Missing Witches - WF Dr Siddharth Ramakrishnan - The Neuroscience of Tarot

00:00:00.000 If you want to support the Missing Witches project, join the coven, find out how at missingwitches.com,

00:00:06.980 or buy our books, New Moon Magic and Missing Witches, and check out the Missing Witches Deck of Oracles. 1.00

00:00:14.080 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 0.99

00:00:17.120 Be a witch. Be a witch. Be a witch. Be a witch. Be a witch. Be a witch. 1.00

00:00:20.640 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:24.220 I didn't give you a fair warning, and I meant to. It's probably fine. 1.00

00:00:28.360 I'm obviously super bald I'm I'm like six months into chemo sometimes that can be I don't know

00:00:35.260 emotional or I should have warned you but anyway I'm fine how is the chemo going I'm okay I found

00:00:42.520 my last dose congratulations thank you yeah I'm like just resting recovering before radiation

00:00:51.200 so that starts soon do you have to have surgery after or I did surgery before

00:00:55.780 yeah i had surgery in the summer then i'll do radiation and then there'll be one more surgery

00:01:02.680 but probably not for another like six months yeah yeah i grew up in a medical family like

00:01:08.780 unbothered yeah mostly people have not i was gonna say not cared but that's not true people

00:01:17.180 have been very caring and unbothered but i can imagine a scenario where it would be like hard

00:01:23.060 you know you're in montreal i'm north of montreal okay yeah i'm in the laurencian mountains near

00:01:31.140 montemblanc if that means anything to you i stayed and i lived in montreal for three months

00:01:36.880 a couple of years back but didn't travel venture out much you didn't come up into the hills up here

00:01:43.060 were you at miguel i was at this ircm it was this hospital but i was trying to do neuroethics

00:01:55.320 so the idea that more and more we have to talk about end of life issues or like abortion issues

00:02:05.220 like fetal consciousness and all these ethical quandaries that are there and I teach neuroscience

00:02:13.280 and we never are trained to talk about this as scientists so I think it's very important for

00:02:21.160 teaching young kids like how to talk about it how to navigate the question of ethics

00:02:26.480 so I came there because there's a big ethics institute there and I kind of want to get out

00:02:32.300 get a training on how to how to talk about it and we did a really cool speed dating event for

00:02:38.540 neurodivergent individuals so the idea is you bring in autistic folks clinicians social workers

00:02:46.920 and kind of have this kind of a speed dating event where you have a progressive dialogue on how to

00:02:53.380 interact with one another and kind of get everybody's inputs on what works for

00:02:59.360 dealing with neurodivergence wow that's fascinating it's really great because we also

00:03:05.600 kind of put these charts in front of people so people are also drawing as they were talking

00:03:11.420 so the conversation kind of progressed with the drawings and especially people who didn't want to

00:03:15.900 make eye contact were able to draw stuff so it was much better it kind of worked out much better

00:03:22.840 I anticipated. That's interesting. I was thinking I had a situation with a doctor where

00:03:31.280 I called to express that I hadn't slept in two weeks because of the hot flashes caused by the

00:03:37.340 chemo. And there was sort of like a broken telephone that happened going to the doctor.

00:03:44.000 And so by the time the nurse told the doctor about it, it didn't sound very serious. And so

00:03:47.760 I was told there was nothing that could be done. And I talked to my mom about it. And my mom was

00:03:52.020 like well you probably were too hysterical like you have to just be really calm and like really

00:03:56.600 kind of masculine list your how it's impacting your income or whatever and it's like that's so

00:04:02.940 unfair like that's so gendered and so unfair like why couldn't they hear when I was here in my panic

00:04:11.060 that there was something wrong and I have a coven mate who because of trauma in their experience 0.99

00:04:17.000 describes like lying on the floor because of medical trauma in a doctor's office to try to

00:04:22.120 ground herself that was necessary you know so so so kind of exciting to hear you talk about

00:04:29.620 a conversation where people could share those different ways that our brains and body are

00:04:34.500 bringing bringing us into communication with doctors in ways that's making us not communicate 1.00

00:04:40.500 very well there's a whole new field of feminist biology that's i don't know if it exists in the 0.94

00:04:47.280 u.s anymore but right deleted yeah it was cropping up there was a really good fellowship at university

00:04:54.180 of wisconsin where like even if you're working in the emergency room and if you're a woman

00:04:59.820 who is saying you know do this right now you know because it's a it's a serious situation

00:05:05.840 they are considered 1.00

00:05:07.660 labeled like bitches 1.00

00:05:08.540 as opposed to men 1.00

00:05:09.800 who give the same instructions

00:05:11.180 and so they have to tone it down

00:05:13.320 they have to kind of

00:05:14.000 constantly self-check

00:05:15.960 right

00:05:16.580 but they should not be

00:05:18.140 should not be doing

00:05:19.520 yeah

00:05:20.260 and it's all my

00:05:21.960 complete social conditioning

00:05:23.260 for all of this

00:05:24.160 wild

00:05:25.120 so

00:05:26.080 Dr. Ramakrishnan

00:05:28.580 am I pronouncing that correctly?

