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.
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My guest today is Mark Austin who is an accredited teacher of 5Rhythms dance classes, which he runs regularly in the north of England. In the interview we explore the origins of the practice, what it is, how a typical session pans out and how it relates to the Middle Way.
Our guest today is Adam Luecke PH.D who is currently an Assistant Teaching Professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. His research focuses on multiple areas of social psychology, including prosocial behaviour and the benefits of mindfulness. He’s done a wide range of research that suggests that mindfulness increases analytical thought, decreases just world beliefs, reduces discrimination and implicit age and races bias. This research will be the topic of our discussion today.
My guest today is David Robson, David is an award-winning science writer and editor, who specialises in writing in-depth articles probing the extremes of the human mind, body and behaviour. He was a features editor at New Scientist for five years and is currently a senior journalist at BBC Future. He regularly features on the BBC World Service discussing scientific issues, and his writing has also appeared in Guardian, the Atlantic and the Washington Post. His first book ‘The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Stupid Mistakes and How to Make Wiser Decisions was published earlier this year and this will be the topic of our discussion today
Our guest today is Sally Kohn, who is arguably one of the leading progressive voices in America. A frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Sally is a popular keynote speaker including most recently with the Forgiveness Project , talking about political division, hate, otherizing, diversity and identity — and how we can solve the deep problems of our past and present. Her first book ‘The Opposite of Hate’ came out last year and will be the topic of our discussion today.
We are joined today by the philosopher and founder of the Middle Way Society. Robert has been a regular guest on the podcast and is the author of a range of books on Middle Way Philosophy, both within and beyond Buddhism, including The Christian Middle Way (Christian Alternative 2018). He has a PhD in Philosophy and a Cambridge BA in Oriental Studies and Theology. He has taught in many different contexts, and was formerly a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order. He’s here to talk to us about his latest book The Buddha’s Middle Way (Equinox 2019).