The Room of Lives: Recent Episodes
Neel
‘I have narcolepsy. Sometimes in sleep paralaysis, I hallucinate that my visual world is split. The left side is reality, and the right side is a bad dream, and I am sliding towards it.
‘I met this blind woman who at some point started hallucinating technicolor light, then started seeing her hand as she waved it across her face. I ran experiments, and her brain images looked similar to those of a sighted person looking at the same objects.’
Dr Jesse Breedlove studies mental imagery and hallucinations. We first talk about her own narcolepsy and sleep paralysis experiences. Then she describes her experiments on a blind lady with non-optic sight, the blindsight on ibogaine phenomena from the previous episode, and her theory for what’s going on here. Then we talk about stretching the definition of ‘vision’, the pushback in the scientific community against such phenomena, and about neurodivergence.
‘I saw dead bodies, rotting and smelling in the heat. I realized that they had not been collected because there were mines planted all around, and I was walking through them.
‘The military found out that I was involved in secret anti-regime propaganda, and sent me to the war front. One night a rocket dropped on us. The shrapnel chopped the head off a running boy, but he kept on running without his head.
‘I was setting fire to a shop as a political protest, but the petrol got on my shoes and I caught fire as well. They arrested us and gave us 75 lashes with a hard rubber radiator tube. They took us prisoners to a big public prayer by a mullah, where I saw my father. I stood up and started challenging the mullah. They beat us and took us to a bigger prison where the in-charge molested the younger prisoners, and insects from the rubbish crawled over us all the time. They made us watch as they hanged our friends. As I was leaving after my year-long sentence, a guard at the prison entrance happened to see me and said, “I am the judge now”, and sent me back for one more year.
‘This girl and I were driving with anti-regime leaflets, when we were stopped and searched. I was arrested and given a death sentence.’
Hossain shares with me the stories of his rough childhood in Iran, fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, being imprisoned and sentenced to death for his anti-regime activities, and his harrowing odyssey to flee Iran through 4 countries with fake documents.
‘The traditional ibogaine ceremony of eating the ground root bark is a rite of passage for all males in the Bwiti tribe. They use it as an oracle. We have adapted it as a treatment for the diseases of the western developed world, like PTSD, trauma and depression. When an 18 year-old enlists in the military and conducts sanctioned violence for 20 years, they sometimes can’t get out and live a normal life without these psychedelic interventions.
‘On ibogaine, the participant often perceives that they can see the room through their closed eyelids and the eyeshade. I see them starting to peek through the eyeshade, and wave their hands in front of them to verify, and there’s disbelief at first. It can feel like a superpower, but also terrifying, because you can no longer hide from your visions. You can also see beings you know, or humanoid creatures. The ibogaine can also take on a voice and an entity that can be in dialogue and answer questions. And you can experience a life review, like a projected home movie, with your life memories and trauma.
‘I myself experienced being able to see the room through closed eyes and eyeshades, then I saw a humanoid figure. I could walk around and look away and look back, and it was exactly where and how it should be in 3D. These beings will often tend to you for the entire visionary experience.
‘The ibogaine asked me if I wanted to know how I would die. I am a death doula and comfortable around my own death. I said no, because I don’t want it to take away the surprise. It said, good answer, and moved on.’
Colm Walker is a veteran and the executive director of The Mission Within psychedelic retreat. He shares his background and a description of their program, and what a typical ibogaine experience is like. Then we talk about a strange phenomenon that is allegedly common on ibogaine: being able to see through closed eyes and an eye mask, and we discuss the prospect of seriously scientifically studying it.
‘1985, first year, second semester: Professor Ed Diener walks into the lecture hall and asks, “what do people want in life?” “Love, sex, money, happiness, a new boat, rock and roll, drugs”, the chalkboard fills up. He circles “happiness” and says, “I believe that all the other wants are about this one. I am studying the nature of happiness, and here’s my research.” I learned something life-changing in his class. He’d found two variables that mattered most in the pursuit of happiness: the quality of your relationship with others, and with yourself.
SQUID is such a simple but powerful concept that improves quality of life so quickly. So it has become the focus of my life to put on a costume and teach it full-time in the streets, instead of being a traditional professor.'
For years, Dr Mel Ganus, doctorate in education with a focus on applied psychology, has put on street shows in a squid costume to teach kids how to not get triggered by situations, and has co-authored a book about it with Dr Philip Zimbardo who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment.
Dr Mel starts by asking who I am, why I’m here, where am I going and what do I want. Then she shares her life story and her experience of attention deficit disorder and neurodivergence, about how she was introduced to positive psychology, and the origins of her lifelong work on Quality of Life Experiments. We end with talking about psychedelic mushrooms and the connectedness of mycelium.
‘I have really suffered mentally, and from mysterious chronic illnesses, which I believe are all an illness of the interface between body and mind: the nervous system.
‘As a kid, I had panic moments of fixating on my death, and would actually kick, punch and scream. On ketamine, my self disappeared, and I was left puzzled: what is awareness without a vantage point that it’s emanating from?’
Former Navy SEAL Chris Irwin was the first subject of my eye-tracking experiments at the new Psychedelics Research and Therapy Center at UT Austin. He has created the Rare Sense podcast and blog that shares his mental health journey. We talk about mysterious chronic illnesses, then I explain my eye-tracking experiments, and we discuss EMDR therapy. We then talk about our fears of death, and the self disappearing with psychedelics or spiritual practice.
‘India was an intense and diverse chaos. I learned to say no to people in a way I never thought I would. But I also had the best time with the locals than any other country. As a Jew, we have the first monotheistic religion. You are polytheistic and the perspective is so different. In Judaism we read interpretations of religion a lot. But India is the birthplace of direct yoga and meditation.‘I once told a friend that I would feel lonely while traveling. He said, there’s being alone and experiencing your true self because you are not compromising. Then there’s loneliness, when your constant high expectations of experiences and socialization are not met. Being alone is the default, and if you learn to be comfortable with it, anything else is extra.’Idan Yarom shares his experiences of backpacking through southeast Asia, including India, and the life lessons on communication, perspective, challenges and loneliness that these journeys have taught him.
'In Israel, you are summoned to the military at 17. They have psychological tests to see if you’re mentally sound to hold a gun. Some people try to fake mental problems to avoid the military, so the system is very skeptical even when you do have real mental issues. I got into the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson unit that reports military news. I’ll say we try our best to tell the truth. I would travel solo to random bases and interview people, and sometimes got the craziest stories with just a couple of questions.'
After that I worked at the Tel Aviv Institute on national security. This last decade was one of the safest for Israeli security. Since 2019 we had about 5 elections, and Palestine was not a central topic in any of them. But there is a big difference in our perspectives. In Palestine they observe the Nakba day like a catastrophe or Holocaust, which in Israel is our independence day, the happiest day of the nation. Both sides have legitimacy, and we need to find a way to make it okay, but I don’t see a solution right now.'
Idan Yarom shares his experience as a military reporter in the Israeli Defense Forces and working at the Tel Aviv Institute on national security, then provides a recent history of Israel and Palestine.
Related: episode 7.2 · Life and Resistance in Palestine
In science we make observations and extrapolate to what we believe are the eternal laws of nature. But what if the laws of the universe themselves are not permanent, but gradually morphing?
Link to my music: Causal Diamond on Bandcamp
‘The world may only appear to be limited by physical laws. But if it is what dreams are made of, it is unlimited, indestructible and endless.’
Number one of three episodes in which I air some hot takes on reality.
'As a teen, I met my friend every year in a park at midnight on Christmas eve. One time as we were walking, there was a flash of light, and I went away somewhere. It felt like outer space, I didn’t have a body and could not move, and time stopped existing. Then I came back. My friend and I looked at each other, and knew we had both experienced the same thing. We started running, and a torrential rain began pouring down.'There was tension at home, and school was constant fear. I felt repressed, and wanted intense experiences to break out of my shell. I hitchhiked across the country, worked for a traveling carnival and odd jobs, and was homeless. When you are vulnerable, the protection of the system turns off. Looking back, I would have liked to do it more gently and avoid some of the trauma, and be more normal and stable today.'I kept having supernatural experiences, and I’m still not sure how to include it in my academic work. I once went into Shavasana and lost consciousness again. It took me on a journey where I was a wanderer working in various spiritual communities. The universe felt connected to me and spoke to me, but it was sometimes scary to be absorbed in the divine. Most of the time there’s enough interference that my spirit is not in sync with the flow of existence. Magical coincidence is sort of like the extent to which they match up.'Dr Brent Crosson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches a course called Science, Magic and Religion. He is the author of Experiments with Power, about the clash of politics with the spiritual practice of Obeah in Trinidad, which won the 2021 Clifford Geertz Prize for the best book in the anthropology of religion. Brent’s interests lie in African and Caribbean religions, the intersection of science and religion, and the colonial regulation of religion.We start with two stories on coincidence, about a motorcycle and an alligator. Then Brent tells me his life story, about his supernatural experiences, about leaving home, working with a traveling carnival and being homeless, and studying Hinduism in India and the Caribbean. We talk about the connection between science, magic and spiritual practices, and I ask him, ‘what are your religious views, and what do you think will happen to you after you die?’
‘Here in the US, money can do a lot of things that a relationship with God can, so people rely less on that relationship. In Haiti, there's less ambiguity about the effect of magic and prayer. When I was six, my grandfather brought my dead aunt back to life. This one US magician was showing his tricks to the Haiti kids, but they were not impressed, because they have seen more in real life.’
