Dr Sumaiya Shaikh and I had a fantastic interview where we talked about a variety of topics including pseudoscience, alternative medicine, religion, extremism and the neurological tendency of us human beings to be violent. The interview went on for quite a while so it has been split into three parts so that you can take it in one bite at a time.

In the first part, we open the conversation with her work in the study of the neurophysiology of pain. There’s a lot more to pain than you may think, and we get a fascinating glimpse of that today.