YES, HE MENTIONED TRUMP AND THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND IN THE SAME SENTENCE - MARCH 31 - 11.34AM - 2019

John Bargh - Weston Lecture Theatre - 10.00am

So today is all about the ‘jewels’ - those events that, perhaps surprisingly and unexpectedly, make you feel...good, like a warm drink or indulgent pastry (after all, it is Sunday, it is freezing AND we did lose an hour of sleep to boot). So while as usual the Festival has a whole array today of well-known speakers and celebrities just waiting to step up to the dias - Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland), Simon Schama, Martin Bell, Kate Adie, Robert Daws, Maureen Lipman and Chris Thorogood - it is also, in parallel, hosting a collection of those authors who, while much less well known, often deliver the bigger feel-good punch. Which is why first thing this morning I eagerly attended a talk entitled ‘Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do’ given by Professor John Bargh, a social psychologist at Yale University and director of its (deep breath) ‘Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation and Evaluation Lab’. Or in short the sort of individual you wish you could sit next to at a dinner party (chatting about school fees, your new extension and your Yoga class does get a little tedious after three or four seconds). Bargh on the other hand, as one of the world leading experts on the unconscious mind, could probably talk for three or four days before you realised your crime brûlée had turned cold. Indeed, even the woman introducing him on behalf of the festival had to admit she’d found it irksome to have their conversation interrupted by us interlopers. The bar then was set high but to an almost sell-out audience he didn’t miss a beat (appropriate really since he once used to be a disc jockey, complete with 70s style tash). In short, this was a talk that just meant you HAD to buy his book, so fascinating was his explanation of our behavioural impulses. Everything from Donald Trump (no great surprise really considering the subject matter) to why you shouldn’t shop on Amazon when hungry. Unmissable.