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 ...
Aug 31, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Season 3Ep. 45
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 psychologi...
Aug 01, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Season 3Ep. 44
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...
Jul 15, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Season 3Ep. 43
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 o...
Jun 30, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 42
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 Reprocessin...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 41
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 so...
May 31, 2023•1 hr 46 min•Season 3Ep. 40
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 ...
May 14, 2023•47 min•Season 3Ep. 39
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 alr...
Apr 30, 2023•1 hr 33 min•Season 3Ep. 38
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...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 3Ep. 37
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 tec...
Mar 31, 2023•1 hr 58 min•Season 3Ep. 36
What evidence is there for quantum effects 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 phenomena. But new research into quantum coherence in avian navigation, quantum tunnelling in DNA mutations, in enzymes, even in smell - has brought new interest and stu...
Mar 15, 2023•1 hr 33 min•Season 3Ep. 35
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...
Mar 01, 2023•2 hr 18 min•Season 3Ep. 34
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...
Dec 01, 2022•1 hr 35 min•Season 2Ep. 33
What theory of reality could accommodate a phenomena of remote viewing? What are the implications of its success? 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 Puli...
Nov 15, 2022•1 hr 39 min•Season 2Ep. 32
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 sen...
Nov 01, 2022•50 min•Season 2Ep. 31
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 ex...
Oct 15, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 30
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,...
Sep 30, 2022•1 hr 56 min•Season 2Ep. 29
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,...
Sep 14, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Season 2Ep. 28
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 exper...
Sep 01, 2022•2 hr 57 min•Season 2Ep. 27
Why 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 se...
Jul 31, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Season 2Ep. 26
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...
Jul 14, 2022•1 hr 37 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Audio Note: There’s a short background sound at 10 mins, it only lasts for 5 mins and it was during an important a point about the role of feelings in reasoning, which was too crucial to the topic to cut out. In this episode we have the fascinating topic of understanding how feelings play a part in reason and consciousness. We’re also going to be learning how feeling is different from sensing, and if internal feelings and homeostasis, which evolved far earlier than other elements of our perceptu...
Jun 30, 2022•55 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Can we have conscious experiences after clinical death? In this episode we have the bizarre phenomena of Near Death Experiences to examine. The intense experience reported by about %25 of patients whose hearts are restarted after a short time of clinical death, has fascinated researchers for many years going right back to Plato. However, advances in cardiology techniques in the last 50 years have permitted doctors to save many more people, and thus to study the phenomenon in a controlled manner:...
Jun 28, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 23
How do we integrate the intense experiences of psychedelic therapy for long term benefits? Can we apply those learnings to existential exploration in general? In this episode we have the fascinating topic of ‘psychedelic integration’ to get our head around. Integration is a crucial part of any psychotherapy process, but perhaps even more so when those suffering experience psychedelic compounds in their treatment program. Many subjects of the new psychedelic treatments for depression and ADHD, ha...
Jun 01, 2022•59 min•Season 2Ep. 22
This episode covers the fascinating science of mindfulness meditation. The massive explosion in popularity of meditation, has brought about a quiet revolution to the frantic western mind with the result of a complete change in our societies approach to stress management, happiness and well being. Today we’re going to get to the bottom of what happens to the brain when we meditate and why it’s so beneficial. But we’re also going to find out what happens to our levels of happiness, satisfaction, m...
May 15, 2022•41 min•Season 2Ep. 21
In this episode we have the challenging job of getting our head around the psychology of altered states of consciousness or ‘exceptional human experiences’ as today’s specialist calls them. Are they mere illusions of the mind? Does their ability to radically change our world view and sense of meaning in the world give them a special status in psychology and mental health? And how do we talk scientifically about significant similarities between such experiences across different times and cultures...
Apr 30, 2022•1 hr 30 min•Season 2Ep. 20
In this episode we have the extraordinary theory of Biocentrism to consider: the hypothesis that the space, time and matter arose from life, and not the other way around. This theory obviously flies completely in the face of material science’s Darwinian view that life and consciousness evolved slowly out of ever more complex systems of matter. Now we’ve heard in multiple interviews on the show so far that similar theories like Panpsychism, the hypothesis that consciousness is fundamental to the ...
Apr 14, 2022•59 min•Season 2Ep. 19
In this episode we look at an alternative child psychology approach to parenting and care-giving, than perhaps the one we’re used to from our own childhoods: one based on connection rather than threat based motivations. This episode is a little closer to home than usual, as a few years ago we hit the wall with our eldest boy, who after the birth of our second child when he was 6, became extremely aggressive and uncontrollable. This led us to try Hand in Hand parenting, and we got an improvement ...
Mar 31, 2022•1 hr 50 min•Season 2Ep. 18
In this episode, we have the tough task of examining the evidence that our society is losing its ability for prolonged attention, focus and concentration. We talk about what are the main factors leading to this, and what we can do to mediate it individually, but also collectively through regulation if necessary, before it becomes intergenerational. Is this also another symptom, like depression and addiction, of growing up with less and less face to face social connection and non-focused attentio...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Season 2Ep. 17
How likely is it that we live in a simulations? Are virtual worlds real? In this first episode of the 2nd Series we delve into the fascinating topic of virtual reality simulations and the extraordinary possibility that our universe is itself a simulation. For thousands of years some mystical traditions have maintained that the physical world and our separated ‘selves’ are an illusion, and now, only with the development of our own computer simulations and virtual worlds have scientists and philos...
Mar 01, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 16
