What are the implications of the discovery of the chemical variation of water, nicknamed “The 4th phase”? What does the new structured chemical composition mean for the storage of energy and information? What can we learn from the discovery that electrical charge plays a role in the way water moves and transports other molecules?

In this episode we have the fascinating new science of water to get into, particularly the research around the discovery of the gel-like chemical variation of water, nicknamed the “4th phase”. It occurs when water gets close to water friendly surfaces, and as it changes chemical structure, it separates into positive and negatively charged components. So we find out how this particular form of water is used by nature; how its structure can be ‘charged’ by infrared energy from the sun like a solar cell, becoming an energy source that can do work. We also separate the wheat from the chaff on the controversial ‘memory of water’ claims of Maseru Emoto and Nobel prize winner Luc Montagnier; and we discuss why there is so much resistance to this research despite the ubiquity and importance of water in biological systems.

Fortunately to navigate this cutting edge research and avoid wishful thinking, we have the director of Pollack Labs at the University of Washington, one of the most established lab’s studying water in the world, Bioengineer, professor Gerald Pollack. He is the author of over 300 scientific papers, and four books for the general public including ‘Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life’, ‘The 4th Phase of Water’ and his new book just out ‘Charged - the unexpected role of electricity in the workings of nature’. 

What we discussed:

00:00 Intro.

10:00 The role of electricity in nature.

15:25 The Earth has a negative charge & the ionosphere positive.

19:00 The old consensus on water.

23:00 Gilbert Ling - cellular water is charged and so the molecules stack.

26:15 The transition of chemical structure when in contact with hydrophilic surfaces.

27:45 Exclusion-Zone Water = Liquid Crystal Water.

32:45 Changes chemical structure and electrical charge.

35:00 Add light or electrons to build EZ Water.

37:30 Grounding - is there any evidence?

38:20 It’s an energy source, a battery charged by infared light.

42:15 The difficulty raising money for ideas that go against the consensus.

46:15 The threat to an old world view.

48:30 The Brownian motion criticism of the data.

49:00 Electrical energy generation in cells.

56:00 The cardio vascular, blood flow energy issue.

01:05:45 We’ve misunderstood membranes.

01:13:00 The gel itself might be a barrier.

01:14:00 Purification of water using the exclusion process.

01:19:00 Difficulty getting business funding for the applications.

01:24:00 Cancer cells have a lower negative charge. Perhaps a lack of EZ water.

01:26:00 How information is stored in structured water.

01:31:00 Luc Montagnier - water claims confirmed in 3 studies.

01:39:00 Jacques Benveniste - dubbed ‘water memory’.

01:40:30 Masero Emoto - Dean Radin confirmed his result.

01:44:45 Non-verbal communication.

References:

Gerald Pollack, “Charged: The Unexpected role of electricity in the workings of nature”

Gerald Pollack, “The Fourth Phase of Water”

Earth’s negative charge, Richard Feynman Volume II, Chapter 9 of The Feynman Lectures on Physics, titled "Electricity in the Atmosphere”. 

Gilbert Ling - Polarised-Oriented Multilayer Theory

Harold Hillman - ‘A radical reassessment of the cellular structure of the mammalian nervous system’

How can consciousness emerge from non-conscious material? If there is only one type of stuff, how is the potential for consciousness encoded in the building blocks of the universe?

In this episode we have the ancient philosophical mind-body problem to get our heads around, and the ever more popular solution, panpsychism: That is, the belief that everything material, no matter how small, has always had a component of consciousness in it. We get into what consciousness is, why it’s not an illusion; into subjective experience; we cover the rich history of the mind-body problem in philosophy, and we also confront the apparently magical emergence of consciousness from non-consciousness by exploring the arguments for panpsychism, and how new understandings from the last 100 years of science might change preconceptions about a panpsychist solution.

Fortunately, to understand this we have the hugely experienced author and analytical philosopher of mind, for many years at the university of Oxford and now at the university of Texas, professor Galen Strawson! Alongside over 140 papers, he has also written 12 books including “Consciousness and its place in nature”, “Things that bother me: Death, Freedom, the self etc” and his new book “Stuff, Quality and Structure”.

What we discuss:

00:00 intro

05:30 ‘Naturalism’ as a position.

07:00 Qualia explained.

09:30 There’s only one kind of stuff: identity metaphysics.

12:00 A criticism of life as narrative story.

14:30 what is the self?

17:20 There is no mystery of consciousness.

19:15 Locke’s Primary and Secondary Qualities clarified.

21:45 The history of the mind-body problem.

27:30 The interaction problem VS the combination problem.

30:30 Radical emergence of consciousness from non-consciousness is impossible.

32:30 The arguments for panpsychism.

34:00 Psychophysical laws - David Chalmers.

35:00 The rise of panpsychism.

36:30 Different types of panpsychism.

41:30 Separating between conscious stuff, and subjects of consciousness.

48:30 Cosmopansychism - patterns of excitation in the quantum field.

50:00 Cellular cognition - Agential behaviour is not proof of experience.

54:00 ‘Matter is energy’ assists panpsychist intuitions.

56:15 Who demands evidence is begging the question.

01:02:30 “A Global Replace” of consciousness in matter.

01:03:30 How would a world of panpsychist science look?01:06:30 Neuroscience: neural correlate reductionism.

01:09:30 Feelings evolved before reasoning.

01:11:30 Being is energy; being is becoming; being is qualititivity; being is mind.

01:13:15 A cosmological mind.

01:16:15 Teleology and Meaning.

Quote:Lee Smolen, “Qualia must be understood as aspects of nature, that is our commitment to naturalism, the philosophy that asserts that all that exists is part of the natural world science studies.”

References:

Galen Strawson, “Mental Reality”, 1994

Galen Strawson, “Against Narrativity” paper. 2004

Galen Strawson, “Realistic monism - why physicalism entails panpsychism”, 2006

Galen Strawson, “Mind and Being, The Primacy of panpsychism”, 2017

What are memes and why do some replicate while others disappear? Are the memes selected for always for the benefit of the host culture? How are our new technologies changing the way memes feedback into our cultural evolution?

In this episode we have the slightly disconcerting ideas of Memetic theory to get our heads around; as we learn how successful ideas and information are replicated by humans before being re-transmitted back out into world. We’ll see how these memes evolve our culture and minds over time, similarly to how our genes evolve through natural selection. But concerns will arise when we realise that this replication is not only selected for memes that are good for human evolution, and so memes seem to take on some type of evolutionary survival of their own. So when we now find ourselves in an internet era, with AI algorithms replicating ideas in an artificially amplified feedback loop with our own human memes, we get a cultural run away train, in which we are not really in control of our own culture and ideas.

So fortunately, to get our head around this tough topic we have one of the inventors of the field, author of the 1999 book “The Meme Machine”, and by now, in her third appearance on Chasing Consciousness, our in-house sceptic - psychologist, philosopher, broadcaster and author Susan Blackmore. She’s best known for her books "Zen and the Art of Consciousness, Consciousness: An Introduction", and "Seeing Myself". Susan’s work spans across hundreds of publications in over 20 different languages, making huge contributions in the fields of psychology, memetics, religion, philosophy of mind, supernatural experiences, and anomalous experiences.

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro.

04:00 Using Natural Selection to apply to the imitation and thus survival of ideas.

06:35 Successful imitation of behaviours came first.

07:35 The ideas that get copied more, for whatever reason, survive longer.

08:40 Language allowed better copying and feedback.

12:10 Memplexes: an analogy of co-adaptive gene-complexes.

14:20 Sue’s scepticism of quantum theories of consciousness.

14:40 Ideas are memes but experiential knowledge is not.

19:05 Concern: Memes themselves are the beneficiary of selfish replication, not the host culture or minds.

22:50 Human rights memes run against genetic replication needs.

26:05 The taboo around memetic theory.

32:40 “Tremes” - technological imitations independent of humans - a third replicator.

