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Before Brain Science: When We Thought With Our Hearts | Matthew Cobb
18 May 2026
Show notes
💬 For thousands of years, humans believed the heart controlled the body - your thoughts, your emotions…everything. The brain was just a radiator - something to discard when preparing the dead.
But why did our ancestors think this for so long? Were there no tell-tale signs? It’s only in the last few hundred years that the brain has received the attention it deserves. And even once it did, we believed a lot of strange things about how it works.
⚡In this episode Matthew Cobb, author of The Idea of the Brain, explains why throughout history we believed the heart was the seat of thought and emotion. And he explores the many bizarre and surprising ways we’ve tried to grapple with how our brain actually works.
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🎧 Stay tuned to learn about:
➡ Why Ancient Egyptians literally threw away the brain during mummification
➡ The clues present in the heart that led ancient people to believe it was in control
➡ How skull size and the nonsense practise of “phrenology” became mainstream
➡ The gruesome story of Phineas Gage - and what he taught us about the brain
➡ Why ancient brain experiments gave us one of the most famous novels ever written
➡ How our modern understanding of the brain as “like a computer” is just as strange
Grab Matthew’s book here:
About the podcast:
What We Did Before is a podcast exploring the history of everyday life, from how we kept food fresh before fridges, to how we survived without shoes and what came before AI.
About your host:
Ollie Guillou is an award-winning podcast producer and broadcaster. He's co-founder of OG Podcasts, working with the likes of New Scientist, Dr Karan and Lessons From Our Mothers.
Connect with Ollie:
Website: www.ogpodcasts.co.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ollie-guillou
Email: hello@ogpodcasts.co.uk
Image Credit: SimplisticReps, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Raffaele pagani, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 via Wikimedia Commons