Othniel, my uber driver to a conference, is from Bahamas of Haitian parents. We talk about religion, satanism and witchcraft in Haiti. I ask if he has any spiritual gifts, and if he believes in meaning and purpose to life. It turns out that he is a pastor, and we talk about science and its dogmas, and the coincidences that brought us to this conversation.
At a recent camping trip to Enchanted Rock with my friend Behnam, I share how I have traversed from the world of scientific reason and objective truths, to spiritual, unprovable, even paranormal truths. I would love to bridge these worlds, but it seems like they have intrinsic properties that keep them from merging, like oil and water.
‘Two clones wake up in identical rooms, and are told that one is near a mountain, the other is near a lake. Either of them can ask, “Am I the one near the mountain, or the lake?”, and there can be an answer. But interestingly, a third person cannot even formulate this ‘which clone is which’ as a question that can have an answer.
Philosophy professor Dr Miriam Schoenfield teaches a course called 'Who am I?' I ask her: what do you think is your self? How did you become interested in the question of the self? I share my lifelong journey of questioning the self that led to non-duality, then we compare our perspectives on the self, subjective vs objective facts, dream vs reality and the continuity of the self over time.
'I was obsessed with knowing the fundamental truths of the world, and became an analytic philosopher, focused on logic and rational thinking. After the wilderness, I began to feel that there are more, juicier, ways of connecting with the world, accessing information not available through thinking. I now suspect that we can't reach the truth by analysis. My colleagues think I should write a paper about it, but I don’t.'
I ask Philosophy professor Dr Miriam Schoenfield: why did you suddenly go off solo into the wild, and what internal shift did you experience there? I share a change happening in my life where I can sometimes feel the energy of trees, then we talk a lot about vibes in the context of living in a city.
'I travelled solo in the wilderness for a year. It shifted my perspective on many things. I started seeing cities as ecosystems, and I began caring out of a love for the world. When I heard they’ll expand the highway, I had an immediate gut feeling: bad idea.'
Dr Miriam Schoenfield graduated from Brandeis university in Philosophy, Math and Neuroscience, then got her Philosophy PhD from MIT, and now teaches at UT Austin.
Texas wants to expand the I-35 highway running through Austin, but Miriam and her activist friends have sued the state in an attempt to stop it. Why does a philosophy professor want to prevent the government from building public infrastructure in one of America’s fastest-growing cities?
Some resources:
- Submit your public comment about I-35 expansion.
- Rethink35
‘I played cricket in Sri Lanka and India, I miss that. I have to live with 227 rules now to have less desire, anger, worrying, so less suffering. Desire is natural, but dwelling on it will cause you suffering. Enlightenment is the freedom from suffering while you’re still alive. I do want to be enlightened, but again that’s desire.’
During a recent backpacking trip in Thailand with my friend and girlfriend, we spoke to Phra KK, a Buddhist monk in Chiang Mai who leads discussion programs and teaches meditation classes (more in this blog).
We ask him: Is the monk life a sacrifice? Do you miss anything about your previous ordinary life? What is enlightenment, and do you think you’ll get it? Do you still have friends, and is that attachment okay? How do you feel about monks who’ve returned to ordinary life? Is the world is becoming better or worse, or coming to an end soon? Why are some people violent, and where does violence come from?
'Growing up prioritizing rationality, I had come to believe that any truth worth acquiring could be written down. Then on a psychedelic trip I realized that truth isn't obligated to be represented in words. Words are only for the shared libraries of data and concepts across humans. There is much beyond that, where language is only a tribute.
'The media looks very unreal to me. It seems that many people are okay with distorting the truth in sometimes dumb ways that still seem to work. Now with AI, governments can afford to do this at scale: run massive social attacks, even drive mass psychosis by say, optimizing for outrage.'
My friend tells me about a psychedelic trip which tuned him towards non-verbal truths, and we discuss intelligence vs goodness, and how my advisor does science for the love of it.
Then we talk about the power and peril of fast recent advances in AI and brain-computer interfaces. If all human brains were connected into a blazing fast network, what would it feel like to be that singular giant consciousness?
'Everyone has their story. My story is that I feel like I have to earn love. As a kid, it was by being good at school. As a tantra teacher, it is by helping people.'
We discuss our experiences in a tantra workshop of broken people looking for healing and empowerment, and about the Guru’s own need to be a Guru.
'There are five divine acts: creation, maintenance, dissolution, remembering and forgetting. If you lived in a world where you knew every outcome, it would be very boring. So at some point God presses a button to forget.
'When we forget something as humans, where does it go? Subjectively, into a black void that is at the edge of our selves. It’s that same void that stuff comes out of in a moment of remembering, and also in moments of creative inspiration. When an idea blossoms in my head, it blooms from a field of darkness. I don't see or own what was beyond the idea that gave birth to it. So no matter how much I say it’s my idea, that’s not true.'
What is enlightenment? If the world is evolving towards more awareness, where does this extra awareness come from? We then talk about the self, and some surprising experiments on patients whose left and right brains have been split.
‘I accidentally took a lot of LSD, and on the outside, unknown to me, I was crashing into people in a tantric orgy. But on the inside, I was stuck in the eternal now.
‘I’ve experienced that as I die and the brain shuts down, time expands to infinity, and my thoughts distil into an essential emotion which I am fated to live for eternity. One time I think it was fear, another time happiness. This may be where eternal heaven and hell come from.
‘If someone falls into a black hole, from the outside you see them slow down to a stop at the event horizon. But in their experience, they fall straight through.
‘Time does not flow in a single stream in the universe, in spirituality or science. It can split off in branches for different observers, and merge again.’
What if at your death your life really flashes past your eyes, but in real time? Is it then rebirth, or eternal recurrence? Is there any correspondence between the splitting of objective time, say in relativity, and of subjective time in non-ordinary states?
‘I’ve been doing intermittent fasting, but I’d be ravenous for my one daily meal. Now as I started this new practice, my hunger completely died. It’s still satisfying to eat tasty food, but I can go for multiple days without hunger or fatigue, haven’t yet seen the limit. When I watch people eat now, it’s almost like seeing drug addicts.
‘The next training I went to was more radical, where the teachers would have sex with the students. You might believe that rejection doesn’t affect you, but after the teaching there would be free play, and then you’d really know how attached you are to outcomes.
‘The third training was in Mexico, where we contemplated death.’
Pratim tells me about his recent travels to learn Tantra practices from different places in the USA and Mexico. Then I share some of my lucid dreams and experiences about death and losing my mind.
'When I was younger, social interaction was difficult, and I worked around it often by going meta in a hyper-verbal way.
'I taught my mom partner dance. She felt amazed by how two strangers could come together for an amazing dance where they communicate so fluidly and dynamically without speaking a word.
'I’ve never spoken with hundreds of people I know in my dance community. But I’ve been pressed up against their bodies every week, and know them so intimately and lovingly, and I know how and where to touch them so they can hear me better.
'There’s this feeling that starts to well up inside when you’re singing worship songs in a large group and harmonizing with them. The whole room rises to a place you can’t reach on your own. It’s beyond a meditation. You see god, life, spirituality, connection, and the souls of people. Dance brings it too. When you share the music with people, you get high.'
Neuroscience student Mae Moninghoff and I discuss nonverbal communication in partner dance and wrestling, and about being vulnerable.
'A partner once called me a brain ninja. I enter people’s mind palaces, roam around and open doors, even suggest rearrangements. I see so clearly how people hurt themselves, and I used to be more abrasive and piercing in my feedback. I’ve now learned to be more careful and balanced about it.
'I spent 21 years trying to be the best boy I could be, so nobody could ever find out that actually I’m not a boy at all, and it was exhausting. There were rooms that were hidden. The things I knew about myself about being trans, nobody ever got in there. My transitioning has been this astoundingly freeing experience. Every step I take towards who I feel like I am, I cannot imagine going back. Now that trans room is mine, I claim it, I live there, it’s my favourite room in my house.'
Neuroscience student Mae Moninghoff talks about her habit of walking into people’s mind mansions, opening doors, looking at things and rearranging them. She describes how people have responded to this, and how she has learned to be more balanced and gentle about it.
'If I failed in a relationship while holding tightly, that would so shake the core of who I am. Holding lightly is being outcome-agnostic. It’s not that nothing matters, but you go into a relationship with no expectation that it has to succeed, and knowing that on the other end you’ll be okay.
'We’re living in an environment that’s not conducive to good spirit or good work. When people fudge their science, or claw against those who should be their compatriots, they do so because they feel it’s more likely to give them some other happiness, and they’re right.'
In this second part of my conversation with neuroscience student Mae Moninghoff, we discuss the idea of holding lightly, in relationships and even in science. We then talk about jealousy, and the utility of anger.
'I always knew I was trans. I was 5 or 6, being raised Christian, and I thought, thank God heaven exists, because one day I will die and get to have my real body there. I am on estrogen, transitioning for four years now. If I was born a woman, I would’ve been happier with my body, but less happy with my social role.
'It shouldn’t be the responsibility of an oppressed population to deliver their message in a way that feels good to hear. But if you want to make progress, you have to put your ego aside for a bit, so that the others can’t just check out of your message. When you get mad, it gives them ammo.
'My Mom is always cultivating hope. I adopted that silver-lining perspective early, and that’s how I got through being dysphoric. It’s about what I’m walking towards vs. what I’m running away from.
'I was lucky to be raised by people who loved me implicitly and gave me an unshakeable foundation that people can’t take from me. I feel safe inside myself and protect myself. I want to help people find that, that’s why I like talking about this.
'The things I’m saying to you, I couldn’t have said them four years back when I came out. But I spent a long time seeking an understanding of myself and others, and now the words just kind of come.
