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. 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.

In this podcast novelist and journalist Jon Stock discusses his latest book 'The Sleep Room: A very British Medical scandal', is a factual account of psychiatrist William Sargant (1907-88 ) that focusses particularly on Sargant's controversial 20 year 'sleep room' regimen for mental illness that combined continuous narcosis, high dose mixed antidepressants, major tranquillisers and ECT, sometimes extending over several months. We talk about Sargant's early life and the influence of his strict methodist father, who sparked an interest in conversion and, later in brainwashing, a subject that brought him to the attention of intelligence services at the height of the Cold War. We discuss his failure to get into general medicine and his determination to drag psychiatry, where he ended up, into mainstream physical medicine. Sargant's own mental illness episodes get a mention, and his lack of public acknowledgement of same; we outline the atmosphere of deference to senior medics in his period and his friendships in politics and intelligence, fertile ground for untried treatment experiments that also fed into his advice on interrogation techniques and protected him following accusations of sexal improprieties. A really interesting portrait of the man and his times.

Participants:

Jon Stock, novelist, journalist and historian. : https://williamsargant.com/ jsthrillers.com

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

Willaim Sargant: https://williamsargant.com/index.php/about/

Jon's Book 'The Sleep Room': https://williamsargant.com/

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.