Upstream

John Bell speaks with award-winning documentary filmmaker and author Saira Shah about the different psychological outlooks that are needed to deal with today's global political challenges. Drawing on her experiences in Gaza and Afghanistan, and on the works of Sufi scholar Idries Shah and scientist Iain McGilchrist, she explains how self-observation and generosity of spirit can shake us out of...

Indian historian Anirudh Kanisetti takes us through a tour of medieval Deccan India, how its rulers used religion in politics, as many do today, and how it was part of an intricate web of commercial and cultural ties stretching from China to Constantinople. https://www.anirudhkanisetti.com/

Are 'East' and 'West' really as far apart as our notions of them suggest? Canadian journalist and author John Zada discusses his latest nonfiction work, The Patchwork Cloak of Kamal Bey: An East–West Memoir. The book, a travelogue and work of reportage written from a dual-identity perspective, chronicles more than two decades of journeys through the Arab and Islamic worlds. Zada re...

Johan Norberg, historian and commentator, describes golden ages throughout human history, what it took to build them and how they declined. Above all, what does this mean for today? Are the Anglosphere and its allies able to rise to the challenges ahead and maintain an open, prosperous and inclusive culture?

Simon Lee Maryan, psychologist, resilience coach and former British Royal Marine, explains how his psychological training helped him survive dire straits and how that in turn can help others manage the highly emotional and inflamed world we are living in today. He looks back to the Stoic wisdom of Marcus Aurelius and forward to how that applies today.

Author Naomi Alderman (The Power) examines how pasttechnological revolutions—writing, the printing press—reshaped human cognition and society. Her insights reveal a pattern: each wave of innovation brought both empowerment and dislocation. Today’s challenge is to harness AI without letting it erode agency or meaning and her views provide context from history in that regard.   The Third Information...

Richard Overy, Honorary Research Professor of History at the University of Exeter and best-selling author, speaks with John Bell about the many causes of war, from evolutionary biology to the hubris of today’s leaders. They discuss evolutionary psychology as well as how the pursuit of innate needs such as security or meaning - through belief, religious or ideological - can lead to war. Professor O...

Antone Martinho Truswell, an evolutionary biologist and Dean of Graduate House at St Paul’s College, University of Sydney, talks to John Bell about the rise of a global monoculture and the endangerment of local ideas and practices. Read Antone's great article for Psyche on the subject, "Insularity can be a good thing, for creatures and cultures alike.": https://psyche.co/ideas/insula...

Ivan Tyrrell, the co-founder of the Human Givens approach to psychotherapy as well as Human Givens College in the UK, talks about the disorder in our world today, and the need for greater human flourishing and what is required to achieve it. Hosted by John Bell.

Dr. Calum Nicholson, a scholar at the University of Cambridge and the Danube Institute, speaks about the cultural undercurrents of polarization impacting politics everywhere – including spurious Western attitudes, assumptions, and habits in its dealings with the rest of the world. Hosted by John Bell.

British author, scholar, and psychiatrist Dr. Iain McGilchrist argues that the quality of a civilization’s culture and ideas—and its tendency to flourish or self-destruct—depends on its habits of thinking. Hosted by John Bell. Iain McGilchrist, a medical doctor and former Oxford literary scholar, is the author of several landmark works about the impact of the brain hemispheres on human life and cu...

Dr. Patrick Ophuls (who writes under the pen name William Ophuls), an American political scientist and ecologist, talks about the rise and fall of societies and about his book Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail . Hosted by John Bell.

Author Jason Webster talks about his book, Violencia, A New History of Spain: Past, Present and the Future of the West , which explores the outsize and little-known cultural impact Spain has had on the Western world. Hosted by John Zada.

Dr. William Beharrell, the Founder and CEO of the Fathom Trust NGO, talks about his years working in community development, heritage preservation, and health in Afghanistan, and the lessons he learned from those experiences. Hosted by John Bell.

Former U.S. Army Green Beret, Scott Mann, talks about the political and military lessons learned during the American Afghanistan mission—and about his book, Game Changers: Going Local to Defeat Violent Extremists. Hosted by John Bell.

Dr. Jonathan Wolff, a philosopher and professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at University of Oxford, talks about the potential for nationalism and group identity to be abused for political benefit. Hosted by John Bell.