Imagine an apple (Vynn & Francis)
Explorez tous les épisodes de Imagine an apple
| Date | Titre | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Jul 2024 | Everyday imagination with Ronja | 00:48:45 | |
What is the experience of imagining a gremlin on someone’s shoulder? How do people imagine music, sounds, time and emotion? How is imagination used to find keys and remember names?Vynn and Francis chat with Ronja about her imagination, covering a wide range of topics that may inspire you to ask your own friends and family what happens in their minds. As someone mostly aphantasic, Francis quizzes Ronja about how she imagines a gremlin on a friend’s shoulder. How solid is it? Does it rotate with the world? Is it alive, and to what extent is it under conscious control? The conversations continues on the topics of imagining emotion, smell and music. Then it gets practical, discussing how imagination can be used to find things lost in your house, navigate to a destination and assemble furniture. What are different ways people remember names, and what techniques can improve that? How do people imagine while watching movies and reading books, and what is it like to imagine emotions? Timestamps: 00:48 Gremlin on your shoulder Show Links:
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| 05 Sep 2024 | Dragons coming from the pavement | 01:08:19 | |
What are the limits of our imagination? Can we imagine an apple 100 miles away, or a sound higher pitched that we can hear? Can we project our imaginations into our actual vision? Vynn and Francis are interviewed by video games designer Berbank Green. He stretches our imagination with a series of exercises (see full list below). Can you imagine a smell that knocks you out? Can you imagine an apple as large as the moon? How accurate are our imaginations? Berbank describes his “prophantasic” ability to put an imagined apple on the actual table in his real vision, and how he used this in childhood. Timestamps: 00:48 Detail of imagining an apple Show Links:
Berbank’s Imagination Exercises: Imagine an apple OK now test limits: Contact Details: | |||
| 29 Oct 2024 | Spiritual experience with Jessica Corneille | 00:52:18 | |
Welcome to another episode of “Imagine an apple”! How do these vary between individuals, and how do they vary between human cultures? Twitter: @imagine_apple @SurenVynn @frabcus Timestamps: 01:40 What are spiritual experiences? Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello | |||
| 27 May 2024 | Fire Kasina with Jane Flowers | 00:42:58 | |
How can you use fire kasina meditation to develop hyperreal imagery? How does this differ from mind’s eye imagination? Vynn and Francis interview fashion designer Jane Flowers, who has developed a hyperphantasic ability using fire kasina meditation. Jane describes how she developed imagery while doing fire kasina meditation. She talks about the progress from seeing visual snow, to the brain pattern matching it as 3D, to forming plants and rich, controlled shapes. She describes ways to prepare your mind and body for these visualisations. The difference between Jane’s kasina visualisations and normal mind’s eye visualisations is explored in detail, including tactile sensation and comparison to reporting on psychedelics. Prophantasia / hyperphantasia Timestamps: 00:36 Mask illusion Show Links:
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| 15 Apr 2024 | Tanha with neuroscientist Michael Johnson | 00:30:04 | |
How does the inner mental experience of autistic people vary? What is our day to day experience that creates stress or tension? Can we skillfully reduce it? Vynn and Francis interview philosopher and neuroscientist Michael Johnson. Michael founded the Qualia Research Institute, and wrote the book Principia Qualia about consciousness. The conversation begins with the inner experience of autistic people. How does a denser, more connected neural network lead to more variety of experience? Then it goes through Michael’s theory of vasocomputation in detail. This relates to the Buddhist concept of “tanha” (grasping) and how it relates to stress and tension. Do we control the world too much, or in ways that make no sense? What is the experience of doing this, and how can we use techniques like meditation to change this? Timestamps: 00:46 Autism and neuron connectivity Show Links:
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| 20 Jan 2025 | Navigating a city with Anna | 00:53:32 | |
When you navigate a city, what is your inner experience? Do you see detailed overhead maps, or street-level views of landmarks, or neither? Vynn Suren and Francis Irving interview Anna about how she uses her imagination to find routes, program a computer and remember names. Anna describes how she sees both an overhead map view and street-level views of landmarks. She switches between them dynamically. What’s a visual map vs a spatial map? What features are salient? What is a waypoint? How do the imagined maps vary in quality between different cities? What does the marker look like that shows where you are? There’s then a discussion about how people work out the route to take on the map, and what happens when they get lost. What’s the inner experience of being lost? How do you find yourself again? The conversation switches to use of imagination while computer programming. Anna describes the abstract concepts she sees in a spatial structure. What then happens when you’re interrupted? Does this apply to other tasks, e.g. getting quotes for insurance? To wrap up, the team talk about names and faces and how well people remember them. If you visualise writing is it serif or sans-serif, is it white or grey? Timestamps: 00:55 Imagine an apple Show Links:
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| 24 Jun 2024 | Limerence with Michelle Akin | 00:43:38 | |
What is it like to have intrusively strong romantic feelings? What are the causes, and what techniques can improve it? Vynn and Francis interview life coach Michelle Akin about what it is like to experience limerence. This is a common, yet not talked about, obsessive love addiction which can repeatedly break relationships. What is the difference between limerence and love? How do limerent people behave with their object of desire? What does it feel like inside their body? The conversation goes into the possible causes of limerence, both innate and relating to attachment in childhood. Michelle describes different methods of therapy and group programmes that can help with it. How do people visualise the object of their limerence? What is the impact of attending to negative traits of the object of limerence on bodily feelings of despair? To finish, Michelle describes how many people messaged her directly when she posted on social media about limerence, and advice she gave them. 01:15 What does limerence feel like? Show Links:
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| 19 Mar 2024 | Music with cellist Matthew Pierce | 01:06:26 | |
What do musicians see in their mind’s eyes and ears while playing? How do they use that to create the impact of the music on the audience? Vynn and Francis interview professional cellist Matthew Pierce who is aphantasic - he has no visual imagination. He uses his audio, spatial, emotional and bodily imagination to perform music. Matthew goes into detail about learning to play an instrument, using different kinds of imagination to train the subconscious to control the body while playing. How does the body move while playing a cello and a piano? Where do you need to visually pay attention while in an orchestra? What are they different layers of habit that are built up while learning an instrument? To finish, there’s a discussion about a lack of visual imagination making it harder to do paperwork. After this interview, Matthew composed, performed and recorded the intro and outro music for “Imagine an Apple”. Thanks Matthew, it’s very much appreciated! Check out his other musical work in the links below. 01:33 Inner audio experience Show Links:
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| 20 Feb 2024 | Emotion with philosopher Tom Cochrane | 00:43:20 | |
What is emotion? How’s it different from feelings? How do different people experience it? Vynn and Francis interview philosopher Tom Cochrane, author of “The Emotional Mind: A Control Theory of Affective States”, about emotion. They unpick the sometimes confusing academic words on this topic, such as affect and valence. How does the way the brain is a prediction machine relate to emotion? Are emotions social? What is the impact of different clothes, locations or music on emotion? What is the state of scientific experiments about emotion? This episode has a follow-up companion episode, where Vynn and Francis talk more widely about our varying experience of emotion. 00:42 Definitions - emotion, feelings, affect, valence Show Links:
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| 22 Feb 2024 | Do we all experience emotion differently? | 00:37:24 | |
How has emotion changed over history, and in different cultures? How do people experience emotion - in the body, cognitively, as concepts, as colours? Vynn and Francis discuss how different people, including themselves individually, experience emotion. The conversation leads into the practical question of how it is best to experience emotion, and how that happens socially and in combination with rational thought. This episode is a follow-up companion episode to the interview with philosopher Tom Cochrane about emotion in the previous episode. 00:46 Experiments about emotions Show Links:
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| 21 Jan 2024 | Introduction to "Imagine an apple" | 00:47:05 | |
Welcome to "Imagine an apple"! A podcast about our different inner mental worlds. In this introductory episode, Vynn Suren and Francis Irving discuss differences in how they do (or don't) imagine, and how they got interested in this topic. What are the differences between what it is like inside our minds? From imagining an apple, to imagining in a dream - even imagined smell and proprioception. How do these vary between individuals, and how do they vary between human cultures? 00:20 Why Vynn and Francis are interested in inner experience Show Links:
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