Doctors' Notes: Beliefs
What's Up Docs?
BBC
4.4 • 659 Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
Chris and Xand continue their conversation about belief with Ryan McKay, Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.
They want to know why some beliefs take hold so strongly, what’s happening in our brains when we hold on to them, and how trust, identity, and community shape what we believe. Beyond that, they’ll explore why health beliefs can be so difficult to shift, and whether it’s ever really possible to change someone’s mind. From the psychology of delusions to the spread of everyday health narratives, this episode dives deeper into the mechanics of belief.
If you’d like to share your thoughts on this or any other topic covered on the podcast, you email us at whatsupdocs@bbc.co.uk or Whatsapp on 08000 665 123.
Presenters: Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken Guest: Professor Ryan McKay Producer: Maia Miller-Lewis Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar Editor: Jo Rowntree Researcher: Grace Revill Tech Lead: Reuben Huxtable Social Media: Leon Gower Digital Lead: Richard Berry Composer: Phoebe McFarlane Sound Design: Melvin Rickarby
At the BBC: Assistant Commissioner: Greg Smith Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
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| 0:10.8 | In 2025, we were here for the entertainment. |
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| 0:43.7 | Hello, welcome to Doctor's Notes. I'm Dr. Chris Van Telekin. And as ever, I'm actually not here with my identical twin brother. Zand is down the line. Yes, that's right. So I am waiting. |
| 0:49.7 | And I don't know how long I'm going to be waiting for a big event, which is that my wife Dolly is about to have a baby. |
| 0:55.9 | Well, since there's a pressure of time, let's get on with the doctor's notes. |
| 1:01.1 | We've just finished recording an interview with Professor Ryan McKay, happens to be my brother-in-law. |
| 1:07.0 | I always think of him kind of as being your brother-in-law as well. |
| 1:09.8 | He's a professor of psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, and he runs the morality and beliefs lab there. |
| 1:18.0 | Now, in the many episode, we talked about where our beliefs come from, how they're much less |
| 1:23.3 | grounded in the reality of the world than many of us think very often, about how they're |
| 1:28.7 | inextricably linked with our social lives about our family and people around us. |
| 1:34.3 | And we also talked a bit about how our beliefs can affect our physical body and the way |
| 1:39.4 | we think about health problems. What are we talking about in doctor's notes, Andy? |
| 1:43.6 | Well, we're going to talk about |
| 1:45.2 | delusions, about how Ryan got into this and how his childhood kind of shaped his research, |
| 1:51.1 | and we're going to be talking about bias, those sort of inbuilt bits of our brain, |
| 1:55.7 | that maybe mislead us a bit or direct us occasionally in the wrong direction. |
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