00:05:30.880 first question

00:05:31.540 great

00:05:33.060 and is it Siddharth or Siddharth?

00:05:35.440 I'll stick with Dr. Ramakrishnan

00:05:37.580 but if I get real comfortable

00:05:38.720 Siddharth is fine

00:05:41.480 I'm Marisa

00:05:43.700 I'm just going to take a deep breath

00:05:47.180 and acknowledge that

00:05:48.740 as you suggest in your book

00:05:50.640 we walk into a reading

00:05:52.040 with our own sort of baseline feelings

00:05:55.460 in our bodies

00:05:56.540 and

00:05:58.660 it's worth noticing what those are

00:06:01.460 because they can impact

00:06:03.180 how we are able

00:06:05.260 to meet each other in a space and listen to each other often when i edit these podcasts i catch

00:06:12.820 moments where i'm like man i wish i had been more on the ball to notice how wise that was or there

00:06:18.120 was a follow-up question i wish i could have asked that's life though i guess always wishing

00:06:23.400 you could loop back in i just want to welcome listeners witches welcome back to the missing

00:06:30.920 Mitch's podcast as we've always said we're science-loving witches here we are and we're

00:06:38.260 really really so excited to get to talk to Dr. Ramakrishnan about their book and their work

00:06:44.920 it's really exciting to me to meet somebody who is living in this space between art and intuition

00:06:54.100 divination and science i wonder if as a means of introduction you would give us a little bit of a

00:07:01.820 life story like how did you become interested in neuroscience and what specifically are you

00:07:09.620 interested in there what are your specialties and then how did you become a tarot reader and

00:07:14.540 interested in divination and how is it for you living between those two worlds i did my undergrad

00:07:21.320 back in India in computer science and then I moved to the US for a master's in computer science but

00:07:28.180 then I think in the back of my head I knew that if I wanted to do a career change I had to leave

00:07:33.760 India because it's very difficult once you get on a path. I promised myself every semester I would

00:07:39.540 take a biology elective and the first semester I took an elective on animal behavior. We went out

00:07:47.320 in the field and we used to observe wolves mating and prairie chickens running around. Then we used

00:07:53.400 to come back to the lab and look at brains and see how it all worked together. And so I completely

00:07:58.500 fell in love and I said, I can't, I can't do computers anymore. And I struggled to finish

00:08:04.140 my master's, but I moved over to a PhD in neuroscience. Working on snails and cockroaches

00:08:10.480 is what I was working on. I don't normally talk about my computer background to people.

00:08:15.220 I still work on snails. I work a lot on how plastics affect brain development and animal

00:08:21.580 behavior and reproduction. A lot to do with how environment controls behavior is what I'm really,

00:08:27.080 really fascinated about. At the same time, when I started my PhD back in 2000, my sister gave me a

00:08:34.740 deck of tarot cards. I'd grown up a lot with astrology, but tarot was not very familiar medium

00:08:40.520 for me because of astrology the science and mysticism as like the dichotomy didn't really

00:08:47.420 exist i went to a school like my primary and secondary education was in a anglo-vedic school

00:08:54.380 where we literally performed fire rituals we invoke the fire every saturday we used to sing

00:08:59.740 mantras and chant and then the next day we'll go back and do frog dissection and rat dissection

00:09:05.300 and stuff like sort of like this it was not as seamless completely seamless and so that mysticism

00:09:11.880 and the science were not really separated out in my life growing up so the tarot was really

00:09:19.700 fascinating for me because I I've been looking at the images for a while and wondering like how

00:09:26.440 how do we tap use this for tapping into intuition and around 2018 I kind of felt disconnected from

00:09:33.940 the world a little bit and I want to get back into my own art practices which made me really

00:09:39.340 delve into okay I want to design a set of tarot cards and it has to be a neuro tarot deck and so

00:09:45.860 I started looking for people to draw these things for me and I said oh you know I want to do it

00:09:50.960 myself but that really led me down okay what am I looking at why is this image evoking so much in me

00:09:59.120 and so what is the science behind it I started looking at all of that at that point.

