My big project for September is called How To Live Forever. I've gone rogue as the Hack Circus Ringmaster and created a kind of "solo album..."

I've been reading a load of stuff about death (and life) and 'transhumanism' and talking to loads of interesting experts about longevity and technology, trying to get a few different sides of the issue and knock something decent together on not-very-much-money, in about a month. And the month when everyone's away, too.

One of the things I'm doing for it is making a short film. The camera conked out at the end of our last filming session, but every cloud has a silver lining, and sometimes when a camera dies, some interesting audio is born from its ashes.

So, here's your unexpected podcast! You'll hear Alexander D. Ornella, Director of the Centre for Spirituality Studies at the University of Hull, Paul Graham Raven from the University of Sheffield and Eric Olsen, Professor of Philosopher at the University of Sheffield. They discuss cryonics, brain uploading, the soul, religious language in transhumanism, metaphors and more! Look out for the full documentary. Hope you like this short pod.

In this episode, Leila catches up with Heather Fenoughty at her home in Sheffield. For composer and sound designer Heather, everything from the bathroom fan to the dishwasher seems carefully placed: "To me, the world is sound designed".

Find out how to manipulate people's emotions with music, which came first – the lyricist or the composer, why we like particular chords, and what happened when she met Jean Luc Picard down the corridor from Doctor Who, in this extra-musical episode of the Hack Circus podcast!

Heather's excellent blog, with links to her work is here: heather-fenoughty.com

Hack Circus is a quarterly magazine, event series and podcast. Check out hackcircus.com and sign up to our newsletter to find up what we're up to next.

It's series two! This series of podcasts explore the magical in everyday life.

This time Leila meets Nick Davies, hypnotist and hypnotherapist, Director of the Warwickshire School of Hypnotherapy and creator of the BLAST therapy technique for resolving trauma. Learn how to put yourself into a more receptive state, and find out a little about the history and science of hypnosis in this fascinating extra-long episode of the show to launch our second season.

Nick even works his magic on Leila's fear of heights live on the show! More about him here and his training and workshops here. 

Hack Circus is also a quarterly magazine and a weird, immersive live show: hackcircus.com and hackcircus.com/underworlds for details of our next show – an immersive, hacky musical in London on March 23rd.

This episode of the show is sponsored by train-mad software development company Shedcode who tinker with arduino, tell stories with data, and drink plenty of tea. Get in touch if you'd like to contact them, or sponsor an episode of Hack Circus yourself! editor@hackcircus.com