Chasing Consciousness Podcast

21/12/2023

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? We discuss all this and much more with this incredible interview to celebrate reaching 600K listens and the close of the third series. What an honour to enter a good faith dialogue with such a titan of the cognitive science field. We also discuss in depth the relevance of the work of important thinkers like Jung, Michael Levin and Iain McGilchrist, among many other themes. It was such a deep dive that we didn't get to the Meaning Crisis and Embodiment stuff that are so important to John's work, so he's agreed to come back and discuss them in the next series! Double awesome!
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-51-john-vervaeke-using-our-collective-intelligence

20/12/2023

In Episode #51 on Collective Intelligence, John Vervaeke argues that distributed cognition is fundamental to our species' success so far. He takes it further and says that our post-scientific revolution focus on the Monological framework of knowledge, the individual brain locked away from the world working everything out on its own - needs to be complimented with the dialogical framework of knowledge. This dialogical framework is famous in the philosophy debates of ancient Greece and the birth of democracy, that looks at the society as a hive mind able to progress only by the sharing and building upon of collective knowledge. The extent to which those individuals are connected cognitively was the topic of this hugely rich and informative discussion. We discuss this alongside how distributed cognition works and the relevance of the work of important thinkers like Jung, Michael Levin and Iain McGilchrist, among many other themes. We didn't get to the Meaning Crisis and Embodiment stuff that are so important to John's work, so he's agreed to come back and discuss them in the next series! Double awesome!
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-51-john-vervaeke-using-our-collective-intelligence

19/12/2023

"Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers", Harari emphasises in his book Sapiens. This evolution of human society is based on our ability to include even strangers in a trust network based on their participation in imaginary institutions, by honouring certain norms. "Our main adaptivity was our ability to collaborate in large numbers", Vervaeke echoes in episode #51 on Using our Collective Intelligence. We discuss how important trust in a dialogical understanding of wisdom is, worked out through an entire global civilisation, rather than a monological wisdom held by disconnected individuals, to try and solve some of humanities potentially fatal collective problems. We discuss this alongside how distributed cognition works and the relevance of the work of important thinkers like Jung, Michael Levin and Iain McGilchrist, among many other themes. We didn't get to the Meaning Crisis and Embodiment stuff that are so important to John's work, so he's agreed to come back and discuss them in the next series! Double awesome!
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-51-john-vervaeke-using-our-collective-intelligence

25/11/2023

How does breathwork interact with our nervous system, access memories and help integrate traumatic memories? How does it get results treating auto-immune disease, addiction, acrophobia, PTSD and depression? How can it help sleep, detoxification, digestion, immunity and taking control of negative thought patterns? Acclaimed author and breathwork facilitator Rebecca Dennis answers all these Q’s and more in Episode #50. She even shares her own story of being brought back from the brink of treatment resistant depression with this unique and non-invasive therapy. Let me know what you think?

https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-50-rebecca-dennis-breathwork-explained

25/11/2023

When psychedelic therapy research was banned in the 1960’s Stan Grof and his late wife Christina developed Holotropic Breathing, the first western adaptation of asian conscious breathing meditation techniques used for millennia like Yoga and Kung Fu to name just a few. He discovered that the effects of altered states did not require mind-altering compounds and that body practices like breathing, meditation, sense deprivation, solitary nature immersion and fasting had similar effects. In our interview breathing specialist Rebecca Dennis reminded me that despite this, breathwork is not recommended for many suffering from difficult mental conditions as it can exacerbate their condition in the same way a psychedelic might.

https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-50-rosalind-watts-psychedelic-therapy-explained

24/11/2023

Breathwork has become a highly effective and direct physiological form of therapy. Similarly to EMDR therapy, which was the subject of a recent episode, it bypasses the story of the adverse event, and with it the risk of re-trauma in revisiting the memory, and goes straight to the release of the feeling and thus to a new perspective of the original negative experience itself. My guest in Episode #50 Rebecca Dennis, a student of neuro-regulation, a breathwork facilitator and bodywork practitioner, believes that the long known eastern knowledge of the advantages of conscious breathing is booming in the west in particular now, because we need it so much, as she puts it, “I’ve never seen anxiety with my clients, the way that I do now”. Our episode goes deeply into the neuroscience, psychology and physiological features of this quite ordinary daily event of breathing, that if done consciously can become a quite extraordinary transformational practice.


