098: Climate activist and author Paul Hawken joins us for his fifth interview, focused on food, agriculture, climate change, and greenwashing. In this episode, the first half of Dave Chapman’s conversation with Paul, they discuss whether regenerative agriculture is organic and vice verse.
Paul Hawken is a climate activist, entrepreneur, and the author of nine books including Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, and his most-recent, 2022’s best-selling Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. He serves on Real Organic Project’s Advisory Board.
What evidence is there for quantum effects in biological systems? What are the implications for life in general?
In this episode we’ve got the relatively new field of quantum biology to assess. For years the idea of quantum effects in biological cells was dismissed because live cells were ‘too warm and wet’ to host these sensitive quantum coherences. But new research into quantum coherence in avian navigation, quantum tunnelling in DNA mutations, in enzymes, even in smell – has brought new interest and study to the field of Quantum Biology.
One biochemist, saw all this coming and wrote a book about it 20 years ago called, ‘Quantum evolution’. He is none other that than Professor of Molecular Genetics at Surrey university, JohnJoe McFadden.
His mainstream research is in microbial genetics, particularly in developing new systems biology approaches to infectious diseases. He is a keen promoter of public understanding of science and has given many popular science talks on subjects as varied as evolution and GM food. He also writes popular science articles, particularly for the Guardian newspaper. His specialties are broad including: systems biology, microbiology, evolutionary genetics, infectious diseases, tuberculosis, meningitis, and bionanotechnology.
He’s written many books but in this episiode we’ll be focussing on material from his newer books, ‘Life on the Edge, the coming age of Quantum Biology’ with physicist Jim Al-Khalili, and ‘Life is Simple: How Occams Razor Set Science Free and Unlocked the Universe’.
Sorry for the occasional connection lagtime on this video, the audio is fine though.
In life and in spiritual practice, we will encounter many in-between spaces: times of transition from one stage of life to the next, from one state of consciousness to another, and even from death to rebirth.
How can we navigate these liminal spaces—and unearth the riches contained within them?
Join Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author Andrew Holecek for an hour-long virtual workshop looking to ancient Tibetan wisdom for insights on how to work consciously with the transitory places and processes in our lives. Looking specifically to two realms of the liminal—dreaming states of consciousness as encountered in Tibetan dream yoga, and the bardo teachings, which explore the realms between death and rebirth—he will suggest how we can approach uncertainty and impermanence as opportunities for awakening.
Holecek is the author of numerous books on Buddhist teachings and the teacher of Tricycle’s online courses, Dream Yoga, Living and Dying: Navigating the Bardos, and Transforming Obstacle into Opportunity.
How can out of body experiences be explained? What theory of reality could accomodate such a phenomenon? Today we have the extraordinary topic of the science and physics of Out of Body Experiences to get our head around! Many brain scientists have reduced this common experience to a mix of physiological and brain chemical effects, maintaining that no perceiving consciousness actually leaves the body, rather it is a form of hallucination and distortion of body schema. Not knowing when these experiences will spontaneously occur has made them hard to study in the lab. However, certain researchers have developed a method for inducing the experience, allowing for deeper study. Following that study some new theories of reality have developed that could include such an experience and even others like Near Death Experience or NDE, and Controlled Remote Viewing which we’re evaluating in this second series. One such scientist is our guest today physicist Dr. Tom Campbell! He’s an experimental physicist who’s worked for over 20 years developing US missile systems for the Department of Defence, specialising in developing cutting edge technology, large-system simulation, technology development and integration, and complex system vulnerability and risk analysis. He began researching altered states of consciousness with Bob Monroe at Monroe Laboratories in the early 1970s. He helped design experiments and develop the Binaural Beats technology for creating specific altered states, and became an experienced test subject and trainer too. After many years studying consciousness, and out of body experiences he wrote the book ‘My Big TOE’, as in ‘Theory of Everything’, which describes his model of existence and reality from both the physical and metaphysical points of view.
Would you want to live forever? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and author, inventor, and futurist Ray Kurzweil discuss immortality, longevity escape velocity, the singularity, and the future of technology. What will life be like in 10 years?
Could we upload our brain to the cloud? We explore the merger of humans with machines and how we are already doing it. Could nanobots someday flow through our bloodstreams? Learn about the exponential growth of computation and what future computing power will look like.
When will computers pass the Turing test? Learn why the singularity is nearer and how to think exponentially about the world. Are things getting worse? We go through why things might not be as bad as they seem. What are the consequences of having a longer lifetime? Will we deplete resources?
Will there be a class divide between people able to access longer lifespans? What sort of jobs would people have in the future? Explore what artificial intelligence has in store for us. What happens if AI achieves consciousness? We discuss the definition of intelligence and whether there will be a day when there is nothing left for humans to do. Will we ever see this advancement ending?
Today we welcome Dr. Jim Tucker who is a child psychiatrist and the Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he is continuing the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson on reincarnation. He has been invited to speak about his research on Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and CBS Sunday Morning. He recently published BEFORE: Children’s Memories of Previous Lives, a 2-in-1 edition of his previous books.
In this episode, I talk to Dr. Jim Tucker about the science of reincarnation. We delve into his research findings and methodology on children who claim to remember their previous lives. Dr. Tucker notes that these children don’t just recall biographical details of their past, but they also retain feelings and emotions. His findings have important implications for how we understand consciousness. We also touch on the topics of mortality, trauma, quantum physics, and panpsychism.
Mo Gawdat is Chief Business Officer at Google [X]. He is the author of, among other things, the book Spooky smart and launched his own podcast Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat (https://www.mogawdat.com/podcast) in 2020, which is known worldwide.
Yuthok Nyingthig is the most important practice for Tibetan medicine healing practitioners. The practice of Yuthok Nyingthig helps reveal the rainbow body that is each person’s natural state. Professor Thurman discusses the meaning of empowerment, tantra, and why the rainbow body of natural bliss and happiness is such an important teaching for our modern world. This podcast was recorded on July 2, 2015 at Menla Mountain Retreat Center as part of a retreat called Shakyamuni Buddha’s Inner Sciences. His Medicine Buddha Healing Science with Dr. Nida Chenagtsang & Robert Thurman. This podcast is apart of the Buddhist Inner Sciences 101 Podcast Series taken from the Bob Thurman & Tibet House US archives which are intended to provide an introduction to the yogic, meditative & theoretical practices of the tradition. These recordings are intended to be general overviews & one should be studying with a qualified teacher before attempting or engaging in the practices.
