How Eastern ideas entered the West

Every week, podcaster Curt Jaimungal immerses himself in big ideas and complex theories to prepare for long, in-depth interviews with some of the world’s leading thinkers on his show Theories of Everything. His guests are wide-ranging - renowned physicists, mathematicians but also philosophers - investigating questions of existence and the nature of reality. He takes it very seriously, as part of a wider quest to find a worldview. But one day, he’s shocked to discover he feels disorientated by what he’d previously considered a mere intellectual exercise.

Matthew Syed asks whether certain ideas and practices are riskier, perhaps more dangerous to explore than others. He discovers ideas around selfhood in particular can send people into a spin and traces the history of when practices based on self-observation became popularised in western societies, often outside of their intended context. He assesses the dangers of ‘ontological whiplash’, a term podcaster Curt gives to the experience of constantly going from one set of ideas to another. And he receives sound advice from his old friend Dr Iain McGilchrist - a psychiatrist, philosopher, and bestselling author - on how best to maintain a sense of equilibrium when exploring questions of the self and consciousness.

With Curt Jaimungal, creator and podcast host of Theories of Everything; Willoughby Britton, associate professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown University Medical School and director of the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at Brown University School of Public Health; Brahmacharini Shripriya Chaitanya, Hindu monk with Chinmaya Mission; and Dr Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist, philosopher, and author of the bestselling book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

Featuring excerpts from Curt Jaimungal’s Theories of Everything YouTube channel: Why Consciousness is Fundamental with Donald Hoffman, July 30, 2020 Noam Chomsky: Panpsychism, LLMs, Artificial Consciousness, October 25, 2022

Rupert Spira: Non-Dualism, God, & Death, June 21, 2021 Matter and Mind: Rethinking Consciousness with Iain McGilchrist, November 26, 2024

Presenter: Matthew Syed Producer: Vishva Samani Series Editor: Katherine Godfrey Sound Designer: Mark Pittam Production Coordinator: Joe Savage Theme by Ioana Selaru A Novel production for BBC Radio 4