Novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer is one of the English language's most mordant and poetic observers of art, travel, and human behavior. He's the winner of the National Book Critics Circle  Award for Criticism and the Windham Campbell Prize for Nonfiction. In his most recent book White Sands, weaving stories about places to which he has recently traveled with images and memories that have persisted since childhood, Dyer tries “to work out what a certain place—a certain way of marking the landscape—means; what it’s trying to tell us; what we go to it for.”On this week's episode of Think Again - a Big Think Podcast, Dyer talks revenge, hallucinogens, the criminal brain, Geoff's disappointing trip to see the Northern Lights and more, and there is a spontaneous William Blake smackdown, much to the chagrin of host Jason Gots. Surprise discussion clips in this episode: Michael Gazzaniga, Lawrence Krauss, and Maia SzalavitzLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices