Chasing Consciousness

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. Trained in biomedicine and plant pharmacology, she treats patients in the only NHS herbal clinic based in a UK hospital at Whipps Cross, and she is a fellow and council member of the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy (CPP). She worked with Breast Cancer Haven UK for 20 years, using nutritional therapies for cancer. Alex has undertaken clinical research, is a visiting lecturer, has published numerous research papers, and is the co-founder of the charity Living Medicine. She is also the author of the new book ‘Root to stem’ which talks about seasonal foods and remedies for strong health and immunity that can be found growing literally in the hedgerow around your house!

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What we talk about:

05:00 An epiphany with nature

07:00 Nutritional Psychiatry and the Gut microbiome

08:40 Evolution with unrefined foods VS modern refined sugars

17:00 The need for minerals and phytonutrients

13:10 High protein/ lo-carb approaches

18:10 Variety is key, the research says

20:20 Phytotherapy

21:20 Inflammation explained

26:30 Acidification and pH in the body

33:00 The gut microbiome

40:00 Reciprocity in nature and life: Feeding diversity

44:00 Crucial gut and fecal microbes via vaginal birth

46:00 Contact with soil and pets (spores, fecal microbes)

46:30 Immune response load needed regularly to maintain health

48:30 The overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals

50:20 Gut disbiosis explained and solutions

55:50 Immunity evolved alongside bacteria and viruses and needs their load

58:30 Supporting Innate and adaptive immunity

1:00:00 Germ theory 2.0? - healthy immune response load

1:04:00 The ‘Root to Stem’ philosophy - Diversity, reciprocity, interconnectivity

06:00 Our relationship to the seasons sustained by seasonal foods

06:55 Reconnecting to nature, ourselves and to community

01:09:10 Plant medicines we might not be aware of

01:10:25 Phytonutrients explained

01:15:30 Dietary fibres and prebiotics

01:18:10 Fermented foods and probiotics

01:24:00 Connection to nature

01:28:00 Sacred = in service to life

References:

Alex Laird’s association 'Living Medicine'

Breast Cancer Haven UK

Graham Rook, Old Friends Hypothesis, UCL

Karin Moelling - ‘Viruses, more friends than foes’

Tim Spector, British epidemiologist and gut microbiome specialist

The College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy www.thecpp.uk

www.herbalalliance.uk

European Scientific Cooperative on Phytotherapy www.escop.com 

Association of Foragers  https://foragers-association.org

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 perceptual systems, can tell us anything about the evolution of human consciousness.

To get to grips with this we the hugely influential Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. Damasio is professor pf Psychology, Philosophy and Neurology at the University of Southern California and the founder of their important ‘Brain and Creativity Institute’. He’s written many important books like ‘Descartes Error: Emotion, reason and the human brain’ and just out the subject of most of our discussion today, ‘Feeling and Knowing: Making minds conscious’.

I’m extremely grateful to previous guest Jonas Kaplan, who works for professor Damasio at USC, for arranging this interview. Check out his fascinating interview Episode #9 ‘The Backfire Effect’ on the neuroscience of belief.

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What we discuss in this episode:

00:00 Intro

02:49 The importance of creativity in science and life

08:30 Creativity can be slow, not always a flash of intuition

09:12 Brain and body are intertwined in the creation of consciousness

14:00 The importance of emotions to reason

17:00 Homeostasis explained

19:15 We have feelings to provoke us to get something that we need

21:15 Feeling is different from sensing

28:00 Sensing predates the nervous systems and feelings in evolution

31:50 Consciousness is related to feelings and they allow knowing

33:15 Artificial intelligence will not be conscious and feeling, but could copy vulnerability

36:28 AI didn’t evolve from surviving like us

38:15 It’s not just the brain - from the start it’s been interrelated with the body

40:30 Will robots suffer?

42:20 There’s no Hard Problem of Consciousness, it’s just physical evolution

47:00 Does awareness of awareness have an evolutionary reason?

