Pushing Boundaries with Dr. Thomas R Verny

What if you could alter your mood, focus your mind, and even manage conditions like PTSD and depression just by listening to a certain type of sound? That's the revolutionary promise behind binaural beats, the focus of our conversation with Wayne Altman, the founder of Melody Clouds, on today's episode of Pushing Boundaries. Wayne shares his intriguing journey into the world of binaural beats, which began as a personal quest to manage his tinnitus, and evolved into an exploration of the incredible potential of these unique sound frequencies.

But Wayne's passion didn't stop there. He took the power of binaural beats and channeled it into his innovative project, Melody Clouds. This remarkable app promises to create a calming environment that helps babies self-soothe and regulate their sleep. Driven by his personal experience and his parents' influence, Wayne's passion for this project shines through as he explains how Melody Clouds stands out from his previous ventures.

Our conversation with Wayne also delves into a more futuristic topic, namely the blurring line between human and AI interactions. We discuss the anxiety induced by repetitive words and motions during conversations and the rapidly advancing world of AI. But amidst this digital evolution, Wayne insists on the importance of human interaction, emphasizing the value of personal contact and encouraging listeners to engage with him directly. Join our thought-provoking conversation on Pushing Boundaries and discover the world of binaural beats, the future of AI, and the enduring value of human connection.

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Ever wondered how to unlock the secrets of financial success? Join me for an enlightening conversation with George Grombacher, a financial advisor with over 20 years of experience, as he shares his journey and the keys to achieving financial freedom. Discover how to create a vision for your future, set goals, and take small steps to get out of debt and find breathing room.

George also discusses the importance of financial coaching in overcoming limiting beliefs and how surrounding yourself with the right kind of people can make a significant impact on your financial success. Learn from his personal experiences with finances, the limiting beliefs he overcame, and how identifying and shifting those beliefs can transform your financial situation.

Lastly, we delve into the concept of personal growth and achievements. George believes that if we all focused on becoming the best versions of ourselves, many of the world's problems would self-correct. Don't miss this episode filled with insights and key takeaways to help you unlock your financial success!

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What if the story of Atlantis was deeply connected to our own embryology, and the myths that surround it held the key to our prenatal development? Join me in an enlightening conversation with Dr. John Bonaducci, an expert in the captivating field of Mythobiogenesis, which he created during his doctoral studies. Discover how John transitioned from liturgy to mythology, connected with the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and developed his work on prenatal psychology - all while uncovering the power of storytelling and the significance of mythological studies for understanding our place in the universe.

As we delve into the fascinating connections between Plato's mythology of Atlantis and embryology, Dr. Bonaducci explains how the story reflects the process of cellular mitosis and conforms to the trauma theories of Donald Kallshed. We also explore the implications of Freud's idea of being born as a "tabula rasa" and how John's personal experiences - from his parents' tumultuous relationship to his mother's nine miscarriages - shaped his worldview and experiences in the womb.

Finally, we examine the importance and implications of John's work on Mythobiogenesis, discussing the origin of Plato's "caste system" and its impact on society. This thought-provoking conversation serves as a testament to the power of storytelling and personal introspection. So come along and immerse yourself in this captivating exploration of myth, memory, and the human experience.

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My guest today is Dr Stephanie Alice Baker, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, City, University of London. Her first book, Social Tragedy (Palgrave MacMillan 2014), analyzed how collective narratives emerge in different cultural contexts and the role of the media in communicating tragic events of social significance.

Her second book examined how lifestyle and wellness influencers construct authority and influence online. She situated this research in discussions around trust, expertise, microcelebrity and medical misinformation. She has published several key articles on these topics as well as a book, Lifestyle Gurus: Constructing authority and influence online (Polity 2019), co-authored with Chris Rojek.

Her most recent book, Wellness Culture: How the Wellness Movement has been used to Empower, Profit and Misinform, traces the emergence of wellness culture from a fringe countercultural pursuit to a trillion-dollar industry.

Dr. Baker says that we are now living in a post-secular society, where even though a lot of people think of themselves as religious or spiritual, many of the institutions and moral frameworks that dictated how people ought to live, have changed.  In this society many people fear that the world as they knew it is rapidly disappearing. They feel lost, suffering what Anthony Giddens calls ontological insecurity..

