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 changing the way we relate to the world, the future, and our own minds.
Latest episodes
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1 h 28
ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS - Tam Hunt #94
Do EM fields across and around the body and brain correspond to and contain information about our experience of consciousness? Can resonance help explain how larger and smaller sys…
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1 h 26
NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES & ACCESSING DEAD PEOPLE'S MEMORIES - Marieta Pehilvanova PhD #93
How can we explain vivid, life changing experiences and true perceptions occurring in patients between brain death and resuscitation? What are the implications of true information…
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1 h 39
HOW METRICS CAPTURE HUMAN VALUES - C. Thi Nguyen #92
How have metrics surreptitiously replaced our internal value guidance system? How much nuance is lost when we scale collective counting across contexts? How dangerous is data that…
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1 h 03
FUNGI & SYMBIOSOS IN LIFE - Merlin Sheldrake PhD #91
Why were fungi so important to the evolution of life on earth? How do they collaborate with plants to help them communicate? What does the difficulty separating individual fungi fr…
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1 h 00
A NEW NUTRITION PARADIGM - Dr. Federica Amati PhD #90
How has new research changed the way we see nutritional health? What role do ultra-processed foods, fibre, gut microbes, inflammation and insulin resistance play in the new paradig…
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1 h 41
EXTENDED COGNITION & PARTICIPATORY SENSE-MAKING - Rebecca Todd PhD #89
How separate is the cognition in our heads from cognition with our bodies, our tools, our communities and our ecosystems? What is participatory sense making and why is our world be…
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3 h 03
SPACE PSYCHOLOGY EXPLAINED - Iya Whiteley PhD #88
What can psychologists do the make pilots and astronauts’ decision making better under duress? Can we anticipate the psychological issues of planned long distance space missions to…
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1 h 12
REIMAGINING OUR POST-COLONIAL PSYCHOLOGY - Bayo Akomolafe PhD #87
How has colonialism shaped our western psychology? How can we reimagine our post-colonial psychology, before we wipe ourselves out? What is the role of the trickster archetype in t…
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1 h 11
THE TEEN BRAIN EXPLAINED - Jennifer Pfeifer #86
Are our preconceptions about teen behaviour true? What can we learn from the psychology and neuroscience of teen development to help support them rather than blame them? Are mobile…
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1 h 57
THE NEUROSCIENCE OF DMT - Andrew Gallimore PhD
How are DMT experiences neurologically different to hallucinations? How does DMT alter the world modelling of our brains? What evidence is there that the brain is receiving informa…
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1 h 34
THE QUEST FOR CONSCIOUSNESS - Christof Koch PhD #84
What are the best competing theories of consciousness? Can we isolate where it arises and measure how complex it is? How do 5meo DMT mystical or non-separation experiences shift wo…
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1 h 21
HIGH-DOSE INTRAVENOUS VITAMIN C TRIALS - Dr. Richard Z. Cheng PhD #83
Do the many clinical trials into high-dose vitamin C prove it can actually treat the common cold and cancer, rather than just boost the immune system? Why is there ongoing sceptici…
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1 h 32
WILL AI ROBOTS BE SENTIENT & THE QUANTUM FOUNDATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS - Suzanne Gildert PhD #82
Will artificial intelligence robots have subjective experience? What are the ethical and safety implications of such entities? Which quantum physics theory can accommodate consciou…
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1 h 07
EXERCISE INTERVENTIONS FOR MENTAL HEALTH - Dr. Brendon Stubbs #81
Is there evidence that even light exercise can improve mental health and help treat severe mental illness? How easy is it to prove the effects? Are our ever more sedentary lifestyl…
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1 h 24
ON FACING DEATH, according to C.G.Jung - Monika Wikman PhD
How should we support the dying, and how should we approach death itself? What is conscious dying? What does Carl Jung’s work say about facing death?In this episode we have the com…
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1 h 48
THE 4th PHASE OF WATER EXPLAINED - Gerald Pollack #79
What are the implications of the discovery of the chemical variation of water, nicknamed “The 4th phase”? What does the new structured chemical composition mean for the storage of…
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1 h 21
THE MIND BODY PROBLEM & THE PANPSYCHISM SOLUTION - Galen Strawson PhD #78
How can consciousness emerge from non-conscious material? If there is only one type of stuff, how is the potential for consciousness encoded in the building blocks of the universe?…
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1 h 01
MEMETICS IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE- Susan Blackmore PhD
What are memes and why do some replicate while others disappear? Are the memes selected for always for the benefit of the host culture? How are our new technologies changing the wa…
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1 h 40
AI SAFETY - A SCEPTICAL VIEW - Stephen Wolfram PhD #76
What are the benefits and risks of developing advanced AI? What kind of safety precautions could we take? Could we risk never making future discoveries, by over-limiting today’s AI…
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1 h 29
OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES: THE ANTHROPOLOGY - Samantha Lee Treasure #75
What are the contents of Out of Body Experiences? How closely do they map the actual physical world? Is it possible to induce them purposefully? How do modern practices compare to…