The Weekend University

In this talk, we will seek to demystify and remove the 'loaded' feelings that oftentimes arise for so many when we hear the term "toxic masculinity". The term has become a part of the current lexicon and can serve to castigate half of the human population as inherently 'bad' or 'negative'. Masculinity is not a negative aspect of the human condition in and of itself, but like anything else, left un...

Richard is a psychotherapist, author, speaker, and the managing editor of The Science of Psychotherapy magazine. He is currently completing his PhD on client-responsive therapy and has spent the past few years investigating the exciting role that curiosity can play in the therapeutic process. Richard is the author of three books including: The Practitioner's Guide to the Science of Psychotherapy,...

Brad is a best-selling author who researches, writes, and coaches on performance and wellbeing. His books include Peak Performance, The Passion Paradox, and The Practice of Groundedness, which this interview focuses on. Some of the key topics covered in this conversation include: — Brad's experiences with OCD and how they eventually led to writing the Practice of Groundedness — The importance of p...

I'll propose an idealist ontology more parsimonious and empirically rigorous than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decomposition problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: the...

Lauren is a Learning Consultant, Educator, and the Founder of The Learning Pirate. She works with organisations to create bespoke, scientifically designed learning programmes using the latest cognitive and behavioural science. She has received qualifications in Neuroscience from Harvard and John Hopkins University. In this fun and wide-ranging conversation, we explore: — What’s happening in the br...

Mark is an author, the host of The Unconventionalists Podcast, and a TEDx speaker with over a million views. His most recent book: Glow in the Dark, provides a masterclass in the art of storytelling, and how you can leverage it to improve almost any area of your life. In this conversation, you’ll learn: — Why stories play such a central role in human life — The psychological benefits of getting cl...

Mick is a Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Roehampton, a Chartered Psychologist, and an internationally recognised author, trainer and consultant in the fields of humanistic, existential and pluralistic therapies. This is Mick’s seventh engagement with The Weekend University, and today’s conversation focuses on his latest book: “Psychology at the Heart of Social Change”. We...

Fiona is an author, facilitator, and coach, whose clients include: The School of Life, Guardian Masterclasses, and The Wall Street Journal. This interview focuses on Fiona’s most recent book: “Find Your Own Path”, which provides a 12 step process to creating a more meaningful and engaging life. In this conversation, you’ll learn: — How changing our relationship with mortality can help us live more...

Alan is the CEO of Complete, a leadership development consultancy that specialises in developing exceptional leaders, the author of 8 books, and a 5 time TEDx speaker, whose talks have more than 7 million views. In this lively and wide ranging discussion, we explore: → Why Alan transitioned out of his career as a medical doctor into executive coaching → Why the reduction of human suffering can pro...

Have you ever looked around and wondered, 'Why has everyone found love except me?' you're not the only one. Great relationships don't just appear in our lives - they're the culmination of a series of decisions, including who to date, how to end it with the wrong person, and when to commit to the right one. But our brains often get in the way. We make poor decisions, which thwart us on our quest to...

In this provocative talk, Johann Hari discusses the “chemical imbalance” theory of depression, why it’s so damaging to our mental health—both individually and collectively, and offers an alternative view backed by the latest scientific research.

If I have a visual experience that I describe as a red tomato a meter away, then I am inclined to believe that there is, in fact, a red tomato a meter away, even if I close my eyes. I believe that my perceptions are, in the normal case, veridical—that they accurately depict aspects of the real world. But is my belief supported by our best science? In particular: Does evolution by natural selection...

Many psychologists and philosophers believe that people are hedonists, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. But what about our appetites for spicy foods, hot baths, horror movies, sad songs, BDSM, and hate reading? How can we explain our choices to suffer—in pursuits such as art, ritual, sex, and sports, and in longer-term projects such as training for a marathon or signing up to go to war? Drawing...

As our civilization careens toward a precipice of climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. Our dominant worldview tells us we’re split between mind and body, separate from each other, and at odds with the natural world. This worldview has passed its expiration date: it’s based on a series of flawed assumptions that have been su...

As the theme of this month’s conference is Psychology & Nonduality (https://bit.ly/nd-conference), I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the nondual understanding and its implications for everyday life. So, I’ve spent around 30+ hours researching the subject, and summarised the best of what I was able to find in this podcast. If you’re relatively new to the area and looking to develop a better u...

According to our standard view of things, consciousness exists only in the brains of highly evolved organisms, and hence consciousness exists only in a tiny part of the universe and only in very recent history (cosmically speaking). According to panpsychism, in contrast, consciousness pervades the universe and is a fundamental feature of it. The view sounds a bit strange, but a growing number of p...

This episode is part of our Meeting of the Minds series in which we bring together leading thinkers from different backgrounds to discuss topics of mutual interest. The topic is “religion without belief” in which we explore to what extent it is possible to benefit from religious practices, without fully adopting the associated belief systems. The speakers are Rupert Sheldrake, Paul Kingsnorth, and...

“Use your head.” That’s what we tell ourselves when facing a tricky problem or a difficult project. But a growing body of research indicates that we’ve got it exactly backward. What we need to do, says acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul, is think outside the brain. A host of “extra-neural” resources—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, a...

Research tells us that our autonomic nervous system scans our body four times per second asking “am I safe?, am I safe? am I safe? am I safe?” If the answer is ‘yes’, we stay neurobiologically in our prefrontal cortex, the most mature part of our brain, our wise adult self, the part of us that is here and now that can observe, reason and decide. However, if the answer is ‘no, I don’t feel safe’, m...

In a previous two-hour lecture for TWU, I argued for the nature of consciousness as a foundational element in the cosmos, not derivative from anything else.  In this talk, I will not attempt to repeat that argument, but start from where I left off.  In a new book, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (Perspectiva Press, November 2021), I ask how we come t...

Mark has a pretty interesting story to tell. Earlier in life, he was an international drug smuggler, an addict of 17 years, homeless, and has spent time locked up in a Spanish prison. Now, he is a leading addiction psychotherapist at Harley Street Clinic in London, a bestselling author of two books, a family-man, and a sought after speaker and teacher on working with addiction. His work has attrac...

The comparative study of identical and fraternal twins is a powerful method for identifying the relative contributions of genes and environments to individual differences in behavioral, physical, and health-related characteristics. Studies of reared-apart twins provide even more compelling ways to approach this same class of questions, given that the co-twins were raised in different homes, commun...

So many of us believe that we are free to shape our own destiny. But what if free will doesn’t exist? What if our lives are largely predetermined, hardwired in our brains – and our choices over what we eat, whom we fall in love with, even what we believe are not real choices at all? Neuroscience is challenging everything we think we know about ourselves, revealing how we make decisions and form ou...

Dr Music will examine how early experiences, secure attachments, and safe environments can lead to more altruistic, prosocial, and empathic ways of acting while stress, trauma, and neglect can lead to more aggression, callousness, and antisocial behaviour. He will examine what current research and clinical understandings can teach us about living a Good Life. Why might we, and the children or adul...

Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. This talk will provide an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life:...