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Leor Zmigrod talks to John Burn-Murdoch

The Ideological Brain

Hay Festival 2025, 

In today’s polarised and polarising world, we need to zoom into the processes happening inside each of us. Why do some people become radicalised? Who is most susceptible to ideological thinking? Can we unchain our minds from toxic dogmas? Dr Leor Zmigrod is a pioneer in the field of ‘political neuroscience’, and drawing on her groundbreaking research she uncovers the hidden mechanisms driving our beliefs and behaviours.

Learn more about our political beliefs and ideologies – not transient thoughts in our minds, divorced from our bodies, but actually changing our neural architecture, our cells. Find out about rigid thinking in ourselves and others, and how to recognise our ability to resist irrational rules and authority. Regardless of your political stance, Zmigrod will challenge you to reassess your convictions – and what they are doing to your brain.

In conversation with John Burn-Murdoch, columnist and chief data reporter for the Financial Times.

Sponsored by FT Weekend