Chasing Consciousness

How do astronomers detect the conditions for life and techno-signatures on exoplanets many lightyears away? What conditions on earth give us clues to how life might have formed elsewhere? How do intelligent civilisations evolve to technomaturity before they destroy themselves?So in this episode we have the mysterious arising of life and eventually intelligent life on our planet to try and explain, to then apply that to our search for other intelligent life in the cosmos. So to explain that we're going to be getting into the co-evolution of the geosphere and the biosphere on earth and their corresponding feedback loops; the possibility of planetary level intelligence; the difficulty of laying a technosphere on top of the geo and biosphere, and the risk of civilisations wiping themselves out before learning how to harmonise the technosphere with the biosphere; We'll be looking at the changes in the field of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Terrestrial Intelligence), since we can now identify potentially life sustaining exo-planets in nearer parts of the galaxy; we're going to get into the newly funded search for techno signatures from advanced civilisations, and potential space junk from the many civilisations that presumably didn't make it; lastly we're going to discuss recent claims of ancient and alleged present visitations to earth by extra terrestrial intelligence.Fortunately to face these tough and complex issues, our guest is a world specialist in astrobiology, with a talent for making these topics fun and imaginative, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, Professor Adam Frank. He's the author of over 200 scientific papers and 6 books for the general public including, “The Blind Spot: why science cannot ignore human experience” and “The Little book of Aliens” which we'll be focussing on today. He's also an award winning science communicator, on a mission to raise public awareness about existential risk and science in general.What we discussed:00:00 Intro.05:20 The importance of experience.07:00 The limits between the expressible and the inexpressible.09:10 Semantic Information: life as self organising, autonomous agents.15:00 There's stuff you can't talk about - there's only the silence16:20 The Basian probability of other life in the universe.20:00 The ingredients for life on this earth.22:30 The codependence between Geo and Biosphere.22:60 Gaian feedback loops. 27:00 The earth is not conscious but it is an agent.29:45 Mind is a process, it's not just in the head.33:25 The fluidity of individuality.34:30 Distributed Cognition - bacteria, fungal networks etc.38:30 A fundamental reimagining of what we mean by ‘Nature'.39:30 There is no disembodied perspective.41:00 Geosphere to Biosphere to technosphere maturity.47:30 The biosphere offers a model for what planetary intelligence looks like.48:00 The history of search for extra terrestrial Intelligence, SETI49:00 The Drake equation - 7 requirements for intelligence life.53:45 We've never looked - a tiny amount of the sky has been studied.54:00 Exoplanets: searching for biosgnatures and techno signatures.56:00 Technospheres: Kardeshev scale and Dyson Spheres.59:00 Techno junk from dead civilisations.01:02:30 UFO's need more data to be taken seriously.01:08:20 UFO's could be surveilling their spy tech.01:10:00 Pros and Cons of solar system settlement.References:Adam Frank, Evan Thompson, Marcelo Gleiser, “The Blind Spot: Why science cannot ignore human experience”.Adam Frank, “The Little Book of Aliens”Adam Frank, David Grinspoon, Sarah Walker - Intelligence as a planetary scale process.Lynn Margulis - Evolutionary Biologist.David Krakauer et al, An information theory view of individuality Frank Drake - ⁠Project Ozma⁠Jason Wright - SETI meta-analysisExoplantets.orgAdam Frank - New York Times ‘I'm a Physicist Who Searches for Aliens. U.F.O.s Don't Impress Me' article"The Expanse", Apple TV series

What's the architecture of a DMT experience, who are the entities that regularly interact and what's their message? How can DMT therapy facilitate positive mental health outcomes?In this episode we're going to learn about the bizarre types of experience that users of DMT have; DMT being the most powerful hallucinogenic molecule on the planet. So we'll be getting into the background of psychedelics for mental health; and the particularities of DMT, the active ingredient in Ahyuasca and the psychedelic that most often presents entities that interact meaningfully with the experiencer; we're going to discuss the different types of entities: from mythological creatures, to Gods and Demons, to machine elves and aliens, and the significance of these same characters appearing significantly often without an obvious primer; we'll also discuss the importance of mystical experience and teacher /guide experiences to positive mental health outcomes.Fortunately our guest was the head researcher on a 2022 paper that looked at exactly this topic, the medical doctor and sports scientist professor at the University of Toronto, Dr. David Wyndham Lawrence. He's published over 35 scientific papers across sports science and psychedelics for medical use.What we discussed:00:00 Intro05:20 Concussion, sports mental health & psychedelic therapy.08:10 Bringing in Robin Carhartt-Harris on the gaps in sports mental health treatment.12:06 Why psychedelics for those already in psychological difficulty?14:04 Serotonin receptor - neuro-protective mitochondria function.15:00 DMT is endogenous to the brain. 18:20 Medical institution meets shamanism.23:50 David's DMT phenomenology paper.30:10 The architecture of the DMT world.32:60 Mostly positive, interactive entity encounters.37:05 Occasionally negative encounters.38:40 Negative psychedelic experiences study - Jules Evans.40:05 How much “Primers” from pop culture influence experiences.44:00 Alien encounters in %16 of participants.45:30 Medical procedures by entities in 9% of participants.47:05 Mystical experiences in %70 of participants.49:00 Familiarity/ sense of home in the experiences.52:20 Default Mode Network is less active during altered states.48:35 Ego dissolution Vs mystical experience.01:00:00 5meoDMT Vs DMT.01:03:20 Wise teacher experience in 32% of participants.01:05:20 Death bed palliative doses to alleviate fear of death.01:09:50 ‘You're not ready for this experience' message.01:11:05 Theories of DMT experiences evaluated.01:12:20 ”All models are false but some are useful”, anonymous statistician.References: David Lawrence, “Phenomenology and content of inhaled DMT” David Wyndham Lawrence and Robin Carhart-Harris, “Sports Medicine, Mental Health & Well-Being, and Psychedelics” Benny Shanon,  “Antipodies of the Mind”Matthew W. Johnson - Johns HopkinsAndrew Gallimore - “Death by Astonishment”Jules Evans et al, “Extended difficulties following the use of psychedelic drugs”Similarities between DMT and Alien encounters paperDavid W. Lawrence, “DMT Occasioned Familiarity and the Sense of Familiarity Questionnaire”Roland Griffiths, “Psilocybin produces substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer”

What are we sleeping less and less? What are the benefits of getting a good nights sleep and the risks if we consistently don't? How is sleep linked to memory, cognitive performance, blood sugar regulation & stress hormones? How is young people's development affected by sleep?In this episode we have the surprising data on the science of sleep to get up to date on; so, why there's a sleep deprivation epidemic; how sleep works and what it's required for; dreams; and importance of sleep for learning and for immunity. We're also going to discuss the wide range of serious health issues that arise with even a small sleep deficit, and the vast benefits of getting sleep right; and the lifestyle tips we need to consistently get the sleep we need. And of course, sleep and mental health, and the importance of sleep for development in young people.Gratefully our guest today is a psychologist and neuroscientist that specialises in sleep, mental health and dream research, particularly in young people. She's the Scientific Director of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, Roxanne Prichard! She's the author of over 40 highly citied scientific papers, and her TEDx talk “Addressing our Childrens Sleep Debt” was featured in the lecture series: Transforming Education. She's quoted regularly in the press, inlcuding the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, and USA Today.What we discussed:00:00 Intro.05:00 The Sleep deprivation epidemic.07:15 Shaking off prejudice about resting being laziness. 08:31 Glymphatic system for toxin removal.10:00 Synaptic plasticity: Learning & unlearning.11:10 Learning & memory require sleep.14:00 The hippocampus processes memory during sleep.15:00 Late night cramming for exams blocks learning.15:50 Lack of sleep appears to the body as a threat out in the world.17:40 Blood sugar regulation is affected by sleep.18:00 “Sleep! Like diet and exercise only easier!”19:10 Immunity and sleep deprivation.21:00 Cancer & regularity of circadian rhythms.22:00 Evolution, daylight, circadian rhythms & learning.23:45 Sleep delay of morning stress hormones in teens. 26:15 Light Vs Deep ‘Slow Wave' Vs REM sleep.30:00 REM Sleep explained. 33:00 Dreams: The top theories.36:30 The electrical nature of sleep & brain waves.40:00 Alpha Waves and biofeedback for insomnia.42:00 Insomnia & the health risks of sleep deprivation.46:00 Sleep is within our control.47:15 The inflammation link with sleep.49:30 The mental health risks of sleep deprivation. 50:00 Catastrophising and attention deficit.50:45 College students mental health & sleep as a crucial marker.57:30 Persausive technology, screens & sleep.01:02:30 How much sleep do we need? 01:04:25 Avoid external stimulants & go to low light.01:06:00 Avoid internal stimulants like caffeine and alcohol. 01:07:40 Sleep and wake at regular times every day.01:08:40 Core temperature dropping signals sleep.01:10:00 Roxanne's campaign points.01:12:00 The shame around rest. References: Ya Chai at al, ‘Two nights of recovery sleep restores hippocampal connectivity but not episodic memory after total sleep deprivation' paper.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65086-xN.I.H. article, 'Sleep on it - How snoozing strengthens memories' (40% drop in learning after sleep deprivation)https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2013/04/sleep-itU. Chicago Medicine article, 'New study helps explain the link between sleep loss and diabetes'.Trisha Hershey, ‘the Nap' Bishop. - “Rest is Resistance” book.

Can intention alone cause changes in physical systems? Can the collective attention of a large group of people to an event cause changes in the coherence changes in physical systems, despite that lack of intention to do so?In today's episode we're going to be exploring a field consciousness hypothesis: so a variation on the idea that consciousness may extend beyond the body and interact casually with physical systems and the consciousness of other beings, in some kind of resonant field phenomena. We're going to be learning about the experiments with random number generators used to test this hypothesis; how human intention and attention has been proved to be able to affect these random outputs in a vast backlog of positive results and meta analyses; We're going to hear about how these experiments have been taken global, looking at collective effects on RNGs of particularly important world events that many people are attending to; we're going to be looking at criticisms of the statistical analysis and a potential experimenter effect; and we're going to be talking about the contrast between some seemingly non-local effects with other localised effects; and as always we're going to be getting into the implications, in this case of whether the ‘field consciousness' effect the data seems to point to, is more likely to be a unified field of consciousness, so in some sense a single mind, or simply the aggregated sum of all individual consciousnesses. Now fortunately to guide us as we carefully test the thickness of the ice on this genuinely alternative world view of consciousness, we have the cognitive psychologist that has pioneered these field consciousness experiments since he founded the Global Consciousness Project at the Princeton University PEAR labs, Roger Nelson. Roger worked at Princeton's PEAR labs in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, initially under Bob Jahn, for over twenty years until his retirement in 2002. He is also the author of the book “Connected: The emergence of global consciousness”.What we discuss:00:00 Intro.07:30 Random Number generator ‘mind-matter interaction' experiments at Princeton PEAR labs.21:10 Bob Jahn - Dean of Engineering at Princeton.28:45 Emotional and passionate group events saw coherence in the RNG experiments. 33:00 Contrast between apparent local and non-local effects.37:55 David Bohm's Implicate / Explicate order concept.38:55 “Pilot wave” and “active information” link between the implicite and the explicate.43:55 Statistical results generation and analysis of significance.49:05 The sceptics criticisms.51:45 The Global Consciousness Project methodology. 53:05 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's mind sphere, called ‘Noosphere'.57:45 Measuring the group coherence of Princess Diana's funeral.01:00:25 The 9/11 Results.01:05:55 The emotional component in coherence.01:18:40 The quantity of people and strength of the emotion, whether positive or negative, raises the effect size.01:11:10 A single collective consciousness VS an aggregate of all individual consciousnesses. 01:14:50 Different levels of collective consciousness above individual bodies.01:16:55 The analogy of individuals being like neurones in a cosmic brain.01:20:55 The Experimenter effect criticism.01:26:10 The Helmut Schmidt “Unobserved tape” experiment.01:29.10 The indeterminate state before observer ‘collapses of the wave function' analogy to explain results.01:37:25 The Schmidt ‘retrocausation' hypothesis.References:Roger Nelson, “Connected: the Emergence of Global Consciousness”Robert Jahn And Brenda Dunn, “Margins of Reality”International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) Publishing.Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Phenomena of man”

How much can a change in diet influence symptoms of mental health disorders? Why are a diversity of plants and whole foods so important to include, and ultra processed foods so important to remove? Why are inflammation and microbe diversity in the gut so key to this question? What does this research mean for the life-style medicine movement and to world food policy?In this episode we have the exploding new field of nutritional psychiatry to get to grips with, that is the way our diet can influence and even treat mental health conditions. We're going to be discussing the historical separation of mind and body by science, which has led to scepticism that diet could influence mental health outcomes; the new understanding of the importance of diversity in our microbiome and inflammation to our mood and mental state; our main topic which is going to be the radical results of recent trials showing large changes in cognitive and mental health outcomes when diet is altered; we'll get into the foods that can bring about that change and why they work; and we're going to be getting into the reasons for the broken industrialised food environment that has contributed to the current mental health epidemic in the west.Fortunately, to understand this complex new field, our guest today is the very scientist that risked her reputation to conduct the first trials, facing considerable pushback, only to shift the consensus remarkably quickly with some top science, Felice Jacka. She is the Deakin University Distinguished Professor of Nutritional Psychiatry in Melbourne, the founder and director of the Food & Mood Centre, and of the International Society of Nutritional Psychiatry; She has been cited in over 100 institutional directives for food policy including the World Health Organization and UNICEF; and she is also the author of two books on this for the general public, the children's book “There's a Zoo in my Poo” and for adults “Brain Changer: How diet can save your mental health” which we'll be covering today. Her impact has been so high on public health that in 2021 she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to nutritional psychiatry.What we discuss:00:00 Intro08:50 The historic separation between mental and physical health. 10:35 People with mental health die about 20 years earlier. 13:30 The connection between the immune system and mental health. 16:20 New microbiome & chronic inflammation research's influence on psychiatry. 20:00 Epigenetics, mitochondria (energy generation) & neurotransmitter influences. 21:15 Gut brain axis & oxidative stress response.33:30 The SMILES trial results and their integration into the consensus. 38:30 Using the Press to shorten the usual 20 year gap between results and policy change. 43:00 Industrialised food is the leading cause of chronic disease & biodiversity loss. 45:00 ‘We're not going to tell people what to eat': the food lobby's ‘nanny state' argument. 50:00 Soil depletion and the soil microbiome. 50:50 The life-style psychiatry movement: Diet, sleep and exercise. 01:05:30 Take out ultra-processed foods - even the nutritionally balanced ones. 01:12:30 Cognitive ability and memory reduced by processed foods. 01:14:45 Nutritional and energetic equivalent foods have totally different outcomes for the microbiome. 01:19:15 Put in a variety of plants - 30 a week. 01:20:20 The mediterranean diet. 01:24:50 Polyphenol science so far. 01:27:00 Emulsifiers and artificial sugars - the mucosal lining of the gut. 01:30:15 Fermented foods - the waste products of the bacteria are beneficial. References:Felice Jacka, “Brain Changer: The Good Mental Health Diet”Felice Jacka, “There's a Zoo in my Poo”Melissa Lane et al, ‘Ultra‐Processed Food Consumption and Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of Observational Studies' paperFelice Jacka' et al, ‘A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the 'SMILES' trial)' Paper

What is the relationship between our cognition and our bodies in the natural environment? How do we reconcile the presence of mind in life without splitting them into a dualism? What are the similarities between cognitive science and the buddhist view of the mind? How can we resist the bifurcation of nature into subjective and objective?In this episode we have the important topic of embodied cognition to raise our awareness about, that is the importance of our biologically lived experience to our perspective of world. So we get into the biologist and neuroscientist Francisco Varela's concept of Autopoiesis, literally ‘self creation' from the Greek, which describes the extraordinary tenacity of self-organising living systems to create and sustain themselves; we discuss the meeting point of buddhism, meditation, asian philosophy and modern cognitive science which may have become overstated in recent decades; and we get into the deep continuity between body and mind, and the importance of the artificial separation of the objective and subjective in the history of science, that has led us to the dominant position of reductionist materialism.To face these diverse topics, we have as our guest the hugely influential philosopher, cognitive scientist and Asian philosophy scholar Evan Thompson. Evan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and an Associate Member of the Department of Asian Studies and the Department of Psychology (Cognitive Science Group). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of many books, collected works, and papers, including “The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience”, “Mind in Life”, “Why I'm not a buddhist” and “The Blind Spot, why science cannot ignore human experience”.What we discuss:00:00 Intro.06:30 Francisco Varela and the “Embodied Mind” book.11:00 Embodied experience, embedded in the environment.13:15 Chalmers and Clarke: Extended mind.15:30 Autopoiesis - Self-creation. Maturana.21.25 Autonomy and enactive self-organising systems.24:30 Neither Inside out, nor outside in, rather relational.26:00 The Enactive relationship between organism and environment.29:00 Mind is a distributed systemic process in connection with the environment.34:00 Neurophenomenology - you need an investigation from within.38:40 Mind in life & Deep Continuity.40.00 Sense making and cognition are proto-mind.41:30 Whitehead and the bifurcation of nature into subjective and objective.44:45 Bottom up/ parts VS top down/ wholes.47:00 Reductionism: the surreptitious substitution.53:45 Buddhism & The Mind and Life Institute.01:03:30 Buddhist exceptionalism.01:05:00 Neuroscience & Buddhism on self.01:09:45 The commercialisation of meditation - spiritual narcissism.01:12:15 The benefits of mindfulness to treat mental heath.01:13:30 De-individualisation of spiritual practices - social practice for social problems.01:15:45 Ritualisation of practice for positive transformation.01:18:30 Dependent Origination and the Self.01:26:15 Dying: Our ultimate transformation. References:Evan Thompson, “The Blind Spot”Evan Thompson,“Mind In Life”Evan Thompson,“Why I'm not a buddhist”Evan Thompson, “Waking, Dreaming, Being”Alfred Lord Whitehead - The Bifurcation of nature articleDavid Bohm - “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”Evan Thompson quote from the episode:“Mind is a systemic property or process. It's not in the head”