40:00 Social media algorithms as super-treme replicators.43:50 Too fast turn around of ideas, hyper vigilance and negativity bias.

47:50 Over stimulated, fast societies - Negative mental health outcomes.

48:20 The implications of artificial general intelligence in terms of Tremes.

53:05 Technology as an extension of our culture.

57:40 Max Tegmark’s “Moloch” allegory.

References:

Susan Blackmore, “The Meme Machine”.

Richard Dawkins - “The Selfish Gene”

What are the benefits and risks of developing advanced AI? What kind of safety precautions could we take? Could we risk never making future discoveries, by over-limiting today’s AI in pre-emptive safety regulations?

In this episode we get a sceptical evaluation of the complex debate that’s currently raging on artificial Intelligence safety, aiming to get a balanced view of the extremely useful applications versus the currently hugely publicised existential risks, and evaluate the safety measures and legislative frameworks that are being considered to help avoid risk to humans. To do this we trace the path from today’s artificial intelligence right up the ever steeper curve towards artificial super intelligence; we risk risk assess the unpredictability of emergent properties of such systems; we assess the future of work, and the potential loss of control of our culture as AI starts to outnumber us and generate more and more of the media we consume.

My guest today has a unique take on these issues which took me by surprise, as he disagrees with the alarmism and call for harsh regulation, whilst openly predicting that emergent properties will more or less guarantee safety hazards. The fact that he has been at the cutting edge of computer science for over 40 years, creating computer language and Ai solutions, makes him well placed to provide a counterpoint to the AI safety campaigners calling for collective action. He is of course physicist, computer scientist and tech entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram. In 1987 he left academia at Caltech and Princeton behind and devoted himself to his own computer systems at his company Wolfram Research. He’s published many blog articles about his ideas, and written many influential books including “A new kind of science”, “A project to find the fundamental theory of physics”, and “Computer modelling and simulation of dynamic systems”, and most recently “The Second law” about the mystery of Entropy. 

What we discussed:

00:00 Intro. 

06:30 Stephen’s first forays into neural nets in the early 80s.

09:30 Cellular Automata.

11:00 Can you make the knowledge of the world available via computers?

13:00 Wolfram Alpha: A non-AI AI. 

17:45 Can AI solve science?

22:00 AI is great at rough answers, worse at the detail.

33:00 Artificial General intelligence, A.G.I.

42:00 The pros & cons of super intelligence.

47:40 Chat GBT’s unpredicted peculiarities.

54:00 The spread of mistruth. 

58:00 AI and the future of work.

01:05:20 Businesses leading automation push.

01:09:00 AI will outnumber us and network, changing our culture.

01:11:00 AI will follow a banal ‘mean’.

01:16:30 The AI Safety debate.

01:21:00 We have no choice, it will be developed anyway.

01:22:00 Ai systems may have feelings, we don’t know.

01:25:00 Stephen’s non-interventionist safety approach.

References: 

Stepehn Wolfram, “A project to find the fundamental theory of physics”,

Stephen Wolfram, “The Second Law” 

The History of “Neural Nets” since 1943, (Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts paper)

Stephen Wolfram, “Can AI solve science?” article

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 meeting other worldly entities, similarly to DMT psychedelic experiences, (see Episode #73, “DMT Entity Experiences”). So, we get into the phenomenology- the various things people experience; potential neurobiological explanations; and the possibility of inducing the experiences on purpose and of exploring alternate realities; we get into indigenous traditions of ‘Shamanic flight’ and which people might be predisposed to these alternate states of consciousness; and we end up talking about a potential connection between OBE, sleep paralysis and ludic dreaming.

To discuss this slippery topic, we have a researcher who is also a lifelong experiencer, who has devoted her career to trying to understand these phenomena, the medical anthropologist and author Samantha Lee Treasure; she has an MA in Medical Anthropology from SOAS university in London, has been a brain science research assistant at the University of Liege, and has just released her first book on the topic, “Out of Body experiences”, the release of which this episode is timed to coincide with.

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro.

11:30 What is medical anthropology?

16:00 OBE entity research.