00:10:03.940 We did a reading today in one of our circles and we pulled out your book on a couple of

00:10:09.460 occasions.

00:10:10.440 I really love the way that you've mapped some concepts from neuroscience on to the

00:10:16.140 major arcana, really like kind of exciting interpretations of some of those archetypes.

00:10:21.820 So thanks.

00:10:22.340 I wondered if you could talk a bit about what is happening in a tarot reading from the

00:10:30.240 perspective of a neuroscientist.

00:10:33.140 what what's happening in the brain maybe specifically when you're doing a reading for

00:10:36.900 yourself like why do we think what is happening what is going on with our intuition what do we

00:10:43.620 think about precognition what really occurs when we look at those images yeah it's amazing like if

00:10:50.060 you look at a card or any image it's just a bunch of squiggly lines but somehow our brain is able to

00:10:55.980 make sense of what they are or trying to make a sense of what figure it represents either it's

00:11:02.180 a person or a dog or a cat or a son so it first needs to kind of put the objects together so

00:11:09.060 first the information travels from your eye to the back of your head it's almost like taking a

00:11:12.820 picture of the image that you see in the back of your head but at that point you don't really

00:11:16.820 recognize what it is and then it starts adding layers saying okay now i have the picture

00:11:23.060 what does it mean so for that you're kind of delving into your memory to say okay have i seen

00:11:27.540 this before if there's a nose and two eyes that probably represents a face so you start adding

00:11:32.380 meaning to the pictures and all of that is kind of happening kind of like in the area right above

00:11:39.040 my ears right where the headphones are that's your temporal lobe with the memories and that's

00:11:43.940 kind of adding like okay I've learned in the past that this means it's a dog or this is a table or

00:11:49.060 this is a chair so using that information from the past to kind of add those labels

00:11:53.200 and then the part up here is kind of giving you information on well is this person moving is he

00:12:00.620 walking is he standing you know what am I thinking about all of that is the board progressing so all

00:12:05.600 those kinds of movement information and location-based information is kind of getting added

00:12:09.520 up here and then we move into metaphors and associations so if you see a cat did you have a

00:12:19.820 pet in your life you know that that's really meaningful to you so you start adding like more

00:12:24.320 associations with it maybe you feel warm and cuddly towards something like that as opposed to

00:12:29.340 me when i was very young i was chased by a pomeranian when i was four years old so i'm

00:12:33.460 deadly scared of dogs even today and so dogs have a very different meaning for me so my associations

00:12:40.260 with some of those symbols are going to be different so you're adding that in that next level

00:12:46.660 and that is happening in a place of your brain called the cingulate cortex which is right above

00:12:53.040 the connection between the left and right brain the cerebral commissure right above that is your

00:12:57.500 cingulate cortex and that's where that metaphors and associations are kind of tangling up together

00:13:02.080 and so that is the first step pretty much it almost instantaneously happens in all of us

00:13:09.720 where we are immediately forming these associations and meanings for anything that we see

00:13:15.880 the intuition bit is the next layer that's added on top where you are then asked to make a choice

00:13:24.060 or okay what does this mean how do i interpret this so that intuition bit is kind of the next

00:13:31.540 step where you are also using emotional centers so you're trying to use your current state of mind

00:13:39.440 and also if this particular object is evoking certain specific emotions in you you're using

00:13:46.860 that to then make that intuitive leap the problem with the intuition bit is that a lot of the

00:13:52.520 information is unconscious and you have intuition because we've evolved to make those very quick

00:13:59.800 split-second decisions so that you know that if you're faced with danger whether you have to run

00:14:05.540 or stay or if you're eating something like is this poisonous or not you have to make those very

00:14:10.900 quick decisions so that circuitry is there in you to make those very quick decisions and it may not

00:14:18.320 always be the right decision but in that instance it gives you the sense of what is called cognitive

00:14:24.600 ease you feel you know what i'm done i've made my decision i'm moving on and you might think back

00:14:32.140 later wonder why you did it but at that moment in time with all this unfiltered information you're

00:14:37.640 just like saying okay what i'm just going to make this choice right now and that's what the power

00:14:43.880 of intuition is and what they found is the intuitive decision making is about 15 to 20

00:14:49.560 seconds faster than logical step-by-step decision making which could be life or death in a lot of

00:14:55.760 situations they've done most of this research on athletes and doctors so if you're a surgeon

00:15:01.800 cutting into somebody and suddenly something goes wrong, you can intuitively process, okay,

00:15:07.880 that's probably the artery that was cut and I'm going to plug that in. As opposed to a new surgeon

00:15:13.080 who is following the rules of the book, it's almost like a tarot reader looking at the little

00:15:18.040 white book and saying, oh, you know what, if I do this, then this is going to happen, then this is

00:15:23.140 going to happen. So there's a delay in thinking about that logical step-by-step processing.

