The award-winning novelist and acclaimed neuroscientist join us with a profound new story of what the world is and who we are.
Philip Pullman’s novels are a testament to the power of the human imagination and a celebration of our capacity for wonder, proving to millions of readers across the globe that enchantment still has a profound role to play in our age of reason.
It is an ethos shared by the neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, whose book The Master and His Emissary was that rare thing: a bestselling classic of modern philosophy with genuine relevance to human life.
In this podcast, the two men will come together to explore The Matter With Things, McGilchrist’s ground-breaking sequel to The Master and His Emissary and the culmination of a lifetime of thought.
How does the brain produce our experience of the world? What role do science, reason, and imagination play in the search for truth – and how much should we trust each of these paths to knowledge? On this week’s show you’ll hear new answers to these ancient questions – and many more.