'Yes, I pursue being different, but not in an antagonistic way. I don’t like feeling disconnected, I like people so much. I try to be different by finding a novel perspective. Every time I have a perspective, I think, how can I have a drastically different perspective that is just as true? It’s a mindful ego-death practice.'
Mae Moninghoff is trans, poly and synesthetic, has a bachelor’s in cognitive science and computer science at UC Davis, and works in Chris Baker’s Brains and Cognition lab in the National Institute of Mental Health.
Here she talks about being trans, how it shaped her life, her evolving understanding of herself and others, and ways to create a bridge of empathy between the LGBTQ and other minorities and the rest of the population.
‘A scientist becomes a scientist only because they can inherit previous knowledge created by humankind. So it is our responsibility to give it back. You could argue that just by doing science we’re giving back. True, but science can flourish only when people come to it with a rational bent of mind. A scientist does not just believe, but questions, and they should reach out to society to convey how science teaches us to think. Our administrators, who now only count publications, should weigh outreach efforts as well.
‘In science outreach, we shouldn’t just share research facts and figures. More important is to teach how to think scientifically. People may believe a scientist out of authority. That’s not the right reason. The bedrock of science is: don’t believe anything without evidence. We should teach them to question us.
‘Most Indian newspapers don’t have science columns. It’s a profit-based model, and they say politics sells, but science doesn’t. Science communication is an art, and good science journalism must become a lucrative profession.
‘Many beliefs and superstitions of people are about questions of origin. Where did the solar system, the earth, and life come from? Any scientist should know the answers to these critical questions, and convey them.
‘People often take science merely as a career: for name, fame, position, tenure. This is also what leads to the exploitation of students. We should instead see science as an emotional pursuit, driven by our love and curiosity for nature, because we want to know her secrets. Many exploitative scientists were themselves exploited as students, so they learned that it’s okay. Instead of figuring out a system to punish them, we should bring up the next generation of scientists with ethical mentorship, so that they become ethical mentors themselves.
‘In India there’s now an organized attempt by the politically powerful to undermine science. This is causing immeasurable harm to our scientific atmosphere, and Indian scientists have a big role to play to defend science. There is a new education policy to introduce courses on ‘Indian knowledge systems’. What comprises that is a fuzzy idea. Government leaders have gone on record saying that 7000 years ago we had plastic surgery to plant an elephant head on a human torso. These are slowly trickling into curriculums, and that’s dangerous.'
Dr Soumitro Banerjee was my masters thesis advisor. He is a Physics professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, known for his studies on nonlinear dynamics in electronic circuits. He is a member of all three Indian national science academies and the World Academy of Sciences, and been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology by the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. He has written two books: Dynamics for Engineers and Wind Electrical Systems, and edited and written parts of a book: Nonlinear Phenomena in Power Electronics: Bifurcations, Chaos, Control, and Applications. He is also the general secretary of the Breakthrough Science Society, an NGO for science outreach.
We begin with asking, should scientists just focus on their research, or also take time for outreach? What if that slows down their research? What should and should not be shared in science outreach? And what should be the role of media in communicating science to the people?
I bring up power imbalance and exploitation between advisor and student, and end by asking, how does he see the attitude surrounding science in today’s Indian society and politics?
'As a physicist I draw lines around the edge of my knowledge and say "I don’t know". I also don’t know what is the self or the universe. I’ve encountered many conflicting explanations, and I just can’t know right now. There are many questions out there to which the right answer is "I don’t know". In this exploration of unknown, our job is to constantly not know, that’s research.
'Maybe there are three infinities in front of us. There’s the infinitesimal, the universe-scale, and the meter-scale infinity of activity called life. Although I don’t know myself or the universe, I can shape the way I interact with other forms of life. How I treat other life is my way of understanding life.
'We professors are benchmarked against numbers that quantify our performance. You can slip into prioritizing these numbers so much that you start treating people as objects, not life. It’s all matter anyway, nothing divine or sacred. If you treat animals as objects, what stops you from treating humans as objects? If your religion doesn’t stop you and the law doesn’t stop you, nothing will stop you unless you stop yourself. The divine idea, on the other hand, comes with its shoulds and shouldn’ts, and that causes me stress too. I try to approach life with absolute respect. I don’t know how life arose, but I see an infinity in it that amazes me. I have my own goals, but I also sincerely wish for the well-being of my lab members. We’re in it together as a symbiosis.'
Dr José Alvarado is professor of biophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. In this episode, I remark that José says ‘I don’t know’ very often and very easily. How does he do that? Where is the place of this attitude in academia today? I mention how I feel relaxed around his energy, and what it has to do with ego. We then discuss systemic power imbalance and exploitation by advisors in grad school. Is there room in today’s competitive academia for generosity and openness?
'What is life? Biologists may say that life is a thing that’s capable of reproducing and autonomous behaviour. The thermodynamic definition is a system that consumes free energy to maintain a stable non-equilibrium state. What is life can also be answered differently by different religions. You could argue that life is something sacred, divine, even created. I look at all these perspectives, and my answer is, I don’t know.
'Can we create life? Some people insist so. My advisor is part of a Dutch group called Basyc whose goal is to create an artificial cell. The Sloan Foundation funds the Matter-to-Life program, whose broad goal is to create synthetic life. Then there’s people who believe that life is so fundamental and divine that it’s impossible for humans to create. My answer is, I don’t know.
'Reductionism hasn’t failed, but it hasn’t yet bridged the chasm between biochemistry and the behaviour of the cell. There is an intermediate layer of regulatory networks where loops are everywhere. You don’t have to go so far as loops of birth and death. Just look at 10-20 proteins that interact in loops, and suddenly it’s an extraordinarily large space of extremely complicated behaviours that’s impossible to describe mathematically. Feedback loops are the quantum of complexity in a biological system. Now try this with the tens of thousands of proteins inside a cell performing all sorts of interlinked functions, and it’s an infinitely connected system that reductionism may never fully break down.
'In physics we’re used to reductionism everywhere. I find this a very interesting time in physics history, where we’re presented with such a major natural phenomenon that is so resistant to our usual approach. So I wonder what else is necessary.'
Dr José Alvarado is professor of biophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. José grew up in Miami, and was a graphic designer for some time after high school and wanted to go to art school. But he ended up doing his undergrad in mechanical engineering in Miami, then a masters in biophysics and a minor in classical Sanskrit from the University of Leipzig in Germany. He then got a PhD in biophysics from the Vreije university and AMOLF in Amsterdam, Netherlands, followed by a postdoc in mechanical engineering at MIT.
We begin with the story of his academic path and his trajectory into biophysics. Then we ask the question, what is life? We discuss British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ meme definition of life, according to which ideas, music and jokes are living. I mention that in non-dual views, the divide between life and matter is unreal. One school decides that consciousness is therefore an illusion, while the other says that matter is a dream. José asks me, ‘is our planet alive?’, which leads to the question, at what physical scale does consciousness exist?
I then ask him about my previous guest (episode 47) Pedro’s view that causal chains of reductionism are failing at explaining life, and causal cycles are a better theory. I ask José the same question that I discussed with Pedro: are our scientific modes of explanation, specifically western linear reductionism vs eastern cyclic understanding, related to our respective religious cosmologies? José then explains why he believes that the study of nonlinear dynamics, my favourite part of physics during my masters, will make a serious comeback.
‘I thought life was a special case in a lifeless physical world. The more I learn, I believe that biology is more general, and physics is a special case.
‘Most people will say that there’s a law to predict every quark and gluon, which lets you predict molecules, so cells, so human bodies, so all of society, economy, history, art, culture. This idea that everything can be reduced to physics is now bizarre to me. Physics did not emerge to explain what life is or does. Many biological things can only be explained at the biology level, not a simpler level. Physics tools are being imported into biology, which I think is the wrong idea. Physics is a hammer, and we’re looking for nails. We need to see life directly and develop new theory. The wrong tools give you the wrong questions. “What is life?” assumes that life is a thing. In biology we’re now swimming in an ocean of endless data, but so few principles. I think a much better question is, “why is life?”
‘Physics has causal chains. In biology the fundamental elements are causal cycles, self-referential loops that have caused paradoxes in math. Darwin lamented that he didn’t know any math to describe his theory, but I think that was good. If you try to quantify what is really qualitative, you lose it.'
Evolutionary biologist Pedro Marquez-Zacarias argues that biology cannot be reduced to physics, and has to be explained using new theory inspired directly by life. But how can biology have its own separate laws when it emerges from physics? And what kinds of new under-explored theories of cycles and relations promise to lead there? We discuss the cultural and authoritative tension with physics that arises from these new autonomous theories. Does evolution invert the causal chain to create order out of disorder? And does our scientific reasoning of causal chains vs loops map onto our religious cosmologies of a linear (e.g. Christian) vs cyclical (e.g. Hindu) universe? I share my first LSD vision of the causality of the world: a sea of snakes eating each other’s tails, and Pedro explains why he’s skeptical of current approaches to looking for extraterrestrial life.
‘I was born in Purépecha, an ancient isolated culture that predates Mexico. We don’t know where they came from. The language has no relation with any other language. They burned everything they produced at the end of the year to start anew, so there are no records.
‘My parents didn’t have much education. My dad was in the military, and we moved to Mexico city and other cities. There was discrimination against indigenous people and pressure to speak Spanish, and my Purépecha became blurry.
‘When I was young, I would tell everyone that the holy grail of progress was to leave Purépecha to study. It was only later that I got interested in re-learning the language and culture and returned to visit. Eventually I felt that uprooting and isolating yourself for all this abstract study is not as important as what we have there, the real culture and community. That’s irreplaceable.’
