The Locked up Living Podcast: Surviving and thriving in prisons and other challenging environments Podcasters David Jones & Dr Naomi Murphy

If you have anything to do with health or the mental health field you must listen to this podcast and follow the links below. This is about the creeping reintroduction of the practice of causing physical damage to the brain as a 'remedy' for distress. Peter Sterling is an American physiologist and neuroscientist and Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. In his long career he has made major and varied contributions to scientific knowledge and you will see more about this in the links below. He has also been a social activist throughout his life and we touch upon that before talking about his recent work ‘Causality in Mental Disturbance; a review of the Neuroscience’
'My life in ten minutes' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjL2D29acro&t=11s
In the essays below, Peter provides an “overview of what we don’t know about the brain regarding mental disturbance and what we should not be doing to the brain physically and chemically as ‘therapy."
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/07/causality-mental-disturbance/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/10/neuroscientist-evaluates-depression/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35107578/

I’m David Shipley. I’ve sold fork lift trucks, been a recruiter, worked in corporate finance and produced a film. I also committed a fraud in 2014, which I was jailed for in 2020. The prison system I saw horrified me. It is neglectful, cruel and seems almost designed to maximise reoffending. In August 2021 I was released, determined to make a difference.  Now, I write, campaign and speak on prison reform. I work as a consultant prison inspector, and I’m always happy to talk, mentor, or write about those experiences. During my time inside I wrote a journal every day. This outlet helped my mental health, in particular during lockdown when I was confined to my cell for almost 24 hours a day.  I then heard about the Koestler Prize and entered works in 2020 and 2021. I was delighted to be awarded prizes in both years and this spurred me to take my writing more seriously.
In January 2021, while still in prison, I began an MA in Creative Writing with the University of Hull, which has encouraged me to write fiction, with a bias towards historical and fantasy genres. 

Piers Cross is a transformational coach specializing in working with men who feel stuck in their relationships. He helps men overcome and heal from trauma, boarding school issues, anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and live a happier and more fulfilled life.
He is also an artist, a poet and a musician.
Piers went to boarding school from ages 11-18. It was an exceptionally challenging time. He changed his name to Simon and then Ziggy Cross. He lost a friend to suicide, a teacher attempted to sexually abuse him and he tried to take his own life. On the surface he was a sucess. Underneath he was hurting.
 
he then trained in International Business at universities in France and London. he worked for several Fortune 500 companies in Paris and London.
 
In 1997, while in London, he started on an internal journey and started to study meditation and different self-healing paradigms.

Gethin Aldous is film and video game maker who believes in the power of story to transform lives. He was co-director and executive producer of The Work documentary, winning a UK Grierson Award for Best International Doc and Best Cinema Doc. He has also been honored with a Ron Herring Award by the Mankind Project USA. Gethin has been involved in men's work for over a decade and has staffed group therapy retreats at Folsom Prison with Inside Circles and Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk with the Jericho Circle.

Stella Assange  is a lawyer and human rights defender. Throughout her career, she has been an international advocate for human rights, most prominently in the case of her husband.
We are really pleased to welcome Stella to our podcast . Stella is a human rights lawyer who was born in South Africa and she's the wife of Julian Assange who's the founder of WikiLeaks and a prisoner at HMP Belmarsh and Stella and Julian have two children.
Julian Assange is held in the high security Belmarsh prison with the expectation that he will be extradited to the USA on charges related to the publication of government lies relating to, among others, the Iraq war.
Donate to Julian's legal costs here; https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/assangeappeal/
Donate to the UK campaign here; https://dontextraditeassange.com/donate/
Sign up here if ypu want to receive a text message on the upcoming hearing, when the date is known - https://dontextraditeassange.com/day-x/
Lobby your MP; https://dontextraditeassange.com/email-mp/
Other ways to help; http://www.freeassangeemergencytoolkit.com/

Ros Watts is a clinical psychologist whose work as the clinical lead for Imperial College, London's psilocybin trial has made her one of the most prominent voices in the field of psychedelics, she has been named as one of the 50 most influential people in psychedelics, as well as being in the top 16 women shaping up the field and you might recognize her from the Michael Pollan series on Netflix, "How to change your Mind".
Website: acerintegration.comInstagram: @acerintegration
https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/
https://acerintegration.com/