Episode
Wisdom in a World in Crisis: The Counterintuitive Need to Slow Down and Find Spaciousness with Iain McGilchrist
- Published
- Apr 22, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 7679
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-great-simplification-with-nate-hagens-6364729/episodes/wisdom-in-a-world-in-crisis-the-counterintuitive-need-to-slow-down-and-find-spaciousness-with-iain-mcgilchrist/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-great-simplification-with-nate-hagens-6364729/wisdom-in-a-world-in-crisis-the-counterintuitive-need-to-slow-down-and-find-spaciousness-with-iain-mcgilchrist.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
For many of us, our instinctual response to rising conflict and instability might be to recede further into pragmatism as a way to survive. Yet, if our cultural values and ways of life are what got us here, rooted in narrow-boundary, cold, and logical thinking – then perhaps moments of turbulence like these actually call on us to change our way of thinking entirely. Is this moment our opportunity to pivot toward worldviews that emphasize the intangible qualities of life, and could that shift cause a cascade through our actions and decisions, leading to more balanced decision-making for the betterment of everyone? In this episode, Nate is rejoined by philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist for discussion on how our left-brain dominance obscures our sense of value, especially for abstract qualities such as truth, goodness, and beauty. As a way to reclaim an appreciation for these things, he urges us to slow down, create spaciousness, embrace silence and deep listening, and resist the mania for productivity in our modern culture. Nate and Iain also discuss consciousness, panpsychism, and panentheism, exploring the thread that there might be some form of universal current running through everything, uniting us all. Bringing everything together, Iain calls for a recovery of humility, compassion, awe, and wonder and insists that even a small percentage of people genuinely living differently could begin to shift cultural consciousness. How do the things we choose to pay attention to affect our ability to see what's important in the world – and subsequently what we value and prioritize? What would it feel like to treat each day as a gift rather than a problem to solve, and how might that shift our relationship with time, mortality, and meaning? Most of all, is it possi…