What are the contents of Out of Body Experiences? How closely do they map the actual physical world? Is it possible to induce them purposefully? How do modern practices compare to indigenous shamanic ones? In this Episode we look at the scientific, religious, cultural and historical contexts of Out of Body Experiences, also known as astral projection - so the experience in which an individual appears to leave their body and be able to travel around the world and into other dimensions, often meet...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr 29 min
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’r...
Jun 14, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 5Ep. 72
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 psych...
May 31, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 5Ep. 73
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 le...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 5Ep. 72
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 phenomen...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 38 min•Season 5Ep. 71
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 influe...
Apr 14, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Season 5Ep. 70
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 o...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 36 min•Season 5Ep. 69
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 beli...
Mar 14, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Season 5Ep. 68
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 alwa...
Dec 01, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 2Ep. 67
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 consciousnes...
Nov 15, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 4Ep. 64
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 ...
Nov 01, 2024•2 hr 10 min•Season 4Ep. 65
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 g...
Sep 30, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 4Ep. 64
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...
Sep 15, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Season 4Ep. 63
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,...
Aug 31, 2024•1 hr 28 min•Season 4Ep. 62
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 o...
Jul 31, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 4Ep. 61
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...
Jul 14, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Season 4Ep. 60
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 effe...
Jun 30, 2024•2 hr•Season 4Ep. 59
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 t...
Jun 24, 2024•2 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 58
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 p...
May 31, 2024•1 hr 49 min•Season 4Ep. 57
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 g...
May 14, 2024•2 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 56
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,...
Apr 30, 2024•1 hr 31 min•Season 4Ep. 55
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...
Apr 14, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 4Ep. 54
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...
Mar 31, 2024•1 hr 28 min•Season 4Ep. 53
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 seri...
Mar 15, 2024•2 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 52
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 d...
Dec 01, 2023•1 hr 58 min•Season 3Ep. 51
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 ...
Nov 15, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 3Ep. 50
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 Ele...
Nov 01, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 3Ep. 49
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 a...
Oct 14, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 48
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 des...
Sep 30, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 3Ep. 47
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 t...
Sep 14, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 3Ep. 46