48:30 The feeling system is ancient and early in our conscious evolution

51:30 Consciousness isn’t an illusion it’s a representation of your self and the world

53:13 The mind instinctively creates maps and patterns, even ones that don’t exist

References:

‘Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious’ 2021

‘Descartes’ Error: Emotion, reason and the human brain’ 1994

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: so, exactly how many people have the experiences, exactly how dead they were at the time and so to start assessing the controversial part of this discussion, whether these experiences can be explained in simply neurobiological terms or if there is evidence that consciousness can ‘survive’ clinical death, if that is in fact the best way to talk about it.

So who better to help us understand this than cardiologist, scientist and author Dr. Pim Van Lommel from The Netherlands. During his 35 year career as a Cardiologist, Dr. Van Lommel saw the need for a detailed study on this to nail down the physiological variables like medication, length of time without oxygen and to connect those to the psychological data, about the content of the experiences and how long they remained influential in the patients lives.

The prospective study he spearheaded was published in the respected Lancet medical journal in 2001, and his book about the research ‘Consciousness beyond life, the science of the near death experience’ was published in 2007. He also recently won second prize in the Bigelow Foundation for consciousness studies essay prize, which discusses the study and its implications.

Full references, shownotes and links here

Please donate a cup of coffee if you’re enjoying the show

What we discuss in this episode:

03:19 Common experiences during an NDE

05:30 NDEs are possible even when the brain is fully functional e.g. Fear of death emergency

06:44 Carl Jung’s NDE was the first description of viewing planet earth from above

07:45 Transformation of world view via NDE + STEs (Spiritually transformative experiences)

08:14 Scientific curiosity about NDEs in clinically dead brains

11:00 1988-1998 Pim’s medical and psychological study of NDEs

17:15 Examining neurobiological explanations

27:45 Implications: consciousness must be non-local and the brain an interface

38:30 NDEers report heightened intuitive skill, empathy, precognition and telepathy

46:00 Organisations researching post-materialist science

51:50 Is the information perceived in an NDE different to normal perceptive information?

54:00 Non-local information exchange

59:30 Heightened sense of interconnection with nature and other beings - oneness

01:01:00 Life review: Experiencing from a different consciousness’ point of view

References:

Pim’s book ‘Consciousness beyond life: the science of near death experiences’.

Pim’s medical and psychological study

Pim’s Bigelow essay prize text 2022

Bigalow Insitute for Consciousness Studies

IONS

The Journal of Consciousness Studies

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: so, exactly how many people have the experiences, exactly how dead they were at the time and so to start assessing the controversial part of this discussion, whether these experiences can be explained in simply neurobiological terms or if there is evidence that consciousness can ‘survive’ clinical death, if that is in fact the best way to talk about it.

So who better to help us understand this than cardiologist, scientist and author Dr. Pim Van Lommel from The Netherlands. During his 35 year career as a Cardiologist, Dr. Van Lommel saw the need for a detailed study on this to nail down the physiological variables like medication, length of time without oxygen and to connect those to the psychological data, about the content of the experiences and how long they remained influential in the patients lives.

The prospective study he spearheaded was published in the respected Lancet medical journal in 2001, and his book about the research ‘Consciousness beyond life, the science of the near death experience’ was published in 2007. He also recently won second prize in the Bigelow Foundation for consciousness studies essay prize, which discusses the study and its implications.

Full references, shownotes and links here

Please donate a cup of coffee if you’re enjoying the show

What we discuss in this episode:

03:19 Common experiences during an NDE

05:30 NDEs are possible even when the brain is fully functional e.g. Fear of death emergency

06:44 Carl Jung’s NDE was the first description of viewing planet earth from above

07:45 Transformation of world view via NDE + STEs (Spiritually transformative experiences)

08:14 Scientific curiosity about NDEs in clinically dead brains

11:00 1988-1998 Pim’s medical and psychological study of NDEs

17:15 Examining neurobiological explanations

27:45 Implications: consciousness must be non-local and the brain an interface

38:30 NDEers report heightened intuitive skill, empathy, precognition and telepathy

46:00 Organisations researching post-materialist science

51:50 Is the information perceived in an NDE different to normal perceptive information?

54:00 Non-local information exchange

59:30 Heightened sense of interconnection with nature and other beings - oneness

01:01:00 Life review: Experiencing from a different consciousness’ point of view

References:

Pim’s book ‘Consciousness beyond life: the science of near death experiences’.