22:15 Samantha’s New Book - getting beyond preconceptions.

25:50 OBE vs Astral projection - bypassing the taboo.

30:00 Common reported OBE experiences.

33:00 Mental body schemas and projected models of the world.

37:00 Do OBE’s map the real world accurately?

45:00 Olaf Blanke - the Temporoparietal junction discovery.

48:45 No sense of smell during OBE nor processed by the TPJ.

49:40 Techniques to induce OBE’s intentionally.

53:45 Bob Monroe’s perspective switching technique.

55:30 Shamanic flight practices in Tuva, Siberia.

59:35 The sonezen - the perceiving mind self.

01:01:00 This is not for everyone, it can be scary.

01:05:00 The predisposition for some to have these experiences.

01:10:45 Crossovers between NHI Contact and OBE entity experiences.

01:14:20 Genealogical predispositions.

01:18:25 “Reality Shifting” and the role of intention in OBE.

References:

Samantha Lee Treasure, “Out-of-Body Experiences: Explorations and encounters with the astral plane”.

Stephen Le Berge, “Pre-sleep treatment with Galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming” paper

Olaf Blanke, “Linking out-of-body experience and self processing to mental own-body imagery at the temporo-parietal junction” paper.

Charles T Tart - 6 Studies of OBE.

Graham Nicholls, “Navigating out of body Eperiences”.

Yurgan Zeiwe - “Multi-Dimensional Man”.

RosalieYoga, Monroe Sound science guided meditations,You tube channel.

“Out-of-body experience in vestibular disorders – A prospective study of 210 patients with dizziness” paper.

Celia Green & Charles Mc Reery, “Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness during Sleep”.

Anthony Peake, “Near Death Experiences”.

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’re going to be getting into the co-evolution of the geosphere and the biosphere on earth and their corresponding feedback loops; the possibility of planetary level intelligence; the difficulty of laying a technosphere on top of the geo and biosphere, and the risk of civilisations wiping themselves out before learning how to harmonise the technosphere with the biosphere; We’ll be looking at the changes in the field of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Terrestrial Intelligence), since we can now identify potentially life sustaining exo-planets in nearer parts of the galaxy; we’re going to get into the newly funded search for techno signatures from advanced civilisations, and potential space junk from the many civilisations that presumably didn’t make it; lastly we’re going to discuss recent claims of ancient and alleged present visitations to earth by extra terrestrial intelligence.

Fortunately to face these tough and complex issues, our guest is a world specialist in astrobiology, with a talent for making these topics fun and imaginative, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, Professor Adam Frank. He’s the author of over 200 scientific papers and 6 books for the general public including, “The Blind Spot: why science cannot ignore human experience” and “The Little book of Aliens” which we’ll be focussing on today. He’s also an award winning science communicator, on a mission to raise public awareness about existential risk and science in general.

What we discussed:

00:00 Intro.

05:20 The importance of experience.

07:00 The limits between the expressible and the inexpressible.

09:10 Semantic Information: life as self organising, autonomous agents.

15:00 There’s stuff you can’t talk about - there’s only the silence

16:20 The Basian probability of other life in the universe.

20:00 The ingredients for life on this earth.

22:30 The codependence between Geo and Biosphere.

22:60 Gaian feedback loops. 

27:00 The earth is not conscious but it is an agent.

29:45 Mind is a process, it’s not just in the head.

33:25 The fluidity of individuality.

34:30 Distributed Cognition - bacteria, fungal networks etc.

38:30 A fundamental reimagining of what we mean by ‘Nature’.

39:30 There is no disembodied perspective.

41:00 Geosphere to Biosphere to technosphere maturity.

47:30 The biosphere offers a model for what planetary intelligence looks like.

48:00 The history of search for extra terrestrial Intelligence, SETI

49:00 The Drake equation - 7 requirements for intelligence life.

53:45 We’ve never looked - a tiny amount of the sky has been studied.

54:00 Exoplanets: searching for biosgnatures and techno signatures.

56:00 Technospheres: Kardeshev scale and Dyson Spheres.

