The Left Hemisphere Interpreter

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The power of narrative is still there, you know, in terms of being able to kind of gloss over the gaps and come up with some kind of story that makes sense. The ability of words to kind of smooth out the kinks should never be underestimated. I think sometimes we think about, or people literally talk about a narrative self, but you know that through line, through time. But sometimes we come to like believe that story. And we don't know what we've forgotten.

Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.