Neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist turns to one of philosophy's oldest questions: what is consciousness, and where does it come from? He argues the brain doesn't create consciousness — it shapes it, the way a larynx shapes air into a voice, filtering a larger field of consciousness into something distinctly yours. From there he builds toward panpsychism, the idea that consciousness pervades everything, from single-cell organisms to mountains. Along the way, he uses the image of a whirlpool in a stream to explain how a stable "self" can exist within constant flow, and makes the case that matter itself is simply a phase of consciousness.

IAIN MCGILCHRIST: We have a misconception that the way we make great discoveries is by great rigor, the famous scientific method, and we'll get to an answer. But actually what we know from accounts by great scientists and great mathematicians, when they saw that great discovery, it came as an aha moment, it came as a visitation.

My belief is the cosmos is a conscious cosmos.…