The frequently degrading nature of modern industrial work, the growth of totalitarianism, the threat of environmental destruction, climate change, the alarming development of military power and weaponry, the polarization of the political discourse, the ever-increasing reliance on robotics with its consequent loss of job opportunities for unskilled workers has become a source of great anxiety for vast numbers of people. 

Polarization, skepticism, doubt and division have led to an erosion of trust in institutions, the media, science and government. This low institutional trust will increasingly become an issue, especially as disinformation floods the world as a result of AI.

Of course, as the old saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”  Gradually, over the last decade, we have seen  the emergence of a whole new class of individuals: the lifestyle and wellness influencers. How can individuals with no expertise, no medical training achieve this high degree of trust and loyalty from their followers?

One way is by their stress on being  authentic. “I'm so authentic”. And this adjective  is really important. Because in describing themselves in this way, what they're actually doing is distinguishing themselves from say, a manufactured Hollywood celebrity, indicating that they're more real,  more genuine. And as a byproduct, you can trust them more. Right? 

Now by achieving fame on social media as well, they also seem much more accessible than, say, a mainstream celebrity who is surrounded by managers and agents and various producers or assistants. And one way in which this impression of accessibility is maintained is this idea that we're all sharing the same platform, that I could send somebody who's an influencer a direct message on social media and they will read it and respond. Fat chance. 

And the third aspect, which is really important to an influencer, is to present themselves as being outside of the system. Not beholden to any-one. An independent person just like you. Not one of the “elites.” Along with that goes this idea of being self-made, of being ordinary and just lik

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My guest today is Mark Scott Rosenbaum, Ph.D., Dean, College of Business, Hawaii Pacific University. Previously, he was dean and professor of marketing with the Graham School of Management at Saint Xavier University in Chicago. Prior to his leadership at St. Xavier Rosenbaum was chair and professor of the Department of Retailing at the University of South Carolina, the Kohl's Professor of Marketing at Northern Illinois University, and an assistant professor in the Department of Marketing at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Dr. Rosenbaum is a three-time Fulbright Scholar. Dr. Rosenbaum serves as co-editor of the Journal of Services Marketing, an associate editor for the Journal of Business Research. 

We discuss how digital technologies, including mobile applications, social media, and online games, have impacted the ways that people communicate, learn, play, date, and entertain themselves. 
Although digital technologies offer their users many benefits, these technologies also expose their users to risks. Indeed, many digital users have been victims of cyberbullying, identity theft, and data breaches. We have apps like Tinder, and in the gay community, there's Grindr. If you're a member of the gay community, you can now meet people right next to you. You're no longer this isolated member of a community. That's a great positive. However, what you don't hear much is how many men are raped with Grindr hookups.
Further, some national governments and local jurisdictions use digital technologies, to curtail their citizens’ freedoms, and to enforce laws that criminalize private, consensual, same-sex sexual activity and anything else that particular government is opposed to.
We are fostering internet addictions, we don't realize that digital technologies have a dark side. Numerous studies show that as youth spend more than two hours a day on social media, their depression levels increase. Now, this would almost seem the converse of what reality should be. Because reality means, I'm connected to these networks of friends, I have friends available 24/7/365. This should elevate my self-esteem. I know exactly where everyone is. And yet, young people feel increasingly alone and unhappy.
To my question, “What's the most important thing you have learned so far in your life?” Mark answered that regardless of how tough the beginning is, you have to have a beginning. Take the risk, the challenge, and begin.
Next week my guest will be Dr Stephanie Alice Baker,  Senior Lecturer in Sociology, City, University of London. Dr Baker’s research explores how we connect and communicate online, particularly around issues pertaining to health and wellness. Dr Baker studies influencer culture and the spread of medical misinformation in the context of COVID-19 and the anti-vaccination movement. Please tune in.

