Few of us stop to think about how we think – but for Dr Iain McGilchrist, this question has shaped his life’s work. An Oxford literary scholar turned psychiatrist and neuroscientist, he has spent decades arguing that modern society is dominated by the left hemisphere’s narrow, analytical focus, often at the expense of the broader, more relational perspective of the right. His landmark books, The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things, explore how this imbalance shapes our perception of reality – and whether we can train our minds to see beyond the limits of what we think we know.

In this conversation, originally recorded for the Seen & Unseen podcast, McGilchrist joins hosts Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall for a profound exploration of how we might rekindle a richer, more expansive worldview. Together, they consider whether reclaiming a ‘right hemispheric’ way of seeing – one rooted in connection, empathy and a sense of wonder – could offer fresh insight into life, love and faith.

This conversation has been edited for print – listen to the full episode at seenandunseen.com.

JB: When I first encountered your work, I was struck by how it bridges divides that typically separate people. Your books have received praise from a range of figures, from atheists like Philip Pullman and AC Grayling to Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Before diving into the core of your ideas, I’m curious – what is it about your approach and writing that resonates so broadly across these diverse groups?

IM: Well, I’d like to think it’s because I’m onto something. I often hear from people from all walks of life – not just psychiatrists, neurologists and psychologists, but also philosophers, lawyers (a lot of lawyers, interestingly) and even politicians. Just yesterday, I was recording with Rory Stewart, and one of my most devoted correspondents is a cleaner in Oxford, though an unusual one – I think he has a doctorate. I’ve also heard from a long-distance lorry driver in Australia, to name just a few. I think people are responding to the way my work highlights something our current way of thinking has obscured, something that, when missing, limits the fulfilment of a life.

You see, if you only view things a certain way, you can’t know what you’re missing. My aim is to help people step beyond the boundaries of what’s considered ‘real’ or ‘true’. Now, when it comes to the brain’s hemispheres, anyone who hasn’t read my work may assume this is just ‘pop science’ that was debunked long ago. The first hurdle I face is clearing up this misconception. A lot of past theories on the hemispheres was wrong, but I’ve spent 30 years exploring what might be true.

Each hemisphere does everything, but each does so with a distinct type of attention and intention, which shapes the kind of world it perceives. To return to your question, the left hemisphere is detail-oriented and creates a self-consistent picture of reality. Anything that isn’t consistent with that picture, it filters out. The left hemisphere often assumes it sees everything and that its perspective is complete.

In contrast, the right hemisphere takes in the broader picture. It’s open, vigilant and aware of uncertainties and complexities. It sees that things are interconnected, that context matters, and that opposites can both hold truth. This openness underpins our appreciation for art, poetry, myth, religion and ritual – all the things that defy ordinary language. The right hemisphere knows it’s only ever seeing part of a larger, evolving picture. In contrast, the left hemisphere often holds onto a consistent, unchanging view, making it difficult to shift people who have spent their lives building up walls around themselves and their beliefs.

BT: I have so many questions about what you just said, especially around how we’re shaped to see certain things and not others. But first, can I ask about the relationship between the brain’s hemispheres? Are they at odds with each other, or working in tandem? How do they interact?

IM: Under normal circumstances, both hemispheres are involved in everything we do, though we’re rarely aware of each hemisphere’s specific contribution. In fact, the right hemisphere actually sees more, understands more, and has higher social and cognitive intelligence than the left. This surprises some people, but it attends better, makes more sound judgments and sees a broader picture. It is the ‘master’ in my book The Master and His Emissary.

The hemispheres are not equal in function or importance. The left hemisphere handles more specific tasks, like computation and carrying out sequences, but these tasks need to be reintegrated with the right hemisphere’s larger, more complex picture. Yet, a curious asymmetry exists: while the right hemisphere recognises its own limitations, the left hemisphere, knowing less, often believes it knows everything. This is known as the Dunning–Kruger effect in psychology – the less you know, the more you think you know.

