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PODCAST

Chasing Consciousness

The curious person’s guide to all things mind! Have you ever wondered how it is that your thoughts and feelings relate to the grey matter in your head? How space and time came to be out of nothing? How what life means to us influences our day-to-day struggles with mental health? In conversation with experts in physics, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy, Chasing Consciousness will take you to the very fringes of reality and share with you the groundbreaking discoveries that are dramatically

science

All Episodes

01:37:16

Alex Laird - MOOD FOOD: THE GUT, DIET AND INFLAMMATION

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/07/14

In this episode we learn everything we need about how food relates to our mood and state of mind. We’re going to lay out the fundamentals of how different food groups and qualities of food influence directly our mental and physical health; how the gut species depletion and inflammation are key consequences of the changes we’re seeing in western industrial diet, and we can counter that tendency with some simple tricks. Alex Laird is a medical herbalist with more than 20 years' clinical experience

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00:55:13

Antonio Damasio PHD - THE NEUROSCIENCE OF FEELING AND...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/06/30

Audio Note: There’s a short background sound at 10 mins, it only lasts for 5 mins and it was during an important a point about the role of feelings in reasoning, which was too crucial to the topic to cut out. In this episode we have the fascinating topic of understanding how feelings play a part in reason and consciousness. We’re also going to be learning how feeling is different from sensing, and if internal feelings and homeostasis, which evolved far earlier than other elements of our perceptual

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01:06:10

Pim Van Lommel MD - A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE STUDY

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/06/28

Can we have conscious experiences after clinical death? In this episode we have the bizarre phenomena of Near Death Experiences to examine. The intense experience reported by about %25 of patients whose hearts are restarted after a short time of clinical death, has fascinated researchers for many years going right back to Plato. However, advances in cardiology techniques in the last 50 years have permitted doctors to save many more people, and thus to study the phenomenon in a controlled manner: so,

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00:59:17

Kile Ortigo PHD - PSYCHEDELIC INTEGRATION via JUNG...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/06/01

How do we integrate the intense experiences of psychedelic therapy for long term benefits? Can we apply those learnings to existential exploration in general? In this episode we have the fascinating topic of ‘psychedelic integration’ to get our head around. Integration is a crucial part of any psychotherapy process, but perhaps even more so when those suffering experience psychedelic compounds in their treatment program. Many subjects of the new psychedelic treatments for depression and ADHD, have

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00:41:27

Shauna Shapiro PHD - THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MINDFULNESS...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/05/15

This episode covers the fascinating science of mindfulness meditation. The massive explosion in popularity of meditation, has brought about a quiet revolution to the frantic western mind with the result of a complete change in our societies approach to stress management, happiness and well being. Today we’re going to get to the bottom of what happens to the brain when we meditate and why it’s so beneficial. But we’re also going to find out what happens to our levels of happiness, satisfaction,

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01:30:20

David Luke PHD - THE SCIENCE OF ALTERED STATES OF...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/04/30

In this episode we have the challenging job of getting our head around the psychology of altered states of consciousness or ‘exceptional human experiences’ as today’s specialist calls them. Are they mere illusions of the mind? Does their ability to radically change our world view and sense of meaning in the world give them a special status in psychology and mental health? And how do we talk scientifically about significant similarities between such experiences across different times and cultures

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00:59:22

Matej Pavšič PHD - BIOCENTRISM: A PHYSICS PERSPECTIVE

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/04/14

In this episode we have the extraordinary theory of Biocentrism to consider: the hypothesis that the space, time and matter arose from life, and not the other way around. This theory obviously flies completely in the face of material science’s Darwinian view that life and consciousness evolved slowly out of ever more complex systems of matter. Now we’ve heard in multiple interviews on the show so far that similar theories like Panpsychism, the hypothesis that consciousness is fundamental to the

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01:49:30

Maya Coleman PHD - PARENTING BY CONNECTION

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/03/31

In this episode we look at an alternative child psychology approach to parenting and care-giving, than perhaps the one we’re used to from our own childhoods: one based on connection rather than threat based motivations. This episode is a little closer to home than usual, as a few years ago we hit the wall with our eldest boy, who after the birth of our second child when he was 6, became extremely aggressive and uncontrollable. This led us to try Hand in Hand parenting, and we got an improvement of

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01:30:49

Yohann Hari - THE ATTENTION CRISIS

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/03/15

In this episode, we have the tough task of examining the evidence that our society is losing its ability for prolonged attention, focus and concentration. We talk about what are the main factors leading to this, and what we can do to mediate it individually, but also collectively through regulation if necessary, before it becomes intergenerational. Is this also another symptom, like depression and addiction, of growing up with less and less face to face social connection and non-focused

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01:09:30

David Chalmers PHD - THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS,...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2022/03/01

How likely is it that we live in a simulations? Are virtual worlds real? In this first episode of the 2nd Series we delve into the fascinating topic of virtual reality simulations and the extraordinary possibility that our universe is itself a simulation. For thousands of years some mystical traditions have maintained that the physical world and our separated ‘selves’ are an illusion, and now, only with the development of our own computer simulations and virtual worlds have scientists and