59:00 Techno junk from dead civilisations.

01:02:30 UFO’s need more data to be taken seriously.

01:08:20 UFO’s could be surveilling their spy tech.

01:10:00 Pros and Cons of solar system settlement.

References:

Adam Frank, Evan Thompson, Marcelo Gleiser, “The Blind Spot: Why science cannot ignore human experience”.

Adam Frank, “The Little Book of Aliens”

Adam Frank, David Grinspoon, Sarah Walker - Intelligence as a planetary scale process.

Lynn Margulis - Evolutionary Biologist.

David Krakauer et al, An information theory view of individuality

Frank Drake - ⁠Project Ozma⁠

Jason Wright - SETI meta-analysis

Exoplantets.org

Adam Frank - New York Times ‘I’m a Physicist Who Searches for Aliens. U.F.O.s Don’t Impress Me’ article

"The Expanse", Apple TV series

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 psychedelic that most often presents entities that interact meaningfully with the experiencer; we’re going to discuss the different types of entities: from mythological creatures, to Gods and Demons, to machine elves and aliens, and the significance of these same characters appearing significantly often without an obvious primer; we’ll also discuss the importance of mystical experience and teacher /guide experiences to positive mental health outcomes.

Fortunately our guest was the head researcher on a 2022 paper that looked at exactly this topic, the medical doctor and sports scientist professor at the University of Toronto, Dr. David Wyndham Lawrence. He’s published over 35 scientific papers across sports science and psychedelics for medical use.

What we discussed:

00:00 Intro

05:20 Concussion, sports mental health & psychedelic therapy.

08:10 Bringing in Robin Carhartt-Harris on the gaps in sports mental health treatment.

12:06 Why psychedelics for those already in psychological difficulty?

14:04 Serotonin receptor - neuro-protective mitochondria function.

15:00 DMT is endogenous to the brain. 

18:20 Medical institution meets shamanism.

23:50 David’s DMT phenomenology paper.

30:10 The architecture of the DMT world.

32:60 Mostly positive, interactive entity encounters.

37:05 Occasionally negative encounters.

38:40 Negative psychedelic experiences study - Jules Evans.

40:05 How much “Primers” from pop culture influence experiences.

44:00 Alien encounters in %16 of participants.

45:30 Medical procedures by entities in 9% of participants.

47:05 Mystical experiences in %70 of participants.

49:00 Familiarity/ sense of home in the experiences.

52:20 Default Mode Network is less active during altered states.

48:35 Ego dissolution Vs mystical experience.

01:00:00 5meoDMT Vs DMT.

01:03:20 Wise teacher experience in 32% of participants.

01:05:20 Death bed palliative doses to alleviate fear of death.

01:09:50 ‘You’re not ready for this experience’ message.

01:11:05 Theories of DMT experiences evaluated.

01:12:20 ”All models are false but some are useful”, anonymous statistician.

References: 

David Lawrence, “Phenomenology and content of inhaled DMT” 

David Wyndham Lawrence and Robin Carhart-Harris, “Sports Medicine, Mental Health & Well-Being, and Psychedelics” 

Benny Shanon,  “Antipodies of the Mind”

Matthew W. Johnson - Johns Hopkins

Andrew Gallimore - “Death by Astonishment”

Jules Evans et al, “Extended difficulties following the use of psychedelic drugs”

Similarities between DMT and Alien encounters paper

David W. Lawrence, “DMT Occasioned Familiarity and the Sense of Familiarity Questionnaire”

Roland Griffiths, “Psilocybin produces substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer”

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 learning and for immunity. We’re also going to discuss the wide range of serious health issues that arise with even a small sleep deficit, and the vast benefits of getting sleep right; and the lifestyle tips we need to consistently get the sleep we need. And of course, sleep and mental health, and the importance of sleep for development in young people.

Gratefully our guest today is a psychologist and neuroscientist that specialises in sleep, mental health and dream research, particularly in young people. She’s the Scientific Director of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, Roxanne Prichard! She’s the author of over 40 highly citied scientific papers, and her TEDx talk “Addressing our Childrens Sleep Debt” was featured in the lecture series: Transforming Education. She’s quoted regularly in the press, inlcuding the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, and USA Today.