00:15:28.000 You know, that was something I found really surprising in the book. Because, you know, the back of the book sort of promotes that it's about discovering the science behind the art of tarot reading, which it totally is. But once you're deeper into the book, you realize it's a handbook for an experienced tarot reader to become a better tarot reader. There's so many.

00:15:49.120 what did you call them in the book like my brain worksheets I don't know yeah worksheets is that

00:15:57.460 what they're called yeah like exercises exercises yeah there's so many exercises and doing them is

00:16:04.460 so interesting like really to see well where does my body respond to a particular image or

00:16:12.100 what did I think you know when I did I did the one where you you talked about using

00:16:17.560 a divinatory practice that you're not familiar with and then going back to the cards and then

00:16:21.740 compare like what did you think the answer was to those two questions can you open up the way that

00:16:26.140 you're you're listening can you talk about some of where those exercises come from i think it comes

00:16:33.580 from me being a neuroscientist is by training i'm a reductionist so instead of thinking about

00:16:40.020 anything of consciousness a lot of people will be like okay where's the mind how do you explore

00:16:44.960 outside a neuroscientist would be like okay how do we break this down into the smallest bits and

00:16:49.780 pieces and then try and see if we can build it up again right in fact a lot of the exercises are

00:16:55.540 kind of almost stopping at every step and like kind of finding other nuances and I think part

00:17:01.320 of the thing was that when I was doing my own readings I was thinking okay why am I doing this

00:17:05.360 right now like what is going on so I think some of those exercise breakdowns are coming from the

00:17:12.040 fact of my own training as a reductionist but at the same time I found that a couple of the

00:17:18.100 readings I've done scientific readings I've done have constantly hammered home the opinion that

00:17:24.420 if I look at something and you look at something even though we're looking at the same exact

00:17:29.360 image what we observe is going to be entirely different and and it's been proven it's there

00:17:36.860 There's a sociocultural divide in what people observe and what they take out of images.

00:17:42.640 So I was thinking if that works with, you know, just simple observation skills, it's

00:17:48.520 probably also going to have something different with different divinatory practices as well.

00:17:54.260 And I also think that if, especially for an expert tarot reader who's so used to doing,

00:18:01.160 you get attached to certain interpretations that you might overlook certain new ways of looking at

00:18:07.120 things and I feel like coming at it from a different angle when you're comparing and

00:18:12.360 contrasting between two different things might actually and almost you know why not be a novice

00:18:16.900 in a new practice right I mean it's something to think about because I just recently heard about

00:18:21.920 the Lenormand and I'm like whoa what is that and then you know trying to get into that a little bit

00:18:25.660 so it's always fun to think about it that way.

00:18:29.780 Could you give an example of some of your favorite exercises or one for developing that

00:18:35.720 yeah that like next that next kind of intuition or like for being able to like go past your first

00:18:42.840 instinct with a card? Yeah one of the favorite ones I've been doing a lot is taking the card

00:18:49.600 and the first day write down the first five things I notice about it even from memory and then

00:18:55.540 picking the same card again the next day and then forcing your eye to notice something different

00:19:01.680 about that card so it cannot be the same four symbols that you saw the day before it has to be

00:19:07.400 something different and then thinking about okay with these would your interpretation of the same

00:19:13.480 card be different or not and then kind of repeat that either with the same card for a few days or

00:19:18.740 trying a new card and again seeing if the different symbols in it would actually alter the way you

00:19:24.280 look at that particular particular card is something to think about and then I think that

00:19:31.300 particular exercise really helps you especially if you always have a sinking feeling when you

00:19:36.080 see the devil card or something like that it really pushes you past that to think about okay

00:19:40.640 what other things can I notice about this that would change how I look at this particular thing

00:19:45.480 can you also talk about the exercise that you have around kind of cleaning your palate and why that

00:19:52.500 works yeah i mean this is something we the neurons get what are called habituated so when you walk

00:20:00.080 into a room and you have this sense this overpowering smell after a few minutes you stop

00:20:05.180 smelling it it's because your neurons are getting fatigued by by that and they kind of stop responding

00:20:10.920 to that particular signal and so that's what happens in an aroma tasting event where you walk

