Catch up with Dr Dean Burnett in conversation
Dean talked about how he started his writing career, how his first book came about, how he came to meet Whoopi Goldberg, and more!
If you’re interested in how an academic parlayed his expertise into a successful writing career, then my conversation with neuroscientist Dr Dean Burnett is just the thing for you!
Dean and I kicked off our conversation with the story of Blue Monday — not the New Order song, but the confected PR nonsense that claims one particular Monday in January is the ‘most depressing of the year’. Dean, already a keen blogger and stand-up comedian, debunked it and soon found himself writing a regular blog for The Guardian.
We then moved on to talk about how Dean came to write his first book, international bestseller The Idiot Brain and then his second book, The Happy Brain, how he does his research and how he made the decision to go full-time as a writer. We also talked about our childhood assumptions that other people wrote books, not us, and how that’s affected our writing careers, Dean’s experience of doing stand-up comedy, the weirdness of having his book optioned by Whoopi Goldberg, and a bit about what he thinks writer’s block might be.
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.