What would a post physicalist world look like? So in this episode we’re going to evaluate the evidence presented by psychiatrist and author Dr. Iain McGilchrist, from his extensive analysis of split-brain studies, that support a broader understanding of the mind and reality. One that pushes beyond the traditional reductionist materialist worldview, to include the implicit, the context dependent and the consciousness dependent. He’s just released an epic two part book to clarify all of this, ‘The...
Dec 01, 2021•1 hr 46 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Can Physics shed light on how synchronicity might work? “Synchronicity: A meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” C.J. Jung, from ‘Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principal’ The majority of us have experienced some meaningful coincidences in our lives - perhaps the right person to help with a problem got in touch out of the blue at just the right time to help solve it, or the right book randomly ended up in front of you...
Nov 15, 2021•1 hr 43 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Are our scientific assumptions justified? In this episode we’re going to be examining the assumptions of Western Science. All science is based on assumptions. In order to isolate systems in experiments and standardise measurements of the target data, other variables need to be pinned down so scientists can form precise mathematical models, that can then be repeated accurately in the peer review process. Today we’re going to look at these assumptions, and establish if they indeed have become stan...
Nov 01, 2021•2 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Can intention, attention or expectation affect random physical events? In this episode we’re going to be exploring the subtleties of an odd phenomenon: the Experimenter Effect, where the expectations of the scientist doing an experiment appear to affect the results measured. This is hugely important for the right practice of science, and for understanding why some experiments that seem watertight methodologically can only be reproduced by scientists who expect the same results and not by sceptic...
Oct 14, 2021•1 hr 58 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In episode #11 we explore the way emotions work, and particularly fear - the way it’s triggered, what happens in the brain and how much we are conscious of what’s going on. I think this is really relevant as we appear to be an extremely fearful, defensive and argumentative society in general, and perhaps if we understood what was happening inside us we might be able to limit some of the damage these kind of encounters produce. We also look at the the Limbic System and Triune Brain theories of em...
Sep 30, 2021•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 11
'Psychedelics in a changing World: medicalisation, reciprocity and planetary healing' With: Ben Sessa, Gabriel Amezcua, Nick von Christierson, David Luke, Andrea Langlois & Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner. This is a recording of a fascinating panel chaired by Chasing Consciousness in the talks tent of Medicine Festival programmed by Ruby Reed. It included psychologists, psychiatrists, psychedelic entrepreneurs and activists at the top of their field. The panel gave a nuanced and positive overview of ...
Sep 24, 2021•1 hr 26 min
Can psychedelic therapy help depression? We are now in the middle of the first psychedelic resurgence since the last bout of research in the 60’s and 70’s led by legends of the psychedelic movement like Dr. Stan Grof at Harvard. This resurgence is taking place on two fronts: Firstly, following promising results from Imperial College’s Psidep 1 study into the use of Psilocybin, the active ingredient in Magic Mushrooms, to treat treatment-resistant depression; there has been a host of studies arou...
Sep 15, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this episode we want to understand how easy it is to change our beliefs when we receive new information, a process that can be really uncomfortable and lead to great resistance in the psyche. The scientific community, whilst educated to update their world view based on new information and theory, are by no means immune to this resistance; today we’ll find out to what extent it is just a human trait we have to accept. Now that the scientific method has become more water-tight from our biases t...
Aug 31, 2021•1 hr 34 min•Season 1Ep. 9
How important is story to to human understanding? Today we take a step away from science per se, to look at the role of story in the formation of our world views, for generations our only method alongside direct experience of understanding the world, as opposed the more modern method of hard data from scientific research that we tend to examine on Chasing Consciousness. So we’re continuing the all important job of our first series: to establish the limits of what science can know. And today we’r...
Jul 14, 2021•2 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 8
How easy is it to change our Habits? Today we have the important job of working out what neuroplasticity is all about. 50 years ago we thought the adult brain remained the same after reaching maturity. Now since the discovery that in fact our neural networks remain ‘plastic’, which means adaptable, a host of research has opened up fuelled by our desire to thrive and improve rather than just survive. Along with that knowledge, as so often with popular science, has come a host of exaggerations and...
Jun 30, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 7
How much of our consciousness is shared? In this episode we have the fascinating job of trying to get to get to grips with Jung’s concept of the Collective unconscious. I’ve always loved Jung and I think his ideas can offer a brilliant framework in which to maximise our mental health, to use life’s challenges to harvest meaningful lessons, and just to navigate the subjective experience of being alive. But this is a science podcast, so we do want to get clear on what is just a useful idea and wha...
Jun 14, 2021•1 hr 47 min•Season 1Ep. 6
What's the importance of safety to health? In this episode we’re going to be talking about the neuroscience of safety and how our sense of safety can be hugely important to the way we communicate and learn. Research shows that when we perceive threat, we go into a hyper-vigilant state and certain circuits of the brain shut down to focus on self-protection. If we can become aware of this as it’s happening we can not only use certain tools to mediate it, but we can also help others not end up in t...
May 31, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 5
What does entanglement actually mean? So in this episode we’re going to be trying to get our heads around one of the most extraordinary phenomena ever recorded in subatomic physics: Quantum Entanglement. Famously dismissed by Einstein as ‘Spooky action at a distance’, it has been proved to exist in the lab over and over again since then. This non-local phenomenon is when sub-atomic particles remain connected so that the physical properties of one will affect the other, no matter what the distanc...
May 14, 2021•1 hr 48 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Do we realise we invent explanations? In this episode we look at the extraordinary phenomena of the Left Brain Interpreter, in which a part of the left hemisphere tends to literally invent an explanation for something we’ve perceived or done based on past experience, sometimes in a completely mistaken way. This is a very important phenomena to our first series as we introduce the cognitive limits of our brains, as it shows just how tricky our so called rational mind can be, and begs questions ab...
Apr 30, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Wave or Particle? So in this episode we have the interesting job of trying to get to the bottom of the famous mystery of the Wave Particle duality, and seeing if along the way we can’t bust a few myths about it. We’re also aiming to better understand whether Quantum mechanics can or can’t help us get closer to a complete theory of reality or not, and hopefully find out of it can give us some clues about how matter and consciousness are related. We’re also going to trace the developments and disc...
Apr 14, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Subjective or Objective? In this Episode we’re going to be introducing one of the oldest and most talked about problems in philosophy, the problem of consciousness. Just how does our subjective experience as humans relate to our existence as human bodies with brains? For most of the 20th century you couldn’t really talk about this as a serious scientist without being laughed at and told to study something useful. But since the 90’s, with the advancement of MRI brain imaging in neuroscience, and ...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 1
See www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes for the full program. Here host Freddy Drabble introduces what he'll be covering with his guests in the first 15 part series. Please subscribe and leave a rating and review if you like what you hear.
Mar 15, 2021•4 min
