You (Don't) Know Where You Are

If someone asked you to point to yourself, where would you point? Your chest? Your head? Somewhere just behind your eyes?

Where are you?

In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry and VSauce’s Michael Stevens explore how the brain maps and understands out location, from the inner ear fluid that tells us which way is up, to the grid and place cells that build a kind of internal GPS.

But how do London taxi drivers rewire their brains to memorise entire cities when the rest of us can’t? How does language change the way we orient in space? And what happens when your senses disagree about your where in the world you are?

Moving from avalanches and virtual reality to ancient philosophy and modern neuroscience, Hannah and Michael move from how to find ourselves on a map to how locating the “self” inside the body may be one of the deepest mysteries in science.

Why did Aristotle believe the self lived in the heart instead of the head? If we’re asked to find the self where do we point? What does it mean to say that you are somewhere…at all?

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Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley

Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell

Researcher: Hannah Dodd-Vastiau

Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott

Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter

Head Of Digital: Samuel Oakley

Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

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