What we discussed:

00:00 Intro.

05:00 The Sleep deprivation epidemic.

07:15 Shaking off prejudice about resting being laziness.

08:31 Glymphatic system for toxin removal.

10:00 Synaptic plasticity: Learning & unlearning.

11:10 Learning & memory require sleep.

14:00 The hippocampus processes memory during sleep.

15:00 Late night cramming for exams blocks learning.

15:50 Lack of sleep appears to the body as a threat out in the world.

17:40 Blood sugar regulation is affected by sleep.

18:00 “Sleep! Like diet and exercise only easier!”

19:10 Immunity and sleep deprivation.

21:00 Cancer & regularity of circadian rhythms.

22:00 Evolution, daylight, circadian rhythms & learning.

23:45 Sleep delay of morning stress hormones in teens.

26:15 Light Vs Deep ‘Slow Wave’ Vs REM sleep.

30:00 REM Sleep explained.

33:00 Dreams: The top theories.

36:30 The electrical nature of sleep & brain waves.

40:00 Alpha Waves and biofeedback for insomnia.

42:00 Insomnia & the health risks of sleep deprivation.

46:00 Sleep is within our control.

47:15 The inflammation link with sleep.

49:30 The mental health risks of sleep deprivation.

50:00 Catastrophising and attention deficit.

50:45 College students mental health & sleep as a crucial marker.

57:30 Persausive technology, screens & sleep.

01:02:30 How much sleep do we need?

01:04:25 Avoid external stimulants & go to low light.

01:06:00 Avoid internal stimulants like caffeine and alcohol. 01:07:40 Sleep and wake at regular times every day.

01:08:40 Core temperature dropping signals sleep.

01:10:00 Roxanne’s campaign points.

01:12:00 The shame around rest.

References:

Ya Chai at al, ‘Two nights of recovery sleep restores hippocampal connectivity but not episodic memory after total sleep deprivation’ paper.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65086-xN.I.H. article, 'Sleep on it - How snoozing strengthens memories' (40% drop in learning after sleep deprivation)https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2013/04/sleep-itU. Chicago Medicine article, 'New study helps explain the link between sleep loss and diabetes'.

Trisha Hershey, ‘the Nap’ Bishop. - “Rest is Resistance” book.

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 phenomena. We’re going to be learning about the experiments with random number generators used to test this hypothesis; how human intention and attention has been proved to be able to affect these random outputs in a vast backlog of positive results and meta analyses; We're going to hear about how these experiments have been taken global, looking at collective effects on RNGs of particularly important world events that many people are attending to; we’re going to be looking at criticisms of the statistical analysis and a potential experimenter effect; and we’re going to be talking about the contrast between some seemingly non-local effects with other localised effects; and as always we’re going to be getting into the implications, in this case of whether the ‘field consciousness’ effect the data seems to point to, is more likely to be a unified field of consciousness, so in some sense a single mind, or simply the aggregated sum of all individual consciousnesses.

Now fortunately to guide us as we carefully test the thickness of the ice on this genuinely alternative world view of consciousness, we have the cognitive psychologist that has pioneered these field consciousness experiments since he founded the Global Consciousness Project at the Princeton University PEAR labs, Roger Nelson. Roger worked at Princeton’s PEAR labs in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, initially under Bob Jahn, for over twenty years until his retirement in 2002. He is also the author of the book “Connected: The emergence of global consciousness”.

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro.

07:30 Random Number generator ‘mind-matter interaction’ experiments at Princeton PEAR labs.

21:10 Bob Jahn - Dean of Engineering at Princeton.

28:45 Emotional and passionate group events saw coherence in the RNG experiments.

33:00 Contrast between apparent local and non-local effects.

37:55 David Bohm’s Implicate / Explicate order concept.

38:55 “Pilot wave” and “active information” link between the implicite and the explicate.

43:55 Statistical results generation and analysis of significance.