Why and how do we store certain memories and not others? What lifestyle elements influence memory for better or worse? Can traumatic memories be reframed and lead to reduction in symptoms?In this episode we get into the most recent research into memory. So, how we store memory; the different types; the way we actively construct it rather than simply receiving it; it's importance to our sense of self and framing of the world; to our attention and motivation; to our openness and updating our beliefs; and to Deja Vu. We talk about the influence of screen time and multi-tasking on memory; some unexpected life style factors that influence the quality of memory function and how they can feed into memory disorders; and we discuss traumatic memories and how we can reframe them, and the psychedelic research on that too.Fortunately, our guest is one of the world's most fun and knowledgeable authorities on memory, psychologist, neuroscientist, and head of the dynamic memory lab at The University of California Davis, Dr. Charan Ranganath. He's the author of over 120 scientific papers on memory and has recently released a fascinating book for the general public on all this, “Why We Remember”. Charan is also a rock guitarist with several bands so a man of many talents. What we discuss:00:00 intro. 07:20 The remembering self vs experiencing self. 09:30 We forget a lot, we're supposed to.11:00 Autobiographic memory.13:30 Episodic memory.14:20 Emotional intensity brings attention, which is linked to motivation.18:20 Association, cue and prompts, and the hippocampus.20:30 Memory athletes and training memory.21:51 Storifcation, mental schemas and ‘scaffolding' new memories with old blueprints.24:40 Preconceptions, bias and prejudice is baked into new memories.27:00 Imagining the past (re-membering) and imagining the future are very similar in the brain.29:15 The brain is not linear, rather a global network of dynamic interaction between brain regions simultaneously.31:29 Prediction error, goals, and memory enhancement.37:00 Dopamine drives our attention, interest and curiosity, multiplying remembering.43:20 Mental flexibility, youthful neuroplasticity, and openness to new experience.46::00 The ‘Stage of Life' theory of memory.49:00 The young brain needs to struggle to get the information they're curious about.50:15 Deja Vu research and familiarity.54:20 The environmental and social components of memory. 58:15 The act of remembering can change that memory.01:00:00 Collective memory - shared memories support sense of self.01:01:20 Life style factors: good for the body = good for the brain, so good for memory.01:02:00 The importance of vascular health and inflammation.01:06:30 Depression inversely correlates with memory.01:08:45 Screen time, focus and memory.01:10:20 Multi taking is actually switching, and leads to fragmented memories.01:12:30 Traumatic memories and reframing them.01:19:20 Psychedelic reframing of memories. 01:20:20 Extinction learning - learning to suppress memory prompts and re-write them.References:Charan Ranganth, “Why We Remember” Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking Fast and Slow”Hermann Ebbinghaus, “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology” 1885Endel Tulving, ‘Mental time travel'Frederic Bartlett, 1930 ‘Imagining the past and constructing the future'Mathias Gruber and Charan Ranganath, “How Curiosity Enhances Hippocampus-Dependent Memory: The Prediction, Appraisal, Curiosity, and Exploration (PACE) Framework” PaperAnne Cleary, Deja Vu experiments article

How do plants communicate using sound? How do they remember previous stimuli that have proven not to be threat, when at first they seemed like one? Where is the memory encoded considering they have no brain? What are the implications for biology of plant memory? In this episode we cover the ground breaking topics in plant cognition studies of: plant intelligence, behaviour, memory and communication. The type of experiments presented here have never really been done before, because there has always been an assumption in plant science that the cellular cognition that all living cells have, relies solely on light, touch or chemical interactions; so it doesn't really permit for plant behaviour, memory and consciousness. So with my guest today, the first scientist to bypass the assumptions and try these tests, we're going to discuss her experiments with plants; that clearly show not only basic memory and the corresponding updated behaviour based on that memory, but even pavlovian memory, i.e. associative memory that requires arbitrary stimuli to take on meaning to the plant. Obviously all of this has massive implications for distributed memory and memory beyond brains. We're also going to get into plant medicine and other indigenous approaches to connecting with plant consciousness; and what plant communication and biophilia in general might do for our relationship to the natural world as we face imminent biosphere collapse. My guest is of course, the research associate professor of Evolutionary Ecology at several universities in Australia, Monica Gagliano. She's published over 60 scientific papers, across the fields of Ecology, Plant Cognition, Plant Communications and Marine Ecology. She is also the author of the books “The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy and Literature”,  and the highly celebrated,“Thus Spoke the Plant, A remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters”. What we discuss: 00:00  Intro 05:00 The consensus on Plant intelligence & communication. 09:20 The difference between reacting and responding in cognition. 10:00 Bio-acoustic communication between plants. 21:07 Possible methods for plants to percieve sound. 22:00 Response to gravity may be similar. 23:30 Her plant memory experiment with Mimosa. 27:15 ‘Habituation' learning: screening out non-useful stimuli. 32:15 The connection between hardship and accelerated adaptive learning. 37:50 Her ‘Pavlovian' associative memory experiment with peas. 46:10 The Implications of plant memory for modern biology.  49:25 Where is memory stored without a nervous system? 52:30 Monica's ethical crisis in animal studies. 01:00:00 ‘Pavlovian' associative memory experiment with peas. 01:01:30 ‘Dieta', amazonian plant communication practice. 01:05:00 Shamanic interface with plant wisdom, particularly for healing. 01:08:00 Reductionist materialist pushback is representative of the colonial history of abuse of nature. 01:11:00 Indigenous science and a new book in the making. References: Monica Gagliano, “Thus Spoke the Plant, A remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters”. Gagliano, Manusco & Robert, “Towards Understanding Plant Bioacoustics” paper

Where is nature's memory of its evolution encoded? Is there evidence for extended mind occurring beyond individual brains? How possible is it that the sun is conscious? In this episode we're going to get up to date on Rupert Sheldrake's extraordinary theory of Morphic resonance: so Morphic fields, the unfolding of nature's ‘habits' and the ‘memory of nature'. We'll examine the possibility of levels of consciousness larger than our own brains - scaling up in a hierarchy from cellular consciousness right up to planetary and perhaps even stellar consciousness! We're also going to get into examples of consciousness beyond the brain like ‘the sensation of being stared at' (clearly a useful skill to evolve) and other phenomena Rupert has reported in his experiments.  Rupert Sheldrake is a Cambridge PHD developmental Biologist whose published over 100 papers on topics as wide as Cellular Biology, telepathy, Pets who know when their owners are coming home, and after-death communications. He is also the author of many books like “A new science of life”, “Science set free”, and “Ways of going Beyond”, among many others. What were discuss: 00:00 Intro. 06:10 Morphic resonance explained. 08:15 Polar Auxin - death in the midst of life. 09:15 Genes make proteins, morphogenetic fields determine form. 11:30 Nature's “memory” spread across time. 13:25 Something that has happened before is more likely to happen again. 14:15 Collective memory, like Jung's collective unconscious. 17:15 His scientific education engrained materialism and atheism in him.. 18:15 Asian philosophy, psychedelics, Neo-platonism and Christianity. 20:30 Questioning of scientific dogma came before his faith. 22:00 Thomas Kuhn's paradigm change, an analogy for him breaking with science. 23:50 Rupert's work denounced as ‘Heresy' by the editor of Nature in 1981.  26:30 Measuring Morphic fields in experiments. 28:30 IQ tests have got easier for people over time, The Flynn Effect 30:00 Video games have to make new versions harder each time.  32:10 Is subtle energy field research beyond science? 37:00 Bioelectric morphogenetic fields & Michael Levin.  41:20 Bioelectric fields are the interface not the explanation. 42:30 Where are morphic fields recorded in nature? 44:50 Platonism doesn't explain evolution and change over time. 47:00 Different levels of collective consciousness, up to planetary, stellar and even cosmic consciousness. 56:40 The feeling of being stared at: examples of extended mind. 01:02:55 Mystical experience - being part of a greater consciousness. 01:09:40 Are spiritual & scientific insight compatible? References: Rupert Sheldrake, “A New Science of life”. Michael Levin - Bio-electric morphogenetic fields CC interview The Sheldrake.org Staring App. Polar Auxin  QUOTE: “Morphic resonance leaps across time and space, It's not stored anywhere it's a direct connection with the past.”

Why is our subjective experiences and cultural context inseparable from our scientific theories and attempts to be objective? Why is it that the more we know, the more we know we don't know? What does reductionist materialism miss out from the scientific picture and what does a post-reductionist science look like? How can understanding some of materialism's incompleteness help us face humanity's greatest problems? In this episode we have the blind spots of enlightenment science to assess; we're going to be investigating the common belief that science can provide a universal, objective, God-like perspective of the truth of things, independent from our human experience. We're also going to look at the implications of the consensus in science that all phenomena can be reduced to solely material causes, and what that may be missing out. To assess this we're going to be looking at data from cosmology, biology, cognitive science and quantum physics and thinking about the assumptions that are so baked in to our western scientific approaches, that we may have forgotten they're assumptions at all.  In order to do this we're going to be speaking to Brazilian professor of theoretical physics at Dartmouth College, Marcelo Gleiser. Marcelo works on a range of topics from Cosmology and information theory, to the history and philosophy of science, and how science and culture interact. He's also the author of many popular science books including most recently, “the Dawn of Mindful Universe: A manifesto for humanities future” and his new 2024 book which we'll be focusing on today, “The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience”, Co-authored with astronomer Adam Frank and philosopher Evan Thompson, who will be not he show in the next series. Gleiser's also the first South American recipient of the prestigious Templeton Science prize for his standpoint that science, philosophy and spirituality are complementary expressions of humanities deep need to explore the unknown. I have wanted to speak to Marcelo about the limits of science and a post-reductionist approach to science since he was recommended by my previous guest psychiatrist and brain-hemisphere researcher Dr. Iain McGilchrist in the series one episode “Navigating beyond Materialism”, and I'm extremely glad I followed him up on it. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 06:14 Asymmetry is also beautiful.  11:40 The more you know, the more you know you don't know. 18:00 ‘Interbeing' - buddhism and the philosophy of science. 22:00 Bacteria are our ancestors. 23:00 Sacred ancestral knowledge - belonging & gratitude for nature. 30:00 Extremely unlikely chemical steps and extinction events required for life to develop. 35:00 The chances of intelligent technological life on other planets. 37:00 Fine-tuned for life VS the anthropic principle. 50:30 Post-enlightenment sacredness. 52:00 The rise of reductionism.  01:03:30 Newton was troubled by his theory. 01:08:37 Strongly and weakly emergent phenomena. 01:12:00 Downward or upward causation? Dualism or monism? 01:17:50 Scientific concepts are stories, and stories are simplifications too. 01:21:20 “The Blind Spot: Why science cannot ignore human experience”. 01:26:31 “Sureptitious substitution” of concepts for experiences. 01:28:45 Is consciousness fundamental? 01:42:45 Blindspots in the hard sciences - jumps that are too big. 01:53:30 Marcelo''s new “The Island of Knowledge' centre in Tuscany. Quote: “Gravity must be caused by an agent, acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers.” — Sir Isaac Newton (Third letter to Bentley, 25 Feb 1693) References: Marcelo Gleiser, “The Blind Spot: How science must take include human experience”. Marcelo Glesier, “The Dawn of a Mindful Universe” Aristarchus of Samos - The greek Copernicus ‘The Island of Knowledge' Centre in Tuscany, Italy

Why are we seeing such a rise in youth mental health diagnosis? How do we relativise this against the rise in mental health awareness? What's the best approach for parents seeking solutions? How can social-connection and loneliness completely change trauma integration? What role does the recent explosion of persuasive technologies in young peoples lives play in the changing situation? In this episode we have the important topic of Youth Mental Health to get ourselves up to date on. Today we're going to try and unravel these often divisary issues in a balanced way; we're going to be discussing the importance of threat and safety to a child's state of mind as they develop; the power of the parent or carer's own unresolved issues to transmit to young people, creating symptoms in the child; the importance of going to the root of the problem rather than just treating symptoms; the role of escapism as an emotional avoidance strategy, and how digital platforms and device providers have taken advantage of that tendency, and the parenting strategies to guide this; and we're going to discuss the role of shame in us avoiding facing these issues. Fortunately, considering the nuanced and potentially triggering topic of the mental well being of the children we parent and teach, today's guest has just released the paper back version of his new book on exactly this topic, “How the world is making our children mad and what to do about it”. As a hugely experienced child psychotherapist and founder of the charity “Apart of Me” that supports children to transform their loss into compassion, he is perfectly placed to give us un update on this, and is filled with excellent stories and advice to help us face it. He is of course Louis Weinstock, a transpersonal psychotherapist and mindfulness specialist, who has worked with a wide range of sufferers from the criminal justice system, to drug addicts, to homeless people, to troubled teens and their parents. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 09:00 Our mental life is inseparable from our environment. 11:45 ‘Fetal programming' is applied in utero by the mother's environment. 14:10 Improvements in kid's mental health, simply from parents doing the work. 18:45 Children having behaviour issues at the same age as their parent's had trauma. 21:20 The evolutionary history of shame. 25:40 The difference between shame and guilt. 28:00 Rupture & repair: conflict in relationships is bearable and repairable. 29:25 Is psychotherapy worth it for kids, considering the stigma? 34:15 Mental health awareness can exaggerate our negative view of ourselves. 38:30 Massive jump in recent stats on youth mental health. 41:00 ‘Roots' of mental health issues and ‘fruits' we can learn from them. 45:20 Suffering and transformation: post-traumatic growth. 49:50 Escaping into virtual realities: Dissociation. 53:00 The ‘freeze' response - shutting the body down. 01:00:40 Resilience explained - fragile vs anti fragile. 01:04:00 The connection between loneliness and trauma. 01:05:25 Youth mental health and device/internet addiction. 01:07:25 ‘Variable reward' strategy taken from gambling slot machines. 01:12:30 Clear differences in kid's moods and sleep after too long on devices. 01:14:20 Parenting solutions to regulating screen time peacefully. 01:16:40 No devices in the bedroom, particularly in the evenings before bed. 01:20:30 Awareness: they're capable of reflecting on their behaviour. 01:24:20 Unsupervised play outside and in nature. 01:25:40 The world is safer rather than less safe than in the past. References: Louis Weinstock, “How the world is driving our kids mad” https://louisweinstock.com/ Apart of Me mental health charity (please donate) Jonathan Haidt - “The Anxious Generation” Let Grow movement for childhood independence

How and why did human's develop self-awareness of what we know and don't know? How does it develop in relation to how we evaluate what other people know? What are the risks of cognitive bias tainting our ability to learn and self correct? In this episode, we have the interesting question of our own self-awareness, or Meta-cognition, to understand. For centuries philosophers have called on us to “know thyself”, but only now with the tools of modern neuroscience have we been able to scientifically quantify the way we consciously track our behaviour, performance, thoughts and knowledge. So today we'll be getting into why this is important for learning and error correction; we're going to talk about meta-cognition's use for “mind reading” I.e. tracking our confidence in others in their own knowledge, both friends and foes, fundamental for the evolution of our collaborative groups; the implications of cognitive bias blind spots in metacognition for updating our collective beliefs over time; also whether metacognition is proportionally correlated to intelligence; and how technology and AI has and will influence the future of our self-awareness, and whether it's convenient to try programming AI to be metacognitive too, or if that would invite disaster. For these matters there can be no better guest than University College London Cognitive neuroscience Professor, Stephen Fleming. He's the author of the 2021 book “Know Thyself, the science of self awareness”, and founder of the Meta Cognition Group at UCL, and the group leader of the Max Plank, UCL Centre for Computational Neuroscience. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 05:15 Striking aspects of experience get you thinking. 08:00 ‘Know thyself' - a moral, social and spiritual responsibility 10:00 Lao Tsu - to think you know when you do not is a disease. 11:00 Tracking the quality of our performance, error correction and learning. 14:00 Cognitive offloading - compensating for our limitations. 14:30 Metacognition and intelligence are similar but different. 17:40 Inside-out modelling of the world influences your cognition. 20:45 The brain has confidence in colour - Subjective inflation in the periphery. 22:00 UCL metacognition lab experiments - confidence in performance. 25:20 Metacogntiive efficiency - skill in evaluating your success. 26:20 MRI scans of the processes of self-aware brain activity. 28:50 Sam Harris - Self-awareness in the brain vs Ego-self. 33:20 Mind reading/Theory of mind: Evaluation of others VS evaluation of myself. 38:50 Children's learning 43:40 Chris Frith - metacognition for collaboration: Balancing our own VS group evaluations. 44:30 Supremacy of collective knowledge 46:45 Why did self-awareness evolve? 51:30 The fight or flight mental state trumps self-reflective evaluation. 54:00 Stress blunts frontal cortex activity. 54:20 Modern life stress is not the same as the stress we evolved for. 57:20 We need self-reflection in stressful arguments but it's not available. 58:20 Education: re-presenting your ideas - an antidote to over confidence. 01:04:00 Left Brain Interpreter - lack of self-awareness of our cognitive bias. 01:10:00 Exacerbated confidence judgements in internet/social media information ecosystems. 01:14:40 Awareness of the inside out way we construct our view of the world could be positive for compassion. 01:17:10 Balancing long-term societal self awareness, with traditional short term one. 01:21:00 The influence of Ai and technology on our self awareness. 01:26:30 ‘Offloading' aids for cognition VS replacements for our cognition? References: Stephen Fleming, “Know thyself - the science of self-awareness” Steve Fleming's Lab - The Meta Lab, UCL Gilbert Riles, “Concept of Mind” - self awareness in us and others Peter Carruthers - “Knowledge of our own thoughts is just as interpretive as knowledge of the thoughts of others” paper Chris D. Frith - ‘The role of metacognition in human social interactions' paper