https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-50-rebecca-dennis-breathwork-explained

06/11/2023

You tube milestone! 550,000 listens too, thanks for all your support so far. Look out for John Vervaeke on Collective intelligence and the meaning crisis next month. https://www.youtube.com/c/ChasingConsciousnessPodcast

04/11/2023

What role does Bioelectricity play in the formation of new organisms? How do cells connect to form a hierachy of ever more advanced cognition, preferences and goals? What are the implcations for regenerative medicine, sense of self and consciousness? I discuss all this and much more in my discussion with biologist and biolctricity specialist Michal levin at TUFTS university. The implications of his departments results in the last 10 years are still being assimilated into the consensus in Biology. Let me know what you think?
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes/episode-49-micheal-levin-bioelectricity-and-the-blueprints-of-life

03/11/2023

“If you don’t think that’s (single cellular) cognition, then you owe a story about what happens when when you go from being that cell to being a human. Where did the cognition kick in? And there is no good story to tell there, and so you know that you’re not dealing with a binary category, you’re dealing with a scaling”. In our interview biologist Michael Levin was adamant that these binary categories, whether about sentience, agency, intelligence, cognition or subjective experience are not only unhelpful but are genuinely wrong - a single fluid continuum being highly preferable. He also speaks about these two charts in the interview to draw attention the continuum at various scales of complexity.
Listen to it to the whole episode here:
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes/episode-49-micheal-levin-bioelectricity-and-the-blueprints-of-life

01/11/2023

An 'Electric Face', is clearly visible in the bioelectric field of the tadpole embryo in this time lapse video; visible when marker dye is activated by fluctuations in the bioelectric field. The white lines clearly move down the nose area before joining at the mouth, and circling back up around the eye socket, before the actual physical features develop. This confounds our old way of seeing morphogenesis. But the truly marvellous thing, is that if you copy the pattern and re-project it onto the embryo in another area, the eyes or mouth grow there instead!
This mapping is the mind boggling work of Dany Adams in the same department as my guest Micheal Levin, at TUFTS university and their work on bioelectricity has massive implications for regenerative medicine and birth defect research.
https://now.tufts.edu/2011/07/18/face-frog-time-lapse-video-reveals-never-seen-bioelectric-pattern

My interview with Michael:
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes/episode-49-micheal-levin-bioelectricity-and-the-blueprints-of-life

25/10/2023

Confused about how quantum reality marries classical reality? We all are, but Roger Penrose’s bold thinking helps us push beyond the incomplete current theories with sound ideas, and humility for the yet unknown. Hats off Roger. Also a great article from Forbes that’s easy to understand.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2023/10/23/testing-a-time-jumping-multiverse-killing-consciousness-spawning-theory-of-reality/?fbclid=IwAR2o5YMExcGExCbfLqT5fL2a47HY-dKI_rRozZZh5WDk3q8rfEibaHgbdnU_aem_AaVaseOA-kCBe8FNplhQaqslSmhn_RfQsmDgTh_YXB3NY1IvcNFFExeKkRNvaHwuMkc

Roger Penrose proposes a conscious observer doesn’t cause wave function collapse. A conscious observer is caused by wave function collapse.

