Humanity has stopped moving. The average person now spends 70% of our time sitting or lying around - and that was before the pandemic. It’s no surprise that this is linked to rising obesity rates, but it could also be increasing our levels of depression and reducing our cognitive skills.

Our guest on this episode, Caroline Williams, was going to be a PE teacher before being seduced by neuroscience. She's spent several years researching the connection between movement and the mind. As a science writer and broadcaster she says that her aim is to learn new and exciting things and share them in the most entertaining way she can think of. She is regularly featured in New Scientist magazine as well as the Guardian, BBC Future, BBC Earth and the Boston Globe. ​

In her latest book, Move!, Caroline Williams investigates how movement moulds our minds including: how core strength is linked to stress control, why stretching tackles the mood-sapping effects of an overactive immune system, what dance can do for our emotional literacy, and why physical strength translates into emotional resilience.

You can find Caroline at https://www.carolinewilliams.net and on Twitter.

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Move! Is Caroline’s second book. Previously she wrote Override (published as My Plastic Brain in the US), and is the editor of two of New Scientist’s Instant Expert Guides: How Your Brain Works: Inside the most complicated object in the known universe (John Murray, 2017) and Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain (John Murray, 2017).

Ideas, People, and Works Mentioned:

  • Rodolfo Llinás, neuroscientist

  • Tecumseh Fitch, cognitive scientist

  • Rubber Hand Illusion

  • Marcus Scotney, ultramarathon runner

  • MovNat Fitness

Find Us Online

  • Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/thenonficpod

  • Bookshop.org: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/nonficpod (purchases here support us and independent booksellers in the UK)

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Credits

  • Guest: Caroline Williams

  • Episode Producer: Emma Byrne

  • Series Exec Producers: Emma Byrne and Georgie Codd

  • Series Senior Producer: Beatrice Bazell

  • Composer and consulting engineer: Mike Wyer

About Us

Brought to you by author and publishing rockstar Georgie Codd and author and broadcaster Emma Byrne, NonFicPod is your home for the latest nonfiction must reads. Our premium podcast, Sh*t I Wish I'd Known teaches you the lessons that we (and our guests) have learned about writing - and about life.

Episode transcript available here (Google doc)

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