Is the brain structure found in many UFO experiencers and remote viewers related to intuition? Are anomalous isotope ratio alloys, allegedly fallen from UFO's, evidence that can help important jumps in the research into energy and transportation technologies? How can this be both a physical and psychological phenomenon simultaneously? Is there a connection between the mind and this brain structure and the phenomena? In this episode, we take a stab at talking scientifically about the fascinating, empirically problematic and historically controversial UFO phenomenon; it's particularly fascinating these days since the US director of National Intelligence confirmed in an official 2021 report that UAPs were in fact real and a ‘population of objects'. Many scientists and engineers are excited, because the study of UFO's, regardless of their origin, could give us clues to clean energy and transportation technology that we so urgently need to combat our pollution footprint, and in fact several patents have been granted to explore such experimental physics if sadly for military purposes, but at least its a start. Apart from a short comment from Harvard Astronomer and director of The Galileo project, Avi Loeb in Episode #45; and a mythological evaluation from religious studies professor Diana Pasulka in episode #53; An idealism perspective from Bernardo Kastrup in episode #34, our guest today is the first on the show to speak in detail about the scientific study of this phenomena. This episode is the perfect deeper dive into this topic, as my guest is going to speak about two pieces of physical evidence which he has studied, so often absent in claims about this phenomenon; Firstly, MRI scans and blood samples of experiencers from the military and intelligence services who had alleged interactions with UFO's; and secondly anomalous fragments of alloys recovered from alleged UFO encounter sites. Being a science podcast the data of physical evidence is always our first port of call, but as so often when discussing anomalous phenomena that don't fit with our current world view, the interpretations of that data are various and contradictory. Today's guest is the perfect person to present this data as he was contacted by US intelligence because he invented the equipment needed to analyse it; he's not shy of the possible implications of the data, while equally in no hurry to jump to any conclusions till we have confirming proof. He is the cell biologist & Chair of the Department of Pathology and part of the cancer immunology department at Stanford University school of medicine, Dr. Garry P. Nolan. He's published over 330 academic papers, holds 50 patents and has founded 8 bio-tech companies. What we discussed: 00:00 Intro. 10:00 Garry's background in genetics and immunology. 18:30 Thomas Kuhn: ‘The structure of scientific revolutions'. 24:00 Imagination and problem solving. 32:00 The brains of 15 military experiencers. 34:00 Havana Syndrome. 37:00 They shared an until-now undiscovered structure in the brain. 38:30 ‘Intuition centre' hypothesis - Basal Ganglia. 42:15 Family members also share this unlikely brain feature. 53:00 The Antenna hypothesis. 01:00:00 It's physical AND psychological. 01:09:00 Spectrometry to analyse UFO molten metal sample alloys. 01:16:50 Patents to develop new technology and energy sources. References: “Stanford Professor Garry Nolan Is Analyzing Anomalous Materials From UFO Crashes” Vice Magazine Article, Dec '21 Thomas Kuhn ,‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'.All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)‘Subcortical Brain Morphometry Differences between Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Schizophrenia' Paper Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais - US Navy “UFO” fusion energy patents Interview on T.O.E. podcast Forbes article

How can neuroscience help us personalise mental health diagnoses and treatments? How are mental heath stats changing and why? How effective are life style changes as a prevention? What other new treatments are proving promising and effective? In this episode we're going to get an update on all the recent research from neuroscience that's studying mental health, and not just the issues and the treatments being used to deal with them, but also the importance of the brain itself in the perception of our mental health, and the lifestyle choices that can preventatively ward off the issues before they arise; things like nutrition, sleep, exercise, and social contact. We'll be looking at the big one: depression and its connection to inflammation, and a wide range of buzz therapies including psychedelic therapy and cold water immersion. Today's guest has just written a book for the public on this topic “The Balanced Brain: The science of mental health”, and her lab at MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences in Cambridge bridges the gap between the nuts and bolts of cognitive neuroscience and the more mind base of clinical psychology. She is neuroscientist and author Camilla Nord. In 2022, she was named a Rising Star by the US Association for Psychological Science, and received the Young Investigator Award from the European Society for Affective and Cognitive Science.   Now it strikes me that if we can integrate new evidence from brain research into the clinical psychology field, we‘ve got a much better shot at treating ever rising numbers of mental health diagnoses and perhaps educating a good portion of the next generation enough to avoid these issues all together. It may be a pipe dream but we've got to try. What we discuss:  00:00 Intro 07:00 Our perception of pain. 11:00 Body changes lead to mental health changes. 12:00 Our ‘Inside-out' perception is an active predictor of our mental health and the outside world. 16:00 The importance of narrative repetition to our self-perception. 18:00 Individualised data and solutions to mental health are impractical for our one-size-fits-all medical systems on a budget. 23:30 Nutritional Psychiatry - the connection between diet and mental health. 26:30 Gut-brain axis importance. 28:00 The risk of dieting affecting pleasure centres and thus motivation and mental health. 30:00 Inflammatory diet choices and lifestyle leading to depression. 33:30 Microbiome research: promise vs wishful thinking. 37:45 Social connection, nature connection and connection to meaning. 40:45 Some mental health symptoms can be useful and adaptive. 43:20 Sport and physical exercise to improve mental health. 46:00 Depression leads to a lack of drive to obtain pleasure - Anhedonia. 48:20 Sleep neuroscience. 53:30 Anger management and ‘hangriness'. 56:20 The Placebo effect is a useful part of a treatment's effect. 58:00 Changing diagnosis rates in mental health. 01:02:00 Psychedelic therapy was unpopular before the last 10 years of study. 01:06:00 MDMA's uses for PTSD, and modifying beliefs and expectations. 01:08:10 Connection between psychosis and cannabis. 01:09:20 Cannabis CBD Oil treatment of THC addiction. 01:11:15 Cold water immersion for euphoria and pain tolerance. 01:13:00 The changing nature of mental health. References: Camilla Nord, “The Balanced Brain, the Science of mental health”. Felicity Jacka, Nutritional psychiatry, Guardian Article Metabolic health influences learning paper. Clinical psychosis vs mediumship paper. Connection to symptoms changes mental health outcomes. Oliver J Robinson - Adaptive anxiety paper Wim Hof, Cold water Immersion method, list of science papers

Can time symmetry in physics, combined with exceptional violations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and the “quantum handshake” transactional interpretation of Quantum mechanics, open up main stream physics to the possibility of retro-causation? Could it help to explain the many paradoxes left open in modern physics? and is there experimental evidence for it? Today we have the extraordinary possibility of retro-causation to get our heads around: the apparently impossible phenomenon of events in the present causing changes in the past, or future events having an effect in the present depending on how you want to look at it. Today we'll be approaching this topic via the context of time symmetry in physics. As far back as 1947, French quantum physicist Olivier Costa de Beauregard, began to question the usual interpretation of time in quantum mechanics, intuiting that something was missing from the model for the many paradoxes in Quantum Mechanics to remain unexplained. And then, with others get on board over the years, in the 80's, John G Kramer, agreed that the missing ingredient was found in time symmetry and he proposed a ‘quantum handshake' between the waves passing forward and backward in time at the moment of collapse; in this Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics, Kramer claimed he had solved the paradoxes. My guest today has put together this research, a re-interpretation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics based on violations where Entropy exceptionally does not hold, and theorisation about quantum correlates to consciousness to create a new theory of retro-causation, which he thinks can be tested. He is Daniel Sheehan, Author and Professor of Physics at the University of San Diego, specialist in plasma physics, violations of the 2nd Law thermodynamics and Retro-causation. He is the founder the Quantum Retro-causation symposia that met at The University of San Diego. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 09:00 Time dilation: the twin paradox. 12:20 Time symmetry: reversible time functions in physics equations. 13:20 Violations of the 2nd Law, the Entropic arrow of time. 18:20 Wheeler's bizarre altered double slit experiment. 23:15 Wheeler's ‘Participatory Universe'. 26:00 The history of retro-causation research. 29:15 Bergmann and Lebowitz ‘Two-State Vector Formalism' theory 1964 31:00 Kramer's “Quantum Handshake” Transactional interpretation of QM. 35:30 Sheehan's theory of retro-causation. 36:45 The assumption of quantum processes acting in the brain. 39:00 Issues with quantum consciousness hypotheses. 42:00 Macroscopic quantum systems. 50:00 Precognitive retro-causation experiments: Graff & Cyrus  51:45 Triple blind experiments - blind ‘even to the universe'. 55:00 Is the subject finding out what actually happened important to the result? 57:00 Emotional charge in the future, influencing the past. 59:00 Are some events in the future already fixed? 01:01:30 Global Consciousness aggregate effects in physical systems. 01:02:30 Time symmetry allows the transmission into the past of important. 01:05:00 Wider science reception of such a paradigm shifting ideas as retro-causation. 01:05:00 Getting over our Second law biology habits. References: Vladislav Capek & Daniel P. Sheehan, “Challenges to The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Theory and Experiment”. Stephen Wolfram, “Computational Foundations for the Second Law of Thermodynamics” John Wheeler - Altered double double slit “Delayed Choice” experiment. Bergmann and Lebowitz ‘Two-State Vector Formalism' theory 1964 John G. Kramer's “Transactional interpretation” of Quantum Mechanics. Dale E Graff, Patricia S. Cyrus, ‘Perceiving the future news: Evidence for retrocausation' Paper Global Consciousness project at Princeton, Roger Nelson. Quotes: “The question is more important than the answer”, author unknown. “Order is a state of mind, not a state of matter” On Entropy, Daniel Sheehan. 

How have we ended up in a meaning crisis and what are the symptoms? Why is embodiment important to knowing? Why is an ecology of practices part of the solution? Today we have the growing issue of The Meaning Crisis to discuss, and the embodied practices that could offer a few solutions. This conversation is a part 2, following directly on from Episode #51, where John and I talked about Collective intelligence, and how the evolution of distributed cognition has led to homo-sapiens being such effective collaborators. It was so fascinating that we didn't have time to connect the sheer power of our collective intelligence, to today's discussion about what John has dubbed The Meaning Crisis. We come back to the importance of our propensity for self-transcendence, and the correspondent risk of self-delusion; how important a sense of the sacred is to our sense of meaning in life, to our mental health; then we zoom in on the importance of a range of embodied practices that John calls an ecology of practices, like Chi Gong, circling, flow states and meditation to re-discover lost forms of knowledge and embodied cognition that John thinks can bring us back from the brink of self delusion and self destruction. There is of course only one polymath who can speak about so many things and connect them all, like a ninja of the mind as one listener called him, the Cognitive scientist and philosopher John Vervaeke. Vervaeke is the director of the university of Toronto's Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches an Introduction to Cognitive Science and The Cognitive Science of Consciousness. Vervaeke has taught courses on Buddhism and Cognitive Science in the Buddhism, Psychology, and Mental Health programs for 15 years. He is also the author and presenter of his much loved YouTube series “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” and ‘After Socrates.' What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 06:15 Self-transcendence VS self-delusion. 07:45 The ‘frame' problem, the need to ignore many things to attend to the ‘salient' ones. 12:30 The history of meaning in the west. 17:00 The history of religion and philosophy: connectedness across generations. 20:00 Pre-agricultural sacred practices and rituals. 22:30 The upper palaeolithic transition - the artistic, technical, and symbolic. 24:30 The axial revolution - numeracy, literacy and democracy. 27:30 The ‘2 world' mythology revolution - the natural and supernatural. 29:30 The scientific revolution - the collapse of the 2 world mythology. 31:20 The impossible promise of scientism. 38:00 The difference between wisdom and knowledge. 43:00 Participatory knowledge - graspable, shapable knowledge. 45:00 Gnosis - embodied knowledge. 49:30 The importance of the sacred to meaning. 54:00 Maladaptive replacement of religion with consumerism. 57:45 A relationship with the transcendent. 59:00 Becoming mature is about facing reality. 01:01:00 Loss of epistemic humility. 01:04:00 Loss of wonder 01:05:00 Humility + Wonder = reverence. 01:06:09 The disappearing of traditional men's roles. 01:17:30 The changing of women's roles. 01:23:50 Direct embodied experience 01:26:00 An ecology of practices - there is no single panacea practice 01:30:20 Dialogical over monological reasoning - we don't become wise in isolation. 01:33:40 Flow States and the lowering of the ego mind. 01:38:00 Circling: Listening as an intentional action 01:41:30 Meditation helps break mental frames. 01:46:40 The lowering of the Default Mode Network 01:50:20 Tai Chi and Qigong.  01:53:45 ‘Transjective' embodiment References: John Vervaeke, “Awakening from the meaning crisis”, You Tube lecture series. Karl Jaspers - Bronze Age collapse to Axial revolution, 1949 article Godel's Incompleteness Theorems Elisabeth Oldfield - ‘The Sacred' podcast. ‘Soul Heal' film, Jose Enrique Pardo, with James Hollis, a film about healing the issues of men Flow states The Circling Institute

Why do we have the tendency to believe things when they may not be true? Why do we project patterns, agency and meaning onto the world when sometimes there is none? How can we consider the probabilities of conspiracies to identify the ones that may be true? How do we encourage brave journalism that calls out conspiracies even by powerful institutions, in spite of the pejorative term ‘conspiracy theorist'? Today we have the uncomfortable topic of how our brains often believe things which aren't true. The topic fits perfectly with our theme for series 4 of Self-transcendence vs Self-delusion. Our innate ability to notice patterns in systems, assign agency and find meaning in the world are among the reasons we've evolved to become so successful at predicting, understanding and creating meaningful collaborations in the world. But the issue with these abilities is that we might make the mistake of thinking what the brain assigns to the world for our own survival, is necessarily true of the world itself. Sure our brains do track the truth but truth is not always what's needed for survival; so issues like negativity bias, confirmation bias and creating narrative stories that conveniently map onto our existing world view have become a deeply engrained part of our society. Add to this modern phenomena like the siloing of information by the internet into small echo chambers where only like minds come together; algorithmic amplification of memes led by the internet business model of “maximising engagement”; and decreasing trust in institutions, as economic inequality in the world increases exponentially, and you get a perfect storm of clashing beliefs about the truth. Fortunately, our guest today is one of the most established sceptical voices in science who reminds us that we need to track closely the difference between what can be collectively confirmed to be true, and what our brains project to be true from the inside out. He is of course, New York Times best selling author and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine Michael Shermer; he wrote for 18 years for the Scientific American. He's written nine books but today we're going to focus on his books “The Believing Brain” and his new release “Conspiracy: Why the rational believe the irrational”. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 07:00 The philosophy of scepticism. 08:45 ‘Default to truth' 15:40 Moral truth VS moral relativism. 19:00 Scientific revolutions overturning consensus. 24:30 ‘The Believing Brain'. 25:40 The ability to see patterns in the chaos, and assign agency to them. 26:50 Evolution selects for assuming more things are real than not, just in case. 30:10 Bayesian inference: levels of confidence in being right or wrong. 32:40 ‘Agencicity', impugning patterns with intentional agency. 33:40 Most things happen randomly, and can't be predicted. 41:10 Assigning meaning to patterns in nature. 43:50 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. 44:40 Teleology: goal directness in life. 47:50 Dennet - the intentional stance 48:50 Confirmation bias. 54:00 Algorithmic amplification. 57:40 There are many real conspiracies. 01:00:20 Tribal, proxy and paranoid conspiracism. 01:03:35 Being overly suspicious - negativity bias. 01:07:50 Critical thinking - how not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. 01:16:50 Conflict of interest in media - shareholders vs stakeholder interest. 01:18:40 The pejorative term ‘conspiracy theorist' demotivating brave journalism. 01:26:30 Reductionism and determinism evaluated. 01:32:20 Remote Viewing and psi phenomena: sceptics view. 01:46:30 The UFO phenomena: sceptics view. References: Michael Shermer, “The Believing Brain” Michael Shermer, “Conspiracy” Michael Shermer, “The Moral Arc” Scepticism 101 course: How to think like a scientist Remote viewing Stargate Program documentary “Third Eye Spies” Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean - ‘Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program', NYTimes article

Why do we have the tendency to believe things when they may not be true? Why do we project patterns, agency and meaning onto the world when sometimes there is none? How can we consider the probabilities of conspiracies to identify the ones that may be true? How do we encourage brave journalism that calls out conspiracies even by powerful institutions, in spite of the pejorative term ‘conspiracy theorist'? Today we have the uncomfortable topic of how our brains often believe things which aren't true. The topic fits perfectly with our theme for series 4 of Self-transcendence vs Self-delusion. Our innate ability to notice patterns in systems, assign agency and find meaning in the world are among the reasons we've evolved to become so successful at predicting, understanding and creating meaningful collaborations in the world. But the issue with these abilities is that we might make the mistake of thinking what the brain assigns to the world for our own survival, is necessarily true of the world itself. Sure our brains do track the truth but truth is not always what's needed for survival; so issues like negativity bias, confirmation bias and creating narrative stories that conveniently map onto our existing world view have become a deeply engrained part of our society. Add to this modern phenomena like the siloing of information by the internet into small echo chambers where only like minds come together; algorithmic amplification of memes led by the internet business model of “maximising engagement”; and decreasing trust in institutions, as economic inequality in the world increases exponentially, and you get a perfect storm of clashing beliefs about the truth. Fortunately, our guest today is one of the most established sceptical voices in science who reminds us that we need to track closely the difference between what can be collectively confirmed to be true, and what our brains project to be true from the inside out. He is of course, New York Times best selling author and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine Michael Schermer; he wrote for 18 years for the Scientific American. He's written nine books but today we're going to focus on his books “The Believing Brain” and his new release “Conspiracy: Why the rational believe the irrational”. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 07:00 The philosophy of scepticism. 12:00 Oppenheimer quote - the freedom to doubt dogma to progress science. 15:40 Moral truth VS moral relativism. 19:00 Scientific revolutions overturning consensus. 24:30 ‘The Believing Brain'. 25:40 The ability to see patterns 26:50 Evolution selects for assuming more things are real than not, just in case. 30:10 Bayesian inference: levels of confidence in being right or wrong. 32:40 ‘Agencicity', impugning patterns with intentional agency. 36:50 Identical twin studies 41:10 Assigning meaning to patterns in nature. 44:40 Teleology: goal directness in life. 48:50 Confirmation bias - cherry picking data to belong in groups with certain beliefs 57:40 There are many real conspiracies. 01:00:20 Tribal, proxy and paranoid conspiracism. 01:03:35 Being overly suspicious - negativity bias. 01:07:50 Critical thinking - how not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. 01:16:50 Conflict of interest in media 01:18:40 The pejorative term ‘conspiracy theorist' demotivating brave journalism. 01:26:30 Reductionism and determinism evaluated. 01:32:20 Remote Viewing and psi phenomena: sceptics view. 01:46:30 The UFO phenomena: sceptics view. References: Michael Schermer, “The Believing Brain" Michael Scheremer, “Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational” Michael Schermer, “The Moral Arc” Scepticism 101 course: How to think like a scientist Remote viewing Stargate Program documentary “Third Eye Spies” Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean - ‘Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program', NYTimes article

What role do estrogen and the menstrual cycle play in the moods of women? Is ‘baby brain' a real phenomena or does the brain actually sharpen during motherhood? What are the symptoms of menopause and how natural and effective is HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy)? - Use the time stamps for those interested only in the neuroscience of Menopause (01:07:45) and Motherhood (37:00).  - NO VIDEO Episode, audio only. Today we have the important topic of women's hormones to up our awareness about. A big part of the experience we have of our bodies is thanks to hormones, also called  neurotransmitters because they help our nervous system communicate with the rest of the body about what's going on inside and outside the body. Having accompanied my partner through the process of having two children, and us both having had many unanswered questions about that; and now heading into my late forties having many female friends and listeners heading towards menopause, and speaking publicly about how they wished there'd been given more information about it as it seems not to be discussed much, even amongst women. So I felt the need to make a show about the science and experience of female hormones, particularly with regard to motherhood and menopause; in the hope that women facing these experiences and men hoping to be informed and supportive to those experiences might get more insight. If you're looking for a show about the comparison or difference between men and women, or Mars or Venus, or the battle of the sexes this is not the show for you: this is simply an informative show about the female brain and particularly about the changes that take place during motherhood and menopause. Unfortunately there is hardly any research into the neuroscience and hormones of trans people, so I apologise in advance for the fact that this show speaks only of those who are born and identify themselves as women.  We are extremely fortunate that our guest today is a neuroscientist and author who has specialised in the Female Brain, both studying the full arc of a woman's life  in her highly accessible yet detailed book “The Women's Brain Book: The neuroscience of Health, Hormones and Happiness”; and most recently in her new 2023 book “Baby Brain: The surprising science of how pregnancy and motherhood sculpt our brains and change our minds (for the better)”. She is of course Dr. Sarah McKay, an Oxford University phD in Neuroscience, whose super power is to make neuroscience simple, actionable and relevant to your everyday life. So she chose to leave her research career in favour of science communication, hoping to bridge the gap between the lab and everyday life. She's the founder of the Neuroscience Academy; has been the neuroscience correspondent for ABC in Australia and has been quoted in the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Grazia and the Sydney Morning Herald. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 10:55 Menstrual cycle and estrogen neuroscience. 13:45 Brain-ovarian axis (HPO hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis). 18:45 Wrong assumption that estrogen equals negative moods in women. 24:30 PMS misconceptions - proved to affect only %10 of population. 35:00 A bio-psycho-social model - many contributing factors to mood. 37:00 MOTHERHOOD neuroscience. 48:45 Wrong assumptions about ‘baby brain' - no cognitive decline. 55:15 Wrong assumptions about post-partum attachment dynamics. 01:05:15 Post natal depression - Not only due to an estrogen drop. 01:07:45 MENOPAUSE Neuroscience. 01:17:00 Perimenopause - menstrual cycle becomes erratic. 01:27:30 Sex-drive and discomfort after menopause. 01:31:30 HRT - Hormone Replacement Therapy  01:41:45 Nuance and ‘grey areas' in a world of click bait. References: Sarah McKay The Women's Brain Book Sarah McKay "Baby Brain: The Suprising Neuroscience of how Pregnancy and Motherhood Sculpt our Brains and Change Our Minds (for the better)" The Neuroscience Academy Dr. Sarah Romans - ‘Mood and the menstrual cycle' paper.

