In this intimate question and answer session, conducted in March 2024 with the students enrolled in Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities, the world-renowned psychiatrist, philosopher, and literary scholar Iain McGilchrist explores topics that animate the collective intellectual life of Ralston’s student body.

Answering questions that range from the metaphysical heights of theology, liturgy, and religious life to the tangible depths of scientific inquiry and medical progress, Dr McGhilchrist challenges his interlocutors to think deeper about the relationship between mind and matter, science and religion, and, ultimately, humanity and the divine.

Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode:

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things
Albert Einstein
Aristotle
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Meister Eckhart
John Donne
George Herbert
Thomas Traherne
Rumi
Henry Moore
Blaise Pascal
St. Augustine
William Shakespeare, King Lear; The Merchant of Venice; Hamlet; The Tempest
Metrodorus of Lampsacus
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
G.W.F. Hegel
Alwyn Lishman
St. Francis of Assisi
Plotinus
Thomas Edison
St. Gregory of Nyssa
Carl Jung
Glenn Gould

Dr Iain McGilchrist in Conversation with Ralston College’s Students