Pim’s medical and psychological study

Pim’s Bigelow essay prize text 2022 

Bigalow Insitute for Consciousness Studies

IONS

The Journal of Consciousness Studies

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, have life changing experiences that often go against everything they have come to believe about themselves and the world. So regardless of how positive that can be to the meaning of their lives, it’s clear that some pretty sensitive guidance and processing needs to take place for the therapy to shift their day to day life long-term. And interestingly the same tools we’ll discuss can be used for all of us to navigate our own existential exploration.

So who better to help us explain this and offer some tools for navigating these tricky experiences than clinical psychologist and author Dr. Kile Ortigo. Kile is the founder of the Center for Existential Exploration in Palo Alto California; he’s hugely influenced by psychologist Carl Jung and Jospeh Campbell and specialises in treating trauma, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and addiction, with a particular sensitivity to gender identity issues. He’s just written a book about the topic Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide for Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration

What we discuss in this episode:

00:00 Intro

06:00 Integration in therapy

09:44 Integration of psychedelic experiences

12:13 Preparation for the unknown - Kile’s new book ‘Psychedelic integration’

17:00 Re-finding initiation; analogy with preparation

21:00 The risks of self-initiation

23:25 Is meaning built into existence?

28:00 Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey

31:30 The symbolism of the battles in the myths

34:00 The shadow - ‘a moral problem’ Jung

35:00 Monomyth is a misnoma

38:00 The Heroine’s journey - Maureen Murdoch

41:30 MDMA therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

43:45 Preparation - medicine journey - integration; 3 Arcs

46:00 The risk of re-trauma if the patient is not prepared

49:45 The rewards from existential exploration and integration

54:00 The exciting mystery of the unknown - making friends with the unknown

References:

Kile’s new Book Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide for Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration,

'The Shadow' according to Jung

Collective Unconscious episode #6

Individuation according to C.G.Jung

Jospeh Campbell’s Hero’s Journey episode

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, mental health and physical health if we meditate regularly over a long period of time. We’re also going to think about how society and business at large will evolve if these techniques continue to be introduced to our schools and companies.

So who better to help us find out what all the buzz is about than award winning professor of clinical psychology at Santa Clara University, Dr. Shauna Shapiro. She’s a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute co-founded by the Dalai Lama, who we’ll be discussing a bit today. She also lectures about and leads mindfulness programs internationally; and she’s even brought mindfulness to pioneering companies including Cisco Systems and Google. She has published over 150 articles and is the author of several books, like ‘The art and science of Mindfulness’, and ‘Good Morning I love You’ and has just released The ‘Good morning I love you’ guided journal.

What we discuss in this Episode:

00:00 Intro

05:37 Study results: Increased attention, memory and academic success, lowered activation of the Amygdala, reaction to pain

09:00 Better regulation of the nervous system

10:00 Effects of longer term meditation practice

11:00 Our happiness base line can be changed with practice

13:30 Intention and repetition’s relation to neuroplasticity

16:00 Journalling to set intention and maintain practice

17:00 Journalling for memory, health, mood, immune system and sleep

18:00 Morning theta state - more malleable brain

20:00 Advice for beginners getting started on meditation

22:00 Breath as a tool for relaxation

24:20 ‘Name it to tame it’ - Increased resilience and acceptance

27:00 Historical undervaluing of the coping function of emotion

28:30 Emotions only last 30-90 seconds, apart from their intellectualisation

30:00 Rise of polarisation and negative bias hacking by media - Mindfulness and compassion as a solution

33:00 Self-compassion leads to wider compassion and implicit bias reduction

34:00 The insular (compassion centre of the brain) is muted when someone is very different to you.

35:00 Knee jerk reactions (amygdala) reduced with regular meditation

37:00 Shauna’s meditation workshops in the military and companies

References:

drshaunashapiro.com

Good Morning, I Love You: A Guided Journal for Calm, Clarity, and Joy Shauna Shapiro

Altered Traits, Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson 

Changing happiness set points - Dr. Tal Ben Shahar - Happiness Studies 

Andrew Huberman Lab, ‘Sigh breath’ research https://governmentscienceandengineering.blog.gov.uk/2021/11/26/is-a-sigh-just-a-sigh/

‘Name it to tame it’ UCLA study. https://www.scn.ucla.edu/pdf/AL(2007).pdf

Alleged Viktor Frankl quote “Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”

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 that appear to imply the existence of an alternative kind of ‘reality’ what ever ‘reality’ is.