The hemispheres communicate all the time, but much of the interaction is inhibitory. Often, one hemisphere tells the other: “Don’t interfere, I’m dealing with this.” They’re essentially producing two different perspectives, both of which we need, but at any moment, one perspective might need to dominate. And the left hemisphere, more than the right, tends to exclude the other’s view. So, the right hemisphere is like a wise ruler who knows a great deal, but it’s frequently overshadowed by the left hemisphere, which is more like a jumped-up functionary.

JB: I know this is a huge area, and we can’t cover it all, but I’d love to get a general picture of how these ideas manifest in our culture. You frequently talk about left-hemispheric versus right-hemispheric ways of seeing the world. You’ve written at length about how a left-hemispheric view of reality has come to dominate academic circles, science and other areas. Could you give a brief sketch of how we got to this place, where the left hemisphere seems to be ‘pulling everything apart’, breaking down reality into purely material components? This view is prevalent in sciences and popular thought – take, for instance, the new atheists, who often want to reduce everything to purely material explanations. Why has our culture pushed in that direction, when there’s meant to be this relationship between the two hemispheres?

IM: In The Master and His Emissary, I look at the history of ideas in the West, starting with the ancient Greeks and moving forward to today. I see three overarching patterns. In 6th century BC Athens, in Rome, and again in 14th–15th century Renaissance Italy and Europe, there were these remarkable cultural eruptions where the left and right hemispheres worked together in harmony. But over time, each of these periods drifted toward a more left-hemispheric, simplified view. I believe that’s happened in our culture since about the Enlightenment – a movement with great achievements, but one marked by hubris.

The Enlightenment brought a belief that everything could be controlled and understood and that true ideas could be formulated in simple sentences, easily communicated without contradiction. Unfortunately, reality is more complex than that. In the 2019 introduction to The Master and His Emissary, I give six or seven reasons why we tend to drift in this leftward direction. One is that the left hemisphere evolved to help us grasp and manipulate objects for survival – think picking up food or using tools. It’s designed to apprehend, to grasp onto the world. The right hemisphere, however, holds the bigger picture, enabling us to comprehend or ‘hold together’ the world, which is a different task.

As societies grow, it’s harder for people to know and trust each other. Governance requires distance and bureaucracy, leading to a more crude control mechanism that replaces the full complexity of life. This simplification becomes visible in art, architecture, poetry, music and thought. I know I’m glossing over a lot, but this shift aids the left hemisphere’s desire for simple answers that give us power. Power is, in a sense, its main motivation. It controls our right hand, enabling us to grasp and hold, whereas the right hemisphere manages a complex, rich picture. The left hemisphere is like a simplified map, offering theories that aren’t always corrected by observing reality. We’re experiencing this today with extraordinary theoretical assumptions that may later appear absurd – they arise out of theoretical constructs rather than real, lived understanding.

BT: That’s so helpful. Your books are profound; they’re just the tip of a deep iceberg. Reading your work, I was surprised by how the left hemisphere influences areas I assumed were governed by the right hemisphere, particularly regarding the sacred. One insight that resonated was realising how often my left hemisphere dominates in areas like tribalism, polarisation and division. In cultural, social justice, and political issues, I can see myself operating almost exclusively in the way you describe. Could you explain how this ‘default mode’ plays out, especially in our tendency toward echo chambers?

IM: Yes. The tendency to stigmatise those who differ from us creates an inability to communicate civilly, as the left hemisphere always seeks quick, cut-and-dried answers. It gravitates toward simplicity, with a worldview that sees the cosmos as mere matter with no meaning or values – a position that’s easy to defend, dismissing anything more nuanced with demands for proof.

