Unusual Practice

In 1983, a neuroscientist discovered something that should’ve ended a philosophical argument dead on the spot: your brain starts acting before you feel like you’ve decided anything.

This week, we connect that experiment to a brand-new 2026 discovery that shows even your most basic sensory brain regions are quietly entangled in decisions you think you haven’t made yet, plus what a West African oracle tradition, a 1,000-year-old Indian philosophy, and a Greek Stoic all figured out about this centuries before EEG machines existed.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re actually driving or just watching the wheel turn, this is the episode that answers it, and it’s not the answer you’re expecting.

🎧 New episode of Unusual Practice. Breaking illusions, building understanding.

Power or money have to just be enough so that nobody in the room dares say "are you sure about that."

This episode is about what happens the moment someone, a billionaire, a president, the imposing voice in your friend group, gets enough authority that people stop correcting them.

The psychology of why proven success curdles into blind conviction, why entire rooms go silent at the exact moment they should be arguing, and why we mistake "they won before" for "they're right now."

Real cases inside: a billion-dollar deal that collapsed in silence, the tech CEO who laughed off the iPhone, the Blockbuster exec who passed on Netflix for $50 million, the Kodak leadership that invented the digital camera and told the inventor to keep quiet, and a live look at how the exact same psychology is playing out in a war room this week.

If you've ever swallowed a question because everyone else in the room seemed so sure, this one's for you.

Power psychology. Ego and authority. Cognitive bias. Groupthink. Decision making under pressure. Confirmation bias. Success trap.

Financial infidelity is ending more relationships than actual affairs, and nobody's talking about it. We break down what people are really hiding, secret accounts, secret debt, secret cards, and the exact kind of money argument Kansas State University found is the single strongest predictor of divorce.

Not sex. Not in-laws.... Money.

If you've ever kept a number from your partner, this one's for you.

You finally got the calm, consistent love you said you wanted. So why does it feel like nothing?

This is Prince Charming Syndrome, and most of what's written about it gets the diagnosis backwards. It's not about being too picky to find him. It's about finding him, and feeling bored.

We get into the actual wiring: the "lovemap" a psychologist named John Money says gets built before you're six, why dopamine fires on uncertainty instead of reward, and why a fully self-aware, fully therapized brain can still go flat in front of a genuinely good partner. Chemistry, it turns out, is often just familiarity in a better outfit.

If you've ever sat across from someone good for you and felt the itch to manufacture a problem, this is the autopsy. No five-step fix. Just the wiring, exposed.

You did everything right. Therapy, boundaries, the work.

So why does being fine feel like something's wrong?

This episode breaks down hedonic adaptation, the psychology finding that humans recalibrate to a stable baseline no matter how much life improves... and why a nervous system trained on chaos doesn't recognise calm as safety, it recognises it as a threat to investigate.

We unpack stress-seeking patterns, hypervigilance after trauma, self-sabotage when things are going well, and why your identity might be quietly addicted to crisis instead of actually wanting it gone.

If you've ever manufactured a problem out of nowhere right when life finally settled down - this is the quick episode explaining why.

Trauma doesn't just affect your personality.

Neuroscience shows it physically restructures the brain, your threat responses, your attachment patterns, your humour, your drive - into what we call identity.

So when therapy works, what exactly gets dismantled?

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Everyone talks about missing the person who left. Nobody talks about missing the version of you that only existed inside that relationship. The one who had that specific laugh, that mapped-out future, that whole self... gone.

This isn't heartbreak. This is identity death. And your brain is grieving something it can't even name yet. Science explains why.

Nobody joins a cult. They think they're joining a community. By the time they realise the difference... it's already too late.

In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli breaks down the truth in cult psychology: the people who get recruited aren't broken, damaged, or gullible. Research shows they're typically intelligent, middle-class, and caught in an ordinary moment of vulnerability, a breakup, a move, a loss. They're you. They're me.

We're going into the mechanics of love bombing, information control, identity destruction, and why leaving feels psychologically impossible even when you can see what's happening.

And then, we're applying all of it to the communities, wellness spaces, and online movements you're probably already in.

The question isn't whether you'd recognise a cult. It's whether you already would have.

Hit play... Quietly ;)

Thirty million people bought The Secret. A NYU study then showed positive visualisation actually makes performance worse. So what exactly is going on?

In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli dismantles one of the most commercially exploited ideas in modern wellness (manifestation) - and rebuilds it from the ground up using real science.

We cover why focused intention shifts what you notice and act on. The self-fulfilling prophecy and how belief drives behaviour without a single quantum particle being involved. Dr Gabriele Oettingen's landmark research showing that pure positive visualisation consistently undermines goal attainment, and her WOOP method, backed by 20 years of peer-reviewed studies, that doubles follow-through rates.

And the part nobody in the manifestation industry wants to talk about: the victim-blaming logic buried inside The Secret's most famous line, and how that logic has caused documented psychological harm.

This isn't anti-spirituality. It's pro-truth!

Your brain isn't broken... it's addicted. And the thing it's hooked on? Familiar pain.

In this episode of Unusual Practice, Charli breaks down the neuroscience of why suffering becomes a habit, and why happiness can feel genuinely threatening to your nervous system. We're talking negativity bias, amygdala hijack, masochistic equilibrium, and the cortisol loop keeping you stuck in cycles you know aren't serving you.

This isn't therapy-speak. This is your brain on a leash, and how to finally take it back.

If you've ever picked a fight when things were going well, convinced yourself the good thing won't last, or just can't stop replaying the same painful thoughts, this episode is about you. In the best possible way.

Hit play. Your nervous system can handle it.