00:20:17.780 in and they have five different scents and in between those you kind of give you a little

00:20:21.520 bit of coffee beans or something to kind of smell to kind of cleanse your palate almost and that way

00:20:26.960 you're resetting you're resetting your neurons to to think about it so I was thinking if when you

00:20:33.100 look at an image and it's evoking certain narratives in you then think about looking at a

00:20:39.120 blank page or something completely neutral that would then reset your visual imagery and so the

00:20:46.700 next time you look at the image it's almost like you're starting on a blank slate instead of being

00:20:51.180 biased by something that came beforehand. And I mean, we're all human. And, you know,

00:20:57.680 even if we say we are making interpretations completely unbiased, that's not true. We are

00:21:01.840 putting our own thoughts and biases into it at every point. If you're agitated and do a reading

00:21:07.700 that reflects on it. So I was hoping that this kind of cleansing actually would help us get into

00:21:13.200 that yeah that's one that i was enjoying playing with like what what do i see in a card if i take

00:21:21.400 like um i don't know a mental break you you have us look at a blank page and then come back to that

00:21:27.080 reading i'm especially interested in yeah how do we acknowledge bias or find our ways around it i

00:21:34.660 mean can't escape the moment that we're meeting in you know the political global moment that we're

00:21:42.080 meeting in. You also talk in the book about how people turn to divination when they experience a

00:21:48.840 loss of control. And we're going to see a whole lot more of that, right? Fascism and a politics

00:21:55.460 of fear does remove our control, our access to control. And so people will turn more to their

00:22:00.840 spiritual tools. How do we use those tools in ways that can confront our bias, can increase our

00:22:08.640 empathy cannot drive us maybe more towards conspiracy thinking, but towards care, towards

00:22:15.540 each other? That's a fascinating question. The scientific research has shown that the trends

00:22:22.380 towards belief in science versus belief in esoteric practices clearly diverge when there's

00:22:28.000 that feeling of uncertainty. When the financial crisis happened in 2008, there was a big increase

00:22:33.440 in spiritual practices mainly because people are wanting to know you know am I going to be okay

00:22:39.600 and I think that's kind of where maybe that divide you're talking about may be bridged because

00:22:46.080 ultimately at the basics of it the questions that are being asked to a tarot reader or other

00:22:53.240 divination expert is going to be am I going to be okay or you know is my family going to be okay

00:22:58.940 you know and those kinds of questions are the most human human level basic ones and respect to

00:23:05.360 a political you know whether your client or who is coming forward you wherever they are coming from

00:23:10.540 that level of humanness the humanness is there and i think that's kind of what we need to approach it

00:23:17.820 with but i also think that with some of the practices in the book especially where you are

00:23:26.420 able to not only think just about spirituality but also about science you can also extend that

00:23:34.200 belief in the scientific system which is also slowly being eroded like the lack of faith in

00:23:39.540 the scientific process or the lack of faith in medical folks i think that the hope is you can

00:23:46.560 kind of bridge that gap a little bit and i think it is going to be bridged with all these new

00:23:51.860 technologies and tools that are going to come we are going to see more explorations of psychic

00:23:57.160 practices and other kinds of practices because we're going to I think develop better tools to

00:24:02.040 examine them in the near future it's going to be very exciting I think for us to see some of the

00:24:07.980 questions that people have been using all I mean all the mental tools that people have been using

00:24:11.400 to come forth like you know what wow what I said was actually true it actually works I found that

00:24:17.120 part exciting in your book it was nice that you were optimistic it's nice to hear that you're

00:24:22.940 optimistic now i like hearing the excitement that there are places that science can go that you see

00:24:29.700 it on the horizon that will allow us to bridge this gap in some ways to let us kind of come

00:24:37.380 closer to things that we've wondered about from an esoteric perspective might be taken seriously

00:24:43.080 from a scientific perspective. I wonder if you could talk about in particular this idea that

00:24:48.320 parts of making a guess about the future are happening in a really deep level of consciousness

00:24:54.260 and so the idea that there might be a connection there with a larger sort of spiritual mind or to

00:25:00.900 see it on an energetic level it might be worth exploring even scientifically. Yeah so our brains

00:25:07.200 are predictive machines like we have to make predictions in order to just do everyday tasks

00:25:12.300 So if I'm walking down the road, I need to know if something is going to approach me or not.

00:25:18.100 I'm kind of constantly calibrating that.

00:25:20.620 But more and more, there's evidence that even if not in the individual mind, the collective mind of across people are actually able to predict events that might happen six months down the line or a year down the line.