What technological solutions can mitigate our ecological and economic crises? Why are horizontally integrated 'smart' data sharing networks so important? What are 'Glocalisation' and Bio-regional governance? Will we rise to the challenge in time to survive the next extinction event? Today we have the technological solutions to our economic and ecological crisis offered by the Third Industrial Revolution to consider. Some may jump to the conclusion that technology and industrialisation are what got us into this mess in the first place and depending on my mood on any one day I might agree with you, but there's no turning back the clock on the scientific and technological revolutions, so if you can't beat it then reform it; And many social elements of the digital and internet revolution seem to have started doing just that, quite independently. That said it has been the campaign and deep vision of my guest today for more than 40 years to go further than just talking about it, to push beyond political divides by prioritising life over blind growth and productivity, and get big entities like governments and trade federations to start thinking like this. He is of course the economist, social theorist, activist and author of 21 books, Jeremy Rifkin. His work focuses on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. Today we'll be focusing on this new book the “Age of Resilience”, his 2014 book “The Zero Marginal Cost Society”, and his 2011 book “The Third Industrial Revolution”; Rifkin has been an advisor to the leadership of the European Union since 2000 and several other European heads of state, particularly on ushering in the smart, green revolution; he has advised the Peoples Republic of China on the build out and scale up of the Internet in a sustainable low-carbon economy; And he is currently advising the European Commission on the deployment of the Smart Europe initiative. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 06:20 Dysfunctional economic system from 1st and 2nd and Industrial Revolution. 08:00 Exponential Climate change feedback loop from industrialisation. 08:30 New Communication, Energy, logistics and water paradigm changes alter society radically. 10:20 Infrastructure paradigms define our world view. 15:00 Dropping productivity and efficiency after 2008. 17:50 Near-marginal cost economy e.g Solar, wind, internet commerce. 20:00 Jeremy's 3rd Industrial Revolution vision, all at near zero marginal cost. 21:30 Component 1: Communication via the internet. 22:30 Component 2: Energy internet - sharing surplus globally. 23:55 Component 3: Logistics internet fed by the energy internet. 24:30 Component 4: The Water internet. 31:00 The 3IR infrastructure system is by its nature distributed using data over the internet. 38:00 "The Age of Resilience" Book. 38:20 Biophilia, Eco-consciousness, and an empathic society. 44:10 “Periods of Happiness.. are the black pages of history” Hegel. 47:00 Mirror neurones and empathic neurocircuitry. 55:00 Extinction events lead to unity. 55:50 Shadow 1: Big data. Can this common be democratised? 01:02:52 Bio-regional governance. 01:04:45 “Glocalisation”. 01:19:00 Shadow 2: The internet business model. 01:29:40 Shadow 3: No motivation for corporations to move from multinational investment to ‘glocal' investment. 01:39:00 Differences between Claus Schwab's “4th Industrial Revolution” and Jeremy's 3rd. 01:50:00 The Ginsburg “Moloch” allegory. Jeremy Rifkin, “The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth” https://search.app.goo.gl/g97t6pL Jeremy Rifkin, “The Third Industrial Revolution” https://search.app.goo.gl/gbMdqE9 Jeremy Rifkin, “The Zero Marginal Cost SocietyThe Zero Marginal Cost Society” https://search.app.goo.gl/eiZXAy5 The Human Microbiome Project NIH https://hmpdacc.org/

Why do complex systems self-organise? What is cellular uncertainty and stem cell plasticity? Can we create artificial digital life that's subject to the same creative adaptability that nature and life demonstrate? Today we have the extraordinary phenomena of self-organisation in Complex Systems to look into. We're going to be looking into the conditions for a system to be considered complex, how a certain amount of randomness in the system releases the creativity required to permit adaptability, and how the feedback loops within that adaptability lead to a self-correcting organisational principle that keeps the system's order and randomness in balance as it evolves. We're going to be seeing how that self-organisation is operative at almost every level of scale in the universe and in life and death, and trying to get our heads around what that means for the nature of reality and consciousness. So who better to discuss this with than stem cell biologist and diagnostic pathologist Neil Theise. Neil is is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity research. In 2018 the news of his discovery of the interstitial, a vast communication network throughout the human body went viral and was featured in the New York Times and Scientific American among many others. Theise is also a long term student of Zen meditation and Kabbalah. And his studies of complexity theory, summarised in his new book “Notes on Complexity: A scientific theory of connection, consciousness and being”, have led to interdisciplinary collaborations in fields as diverse integrative medicine, consciousness studies and the science-spirituality interface. Since speaking with biologist Michael Levin on Cellular cognition, and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke on collective intelligence, in the last series; I've been keen to speak to Neil about stem cell plasticity and self-organising systems, as their elegant sophistication begs so many questions about the nature of reality and consciousness. So without further ado, let's go! 00:00 Intro 05:45 Livers have stem cells, Neil's first of many discoveries 13:50 “Cellular Uncertainty” - Stem-cell plasticity. 17:43 Heisenberg's ‘Uncertainty principle' analogy. 20:20 Cellular sensitivity 22:00 The TechnoSphere - interacting with virtual creatures 26:20 Emergent bottom-up structure, self-organising inside the game 27:20 Artificial Life. 29:20 Complexity Theory explained by Ants. 34:20 Randomness allows the creativity to adapt to changes: in the environment Divergent ants. 35:20 A minimum of elements are needed over time to become self-organising. 36:50 Cells, ants and humans all self-organise: micro macro phenomena. 38:40 No planning or top-down intelligence managing complex systems. 42:55 ‘Wholarchies' not hierarchies. 47:50 Living systems and complexity arise at the boundary between perfect order and fractal chaos. 49:55 Extinction is also part of complexity, as much as creative adaptivity. 50:30 “What makes you able to be a living system, inevitably, given enough time will lead you to die. You can't separate life and death”. 53:10 Self correction 55:50 Cancer, economic crashes, extinction events: Pruning away the corrective negative feedback loops leads to collapse. 57:30 Every scale of nature adheres to complex system behaviours. 59:50 Complementarity exists at all levels of scale - Niels Bohr. 01:01:40 Biological complementarity. 01:04:50 Breaking down the separations between discrete organisms. 01:10:50 Not upward or downward causation but complementarity. 01:35:50 Zen meditation insights which led to scientific insight. 01:18:20 The risk of over-rating our personal experience. 01:23:20 Where you find mind, you find life. References: Neil Theise, “Notes on Complexity: A scientific theory of connection, consciousness and being” Evan Thompson - Deep Continuity (of Life and Mind) Francisco Varela - (Evan Thompson's mentor)

How are traumatic memories stored in the body? How has Somatic Experiencing helped thousands of people release the symptoms of trauma through bodily practices rather than talky therapy? How did Peter resolve his own devastating childhood trauma? What will a trauma aware society be like? In this episode we have the fascinating question of the different ways traumatic memories are stored to think about, and how the body itself and not only the brain is instrumental in the way the memory's are made and processed, and so in how we might ease the symptoms of the trauma later on. We're going to delve into the brain-body connection in traumatic memory, looking at the way trauma can influence our bodily states and so in turn the way we can use bodily methods in a bottom-up approach, to re-train the brain to feel safe and integrate traumatic memories.  For this there can be no better person than the psychotherapist, Dr. Peter Levine, the creator of the Somatic Experiencing therapy method, founder of the Institute of Somatic Education and author of many books on trauma and therapy, including “Waking the Tiger”, “Healing Trauma”, “Trauma Through a Childs Eyes”, “Trauma and Memory” which we'll be discussing today, and his brand new book, which this episode is happy to celebrate the release of “An autobiography of Trauma: A healing Journey”. Minus 1 minute What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 06:00 Conscious memories start earlier than we might imagine. 07:00 Descartes was wrong, better “I move, I sense, I feel, I have images, I have thoughts: therefore I am.” 07:30 The mid-1960's session with Nancy that started it all for Peter. 14:20 The 3 different nervous system bodily states: fight or flight, freeze and social engagement. 20:00 Body/Nervous system bi-directionality: Influences between Polyvagal theory and Somatic Experiencing. 26:00 Exercises to switch the hyper-aroused message coming from the body. 29:00 Animal kingdom research into ‘shaking off' daily life threatening experiences. 31:00 The very sensations that help animals release, are scary to us so we block them. 31:40 Vitality, movement and exuberance VS a disembodied society. 33:20 As children we learn to limit our exuberance, so as not to disturb adults. 35:30 Different types of memory and the role of the body in recording them. 36:00 Declarative conscious memory. 36:45 Autobiographical conscious memory. 38:30 Emotional unconscious memory (associative). 39:00 Procedural/body unconscious memories (to protect oneself). 39:45 Peter as Chiron “The Woundd Healer” archetype. 45.10 Being heard, witnessed and listened to: why reflection and mirroring are important. 47:00 “I don't think there is consciousness without being mirrored”. 47:40 A trauma aware society. 51:00 Being heard and mirrored leads to resilience. 54:00 Peter's devastating childhood trauma and shame: “An Autobiography of Trauma” 57:00 Confronting shame tends to intensify it. 59:30 Why share such a personal vulnerable story with the world? 01:01:00 The dream that helped him choose whether or not to publish this deeply personal story. 01:02:20 Encouraging others to tell their stories: cathartic sharing. 01:04:45 Sharing vulnerability with the compassionate other. 01:05:30 Is trauma required to transform or is it just an inevitability of life? 01:07:00 Trauma is a rite of passage towards being truly compassionate. 01:07:40 Gabor Mate, “Compassionate Enquiry”. 01:08:00 Curiosity can't co-exist with fear, use it to shift the process. References: Peter Levine, “An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey” 2024 (Available at Ergos Institute, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Amazon UK, Inner Traditions, Books A Million, and Bookshop.org) Somatic Experiencing https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/home Peter Levine, “Trauma and Memory” 2015 https://g.co/kgs/vAzjvB2 “Hand in Hand: Parenting by connection” episode, Listening technique https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-18-parenting-by-connection-maya-coleman

In what way is beef in UFOs religious-like? Is there evidence for collective visions of these objects and entities, or rather for their objective reality? In what way could the experience have elements of both? In this episode we have the ever more mainstream story of UFO experiences to assess; Not necessarily the important questions around the existence of the phenomenon, which the office of the US director of National Intelligence confirmed in an official 2021 report that they were, in fact, a ‘population of objects' (see show notes below)- but rather the belief in the phenomenon, in 2008 polled at around %37 of Americans, but by no means confined to the US. This widespread belief, along with less ridiculed beliefs bolstered by the high probability of extraterrestrial civilisations more advanced than our own existing out there in the cosmos, has had a huge sociological and cultural influence on western society. So in this episode I want to put into a sociological context all of this quasi-religious belief; understand the role of our perception of technology; get our heads around a rare example of a modern myth forming in real time; look at the ways a phenomenon can be both physical and psychological at the same time; and examine various scientific, academic and even philosophical doors into this confounding phenomena that no matter how much the sceptics deny, just won't go away. So when we study belief we have to turn to a religious studies specialist, and who better to call on than Professor of Religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Diana Pasulka. She's also the author of 3 books, “Heaven Can Wait”, a book about purgatory, “American Cosmic” on scientists who believe in UFO's, and her new 2023 book “Encounters” on multi-disciplinary academic approaches to the UFO phenomenon and experiences with non-human intelligence. Don't forget listeners, that we talk about all the science in more detail with Stanford medical School's immunologist, pathologist and inventor Garry Nolan in this series so check that out too. What we discuss:00:00 Intro.13:08 Meaningful events propel people towards religious belief.21:30 Heidegger's warning about underestimating the influence of technology on our culture.27:00 Plato's “Allegory of the Cave” - A just government and the control of information.34:40 Nietzsche, the risk of assigning causal power for synchronicities to higher powers.44:00 Perspective change: The creation of a modern myth, to a real physical phenomenon.45:50 Looking for UFO crash parts in the desert with Garry Nolan, taken blindfolded by a Space Force scientist.49:00 The ‘Antenna' hypothesis: the brain as a receiver and transmitter.56:00 Physical data analysed by top scientists, and government “management” of information.01:01:00 Where the physical and non-physical meet: idealism or VR hypotheses.01:05:00 Humans may be a sophisticated type of biotechnology.01:06:00 The use of intuition protocols to find technological solutions: intention and visualisation.01:11:30 New Encounters book: a “reorientation”.01:14:00 Iya Whitely: validating pilots experiences. Diana Pasulka, “Encounters”. https://g.co/kgs/tFfG3Mx Diana Pasulka, “American Cosmic”. https://g.co/kgs/MbQ1tXQ Office of the Director of National Intelligence Assessment on UAP, June 2021, John L. Ratcliffe https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf Martin Heidegger essay, “The Question Concerning Technology” https://g.co/kgs/ed5JVEW Iya Whitely “Trusting and Learning from Pilots”, Lecture at the SOL Foundation symposium at the Nolan Lab at Stanford Medical School https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR09GHQ5AwA Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non Human Intelligence - Rey hernandez et al. https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-UFOs-Science-Consciousness-Intelligence/dp/1721088652

Does the use of computer models in physics change the way we see the universe? How far reaching are the implications of computation irreducibility? Are observer limitations key to the way we conceive the laws of physics? In this episode we have the difficult yet beautiful topic of trying to model complex systems like nature and the universe computationally to get into; and how beyond a low level of complexity all systems, seem to become equally unpredictable. We have a whole episode in this series on Complexity Theory in biology and nature, but today we're going to be taking a more physics and computational slant. Another key element to this episode is Observer Theory, because we have to take into account the perceptual limitations of our species' context and perspective, if we want to understand how the laws of physics that we've worked out from our environment, are not and cannot be fixed and universal but rather will always be perspective bound, within a multitude of alternative branches of possible reality with alternative possible computational rules. We'll then connect this multi-computational approach to a reinterpretation of Entropy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The fact that my guest has been building on these ideas for over 40 years, creating computer language and Ai solutions, to map his deep theories of computational physics, makes him the ideal guest to help us unpack this topic. He is physicist, computer scientist and tech entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram. In 1987 he left academia at Caltech and Princeton behind and devoted himself to his computer science intuitions at his company Wolfram Research. He's published many blog articles about his ideas, and written many influential books including “A New kind of Science”, and more recently “A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics”, and “Computer Modelling and Simulation of Dynamic Systems”, and just out in 2023 “The Second Law” about the mystery of Entropy. One of the most wonderful things about Stephen Wolfram is that, despite his visionary insight into reality, he really loves to be ‘in the moment' with his thinking, engaging in socratic dialogue, staying open to perspectives other than his own and allowing his old ideas to be updated if something comes up that contradicts them; and given how quickly the fields of physics and computer science are evolving I think his humility and conceptual flexibility gives us a fine example of how we should update how we do science as we go. What we discuss:  00:00 Intro 07:45 The history of scientific models of reality: structural, mathematical and computational. 20:20 The Principle of Computational Equivalence (PCE) 24:45 Computational Irreducibility - the process that means you can't predict the outcome in advance. 27:50 The importance of the passage of time to Consciousness. 28:45 Irreducibility and the limits of science. 33:30 Godel's Incompleteness Theorem 42:20 Observer Theory and the Wolfram Physics Project. 50:30 We 'make' space. 51:30 Branchial Space - different quantum histories of the world, branching and merging 58:50 Rulial Space: All possible rules of all possible interconnected branches. 01:19:30 The Measurement problem of QM and Entanglement meets computational irreducibility and observer theory.  01:32:40 Inviting Stephen back for a separate episode on AI safety, safety solutions and applications for science, as we did't have time. 01:37:30 At the molecular level the laws of physics are reversible. 01:45:30 Entropy defined in computational terms. 01:50:30 If we ever overcame our finite minds, there would be no coherent concept of existence. 01:51:30 Parallels between modern physics and ancient eastern mysticism and cosmology. 01:55:30 Reductionism in an irreducible world: saying a lot from very little input. References: “The Second Law: Resolving the Mystery of the Second Law of Thermodynamics”, Stephen Wolfram “A New Kind of Science”, Stephen Wolfram Observer Theory Article, Stephen Wolfram

