All posts by Barry Daniel

About Barry Daniel

I live in the Lake District in the UK where I run a guesthouse with my partner Kate and my cat Manuel. I enjoy painting, hillwalking, reading, visiting and entertaining friends, T’ai Chi and playing the guitar. I’m engaged to a certain degree in the local community, as a volunteer with Samaritans and I’m a fairly active member of the local Green party. I’ve had a relatively intuitive sense of the Middle Way most of my adult life but it found a greater articulation and a practical direction through joining the society. It’s also been interesting and great fun engaging with other people with a similar outlook. My main contribution to the society is conducting the podcast interviews, something that gives me a lot of satisfaction and that I’ve learnt a lot from.

The MWS Podcast 84: Mark Williams on the impact of humans on the biosphere

Climate Change, Science

Our guest today is Mark Williams who is a professor of paleobiology at the University of Leicester. He’s the co-author, along with Jan Zalasiewicz of The Goldilocks Planet: The 4 billion year story of Earth’s Climate and has published several peer reviewed papers on paleobiology, paleoenvironments and paleoclimates in conjunction with other researchers including his latest ‘The Anthropocene Biosphere’ which explores the impact of humans from a geological perspective on the biosphere. It also looks at how humans are potentially driving a sixth mass extinction and this will be the topic of our discussion today.

If you’d like to pursue this topic further you can download the Anthropocene Biosphere paper here. In addition, a couple of books Mark recommended are: Dodging Extinction – Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth by Tony Barnosky and The Anthropocene. The human era and how it shapes our planet by Christian Schwägerl


MWS Podcast 84: Mark Williams as audio only:
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The MWS Podcast 83: Ellen Langer on Mindful Learning and the Power of Possibility

Mindfulness, Psychology, Science,

Our guest today is Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the first woman ever to be tenured in psychology at Harvard. Her studies include the illusion of control, decision-making, ageing and mindfulness theory and she has often been described as the mother of mindfulness. She has written many books including the best selling, Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning, On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity; Counterclockwise and the Wiley Mindfulness Handbook . She’s going to talk to us today about mindfulness, mindful health, mindful learning and the power of possibility.


MWS Podcast 83: Ellen Langer as audio only:
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The MWS Podcast 82: Peter Sheath on Addiction, Mental Health and the Middle Way

Health, ,

Our guest today is Peter Sheath, a mental health nurse, counsellor, consultant, trainer and person in long term recovery who has been involved in the field of health and social care for many years. He has worked in a variety of mental health settings including managing acute psychiatry units, community psychiatric nursing, day centre management and nurse teaching. Peter is extremely passionate about addiction and its relationship with mental health. As a result, he has worked extensively in the third sector since moving in to substance misuse. In 2011 Peter was invited to address the United Nations Drugs Symposium and UK drugs consortium to talk specifically about recovery from addiction and this will be the topic of our discussion today.


MWS Podcast 82: Peter Sheath as audio only:
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The MWS Podcast 81: Amelia Womack on Ecocide and Environmental Law

Climate Change, Politics, ,

We are joined today by Amelia Womack, who is a British politician and deputy leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. Following a BSc in Environmental Biology, Amelia completed an MSc in environmental technology at Imperial College London in 2013, with a thesis entitled Who’s afraid of Environmental Law? – How the law of ecocide can secure our environment for business resilience. She has been an active campaigner on this issue since then and this will be the theme of our discussion today.


MWS Podcast 81: Amelia Womack as audio only:
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The MWS Podcast 80: Steven Heine on the Weirdest People in the World

Culture, Psychology, , ,

Our guest today is Steven Heine, a Canadian professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and a leader in the field of cultural psychology. In 2010, he, along with his colleagues Joseph Henrich and Ara Norenzayan wrote the ground-breaking paper ‘The WEIRDest’ people in the world?’ with WEIRD meaning Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. The paper suggests that the view we have of the mind derived from the research of behavioural scientists is distorted due to the majority of studies in this field being done on only a small and not particularly representative sector of the human population. This will be the topic of our conversation today.

Also for anyone interested, here’s the link to the paper The Weirdest People in the World and the paper Steve mentioned near the end of the talk by Adam Galinsky and Will Maddux on The Relationship between Living Abroad and Creativity


MWS Podcast 80: Steven Heine as audio only:
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