49:05 The sceptics criticisms.

51:45 The Global Consciousness Project methodology.

53:05 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s mind sphere, called ‘Noosphere’.

57:45 Measuring the group coherence of Princess Diana’s funeral.

01:00:25 The 9/11 Results.

01:05:55 The emotional component in coherence.

01:18:40 The quantity of people and strength of the emotion, whether positive or negative, raises the effect size.

01:11:10 A single collective consciousness VS an aggregate of all individual consciousnesses.

01:14:50 Different levels of collective consciousness above individual bodies.

01:16:55 The analogy of individuals being like neurones in a cosmic brain.

01:20:55 The Experimenter effect criticism.

01:26:10 The Helmut Schmidt “Unobserved tape” experiment.

01:29.10 The indeterminate state before observer ‘collapses of the wave function’ analogy to explain results.

01:37:25 The Schmidt ‘retrocausation’ hypothesis.

References:

Roger Nelson, “Connected: the Emergence of Global Consciousness”

Robert Jahn And Brenda Dunn, “Margins of Reality”

International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) Publishing.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Phenomena of man”

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 influence and even treat mental health conditions. We’re going to be discussing the historical separation of mind and body by science, which has led to scepticism that diet could influence mental health outcomes; the new understanding of the importance of diversity in our microbiome and inflammation to our mood and mental state; our main topic which is going to be the radical results of recent trials showing large changes in cognitive and mental health outcomes when diet is altered; we’ll get into the foods that can bring about that change and why they work; and we’re going to be getting into the reasons for the broken industrialised food environment that has contributed to the current mental health epidemic in the west.

Fortunately, to understand this complex new field, our guest today is the very scientist that risked her reputation to conduct the first trials, facing considerable pushback, only to shift the consensus remarkably quickly with some top science, Felice Jacka. She is the Deakin University Distinguished Professor of Nutritional Psychiatry in Melbourne, the founder and director of the Food & Mood Centre, and of the International Society of Nutritional Psychiatry; She has been cited in over 100 institutional directives for food policy including the World Health Organization and UNICEF; and she is also the author of two books on this for the general public, the children’s book “There’s a Zoo in my Poo” and for adults “Brain Changer: How diet can save your mental health” which we’ll be covering today. Her impact has been so high on public health that in 2021 she was awarded the Order of Australia for her services to nutritional psychiatry.

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro

08:50 The historic separation between mental and physical health.

10:35 People with mental health die about 20 years earlier.

13:30 The connection between the immune system and mental health.

16:20 New microbiome & chronic inflammation research’s influence on psychiatry.

20:00 Epigenetics, mitochondria (energy generation) & neurotransmitter influences.

21:15 Gut brain axis & oxidative stress response.

33:30 The SMILES trial results and their integration into the consensus.

38:30 Using the Press to shorten the usual 20 year gap between results and policy change.

43:00 Industrialised food is the leading cause of chronic disease & biodiversity loss.

45:00 ‘We’re not going to tell people what to eat’: the food lobby’s ‘nanny state’ argument.

50:00 Soil depletion and the soil microbiome.

50:50 The life-style psychiatry movement: Diet, sleep and exercise.

01:05:30 Take out ultra-processed foods - even the nutritionally balanced ones.

01:12:30 Cognitive ability and memory reduced by processed foods.

01:14:45 Nutritional and energetic equivalent foods have totally different outcomes for the microbiome.

01:19:15 Put in a variety of plants - 30 a week.

01:20:20 The mediterranean diet. 01:24:50 Polyphenol science so far.

01:27:00 Emulsifiers and artificial sugars - the mucosal lining of the gut.

01:30:15 Fermented foods - the waste products of the bacteria are beneficial.

References:

Felice Jacka, “Brain Changer: The Good Mental Health Diet”

Felice Jacka, “There’s a Zoo in my Poo”

Melissa Lane et al, ‘Ultra‐Processed Food Consumption and Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of Observational Studies’ paper

Felice Jacka’ et al, ‘A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the 'SMILES' trial)’ Paper