00:25:31.560 and in fact if you really think about farmers or agricultural practitioners from before they were

00:25:38.020 kind of like you know they were looking at certain cues and predicting they are forecasting what might

00:25:42.800 be happening and so there's a new field of neuro forecasting that's kind of talking about

00:25:48.580 if I poll everybody now in this group as to which song is going to be the most popular six months

00:25:54.720 down the line even though consciously you might say it's going to be song x if I poll your

00:26:00.800 unconscious brain it's actually going to point towards song why and all of you are going to get

00:26:05.320 a consensus on that how do you pull our unconscious mind so they have these mri machines where they

00:26:13.140 are scanning specific areas of your brain your insula which is where you have your internal body

00:26:18.860 representation also points towards negative aversion so if all of us hate something but

00:26:25.620 you don't want to say it out loud you know that insula is going to light up like a flash

00:26:29.680 and similarly if all of you love something and you don't want to say it out loud the nucleus

00:26:34.160 accumbens a different part of the brain is going to light up so it's kind of like the interplay

00:26:38.120 between these two is kind of what's going to help you decide whether you're going to have a positive

00:26:43.720 effect a positive thing towards a particular object or a negative reaction to a particular

00:26:48.820 object right now it's all in the mri machine but i guess going forward there you can have like

00:26:54.040 helmets or something going around where these things are being pulled i guess a good friend

00:26:59.040 of mine victoria wesner at ucla has developed these octopus headsets where it's an eeg headset

00:27:05.180 on your head and it changes colors and when two people's brain waves sink they form the same color

00:27:10.800 basically so i think those kinds of technologies can be developed and become cheaper but but yeah

00:27:17.780 so that it exists it's that collective mind pointing towards something is is there in us

00:27:24.920 and i think the larger questions in science like what is consciousness what is god and those kinds

00:27:33.960 of things cannot be answered by scientists alone it's just not possible because i i can dig however

00:27:40.100 i want deep and you know and break things apart it's just not going to answer that question

00:27:44.160 we just started a major in my university on neurospirituality where students have to take

00:27:49.780 hardcore science courses but also take hardcore religion courses and then kind of blend it into

00:27:55.460 two i think those kinds of areas are where we're going to get those larger questions answered

00:28:01.620 you're at puget sound right yeah yeah just for people listening who are like sign me up

00:28:06.460 folks want to find you and study with you will you talk about this concept of the

00:28:12.840 umwelt oh i love this concept okay get into it for me so it's a german word it's an umwelt it's

00:28:22.320 like it's an umlaut on top of that you and it's this thing of how you are entirely dependent on

00:28:30.480 your sense organs to perceive the world around you so humans are very visual creatures but we're

00:28:37.940 very limited visual creatures in the sense we can only see from blue to red and we can't see the

00:28:44.200 ultraviolets or the infrareds you're sharing your space with all these other animals which have

00:28:50.760 completely different sensory in fact a much more wide-ranging sensory processing associated with it

00:28:57.620 like ants can see infrared rays and they are navigate using infrared rays so they know exactly

00:29:04.520 where their home is because they're using different strategies to kind of find their

00:29:09.220 anthill and bees can see ultraviolet so while we see a white flower they see these deep purples in

00:29:16.460 the center of the flower and so you have your sensory world and then all these animals have

00:29:23.700 their own sensory worlds around you so it's almost like multiple universes of sensation

00:29:31.560 that exists around us which we have no concept of i mean i guess some of us who have pets like dogs

00:29:37.920 we clearly know that a dog can not only smell in they can smell things like which we can't but

00:29:45.580 they can also smell the past like things that have happened like three days ago and stuff so

00:29:49.680 their level of sensation is just amazing so that's concept of the umwelt is this this world

00:29:55.480 the surrounding worlds and how it's we have we have this intersection of multiple creatures

00:30:01.140 which are making up our sensory spaces basically within humans do we have different umwells oh

00:30:08.760 that's a great question i think we all i mean definitely if you if you think about synesthese

00:30:16.980 they probably have a different different world around them because not only can they smell

00:30:22.600 things but they can also see the smells as different colors if you're not as visually

00:30:28.540 inclined then you probably have a better sense of space in terms of your your sounds so you can

00:30:37.200 train yourself to become more aware of some of these things if you start listening to your body

00:30:44.060 when you see something and is your heart beating faster or not so it's kind of training yourself

00:30:49.840 to feel more of those mechanical changes that are happening in your body when you perceive things

00:30:55.360 i think we all do it but most of us are not just aware of it at all so i have actually not thought

00:31:03.560 about it the way you asked me and it's a really really fascinating question if we have individual

00:31:10.300 umbels floating around us but my answer probably would be yes feels like yes but i don't i mean i

00:31:18.340 live with a six-year-old and um you know i've told her that she has more taste buds than we do

00:31:25.060 or that she probably has better eyes than we do.

