BEST OF: IAIN MCGILCHRIST - Our “wretchedness” is a left-brain issue

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 600,000 words long!). In this chat, we cover why societies start out creative, happy and flourishing (right-brained!) but switch left and destructive as they expand; the secret to living a well and happy life and how to find meaning and beauty in a world we possibly can’t “fix” (in the left-brain sense of the word). SHOW NOTES Learn more about Iain's work via his website and watch his videos here . Buy Master and his Emissary and The Matter with Things here . Listen to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's Wild episode . -- If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my " about " page For more such conversations,

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BEST OF: IAIN MCGILCHRIST - Our “wretchedness” is a left-brain issue is an episode from Wild with Sarah Wilson by Sarah Wilson.

This episode is 1:16:24 long.

This episode was published on Dec 30, 2025.

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