Contrary to old assumptions, the left hemisphere is not unemotional or reliable. In fact, when isolated from the right hemisphere’s influence, it becomes delusional. Neuroscience research shows that many delusional syndromes stem from right-hemisphere deficits, while the left hemisphere tends to be emotionally biased, especially in anger, disgust and self-righteousness. This explains why those locked into this left-hemisphere thinking adopt a rigid, simplistic view and react with anger and self-righteousness when challenged – a familiar pattern online.

What I see happening today is a preference for simple, clear-cut answers that sacrifice context, which is often lost in sound bites rather than deeper discussions. The left hemisphere sees everything as a category, overlooking individual uniqueness and interconnections, whereas the right hemisphere sees the world as a web where relationships create meaning. I argue that relations come first, with ‘things’ merely points where connections meet.

We also miss the hidden shadow side of everything we think is good, and sometimes the hidden redemptive side of something we think is ill. A simple example is freedom versus constraints, boundaries or respect. If we valorise freedom to the exclusion of all else, we end up with anarchic chaos, which in turn breeds tyranny – leading to the very thing we hoped to avoid. In today’s world, well-intentioned people sometimes push certain values so hard that they inadvertently create divisions. Tensions between abstract groups and categories often become more damaging rather than less. Many things are deteriorating due to the absolutist misunderstanding that nothing can be taken out of context. Everything has an opposite, concealed for the time being, unless you get into the habit of seeing the thing in its opposite, do a kind of dance together and exist together and need one another.

JB: Just picking up on some of the things you’re saying, I’ve heard many people, including yourself, reference various crises affecting culture at the moment. For instance, there’s the meta-crisis – a sense that numerous factors, including technological, ecological and social issues, are converging to create an almost semi-apocalyptic vision of the future. There’s also the meaning crisis that many psychologists discuss, highlighting how many people seem to lack a narrative that makes sense of their lives. And then we have the mental health crisis, particularly concerning the alarming rise in problems among young people. I’m sure they’re all interlinked. So, in light of the left hemispheric domination you’ve mentioned, how does that play into these various crises we are facing, especially in the West?

IM: As you rightly say, Justin, these crises are interconnected, and the umbrella term is the meta-crisis. The issues you mentioned, such as environmental problems and socio-economic problems, stem from a left hemisphere perspective. In a talk I gave at Darwin College, I argued that our problems stem from the espousal of a left hemisphere point of view. This perspective leads to a fundamentalist, scientistic view that everything can be explained by science. Consequently, we disregard things that can’t be measured or manipulated in the laboratory. These turn out to be the things that most matter to us and that give our lives meaning, such as the creative arts, a sense of the sacred, the ability to appreciate and understand nature, and empathy.

A world in which we have excluded from our view the things that make the world mean something is bound to face a crisis of meaning. I often refer to three vital components for human flourishing. The first is our relationships with one another in a community where we trust each other, share values and share our lives, meals and worship. The second is our relationship with nature, which, until a couple of hundred years ago, was something that people were inevitably very close to – 99.9% of the world’s population lived in close proximity to nature. Now, that number might be less than half. The third is the realm of the sacred or the divine. To have lost this is a catastrophe. Even from a utilitarian standpoint, a relationship with the divine is a potent indicator of psychological and emotional health.

If we want to make people feel completely at sea, we would take away the very things that anchor life. This, I believe, is at the heart of the meaning crisis. Tragically, 85% of young people today feel that life is pointless and meaningless. Therefore, we are experiencing a vast meta-crisis that encompasses both a meaning crisis and a mental health crisis.

BT: Let’s talk a bit about that loss of the sacred and the divine. You mentioned in a conversation with Nick Spencer that there is something profound in the world that does not map onto a purely material perspective. Your final chapter in The Matter of Things touches on this idea of the sacred. Could you give us an overview of what you mean by the sacred and why we’ve trained ourselves to overlook it?

IM: There’s a paradox in what you’ve asked: the most important thing about the sacred is that it is beyond articulation. This notion is echoed in many traditions; for example, the Dao De Jing begins: “The Dao that can be named is not the real Dao.” If we think we’ve got it, we know that we haven’t. Sceptics may dismiss this as a cop-out, but my lifelong experience tells me otherwise.