Evolutionary biologist Pedro Marquez-Zacarias got his bachelors at UNAM, Mexico city, his PhD from Georgia Tech, and is now a postdoc at the Santa Fe institute. He is interested in the origins and evolution of biological complexity, the history and philosophy of biology, and the evolution of language.
Pedro started Biomusings, a bilingual blog that collects perspectives from different scientists. He taught at Freedom University, an ‘underground college’ in Atlanta for undocumented students, and volunteered for Books not Bombs and The Global Village Project, which support the education of refugees. He also makes music, and has another podcast interview about the music of his hometown.
Here Pedro tells me about his early life in Purépecha, how he moved to the city and lost some of that culture, and why he returned to it later with renewed appreciation. He shares his early education, involvement and disenchantment with politics, and trajectory into biology research.
‘We pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at these two locations to search for planets. When the data came in, I processed it, and jumped out of my seat and screamed.’
Aniket Sanghi, is getting his bachelors in physics and astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, and has already begun doing research. He has published work on identifying, photographing and analyzing different celestial bodies, including planets, using ground- and space-based telescopes. Aniket is also interested in science outreach, communication and mentoring.
Aniket gave this talk at Darwin’s Pub in downtown Austin, as part of the physics department outreach program called Schrodinger’s pints. In this talk, he takes us through several questions. What kinds of distant planets exist outside our solar system, and how are new planets formed? How do astronomers try to find these planets, and look for life on them? How can they take photos of these distant planets, and what are the challenges and rewards of this work?
‘The Supreme Court ruling against abortion gives evidence to the unity of church and state. The Supreme Court is not elected in this country, it’s appointed. Why does that sound so different from the Supreme Council in Iran, which is subject to sanctions by the US?
‘Some time ago, I was exposed to Buddhist principles. I was astonished by their likeness to Islamic ideas such as Shia theology on justice, and to Candomblé, an Afro-diasporic syncretic belief system. Even the idea of the illusion of separation within Buddhism and therefore oneness, brought up for me the unity of God in Islam, and within that, a Tasleem: submission to a design that does not have you at its center.
‘I want to deepen a radical vision, with the end-goal of personal power. That does not mean misusing resources, it means moving through the world with an integrity and personal code of what you’re willing and unwilling to do. And I’m always updating that code.’
In this final part of my conversation with artist and author Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, I ask her about the role of religion and spirituality in her life.
‘I think we’re going through such a trembling, fearful, paranoid time of the waning influence of the male era. This idea in the tech bro circles that all we need is a technocratic womb society like in The Matrix. I feel like there’s a gender cold war going on. Some might say it’s not even that cold.
‘I’m writing a book on extractive economies. We know that fossil fuels are going to end. Analogous to that is the world of data, which is seemingly infinite. The other extractive resource is women.’
In this part of my conversation with artist and author Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, I bring up that her art frequently comments on politics, economy and technology, all heavily male-dominated areas. Is the current state and movement in these areas influenced by a runaway male ego?
‘I am more and more interested in Jungian thought. Serendipity is very much part of his framework, and it isn’t just magical thinking. It comes from the collective unconscious.
‘I recently learned that the epigenetic framework is particularly matrilineal. Whether or not certain genes are turned on for collective or generational trauma depends on the mother line. Given all the hormones and the physical-emotional processes happening in the bodies of these women, it makes sense that I am capable of being the beneficiary of their trauma, or their triumph.
‘We are taught to centralize ourselves in our lives, that we design our life, we lead our life. I am in the process of deeply questioning that thesis. What would it look like, if instead of leading my life, I followed it?’
In this part of my conversation with artist and author Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, we talk about serendipity, and its relation to Carl Jung's collective unconscious, and collective and inter-generational trauma.
‘In art school, a professor chastised me for the lack of a traceable icon. That’s wanting it to be easy: “Why can’t I see this thing all throughout your work? Repeat a signature so I know it’s yours.” I am deathly uninterested in that. To expect to elicit one kind of response would be incredibly narrow. The art is not complete until it betrays the artist.
‘I think if there’s anything that unites what I do, it’s on and around the question of the limits of knowledge.
‘Gaining knowledge, feeling an intellectual insatiability, being naturally very curious: all of those things may be true, but I’m always thinking about the asymptotic limit of knowledge. I think the great religious traditions have also thought of this.’
In this part of my conversation with artist and author Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, she talks about her recurring explorations of the limits of knowledge. I ask if she feels misunderstood as an artist and as a person. Is there an undercurrent of depression or pessimism in her art? And does she feel that the world is ending?
‘The West only really knows the criminals of Islamic cultures. It prides itself on the surveillance, the capture, the vanquishing, all of its victory over Islamic culture. After 9/11 and the fomenting of America’s latent Islamophobia, there was a rounding-up of about 5,000 men and boys with Muslim names. A man I loved was also rounded up. It got me thinking, what would it mean to have men and boys with the same name, all somehow living a singular life? And that idea came to me way, way back in high school, when I read a piece called The Life of John Smith, that united 7 men and boys by that name, in a linear timeline from very young to nursing home, as though they were one person.’
In this second part of my conversation with artist and author Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, I ask her where her ideas come from, and she walks me through how she conceived her work that she calls Life of Mohammad.
‘When I was a kid at elementary school, I made some artwork and a poem for some contests. I won each time, and the government even issued me a bond. That was the first time I felt, “I’m not just making something in my own small container, but other people will see it, and it will no longer just be mine.”
‘But there were instances that really cast doubt on what I was doing. My first detention was because I did not follow instructions, and finished an assignment earlier than other students. Later I wrote an essay on Huckleberry Finn, and the teacher forced me to stay after school and said, “I know this isn’t your work.”
‘But the good thing is that these injuries in the education system could not completely crush my artistic spirit.’
Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is an artist, author and theorist. She did an MFA in Film & Video, and a PhD in Comparative Literature and Film & Visual Studies at Harvard, and held a postdoctoral Fulbright and Visiting Professorship. She has been a lecturer in history & literature at Harvard, and at New York University and Northeastern University. She has written several books, and founded the Oil Research Group as a one-woman artist collective that explores the relationship between oil and data. She lives and works in New York.
Monalisa shares the story of her life so far, beginning with moving from Tehran to the US at a young age, and realizing at some point in her childhood that she was artistically gifted.
"জীবনের যখন পূর্ণশক্তি, তখন কোলাহলের মধ্যে তোমার নির্দেশ স্পষ্ট করিয়া শুনিতে পারিতাম না। এখন পারিতেছি; কিন্তু সব শক্তি নির্জীব হইয়া আসিতেছে।"
আচার্য জগদীশ চন্দ্র বসুর 'অব্যক্ত' বই থেকে আমার কিছু পছন্দের অংশ পড়লাম।
"ভিতরের শক্তি তো স্বেচ্ছা! তবে জীবনের কোন স্তরে এই শক্তির উদ্ভব হইয়াছে?"
আচার্য জগদীশ চন্দ্র বসুর 'অব্যক্ত' বই থেকে আমার কিছু পছন্দের অংশ পড়লাম।
"এই ভীষণ নিনাদের মধ্যেও মনুষ্য-কণ্ঠের কত মর্মবেদনাধ্বনি, কত মিনতি, কত জিজ্ঞাসা ও কত রকমের উত্তর শোনা যায়। ইহার মধ্যে কে একজন অবুঝের মতো বার বার একই নাম ধরিয়া ডাকিতেছে — 'কোথায় তুমি? — কোথায় তুমি?' কোনো উত্তর আসিল না — সে আর এই পৃথিবীতে নাই।"
আচার্য জগদীশ চন্দ্র বসুর 'অব্যক্ত' বই থেকে আমার কিছু পছন্দের অংশ পড়লাম।
"আজ আমরা এমন একটা সময়ে বাস করি, যেখানে সংসারটাকে খুব আঁকড়ে ধরে রাখাকে আমরা অবান্তর মনে করি। কিন্তু আমরা যত বিচ্ছিন্ন হচ্ছি, ততই আর বলার দরকার পড়ে না, এটা কত বড় কাজ। এই ধরনের মানুষেরা অনেক মানুষকে একসঙ্গে নিয়ে জীবনের সংলগ্নতায় থাকতে পারতেন।"
কয়েক বছর আগে আমার মা মারা যান, তার কিছুদিন পর একটি স্মরণসভার আয়োজন হয়েছিল। সেখানে এক ভদ্রলোক এসেছিলেন, তাঁকে আমি চিনি না, কিন্তু তাঁর কথাগুলি আমার ভালো লেগেছিলো, তাই এখানে রাখলাম।
আজকের বিশিষ্ট অতিথি আমার ভগ্নীপুত্র ছোটু ও হাম্পি, শোনাবেন Spiderman, Hulk ও Batman এর আদিকথা।
“When I started, I wasn’t sure if I’d get a single donation. I was handing out food alone. There was much criticism, and only a little support that kept me going. First my close ones joined to help, then volunteers around the world. Eventually in our second year, I received $74,000, enough to keep going for 10+ years. I don’t even ask for donations any more.
“The more I help people, the stronger my empathy grows. It doesn’t take that much to become homeless. Say you have an addiction and nobody to pull you out of it, you spiral down, lose your job and can’t afford rent, and now you’re homeless. I’ve seen addiction happen with my close friends. They could want to get cured with every ounce of their will, but it’s tough. It takes a lot of work, medical help, counseling and financial planning. Without any support and the deck stacked against you, that’s insurmountably harder. All this makes me work harder on the project.”