How has the evolution of cognition led to homo-sapiens being such effective collaborators and how is the collective knowledge and wisdom of the society distributed and passed on to later generations? How can we apply the amplified wisdom of distributed cognition to solve some of humanities biggest problems? Today we have the important fields of Collective Intelligence and how we can use it to solve our problems as a society, to try and get our heads around. We'll be discussing the relevance of difficulties arising from cognitive science and physics research that for some put into question the consensus story that embodied feelings were fundamental in the development of reasoning and consciousness; We also discuss the relevance of the work of Carl Jung on the Collective Unconscious; of Neuroscientist Anil Seth's Controlled Hallucination and Don Hoffman's User interface theory; of Iain McGilchrist's split brain research and of Michael Levin's take on cellular cognition.  There is of course only one polymath who can hold that many topics in a single conversation and that's the Cognitive scientist, and philosopher John Vervaeke. Vervaeke is the director of UToronto's Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches an Introduction to Cognitive Science and The Cognitive Science of Consciousness.  He has been a leading intellectual observer of the modern meaning crisis: the loss of a spiritual worldview in the West, and the decline of wisdom traditions that help individuals find meaning in their lives. His online lectures and practices integrate teachings from many different disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, religion, and cutting edge cognitive science. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series, “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” and his brand new series, "After Socrates." What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 05:35 Losing faith without losing a taste for the transcendent. 15:30 The difference between intelligence and living cognition. 18:40 Relevance realisation: What to attend to in the sea of info available. 21:00 Cognition “cares” because its life is on the line: Salience landscapes. 24:15 Humans VS persons. 30:05 Distributed Cognition explained. 30:30 ‘Reason is monological' framework. 33:15 The rise of individualism. 34:30 Distributed computation and problem solving via the internet. 36:30 ‘Reason is dialogical' framework. 38:00 Your best self-correction ability is with other people. 42:30 Life builds collective intelligence without language. 45:50 Issues from neuroscience and quantum physics. 50:30 Predictive processing to identify salience. 52:30 The imaginary VS the imaginal. 53:40 Imaginally augmented perception. 58:00 Causality is not the same as causal relevance: Acausal phenomena. 01:00:30 Determinism VS fractal probability.  01:03:50 A hierarchy of cognitive selves: Michael Levin. 01:06:50 There isn't just bottom up emergence but top down emanation. 01:07:20 Deep continuity - Evan Thompson. 01:09:30 Hierarchies of selves: Michael Levin. 01:15:30 Could we be part of single selves greater than our individual organisms? 01:17:30 Cognition is a continuum but differences of degree eventually make differences of kind. 01:19:30 Solving collective problems via distributed cognition and practices of connectedness. 01:25:20 Left/right hemisphere considerations for distributed cognition: Iain McGilchrist. 01:32:30 Adaptivity: Self-transcendence VS self-delusion. 01:35:15 Narrative bias and the Left Brain interpreter: Mike Gazzaniga. 01:37:00 Extended naturalism 01:40:24 The Collective Unconscious - Carl Jung. 01:46:25 A lot of the unconscious contents are not narrative like or persona like. References:  “After Socrates” You Tube series “The meaning Crisis” You Tube series Michael Levin - Cellular cognition episode Evan Thompson - Deep continuity hypothesis “Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind”

How does breathwork interact with our nervous system, access memories and help integrate traumatic memories? How has it got results treating auto-immune disease, addiction, agrophobia, PTSD and depression? How can it help sleep, detoxification, digestion, immunity, and taking control of negative thought patterns. In this episode we have the hugely popular practice of Breathwork to look into. After millennia of it being used in bodily practices like martial arts and yoga, conscious breathing was launched into our modern scientific world view by the work of psychologist Stan Grof, who developed Holotropic Breathing in the 1960's at Harvard, see our Transpersonal Psychology episode for more on that; Breathwork continued to gain in popularity following the focus on the lungs and breathing in near regulation proposed by Dr. Stephen Porges in his Polyvagal Theory, see our devoted episode with Dr. Porges for detail on that; And gained further in popularity with Dr. Pete Levine's development of Somatic Experiencing, who I am delighted to announce will be coming on the show in the next series, so look out for that.  So having been present for some time in the trauma community, in the last few years the practice has exploded onto the wellbeing scene as well because of all its benefits both physiologically and psychologically. So who better to talk to about this than expert in a wide range of Breathwork and body-based therapies, Rebecca Dennis. She facilitates workshops, events and retreats alongside her public speaking and individual sessions. She is a gifted speaker and coach, specialising in breathwork, trauma release, somatic modalities, polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation.  Part of her wide popularity is due to her having written three successful books on the topic, the latest being a new edition of Let it Go, “Let It Go and Breathe – A Practical Guide To Breathwork” which has been featured in Amazon and Sunday Times Best Sellers, and which we'll be discussing today. And she has also collaborated with Google, BBC, Stylist magazine and Sweaty Betty. What we discuss: 00:00 intro. 05:15 Breathwork explained 09:00 Repressing and controling emotions changes breathing. 12:00 Sympathetic vs parasympathetic nervous system. 20:50 Long deep breaths don't necessarily calm you down. 23:50 It's NOT hyperventilation or hyperoxygenation. 29:00 How traumatic memories can be brought up by the breath. 38:00 Rebecca's crisis that brought her to breathwork. 43:30 Benefits: Depression relief, confidence, sleep, detox, digestion, immunity, taking control of thought patterns. 46:00 “Let it go” book: the foundations of the breath in daily life, tips and methods. 47:40 Breathe yourself calm - lower abdominal breathing. 49:00 Anxiety is higher now than ever. 52:40 What's the right way to breathe? 59:00 Accessing altered states of consciousness without psychedelics. 59:45 Unlocking traumatic memories: Breath, psychedelics, EMDR. 01:01:00 Easing the symptoms without re-living the memories. 01:02:45 Some of her darkest memories have been her greatest teachers. 01:05:00 Increased resilience emotionally, physically and mentally. 01:07:20 Anti bacterial/anti viral Nitrous-oxide produced, improving immunity. 01:08:00 Gut-brain-cardio vascular system axis: anti-inflammatory effects. 01:11:45 Telomere length in meditators (caps on the end of chromosomes) Elizabeth Blackburn 2015 study. 01:13:30 Treating auto-immune disease, addiction, agrophobia, PTSD and depression using breathwork. 01:17:00 New book coming soon. 01:17:50 Her own new training school in Nov 2024. References: Rebecca Dennis, ‘Let it Go: Breathe yourself calm' www.Breathingtree.co.uk Polyvagal theory, Stephen Porges, CC Episode #5 Deborah Dana, ‘Anchored': how to befriend your nervous system' Elissa Epel, Elizabeth Blackburn 2015 ‘Can meditation slow rate of cellular aging? Cognitive stress, mindfulness, and telomeres' 

What role does bioelectricity play in the formation of new organisms? How do cells connect to form a hierarchy of ever more advanced cognnition, preferences and goals? What are the implications for regenerative medicine, sense of self and consciousness? In this episode we have the extraordinary role of bio-electricity in the orchestration and elaboration of organisms to look at. I became interested in this topic in the nineties when I read a book that was controversial at the time: ‘The Body Electric', by Dr. Robert Becker who had been studying the bioelectric fields around salamanders as they regenerated limbs. I've been hoping to hear about it again ever since, but I thought the research had died out. That was until my guest Zhen Xu at the university of Michigan, spoke about the work of my guest today, in our episode #37 on her work “Histotripsy: Ultrasound for destroying cancer cells”. He is the award winning Biology professor at TUFTS Michael Levin, in the department of regenerative and developmental Biology, although he started out as a computer engineer. His specialisations are in how cells form bioleletrical networks, used for storing and recalling the pattern memories that guide morphogenesis. He then applies that to next generation Ai to help understand a top down control of pattern regulation in the new field of the bioinformatics of shape. He is also a visionary in how all this can be applied to regenerative medicine and bioengineering and his work obliges us to re-examine our approach to morphogenesis. I have been longing to find someone to talk to about the implications of this work for the biolelectric nature of collective intelligence, and how that builds up ever higher levels and layers of collective cellular agency, cognition and sense of self, culminating perhaps in collective intelligences greater than single organisms. For that answer you'll have to listen to what Michael says in the episode. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 06:10 Bioelectrical fields are responsible for which cells become which body parts. 07:30 The cognitive ‘glue' that binds collectives of cells to goals, agency and preferences. 09:30 Morphogenesis explained. 11:00 Self-organising cellular adaptability. 12:30 Cells also communicate using electric signals, not only neurones. 16:00 How are cognitive memories encoded in the electrical field? We don't know yet. 16:45 “Electric face” present in the field: copy it, apply it elsewhere and it grows there! 18:30 The bioelectrical pattern is instructive. 20:15 It's a simple information encoding. 20:30 Competent active cellular material. 24:30 DNA vs Bioelectricty: Analogy of Hardware vs Software with reprogrammability 28:00 Where is the location of the forms stored, memorised and encoded in the bioelectric field? 30:30 “We really have to redefine what me mean by “Where”“ 32:21 We don't know where the truths of mathematics reside. 38:10 Bioengineering: Training competent materials VS building passive materials. 40:30 Agential' material: Cells have agency and preferences. 44:30 Zenobots: cells re-program themselves in days, with no training only influenced by their environment. 50:40 Highly regenerative, cancer resistant, immortal: Plenaria asexual worms. 55:40 Gap Junctions: bioelectric gates for cells to network memories and agency 01:01:50 Cognitive hierarchy of selves within selves, with increasing levels of advanced complexity and agency, each with subjective experience. 01:08:00 Collaborative collective intelligence between organisms VS ever larger selves as one unified intelligence. 01:09:00 Testing agency at any level: Perturbative experiment over only observation. References: https://drmichaellevin.org/ https://thoughtforms.life/ Voltage movie of an embryo developing “Electric face” - Dany Adams, TUFTS Agential material Nature paper Zenobot researchWerner Lowenstein book - the discovery of Gap junctions

What did Jung mean by ‘The Shadow'? What did he mean by making the Unconscious conscious? What is integrating the shadow so useful for us and our relationships? In this episode we cover the fascinating topic of Carl Jung's concept of ‘The Shadow' in analytic psychology; a term that has become overused in pop psychology and seems to be understood in many different ways depending on who you talk to. To clarify the mystery, our guest today is one of the worlds most published and respected Jungian analysts, teachers, authors and commentators, Dr James Hollis. After a career teaching literature, he then retrained to become a Jungian analyst, and is still lecturing, writing books and giving psychotherapy at 83. He has written 19 books on Jungian themes, among which ‘Why good people do bad things: understanding our darker selves' which we'll touch on today. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 08:00 ‘The Shadow' according to Jung. 08:30 A Reluctance to face what contradictory, disturbing or challenging. 11:00 4 ways the shadow manifests: 11:10 1) Unconsciously: everyone else deals with the consequences. 11:40 2) Projected onto others: we disown what we don't accept in ourselves. 12:00 3) Being possessed by the shadow. 13:00 4) Consciously: this takes a lot of work and is a social responsibility. 13:50 Projected onto children: "The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents”, Jung. 16:00 “Why good people do bad things: understanding our darker selves” Hollis' book on the shadow. 18:30 Being accountable for our actions and their consequences. 19:50 Making the unconscious conscious. 23:00 Making decisions as if we were still 8 years old. 24:50 What am I expecting the other to do, that is mine to address? 26:45 Storification and oversimplified narratives, become complexes. 31:43 Changing our relationship to our complexes. 32:30 We don't solve these complexes we outgrow them. 35:50 What does your complex make you do or stop you from doing? 36:20 Meaning is the goal of life not happiness. 38:00 “The least of things with meaning, is always greater the the largest of things without meaning” Jung 39:00 An inner sense of purpose and satisfaction, and what to do if it's not there. 40:20 The role of suffering, failure, and challenges in learning and meaning. 42:30 “Relationship is finding one special person you can annoy for a very long time” Mrs. Hollis. 43:45 The trickster overthrows our expectations: life's way to force us to look in a new way. 47:00 Life is change, yet our nervous system and ego respond badly to ambiguity and the unknown. 49:30 The Ego's complex is control - understandable but life rarely collaborates. 50:30 Ageing and mortality: an example of a summons to the ego to let go and go with it. 51:00 The ego is like a wafer thin boat floating on the vast iridescent sea of the unconscious. 52:20 “The unconscious is as vast as nature, you carry the human race inside of you”, J. Hollis. 56:45 Leading a life more examined = asking where I can change, improve and grow. 01:00:00 Most of our habits are protective, but stand in the way of our growth. 01:01:15 ‘Soul Heal' Joe Enrique Pardo, a film about men being cut off forms their inner life. References: James Hollis, “Why good people do bad things: understanding our darker selves” James Hollis' 18 other books! ‘Soul Heal' film, Jose Enrique Pardo, with James Hollis, a film about healing the issues of men Bernardo Kastrup, Jung's Metaphysics CC episode  Monika Wikman, Collective Unconscious CC episode Laura London's, Speaking of Jung podcast

How close are we to a scalable quantum computer? How do they work? Why is it so difficult for women in science? Is that changing? In this episode we have the fascinating new technology of Quantum Computers to get our heads around. They've been in the news a lot recently for the extraordinary computing power they could offer if harnessed properly; and also in conjunction with misleadingly named ‘teleportation' technologies that can encode information in a quantum key and have it appear at the destination almost instantaneously and unshackably using quantum entanglement. But how do they work? Our guest today Shohini Ghose explains beautifully, she studies them as a professor of Quantum Physics at the Wilfrid Laurier University in Toronto, Canada. She is also a Senior Fellow at TED and her TED talk, ‘A beginners guide to Quantum Computers' has been viewed almost 5 million times. She's a passionate advocate for women in science which she's just released a new book on, ‘Her Space, Her Time' and which we'll be getting into around the 45min mark, and she's the Chair for women in Science at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. She is also the author of the 2019 book ‘Clues to the cosmos'. I couldn't let such a brilliant since communicator get away without asking her what the measurement problem means for the nature of reality too. Fascinating stuff! What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 06:50 A beginners guide to quantum computers 09:50 The difference between binary 0/1 opposite and quantum superposition ‘probabilistic' states 13:20 Integrating sensitive quantum systems into a practical computing technology 15:00 Harnessing cubits connecting them via entanglement for processing power 15:30 Avoiding the ‘noise' of entanglement with external particles: near absolute zero conditions  20:40 The applications of quantum computing 21:30 Encryption via ‘no cloning' keys 22:10 A quantum enhanced internet - more security 25:40 Developing new chemical compositions via quantum simulations  30:10 Quantum ‘teleportation'  35:40 Clarifying the role of light photons in quantum teleportation - it isn't instantaneous 40:30 The limitations: When will we have a practically useful quantum computer (VS Neural network computers, see Vitaly Vanchurin episode) 45:30 Women in Science throughout history and the appropriation of their success by men 47:10 “Her Space, Her Time”, Shohini's new book 47:40 The Mathilda effect: When men get credit for women's work 52:30 Skew in The Nobel Prize and awards in general, and the risk of tokenism now 56:10 There is a lower ratio of women choosing science careers, but is that culturally biased data? See study 01:03:10 “Clues to the Cosmos” Shohini's first book  01:05:10 The way new experiments force us to update our theories step by step 01:09:05 The implications of non-local probabilistic quantum phenomena  01:12:10 Matter is not fixed, reality is fluid 01:13:55 Measurement problem's meaning: Even the separation between classical and quantum scale is fluid References: Shohini Ghose “Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe” 2023 https://g.co/kgs/bt9h63 A Beginners Guide to Quantum Computers, TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/shohini_ghose_a_beginner_s_guide_to_quantum_computing?language=en Nobel prize for experiments confirming non-local realism and entanglement https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/ Vitaly Vanchurin - Neural network computers https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-38-vitaly-vanchurin-the-world-as-a-neural-network A celebration of women scientists, TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/shohini_ghose_a_celebration_of_women_scientists_and_why_we_need_more_of_them Scientific Careers and Gender differences, A qualitative study https://jcom.sissa.it/article/pubid/Jcom0701(2008)L01/ Shohini Ghose, “Clues to the Cosmos” 2019 https://g.co/kgs/PiuqF6

Why do we have a negativity bias that predisposes us to focus on bad things in the world? How can we channel that natural tendency to learn and improve, rather that be afraid and depressed by it? What are the implications of negativity bias for the functioning of our society ongoing? In this episode we've got the important topic of the inherent Negativity Bias in human psychology to assess. This is the tendency for bad events, experiences and emotions to have more impact than good ones. We see this in relationships, social patterns, traumatic events, the media and learning processes. Research shows that bad impressions and stereotypes form quicker than good ones, that the self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones, and even that bad impressions are more thoroughly processed than good ones. This all plays out in out in the media, in the consumer markets and in politics and thus defines our culture ongoing. Is this natural? Is there anything we can do to mitigate it or use it for good? And do we even want to? Fortunately for us our guest today is a specialist in these matters, one of the most prolific and cited psychologists in the world, with over 650 publications, Professor Roy Baumeister. His 40 books include the New York Times bestseller Willpower. His research covers self and identity, self-regulation, interpersonal rejection and the need to belong, sexuality and gender, aggression, self-esteem, meaning, consciousness, free will, and self-presentation, some of which we cover today in connection with negativity bias. In 2013 he received the William James award for lifetime achievement in psychological science (the Association for Psychological Science's highest honor). In 2001 He co-wrote a seminal paper on the very topic of today's episode in, called ‘Bad is Stronger than Good'; and one of his latest books, co-authored with John Tierney, is called “The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It”. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 10:00 Negativity Bias Explained 12:00 Evolutionary reasons to focus on the negative 15:45 “Life has to win every day, death only has to win once” 17:45 We process the negative more thoroughly than the positive 18:45 “We learn a lot more from bad events than from good ones” 20:10 The Pollyanna principle VS Bad memories being good for learning  27:30 Negativity bias in the media, fiction and entertainment 31:50 Ai algorithms tracking our engagement with negativity, making us feel the world is worse than we it is 33:10 “The world is getting better on every index except hope”, John Tierney  35:30 Older people are happier than younger people, Laura Carstensen 37:00 Polarisation as a consequence of algorithmic driven negativity bias 41:50 Using fear for profit VS using fear for control  33:15 Tendency to see the outsiders as threats 47:30 Belonging: our need not to be thought of negatively, hence not to be thrown out of the group 49:50 Theory of mind: Primates understand how other people think of them competitively but humans also collaboratively 50:40 We act ethically because we need people to cooperate 53:50 Negativity bias leading to a sense of belonging in the camp against the ‘other' 55:30 Self control and regulation: taking control of negativity bias, we're good at getting better 56:30 Not doing the bad things is what makes the difference 58:50 4:1 Ratio of good things to bad things required to swing the balance 01:03:40 Ego depletion confirmed: self control fatigue over time  References: Baumeister and Tierney “The Power of Bad: How the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it” ‘Bad is stronger than Good' Paper, 2001 Baumeister and Tierney, “Will Power: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength” Full Show Note References on CC.net