22/10/2023

What did Jung mean by ‘The Shadow’? What did he mean by ‘Making the Unconscious conscious? Why is integrating the Shadow so useful for us and our relationships? Psychoanalyst and author of 18 books on Jung, James Hollis joins us in Episode #48. Apart from the above, we also discuss complexes and oversimplified self-narrative forming, the trickster, meaning VS happiness, the importance of failure and hardship, change and embracing the unknown, and how the ego is not in control but rather like a wafer floating on the vast ocean of the unconscious. Let me know what you think.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-48-james-hollis-the-shadow-and-how-to-integrate-it

22/10/2023

“Happiness is not the objective of life, meaning is”, James Hollis, Jungian psychoanalyst and author, and my guest in episode #48 on ‘The Shadow and how to integrate it'. Cultivating meaning in our lives is fundamental for mental health, and yet we often switch ourselves off to internal meaning and the emotions that inform it, in favour of external measures of success and fulfilment, by now mostly consumerist in nature. Hollis argues this has estranged men in particular from their internal life, at the cost of nature around us, other human life and women and children’s safety and wellbeing, (see the short film he collaborated on, ‘Soul Heal’ in the show notes on this). Meaning is just one of the important themes we expand in this interview for helping us to integrate the Shadow.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-48-james-hollis-the-shadow-and-how-to-integrate-it

21/10/2023

Confronting the discomfort and vast mystery of the unknown, is a large part of Jung's concept of Shadow integration. James Hollis, psychoanalyst and author of more than 18 books on Jung’s work and how we can apply it, has a profoundly poetic but clear and practical way of explaining Jung. In the episode #48 on Shadow integration, he quotes the Roman playwright Terence, ‘Nothing human is alien to me’, suggesting that we have access to the entire repository of human nature via the unconscious; so in some sense making that fact conscious takes away some of the weight of separation from the rest of mankind. This episode is full of stunning language but above all is a good layman’s intro to the Shadow.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-48-james-hollis-the-shadow-and-how-to-integrate-it

14/10/2023

How do quantum computers harness entanglement to increase classical computing’s power? What are the challenges of working with sensitive conditions, like quantum systems? How close are we to a scalable quantum computer? Are women given fair representation and acknowledgement for their contributions in physics and other sciences? Is it improving and how can we overcome the historical bias in science in future?
We discuss all this and much more with Quantum physics professor and author, Shohini Ghose at Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario, Canada.
Her new book “Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe” is out on 17th Oct 2023. Let me know what you think.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-47-shohini-ghose-quantum-computers-and-women-in-science

13/10/2023

Shohini Ghose’s new book, "Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe” comes out in just a few days, and it tells the story of the many female physicists that were involved in big discoveries throughout history. Sadly they are rarely given the credit. or given prizes, and often forgotten by history. In this episode we discuss the difficulties of this phenomenon, and the corresponding justifications for the lower proportion of women in science than men. Shohini’s book is a celebration of these women and an attempt to promote their fair acknowledgment as we head into the future.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-47-shohini-ghose-quantum-computers-and-women-in-science

09/10/2023

The quantum strangeness of probabilistic states, somewhere between the traditional computer bit’s binary 1 or 0, opens up an extraordinary potential for computational power. What is less evident however is how engineers will overcome the challenges of isolating the entangled particles (referred to in quantum computing as Qbits) from interfering particles from outside the system - a really tough job considering some particles pass straight though our entire planet! On top of that there is the difficulty of entangling enough particles simultaneously to get up to the computational level needed to rival classical supercomputers. Some, like my previous guest Vitaly Vanchurin at NIH, believe neural network chips, despite receiving a fraction of the funding will arrive to a higher level much faster. What do you think?
Listen here: https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-47-shohini-ghose-quantum-computers-and-women-in-science

19/09/2023

Interesting research, particularly for those who are stuck in coma.

https://www.freethink.com/health/consciousness-study?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1pLDyKKZnZpErm-P0XpxnYx_Xm63Nm9bAwm7Rg6Y4G1KQPhFFsFNII6nI_aem_Adhu_mW8k8Xx3mH_4Lgf_LNjffcXHwmn_JIv8I5Txa6GKbZrD6_KCOI41mC_yi1daFY =1695130506

Scientists stimulated the brains of macaque monkeys in an effort to determine which areas are responsible for driving consciousness.

19/09/2023

Finally data will be examined for what it is, and we can talk about it sensibly, whether man made or not.

