Brain and mental health podcasts at Oxford

Futuremakers: Brain and Mental Health (2023)

In the fourth series of the award-winning Futuremakers podcast, Oxford experts, and guests from beyond the university, unravel the mysteries of the brain and examine how mental health issues impact individuals and society.

Episodes in this series explore topics as diverse as brain injury, maternal mental health, childhood and adolescent anxiety, wellbeing in the workplace and protecting mental health in crisis contexts.

Find out more about ‘Futuremakers: Brain and Mental Health’.

CortexCast - A Neuroscience Podcast (2020-23)

CortexCast provides in-depth interviews with world leading Neuroscientists. Through conversations that are accessible to anyone with an interest in science, the podcast explores cutting edge techniques, challenges in the field and how these researchers think not only about the brain but life in general.

CortexCast is the official podcast of the Oxford University Cortex Club, a student run society that connects local and internationally recognised neuroscientists with students and researchers in Oxford through forums such as panels discussions, lectures and small debates.

Our Mental Wellness (2022)

Our Mental Wellness is a seminar series organised by the Experimental Psychology Department at Oxford.

The series aims to inform, dispel myths and generate discussion on a range of mental health topics.

The podcast series is an opportunity for students, staff and alumni to hear world-leading researchers from the University of Oxford share their expertise about mental health conditions and effective evidence-based treatments.

Mental Health Interventions for Refugee Children (2019)

Made for people working with refugee children and interested in their mental health needs, this series of podcasts outlines a number of topics: approaches to psychological assessments for refugee children, PTSD, Narrative Exposure Therapy, Trauma Focussed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and how a child's family, home, community and school environments can impact their mental health once settled in a new country.

Find out more about the 'Mental Health Interventions for Refugee Children' podcast.

Textual Therapies (2018)

Textual Therapies aims to crystallise, communicate, and expand our understanding of how texts and health interact.

Through conversations with experts drawing on a wide range of professional and personal experience, the episodes offer introductions to some of the many perspectives from which texts and health are investigated, experienced, and understood.

The series asks questions, reviews findings, and considers next steps for this realm of health-humanities inquiry.

Shakespeare and the Brain (2016)

The 'Shakespeare and the Brain' podcast is a series of talks from an interdisciplinary event held by the St Edmund Hall Centre for the Creative Brain in Oxford on 26 November 2016.

The speakers interpret the theme of ‘Shakespeare and the Brain’ in various ways, examining it from the perspective of literature scholars, neuroscientists and actors. All the talks are aimed at a non-specialist audience.

Find out more about the 'Centre for the Creative Brain'.

Unconscious Memory (2016)

‘What is the unconscious? Where is it? How does it affect our conscious experiences?' 

The Unconscious Memory Network was a forum where humanists and neuroscientists discussed and exchanged their research findings on diverse aspects of the unconscious, in particular unconscious memory.

The Network aimed to bring together scholars from Oxford and beyond as well as to involve new researchers, students, and people from outside the research community. 

Psychiatry (2013-17)

Psychiatry is a medical discipline seeking to understand and treat mental illness.

The 'Psychiatry' podcasts provide an introduction to core topics in psychiatry, and to research undertaken in the Oxford University Department of Psychiatry.

This series is relevant to health-care professionals and members of the public. The topic podcasts are particularly relevant to medical students studying psychiatry.

A Romp Through the Philosophy of the Mind (2012)

The mind is a fascinating entity. Where, after all, would we be without it? But what exactly is it?

These days many people believe the mind simply is the brain. Descartes would have disagreed profoundly. He recommended a dualism of substance. Modern philosophers are again finding various forms of dualism attractive because the problems with physicalism are so intractable.

Find out more in the 'A Romp Through the Philosophy of the Mind' podcast.

New Thinking: Advances in the Study of Human Cognitive Evolution (2011)

The 'New Thinking: Advances in the Study of Human Cognitive Evolution' podcast series is taken from an interdisciplinary conference focusing on new ideas and discoveries in research on the evolution of human cognition.

The conference focused on genetic, developmental, and socio-cultural processes that have played a particularly significant role in the evolution of human cognition, and on uniquely human cognitive achievements in domains such as causal understanding, language, social learning, theory of mind and meta-cognition.