Kenneth Kim founded Crypto for the Homeless, a non-profit organization where volunteers bring food to the homeless, and are reimbursed in crypto donations. He shares his life story, and how he got into this project. He explains how the project works and how it evolved over time, why he uses crypto instead of fiat money, and how the current market crash is affecting the project. I ask how homeless people and crypto people feel about his project, and discuss the criticisms he’s got. Ken then shares his worldview that has resulted from his experiences, and his vision for the future of the project, and general global homelessness.
We end with Ken's views on the future of communal vs. atomic living situations, and the depth vs. superficiality of human relationships.
00:00:00 - 00:05:46: Life story
00:05:46 - 00:13:15: How'd you get into the project?
00:13:15 - 00:16:06: How does it work?
00:16:06 - 00:26:09: How has the project grown?
00:26:09 - 00:32:03: Why use crypto?
00:32:03 - 00:32:55: How do your parents feel about it?
00:32:55 - 00:36:34: How do the homeless feel about it?
00:36:34 - 00:42:32: Criticisms of the project
00:42:32 - 00:44:58: Impact of the bear market
00:44:58 - 00:45:54: Using stablecoins
00:45:54 - 00:48:55: How do crypto people see it?
00:48:55 - 00:53:53: Increasing trustlessness
00:53:53 - 00:59:27: How have you grown through this project?
00:59:27 - 01:02:48: Does the criticism bother you?
01:02:48 - 01:05:15: Future of the project
01:05:15 - 01:08:39: The global homeless problem
01:08:39 - 01:09:52: Have you ever felt in danger?
01:09:52 - 01:23:13: The future of living
01:23:13 - 01:40:49: Human connection and disconnection
I talk with my young idealistic friend about the pursuit of wealth, power, prestige and knowledge, and the interlink of science and capitalism. But is life instead really about learning to love better? If so, how do we do it? Does this love mean overlooking the dark and loveless side of the world?
We also talk about her psychic communications with nature, seeing omens of death, and the risks of having a sensitive and open heart.
Image: Winter Magic by snatti89.
‘As soon as I hit the bong, I felt like a window pane closed between my brain and the outside world. It wasn’t fun any more.’
Over time, Ian had become manic, feeling like a philosopher who’d figured out life. Then he did some LSD and weed, and became trapped in insanity for several months, first seeing himself as a Christ-like messiah, then not feeling like a person any more. At times he believed that he would be insane forever.
Here he describes those episodes, how he made it back, and his current outlook on himself and on drugs:
‘I think psychedelic therapy would be less necessary in a world where people are less exploited.’
‘Intimidation is easier short-term, but in the long run you get back what you put in. So if you put in the time and work to put logical thought into your kid’s head, it will pay off more than just yelling to get them to do stuff.
‘My dad told me that their parenting philosophy was this. "Whenever Veronica hits teenage, she will go into a tunnel and not listen to us any more. So up until then, we have to give her as much preparation as possible, so that when we can’t reach her any more, she has everything we want her to have, to become a good person."'
Veronica King is a math and German major at the University of Texas at Austin, and co-president of the local Secular Student Alliance. She is the director of our co-op, and I've been impressed by her calm and collected leadership skills.
It all started when in one situation, I noticed that a person said something intimidating, but her response was unafraid. Later she told me that she is never intimidated by people, and doesn’t even know how it's supposed to feel. Then she revealed that her parents never used intimidation as a parenting strategy.
In this conversation, Veronica describes her parenting, and her parents’ parenting, and why she believes that explanations work better than punishment, discipline and manipulation. Is all that work worth it? I share my history and ongoing struggle between being a pushover vs. lashing out. I get her view on situations where scaring a child may sound acceptable, and ask her how she would raise her own kids. Does oppression ever go in the direction of child to parent?
I describe Indian parenting that is based on authority, then we speculate on the link between the parenting cultures of different societies, and their relationship to other authorities like the government, or God.
‘I was going deeper and deeper into this trance, when I looked up and went, holy sht, God’s here! Until this point, I didn’t necessarily believe in God, or thought maybe it’s energy, or something I’ve experienced in meditation. But no, this was f**ing different. I recognized an old friend, and I called him by his name, and it was God. It was obvious. I had my hand above me, and he came down as another hand to interlock with my fingers. Next thing I know, I am getting a system rewire and upgrade.
‘I felt it ignite and tune-up each of my energy centers: sexuality, survival, money, love, my voice. And I started to perceive, for the first time ever, that there is nothing but abundance in the universe. Lack was revealed to be an illusion. I could see there’s so much good in everything. I immediately understood what motivated the Bible and other religious texts that I’d felt so disconnected from.’
My anonymous friend shares his experiences of meeting God through Bufo and Ayahuasca.
Image: The Spirit Molecule by Alex Grey
‘Zen is not about being good, but being honest about who you are. That means letting go of stories. The mind comes up with stories about what’s wrong with this or that person, people complaining in coffee shops about situations they can’t change. I see it as disembodied ghosts, this pain that is not owned. The authenticity of Zen is to turn the light inward, to simply say, I am in pain. That’s the first noble truth, the start of the path.
‘Zen has made me careful to have my language reflect my reality. This is the teaching of no-self: I don’t believe the distinction in our language between a core self and my functioning in this moment. I am nothing but what’s happening right now. Being honest is respecting yourself as the Buddha in that moment. It opens you up to let someone care for you, and be healed.
‘Zen helped me see that specific things in my body kept me from feeling free. For my entire life and even now, I feel a tight twisting in my heart and neck. As I release it, this anger and fear come up that I’ve probably avoided my entire life. The body bottles up what you don’t want to feel, but then you cut off positive feelings too. So as much as I can, I prefer going towards relationship rather than comfort.’
I speak with Buddhist monk Drew Schäffer about Zen and nonviolent communication. We discuss Zen’s emphasis on ordinariness, its rituals that I find annoying, its views on hope and God, and what his meditation practice comprises. If Buddhahood is already everything, why practice spirituality? Is spirituality about becoming at ease? What is non-attachment and its relation with technology? How do psychedelics square with the Buddhist precept of no drugs? What is the potential of love and sex to heal people? We discuss D. H. Lawrence’s writings about the dehumanizing nature of industrial civilization, and the book Drew is writing about his honest monastic experiences as a horny 23-year old boy in a Buddhist temple.
‘Mom was nearly dying from bleeding during childbirth. My casual Jewish dad prayed desperately that he would start following Judaism if she survived, which she did. Over the next decade, his religiosity ramped up. Mom found herself married to a fundamentalist, ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jew who wanted us to go to religious school, and divorced him.
‘Thus began my split-custody childhood where I switched houses every single day. At his house, my dad forced his religion on me through emotional abuse and physical violence, and had my sister spy on me at my mom’s house. A feeling I still deeply carry around is that I am constantly lying.
‘I rebelled against my dad about bar-mitzvah, and resolved never to lie again about who I am. I threw out all spirituality and got into hard sciences, axiomatized my life like an unfeeling machine, and soon fell into depression.’
Zen Buddhist monk Drew Schäffer describes his life story: a tumultuous upbringing, evolving through stages of extreme self-experimentation, reveling in unbridled shenanigans at Caltech physics, being engulfed by loneliness, and meeting a mathematician who interested him in Buddhism.
He then describes his formal Zen monastic career: starting in Paris, then at the Los Angeles and San Francisco centers at Green Gulch, then the Tassajara center, the first Soto Zen monastery outside Asia:
‘At Green Gulch, I started hearing stories of the Tassajara center, the most intense. It was totally remote in the high desert, 100° F (38° C) in the summer and 20° F (-7° C) in the winter, with no climate control. The wake-up bell is at 3.45, everyone wears black robes, it’s total silence.’
‘My father and I were about to draw our swords again, when I caught myself and said, “I didn’t come all this way from Japan to fight. I’m still very immature in both my life and this technique, please don’t judge the technique by that. Can you please loan me a guest bedroom? I need to meditate for three days.”
'Then I took them to a course, and I’ll never forget the first words out of my mother’s mouth right after. She said, “Wow, you must really love us a lot to have brought us here.” My father, whose only emotions around us kids was anger and violence, wanted to put his arms around me.
'We can have two births. One is when we come out of the womb, and the other is when we come into contact with dhamma, the path of enlightenment. For thirty-three years I suffered due to my own behaviour. Then I realized, clearly, that this was the way out of all suffering. I was the one responsible for my misery and my liberation.
'I’ve conducted courses inside maximum-security prison, where many are serving life for murder. Most of them work harder than regular people, because they really understand suffering in a deeper level. If they say they can’t do it, I tell them they can. First, because they were born human. Second, they have now learned of the path of liberation, that billions outside have no idea of. Anyone who sits there and makes the effort to feel their sensations without reacting to them, will rid themselves of all their complexes and misery.’
Tim Lanning is an assistant teacher at silent vipassana meditation courses set up by the late S N Goenka.
We begin with the circumstances that brought him to vipassana in Japan years ago, and what he would tell that younger self today. Then we delve into questions I had about the vipassana meditation practice, its effects, and the Buddhist cosmology around it. Tim describes his regular practice, then challenges me on my own meditation practice, my substance use, and explains how my intellect can be an obstacle. Then he shares how his anger towards his family pushed him into vipassana, which helped heal them. We end by discussing the relation between technology and mindfulness, the laws of nature, and the magical spiritual climate of India.
- 00:02:41 - 00:05:41 How he found vipassana in Japan
- 00:05:41 - 00:07:35 Being an assistant teacher
- 00:07:35 - 00:09:24 How vipassana transformed him
- 00:09:24 - 00:10:33 Can vipassana heal all suffering?
