Pushing Boundaries with Dr. Thomas R Verny

My guest today is Susan Highsmith DD, PhD, counselor and, in addition to have written The Renaissance of Birth and  Babies Know , author of a fabulous series of  fairy tales for unborn, newborn and very young children designed to help parents bond with their children and children attach to their parents. They are called The First Fairy Tales I – IV..
Susan got into this subject in 2001 when she began a five year study program to earn a PhD in Pre and Perinatal psychology, intending to help answer the question, why would anybody be having difficulties because they were born in hospitals, a comment made by a friend of hers some time ago.
Susan thought that if  she could get the mommies to begin to read to their babies, transmit some of the research by reading to the babies while they were being carried in the womb, that that would be a really good start on bonding, this recognition of the child, the acknowledgement of its consciousness, helping reassure it, helping it feel safe, and that those things could be beneficial. So she wrote books. Susan started with one called The Adventure Begins, which is focused on conception. The second  is The Awakening Heart, which is about the first three weeks and heart development because the little heart starts to beat it within that first 21 days. The third one is called Making Sense. And it's about sensory development. And the fourth one is about birth. And it's called Welcome to the Light.  Her latest book is Sailing into the Light because as she says, “there's another realm of light that I believe our souls go to.”
About three days after her son died, when she put herself into a relaxed state because totally exhausted, “ my son came to me, and he said, mom, everybody loves me here. And I thought, oh, Tommy, that's so like you. He was a brilliant chemist, worldwide known and a wonderful kid. And I thought, Oh, that's wonderful. And he said, ‘There is only unconditional love her’. So nobody can convince me that anything after this life is bad.  Anything that we create that we might consider hellish we do right here. And all my Pre and Perinatal studies have led me to that conclusion that what we are doing is creating either a heaven or hell for ourselves right here. And so I'm very
happy to have books that are sort of like bookends on the entire lifespan.” 
You may find Susan’s books on
https://wordsmatterpublishing.com/
amazon.com

Next week my guest will be Jeffrey Mishlove PhD, a clinical psychologist, host of  the podcast, New Thinking Allowed, author of an encyclopedic volume of consciousness studies, The Roots of Consciousness and recently awarded the Bigelow Institute Competition Grand Prize for his paper Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death.

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 My guest today is Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD,  Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston and Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Dr. Davis-Floyd is a medical/reproductive anthropologist, international speaker (over 1000 presentations) and researcher in transformational models in childbirth, midwifery and obstetrics. She is author of over 80 articles, 23 encyclopedia entries, and of Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992, 2003) and Ways of Knowing about Birth: Mothers, Midwives, Medicine, and Birth Activism (2018); coauthor of From Doctor to Healer: The Transformative Journey (1998) and The Power of Ritual (2016); and co-editor of 12 collections. Robbie serves as Editor for the International Childbirth Initiative and Lead Editor for the Routledge series “Social Science Perspectives on Childbirth and Reproduction.”
I asked her about her most recent book, BIRTHING TECHNO-SAPIENS:
HUMAN-TECHNOLOGY CO-EVOLUTION AND THE FUTURE OF REPRODUCTION. What is a techno-sapiens? After offering an explanation, I wanted to know the meaning of cyborg.
I read that once Robbie was asked by a frustrated Latin American epidemiologist,
"Why don’t obstetricians get it? We epidemiologists understand that the vast majority of what they do during labor and birth is just plain wrong. Lots of pediatricians do too. Like—cutting the umbilical cord immediately is just plain stupid! So why don’t OBs act according to the evidence, as we have long been insisting that they do? Instead they just blindly follow obstetric traditions—why can’t they learn to think for themselves? “ She answered that the majority of obstetricians are fear driven; fear of anything going wrong, fear of being sued, fear of criticism by colleagues if they dare not to follow the status quo. She said none of the obstetricians practicing in the US have ever seen a normal unassisted vaginal birth. Robbie would dearly like to see present day obstetrics humanized.
Robbie is, amongst her many other projects, working on a personal memoir.
My guest next week will be Susan Highsmith Phd, Counselor, Author of  "The First Fairy Tales I - IV"   a series of fairy tales for unborn, newborn and very young children designed to help parents bond with their children and children attach to their parents.

