The Weekend University

Your personality is the set of basic traits that makes you you, influencing your habits of thought and behaviour. But how fixed are they? The great American psychologist William James said that our personality is set like plaster by age 30. But new findings show that while there is a degree of stability in our traits, we also continue to change in meaningful ways through our lives – our personalit...

The Science of Diversity is a method of teaching universal, scientific reasoning as a tool to overcome dialog barriers and move forward in polarizing conversations. This method addresses fundamental weaknesses in the way we communicate and provide learners with the necessary skills to approach conversations about diversity issues scientifically. People do not always think of scientific reasoning a...

Professor Marc Lewis is a neuroscientist, professor, bestselling author, and one of the world’s leading experts on the neuroscience of addiction. In his academic work, he has authored or coauthored more than fifty journal articles, and for many years was a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Toronto before retiring. In recent years, he has focused on making his work more acc...

David Sloan Wilson is one of the world’s foremost evolutionary thinkers and a gifted communicator about evolution to the general public. He is a SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University in New York. In addition to his teaching and research work, David is President of Prosocial World – an organisation which aims to catalyze positive cultural change...

Roman Krznaric is a bestselling author and one of the UK’s leading philosophers, who is passionate about the power of ideas to transform society. He is a TED speaker, a founding faculty member of the School of Life, the Creator of the World’s First Empathy Museum, and a Research Fellow at the Long Now Foundation. Roman's books include: 'How to Find Fulfilling Work', 'Empathy', 'The Wonderbox' and...

Have you ever wondered what exactly DBT is? What are its essential components? What exactly are dialectics and why are they relevant to a psychological therapy? In this presentation, Professor Michaela Swales, an international expert in DBT, introduces you to the essential elements of DBT: underlying theories, treatment structure and treating clinical cases. This presentation is aimed at those who...

We live in a challenging age. With the death of George Floyd, the subsequent marches across the world against racism, the struggles of the #Metoo movement, campaigns for equal rights for the LGBTQ community, and the rise of Disability theorists. Yet, all these efforts towards equality in the face of varying types of oppression speak loudly of the voices of the others and their need to be heard and...

Ever wondered why identical twins become less alike as they age, even developing different diseases? Why are the cells of your skin so different from the cells of your kidneys, even though they contain exactly the same DNA? The answer lies in epigenetics, an extra layer of information on top of genes, that controls how the genetic script gets used. It’s the link between nature and nurture and it’s...

Professor Jean-Louis Monestès is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Grenoble in France, and a leading thinker into the application of evolutionary principles in psychology. He has published several chapters on evolutionary processes in clinical psychology with Steven Hayes and David Sloan Wilson, as well as articles and books on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Relational...

This will be the first in a series of ‘meeting of the minds’ discussions, where we bring together leading thinkers to share perspectives on a topic of mutual interest. In this discussion, we explore the relationship between evolutionary science and clinical psychology and psychotherapy, why there needs to be greater integration between the fields, the crossover between ACT and CFT, and the role ps...

Dr Paul Atkins, PhD is an organisational psychologist, author and the co-developer of The Prosocial Process along with Steven Hayes and David Sloan Wilson. This unique approach draws from the Nobel prize winning economic theory of Lin Ostrom, evolutionary science, and the psychology of behaviour change to offer a practical framework for creating highly effective, inclusive and cooperative teams -...

Dr John Vervaeke Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Toronto, and the author and presenter of the YouTube series: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. The depth and breadth of John’s knowledge are extensive which is reflected in the wide range of subjects he teaches. His courses include cognitive science, Buddhism, psychology and mental health, cognitive development, the psycholog...

Online social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can be seen as a virtual extension of our psychological and emotional selves. They also happen to be an essential technology that mediates our relationships in contemporary society. The architecture of different online social networking sites enable certain aspects of self-expression while inhibiting others. The consequence is that self-...

Why is the incidence of mental illness in the UK twice that in Germany? Why are Americans three times more likely than the Dutch to develop gambling problems? Why is child well-being so much worse in New Zealand than Japan? The answer to all of these questions, hinges on inequality. This talk will explore how inequality affects us individually, how it alters how we think, feel and behave. You’ll l...

The most basic aspects of our psychology were shaped by the “social leap” our distant ancestors made from the rainforest to the savannah. In their struggle to survive on the open grassland, our ancestors prioritized cooperation and teamwork over physical prowess, creating a new form of social intelligence that set the stage for our rise to the top of the food chain. In this talk I trace our evolut...

Martin Wilks is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist, Associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, and is a registered applied psychology practice supervisor. Martin specialises as an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Practitioner, and in this interview, we discuss some of the core ideas of the approach, psychological flexibility, the benefits of living a values based life, and the...

The traditional use of psychoactive plants and fungi for spiritual and shamanic purposes has occurred for thousands of years, whereas the Western scientific research of these substances has only been explored in the last 100 years or so, and prohibition stalled 50 years of this. Now that scientific research is resuming, what do psychedelics tell us about the stranger and more exotic side of human...

This lecture will explore the evidence for our changing environment, and suggest that there are significant cognitive biases in how we think about, and act on climate change. It will examine how organisations have attempted to mobilise the public in the fight against climate change, but these initiatives have often failed due to the public’s unwillingness to adapt their behaviour. The talk will al...

Friedrich Nietzsche was a fascinating, eccentric, and sometimes controversial philosopher in the Existential and Nihilist tradition. In this lecture, we will look at his literary works and his personal life, as well as the impact of his legacy on the world. You’ll learn: – How can Nietzsche help us live more authentically? – Who was he and how did this inform his philosophy? – What is his legacy –...

The sciences are pointing toward a new sense of a living world. The cosmos is like a developing organism, and so is our planet, Gaia. The laws of Nature may be more like habits. Partly as a result of the ‘hard problem’ of finding space for human consciousness in the materialist worldview, there is a renewed interest in panpsychist philosophies, according to which some form of mind, experience or c...

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is perhaps the most evidence-based therapy for emotional problems. It was directly inspired by Stoicism, an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy which teaches people how to take care of their minds and souls. In this talk, Philosopher Jules Evans will look at practical methods from Stoicism and CBT to help cope with adversity and find resilience even in emergencie...

It has become customary to talk about consciousness as the great unsolved problem of our age. I argue that consciousness itself is not the problem; the problem is our customary mode of thinking. I will outline the thesis of a new book, The Matter with Things, in which I suggest that, because of our allegiance to a certain model of the world, demonstrably associated with the left hemisphere of the...

Dr Benjamin Hardy is an organisational psychologist, entrepreneur, TED speaker and bestselling author, with an interesting story to tell. He went from being broke and sleeping on his cousin’s sofa at the age of 20, to completing a PhD, building a 7 figure business, and becoming the #1 writer in the world on Medium.com. Ben and his wife Lauren adopted three children from the foster system in Februa...

Have you ever come up with amazing New Year’s resolutions such as losing extra weight, starting saving up money, starting your own business, exercising regularly, changing your career, eating much healthier or quitting smoking? You pumped yourself up with great enthusiasm and thought things are going to be very different this year. Fast forward – what happened a month down the line? If you are lik...

If you are living your life right, then a time will come when you sense the need to grow and fulfil your potential. Yet we can find ourselves poorly equipped to move ourselves forward, and seek insight in our stuckness through running inventories of our skills and experiences. Even less helpful, we ask ourselves “What do I want?”, and stare into a chasm of uncertainty and confusion, led by scripts...