- 00:10:33 - 00:13:57 Why are we learning to dissolve the body?
- 00:13:57 - 00:17:49 Has vipassana made you more sensitive?
- 00:17:49 - 00:18:51 Reading people's minds
- 00:18:51 - 00:24:02 Can vipassana cause harm?
- 00:24:02 - 00:25:28 Can one fully overcome craving and aversion?
- 00:25:28 - 00:28:21 Can one overcome aversion to pain?
- 00:28:21 - 00:32:33 Are relationships harder without attachment?
- 00:32:33 - 00:36:59 What if I don't want liberation from life?
- 00:36:59 - 00:46:30 What if life is too rough to meditate?
- 00:46:30 - 00:48:37 What would you tell your younger self?
- 00:48:37 - 00:58:37 Technology and mindfulness
- 00:58:37 - 01:01:31 What is your regular practice?
- 01:01:31 - 01:07:38 Do you ever feel bored of meditating?
- 01:07:38 - 01:15:41 Tim challenges my practice
- 01:15:41 - 01:24:19 Tim's relationship with his parents
- 01:24:19 - 01:27:41 Goenka's discourses vs science
- 01:27:41 - 01:36:29 Intellect can be an obstacle
- 01:36:29 - 01:58:51 Tim challenges my substance use
- 01:58:51 - 02:00:49 Laws of nature
- 02:00:49 - 02:12:31 The spiritual climate of India
“I wanted to become a monk at a monastery after my PhD. This retreat made me cancel that plan.”
I speak to a university audience about my experiences at my first ten-day silent meditation retreat in 2017, in remote Texas. I begin with some background on my personal spiritual journey that led to the retreat. I describe the setting and structure of the retreat, the kinds of people I found there, and the meditation method. Then I share my physical and mental experience, about hitting bottom, then finding a message scratched on a bench that helped me start climbing back up.
- 1:01 - 17:52: My spiritual path to the retreat
- 17:52 - 23:21: Arrival
- 23:21 - 29:14: How the retreat is designed
- 29:14 - 31:46: The meditation method
- 31:46 - 41:00: My experiences: physical and mental
- 41:00 - 56:03: Boredom: in the body and mind
- 56:03 - 58:14: Things I disliked
- 58:14 - 1:03:47: Finding entertainment at the retreat
- 1:03:47 - 1:05:27: What the insects taught me
- 1:05:27 - 1:11:24: Effects after returning
- 1:11:24 - 1:16:45: Tech addiction
- 1:16:45 - 1:23:52: Increased empathy
“My spiritual journey started in childhood in a way, when I thought, ‘What even am I, and what is this existence?’
"My experience with iboga was an opening of selfless, non-static love that rewards you for wanting to evolve. On amanita, I was experiencing the life of a cell, then a fish, a human, and then a creator of worlds. These substances jolt you out of local minima, like in machine learning. But that is only half the task. Meditation must then guide you towards the true optimum.
"My spiritual and psychedelic experiences have inspired me to become a karma yogi. When I see injustice, I want to make things right, but it takes a lot of time to help people case by case. That’s why I am volunteering to build tools and decentralized technology. The Laurel project is the generalization of my spiritual path.”
In this second part of my conversation with Romanian programmer and Ethereum developer Loredana Cirstea (github, twitter, youtube, blog, linkedin), we talk about her experiences in spirituality and psychedelics. She shares her path into spirituality and Indian practices such as hatha yoga, fasting and meditation. Then she describes her visions on the iboga and the amanita mushroom, and I share how my psychedelic experiences exposed my deepest fears of losing my mind and dying. She then explains how her spiritual and psychedelic experiences inspired her towards karma yoga, the spiritual path of selfless work, and how she is trying to implement these ideas of provable volunteering on the blockchain, through her Laurel project.
00:00 - 07:00: Journey into Indian spirituality, hatha yoga, fasting
07:00 - 17:29: Psychedelics, & parallel to machine learning
17:29 - 28:33: Psychedelic experiences on iboga
28:33 - 31:47: Psychedelic experiences that exposed fears of death & losing my mind
31:47 - 38:00: Psychedelic experiences on amanita
38:00 - 41:13: How spirituality & psychedelics have inspired her towards karma yoga
41:13 - 52:53: Bringing provable human effort to the blockchain
Full video of this podcast is on Loredana's YouTube.
“I was born in the midst of the gunshots of the Romanian revolution. It took me years to understand the repercussions of the communist mentality in society and in myself. I was born premature, and was in the neonatal ICU for two weeks with no contact with my mother, and spent a lot of my childhood alone. I think maybe that has had some effect on me.”
Romanian programmer Loredana Cirstea (github, twitter, youtube, blog, linkedin) has been developing for Ethereum and other blockchain projects for several years. Most crypto devs today are men working in emerging companies with big capital and marketing. But Loredana works mostly by herself to build great volumes of publicly available software for free.
We begin with the political and personal circumstances of her birth and childhood in Romania, and why she was motivated to cultivate self-reliance and independence from her parents, and direct access to truth. Then we talk about developing for Ethereum. She shares her philosophy for volunteer work, and her experience in contrast to the rest of the crypto space and culture. We talk about her work on the Laurel project: “a blockchain that tracks provable human effort (such as volunteering) as a non-transferable medal of merit, usable for governance, proof of effort, provable news etc.”
At the end, she shares her vision for the future of Ethereum, the internet, and technology and society in general, particularly in the context of fake news and deep fakes that can pose a great challenge to the truth.
00:00 - 12:47: Political & personal circumstances of birth & childhood in Romania
12:47 - 20:40: Cultivating independence from parents & direct access to truth
20:40 - 26:21: How she got into Ethereum
26:21 - 49:27: Volunteering philosophy vs. mainstream crypto culture
49:27 - 58:17: Working independently vs. in companies
58:17 - 01:02:31: Will Ethereum overcome its challenges?
01:02:31 - 01:06:36: Generations of tech are decentralizing power
01:06:36 - 01:12:37: Corporate attention war on the internet
01:12:37 - 01:23:00: Rewarding provable work through the Laurel project
01:23:00 - 01:35:25: Deepfakes & provable news
01:35:25 - 01:40:12: Future society: provable morality
Full video of this podcast is on Loredana's YouTube.
"A question is the desire for an answer. If there is no desire for an answer, there is no question about it."
“Some people may have an issue that this is giving up an aspect of femininity to fit into the man’s context. I don’t see that as what I’m doing. I am trying to identify parts of femininity that I was conditioned into and are keeping me from my goal. I try not to frame my beliefs or actions in the context of others, but on what is authentic to me. I have maybe never called myself a feminist to anyone, but I try to embody the spirit of feminine progress.”
In this final part of my conversation with geologist Alicia Downard, we are talking about gender roles. We begin with discussing how Alicia has a bit of a boyish energy in her body language and speech. Then we talk about feminism, patriarchy, gender roles, and self-empowerment in her romantic relationships, work and life.
“Demonizing the fossil fuel industry doesn’t help. What helps is making them part of the conversation and seeing the role that we fundamentally have to play, and are more than willing to play.”
I attack Alicia Downard, Earth scientist at oil and gas giant Chevron, about how she and her soulless oil people are out to murder the planet. Alicia fights back.
We talk about the judgment she receives for being in the oil and gas industry, and how she feels about it and responds to it. She shares how she feels as an Earth scientist in the industry, and whether they are truly killing the planet. What are the people in this industry like? Are they money-minded climate-deniers, or do they drive Teslas? How is the industry responding to the climate crisis? Is that response fast and effective enough, and will we be able to overcome the crisis?
We discuss if the responsibility of treating the planet better lies with the consumer, or with big corporations and government. And what does all this have to do with Gandhi’s principles of nonviolent transformation?
We also discuss whether remedial tech like carbon capture will help, or let industries become more complacent about their footprint. Are there negative impacts of such cleaner tech too?
Alicia's opinions in this episode are her own, and not on behalf of her employer Chevron. To learn more about Chevron’s plans for sustainability, check out:
Chevron: sustainability (net-zero pledge, carbon storage)
Chevron: new energies (organization within Chevron)
Chevron: lower carbon
“When I saw The Matrix, I was obsessed. Something in me resonated with this idea of waking up from life. This idea has been playing games with me for a long time. I wonder, especially with my lucid dreams and my belief while on psychedelics that death is not real, if something subconscious in me is trying to wake up.”
In this part of my conversation with geologist Alicia Downard, we talk about our dreams. We discuss how in a dream, our mental physics engine effortlessly renders a world according to natural laws, and how I have noticed that my mind uncontrollably projects new images that are similar to examples I see, like a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network). I share my journey with lucid dreaming, and why I think that the moment I realize I’m dreaming, I try to kill myself by jumping off a building.
“Why do we live in a world, where we have this abstract thing called math built with symbols and language that come into our mind, and we put it in this thing called a computer, and out comes this amazing picture with infinite unpredicted detail. Did that need to happen?”
Alicia Downard did her undergrad and masters in geophysics, and works for Chevron. I met her at a party that was playing a video of a deep zoom into the Mandelbrot set fractal, and we eventually worked together to write a program to make such images.
We talk about the wonder of nature and math that is the Mandelbrot set. Alicia Downard describes how fractals came into her life and how she’d sometimes see one in her visual field, and I try to explain how, to me, the Mandelbrot set is a spiritual doorway into the mysterious heart of the universe.
"I think more and more for me, home is other people. And I think you need to let yourself make a home in different places, and I haven’t let myself do it here."
Khristián Méndez Aguirre, director and PhD student of Theatre, shares his thoughts on whether he feels at home in his native Guatemala and the US, and his observations on awareness as an artistic process.