Agency aims to eliminate stigma that surrounds reporting of sightings and ‘shift conversation from sensationalism to science’

17/09/2023

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 our interview, Roy Baumeister, co-author of the most highly cited social psychology paper “Bad is stronger than good” (2001), and the book “The Power of Bad: How the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it” co-authored with John Tierney, explains all the research around these questions, and we also get into other research including that older people think less about the bad, tendencies to hate other groups more than love our own, algorithmic bias, and the science of belonging and self control. I think this awareness of negativity bias is fundamental to continuing our society on a path of progress, hence the devoted episode. Let me know what you think.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/epsiode-46-roy-baumeister-negativity-bias-explained

17/09/2023

Standard of living markers like access to clean water, education, food and healthcare are slowly rising across the world, despite rising inequality and socioeconomic injustice. Yet our bias toward negative news combined with our tendency to see outsiders as a threat, currently being exaggerated by algorithmic amplification, is making us see the world getting worse. Despite the positives of learning from negative events and thus improving the world, this phenomenon is reversing years of progress in global collaboration and fuelling social unrest - further exaggerating our need for investment in defence rather than shared interest. To what extent is this negativity bias just human nature that keeps us prone to danger, and to what extent can we mitigate it to keep this tendency of progress and unity on track? My guest Roy Baumeister and his co-author of “The Power of Bad” John Tierney, use the research to raise awareness and tackle these tendencies.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/epsiode-46-roy-baumeister-negativity-bias-explained

16/09/2023

Research shows that bad events have about 4:1 ratio of higher impact on us than good ones. How fascinating to think that not only does this heavy negativity bias help us stay alive, in terms of being on the look out for threat and negative outcomes - but it also has positive implications for our learning. In our interview, Roy Baumeister, co-author of the most highly cited social psychology paper “Bad is stronger than good” (2001), explains that we need to appreciate the bad things as valuable opportunities to improve, rather than let them drag us down into a victim mentality. We also spoke about the shadow side of this phenomenon, that our skew towards negative news linked with our tendency to see outsiders as a threat, now algorithmically amplified, is leading us to believe the world is exaggeratedly bad, artificially incrementing social division and hindering global collaboration.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/epsiode-46-roy-baumeister-negativity-bias-explained

09/09/2023

How likely is it that there are or have been many times more advanced civilisations than ours around other stars? What data supports the idea that Oumuamua could have been space junk 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? We discuss all this and his new book ‘Interstellar: the search for extra terrestrial life and our future in the stars’, with award winning Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb, in episode #45. His humble attitude towards the vast field of unknown knowledge yet for us to discover, when we consider how young our star and thus our civilisation is, is genuinely refreshing. The high probabilities of more advanced life elsewhere force us to not only keep an open mind, but to really get behind a more targeted search for evidence of life, as it could cause a massive jump in our understanding of human existence, science and technology. Let me know what you think.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-45-avi-loeb-oumuamua-and-interstellar-objects

08/09/2023

In our interview, Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb argues, that not only there’s a strong chance of civilisations millions of years more advanced than our own around much older stars in the galaxy than our own, but also that they will almost certainly have unimaginably more advanced science labs, capable of to us seemingly magical feats like engineering life and even making entire universes in the lab. Here’s the full quote from our chat, “If we find a partner it would change our life, it would give a meaning to our study of the universe: it could explain why we exist If that happens to be a gardener who seeded the earth with intelligent life, or if we realise it can produce life artificially or even make a baby universe in its laboratories, it would have the attributes of a divine entity, what religious texts call God.. the meaning is in the living parts of the universe”. Whether his optimism and imagination is skewing the way his new Galileo Project reads the data remains to be seen, but it’s certainly pushing the scientific community to get behind checking more closely for traces of their existence, namely scanning the solar system more finely for space junk and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, now confirmed as 'population of objects' by the US Office of the Director of Intelligence (see show notes for links) https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-45-avi-loeb-oumuamua-and-interstellar-objects

