Polarised

In this lively interview series from the RSA, Matthew Taylor, puts a range of practitioners on the spot - from scholars to business leaders, politicians to journalists - by asking for big ideas to help build effective bridges to our new future. Noga Arikha has long been fascinated with mental illness and the way we understand identity. Researching her new book, the philosopher and historian spent 18 months at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris studying what happens when the mind goes wrong – and how our physical experiences inform our identities. Noga Arikha is a philosopher and historian of ideas. She works as a science humanist, fostering dialogues between neuroscientists, psychologists, clinicians, social scientists, humanists and artists in order to bring to a general audience accessible accounts that analyse the origins of our deepest concerns about our embodied, feeling and thinking selves. Her latest book, The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind, is an exploration of