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My guest today is Dr. Natalie Dyer, PhD, Research Scientist with Connor Whole Health at University Hospitals, Warrensville Heights, OH and President of the Center for Reiki Research. She has published many scientific papers and book chapters on postmaterialist science, psychedelics, and the therapeutic effects of integrative medicine practices, including Reiki, yoga, acupuncture, and mindfulness, and is co-editor of the book Expanding Science: Visions of a Postmaterialist Paradigm and the forthcoming book Infinite Percepton: The Power of Psychedelics for Global Transformation. Natalie is also an energy medicine practitioner and teacher. Her passion is in understanding and addressing mental and physical health from a psychospiritual perspective. She lives in the woods on the east coast of Canada with her husband, artist Louis Dyer and their freshly minted three-months-old daughter.
I asked Natalie to explain the term post-materialism science? Natalie  said that it signifies a new age in science, where we move beyond the limitations of the materialist paradigm, which states that everything can be reduced to matter, including consciousness.  Many scientists and theologians believe that matter emerges from consciousness instead of  the other way around. Post-materialism scientists adopt the findings of quantum mechanics, and acknowledge that that the mind affects measurements of various experiments in physics. It doesn't exclude materialism. 
Since Natalie’s next book is about psychedelics, I wondered what role do psychedelics play in treating people with mental distress. The usual approach taken is by way of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy in a setting where there's a therapist who has been trained in administering psychedelics who guides the individual to step outside of their normal operating ego self, and to view their whole life, including what led to, and what keeps the depression going through this shift outside of the normal, mundane day to day thinking process. The psychedelics can show them, how their depression developed, and how they're keeping it going with their thoughts and their beliefs. So that they get is this chance to step outside of the normal narrative of their life. And that can cause a profound shift. There can be a scary kind of loss of control, when there's that ego death, where you're kind of stepping outside of your normal function of your mental awareness. That’s where the therapist comes, reassuring the person that it’s ok, that they are safe to continue. Then hopefully, the therapist can facilitate  integration  to take place and make changes based on what was discovered.
What does a shamanic Reiki master, like her, do? “Reiki is a biofeedback therapy. It's 100 years old at this point, but it's based on practices that go back 1000s of years, like Chi Gong, for example. And the idea is that anytime we have disease in the body, or we're unwell, there's an imbalance in our lifeforce energy. So that's called many different things, chi, prana. Spirit. So that's the basis for these practices.”
“Reiki works to bring balance back to that energy system and hoping that the physical system corresponds with that shift. So you learn to tap into the intention of channeling this energy, which is infinite and everywhere. That's the idea. And you either give this energy to yourself, so you're just kind of bringing this energy through into your body, or you give it to another person. “
“What I found when I started doing Reiki was really experiencing the uncon

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My guest today is Helane Wahbeh ND MCR,  director of research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)—a nonprofit parapsychological research institute cofounded by astronaut Edgar Mitchel. Author of  Free To Be Me: A Journey of Transformation through Generational Healing, 2015 and The Science of Channeling: Why You Should Trust Your Intuition and Embrace the Force That Connects Us All, 2022.

Helane’s first book offers the reader a remarkable window into the lives of five generations of women in Palestine starting with her great-great grandmother in the early 1800’s. What she learned about herself doing research and writing this book is the ability to overcome the ancestral patterns around being silent, powerless victim, et cetera. So, the story really is one of transformation, of empowerment of subsequent generations to continue their powerful, unique and beautiful voice in the world. And not just women, but also men because women raise men, they raise boys, and so if we can empower the masculine and the feminine side of young boys, they become more well-rounded and compassionate and can balance the nurturing aspects of themselves along with the action,  the traditional male archetypes.
Attending a meeting at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) changed the trajectory of her life. She was amazed at the courage of the participants to ask  esoteric research questions, to do rigorous research on these trailblazing topics, if you will, and got excited to join the team. That triggered a number of synchronistic events for Helane to eventually start working at IONS first as a consultant, and then scientist and now director. So that gave her permission to think about and explore the topics of channeling.
Channeling, in a very broad way, is the capacity that all humans have to access information and energy that's not limited by our conventional notions of time or space. It is beyond our five senses, and it can appear expressive, or receptive. And these experiences are quite varied. They exist on a spectrum from intuitive gut hunches to dreams that come true, or getting mental impressions from someone else's mind in the middle of doing something totally different. So there's quite a variety of what we call channeling.
The IONS Helane and her team have done quite a bit of work to develop an inventory that helps people evaluate  their own, what they call noetic signature. it is unique. Each person has their own unique expression of channeling. Studying  data from thousands of people  they found 12 different characteristics that seem to show up significantly. People can go to IONS website (https://noetic.org/ ) and  take this inventory and discover how channeling shows up for them in their life. And if they're interested, explore that, and see if they can nurture the ones that they're strong in, or even the ones that they aren't strong in and see how it can be used to support them in their daily life.
Best advice Helane ever got? Think it was about this path, this inward path. To not look outside myself for the truth for me.
Thank you, Helane. I enjoyed our conversation and now I am ready to explore my channeling abilities. My guest next week will be Dr. Natalie Dyer, PhD,  who is a Research Scientist with Connor Whole Health at University Hospitals and President of the Center for Reiki Research. Natalie is also an energy medicine practitioner. We shall discuss the benefits of Reiki on physical and psychological health and understanding and addressing mental and p