01/09/2023

Congratulations to professor Avi Loeb, longest serving ex-chair of Astronomy at Harvard University, on his new book, “Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future In the Stars” just out on Harper Collins. Its release coincides with his new claims that a recent meteor came from another solar system, fragments of which his Galileo Project at Harvard has recently retrieved from the ocean floor. In our interview we discuss anomalous date points on various interstellar objects, and the high possibility that eventually we’ll find evidence or relics of extraterrestrial technology, with massive implications for our scientific future and the way we understand our existence. Despite significant push back from his colleagues over details like, how fast a meteor must be moving to have come from outside our sun’s gravitational pull and chemical composition that entails artificially arranged materials, Avi’s logic and faith in following data agnostically is a credit to pushing the fringes of science without extreme claims or exclusions. Bravo!
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-45-avi-loeb-oumuamua-and-interstellar-objects

07/08/2023

What is the stage by stage process of psychedelic therapy? How does it work? Who is it appropriate for? How important are mystical experiences to their success? Are 'bad trips' useful signposts to the areas that need work? Is their a role for the ritual or ceremonial in healing? Why is integration after the experience so important for lasting results? I discuss all this and much more in Episode #44 with clinical psychologist and one of the leading thinkers in psychedelic therapy Dr. Rosalind Watts. Her first hand knowledge, compassion and impressive procedure creation skills really come across in this interview where she put to bed may of my burning questions and doubts about psychedelic therapy. Let me know what you think.
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-44-rosalind-watts-psychedelic-therapy-explained

06/08/2023

The need for integration of the intense experience of psilocybin journeys, as well as having the journeys themselves comes up several times in Episode #44 with Dr. Rosalind Watts, clinical psychologist, psilocybin therapy guide and founder of the ACER integration protocol and community. She argues that this is useful not only for depression sufferers undergoing psilocybin treatment but also for psychonauts and recreational psychedelic users who may have had some intense transformational experiences too. Equally ACER integration communities are as useful for taking pressure off overstretched national health service family doctors and mental health professionals, as they are for coordinators trying to roll psychedelic therapy out to the wider public without having the budget for long term integration sessions. It’s an elegant solution to an old national health resource problem.

"A - Accept, C - Connect, E - Embody, R - Restore
ACER Integration is a year-long cycle designed to provide a framework for more thorough, thoughtful integration.
The cycle is completed in real-time within a closed community. It is this collective aspect that, although proven to be of great benefit to overall wellbeing, is often missing from the Western model of healing.
The cycle’s content was created by drawing on principles of acceptance and commitment therapy, and eco-psychology."
https://acerintegration.com/
https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-44-rosalind-watts-psychedelic-therapy-explained

05/08/2023

The use in the west of psilocybin for healing, was originally inspired from the Mexican Mazatec tradition, after Gordon Wasson published his experience with shaman Maria Sabina in Life magazine in 1957. As a result of this lineage many therapists like my guest Dr. Rosalind Watts, have sought to include shamanic modalities in their understanding of psilocybin as a medicine that can provide healing. As we discuss, sadly, this publicity brought ruin to Maria Sabina, whose village became inundated with westerners seeking revelation, became changed by the influence of psychedelic tourism, and eventually her community turned against her.
This is a clear precedent to both shamanic practitioners and western well wishers who want to spread this further into western culture, that it will be used and abused the way we always have done with stimulants and non-conventional cures. The importance of navigating carefully the reciprocity and cultural appropriation of these traditions is paramount as evidence supporting these treatments grows, particularly as non-human corporate entities without a moral compass begin to wade into the gold rush. https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-44-rosalind-watts-psychedelic-therapy-explained

03/08/2023

What does symmetry and self-similarity between life and intelligence mean for the nature of reality? How are neurones like genes? Taken out of context these questions seem bizarre, but in the context of nested fractal patterns, we have to ask ourselves if there are such mathematical relationships in the biological systems of life, and not just in the forms of nature as Benoit Mandelbrot firmly established? Such ideas form the Fractal Brain Theory of my guest Wai Tsang, that was picked up by Stuart Hameroff and brought to the Science of Consciousness Conference in the late 2010's. I remain unconvinced following this interview but not understanding enough of the maths i am not in a position to judge. Let me know what you think. https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-43-wai-tsang-fractal-brain-theory