A judge walks out of his chambers laughing his head off. A colleague approaches him and asks why he is laughing. "I just heard the funniest joke in the world!" "Well, go ahead, tell me!" says the other judge. "I can't. I just gave someone ten years for it." With the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the world lost one of humanity's greatest cultural productions: the communist joke. Crossing cultures and borders, the jokes were unique, ubiquitous, and jam-packed with...

Fragile things hate chaos, volatility and randomness. The slightest jolt can break them. But what is the opposite of fragility? Not resilience or robustness. Resilient things are neutral to stressors. They take a beating, but remain unchanged. So what likes from disorder? Our languages don't have a word for such a property, or at least they didn't, until Nassim Taleb came around. Antifragile is the property of things that gain from disorder: like muscle, economies, creativity, and character....

Are killers born or made? Depending on who you ask, you'll get a variety of responses: all humans are good - it's only the 'environment' or 'society' that makes them do bad things; anyone who engages in murder must be a cold-blooded psychopath, born to kill. But simple explanations come from simple minds. It's not a matter of either/or. Some people are born that way, like psychopaths. Some have the strength of character to resist the impulse to conform. But most people are somewhere in...

Everywhere we look we see signs that the medical system, that's supposed to be healing and preventing disease, is diseased itself. It was recently announced that Americans are dying young at alarming rates. And is it any wonder? We have the opioid epidemic, vaccine injuries, the obesity epidemic, the cholesterol obsessed doctors who know nothing about nutrition, the most basic foundation of health. Polio vaccines now cause more polio outbreaks than the wild virus, the idea of curing disease...

Why have many ancient - and even contemporary stories - just stuck with us and seem etched into the psyche of civilization? What is it about particular narratives that appear to hold something so essential to our existence, and that have become reference points for our own narratives? And how can a story, or a mythology, serve us as we navigate life's many day to day travails, and unexpected twists and turns? Jordan Peterson writes: "A good theory lets you use things — things that once...

While materialist scientists and academics dismiss the possibility out of hand, there is not only an extensive amount of research suggesting the validity of reincarnation, near-death out-of-body experiences, and the like - but also much more to the reality of an afterlife than many people assume. Through automatic writing and the use of mediumship there exists a whole body of literature that presents such a world to us. While perhaps impossible to prove the validity of this material, it is...

Any regular readers of Sott.net, Mercola.com, GreenMedInfo and a number of other alternative health news websites are no-doubt familiar with the fact that alternative health information is being censored, deranked or flatly banned by a number of Big Tech platforms. Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Pinterest, even MailChimp have all been exposed recently for taking a firm stand against their user's freedom to have access to the health information they may wish to see. Today we're joined again by...

It's time again for another of our 'In the News' (ITN) shows, where the Objective:Health hosts weigh in on some of the headlines showing up in our feeds in the world of health. We cover a lot this week: A new study showing children who live closer to fast food joints are more likely to be obese (duh); genetic testing shows many vaccines contain aborted fetal cells; Tylenol taken by pregnant women may cause autism, ADHD or other developmental issues; chemicals in consumer products lead to...

Dr. Jordan Peterson's 1999 classic Maps of Meaning contains much the raw material for his more recent lectures and writing. While a dense read at times, it's worth the effort. On this episode of MindMatters we take a look at the first sections in Chapter 2, which explore the universals of human experience: the unbearable present, the encounter with chaos, and its transformation into the ideal future. With examples from everyday life and neuropsychology, Peterson shows how we are hardwired to...

The consequences of the ongoing misguided "war on drugs" have been devastating on multiple fronts not the least of which is the lack of research into actual benefits. On the last episode of Objective:Health we looked at the new research being done on psychedelic drugs to help with a whole range of mental issues. This week, we shift our focus to cannabinoids, better known as CBD, a powerful medicinal from the marijuana plant. Joining us today are our regular O:H host Erica and her husband...