Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Covid on the brain

Thomas H. Ford on the irresistible rise of ‘brain fog’
The ABR Podcast 30 March 2022

Covid on the brain

Thomas H. Ford on the irresistible rise of ‘brain fog’
The ABR Podcast 30 March 2022

Brain Fog


Few phrases captured the atmosphere of lethargy and disorientation in which many of us lived under lockdown as much as ‘brain fog’. The term has come to denote a whole range of symptoms – from fatigue and forgetfulness to anxiety and an inability to focus – that serve as an historical marker for our Covid moment. Yet, as literary scholar Thomas H. Ford observes, the malaise is far from unique to the twenty-first century. In this episode of The ABR Podcast, listen to Ford as he traces the history of cognitive fuzziness, revealing the persistent concerns about mental overwork for which ‘brain fog’ is only the latest diagnosis.

Thomas H. Ford is Senior Lecturer in English at La Trobe University and the author of Wordsworth and the Poetics of Air (2018) and How to Read a Poem: Seven steps (2021).

Subscribe via iTunesGoogle, or Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

From the New Issue

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.