Fortunately, to navigate this bag of worms, we have a researcher who has devoted his career to the study of these experiences both psychedelic and other, Dr. David Luke. David Luke is currently a module leader of the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience in Greenwich Universities Psychology and Counselling Department, a course he has been running since 2009.

He is also currently an Honorary Senior Lecturer for the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London. He was President of the Parapsychological Association between 2009 and 2011, and received the Faculty's first Inspirational Teaching Award (2016) from the University of Greenwich.

He is a prolific author and editor of books, and today we’ll be discussing his 2017 book ‘Otherworlds: Psychedelics and exceptional human experiences’ and his new book, a collections of essays he has edited called ‘DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule’

He is also the co-founder of the Breaking Convention Conference on Psychedelics.

What we discuss in this episode: 

00:00 Intro

04:20 Measuring subjective qualitative experiences

11:45 The different types of altered states of consciousness

18:00 Reduced activity in the DMN (Default Mode Network) during alternate states of consciousness, but increased brain region connectivity

21:30 Evaluating mystical experiences psychologically

33:00 The connection between psychedelics and telepathy

57:00 Psychonautics - trying to map psychedelic realms and types of beings encountered

and much much more (full show notes here)

References:

William James - Radical Empiricism

During Altered states there is a reduced activity in the DMN but increased brain region connectivity

Johns Hopkins and NYU studies - Intensity of mystical experience correlation with positive clinical outcomes.

%50 drop in atheism among DMT experiencers

Stephen Szára - first DMT experiments in 1950’s

Charles Laughlin - Polyphasic culture and transpersonal anthropology

Medicalisation and Reciprocity Specialists Symposium

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 physical world, are hugely increasing in popularity and not only among philosophers but also among physicists, perhaps because many of the anomalies coming out of quantum experiments can be explained in a panpsychist model. But this is the first time as far as I know that a scientist has argued that life itself is fundamental to the physical world. Perhaps to many scientists it would sound absurd, but as the theory has been popularised by award winning Stem Cell biologist Robert Lanza, it seems important that we give this theory a closer look.

Given our physics slant on Chasing Consciousness, we are extremely lucky to be speaking today with Robert Lanza’s co-author on the new book about the theory “The Grand Biocentric Design, How life creates reality”, physicist and author Matej Pavšič

Matej Pavšič has been a theoretical physicist at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia for over 40 years, working on Mirror Particles, Brane Spaces, and Clifford algebra and spaces among other areas. He’s published more than hundred scientific papers and 3 books including "The Landscape of Theoretical Physics: A Global View" (Kluwer Academic, 2001) and "Stumbling Blocks Against Unification" (World Scientific, 2020). And the Biocentrism book mentioned above.

00:00 Intro

06:00 Niels Bohr - Measurement ‘creates ‘ the world quote

10:00 The wave particle duality - real vs perceived

15:10 The Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics

18:00 Hugh Everett - The wave function is relative to the observer

20:00 The risk of Woo when talking about Quantum Entanglement

25:30 A universe fine tuned for life - Hierarchical levels of representation and the hard problem

37:00 Mystical experiences may connect to wave function of the universe

38:31 Hawking and Wheeler - The past is not fixed until measurement

39:45 Matej’s theory: The Big Bang could have been caused by a vacuum instability in the quantum field

40:30 The book has been criticised by scientists for being over-simplified for the general public

44:30 Testability of Biocentrism via Quantum Mechanics

46:00 Weak Biocentrism paper, accounting for the observer effect while keeping the physical world

49:00 Quantum Suicide and the impossibility of being dead from the first person point of view

53:00 Why is consciousness so controversial in modern physics?

55:12 Difficulty of applying different laws at the classical and quantum level

References:

Rupert Everett - The Many Worlds from interpretation of quantum mechanics

Robert Lanza, Dmitriy Podolskiy and Andrei Barvinsky paper - reduction of quantum gravity in the presence of observers: Intro article and Paper

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 of wellbeing and behaviour within just 2 weeks!

