That is the Self? How does a placebo work? Can we train genetic pathways? What is bioelectric memory? What are recent breakthroughs in biology? This and much more in this episode with brilliant Michael Levin.

Michael Levin is a Scientist at Tufts University; his lab studies anatomical and behavioral decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems. Levin's work is particularly innovative in its use of bioelectric signals - electrical signals that cells use to communicate with each other - to guide the development and regeneration of tissues. By manipulating these signals, Levin has been able to induce the growth of new body parts in animals, such as tails and eyes, and even direct the formation of new organs.

Overall, Michael Levin is a fascinating and pioneering figure in the field of developmental biology, whose work is helping to transform our understanding of how living organisms grow and repair themselves.

Michael´s Website - https://www.drmichaellevin.org/

"A self is a collection of parts that are able to work together towards system-level goals." - Michael Levin

Michael´s Twitter - https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin

Timestamps:

00:00 What does Michael do?

07:00 How do we develop from genes?

13:00 Emergence in biology - Electric circuits

20:00 Biolelectric information in an organism

34:00 Hardware Vs. Software and Evolution

38:30 Morphospace

49:00 Goal-directedness biology

55:00 Placebo and can you train Genetic Pathways?

1:05:00 Robots in physiological space

1:07:00 The Self and Identity

1:15:00 Levels of the self

Find out about the most potent and breakthrough supplements with Shawn Wells. Shawn is a nutritional biochemist. He has formulated over 1000 supplements, food, beverages, and cosmeceuticals and patented 25 novel ingredients and is now known as the Ingredientologist - the scientist of ingredients. Formerly a Chief Clinical Dietitian with over a decade of clinical experience, he has counseled thousands of people on natural health solutions such as keto, paleo, fasting, and supplements. And this was one of the best conversations that we´ve ever had because Shawn really goes deep and knows what he is talking about and gave us a ton of insights and practical tips and tools that we can use today to optimize our help. So give it a listen, because it was epic.

Shawns website: https://shawnwells.com/

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Timestamps: 

03:57 Caffein 

16:05 Testosterone 

19:58 Aging 

23:11 Niacin

30:44 Essential micronutrients

48:26 Creatine 

58:25 Outro

Practical Buddhism and Mindfulness, how can they improve our lives on a daily basis? With incredible pleasure, we are presenting our interview with David Michie. David Michie is the internationally best-selling author of The Magician of Lhasa series, The Dalai Lama's Cat series, and several non-fiction titles on meditation and Buddhism. His books are published in over 30 languages and 50 countries. We talked about our subjective experiencing of the world and how to make it maybe a little bit more pleasant throughout our life. We talked about theory and practical things that you can incorporate into your life. Enjoy the show and if you want to support us in any way, please share it with friends!

Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/BrainWeAre and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bwa.podcast/

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTEpKUkN2y6zCuC0AeOauIQ

In an ever-changing world knowing who you are is becoming a super-power. We are infinitely affected and connected to the environment around us. We are biased to fit in, there's always this pressure not to peak out of the ordinary. It has been beneficial at some point in the evolution, perhaps, when we were in a smaller group of people and those were the only people we knew. Any embarrassment there would mean, that we wouldn't spread our genes into future generations, therefore standing out was not selected for. That's the root of social status bias.

Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/BrainWeAre and Instagram 

Follow @ChrisWillxGet his lifehacks here: https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/

TimeStamps:

00:00 Who is Chris Williamson and what does he do? 

02:00 What did Chris love to do as a Child? 

06:40 What questions did Chris ask before starting Modern Wisdom? 

10:00 How to rediscover yourself? 

15:30 Embracing weirdness 

21:55 How do you integrate information into our own life 

27:45 The Good sh*t sticks 

41:15 Non-religious spirituality and evolutionary psychology 

42:15 Have a Red Pill: Free Will - So What?