What data supports the idea that Oumuamua could have been space junk from another civilisation from another civilisation? Why is it so important that the Galileo Project at Harvard looks for more such objects? Why is science finally taking the UAP Phenomenon seriously? Today we're going to find out about new developments in the SETI discussion (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) that has been prompted by the anomalous interstellar object Oumuamua, that passed through the solar system in 2017. Since the cosmologist, sceptic and TV presenter Carl Sagan helped normalise the topic for serious scientific consideration, SETI has been a thriving, if underfunded, scientific endeavour with multiple techniques being used, not just listening for radio signals; but which until recently hasn't found anything to write home about, despite a few false alarms. Until the arrival of Oumuamua, today's guest, Avi Loeb wasn't really involved in the SETI debate, but his SETI interpretation of the data on this object, and his impeccable reputation as former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University has brought him into the debate with a bang. He is the Frank B. Baird Jr Professor of Science at Harvard, author of over 700 scientific papers, and receiver of so many awards and accolades I won't list them there. Avi is also the author of 4 books, of which we'll be discussing two today. First his New York Times bestseller ‘Extraterrestrial' about Oumuamua, and second his new book that's just out “Interstellar: the search for extra terrestrial life and out future in the stars”. To add further taboo to this newly invigorated debate, we'll also be talking about the 2017 NYTimes story on military UFO encounters, which revealed that the US Government had not only been secretly studying the UFO Phenomenon, but also covered the extraordinary ‘TicTac' case around the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, witnessed by multiple pilots and including radar blip confirmation. All of which has led to Congress passing a new law obliging military witnesses to testify about these incidents and alleged black projects working on this kind of technology, and to the June 2021 report form the Director of National intelligence (see show notes). Having never known this was even a real confirmed phenomena, and knowing Avi has since become involved in the scientific debate on this topic too, this interview was particularly curious. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 12:45 6x anomalous data points on interstellar object Oumuamua, Oct 19th 2016 21:45 Technological relic VS natural object hypothesis 24:00 Natural origin: Solid hydrogen/nitrogen hypotheses 27.30 Avi's New book “Interstellar” 32:00 Our star is younger than most in the galaxy so younger star's civilisations are probably more advanced 36:00 The Galileo Project: Looking out for interstellar objects, in 3 ways 39:15 1. Exploring impact sites on earth, Finding the next Oumuamua sooner, Study of UAP 48:00 Imagining seeding of planets, creating species and creating universes in labs 01:12:30 “Science is not zero sum game its an infinite sum game, because basically everyone benefits from knowledge” References: Avi Loeb 'Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars '(2023) Galileo Project @Harvard University Office of the Director of National Intelligence Assessment on UAP, June 2021, John L. Ratcliffe VICE Magazine, Experiencers brains and Anomalous materials magazine article NY Times USS Nimitz ‘Tic-Tac' article, Dec 2017

What is the protocol for psychedelic therapy? How does it work? Who is it appropriate for? Today we have the interesting topic to look into, of how psychedelic compounds are now being used in psychotherapy. With promising results in clinical trials from Imperial College around the mid 2010's, a flourish of trials at other medical schools across the world has seen a renaissance of the psychedelic movement for treating, particularly depression and PTSD, that was started by transpersonal psychologists like Stan Grof in the 1960's before then being banned.  Along with this renaissance has come interest from pharmaceutical companies and psychonauts, psychotherapists and members of the general public suffering from treatment resistant conditions. With all this activity there is confusion about what the results from the studies actually show, how the treatment should be done safely, ethically and with lasting results and who to be contacting if you want to try it out. So I thought it was important to speak about these matters here for anyone interested in getting a data led picture of the fast evolving situation, among all the noise out there on the internet. Fortunately my guest today is a clinical psychologist who's been at the centre of the field since the beginning of the renaissance, and not just as a researcher but as a hands on psychologist in the therapy room with the subjects at all stages of the process, Dr. Rosalind Watts. Dr. Watt's work as the Clinical psychologist Lead for Imperial College London's psilocybin trials,  have made her one of the most prominent voices and minds in the field of psychedelic research. She has been named as one of the 50 Most Influential People in Psychedelics; however, what sets Dr Watts apart is her focus on integration, harm-reduction and inclusion in the psychedelic space.   Apart from treating she also builds tools and structures to foster connectedness after psychedelic experiences, finding inspiration for their design from nature. The most recent of which is the integration community she's created - ACER Integration. What we speak about: 00:00 Intro 04:30 Clubbing community 07:40 The psychedelic therapy process: step by step 08:40 1. Screening: for people it could suit VS cause problems for 09:50 2. Preparation: Building trust and safety in vulnerability 11:15 The psychedelic experience is the beginning not the end of the work 13:05 Sharing meals; music and essential oils used to encourage relaxation and surrender 16:50 At least two guides needed for ethical and practical reasons 19:50 The ‘Pearl Dive' analogy, deep down to the hidden traumas 26:50 3. The therapy session itself 28:50 A non-directed approach to the journey from the guides 33:05 4. Integration: after the experience, maximising benefits 35:10 Planting the pearl of insight to nourish and nurture them 35:40 6 months later the depression was back 44:20 The role of ritual and ceremony in effective results 46:20 Appropriated from Mexican Mazatec tradition of psilocybin for healing 49:50 How to talk about the ceremonial without deities and religions   54:50 Opening up to the sacred wound VS numbing the feelings 58:50 Ros's first experience: Fear before and transformation after 01:07:35 The ‘brain reset' analogy and the expectations it created 01:12:05 Mystical experience's importance in the transformation  01:18:05 Adverse psychedelic effects: actively facing the hardest places References: ACER Community Integration Group Dr. Rosalind Watts, A.C.E. Accept, Embody, Connect model Maria Sabina, Mexican shaman - Life magazine 1957 Gaia Hypothesis Adverse effects trial at Greenwich University: Jules Evans and David Luke  Increased brain connectivity following psilocybin treatment Little Pharma (Dr. Ben Sessa)

What does symmetry and self-similarity between life and intelligence mean for the nature of reality? How are neurones like genes?  Today we have the extraordinary Fractal Brain Theory to discuss. After episode #38 about the World as a Neural Network, with Russian physicist and computer scientist Vitaly Vanchurin, i've become more open to a unified theory of universe that reconciles quantum mechanics with general relativity, as Vanchurin's equations seem to offer. So when I was recommended today's guest's Fractal Brain Theory by one of the wonderful listeners, I was curious if a little sceptical given all the psychedelic hype about fractal geometry. So a symmetrical theory of repeating self-similar, self-modifying behaviour in the universe is not so far from the vision of the universe as a thriving, adaptable neural network. And according to today's guest the symmetry directly connects the often divorced worlds of neurones, brains and intelligence with the world of genes, evolution and life.  He is multi-disciplinary researcher, computer scientist, musician and author Wai H Tsang. A self-taught thinker in the world of neurology, evolutionary biology, consciousness and philosophy of mind, Tsang is in the unique position of combining these traditions into a single theory of brain, that promises to solve even the hard problem of consciousness. Trained in computer science at Imperial college, he wrote the first version of his Fractal Brain Theory in 2016, in his book of the same name, and it was picked up by quantum consciousness theorist Stuart Hameroff, who invited him to the Science of Consciousness Conference, alongside heavy weights in the field like David Chalmers, Roger Penrose, Sue Blackmore,  Donald Hoffman - many who've been on this show already. This recognition catapulted his theory into the field, so it's with great pleasure that I include it on the show for us to compare alongside the theories of many of the giants. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 07:10 Symmetry explained: Variance and non-variance; change and resistance to change 11:00 Genomes work like tiny fractal brains 12:30 The symmetry between intelligence and life, neurones and genes 13:00 Junk DNA, neurones and boolean algebra 17:45 Dendritic structure, processing and artificial intelligence 19:00 Self-similarity and recursively nested symmetry 21:30 Evolution and ontogenesis algorithm: differentiate, select, amplify  22:15 Fractal Mathematics and Benoit Mandelbrot: Approximate self-similarity 25:45 Binary trees generating life and intelligence 29:00 Mitosis and progenator fields 30:00 Allocentric and egocentric mapping (Nobel prize) 34:40 Goodwin and cell division VS epigenetic mutation/adaptation 36:00 Recursive modification IS intelligence; evolving evolvability 40:15 A new calculus: analytic geometry  47:00 The soft and hard problem of consciousness  51:00 Time symmetric quantum mechanics and problems with causal chains  58:00 David Chalmers: Identity cosmo-psychism critique 01:11:00 Is self-reflective conscious Ai possible? 01:19:30 Penrose: Quantum mechanics is incomplete until we understand the collapse of the wave function 01:21:00 The ethical debate about the future of Ai References: ‘The Fractal Brain Theory' Wai Tsang Wai Tsang You Tube Channel  Boolean Algebra David Chalmers, “Idealism and the mind body problem” paper

What evidence is there for a connection between the microbiome and the chronic inflammation and mental health problems on the rise in western populations? Do we need to rethink hygiene practices to benefit from this new understanding? In this episode we're going to be getting our heads around the idea that while Hygiene has revolutionised health, too much hygiene, actually weakens our immune system's development. To understand why, we need to understand how the complex community of microbes in our intestines, on our skin and in nature around us has evolved for thousands of years, in symbiosis with our immune system; we'll be mapping out how, as our hygiene practices and food processing have increased, so the diversity of microbiota has dropped, eventually leading to the explosion of inflammatory disorders, mental health issues and auto-immune disfunction we're now seeing in western communities. But how to solve this problem, without loosing the great advances in health care achieved by the application of Hygiene theory? Who better to answer that question and explain these subtleties than professor of medical microbiology at University College London, Dr. Graham Rook. Rook is a specialist in infection and immunity, and has spent his career unfolding how the young immune system is ‘programmed' by the microbial background, identifying all the medical conditions that have been worsened by the failing immuno-regulation associated with our impoverished biomes, and developing ways we can update our lifestyle to restore the diversity required to sustain healthy immune response. In his new book ‘Evolution, Biodiversity and a Reassessment of the Hygiene hypothesis' he explains all this and his 2003 Old-Friends hypothesis, which seeks to correct the over-stretching of the Hygeine hypothesis. We have got a show from the second series with phytotherapist Alex Laird, about the dietary aspect of the microbiome and inflammation called ‘Mood Food: Inflammation, the gut and diet' should anyone want to get into the food side of this. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 08:30 Bacterial diversity in the human body and the evolution of the immune system 12:00 The symbiotic co-evolution of internal bacteria and humankind 13:30 The ‘programming' of the adaptive immune system by diverse bacteria: Lymphocytes 16:30 Most of our genes evolved in micro-organisms  20:55 Modern western microbiomes compared to our hunter gatherer ancestors 21:40 Variety of diet and contact with nature 22:10 Microorganisms from mother and the natural environment 24:00 The socio-economic factor: Urban poverty VS exposure to microorganisms and diverse diet 26:00 Antibiotic over-use in children contributing to allergies and obesity 26:25 Immune regulation, and how it changes with hyper inflammation 30:00 Background high inflammation in the west 31:20 Microbiota transplants in mental health, allergies and obesity experiments 33:50 The difficulty in using biota transplants to treat biome related issues  39:00 Microbiome/inflammation research into Autism, Parkinsons and Alzheimer's  46:00 ‘Trained Immunity' - raising immune alertness epigenetically  50:00 Reassessing the hygiene hypothesis, good diet and minimising antibiotics References: G. Rook, ‘Evolution, Biodiversity, and reassessing the hygiene hypothesis' book G. Rook, 'The Old Friends Hypothesis' paper ‘Pediatrics Consequences of Caesarean Section-A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis', maternal microbiota paper ‘Association between antibiotic treatment during pregnancy and infancy and the development of allergic diseases' paper ‘Gut microbiome remodelling induces depressive-like behaviour' paper ‘Long-term benefit of Microbiota Transfer Therapy on autism symptoms and gut microbiota' paper 'Pet-keeping in early life reduces the risk of allergy in a dose-dependent fashion' paper

What is Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprogramming therapy? What could be the mechanism by which its bilateral stimulation relieves the disturbances from trauma? In this episode we have the fascinating technique of EMDR psychotherapy to look into. This is another show, like the Parenting by Connection episode #18, that's close to home, as I personally have had extraordinary results with this method. Developed from the 80's onwards by Francine Shapiro, Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing uses a bilateral brain hemisphere stimulation, similar to the pre-REM sleep state, to lower the physiological reaction in the present, following traumatic experiences in the past. The reason I was so struck by the method and wanted to share the science of it here, is how the model works physiologically on the reprogramming of traumatic memories, with more or less instant results - results that might take years using traditional talky therapies. Why this ‘straight to the point' method works though is still not clear to scientists, so it will be interesting to hear the different theories. Who better to tell us all about it than EMDR therapist ex-president of EMDR Europe and the president of EMDR Italy, Dr. Isabel Fernandez. As well as more than 20 years treating patients with EMDR and training tens thousands of therapists, she sits on several boards of organisations studying science of psychotraumatology, like the Society of Traumatic Stress Studies. She has written various scientific papers, books and chapters on EMDR and trauma too. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 06:10 Trauma with a big 'T' (threat to life) and a little 't' (interpersonal) 09:20 The risk of a ‘victim' complex, lowering resilience if we focus on even little 't' trauma 10:00 You reach resilience through addressing and integrating trauma  11:20 Our innate ability to process adverse experience information and the overwhelming of that in PTSD  15:30 Bilateral eye movement stimulation helps the completion of our innate memory integration ability 18:25 You do need to remember the memory to work on it, but often it arises by association rather than actively remembering it 21:00 Bilateral stimulation of the left and right hemisphere: visual, sensory and auditory versions 23:00 Pre-Rem Sleep is similar to the EMDR state 26:30 Proved to be faster than other therapies, therefore more cost effective for the state health services 28:15 Its functioning is not yet completely understood: the leading theories  32:40 Iain McGilchrist's left right hemisphere interpretation (See Episode #15)  36:45 A meta analysis - Bilateral stimulation much more effective than non-bilateral stimulation, just therapy  39:30 Adaptive information - 1. Processing of the past 2. De-sensitisation of disturbance the present 3. Imaginal future events  50:15 EMDR for kids with traumatic experiences from 2 years old 51:45 Applications for collective mass trauma: war, pandemics, floods and earthquakes 52:45 The key is to work with bilateral stimulation during the acute phase of the trauma 55:00 Bringing EMDR to the Police, the military and the hospitals   References:  Frontiers in Psychology: Slow Wave Sleep/ Pre-Rem Sleep similarities with EMDR State American Psychological Association: Neural Basis of EMDR Therapy Nature: Neural Circuits involved in EMDR suppressing fear response American Psychological Association: Chris Lee, Meta-analysis of efficacy and speed of EMDR PubMed: Meta-analysis of treatment of sexual abuse in children and adolescents EMDREurope.com EMDR.com EMDR.it 

Just how much evidence for psi phenomena is there today, when we put together the data from all the studies? What theory of reality could account for such phenomena? In this episode we have the baffling results of the scientific study of psi phenomena to get our head around. Broadly speaking psi can be broken down into four categories: telepathy, precognition and clairvoyance, and mind-matter interaction. The mere mention of these words immediately conjures images of magicians, charlatans and soothsayers duping a susceptible public; so combine that with the fact that nothing of these experiments and results have ever been properly covered in the scientific press, except by sceptics to dismiss them as physically impossible, as they would defy our current conception of the laws of physics: and the consequence is that scientifically educated people like us may have had absolutely no idea that there was more than 100 years of serious scientific peer-reviewed study on these effects from credible institutions like Princeton University and Stanford Research Institute, with debate and disagreement like any other field of science. Still, you can understand why professional scientists that are interested do this research out of the public eye, and the difficulty of other main stream scientists opening up to the results; as not only would it mean opening up to an alternative understanding of the laws of physics and mind, but also to be accused of believing pseudo-science. So I ask listeners that you sit through this presentation of the evidence patiently and just stay open to the possibility, as let's face it the testimonial evidence for these anomalies is overwhelming. So who better to speak to about this baffling data, than one of the world's leading psi researchers for over 30 years, psychologist Dean Radin. Dean got his degree in Engineering with Physics at the University of Massachusetts, and his PHD in psychology from the University of Illinois. He's the head scientist at The Institute of Noetic Sciences and has worked in R&D for AT&T and GTE, as well as holding positions at Princeton University and SRI international. He has written many books on these topics for those who want delve deeper but the ones we'll concentrate on today are ‘The Conscious Universe', ‘Entangled Minds' and ‘Real Magic'. 00:00 Intro 07:35 4 types of PSI experiments: Telepathy, mind-matter interaction, Precognition and Clairvoyance 10:30 Typical scientific response: delusion, illusion, mental illness, ignorance of the scientifically possible, and often that's true 11:30 The Ganzfeld telepathy experiments: 5000 experiments with a 25% chance, result shift to 30% (6 sigma - a billion to one chance) 23:00 These phenomena may be bubbling up from the unconscious, so best to avoid conscious reporting methods 32:14 Mind-matter interaction: quantum random number generator experiments (4.5 Sigma result) 40:20 Dean's ‘non-local connection/ observer effect' theory for how psi works 44:80 Evidence for quantum coherence in the brain (See episode on ‘Quantum Biology') 51:45 Robert Jahn, Princeton University Dean of Engineering, founder of PEAR Labs 56:30 A shift in openness to PSI 59:30 The Stargate remote viewing program at SRI: Dean's role 01:07:00 Sceptic Ray Hyman: the strongest evidence for psi comes from Dean Radin and Jessica Utts 01:15:00 What's being studied at IONS, that Edgar Mitchell founded following his mystical experience 01:35:00 Journals with editorial prejudice and psi research friendly publications References: Dean Radin 'The Conscious Universe' Dean Radin 'Entangled minds' Telepathy Gansfeld meta analysis of 29 studies (1992-2008) Precognition experiments meta analysis of 90 studies (-2011) Mind matter experiments eta analysis of 216 studies (1959-2000) Stargate Remote viewing program 1974-1996 Documentary ‘Third Eye Spies' Evidence for quantum entanglement in the brain

Why are religious and mystical experiences important to our sense of meaning and purpose in life? What is a spiritual emergency and how can it actually help us in the long run? Are transpersonal experiences illusions of the mind or can they tell us anything about the nature of reality? In this episode, we have the extraordinary topic of Transpersonal Psychology to learn about. With the steady rise in popularity of western secular spirituality, meditation, psychedelic research, altered states of consciousness and embodied practices in general, during the 60's some psychologists felt there was a part of psychology missing from the old humanist and behaviourist models. It was as if the overwhelmingly materialist scientific view of humans, that sees our bodies and brains as fundamentally separate from other beings, the natural world and any hypothetically transcendent reality, was missing out a huge source of data about the way our minds work. So a bunch of them coined a new term, Transpersonal psychology, and with it came a new field of study and practice.  It's a really wide field and at its cusps starts to get into areas that science can't actually study using the method; some of which we're going to touch on towards the end of this episode. But above all it makes a place for the importance of the transpersonal that crosses those boundaries between our bodies and brains and everything else out there, both known and unknown. So fortunately today's guest has over 25 years of experience both as a psychologist and a workshops leader, David Lukoff. Dr. Lukoff has published over 80 articles on spirituality and mental health, and is an active workshop presenter internationally on spiritual competency, grief, death, recovery, and spiritual crises. He is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the Sofie University, previously known as the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, in CA and previously served on the faculties of Harvard University and UCLA. He is also the co-founder of the Spiritual Competency Academy, that offers mental health professionals courses on the skills and knowledge to become more spiritual competent. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 05:30 A psychedelic psychotic episode and a spiritual crisis 07:00 Spirituality and religion as resources and practices 07:42 The history of transpersonal psychology  14:00 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs VS behaviourism 16:45 Spiritual emergencies  18:00 Jospeh Cambell's ‘Hero's Journey' and Jung's ‘Compensatory psychosis' 22:30 David's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) entry 24:00 The post scientific revolution meaning crisis, and spiritual assessment as a solution 29:45 Ceremonial, shamanic and plant medicine approaches 32:30 Bringing altered states into mainstream psychology 37:00 Holotropic breathing: simulating an LSD-like research after LSD research was banned 40:15 The strength of the mystical experience correlates with positive outcomes 41:15 Stan Grof: NDE, OBE, psi, afterlife and interdimensional communications 45:00 The Spiritual Competency Academy: forgiveness, compassion, mindfulness References: Spiritual Competency Academy Journal of Transpersonal Psychology Rick Doblin - Founder of MAPS - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies ‘Spiritual and religious problems' included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders Jung's ‘Compensatory psychosis' The Spiritual Emergency Network Johns Hopkins and NYU studies - Intensity of mystical experiences correlation with positive clinical outcomes.

