Dr Dean Burnett in conversation

Join us at 19:00 GMT on Tuesday 19 March for a conversation with neuroscientist-turned-author whose books have become international bestsellers.

Dr Dean Burnett, neuroscientist, podcaster, comedian and author of the international bestsellers The Idiot Brain and The Happy Brain will be joining Suw at 19:00 GMT on Tuesday 19 March to talk about why he decided to give up his career as a lecturer at the University of Cardiff to become an author.

He’ll also talk about his stint as a stand-up comic and how that influenced his writing, and we’ll also discuss his writing practice including how much research he does for his books and how he structures it. And as someone intimately familiar with the idiotic nature of our brains, he’ll be talking about how he views writer’s block and give us some ideas for how to overcome it. If we’re lucky, we might also get some stories about his notorious cat, Pickle.

About Dean Burnett

Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist, blogger, sometimes-comedian and author. He lives in Cardiff, and is currently an honorary research fellow at the Cardiff University Psychology School.

His first two books, The Idiot Brain and The Happy Brain, were international bestsellers published in over twenty-five countries, and he’s written several other successful books, including Why Your Parents Are Driving You Up the Wall and What To Do About It, Psycho-Logical, and Emotional Ignorance. Dean currently writes the Brain Yapping blog for the Cosmic Shambles network, and co-hosts the Why Does This Thing Exist? podcast.

He has written for The Telegraph, Buzzfeed, GQ, BBC Focus, The Lancet, LA Times, ReThink (the mental health charity), Pitchfork, and many more. His Guardian articles have been read over sixteen million times. He has also appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, CBC’s The Current, Ireland’s NewsTalk and countless platforms and publications in the UK. The TV rights for The Idiot Brain were purchased by Whoopi Goldberg’s One Ho Productions.

About Suw

Suw Charman-Anderson is a writer and campaigner. She publishes two newsletters for writers: Why Aren’t I Writing? explores the various faces of writer’s block, and Word Count is a regular round-up of useful and interesting links for writers, plus Suw’s own writing news. Her first novella, Argleton, was crowdfunded on Kickstarter and featured in their first ever newsletter. She’s currently working on Fieldwork, a comedy drama short film about ecologists working in the field which has been commissioned by the University of York, and Tag, a six-part urban fantasy TV series spec script.

Suw began writing professionally as a freelance music journalist in the late 90s, contributing to the Melody Maker and various trade magazines. She started writing about technology in the early 00s, and has written about social media, technology and digital rights for The Guardian, CIO Magazine, .Net Magazine, First Post, Computer Weekly, and Linux User & Developer, and about publishing and crowdfunding for Forbes.

In 2009, she founded Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of women in STEM, which raises women’s profiles and creates new role models to encourage girls and women to study and pursue careers in STEM. In 2005, she co-founded the Open Rights Group, a digital rights campaigning group.

Suw can be found at the following links: Website, Twitter, BlueSky, Substack.

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