Join the award-winning novelist and acclaimed neuroscientist for 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 live and livestream event, 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.

Drawing together his insights as a scholar and practitioner of medicine, psychiatry, neuroscience, philosophy, theology and the arts, and directly addressing our contemporary malaise and the future of life on earth, this is not a rehearsal of McGilchrist’s previous ideas but an articulate and compelling argument for a new philosophy of living.

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? What do they tell us about the nature of the cosmos and of ourselves as its inhabitants? How can we make sense of the building blocks of universe – time, space, motion, matter, consciousness, values, purpose and the existence or otherwise of what we refer to as God?

For anyone who feels disenchanted with the contemporary way of living and seeks a richer, more humanitarian, more enlightened way of being, this live and livestreamed event is unmissable.

This event is available to attend both in-person and as a livestream. 

Members of our How To Plus digital service receive a 20% discount to the live event and free access to the livestream.