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Gerard D. C. Kuiken PhD. False Dualities, Space-time, Life-death
We talk about consciousness, thought, time and the relationship between life and death.
Max Planck regarded consciousness as a fundamental component of the universe and matter as derived from it.  Dr. Kuiken disagrees. He holds that a chosen distinction, a measurement, collapses the  “wave function”  yielding a triunity, like consciousness—distinction—matter.    In other words, they all coexist, and  there is no primacy of consciousness over matter or vice versa. 
His studies of Sanskrit texts have lead him to equate consciousness with Self/self. This self is made of speech, mind and vital breath. The Self is free from evil, free from old age, free from death, free from sorrow, free from hunger, free from thirst, true in love, true in intention. It is to be searched for and wished to be known. 
Gerard speaks of the paradoxical nature of existence and insights from properties of the QM singlet state. He takes a brief dip into Quantum Mechanics and states that entanglement and superposition are equivalent. Frankly, this is beyond my pay scale but perhaps some of my super well-informed listeners/viewers will get it.
Gerard proposes that without a limitation there is no existence and that the brain is the tool for setting up limitations and controlling the consciousness of differences. In this way, 'man becomes aware of himself by limitation and experiences that as the awakening of his own world.
Time is part of the form world and the formless world is timeless, a formulation corresponding to insights from near-death and mystical experience. Life and death are complementary in the sense that in life, spirit is beyond space-time and substance is in space-time.
Next week my guest will be Dr. Robbie Davis-Floyd, cultural, medical, and reproductive anthropologist, researcher, author, and international. We shall discuss the new three-volume book she is editing, THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF OBSTETRICS AND OBSTETRICIANS: THE PRACTICE, MAINTENANCE, AND REPRODUCTION OF A BIOMEDICAL PROFESSION.

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Precognition confounds our sense and understanding of time, something we can generally take for granted. Between case histories and recent experimental work, it is clear that we must take precognition seriously. What does it tell us about the world that individuals can get glimpses of the future (and the past)?
Psi puzzles us in many ways, muddling our ordinary notions of individuality, personality, and the nature of mind in general.
In 2003, Bob started attending the Sursem or ‘Survival Seminar’ project at Essalen and became more actively involved with the leading researchers in Parapsychology. In 2021 he contributed a chapter on Precognition to Consciousness Unbound (Kelly and Marshall).
As we talk, Bob offers a number of case histories of people having precognitive dreams and of laboratory research on Psi. Is there a scientific explanation for such phenomena, I asked. Listen to his answer.
Bob believes that freedom is real, that our human choices matter, and that we have barely scratched the surface of our human potential. He is convinced that there is some kind of life after death though what form it takes he does not know.
My guest next week will be Gerard D. C. Kuiken Ph.D., author of Eastern Thought and  The Shiva Sutra of Vasugupta: Sanskrit and English Translation. 2019. We shall discuss
•What is thought?
•What is space-time?
•What is life-death?

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My guest today is Andria Spyridou PhD, Dr.Nat.Sc.,  Her Doctorate is in Clinical Psychology from the University of Konstanz, Germany. Dr. Spyridou is presently the regional mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) coordinator for UNICEF’s Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office. Currently, Andria lives in Panama.  She emphasized that the opinions expressed here are her personal views and do not necessarily represent her employer’s.
UNICEF in 2018 estimated that more than 29 million babies in 2018 were born in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen or on perilous journeys to escape fighting.
In 2016 Andria joined an international humanitarian organization in the response to the refugee crisis in Greece as a psychosocial support  (MHPSS) coordinator. Since her work in Greece she worked in similar positions in Syria (2017-2019) in  Iraq, Lebanon, Democratic Republic of Congo. During the Covid-19 outbreak she joined  Federation of the Red Cross and worked in the Bahamas and in Latin America.
As an expert trainer in Narrative Exposure Therapy for PTSD she worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Colombia and in Cyprus. I asked her to tell me what is Narrative Exposure Therapy and what benefit did the people in those countries derive from it?
In 2018 Andrea wrote a very interesting paper, Variation in Caesarean Section Rates in Cyprus, Italy and Iceland: An Analysis of the Role of the Media. A fascinating subject that we discussed at length. We discussed her own family background that may have contributed to her interest in this subject as well as more existential issues such as what would she like to be most remembered for.
My guest next week will be Dr. Bob Rosenberg  who received his PhD in the history of science and technology from Johns Hopkins University. He has contributed a chapter on Precognition to Irreducible Mind (2007) and Beyond Physicalism (2015). He will discuss with me Precognition. Please tune in.