00:31:27.320 We're pretty old parents.

00:31:29.080 And so she'll share that with us now in return.

00:31:33.700 She'll be like, yeah, of course I can see that.

00:31:35.340 I have better eyes than you.

00:31:36.540 I do feel like I'm living with a very vibrant, different world.

00:31:40.100 I love this concept because I'm really interested in human-animal connection,

00:31:47.440 human-animal communication, not just, you know, as a vegan,

00:31:51.320 But I just think we live in a world where we sort of pushed animal experience as far away from our consciousness as we can so that we don't have to really acknowledge how much suffering we're causing there.

00:32:05.120 If it's possible to enter into their lived world experience more or to make connection across those divides, then maybe that's a path to kind of undoing some of the damage that we're doing there.

00:32:21.480 I did a project called the sniffing boot where we kind of had these thermal ink cards which were placed along different parts of a room and you had to breathe on it the thermal ink would kind of make objects appear and the idea being that it would kind of like the dog would have probably smelled it even before but then for you had to kind of literally like physically go and do something to figure out what was in that particular location.

00:32:46.100 But we also have this, my collaborator, Victoria Vesna at UCLA, whom I mentioned before, she and I started this project called the Hox Zodiac, H-O-X Zodiac.

00:32:56.620 And the idea being that the genes that control your body plan, whether you have one head, two hands, or like an elephant have a long trunk or a python having a long body, the genes that control that are called the Hox genes, H-O-X Hox genes.

00:33:12.080 and the same eight genes control the body plan of every single animal that we see around us

00:33:21.320 so we see this morphological variation around us but if you look at it underneath all we're all

00:33:30.620 the same eight genes it's like how they are activated whether you know you're activating

00:33:36.740 more of the body or more of the nose you know that is different but it's just the same gene

00:33:41.900 that are controlling all of us and so we kind of been using this we ask people to come to this

00:33:47.240 dinner table as a as their chinese zodiac animals and partake in food and then we start talking about

00:33:55.080 how the animals are our pets our mythological creatures our lab experiments our food and then

00:34:06.220 we start talking about the similarities and also the variations and the cultural differences and

00:34:11.540 how we approach different animals. So it's like a fascinating project that's been going on for

00:34:15.900 some time. Sounds like you guys throw a fun party. People come and then we talk a lot about

00:34:21.420 molecular genetics, but also about, you know, just animals. Oh, that's so cool. I'm really excited

00:34:29.540 by this approach in your work. Okay, I want to read a piece. So give me a second. I'm just going

00:34:34.440 to pull it up and then I want to ask you questions about it. So this is from The Neuroscience of

00:34:39.520 tarot by dr ramakrishnan was forward by mary k greer i met her at a conference and she was so

00:34:45.540 assuming i had no idea who she was we were just like doing readings for each other and then

00:34:50.480 everybody's like that's me yeah yeah yeah and she wrote a beautiful forward okay so this sort of

00:35:02.280 talks about what we were just touching on and i just want to sort of dig into it a little bit more

00:35:07.980 this is in a piece called worlds within worlds in your book we live in a world but actually we live

00:35:14.920 in multiple perceptual worlds defined by other creatures and individuals we share spaces with

00:35:20.540 this concept is called the umwelt or surrounding worlds my experience of my surroundings is entirely

00:35:26.660 dependent on my sensory organs how i perceive the world how i see smell taste in here is very

00:35:32.480 different from an ant when i look outside and see some flowers i'm just skipping because you just

00:35:37.180 described that ultraviolet and polarized light. You might notice grass, blue skies, reds and

00:35:43.160 pinks. For a bee, the same scene is shifted and they can see contrasting planes of lights and

00:35:47.720 shadows, intense differences within the worlds of the flowers, and distances measured in dance

00:35:52.740 movements. For a dog, this scenario can be layered with traces of smell, bringing in a rich history

00:35:58.280 of animals that have visited the location over the last three days. But such differences in

00:36:03.380 perception do not just extend across species. What scientists are now discovering is that

00:36:08.040 cultural upbringing and early childhood experiences change what humans notice and observe.