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My guest today is Dr. Steve Cole PhD, professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and Behavioral Science in the UCLA School of Medicine.

What are signal transduction pathways? It's a way of basically perceiving, at the cellular level, what's going on outside and changing cellular behavior by increasing or decreasing rates of RNA transcription from the DNA genome at specific sites in the genome. A standard signal transduction cascade would have some kind of a receptor on the surface of the cell that detects let's say, a neurotransmitter, or a bacteria or something like that. It relays information from outside the cell, through the cell membrane into the interior of the cell, where it can then kick off a chain reaction of different chemical events, that ultimately leads to turning on or turning off a gene in our DNA genome inside the nucleus of the cell.
We discuss one of Steve’s recent papers, Black mothers in racially segregated neighborhoods embodying structural violence: PTSD and depressive symptoms on the South Side of Chicago. In this study, Steve and his team conceptualize the environment as social phenomena and examine its consequences on the body. They asked themselves: Why do these women have heart attacks more often? Why do they get neurodegenerative diseases more often? Why do they get cancer more often? They found that feeling trapped, significantly predicted increased mental distress in the form of PTSD, depressive symptoms, and glucocorticoid receptor gene regulation that's involved in producing inflammation.
The reason we pay a lot of attention to that is that in addition to healing wounds, 
when inflammatory activity is persistent, even at a low level for a long period of time, that kind of molecular scenario acts as a fertilizer for the development of most chronic diseases such as  heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, metastatic cancers, all of the diseases that are the major causes of death in the West.
Moving onto a new subject: cytokines. Initially cytokines were discovered to increase communication between immune cells, to  enable them to talk to each other. recently it was learned that brain cells could also hear the signal sent by the cytokines.  That opened up this really fascinating area of science, trying to understand how changes in immune biology changed people's neurobiology, and perhaps, as a consequence of that change their psychological experience and their, their behavior in the real world.
One area where this is known to happen, is what we call sickness behaviors. When people get sick, and they feel tired and fatigued and achy, and they have fevers, it turns out, none of that is actually caused by the pathogen. All of that is caused by the cytokines that go to the brain, and they say, ‘Hey, brain, I want you to activate the behavioral package that we call sickness.’
And so the brain, which has essentially learned to do this over millions of years of evolution says, ‘Great, you're sick. So I'm going to stop you from expending a lot of energy by immobilizing you. I'm not going to let you run around, I'm going to make you tired. I especially don't want you to run around infecting other people or getting into fights with other people. So I'm going to make you antisocial and irritable as well.’
In the course of our meeting, we spoke about many other subjects and ended by 
talking about the surprising power of pro social behavior for writing many of the wrongs that arise from stress and threat. If I'm anxious, and threaten

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My guest today is Dr. Joann O’Leary, who holds a Masters Degree in Maternal-Child Health from the University of MN and a Masters in Psychology from Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Joann has published 5 books including 
Different Baby, Different Story: Pregnancy and Parenting after Loss
2020
Meeting the Needs of Parents Pregnant and Parenting After Perinatal Loss
2016
Pregnancy After Loss: A Descriptive Phenomenological Study Of Parenting A Subsequent Baby Following A Perinatal Loss
2010
After Loss: Parenting in the Next Pregnancy: A Manual for Professionals Working With Families in Pregnancy Following Loss
1998
A parent involvement program for preschool children with special needs
1978
Joann does research and writing on prenatal parenting, and the impact on parents and siblings and on the child born after the loss of a baby.