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My guest is Joan Koenig, a pioneering music educator, author of  The Musical Child and owner operator of famed Parisian L’Ecole Koenig-The American Conservatory. Joan will tell us how music can supercharge early childhood development—and how parents and educators can harness its power.
At her  music schol they have classes for parents and babies. “We have bells, little bells that sit on the floor. And there's always a pianist in the room. The bells require no motor skills, literally, the child can hit it with their hand. And even very young babies give it a try, of course, most of the time, they pick up the bell and put it in their mouth. But when they get a little older, they realize what's going on, they begin tapping on the bells, and the pianist will join them in exactly the same tempo. So what this child is understanding is that they are making music with somebody.”
Joan says that she has  two year olds who can tell you that that chord is major or minor. Of course, for them, it's a happy elephant or a sad elephant, but it doesn't matter what they're attributing emotional valence to something which is completely abstract, which I find thrilling. So I began to realize that a lot of the exciting research on this subject is still in research papers. So then came the idea. I really wanted to write a book so that parents and educators and just the whole world could understand that we shouldn't be negating musical practice, especially now in a world where we're having increasing problems of attention and dissipated classrooms.
And you don't have to force the children it music, it acts as a sort of a force field with its laws. And believe me, the children obey them. Because they don't actually like cacophony. They  seek harmony, and they will, they will master their impulses, with nobody saying they have to simply because they actually want to participate in this beautiful piece of music they're creating. So that was a Oh, my goodness, was that a 10 minute answer to your question?
Even children younger tha 3, interpret dissonances. So let's say a c and a c sharp together. They find that disagreeable. They love major thirds. What it is utterly fascinating is that a two year old child will say they don't like this sound but they like this sound. And they will tell you that this is sad. And they will tell you that this is happy. And these are two year olds.
I think it's really dreadful, Joan says,  that  in the Western developed world experiencing music early in life is most often through learning to read music. Yet,
very young children, when given the opportunity will actually spontaneously create music. “It's this period from birth, even before birth, right on till the age of six that I think will determine so many things in their lives.”

Please join me next week when my guest will be Andria Spyridou PhD, Dr.Nat.Sc., the regional mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) coordinator for UNICEF’s Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office. She will discuss with me how conflict shapes birth experience, child development, and parenting and what is the role of the international academic community. UNICEF in 2018 estimated that more than 29 million babies in 2018 were born in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen or on perilous journeys to escape fighting.

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My guest today is Dr. Bruce Lipton, cellular biologist and author of The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles. He also wrote two more books, The Honeymoon Effect: The Science of Creating Heaven on Earth in 2009 and with Steve Bhaerman Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (and a Way to Get There from Here)

Through the research of Dr. Lipton and other leading-edge scientists, stunning new discoveries have been made about the interaction between your mind and body and the processes by which cells receive information. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology, that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our thoughts. Bruce repeatedly emphasised that genes contain the blueprint and the environment, of which of course consciousness is very much part of, is the architect and construction crew that builds who we become. He also asserts that if we use the 50 trillion cells that live harmoniously in every healthy human body as a model, we can create not just honeymoon relationships for couples but also a “super organism” called humanity that can heal our planet.
Bruce is no fan of pharmaceutical companies that vigorously resist the idea that one’s mind can control one’s body. A healing of the consciousness which is what Bruce advocates –is something the drug companies cannot sell for any price. The influence of the pharmaceutical companies is enormous, and so their refusal to accept epigenetics is a main reason many people have not heard of it. In fact, the drug companies  in some cases even affect the curriculum in medical schools. Bruce says, “You don’t need drugs. You have to change your consciousness because you already manufacture every equivalent of a drug right now.”
There's not one gene that causes cancer. Genes are correlated with cancer, but they themselves do not engage the cancer. It's a life out of harmony. That's a life with suppressed anger. It's a life where people are not living what they really want to experience or holding things inside is what initiates a cancer. 50% of the women that have the breast cancer gene never get cancer. Possession of the gene doesn't mean you get cancer. It's not living in harmony, and you want to know about not living in harmony, then I would direct everybody to your book, Thomas, because that's where it all started.
And we end on this note: "We're not the TV set, we're the broadcast. And all of a sudden, I said, Hey, I can't die. I'm a spiritual person. Why? Because I'm the broadcast. And the broadcast is always there."