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01:45:32

Iain McGilchrist PHD - NAVIGATING BEYOND MATERIALISM

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/12/01

What would a post physicalist world look like? So in this episode we’re going to evaluate the evidence presented by psychiatrist and author Dr. Iain McGilchrist, from his extensive analysis of split-brain studies, that support a broader understanding of the mind and reality. One that pushes beyond the traditional reductionist materialist worldview, to include the implicit, the context dependent and the consciousness dependent. He’s just released an epic two part book to clarify all of this, ‘The

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01:43:05

Christoph Le Mouel PHD - JUNG'S SYNCHRONICITY EXPLAINED

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/11/15

Can Physics shed light on how synchronicity might work? “Synchronicity: Ameaningful coincidence of two or more eventswhere something other than the probability of chance is involved.” C.J. Jung, from ‘Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principal’ The majority of us have experienced some meaningful coincidences in our lives - perhaps the right person to help with a problem got in touch out of the blue at just the right time to help solve it, or the right book randomly ended up in front of you when

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02:04:52

David Lorimer - EXAMINING THE ASSUMPTIONS OF WESTERN...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/11/01

Are our scientific assumptions justified? In this episode we’re going to be examining the assumptions of Western Science. All science is based on assumptions. In order to isolate systems in experiments and standardise measurements of the target data, other variables need to be pinned down so scientists can form precise mathematical models, that can then be repeated accurately in the peer review process. Today we’re going to look at these assumptions, and establish if they indeed have become

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01:58:22

Garret Moddel PHD - THE EXPERIMENTER EFFECT AND THE...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/10/14

Can intention, attention or expectation affect random physical events? In this episode we’re going to be exploring the subtleties of an odd phenomenon: the Experimenter Effect, where the expectations of the scientist doing an experiment appear to affect the results measured. This is hugely important for the right practice of science, and for understanding why some experiments that seem watertight methodologically can only be reproduced by scientists who expect the same results and not by sceptics of

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01:35:12

Joseph Le Doux PHD - FEAR, EMOTIONS AND THE EVOLUTION...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/09/30

In episode #11 we explore the way emotions work, and particularly fear - the way it’s triggered, what happens in the brain and how much we are conscious of what’s going on. I think this is really relevant as we appear to be an extremely fearful, defensive and argumentative society in general, and perhaps if we understood what was happening inside us we might be able to limit some of the damage these kind of encounters produce. We also look at the the Limbic System and Triune Brain theories of

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01:25:55

Specialist Panel - MEDICALISATION AND RECIPROCITY IN...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/09/24

'Psychedelics in a changing World: medicalisation, reciprocity and planetary healing' With: Ben Sessa, Gabriel Amezcua, Nick von Christierson, David Luke, Andrea Langlois & Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner. This is a recording of a fascinating panel chaired by Chasing Consciousness in the talks tent of Medicine Festival programmed by Ruby Reed. It included psychologists, psychiatrists, psychedelic entrepreneurs and activists at the top of their field. The panel gave a nuanced and positive overview of the

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01:02:10

Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner - TESTING PSYCHEDELICS FOR...

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/09/15

Can psychedelic therapy help depression? We are now in the middle of the first psychedelic resurgence since the last bout of research in the 60’s and 70’s led by legends of the psychedelic movement like Dr. Stan Grof at Harvard. This resurgence is taking place on two fronts: Firstly, following promising results from Imperial College’s Psidep 1 study into the use of Psilocybin, the active ingredient in Magic Mushrooms, to treat treatment-resistant depression; there has been a host of studies around

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01:34:25

Jonas Kaplan PHD - THE BACKFIRE EFFECT EXPLAINED

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/08/31

In this episode we want to understand how easy it is to change our beliefs when we receive new information, a process that can be really uncomfortable and lead to great resistance in the psyche. The scientific community, whilst educated to update their world view based on new information and theory, are by no means immune to this resistance; today we’ll find out to what extent it is just a human trait we have to accept. Now that the scientific method has become more water-tight from our biases than

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02:04:29

Carla Stang PHD - THE HERO'S JOURNEY

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/07/14

How important is story to to human understanding? Today we take a step away from science per se, to look at the role of story in the formation of our world views, for generations our only method alongside direct experience of understanding the world, as opposed the more modern method of hard data from scientific research that we tend to examine on Chasing Consciousness. So we’re continuing the all important job of our first series: to establish the limits of what science can know. And today we’re

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01:21:18

Moheb Costandi - NEUROPLASTICITY EXPLAINED

Chasing Consciousness ·

2021/06/30

How easy is it to change our Habits? Today we have the important job of working out what neuroplasticity is all about. 50 years ago we thought the adult brain remained the same after reaching maturity. Now since the discovery that in fact our neural networks remain ‘plastic’, which means adaptable, a host of research has opened up fuelled by our desire to thrive and improve rather than just survive. Along with that knowledge, as so often with popular science, has come a host of exaggerations and

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87 results

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