous paper was published 35 years ago. After discussing her reasons for moving to the UK, Uta talks about Lorna Wing’s work and influence before discussing the innovative and multidisciplinary clinic in which Asperger worked in the 1930 and 40s and the structure of his paper - four detailed case descriptions of children with what best translates as ‘autistic psychopathology’. We discuss origin of the term ‘autistic’ and how the concept has evolved since the 1960s, from a narrow and severely disabling non-verbal condition to a spectrum and the difficulties inherent in a condition of varying severity. The episode concludes with three short extracts from Dame Uta’s translation. In the next episode, with novelist Alice Jolly, we will discuss Asperger’s world in more detail, including recent evidence of complicity with Nazi eugenic practices. Check out Alice’s novel ‘The Matchbox Girl’.

Participants:

Dame Uta Frith FRS is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College, London.

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/ http://cornwallcomposers.com/stephen.htm

More on Dame Uta and her research : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uta_Frith

And on the BBC's "Life Scientific: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017w65r

A review of Two Heads is here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/29/two-heads-by-uta-frith-chris-frith-alex-frith-and-daniel-locke-review

Alice Jolly's novel ‘The Matchbox Girl’: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/matchbox-girl-9781526681034

More on Hans Asperger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger

Read extract from Uta's translation of Asperger's paper (with the permission of the translator) from: Chapter 2, 'Autism and Asperger Syndrome, Edied by Uta Frith, Cambridge, 1991.

Alice Jolly's novel 'The Matchbox Girl': https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/matchbox-girl-9781526681034/

Music: Prelude to Act 1 of the opera Brainland composed by Stephen Brown www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Sketch by KB.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The final episode of season 2 is a compilation of 10 male and 10 female voices from season two, chosen more or less at random, about 90 seconds from each episode sampled at or around 20 minutes in. Thanks to all guests for a fascinating season and see you in season 3.

The key to the episodes and timings is below:

1.10. Kimberly Campanello.(26) DANTE, DOPAMINE AND ME: Neuro-poetic and other explorations into language.

2.36. Mark Solms. (29) '...PERCHANCE TO DREAM: On the neuroscience of sleep and dreaming...

4.12. Raquel Medina. (2) I FEEL I AM NOT IN MY PERFECT MIND: Alzheimer's and cognitive decline in movies.

5.45. Antony Penrose. (31) DREAM WARRIORS: Exploring the world of the surrealists...

7.40. Eileen Joyce and Sheldon Benjamin (10) NEUROPSYCHIATRY: Second Coming or Unholy Alliance?

9.15. Erika Dyck (13) EXPANDING MINDSCAPES: A psychedelic world tour.

10.40. Owen Flanagan (8) WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE AN ADDICT? A philosopher tells it like it is.

12.33. Fiona Sampson. (39) FRANKENSTEIN DISASSEMBLED: The remarkable life of Mary Shelley.

13.43. Nick Lane. (3) EVOLUTIONARY BIOCHEMISTRY: New perspectives on the chemistry of you.

15.20. Joanna Kempner (11) PSYCHEDELIC OUTLAWS

16.16. Jon Stock (35) WILLIAM SARGANT AND HIS 'SLEEP ROOM': Shrinks, spooks and medical hubris.

17.56 Julia Vassilieva (38) DISCOVERING EISENSTEIN: Part 2 - Neuroscientific collaborations.

19.24. Jonathan Dove (21) OH FOR THE WINGS OF A DOVE: From choirboy to Operatic Maestro.

20.57. Tricia Durdey. (7) UPSIDE DOWN IN A HOOP: Processing change through writing, dance and circus skills

22.25. Eugen Wassiliwitzky (9) POETRY AND THE NEUROAESTHETICS OF SURVIVAL.

23.33. Pia Tikka. (19) NEUROCINEMATIC EXPLORATIONS: Cinema creators in the act of creation.

25.20 Frank Burke (30) DREAMWORKS: Fellini's dream obsession, from graphic diaries to movies.

26.26. Emily MacGregor (18) WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS: Life, loss and musicology.

28.28. Austin Lim (32) HORROR ON THE BRAIN: The neuroscience behind sci fi and horror.

Host: Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Opening music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketches by KB