What do machine learning, physics and biology have in common? What maths emerges when we apply learning dynamics to physics, and can it reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity? If we see all nature as neuroplastic and constantly learning, like a neural network, what can this tell us about the fine tuning in the universe and the emergence of life and observers? In this episode we have the fascinating possibility that the world is like a neural network to consider. On the show we've already deeply considered the way in which particles and sometimes even minds seem to be inter-connected in the universe, even beyond the apparent causal links in space and time. We also covered the brain science of neuroplasticity, for listeners who want to understand how that works. Applying that idea to the universe, that in some way the dynamic evolution of systems in the universe, over time adapt depending on the requirements could explain the extraordinary fine tuning we see in the universe, that permitted the arising of life in the first place. Along the way it could potentially fix some of the other gaping holes of disagreement in our best theories of physics.  Our guest in this episode, the Russian physicist Vitaly Vanchurin, has not only developed this theory from the ground up, apparently reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity, but is connecting it with biological systems and even developing a new type of computer processor to model it. After many years at the University of Minnesota, he's taken a position at the National Institute of Health, and has more or less simultaneously launched a new multidisciplinary company ‘Artificial Neural Computing' that connects physics, biology, and machine learning. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 05:21 The world as a neural network 06:00 Deep learning in the systems of the universe, neural learning and machine learning 09:00 The universe is learning as it evolves 11:30 Cosmic storage of learning, leads us to a cosmic consciousness model 12:40 The efficiency of learning defines its level of consciousness 13:30 A super-observer 16:00 It's a useful model, but it's likely how the universe actually works too 18:20 Fast changing non-trainable variables VS slow changing trainable variables 20:00 When the trainable variables change they could modify the laws of physics 21:20 Trainable variables in machine learning, are similar to genetic adaptation in biology 22:00 Connecting machine learning, physics and biological adaptation 31:40 What experiments could confirm this model? 42:00 At large scale entropy's actually reduced by learning. 43:00 The emergence of life has a low chance of emerging by chance, more likely by pursuit of learning 44:50 Learning theory explains fine tuning in the universe 49:20 Neuroplasticity at a cosmic level: increasing efficiency and collective consciousness 54:30 The observer problem solved - hidden variables are trainable variables learning 58:30 Getting comfortable with variances from our best theories: models are only mental constructs 01:01:30 Vitaly's new company 'Artificial Neural Computing' - an interdisciplinary method marrying machine learning, physics and biology 01:11:00 What is emergent quantumness? 01:13:15 The implications of neuromorphic machine learning technology 01:17:30The implications for AGI 01:18:30 Self-driving car efficiency 01:21:00 Biology is a technology 01:27:40 You can think of space-time as many communication channels or neural connections 01:28:30 We are like one organism, a super-consciousness References: Vitaly Vanchurin - The World as a Neural Network Paper Vitaly Vanchirin - Toward a theory of evolution as multilevel learning paper Vitaly's new company, Artificial Neural Computing Anthropic principal Stochastic (Adj) = Random and predictable only using probability distributions Learning equilibrium = when learning in a system equalises with the level of knowledge in the wider system Self-organising criticality

How Can Ultrasound destroy cancer cells and even increase immune response elsewhere? Are there any implications for a resonant field based understanding of matter? In this episode we have the fascinating invention of Histotripsy (https://histotripsy.umich.edu/), the non-invasive destruction of cancer cells using ultrasound to look into. Alongside the other headline news that bioengineers are also using acoustics to pattern replacement heart tissue, makes the field of bioacoustics one of the most exciting for the future of medicine.  It is of course the implications of this for the resonant vibrational nature of matter that make this of interest to us on the show, as we attempt to get closer to a true understanding of the nature of reality through our shows on the implications of Einstein's ‘matter is energy' findings and quantum mechanics. We get into this after 45 mins or so. We are lucky enough to be speaking today with one of the inventors of Histotripsy technology, Zhen Xu, Associate Professor and Graduate Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Michigan University. She's won many awards for her research, including from the American Heart Association and from the National Institute of Health.  00:00 Intro 07:25 Destroying Cancer Cells with Ultrasound  08:50 Issues with tissue heating and toxicity in other non-surgical techniques 09:50 Cavitation: the creation, expansion and collapse of bubbles - gas pockets in the tissue 11:40 Ultrasound propagates through the vibration of tissue particles 13:36 Acoustic Scalpel: Cavitation bubbles are highly visible on ultrasound imaging, for high accuracy treatment 14:45 No spread of tissue heating, so no healthy tissue damage 16:00 The discovery happened by mistake 19:45 She developed new devices for a new phenomenon  21:40 Toxicity of the destroyed tumour is removed from the body in a few months 24:30 Immune response to tumerous cells after treatment, possibly from the debris 25:40 Live cancer cells alter signal pathways to confuse the immunes system 28:00 But once dead the the debris can are noticed by the immune system  29:45 Future tumours or relapses in different locations are picked ups by the immune system 33:30 Treating neurological disease, brain blood clots and epilepsy too, across the skull protection 40:30 Patterning and forming new cell structures using sound (Stanford Med research): Structuring vs destructing using sound 44:30 Resonant frequency in various types of matter and biological tissue 45:00 No evidence from the lab for a resonant theory of tissue/organ health 48:50 Nikola Tesla, “If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration” 52:00 The implications of a wider wave-length fields, for the creation and maintaining of matter and biological life's structure 56:30 Bioelectric component in organ development (TUFTS Study): The formation of life depends on more than DNA 1:01:00 A field based understanding of physical matter, rather than matter generating fields   References: Dr Zhen Xu 'Histotripsy: the first noninvasive, non-ionizing, non-thermal ablation technique based on ultrasound' Paper Dr Zhen Xu - Histotripsy Group Cosmos Magazine Article on Histotripsy Dr Cliff Cho, Dr Zhen Xu - “...Immune responses that enhance cancer immunotherapy” Paper Sean Wu and Utcan Demerci, Stanford Medical School, Engineering Heart tissue using Bioacoustics Havana Syndrome Nikola Tesla quote, “If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration” Micheal Levin, TUFTS university, “changes in bioelectric signals cause tadpoles to grow eyes in back and tail”

What are the benefits and risks of transhumanist technologies, and why are they so taboo? How do we legislate to avoid existential risks, without holding back too much the enormous possible benefits? How do we secure the mental health, rights and equal access of the public as it inevitably rolls out? So today we have the tricky and somewhat taboo topic of how to ethically guide the ever-increasing application of transhumanist technologies. With the recent advances in bio-technology, and some technologies already making their way into our bodies, it seems that the move towards a transhumanist vision of how to improve our standard of living is already well under way. So the question now is how do we educate ourselves the public and legislate tech corporations and governments, to be sure that people's mental and physical health, access to opportunities, and personal freedoms are not being compromised in the gold-rush.    Fortunately our guest today is a sociologist and bioethicist with over 25 years of debating exactly these kind of questions. He is the executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies or IEET, and he is the Associate Provost for Institutional research, Assessment and Planning at the University of Massachusetts Boston, James Hughes. He is a Buddhist and techno-optimist, and was executive director of the World Transhumanist Organisation from 2004-2006. He argues for a democratic transhumanism in which human enhancement technologies should only be allowed if available to everyone, with respect for the rights of the individuals to control their own bodies. He's the writer of many articles and papers and the author of the book,“Citizen Cyborg: Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future”. He is currently working on another book about moral enhancement, tentatively titled “Cyborg Buddha: Using neurotechnology to become better people”. Being a techno-optimist and futurist myself, yet extremely cautious of mankind's reckless and often blind curiosity when developing technology, I felt it was an important time to take a balanced multi-perspectival look into the ethics and policy development of transhumanist technologies. The interview offered me a process of re-evalutation of my own preconceptions and triggers, so I hope it helps you question your own opinions on this complex topic.  What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 08:00 Difficulty accepting our inevitable transhumanist future 14:00 The taboo of transhumanism and debating toxic issues 19:45 It's not the tech that's the risk but the way we use it and legislate it: Max Tegmark 33:20 The History of Transhumanism 44:50 Is Eugenics connected to Transhumanism? 51:00 The roadmap towards markets rolling out transhumanist technologies  52:30 The Kurzweilian paradigm: Smaller, smarter and faster  55:45 Backing up memories - replacing and supplementing brain function 57:00 Instantiating brain backups in robot bodies, cloned bodies or computers 58:45 The Metaverse and brain-internet interfaces assessed 01:03:00 Augmented reality will be more popular than virtual reality 01:06:00 Technology interfering with the evolution of brains and culture 01:10:00 Selective scientific publication about the negative mental health outcomes 01:21:00 Neurolink: brain computer internet interfaces assessed 01:27:00 Gene therapy assessed: the risks of yet further inequality of wealth and power 01:43:50 The Singularity explained 01:56:20 Inequality leads to dangerous conflict VS Transnational collaboration leads to peace References: James J Hughes ‘Citizen Cyborg' Nick Bostrum - ‘A History of Transhumanist thought' paper The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies IEET

What evidence is there for quantum coherence in biological systems? What are the implications for life in general? Today we've got the relatively new field of quantum biology to assess. For years the idea of quantum effects in biological cells was dismissed because live cells were ‘too warm and wet' to host these sensitive quantum coherences. But new research into quantum coherence in avian navigation, quantum tunnelling in DNA mutations, in enzymes, even in smell - has brought new interest and study to the field of Quantum Biology. One biochemist, saw all this coming and wrote a book about it 20 years called, ‘Quantum Evolution'. He is none other that than Professor of Molecular Genetics at Surrey university, JohnJoe McFadden. His mainstream research is in microbial genetics, particularly in developing new systems biology approaches to infectious diseases. He is a keen promoter of public understanding of science and has given many popular science talks on subjects as varied as evolution and GM food. He also writes popular science articles, particularly for the Guardian newspaper. His specialties are broad including: systems biology, microbiology, evolutionary genetics, infectious diseases, tuberculosis, meningitis, and bionanotechnology. He's written many books but in this episode we'll be focussing on material from his newer books, ‘Life on the Edge: the coming age of Quantum Biology' with physicist Jim Al-Khalili, and ‘Life is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Unlocked the Universe'. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 04:30 ‘Too Warm and Wet' Dismissing quantum consciousness in microtubules 08:40 Roger Penrose: Consciousness may be a field 14:28 The macro universe must be quantum in some way 17:30 Nobody understands the cut-off point between classical large and quantum small 20:20 Quantum coherence in Photosynthesis, enzymes, DNA mutations and avian navigation 23:00 Life ‘amplifies' the dynamics of stuff going on at the quantum level a to classical level 49:30 University of Surrey ‘Quantum Biology' PHD graduate program 54:30 Science is becoming more and more interdisciplinary 57:00 Biologists sometimes need to go to quantum mechanics to understand their phenomena 01:12:00 The brain is a receiver and a transmitter: Conscious Electromagnetic information theory 01:16:00 William of Occam's ‘Razor' explained 01:22:00 Any sufficiently advanced science would look like metaphysics 01:27:00 Simple models aren't an ontological claim about the world being simple 01:28:30 Bayesian likelihood reasoning makes sharper predictions References: ‘The Emperor's New Mind' Roger Penrose Greg Engel, Quantum Coherence in Photosynthesis paper (2011) Judith Klinman, Quantum Tunneling in Enzymes paper (2006) Thorston Ritz, Avian navigation paper (2004) Johnjoe McFadden, Consciousness: Matter or EMF paper (2022)

What are the implications of Jung's theories about the Collective Unconscious, Archetypes, Synchronicity and Individuation? What can they suggest about the nature of reality and the anomalies of modern science? In this episode we have the fascinating topic of the metaphysics implied by Carl Jung's theories to discuss. Jung is one of the great hero's of this podcast, we covered the collective unconscious in episode #6 and synchronicity in episode #14 for listeners who want to go into detail about that. And the topic of The Shadow is coming up too, so look out for that. But to understand the metaphysical implications of his theories we need a special guest. He is philosopher and author Bernardo Kastrup. Bernardo is the executive director of Essentia Foundation and his work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental (he has a PHD in philosophy). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) (he also has a PHD in Computer science!). He has written many academic papers and books, has appeared on many media outlets and writes regularly for the Scientific American. Today we'll be mostly speaking about one of his most recent books “Decoding Jung's Metaphysics, the archetypal semantics of an experiential universe”. But we do take time first to talk about his scientific and philosophical worldview, as it related directly to Jung's. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 06:40 Materialism VS the church: The history of Idealism 14:20 The dissociative boundary between us and the mind at large 22:20 Neural correlates + interacting across the dissociative boundary 25:50 Anaesthesia: Mistaking unresponsiveness for unconsciousness 29:45 Jung's Metaphysics 31:20 The unconscious is active and creative, not a passive container 38:40 Archetypes are primordial templates of manifestation 39:40 ‘The ego is a little boat floating on a raging ocean of psychic activity that it cannot control' 43:20 Was Jung an idealist? 46:00 Causality + synchronicity: Wolfgang Pauli and Jung 47:10 Individual quantum events are not causal, so they are governed by synchronicities 48:00 Causality itself is an aggregate effect of microscopic level synchronistic effects 01:04:40 Bernardo's midlife crisis - the first and second half of life 01:06:20 Individuation explained 01:09:20 ‘The freedom of the Slave': The impersonal flow of nature channeled through you 01:20:50 Etiology: spontaneous VS deliberate purpose 01:26:20 Interpreting quantum phenomena through an idealist, Jungian lens 01:34:20 Physical quantities only exist if you look, if you measure 01:35:20 Entanglement and materialism's difficulty 01:40:20 The states of the world are not physical but probabilistic states, physical states arise from measurement 01:48:20 Primordial truth beyond space time, is projected into space-time 01:51:50 Evolution is a spatio-temporal projection 01:53:30 Are Psi phenomena and military UAP experiencers manifestations of the unconscious? 02:03:40 Humility in the face of the unknown about the nature of reality References: “Decoding Jung's Metaphysics, the archetypal semantics of an experiential universe” Bernardo Kastrup “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” Carl Jung

What exactly are time and space? What are the implications of them not being as they seem? What is the relational interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? What are the implications of its leading to no universal laws of nature? In this Episode we have the non-linearity of space and time to get our heads around. In Episode #28 with physicist Paul Davies we talked about the implications of Einstein's work in general, and in this episode we delve deeper into the implications of relativity, particularly of time, but also of space and extension. A subject that our guest has worked on extensively. Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who works mainly in quantum gravity research, heading up the Quantum Gravity Group at the Centre de physique Theorique in Aix-Marseille in France. He is also passionate about the philosophy and history of science, so a perfect guest for this show. Rovelli has written many popular science books, including the bestseller ‘The order of Time' which we'll be focussing on today. We're also going to discuss today the release the his new book ‘Helgoland', which champions his favourite Relational Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Being such a philosophical scientist I'm also going to ask him about Intuition, Buddhist philosophy and psychedelics. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 08:05 Time is local not universal 12:32 ‘Block time' is a bad analogy 13:20 The apparent ‘flow' of time from the past to the future 18:00 Entropy's relationship to time 21:15 Is time an illusion? 26:00 Matter and its extension is also relative 27:00 Space is curved 28:00 Back holes are full of space 30:35 Our most obvious intuitions may not be correct 31:00 Quantum Mechanics: Nature is radically and violently different from our intuition 36:00 Probability Matrices and margins of uncertainty 38:00 The wave particle duality and probability distributions 39:00 Why the relational interpretation is the best 46:00 Science is how you think about reality, not just maths 53:00 Our obsession with final truth is illusory, a silly dream 57:00 Buddha's Dependent Origination + Nagarjuna's emptiness 01:02:00 Intuition and altered states of consciousness 01:06:00 Psychedelics, insights and jumps of imagination 01:17:00 A scientific theory of meaning 01:26:00 An intro to Loop Quantum Gravity theory References: ‘Helgoland: The Strange and Beautiful Story of Quantum Physics' , Carlo Rovelli 'The Order of Time' , Carlo Rovelli ‘The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika' , Nagarjuna Empedocles - Greek philosopher 7 Brief Lessons in Physics' , Carlo Rovelli ‘Reality is not what it seems' , Carlo Rovelli

