Episode 3 - Intercultural Visionary Edward Hall

Yvonne and Joseph reflect on the life and legacy of the intercultural visionary thinker Edward Hall. Trained as an anthropologist, he broke with orthodoxy and pioneered the study of intercultural communication with the publication of his 1959 book, The Silent Language. He believed that intercultural understanding is harder than we might think, because we are deeply influenced by the cultural “programming” or our unconscious mind. This episode is in three parts:

Part 1 – The shape of your head

Part 2 – Shaking hands with Hall

Part 3 – The brain-scan revolution

Yvonne and Joseph discuss how thinking about cultural difference has evolved over time, introduce some key ideas of Hall, and reflect on how Hall’s work anticipated the work of cultural neuroscience and cultural psychology today.