Podcasts Culture Start the Week Susan Pinker on the benefits of face-to-face contact

Susan Pinker on the benefits of face-to-face contact

Published: March 23, 2015, 2:47 p.m.

On Start the Week Susan Pinker argues that face-to-face contact increases longevity and reduces the risks of illness. She tells Anne McElvoy that although new technology connects more people, it can often leave us more disconnected. However the writer and gamer Nicholas Lovell explains that online gamers have their own sense of community. The philosopher Daniel Dennett considers whether it's possible to create a robot that can rival the human brain, and the poet Sam Riviere has used and manipulated the results of search-engines to compose his new collection: 72 poems marking the 72 days of Kim Kardashian's marriage in 2011. Producer: Katy Hickman.