Dr. Ian McGilchrist in conversation with Dr. Ash Ranpura

Dr Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, philosopher and literary scholar. He is Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch.
He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry. He is the author of a number of books, but is best-known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009), and his new book; “The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World” was published in November 2021 by Perspectiva Press.
Ash Ranpura is a neurologist and neuroscientist who has been active in brain research for over 20 years. He received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University, an M.D. from the Medical College of Ohio, and carried out his Ph.D. research at Queen Square in London, as part of UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
He completed a clinical residency in adult neurology at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he maintains research interests in mood disorders and epilepsy. In addition to his clinical and research work, he was a co-founder of Café Scientifique at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, a founding editor at BrainConnection magazine in San Francisco, and a writer at National Public Radio’s “Science Friday” in New York.
He frequently chairs public science events for organisations including the British Council and the American Medical Association, and has written a book (How to Be Human) with the performer Ruby Wax and Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten about mindfulness and the brain. He lives in Somerset with his wife, the novelist Susan Elderkin, and their son.