How it all started 35 years ago. Joann and Linda Parker, a nurse, led their first pregnancy after loss group. “We were going to do it twice a month, like most infant loss group, but the parents were like, Oh, my God, we can't wait another two weeks. We want to come next week too. And when they left Linda being the clinical nurse specialist said, did you see all those moms with high risk pregnancies? And I said, did you see all those babies with attachment disorders because I envisioned all these little babies in their mothers’ wombs, saying I'm here, I'm here, because the moms weren't paying attention, they were afraid to embrace this new baby. And so that's kind of how our program started.”

She works with grief and attachment at the same time. Because it's a whole new layer of grief when parents become pregnant again, because they think they're going to be so excited to have this baby. Of course, it just brings up Oh, my God, this baby could die too.

Joann’s approach, in a nutshell, is showing pregnant parents after a loss how they can still be parents to their deceased baby while working to embrace this new unborn baby.

I asked her whether she thought think that her work had influenced physicians’ attitudes towards pregnancy and pregnancy loss since physicians usually are just interested in the physical aspects of a baby. How much does it weigh, what is the Apgar score, stuff like that? And they don't give a hoot about the psychological emotional aspects of pregnancy and births? Joann obviously does. Her answer was not encouraging.

“I wish I could say yes. But I'm afraid I can't. The perinatologists
 that I worked with, they always still thought I did a grief group. Right? They never understood that it was a group to build attachment. Right. And we have very, very few physicians that come to our presentations. Very few.”

We spoke of embodied grief. How grief stays in the body and the importance of releasing it with massage, Reiki, other types of body work.

Joann says that the babies that have been in her groups have been observed to be sensitive, caring adults. They have  learned about grief in utero. Their teachers report that they're the first child in class to reach out to children with special needs. Parents and teachers agree that they're just wonderful, caring people.

Joann can be reached at [email protected]. 

My next week’s guest, will be Dr. Steven Cole, Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science in the UCLA School of Medicine with whom I will discuss  the molecular pathways by which soc

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• Intro to organoid intelligence
• Comparing brain organoids to supercomputers
• Is there any danger of organoids becoming conscious
• How much does it take to claim an intelligent system
• Impact of the work in the long run, on treatment of diseases like Alzheimer’s

My guest today is Prof. Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD. He is the former Head of the European Commission’s Center for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM), Ispra, Italy, and has authored more than 560 scientific publications and received 16 different awards ranging from the German Ministry of Health to Hellenistic Society of Toxicology. 
Prof. Hartung is presently the Doerenkamp-Zbinden-Chair for Evidence-based Toxicology in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, with a joint appointment at the Whiting School of Engineering. He also holds a joint appointment for Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School. In addition, he holds a joint appointment as Professor for Pharmacology and Toxicology at University of Konstanz, Germany; is Director of Centers for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT, http://caat.jhsph.edu) of both universities. He is adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. and he is Chief Editor of Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.
 These past few weeks,  image generators like DALL·E 2 and language models like ChatGPT  are grabbing headlines. But Prof. Hartung has been working on what sounds like an equally, if not more, revolutionary research, namely computers powered by human brain cells, part of a new field called “organoid intelligence.” Prof. Hartung explains the concept and the research.
“Brains have an amazing capacity to store information, estimated at 2,500 (terabytes). We’re reaching the physical limits of silicon computers because we cannot pack more transistors into a tiny chip.”
In essence, Prof. Hartung is interested in two different things. One is in advanced cell culture, focusing mainly on the brain referred to as brain organoids, which is a really a breakthrough technology in recent years. And the second one is artificial intelligence, AI. And merging these two, brings them together to AI Augmented Intelligence. So the idea is, how far can we get by letting brain organoids for us do also some computational work.
.In response to my questions as to what's the most important thing he has learned about, about life, Prof. Hartung said, “It all happens between people. It is not about the next scientific paper, or the speech you give. It is about talking to others, inspiring each other and motivating each other to work for a goal. It's not something which is done when I'm writing my next article on the computer.”

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