"My work was inspired by the #MeToo movement: what lets theatre directors and producers like Harvey Weinstein abuse their powers with actors? It’s a hard project: their power is usually unquestionable, and I was questioning it. Since they work with actors’ bodies, they can easily cross the line between an exercise and a transgression."
Khristián Méndez Aguirre, director and PhD student of theatre, describes his undergrad in Human Ecology, and why he gave up studying and performing standup comedy in favour of directing. He explains how his work challenges the autocratic culture of theater directors by tracing it back to its white European roots. We explore the intersection between theatre and scientific narrative, and how they are shaped by culture and power. We discuss why our world, increasingly dominated by science and technology, and under the threat of climate change, needs better public scientific literacy and communication. Then we talk about science versus culture when it comes to food, medicine and psychedelics.
"I wanted to get out so badly that I didn’t measure its consequences on me: alienating me from my family and my culture, and changing the things I wanted."
Khristián Méndez Aguirre, director and PhD student of Theatre, shares his experience of leaving Guatemala at 16, and going on scholarship to an international high school in India, and traveling through the country, and how a foreigner like him was perceived by Indians.
"I learned how to read before I turned four. At some point I’d finished every book in the house, so then I started to read encyclopedias, and go and tell my mom random facts."
Khristián Méndez Aguirre is a director and PhD student of theatre, and has taught undergrad classes in theatre history, theory and practice, including Indian & Sanskrit performance. He tells me about Guatemala: its nature, history and economy, and its peoples, culture and languages. Then he paints a picture of his family, growing up, and early education.
"My grandmother had Alzheimers. She lost the ability to speak, and degenerated to where she died because she forgot to breathe. My mom saw her mother disappear right in front of her. I was in the Bible belt, but for me this really challenged the idea of a soul. Then one spring my sister and I were T-boned by a drunk driver who’d had eight drinks. That was another confirmation that the world must just be chaotic."
Violinist, composer and producer Behnam Arzaghi (Soundcloud) talks about the constant presence of death and illness growing up, and how it sped up the maturing of his perspective on life and mortality.
Behnam began playing violin at 6, writing and performing at 12, debuted solo with orchestra at 13, and premiered a violin concerto and had the Austin Symphony perform his works by 17. He's studied music at the Colburn School and the University of Houston, composed for film, played with Austin artists, and teaches music. He also graduated in Computer Science and Physics, and teaches yoga and rock climbing.
"Growing up, I never had to learn how to dial it down. I would turn on, and keep going until I ran out. So high school was horribly numbing. A lot of my peers had brilliant minds and curiosity that were being stymied and obstructed at every turn."
Violinist, composer and producer Behnam Arzaghi (Soundcloud) charts his long trajectory through five different systems of education: homeschool, public high school, music conservatory, public university, and a start-up university that tours the world. He describes how these systems succeeded or failed to resonate with his learning style and creativity, and his observations on the effectiveness of different formats of education.
Behnam began playing violin at 6, writing and performing at 12, debuted solo with orchestra at 13, and premiered a violin concerto and had the Austin Symphony perform his works by 17. He's studied music at the Colburn School and the University of Houston, composed for film, played with Austin artists, and teaches music. He also graduated in Computer Science and Physics, and teaches yoga and rock climbing.
Violinist, composer and producer Behnam Arzaghi (Soundcloud) shares why he is uncomfortable with static labels that humans use to identify themselves and others, or any tribalism around them. Born of an Iranian Muslim father, and American Christian mother, Behnam could never relate to a patriotic, religious or ethnic identity. We then discuss his opinion that classical music is a meritocratic cult.
Behnam began playing violin at 6, writing and performing at 12, debuted solo with orchestra at 13, and premiered a violin concerto and had the Austin Symphony perform his works by 17. He's studied music at the Colburn School and the University of Houston, composed for film, played with Austin artists, and teaches music. He also graduated in Computer Science and Physics, and teaches yoga and rock climbing.
"I want to believe that I am worthy of love and belonging. And music was this lever I could pull and get some facsimile of that. People would say, wow you sound great, and I would think, that means you love me, right? It actually poisoned both me and the music, because it became the condition that needed to be met before I felt that I was able to receive love and belonging."
Violinist, composer and producer Behnam Arzaghi (Soundcloud) recounts how he became trapped in shame and despair in the world of highly competitive classical music. He then discovered the ideas of Brené Brown on shame and vulnerability, and in the end, left his classical music career. We discuss spontaneous creativity, flow states and the sense of self and ego, and how I made some uninhibited art when I took LSD for the first time.
Behnam began playing violin at 6, writing and performing at 12, debuted solo with orchestra at 13, and premiered a violin concerto and had the Austin Symphony perform his works by 17. He's studied music at the Colburn School and the University of Houston, composed for film, played with Austin artists, and teaches music. He also graduated in Computer Science and Physics, and teaches yoga and rock climbing.
Violinist, composer and producer Behnam Arzaghi (Soundcloud), shares how he learned much about music in his own way. At an early age, Behnam just knew that he liked some sounds and not others, but without understanding why. He describes how he extended this somewhat atypical musical sense by learning more about musical form, theory, and orchestration.
Behnam began playing violin at 6, writing and performing at 12, debuted solo with orchestra at 13, and premiered a violin concerto and had the Austin Symphony perform his works by 17. He's studied music at the Colburn School and the University of Houston, composed for film, played with Austin artists, and teaches music. He also graduated in Computer Science and Physics, and teaches yoga and rock climbing.
Violinist, composer and producer Behnam Arzaghi (Soundcloud) summarizes the story of his life so far. Then we talk about his perfect pitch: what it is, how it originates, its relevance in tonal languages like Mandarin, and how it in fact hindered him as a musician.
Behnam began playing violin at 6, writing and performing at 12, debuted solo with orchestra at 13, and premiered a violin concerto and had the Austin Symphony perform his works by 17. He's studied music at the Colburn School and the University of Houston, composed for film, played with Austin artists, and teaches music. He also graduated in Computer Science and Physics, teaches yoga, and loves rock climbing.
Violinist, composer and producer Behnam Arzaghi (Soundcloud) explores two questions with a university audience: what is melody, and what makes a good one?
Behnam began playing violin at 6, writing and performing at 12, debuted solo with orchestra at 13, and premiered a violin concerto and had the Austin Symphony perform his works by 17. He's studied music at the Colburn School and the University of Houston, composed for film, played with Austin artists, and teaches music. He also graduated in Computer Science and Physics, and teaches yoga and rock climbing.
Melody is the most important aspect of a song. To answer what it is, Behnam takes us through western classical music theory and history, explaining harmony, counterpoint, motif, rhythm, pitch and timbre, addressing questions with examples from western music, his compositions, and live violin demos. Are the emotions conveyed by music intrinsic, or conditioned by culture, experience, language? Finally, we hear his take on the qualities of good melody.
Sreya Majumdar, PhD student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad, and Fulbright-Nehru fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, studies natural birthing practices and reproductive justice.
We begin with her story of growing up in the foothills of India in a mixed culture, challenging social norms to pursue athletics. Then an incident involving a friend’s unwanted pregnancy drew her interest towards the culture and taboos in India around sex, pregnancy and birthing. We discuss how the over-medicalization of pregnancy has marginalized midwife-assisted births at home, and taken autonomy away from women. Is natural childbirth at home riskier than at the hospital? Does the pain of birth need to be dulled? Sreya shares her research, her experience of attending a live birth, and her vision for birthing practices in the future, including for herself.
Content warning: death and suicide.
Psychology PhD student Hannah Lunkenheimer studies beliefs and rituals surrounding death across human cultures.
We begin with Hannah's life story: in high school she lost a friend to suicide, and her community's reaction made her question, why is death so taboo?
We discuss Hannah's research, then share our own relationships with death, and conclude with her thoughts on suicide.
A whirlwind tour with my friend Jackie (嘉雯) on a bewildering range of topics.
First, my weird belief that today’s electronic devices and digital content are the result of our desire to manifest Platonic ideals in reality. How do perfect ideas appear in an imperfect world? Do we know how our mind reaches its conclusions? Why was I in deep denial in a past relationship, when it’s so clear to see through it now? Why do we enter and stay in unhealthy relationships? We talk about scarcity vs fulfillment in romantic and platonic relationships. Is the love we are looking for locked inside other humans? What is true love, and what is the point of loving others? Are humans naturally materialistic? Why am I not already spiritually perfect? Would I take a pill that instantly delivers a lifetime’s experience? We talk about total connection to life, and about suffering: how it dilates time, and how we can open to our suffering with kindness and space.
Neuroscientist Dr Rishidev Chaudhuri shares his intense episodes of Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder around fears of death that began in high school, which caused him, for example, to wash his hands until they bled. He shares his interest in Zen Buddhism, vipassana meditation and mysticism, and how they helped with intrusive thinking. We conclude with his vision for the future of his life and neuroscience research.
Neuroscientist Dr Rishidev Chaudhuri tells me about his time wandering around the colonial Indian city of Kolkata where I am from, while he wrote for a newspaper and a cookbook. We then explore his ideas for a structuralist cookbook on the theory and general organizing principles of Indian cooking.
“When I was younger, I thought that you could think your way to an understanding of the universe. As I get older, I am more convinced that all of the interesting stuff happens in engagement with the world.”
Neuroscientist Dr Rishidev Chaudhuri shares his trajectory from studying physics with a platonic idealistic philosophy, to studying biology with a pragmatist philosophy. Unlike physics, there is no fundamental theory of how brains work, and everything’s messier. In this context, we ask: what is meant by a useful theory in science? We then discuss our views on the hard problem: how consciousness arises in the material world.