Indeed, if my life hadn’t taken the path it did, I would likely have gone into a monastery. All my life, I’ve sensed something profound that is much greater than anything I can reduce to common language, but it is utterly real and undeniable. It’s only denied by those fixated on the idea that if language can’t encompass it, then it can’t be real – that if it can’t be seen or measured, it isn’t real. This is just a basic error, as we know many things in this world are neither explicit nor measurable.

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It shouldn’t need to be stated that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, a piece of music can be analysed as far as you like until you come down to a bunch of single notes that won’t help you understand the whole piece that you’ve just destroyed. Through experience, we access a realm that resonates with many – what we refer to as the sacred or the divine. This realm is defined by its elusiveness; it can only be pointed to, not explicitly articulated.

Mystical insights are enormously revelatory, yet often, people with a left-hemisphere orientation attempt to codify these experiences, reducing them to legalistic documents. This approach, which demands rigid adherence to beliefs, often keeps people away from recognising the depth of meaning available to them.

JB: I was fascinated to hear you say that you once considered a life as a monk. When it comes to the question of God, we find ourselves in a difficult position, living in a left-hemispheric culture where people want some kind of philosophical or scientific explanation for God, as figures like Richard Dawkins always demand. Yet, it’s not something that can be expressed in that way. So, as someone who has written increasingly about the divine and the sacred, specifically about God, how do you engage people with God in a very left-hemispheric culture?

IM: Yes, it’s a good and difficult question. The first thing is to realise what has been lost from our world. It’s challenging to be aware of what your culture prevents you from seeing. One answer is a humanistic education that introduces you to the great minds of the past – people of astonishing intelligence who were able to see things we no longer see. This includes the Romantics, which I think is an easier path for many than the expressive religious path, as defences go up as soon as the word ‘God’ is mentioned. In chapter eight, when I talk about the sense of the sacred, I move towards the subject of God, but I also point out the many misconceptions wrapped up in that name.For many, this can be a stumbling block because they don’t understand what is being referred to. The Church bears much responsibility for projecting a picture of God as a sort of superhuman engineer or, worse, an apathetic ruler who takes no offence. These portrayals create problems for people trying to understand the divine. In The Matter with Things, I explore neuroscience and philosophical discussions on the various ways we can come to understand the world. These include reason and science – things that have served me well – but also intuition and imagination, which can reveal things that reason and science cannot.

In fact, one way to describe science is as the study of the perpetually mistaken, since science is always evolving. Our thinking should also evolve, and we need these other faculties. I’ve guided readers through the book, asking: “Do you see why I would say this? Can you understand what is meant here?” I discuss the coincidence of opposites, the relationship between the one and the many, time, flow, space, matter, consciousness, values and even a sense of purpose. By the time readers finish, I hope the idea of the sacred seems less bizarre.

What truly moves me are the many letters I receive. I feel humbled that someone like me, who doesn’t know how to describe themselves in religious terms, has brought people to an understanding. Some write to say they were confirmed atheists but, after reading my book, feel they need to take the idea of divinity more seriously. This is wonderful because I didn’t anticipate it. I don’t think I use the word ‘God’ often in The Master and His Emissary, but many have seen it as a kind of work of crypto-theology. It uses science and philosophy to make the divine more credible.

We tell ourselves stories about the lives we lead, often shaped by the different hemispheres of the brain. The left brain seeks order, logic and structure; the right brain looks for meaning, emotion and connection. Together, they influence how we interpret the world – and how we communicate within it. The same is true for organisations. Every business is a story, and the most effective ones engage both sides of the brain: the rational case for action and the emotional reasons people care.

This livestream is for communications, corporate affairs, and culture professionals who believe in the power of storytelling to make strategy stick, help culture flourish, and bring meaning to change. Join The Beautiful Truth on 10th December.