We were scheduled to be speaking with the founder, child psychologist Patty Wipfler. Patty sent her apologies as sadly her health had taken a turn, but what a silver lining as Patty sent us Hand in Hand’s program director and Clinical psychologist Dr. Maya Coleman Ph.D. Since 2007 she has been providing trauma treatment for children and support for parents. She spent 3 years at the Children’s National Medical Center giving behavioural and developmental consultancy, and last year joined Hand in Hand as program director.

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00:00 Short intro

13:36 Parent-child mutual connectedness for healthy emotional development

18:50 Learning and healing only possible in a state of safety

19:30 Traumatic experiences block learning both physically and mentally.

27:00 Release of emotion only when connected, emotionally regulated care is present

27:00 Crying is an opportunity to clear and reset their emergency/threat system

31:00 Offloading often happens later when the parent takes back the child

32:40 Children’s fear of care givers themselves

38:25 THE 5 HAND IN HAND PARENTING TOOLS EXPLAINED

39:20 SPECIAL TIME EXPLAINED - building connection

43:45 STAY LISTENING EXPLAINED - holding a regulated space for big emotions

55:00 SETTING LIMITS EXPLAINED - Listen, limit, listen

01:05:00 Regulation and body language, instead of tagging and shaming

01:09:40 PLAY LISTENING EXPLAINED

01:13:45 Laughter as an inbuilt releasing mechanism

01:18:00 LISTENING PARTNERSHIPS EXPLAINED

01:21:00 Parents too get triggered and go off track

01:28:35 You can heal betrayed trust with kids

01:35:30 Memories and a corrective associative adjustment

01:38:15 Heal parenting, heal the world

References:

Attachment theory

Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study 

5 Listening tools for parents introduced

Hand in Hand you tube channel

More videos with Patty introducing the tools

Patty Wipfler and Tosha Schore Book “Listen: Five simple tools to meet your Everyday Parenting Challenges”

Listening partnership instructions video

‘The neuroscience of enduring change’ Richard D. Lane and Lynn Nadel

‘Birthing a new world’ parenting blog, Roma Norris

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 attention?

Fortunately today’s guest, the New York Times bestselling author Johann Hari, has written about Depression and Addiction, and his new book “Stolen Focus: What you can’t pay attention and how to think deeply again”, focuses on this very issue of Attention.

Johann is a British award winning author and journalist. His book on Addiction ‘Chasing the Scream: the First and Last Days of the War on Drugs’, has been adapted into the Oscar-nominated film ‘The United States Vs Billie Holiday’.

And his second book, ‘Lost Connections: Uncovering The Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions’ was shortlisted for an award by the British Medical Association.

His TED talks have been viewed more than 80 million times. Over the past decade he has written for some of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and the Spectator. And he has appeared on NPR, HBO, The Joe Rogan Podcast, and the BBC.

What we discuss:

00:00 Short Intro

050:0 Rumi’s quote, ’The wound is where the light enters you’

09:42 The 12 reasons for our shrinking attention

11.10 Task switching and the illusion of multitasking

14.27 Higher stress from faster lives

17:00 Deep concentration only when feeling safety

18:41 Technologies that monitor us and manipulate our attention

20:00 Precedents in history for laws to ban certain elements that were harmful

22:00 The social media business model and the alternative

45:16 Gabor Mate, trauma and the rise of ADHD

48:45 Lowering of length of sleep and bad diet

50:00 The loss of exercise, sedentary schooling

53:00 www.letgrow.org, free social play without supervision

01:04:00 Flow states: Meaningful goals at the edge of your ability

References:

Leonard Cohen quote: ‘There’s a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in’

Earl Millar at MIT - Task Switching and the Switch- Cost effect

Nadine Burke-Harris - Ex-Surgeon general of California, adverse childhood experience survey

Tristan Harris - Social Dilemma documentary

Gabor Mate book on addiction - In the realm of Hungry ghosts

Johann Hari book on addiction - Lost Connections

www.letgrow.org, free social play without supervision

David Hume quote - ‘reason is the slave of the passions’

The Corporation, documentary about the history of corporations

Paul Graham - the world will become more addictive

Krisna Murti quote- ‘it’s no sign of good health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society’