My guest next week is Joan Koenig, a pioneering music educator, author of  The Musical Child and owner operator of famed Parisian L’Ecole Koenig-The American Conservatory. Joan will tell us how music can supercharge early childhood development—and how parents and educators can harness its power.

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Dr. Michael Levin is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor, director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology and co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms with Joshua Bongard. He is the founding associate editor of Collective Intelligence and co-editor of the Bioelectricity Journal. 
Dr. Levin provided in this 50 minute discussion a master class on synthetic biology, regenerative medicine and bioengineering. He explained how birth defects, traumatic injury, cancer and degenerative disease would all be solved if we knew how to control the morphogenetic process. Advances in molecular medicine and genomic editing will not have an impact on biomedicine unless we know what to edit or which pathways to target to achieve system-level goals, such as ‘make a new arm’.
Beyond life on Earth, how would we recognize novel forms of life? What is the appropriate scale of observation for detecting the behaviour and appropriate problem spaces in which life operates? Bioengineering provides a crucial inroad for exobiology; a stepping-stone for enabling generalization of biology such that we can detect truly alien forms of life if and when we encounter them.
The new field of bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organisms, of which Dr. Levin is a leading scientist, suggests not only novel capabilities and advances in knowledge, but also the need for a new ethics. The frequently voiced statements that ‘living things are not machines’ reflect an outdated essentialism and a type of magical thinking that trusts in clear, binary lines separating evolved living beings from designed machines to define our moral duty to various agents comfortably. These lines do not exist, which will be made painfully clear in the next decades as we become surrounded by collections of agents that make the iconic Cantina scene in ‘Star Wars’ look tame in comparison.

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My guest today is Stephen Gyllenhaal, film and television director, writer and producer.  His producing credits include dozens of films and TV shows, amongst them Shattered Mind, about a woman with dissociative identity disorder, the feature documentaries  Exquisite Continent on dream interpretation and In Utero about prenatal psychology. Stephen interviewed me for this movie and that’s how we first met.
Stephen is the father of  actress Maggie Gyllenhaal and actor Jake Gyllenhaal. A few years ago he made a big career pivot, went to Amsterdam, studied with Franz Rupert, had an epiphany and on his return to LA founded the Identity Development Institute.
Stephen spoke with me about his difficult childhood with two alcoholic parents. His escape to a small college in CT and how he fell in love first with movies and then making movies. He says, “It made me feel sane.” Over time he sought out every type of psychotherapy under the sun and saw up to 40 therapists. All this time he was garnering Emys and a multitude of Academy awards for his movies and TV work. His productions were often based on deeply flawed characters with psychological trauma.
In 2016 he was introduced to the work of  Dr. Franz Ruppert who developed the theories and practice of Identity oriented Psycho Trauma Theory (IoPT) over the last 30 years. Stephen says that just one single session had a profound effect on him. He offered to demonstrate it if I agreed to participate.  And I did for 10 minutes. I can attest to the fact that this approach is powerful. No wonder Stephen is putting a lot of his time and energy into establishing it in the US.
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Next week my guest will be Michael Levin  PhD, an American developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. Levin is director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology.  He is also co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms  with Joshua Bongard.  Levin is co-editor in chief of the Bioelectricity Journal and founding associate editor of Collective Intelligence.
Please tune in.

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There are people who just stumble into a job and suffer through it until they die or retire. Whichever comes first. Others find a vocation that truly expresses and fulfills their inner self early in life. For others it takes longer. Luciano Volpe, my guest today, falls into this latter category. He got his MBA at the University of Toronto and for the next two years he worked as a management consultant, a job that made him feel miserable. Then he went into business development where he lasted four years. In 2007, he started a small international business expoting maple syrup to Italy. This business, SLV International,  has grown exponentially and  now, both exports and imports food and other items to  and from South East Asia, Mexico and the EU.
Most importantly, and this is when things become interesting, in 2011 Luciano founded a not-for-profit company, Inspire North. In 2020, he shifted Inspire’s focus and started the podcast Behind Greatness.  
In our conversation we touched on many subjects including Julius Cesar and Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy, widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language. I asked Luciano what he would do if given $100 million. He said he would help struggling artists. We had a most stimulating meeting. 
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Next week my guest will be  Stephen Gyllenhaal, film director, father of  actress Maggie Gyllenhaal and actor Jake Gyllenhaal. He is also a published poet and the founder of the Identity Development Institute in Los Angeles. Please tune in.

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