BEST OF: IAIN MCGILCHRIST - Our “wretchedness” is a left-brain issue
About this episode
A conversation with Iain McGilchrist about the impact of left-brain thinking on society and the importance of embracing right-brain creativity and meaning.
As many of us move into the holiday season and slower days, I wanted to reshare this conversation with Iain McGilchrist. It’s a spacious, illuminating exploration of how we’ve come to live as we do — and a reminder that meaning and beauty are still available to us, even when solutions feel out of reach. Dr Iain McGilchrist (neuroscientist, psychiatrist, polymath, author of The Master and His Emissary ) devised a thesis that sets out how the two sides of our brains can affect the way we both interact and create the world. The left hemisphere is a narrow, extractive, problem-solving “machine” that divides and conquers things, fails to see our part in the world and to fathom beauty, awe and responsibility. Our civilisation, Iain says, has become ruled by a left-brain mentality, which is killing us and leaving us “wretched”; we need to put the right side back in charge! Iain is an associate of Green Templeton College in Oxford and a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal Society of Arts. His 2009 book Master and his Emissary became a cult read and the recent follow-up, The Matter with Things took him 12 years to write (and is…
People in this episode
Host: Sarah Wilson
Guest: Iain McGilchrist
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Green Templeton College, Royal College of Psychiatrists, Royal Society of Arts
Books & works: The Master and His Emissary, The Matter with Things
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