The Spectator Podcast: Train your brain

Can playing brain-training games slow, or even reverse, the brain’s ageing? In this week’s Spectator, Camilla Cavendish suggests that we are far too fatalistic about getting old. She argues that new research suggests it may be possible for our brains to keep developing well into our later years. Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist and contributor to the Daily Telegraph, joins Damian Green MP, chairman of the newly established All Party Parliamentary Group on Longevity, to discuss whether it is possible to train your brain to keep it staying young.

Also on the podcast: has grouse hunting decimated the English countryside? Ben Macdonald says that turning over vast swathes of our countryside to grouse farms has been an ecological disaster. He speaks to Tim Bonner Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance.

And Damian Thompson marks 25 years without booze. He joins The Spectator’s food critic Tanya Gold to discuss the three simple things that sobriety has taught him.