New review of ‘The Biology of Desire’ by Marc Lewis
There’s now a new review up of Marc Lewis’s book ‘The Biology of Desire: Why addiction is not a disease’, which you can read here. Marc Lewis is a neuroscientist and ex-addict who challenges what he sees as the over-medicalisation of addiction, providing a detailed account of the brain processes and some moving stories of individuals along the way. Marc Lewis was also recently interviewed by Barry for his podcast.
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.
A new review is now up of a great and highly readable piece of psychology by Ellen Langer. Langer’s use of ‘mindful’ is much wider than normal today, and refers to provisionality and the recognition of uncertainty – core elements of the Middle Way. Click here to read the review.
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.