45:00 Sam Harrises' experience of no free will 

49:00 "Just enjoy the fu*king ride man" 

50:00 Meaning and transcendence 

53:00 Humans as an Inherently transcending creatures 

56:00 Richness of our subjective experience "Just how insane it is to exist" 

1:00:00 Evolutionary Psychology, insight, and mindfulness 

1:04:00 Mindfulness gap 

1:05:30 Favourite mental model: Never Multiply by zero 

1:11:45 What's the most essential thing with mental models - Go into dirt 

1:14:00 Red Pill 

1:18:30 Dating Pareto Rule 

1:22:20 Chris´s daily routines

With incredible pleasure and gratitude, we invite you to our talk with John Vervaeke. John is really interesting to us because not only has he mastered lecturing and talking about these topics with such a passion, but he also lives and is a living representation of the things he talks about! In fact, I believe we lived the things we talked about during the podcast. 

We were talking about John's background, and how did he become interested in these kinds of topics. Thereafter we described what the meaning crisis is and the symptoms of it we can see throughout the world, culture, and ourselves.  

What are the ways to make meaning? What are the lost ways of knowing and how important they are to make sense of the world and optimally grip it. We talked about the ecology of practices both inside and outside of mindfulness and how they lead to insight, wisdom and ultimately meaning as well.   

We described the participatory nature of everything including ourselves and how that's important in cultivating meaning and wisdom. What role does love play in those processes and if you can fall back in love with reality again?  John described what the awakening experience might look like and how meditation and contemplation lead to it.  Last but not least the concepts we've mentioned were modal confusion, what is it, and how to overcome it.  We hope that you are going to enjoy this talk with John as much as we did!

Timestamps:

15:50 Meaning. How your experience unfolds, fits together, and makes sense.  

19:35 Self-deception and modern environment. Wisdom and meaning in life.  

21:00 CUltures and cultivation of wisdom and meaning. Distributed cognition. Meaning crisis.  

26:40 Symptoms of meaning crisis.  

30:13 Core ecology of practices. Mindfulness. Active open-mindedness. Sensory-motor practices. Discourse practice.  

33:20 Awakening from the meaning crisis. Four types of knowledge and the difference between them.  

44:45 Inverted life with conflated meanings of different types of knowledge. Monological mind culture.  

49:56 Insight and its role in wisdom cultivation.  

57:42 Socrates. Socratic faith. Wanting final forever knowledge vs knowing yourself and constant adaptation. Philia Sophia. 

1:05:40 Cognitive flexibility. Change of state of consciousness.  

1:09:13 Being present and catching insight and being aware of and being aware through.  

1:25:22 Fromm, Having and Being existential modes. Agent-arena relationship.  

1:30:05 Developmental needs. Becoming modes.  

1:41:05 Falling in love with reality. Finding real patterns in the world.  The practices John does daily and his videos with expanded explanations on them:  

1:50:10 Dream journaling https://youtu be/rWwmJ912NJU 

1:50:42 Walking and practicing savoring https://youtu be/IeziyBT_Utg , invoking logos https://youtu be/xkfEb1FnRRM 

1:52:30 Tai Chi  https://youtu be/OWiANJeO_yc and Chi Kung https://youtu be/BMqbW0M6VUw 

1:52:39 Vipassana meditation https://youtu be/oszQ5QL11W8, Metta contemplation https://youtu be/IXWB60QaAVA and Prajna https://youtu be/O8rZNE0hVyA  

1:52:46 Lectio Divina https://youtu be/j_dUgJCja48 

Books list: The Enlightned Heart. The Enlightened Mind. Wisdom of Hypatia. The Daily Stoic: 366 meditations on wisdom. Stoic Spiritual Exercises. The 25 Cognitive Biases. Damascius: Problems and solutions concerning the first principles.  

1:53:13 Stoic journaling  

1:54:50 State of wonder. Curiosity - Having Mode. Wonder - Being Mode. Falling in love with being.