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Fiona Sampson's probing biography of Mary Shelley is the first of a trilogy of biographies of 19th century writers of the romantic period. After sharing her approach to biography, Fiona talks about Mary's famous parents: Mary Wollstonecraft, influential philosopher and educator, who died of puerpural fever shortly after Mary's birth, and William Godwin and radical philosopher. We discuss the intellectual household in which she became a precociously intelligent child, her reading that included key 'natural philosophers, of the day, two long childhood trips that found their way into 'Frankenstein', her elopement at 16 with philandering poet Shelley, the ever-present step-sister, and their subsequent travels. These included the fateful stay in Geneva where Byron had taken a villa and the idea of writing horror stories arose. The book was completed when she was only 18 and we explore the various themes and interpretations of the novel, an immediate best-seller with several early stage versions. We talk about her bereavments (3 of 4 children and Shelley, in 1822), her challenging life post-Shelley, and her other novels, including the less known but equally genre-creating 'The Last Man'. To conclude, Fiona reads a summing up section from the end of her book. A terrific in depth conversation about an extraordinary woman.

Participants:

Fiona Sampson, poet, biographer, Professor Emerita, University of Roehampton; Senior Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College University of Oxford. https://www.fionasampson.co.uk/

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Fiona's biography 'In search of Mary Shelley': https://www.fionasampson.co.uk/book/in-search-of-mary-shelley-the-girl-who-wrote-frankenstein/

Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus' (1818): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's 'The Last Man' (1826): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man

Opening and closing music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by KB

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This is the first of two episodes on the life, work and collaborations of Soviet film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein. Ian Christie has researched and written about Eisenstein for more than 40 years. In this wide ranging conversation, we talk about the influence of his troubled childhood, the importance of drawing throughout his life, the international fame that resulted from his second film 'Battleship Potemkin' (made a century ago) and his early theoretical writing on montage. We discuss his 3 year trip abroad, including Hollywood where he became a friend of Chaplin, the profound effect on his thinking and work of an extended trip to Mexico and the criticism he received on his return. His ill-fated and banned sound film 'Behzin Meadow', made at the height of Stalin's Purges, gets an airing before we move on to his last two films based on the life of Ivan the Terrible, the first part of which led to later criticism of him as a Stalin apologist, whilst the second part was banned by Stalin. Another great conversation. Part 2 coming soon...

Participants:

Ian Christie, Professor of Film and Media History, Birckbeck, University of London. www.ianchristie.org

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Oksana Bulgakowa’s biography of Eisenstein: https://europe.potemkinpress.com/products/oksana-bulgakowa-sergei-eisenstein-a-biography-1

Ian's recent book 'Eisenstein Universe' edited with Julia Vassilieva. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/eisenstein-universe-9781350142091/

Opening music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by KB

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In this episode David Bates discusses his recent book An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: Thinking with machines from Decartes to the digital age', a masterly survey of the history of intelligence and its aids. The book is the summation of 20 years of scholarship, a kind of time travel of the mind, and the range of topics we cherry-pick include the influence of automata on Descartes's thinking and pocket watches on Kant's, Spinoza's 'bloodworms', Peirce's hypothesis as 'emergency thought', Hughling Jackson on the brain as a continuously evolving organ, the origin of the notion of brain plasticity, Wolfgang' Köher's chimps and Alan Turing's 'spiritual machines'. Lyotard wrote that 'technology wasn't invented by us. Rather the other way round'. Discuss....or just have a listen.

Participants:

David W. Bates, Professor, Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/david-bates

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

David's book: An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo212878817.html

Opening music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by KB

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.