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.

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If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page

For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!

Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life

Let’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8

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As many of us head into the holiday season — travelling, slowing down, or looking for something good to listen to — I wanted to reshare this conversation with Martha Beck. It’s a thoughtful, generous discussion about anxiety as a guide rather than a problem, and one I have a feeling will land right now.

Dr. Martha Beck (author; “best-known life coach in America”) is about to release a book on anxiety. The international best-selling author – who holds three Harvard degrees in social science and was described by Oprah as “one of the smartest women I know” – specialises in helping people find meaning and integrity in their lives.

In this episode, Sarah and Martha reconnect after 15 years to discuss their takes on the role of anxiety in our lives, and how it can be used to create purpose and direction (tune in to hear about the time Martha “bent a spoon with her mind” for Sarah!). They also share tangible techniques for using creativity to switch out of anxious spirals. Martha’s book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, is available now.

SHOW NOTES

Order your copy of Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose

Here’s the newspaper column I wrote about my first meeting with Martha in 2010

I refer to previous podcasts with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor and Iain McGilchrist, and another on the role of creativity with Ian Leslie

You can read more about Martha's work here and connect on IG here

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If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page

For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!

Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life

Let’s connect on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wild has been on hiatus while I finish my most recent book. We’ll be back with a fresh direction and new guests in the coming months, but in the meantime, I’m dropping in a small handful of interviews I’ve been doing on Substack that you might find interesting. They’re far more rustic and casual than my usual offerings. You can, of course, watch the video versions over on Substack.

My guest today is Dr Sharon Blackie a psychologist, mythologist, and author whose work lives at the meeting point of story, psyche, and ecology. In this conversation, we explore the role of fairytales and myths in hard and disorienting times, and what these old stories can teach us about the deeply human act of hospitality, how we welcome others, and ourselves, in moments of fear, change, and uncertainty. You can also watch the chat here.

We anchor the discussion around a beautiful essay of Sharon’s, The Meaning of Hospitality, which she has generously made available for free.

A bit about Dr Sharon Blackie: An award-winning writer and teacher working at the intersection of psychology, mythology, and ecology. She’s the author of the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted, and her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Irish Times, and The Scotsman. She lives on a smallholding in the mountains of Wales, where she continues to explore how myth and story can guide us through modern life.

PS: My new book, I Eat the Stars, will be out worldwide in May/June 2026. If you’re curious, you can read the serialised version over on Substack. Today’s chat touches on a few of the themes I explore in that work.

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If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page

For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!

Let’s connect on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.