Tempest Productions

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 10 Why are some words funnier than others? Can you learn a theory of humour? Are the sounds we find comical just as effective in other languages? The Neuromantics – writer Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott – give funny words a thorough seeing to, asking whether it’s possible to find any consensus on humour or if it’s a case of each to his own. S...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 9 Think you know all about testosterone? Well, you might have to think again after this episode of the Neuromantics, as Will and Sophie discuss the sex-related goings on in our brains. The relationship between testosterone and our brains is not as clear-cut as it is with our bodies, and a scientific paper elaborates on how the hormone can convert in mammal brains...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 8 Loss, survival and sympathy are the dominant themes of this episode of the Neuromantics, with Will and Sophie discussing research into the impact of maternal death on mammalian offspring. Maternal care is essential to survival and young mammals deprived of their mothers often move away from their social group, putting themselves at greater risk. But what happens...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 7 The Neuromantics revisit a favourite theme: the importance of social interaction when it comes to healthy minds. This time the starting point is a study on the mental health benefits of cultural engagement. Why is looking at art in a gallery more psychologically resonant than looking at the same pictures online? And how is it that laughing along with an audience...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 6 Neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott and writer Will Eaves - AKA the Neuromantics - suggest you might want to reconsider what you think you know about metaphors. Are they only useful for describing existing things or can they have an earlier, more constructive role in the creative process? A scientific study which asked architects to make use of metaphor at the...

An Interaction of Particles A couple in bed. She's listening to the radio. He's reading a book. But it's Christmas Eve and something special - and a little weird - happens to them every Christmas Eve. Get ready for the journey of a bedtime! Our Christmas Special this year is a celebration of forbidden love, beautiful science and good old-fashioned broadcasting. Written by Bibi Berki, performed by...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 5 The Neuromantics – writer Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott – return to the theme of ageing brains, this time exploring research into why some people remain cognitively intact well into their 90s and beyond. Is it simply a case of keeping our brains busy by learning new languages and musical instruments, or is there something more lobal going...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 4 The grooming episode. Neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott and writer Will Eaves talk social bonds, hierarchies and connectedness. Focusing on a paper about baboon groups in Africa, they untangle the reasons why primates thrive as social animals and come a cropper when left alone. (That's where the grooming comes in.) What can these tight baboon hierarchies use...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 3 This atmospheric episode of The Neuromantics is brought to you from London Zoo. Neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott and writer Will Eaves – once they’ve stopped to admire the grooming macaques – discuss the plasticity of the human brain, in particular when it comes to the ageing process. Given that we're all born with the brain cells we’ll need for the rest of...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 2 The Neuromantics - writer Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott - take their usual inspired and multi-disciplined approach and apply it to the theme of journeys. Helping us unravel issues of movement and travel is an enlightening scientific paper on bird navigation and two moving short stories. With plenty of ground to cover, they discover why pig...

The Neuromantics Season 2 Episode 1 In this constantly shifting world, with its endless novel experiences and influences, one thing we can be sure of is that we're not the same person as we were at birth. Welcome to the first episode of the second season of the Neuromantics, in which writer Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott juggle ideas of human response to a changing environmen...

Unbound 17 The Seesaw of Isolation Trapped in his house by rising flood water, an old man's life depends on outside help. The sense of menace grows along with the encroaching water in this tense tale of old-age vulnerability. Written by Dianne Bown-Wilson and read by Steven Blake. Studio production by Mark Lingwood. Unbound is Tempest's audio bookshelf, packed with original stories of every genre....

Set in frozen, war-torn Leningrad, After Silence follows the story of the musicians of all backgrounds and circumstances who come together to perform Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in 1941. Described as "absorbing" and "richly sensuous," this ambitious novel by Jessica Gregson is due to be published by Deixis Press in August 2022. https://deixis.press/books/p/after-silence Trailer read by Rebecca...

The Neuromantics Season 1 Episode 10 The Neuromantics go out on a good laugh. For their season-ending episode, neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott and writer Will Eaves explore the social function of laughter and discover that it’s a surprisingly more complex facet of human behaviour than you might think. There’s plenty of ground to cover: why do jokes seem funnier when other people are laughing...

Apex "If this is the last time, make it count." A lone driver walks the track early one morning before a major race. Written off and dogged by bad luck, he knows that what lies ahead has to be the defining moment of his career - one way or another. Lose yourself in the explosive noise and adrenaline of this high-octane drama, full of the chaos and intensity of a Formula 1 event. Both a narrative a...

The Neuromantics Season 1 Episode 9 The prof and the poet bring a beautifully meandering arc to their discussion of inner voices in this episode – starting with a poignant Old English poem about loneliness and rejection and moving on to a paper on auditory verbal hallucinations. Historically, being alone – or “friendlessness” – was a dangerous state to find yourself in. But did the interior world...

The Neuromantics Season 1 Episode 8 The pleasure of making and listening to music. Is it universal? Or is it a very varied experience? The Neuromantics – author Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott – explore our neurological responses to music and ask how these may have changed over the years and with technological developments. What role has ritual to play? How does music help us...

The Neuromantics Season 1 Episode 7 In the 90s, the psychology community was tying itself in knots over whether forgotten traumas could or should be recovered through therapy. In this episode of the Neuromantics, writer Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott revisit the so-called memory wars, and discuss the controversial issue of repressed memory (now rebranded as dissociative amnes...

The Neuromantics Season 1 Episode 6 In this episode, the Neuromantics take apart the sound of music, the scientific phenomenon that is. Writer and poet Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott discuss how the human ear processes musical sound, focusing in particular on pitch and timbre. Visiting, as ever, a scientific paper and a literary offering, they revel in the soaring possibiliti...

Chocolate Cake for Imaginary Lives is a unique collection of culinary-themed short stories written by Genevieve Jenner and published by Deixis Press. Funny, frank and full of the mess and magic of food preparation, this collection brings you the most delicious surprises. https://deixis.press/books/p/chocolate-cake Trailer read by Rebecca Charles and made by @tempestproductions.net

The Neuromantics Season 1 Episode 5 The Neuromantics – writer Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott – delve deeply into emotions in this episode, and explore how our feelings are recalled and expressed. Taking as their starting point a poignant poem about the memory of illness, they move onto a Finnish scientific paper on the bodily mapping of emotional responses. But they save thei...

London Epitaphs 12 Lieutenant Gilbert Price The date and place of Lieutenant Gilbert Price's death - Dublin 1920 - leads local historian Mike Guilfoyle to discover a remarkable story hidden away in Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries in South East London. The young Londoner had a pivotal role in one of the most memorable and bloody events of the Anglo-Irish War of Independence - the notorious Talbot...

The Neuromantics Season 1 Episode 3 “Remember me when I am gone away.” The opening line of Christina Rossetti’s celebrated poem marks the starting point to a discussion of death in this episode of The Neuromantics. Exploring new research into death rites among primates, neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott and writer Will Eaves ask whether our brains are really capable of grasping our own demise....

The Neuromantics Season 1 Episode 3 What are we actually seeing when we visualise the world? How could the blind Milton have recreated such a sumptuously colourful Eden? And why do babies use their mouths as the first means of ‘seeing’ objects? In episode 3 of The Neuromantics, writer Will Eaves and neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott explore what happens when our brains recreate external images...

The Watch - an audio trailer Read by Georgina Sutton The Watch, written by Bibi Berki and published by Salt, is a dark story of obsession. Two uncompromising young women meet under extraordinary circumstance one midsummer night at university. By the time the sun comes up their fates have been sealed. Shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish and Exeter fiction prizes. www.saltpublishing.com/products/the-...