Our guest today is Oliver Burkeman. Oliver is a British journalist and author renowned for his insightful exploration of psychology and philosophy. He wrote the popular Guardian column "This Column Will Change Your Life" and is the bestselling author of "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals." His latest book, "Meditations forMortals," offers a practical philosophy of imperfectionism, encouraging readers to embrace life's limits and focus on what actually matters. An approach very muc...
May 25, 2025•40 min
Our guest today is Jamie Bristow, who is a writer and policy expert working at the intersection of inner and outer transformation and sustainability. For eight years, he was Director of the Mindfulness Initiative and clerk to the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness. In 2023, he joined the Inner Development Goals team to lead on public narrative & policy development. He’s here to talk to us today about a Middle Way approach to the climate crisis
Feb 13, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 165
Our guest today is Chris Rose. Chris is the Director of Amos Trust, a small creative human rights organisation which has three main areas of work: promoting Palestinian rights, creating opportunities for girls and young women on the streets and calling for climate justice. Chris has travelled extensively to Amos partner projects and led many trips and activities with them, such as home rebuilding, cycling and marathons trips in Palestine. He cofounded the Street Child World Cup in South Africa i...
Feb 13, 2025•55 min•Season 1Ep. 164
Our guest today is Rupert Read, an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion and co-director of the new Climate Majority Project. He’s authored several books, including This Civilisation is Finished, Parents for a Future and Why Climate Breakdown Matters and has been many times on the Today programme, Question Time, Newsnight, Politics Live, Al Jazeera, and more and he’s here to talk to us today about the Climat...
Feb 13, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 163
My guest today is George Glen. George is the new chair of the Middle Way Society, after taking over the role last year from the society’s founder Robert M Ellis. He’s going to talk to us today a little bit about his life and interests, how he became interested in Middle Way philosophy, as well as a range of topics from Yoga and meditation, to art and the joy of play, ways of seeing and value and navigating our lives.
Feb 12, 2025•53 min•Season 1Ep. 162
Our guest today is Robert M Ellis, who is the chair of the Middle Way Society. For anyone unfamiliar with the society’s aims, it is devoted to developing the theory and practice of the Middle Way beyond the limitations of the Buddhist tradition. From this universal perspective, the Middle Way is understood as a principle of judgement that throws us onto experience by avoiding absolutes, both positive and negative . Robert has a PhD in Philosophy which formed the starting point of his work in dev...
Feb 12, 2025•56 min•Season 1Ep. 161
Sukhema (aka Larry Butler) is a poet and a publisher who teaches tai-chi in healthcare settings, leads therapeutic writing groups for Lapidus Scotland, and has helped establish Towards Transition Glasgow. He completed a facilitator training in the Work That Reconnects (WTR) with Maitrisara, Chris Johnstone and others in England. He co-led a WTR facilitator training course in Scotland with Jenny Mackewn. Larry has 30 years experience facilitating groups and he’s here to talk to us today about the...
Feb 12, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 160
Our guest today is Margaret Wheatley. Margaret, or Meg has worked globally in various roles since 1966, such as a speaker, teacher, community worker, consultant, advisor, and formal leader. She believes that leaders must evoke people’s generosity, creativity, and community in a world that she feels is tearing us apart. A deep understanding of Systems Theory underpins her work and she has written nine books, including the Leadership and the New Science, her recent The Warrior’s Songline as well a...
Feb 12, 2025•38 min•Season 1Ep. 159
Our guest today is Dan Nixon. He’s a writer and researcher specialising in themes around attention, environmental philosophy and digital culture. A particular area of interest and expertise is the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and he’s also a mindfulness teacher. He’s written a couple of essays for Aeon and his ideas have been picked up and discussed in the Sunday Times, The Economist and the Guardian among others. He co-lead Perspectiva’s work on the Digital Ego. He’s going to talk to us today ab...
Feb 12, 2025•55 min•Season 1Ep. 158
Our guest today is Andy West, a senior specialist and training officer at the Philosophy Foundation. He has written for the Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and Lino amongst others. For the past several years he has taught philosophy in prisons and he’s here today to talk to us about his first book ‘The Life Inside: A memoir of prison, family and philosophy
Feb 12, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 157
My guest today is Gavin Haynes, a freelance journalist, writer, presenter and former editor-at-large at Vice. He's here to talk to us about the Purity Spiral. How a process of moral outbidding is corroding communities from within.
Oct 25, 2020•44 min
In this week's podcast, the chair of the Middle Way Society, Robert M Ellis talks to us about his most recent book 'The Thought of Sangharakshita: A Critical Assessment'.
Sep 13, 2020•40 min
In this latest member profile, Anna Markey talks to us about her background in Australia, her time spent in India as a young woman and her initial engagement with Buddhism. She then goes on to talk about her interest in language and her career as a teacher, why she joined the society and what her understanding is of the Middle Way.