In this episode we have the extraordinary phenomenon of Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) to get our heads around. Thanks to declassification of US government documents and several freedom of information act requests, enough official paperwork and declassified accounts about the top secret Stargate remote-viewing program has been gathered to give credibility to a book Phenomena by Pulitzer Prize finalist and military journalist Annie Jacobson, and a documentary film about this controversial psychic phenomena. The film ‘Third Eye Spies' follows laser physicist Russel Targ, who along with Hal Puthoff, was employed by the Defence Intelligence Agency to do some tests on allegedly ‘psychic' test subjects at the Stanford Research Institute in the early 1970's. This was at the height of the Cold War, when intelligence was coming out of Russia that the military were doing psychic research successfully. To cut a long story short, the experiments were successful and the program went top secret shortly after the scientists published their first results. A protocol for ‘viewing' distant times and places in the minds eye was developed by their first talented subject, Ingo Swann. The program ran for over 20 years costing over 5 million dollars of military funding, which is actually very little for military projects. The technique was used for intelligence work for the CIA, DIA, NSA, the army, and the navy, including assisting the finding of lost aircraft and profiling of Russian bases, before being declassified in the mid 1990's after a CIA report determined the technique wasn't accurate enough, despite getting some good, statistically significant results. After it was declassified, the instructors went over to the private sector and began teaching the technique to members of the general public. Two such instructors were Lyn Buchanan and Mel Riley, who met my guest today Lori Williams; and became her mentors. In 2001 Lori became the first non-military certified instructor. Her experience includes not only teaching the technique but working with law enforcement to assist in missing person cases, conducting professional sessions for corporations that have had a direct effect on profit margins, and working on archeological mysteries. She is also the author of two books about the subject Boundless: Your How to Guide to Practical Remote Viewing, and Monitoring: A Guide for Remote Viewing and Professional Intuitive Teams for anyone who wants to learn more before doing an actual course with an instructor. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 07:20 Controlled Remote Viewing explained 11:20 Being ‘blind' to the target 14:00 No need to be in a theta or meditative state 29:00 Viewing the future: some things in the future seem to be set 30:00 Time loops and retro-causality 32:00 Anyone can do remote viewing 51:00 Viewing future alien technology 01:14:30 Fear of demonic possession and extra-dimensional viewings 01:25:30 Remote viewing structures on Mars and other dimensions References: Lori Williams. Boundless: Your How to Guide to Practical Remote Viewing Free introductory remote viewing course from Lori's school Annie Jacobson ‘Phenomena' Watch ‘3rd Eye Spies' documentary 1995 CIA Report that led to the cancelation of the US govt Stargate program. Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman

In this episode we have the fascinating proposition that what we call reality is in fact a hallucination we all agree on, to consider. We've already heard in this second series in Episode #28 from physicist Paul Davies on ‘The implications of Einstein', that indeed matter is energy and as such the world we see as solid objects with space between them, isn't truly like that. We've also heard from cognitive scientist Don Hoffman that we see the world optimised for ‘fitness' in the evolutionary sense, and not for truth i.e not to see it as it actually is. So in the same vein in this episode we're going to find out from a brilliant neuroscientist that we are in what he calls a ‘controlled hallucination'. That neuroscientist is none other than Anil Seth. Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex. He is also the co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. He has published over 100 scientific papers and is the editor-in-chief of the Oxford University Press publication ‘Neuroscience of Consciousness'. His TED talk ‘Your brain hallucinates your Conscious reality' has more than 11 million views. His new book ‘Being You: a new science of consciousness', which expands on most of what we'll discuss today, is a Sunday times top 10 best seller, and a New statesmen, Economist and Bloomberg book of the year. I've wanted to speak with Anil since I heard about his theory, as it seemed to match some of my worries about the disconnect between what we perceive and what is actually there, and how much of what we see is coming from our own mental and biological state, and our biases at the time. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 05:41 A ‘prediction machine' perceiving from the inside-out, as well as perceiving sensory info outside-in. 10:00 Interoception: predictions about the body for self-control/regulation 14:00 The rubber-hand illusion: the prediction machine is not perfect 19:00 The risk of our best predictions being considered truth rather than hypothesis 23:00 Cultural humility about differences in our perceptions and beliefs 24:15 Why we call reality is a ‘controlled hallucination' 31:30 The body has shaped the predictive brain for survival 34:00 Brain body bidirectionally vs reductionism 37:30 Supervenience 38:00 Can different levels of description be primary to each other? 46:00 The self is illusory References: Anil Seth's best seller, ‘Being you' The Perception Census - Call for participants Immanuel Kant's idea: Noumenon, 'the world is hidden behind a sensory veil' Pareidolia - seeing patterns in things The Dream machine - Interactive flickering light experiment

Is our subjective experience of Free Will, supported by the experimental evidence? If not, how do we take moral responsibility for our actions? Why do meditators, who're used to watching their thoughts arise and pass without identifying with them, find this data easier to integrate? In this episode, we have the tough job of evaluating the experimental evidence for the existence of Free Will. The debate has raged for centuries in Philosophy, but now with advances in neuroscience and psychology experiments, we have some actual physical evidence to examine, and its implications to reflect on. We're going to discuss how most of those who accept this evidence have chosen to carry on as if it they still have Free Will, which sounds contradictory. Do the implications for personal moral responsibility require us to do that? We're also going to get into meditation and Zen, as our guest today and another famous advocate of the illusion of free will, Sam Harris, are long term practitioners. It seems those who use some kind of mindfulness meditation, and hence are used to watching the way thoughts arise and pass without identifying with them, are less troubled by the idea that they may not have free will. What does all this mean for the reality of a ‘self'? So who better to explain this mind boggling question than, our first returning guest, psychologist, author and visiting Professor at Plymouth University, Susan Blackmore. Best known for her books The Meme Machine, Consciousness: An Introduction, and Seeing Myself, Sue's work spans across hundreds of publications in over 20 different languages, making huge contributions in the fields of psychology, memetics, religion, philosophy of mind, supernatural experience, and many other areas. What we discuss (full show notes on the website) 00:00 Intro 04:24 Previous Interview with Susan - Episode #1 on The Hard Problem of Consciousness 08:30 Experimental evidence refuting Free Will 14:30 Daniel Wegner - Thought suppression experiments 19:30 Who is making the decision if not our consciousness? 29:40 Wegner, ‘I let the decision make itself' = Zen: Let the universe or practice do it 40:00 Meditation: frustration, Sam Harris and letting go of free will 50:00 Buddha's ‘dependent origination' and science's causation References: Susan Blackmore - ‘Living without Free Will' Benjamin Libet - Testing readiness potential against the time of choice Daniel Wegner - Thought suppression experiments Susan Blackmore - ‘Conversations on Consciousness' Susan Blackmore - ‘Zen and the art of consciousness'

In this episode we explore a User Interface Theory of reality. Since the invention of the computer virtual reality theories have been gaining in popularity, often to explain some difficulties around the hard problem of consciousness; but also to explain other non-local anomalies coming out of physics and psychology, like ‘quantum entanglement' or ‘out of body experiences'. As you will hear today the vast majority of cognitive scientists believe consciousness is an emergent phenomena from matter, and that virtual reality theories are science fiction or ‘Woowoo' and new age. One of this podcasts jobs is to look at some of these Woowoo claims and separate the wheat from the chaff, so the open minded among us can find the threshold beyond which evidence based thinking, no matter how contrary to the consensus can be considered and separated from wishful thinking. So who better than hugely respected cognitive scientist and User Interface theorist Don Hoffman to clarify all this. Donald D Hoffman is a full professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine, where he studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments. His research subjects include facial attractiveness, the recognition of shape, the perception of motion and colour, the evolution of perception, and the mind-body problem. So he is perfectly placed to comment on how we interpret reality. Hoffman is also the author of ‘The Case Against Reality', the content of which we'll be focusing on today; ‘Visual Intelligence', and the co-author with Bruce Bennett and Chetan Prakash of ‘Observer Mechanics'. What we discuss: 11:20 Seeing the world for survival VS for knowing reality as it truly is 13:30 Competing strategies to maximise ‘fitness' in the evolutionary sense 21:30 The payoff functions that govern evolution do not contain information about the structure of the world 29:30 Space-time cannot be fundamental 37:45 A User-Interface network of conscious agents 41:30 A virtual reality computer analogy 53:30 User Interface theory VS Simulation theory 01:08:00 The notion of truth is deeper than the notion of proof and theory 01:17:30 Is nature written in the language of Maths? 01:27:00 Consciousness is like the living being, and maths is like the bones 01:44:00 Being and experiencing being may co-arise 01:48:00 Different analogies for different eras References: Donald Hoffman - ‘The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes' Nima Arkani-Hamed - ‘Space-time is dead' Nima Arkani-Hamed - 'Reductionism is dead' Local Realism is false Noncontextual realism is false Don Hoffman - Objects of Consciousness paper Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem

What are the implications of Einstein's predictions? Has our understanding of reality integrated the implications of this thinking? His General and Special theories of relativity have completely changed the way we see gravity, energy, mass, space and time, even size - but how? Physicists may find it easy to understand what his ideas mean; like this quote “The distinction between the past, the present and the future is nothing but a stubbornly persistent illusion”. But for us, the general public, just thinking that the the arrow of time is an illusion, is enough to give us a bad headache and leave us wishing that Newton was right after all. But that's not what we do on Chasing Consciousness, our mission is the same as always, to update our world view to match new theories. Now this sounds like no small feat, but have no fear, all will be be clarified by a man with a skill for presenting complex ideas in a way we can all understand, one of the worlds most published popular science writers, Professor Paul Davies. Paul Davies is a Cosmologist and Professor of Physics and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University. His work has covered topics as far reaching as Cosmology, Quantum Fields and Astrobiology, with a sprinkling of the Search for Extra terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and cancer research to boot. He's the bestselling author of almost thirty popular science books, his many awards include the Templeton Prize and the Faraday Prize of the Royal Society. He is a Member of the Order of Australia and even has an asteroid named after him! Quite a career! His new book ‘What's eating the universe', that covers many of the topics we'll touch on today, is out now. What we discuss in this episode: 00:00 Intro 08:00 ‘The universe is about something' 16:00 The warping of space time 22:00 The implications of gravity slowing time 31:25 Time and Space are relative, and can change and move like matter 36:00 Arrow of time VS Block time - ‘Time is just there' 38:30 Matter is energy or Mass is a form of energy 42:00 The table isn't solid, its mostly empty space 44:30 Did time start at the Big Bang? 49:00 Time doesn't flow universally, it's what clocks measure 52:00 3 big origin problems: the universe, life and consciousness 1:03:00 John Wheeler - the ‘bendy rubber' analogy of space time 1:05:00 Einstein's famous quotes explained 1:08:00 Intuition according to Einstein References: Paul Davies ‘What's Eating the Universe: And other cosmic questions' An Einstein Ring (A warping of space time) Full Isaac Newton quote, 'Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external' St Augustine quote ‘The world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time' Nima Arkani-Hamed ‘Space Time is Dead' lecture (from 14.20) John Wheeler ‘Pregeometry' Mach's Principle

How can out of body experiences be explained? What theory of reality could accomodate such a phenomenon? Today we have the extraordinary topic of the science and physics of Out of Body Experiences to get our head around! Many brain scientists have reduced this common experience to a mix of physiological and brain chemical effects, maintaining that no perceiving consciousness actually leaves the body, rather it is a form of hallucination and distortion of body schema. Not knowing when these experiences will spontaneously occur has made them hard to study in the lab. However, certain researchers have developed a method for inducing the experience, allowing for deeper study. Following that study some new theories of reality have developed that could include such an experience and even others like Near Death Experience or NDE, and Controlled Remote Viewing which we're evaluating in this second series. One such scientist is our guest today physicist Dr. Tom Campbell! He's an experimental physicist who's worked for over 20 years developing US missile systems for the Department of Defence, specialising in developing cutting edge technology, large-system simulation, technology development and integration, and complex system vulnerability and risk analysis. He began researching altered states of consciousness with Bob Monroe at Monroe Laboratories in the early 1970s. He helped design experiments and develop the Binaural Beats technology for creating specific altered states, and became an experienced test subject and trainer too. After many years studying consciousness, and out of body experiences he wrote the book ‘My Big TOE', as in ‘Theory of Everything', which describes his model of existence and reality from both the physical and metaphysical points of view. PART 1: Testing Out of Body Experiences 00:00 Intro 06:00 Balanced left right brain thinking 09:00 Out of Body Experience is a bad term, but neutral 13:00 Consciousness is not projected from the body 21:30 Testing Bob Monroe's OBE phenomena 32:00 The experiment that confirmed it was real 36:00 Alpha Numeric information is not the same type as image, pattern or metaphor 46:00 The weirdest stories Tom's encountered 55:00 Non-embodied consciousnesses encounters 01:05:00 Binaural beats to aid getting out of body explained 01:20:00 Theta brainwave is the state you need to be in to explore your consciousness PART 2: The physics of Tom's ‘My Big T.O.E' (Theory of Everything) 01:25:00 Consciousness evolves by lowering entropy, finding more order and structure Full show notes at Chasingconsciousness.net References: My big TOE book series Monroe Institute MBT events (binaural beats) ‘On testing the simulation' One of Tom's scientific papers Tom's You tube channel MBT

What is Panpsychism gaining popularity? Is it coherent to say consciousness emerged out of non-consciousness? What can we deduce from a universe fine tuned for life? In this episode we have the important job of finding out what Panpsychism is all about, and why the philosophical position is gaining more and more traction in philosophy, but even with physicists and other scientists. The idea that consciousness is the fundamental nature of the physical world is by no means a new one, and it does seem to resolve some of the problems of how consciously experiencing lifeforms could have evolved out of non-conscious non-living material. But most materialists balk at the idea and consider it absolutely bonkers, for reasons we'll find out as we attempt to pay respect to the criticisms of the position too. So fortunately, to navigate this tricky philosophical quagmire we have one of the best known and most passionate supporters of panpsychism, author and professor of philosophy at Durham University Philip Goff. Philip's research focuses on how to integrate consciousness into our scientific worldview. He argues that the traditional approaches of materialism, that consciousness can be explained in terms of physical processes in the brain; and dualism, that consciousness is separate from the body and brain, face unresolvable difficulties. His first academic book, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality was published in 2017 and his first book aimed at a general audience, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, was published in 2019. He also has a podcast, Mind Chat, which he rightly hosts with a philosopher of a completely opposite point of view. And he's involved in a book of essays on consciousness which will be out this year called ‘Is Consciousness Everywhere? Essays on Panpsychism', which is a collection of essays by scientists and philosophers published in Journal of Consciousness Studies. The contributors include Carlo Rovelli, Sean Carroll, Lee Smolin, Anneke Harris, Christoph Koch, and Anil Seth, several of whom appear in this series of Chasing Consciousness. What we discuss 00:00 Intro 06:00 The unanswerable questions 09:30 Panpsychism explained 12:30 %32 of philosophers are now opposed to materialism 19:30 Neural correlates don't describe the subjective contents of experiences 21:10 Arguments for Panpsychism 23:00 Consciousness from Non-consciousness: the evolutionary problem 26:20 Materialist counter arguments 44:45 Public observation and experiment is not the full story 54:30 Block Universe implications for panpsychism 01:06:45 Meaning, value and mystical experiences References: Galen Strawon: why he believes Panpsychism Eric Schwitzgebel ‘Crazyism' article Sabine Hosselfeld “Electron's don't think” article David Chalmers on Consciousness might collapse the wave function Full references and show notes at Chasingconsciousness.net

In this episode we learn everything we need about how food relates to our mood and state of mind. We're going to lay out the fundamentals of how different food groups and qualities of food influence directly our mental and physical health; how the gut species depletion and inflammation are key consequences of the changes we're seeing in western industrial diet, and we can counter that tendency with some simple tricks. Alex Laird is a medical herbalist with more than 20 years' clinical experience. Trained in biomedicine and plant pharmacology, she treats patients in the only NHS herbal clinic based in a UK hospital at Whipps Cross, and she is a fellow and council member of the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy (CPP). She worked with Breast Cancer Haven UK for 20 years, using nutritional therapies for cancer. Alex has undertaken clinical research, is a visiting lecturer, has published numerous research papers, and is the co-founder of the charity Living Medicine. She is also the author of the new book ‘Root to stem' which talks about seasonal foods and remedies for strong health and immunity that can be found growing literally in the hedgerow around your house! Please buy me a coffee if you're enjoying the show here What we talk about: 05:00 An epiphany with nature 07:00 Nutritional Psychiatry and the Gut microbiome 08:40 Evolution with unrefined foods VS modern refined sugars 17:00 The need for minerals and phytonutrients 13:10 High protein/ lo-carb approaches 18:10 Variety is key, the research says 20:20 Phytotherapy 21:20 Inflammation explained 26:30 Acidification and pH in the body 33:00 The gut microbiome 40:00 Reciprocity in nature and life: Feeding diversity 44:00 Crucial gut and fecal microbes via vaginal birth 46:00 Contact with soil and pets (spores, fecal microbes) 46:30 Immune response load needed regularly to maintain health 48:30 The overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals 50:20 Gut disbiosis explained and solutions 55:50 Immunity evolved alongside bacteria and viruses and needs their load 58:30 Supporting Innate and adaptive immunity 1:00:00 Germ theory 2.0? - healthy immune response load 1:04:00 The ‘Root to Stem' philosophy - Diversity, reciprocity, interconnectivity 06:00 Our relationship to the seasons sustained by seasonal foods 06:55 Reconnecting to nature, ourselves and to community 01:09:10 Plant medicines we might not be aware of 01:10:25 Phytonutrients explained 01:15:30 Dietary fibres and prebiotics 01:18:10 Fermented foods and probiotics 01:24:00 Connection to nature 01:28:00 Sacred = in service to life References: Alex Laird's association 'Living Medicine' Breast Cancer Haven UK Graham Rook, Old Friends Hypothesis, UCL Karin Moelling - ‘Viruses, more friends than foes' Tim Spector, British epidemiologist and gut microbiome specialist The College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy www.thecpp.uk www.herbalalliance.uk European Scientific Cooperative on Phytotherapy www.escop.com Association of Foragers https://foragers-association.org