Neuroscientist Rishi talks about his research: the tradeoffs that our brain has to make in its functioning, and how its different parts may work at different time-scales. We discuss distributed computing in the brain: how do millions of neurons collaborate without an organizing center?
Dr Rishidev Chaudhuri explains his work of using math and computer science to understand how our brains efficiently pack and correctly recover our memories, and of finding patterns in the neural firing of awake and asleep mice.
“I feel like a postcolonial creation that couldn’t have existed a 100 years ago. It makes me restless and want to move around.” In this episode, neuroscientist Dr Rishidev Chaudhuri shares his experience of living in an intersection of cultures, and we talk about the cultural and social contrasts that we perceive between India & the United States.
Dr Rishidev Chaudhuri is professor of Mathematics and Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. He is one of the smartest people I've ever known, with incredible curiosity, talent, experience and wisdom across a wide range of intellectual, artistic and spiritual pursuits.
In this episode, we talk about Rishi’s strange and varied life trajectory so far, such as working in a farm in South India and as a journalist in Kolkata, and then his educational journey and interests in neuroscience.
Lying on a picnic blanket in the woods under a summer sky, we ask: how does a mushroom, when eaten, cause us to feel love and connection with nature?
Homeless man David tells me about his mom, and how the world is waking up and everything is getting better.
Ross Ulbricht created the first anonymous dark web marketplace Silk Road where drugs and other items were traded for bitcoin, and was arrested and sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years in maximum-security prison without parole.
I have a personal conversation with Ross' mother Lyn about her experience of Ross' trial, her views on US amendment violations, digital snooping, prisons and the drug war. She shares lessons from her long road of activism, then we talk about Ross the person: his upbringing, his philosophies, affinity for eastern spirituality and meditation, and how he has been doing in prison.
Ross Ulbricht created the first anonymous dark web marketplace Silk Road where drugs and other items were traded for bitcoin, and was arrested and sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years in maximum-security prison without parole.
Here Ross' mother Lyn gives a talk that I organized at the University of Texas at Austin, presenting her view on the case of Ross and Silk Road.
My physics PhD friend Stefan Eccles discusses recent criticisms by prominent physicist blogger Sabine Hossenfelder, that large experiments like the LHC are not motivated well enough (by theories such as 'naturalness'), so we should not fund them.
We discuss harm reduction from drugs (also using meditation), the war on drugs, and today’s psychedelics movement. Then we discuss the connection between psychedelics and the body. We end with talking about transpersonal (out-of-body/space/time) experiences on psychedelics, and I poll them on their religious views.
Jordon shares his painful religious upbringing, and eventual spiritual and psychedelic experiences. Carol talks about growing up as a dreamy loner in a fractured family, being exorcised for having visions of the future, and how psychedelics completely transformed her pain from arthritis and opiate withdrawal.
Carol Gilson and Jordon Stanford tell us how they do psychotherapy with the help of the ketamine molecule. We talk about ketamine, its effects, how it helps therapy, its legal status, risks, abuse potential and irresponsible use by clinics. Then we talk about the therapy sessions: how they get the clients, the issues they treat, a typical session and the therapy methods they use, set and setting, and risks of such therapy.
সত্তরের দশকে কলকাতার যুবক-যুবতীরা যে মাওবাদী রাজনৈতিক বিপ্লবে শামিল হয়েছিল, তার খেসারত হিসেবে প্রশাসন ও পুলিশের হাতে অকথ্য গ্রেফতার, অত্যাচার ও হত্যার শিকার হয়েছিল। আজকের পর্বটি আমার বাবা বিশ্ববন্ধু দাসের দেখা সত্তরের কলকাতার সেই ভয়ানক বিপ্লবের ইতিহাস, বাবারই লেখা ও পাঠ করা।
আমার বাবা বিশ্ববন্ধু দাস ছিলেন Geological Survey of Indiaর ভূতাত্ত্বিক। অবসর নেওয়ার পর দীর্ঘ কর্মজীবনের স্মৃতিগুলি গল্পের আকারে লিখতে শুরু করেন। এটি বাবার লেখা ও পাঠ করা প্রথম গল্প।
Brielle (李雨可), a screenwriter from China who lives in Los Angeles, tells me about her life background and journey into writing for films. She discusses her feelings on different genres, her passion for sci-fi and drama that explore the human condition, and describes a script she dreams of producing. We talk about her inspirations, such as Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang. She describes the contrasts she sees between Chinese and American films, and the challenges she faces in writing stories in a foreign language for a starkly different culture.
Andrea Aramayo, a behaviour therapist for autistic children, speaks with a university audience about her journey to this profession. She then describes what autism is through the lens of the kids she sees, and explains the methods she uses in working with them and their parents to improve their behaviour issues.
Hanan Hashem shares how Islam and the character of prophet Mohammed motivate and inform her therapy. She tells me that only men challenge her authority, why she thinks they do, and whether it angers her. Then we discuss why American Muslims need therapy, and conclude with her life goal.
“Islam is way more forgiving than the people who practice it.”
Hanan Hashem describes the roots of why Islam is seen as rigid and aggressive, then shares her own views of Islam, God, values, and death. We discuss hope vs the present moment in contrast to Buddhism, then she tells me about shadow selves, fluid identities, and the energies of people.
Hanan Hashem, PhD student specializing in therapy for young American Muslims facing discrimination, tells us about her early life, family, and the discrimination they faced as Yemenis in Saudi Arabia. She tells us about her excitement for learning, her journey from math to logic to philosophy to psychology, into doing research, therapy and community work.
History major Analia Salomon interviews me on the connections between psychedelics, veganism, meditation, tech addiction, ego death, and dancing.
Gravity does more than hold things together: it whispers stories of the cosmos from long ago and far away. Astrophysicist Dr Aaron Zimmerman tells us about the young science of listening to these whispers.
Physics PhD student Ryan Hannigan shares stories and insights about his synesthesia: a condition in which sounds evoke perceptions of colour, touch and emotion.
We discuss the ancient Hindu idea of Maya, the illusory game with which the one consciousness deceives itself. Why is this cosmic game so challenging, what is the role of love in it, and do people ever wake up from it?
Is life the culmination of immersive technology? What can science truly establish about this reality? And what kinds of religious questions are raised by the simulation theory?
My friend Behnam Arzaghi and I discuss why the idea of life being a simulation is deeper, older and truer than a contemporary hot topic, as affirmed by Eastern religious myths and psychedelic accounts.
Is beauty a trap, both for the beautiful and those who are pursuing it? Is there a beauty that does not create judgment and misery? Is love only a chemical cocktail? If so, would it be ethical to give a love drug to everyone?
Data scientist Jackie (嘉雯) and I discuss our personal, as well as social perceptions, of death. We share our feelings on death, speculate where they come from, discuss near-death experiences, and how psychedelics influence the anxiety of death.
Data scientist Jackie (嘉雯) and I talk about the nature of reality and consciousness, and the meaning and absurdity of life, in the context of a Humans of New York post.
Young data scientist Jackie (嘉雯) tells us about growing up in China, what drives her in life, sci-fi stories she's read and written, and the time when her heart started beating very loudly all the time.
Pace and I discuss our experiences of different strategies to battle depression and anxiety, such as talk therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, medicine, psychedelics, and meditation.
Pace talks about being the first human diagnosed with a new disease. He describes its causes and effects, and how it shaped him to be raised without any accommodations for it.
What attracts young people to today's thought leaders like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson? Should we be aware of any blind spots in them?
Pace shares his view that some welfare policies work against their own goal, and we can reimagine how to make welfare actually effective.
Pace tells us about getting arrested in college for protesting sweatshops, and travelling to Palestine for the solidarity movement.
Pace talks about growing up in Austin, Texas, amid physical and social challenges that shaped his principles around justice and intellect.
Pace Davis gives us a background of Israel-Palestine history, and shares his experiences of joining the popular resistance struggle in Palestine.
Pace Davis talks to an audience about living with unrelenting depression and suicidal thoughts, and the stigmas surrounding mental health.
Travis Heggen, special ed teacher and mindfulness director of a school, shares how his own challenges as a special needs kid brought him to mindfulness, why he's teaching it to children, and how.
I talk with Bleu, a young homeless girl, about becoming and being homeless, her art, music and farming, and her views on life and death.
Dr Calen Walshe (Computer Science/Neuroscience/Vision Science) interacts with an audience about inequality in today's world, and its causes and effects.
Ian Benouis, former Blackhawk pilot in the War on Drugs, shares his experiences of healing with plant medicine and practice, and curious knowledge into reality that psychedelics uncover.
Ian Benouis, former Blackhawk pilot in the War on Drugs, and currently a plant medicine activist, shares his experiences of war, his personal trauma, the drug industry, and drug policy reform.
Ian Benouis, former Blackhawk pilot in the War on Drugs, and currently a plant medicine activist, talks with an audience about his experiences of war and the pharmaceutical industry, and using natural psychedelics to heal trauma.
Physics PhD student Stefan Eccles and I discuss religion, spirituality and morality in our lives. He talks about growing up deeply Christian, then becoming distant due to science. We explore how science and religion collide on free will, and salvation through grace vs work. We conclude with his visions for his future.
Physics PhD student Stefan Eccles and I recount our experiences of making music, and he performs an original composition. His music can be found on SoundCloud and YouTube.
Physics PhD student Stefan Eccles talks about his outdoor adventures, rock-climbing as a mental sport, and the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Cosmology PhD student Stefan Eccles describes his journey into physics, and the questions that he and colleagues are asking the universe.