Jul 03, 2020•36 min
An extract from an interview with Stephen Batchelor for the Middle Way Society about his latest book 'The Art of Solitude' in which he offers some reflections and advice on how to deal with self-isolation during the corona virus emergency.
Apr 15, 2020•5 min
Our guest today is Stephen Batchelor, a patron of the MW Society, author and Buddhist scholar who's here to talk about his latest book 'The Art of Solitude'.
Apr 12, 2020•45 min
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.
Nov 27, 2019•22 min
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.
Nov 13, 2019•49 min
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: ...
Aug 31, 2019•51 min
Our guest today is Sally Kohn, who arguably is 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.
Jul 17, 2019•29 min
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...
Jun 02, 2019•27 min
Our guest today is Katherine Weare who is Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter where she is working to develop and evaluate mindfulness in schools programs. Katherine is a dedicated mindfulness practitioner herself as well as a qualified mindfulness teacher. Her overall field is social and emotional learning and mental health and wellbeing in schools. She is known as an international expert on evidence-based practice and has conducted several definitive reviews and led programmes which...
May 01, 2019•54 min
Today’s guest is the British environmental writer and political activist George Monbiot. George writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain (2000) and Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding (2013). He will be discussing the topic of rewilding with the chair of the Middle Way Society, the philosopher Robert M Ellis.
Mar 17, 2019•37 min
Our guest today is Simon Bell. Simon is a retired mental health nurse who spent 37 years working in the National Health Service in the U.K. For 22 years he dealt solely with suspects, defendants and offenders from the time of their arrest until the point when criminal proceedings took place. He dealt with most types of offending behavior and over the course of his career was involved in assessing and caring for several thousand offenders and victims of crime. His passion for history goes back to...
Mar 03, 2019•49 min
My guest today is Maryanne Wolf. Maryanne is the John Dibiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service and Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research. She is an expert on the neurological underpinnings of reading, language, and dyslexia. She is also the author of numerous scientific publications as well two books written for the general public ‘Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain’ which has been translated in 10 languages and her latest book ‘Reade...
Jan 20, 2019•45 min
Our guest today is Jeremy Sherman. Jeremy is a decision theorist researching and writing about choice from the origin of life to everyday living. He teaches college courses across the social sciences and blogs for Psychology Today. He’s here to talk to us about his latest book Neither Ghost nor Manchine in which he distils for a general audience the theory developed by renowned neuroscientist Terrence Deacon that extends the breakthrough constraint-based insight that inspired evolutionary, infor...
Oct 22, 2018•53 min
We are joined today by the writer, sociologist, lecture and music critic, Keith Kahn-Harris. His books include Judaism: All That Matters, Uncivil War: The Israel Conflict in the Jewish Community, Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge and his latest book Denial: The Unspeakable Truth and this will be the topic of our discussion today.
Sep 24, 2018•35 min
We are joined today by the author and integrator Jeremy Lent and the chair of the Middle Way Society Robert M Ellis. Jeremy was a recent guest on the podcast when he spoke to us about his book “The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s search for Meaning”. Shortly afterwards Robert wrote a review of the book and some of the themes and issues raised in that review will form the basis for our discussion today.
Sep 03, 2018•1 hr 9 min
Our guest today is Alex Beard. Alex is a former English teacher at a London comprehensive and is now a senior director at Teach For All, a growing network of independent organizations working to ensure that all children fulfil their potential. He is fortunate to spend his time travelling the world in search of the practices that will shape the future of learning and has written about his experiences for the Independent, Guardian, Financial Times and Wired. His book Natural Born Learners is a use...
Aug 14, 2018•53 min
Our guest today is Laura Bridgman. Laura was ordained as a Buddhist nun in 1995, and was resident at Amaravati and Chithurst monasteries in the UK for eighteen years until she moved out to live as a solitary nun in 2010. In 2015 Laura left the monastic tradition to pursue the Diamond Heart (Ridhwan) spiritual path alongside her Vipassana practice. She has run several retreats over the last couple of years on the subject of the ‘Inner Critic’ and this will be the topic of our discussion today.
Aug 12, 2018•27 min
My guest today is Allan Frater, a psychotherapist and teacher at the Psychosynthesis Trust in London. Psychosynthesis is a transpersonal or psychospiritual psychology, in which the spiritual or soulful is integrated with the psychological. It has its origins in the work of Dr Roberto Assagioli, an early pioneer of psychoanalysis which he studied under Freud and as a contemporary of Carl Jung. On returning to Italy, Assagioli went beyond psychoanalysis in the formation of psychosynthesis, which i...
Jul 13, 2018•42 min