00:36:13.420 All that you have smelled, tasted, and interpreted before is poured into one cauldron to give you a

00:36:18.080 recipe for noticing things and finding meanings and associations. Thus, it is your world and it

00:36:25.320 has a meaning of its own for you. This is what we've been talking about and I just think it's

00:36:30.380 such a beautiful aspect of the way you're describing tarot reading, that it is this

00:36:36.960 meeting of two worlds. Can you talk more about what's happening when we're sitting down with

00:36:44.960 someone who's asking us for a reading and how we're sort of trying to enter into that person's

00:36:50.320 world, how they're sort of deconstructing what we're saying while we're saying it and building

00:36:55.180 up their own story yeah this part was fascinating for me it's a concept of social cognition the fact

00:37:02.220 that we are able to interact with other people and so we are wired for it when you first meet

00:37:07.720 someone or when a client is sitting in front of you or someone is asking for a reading you are

00:37:12.240 observing them and you are first of all perceiving what they're about and then you almost internally

00:37:19.320 mirror them so you even if you're not physically assuming a defensive posture or an open post

00:37:25.900 stance you are internally mirroring what they look like so and then it's almost like you're creating

00:37:32.700 a golem of them inside your head it's called mentalizing where now that you have an image of

00:37:38.360 this person you're then instilling aspirations and desires and what are their motivations so

00:37:45.800 you're kind of immediately forming a mental picture of what this person is going to be doing

00:37:51.620 and this is not just in a tarot reading you're doing this all the time based on that you're

00:37:56.940 then saying okay this person is going to be doing this or that and that is kind of how we are we're

00:38:02.260 almost judging the other person in terms of what are they going to be doing next or what are their

00:38:07.260 hopes and desires so in a reading that's kind of what's happening where this person comes to you

00:38:12.820 and you're creating this mental image of their hopes and desires and then the story that's laid

00:38:19.100 in front of you with the cards is allowing you to guide answering those questions. I just did a talk

00:38:24.380 at the StarCon in Florida and I first asked people to just look at the other person and offer their

00:38:34.000 first impressions of the other person and I got complete silence and then I asked them to use the

00:38:41.460 cards and then offer the their impressions of these person's motivations and desires and then

00:38:47.220 people start like chatting and then what they told me was without the cards it was almost like

00:38:52.980 feeling like they were offering judgment on the person but the cards almost give you permission

00:38:58.140 to state more and almost say you know it's not me i'm not saying this the cards are saying this

00:39:06.480 So the cards are giving you the permission to talk about what was going on in your head.

00:39:11.780 I hadn't heard that before and it was really fascinating for me to hear that the permission

00:39:16.320 of the cards, but then it's a two-way street.

00:39:20.000 So when I'm listening to, if you are giving me a reading and I'm listening to you, I have

00:39:24.820 my own sense of self.

00:39:27.840 So the default mode network inside me is my sense of self, but it's not just the current

00:39:35.040 self the default mode network also helps me think about me in the future it's the one that allows

00:39:42.040 me to plan for like say five years down the line or two years down the line and so i when you're

00:39:48.640 narrating a certain reading to me it i'm then processing it with my own expectations of my

00:39:57.000 future with my default mode network and then there's a part of me in the front the front

00:40:01.080 autoparietal network which is saying which will kind of deny things that are like if I'm not

00:40:05.980 interested in what you're saying or if I don't if it doesn't gel with my own plans I'll just ignore

00:40:11.820 it or be like oh I didn't like that reading it's this is just not correct and so you can just

00:40:17.500 ignore it and move on almost so it's almost like having a plot and having a wrench thrown in the

00:40:23.340 plot and you're like saying you know that doesn't work with me I'm just going to stick with my own

00:40:27.100 believes. Can you talk more about the default mode network? I remember reading that magic

00:40:32.140 mushrooms, certain other drugs, part of what they do is kind of turn down or turn off the default

00:40:37.160 mode network. And the implication in the article was that this allowed us to connect with more

00:40:42.400 maybe of a universal consciousness or like to connect, be less of an ego and more collective.

00:40:49.080 Is that how that works? Is that part of it? That's what it implies. I think even meditation

00:40:54.220 is supposed to turn down the activity in the default mode network it's called a default mode

00:40:59.100 network because not just one part of the brain there are like multiple parts there's one part

00:41:03.420 right in the front here and then there's a part which is kind of up here these two areas

00:41:08.620 and it's supposed to give that strong sense of like this is me and then when you meditate or

00:41:17.500 when the sufi dervishes do the whirling dervish again it's supposed to like completely like

00:41:22.080 toned down when they're doing that. And then as you mentioned, when you're doing the magic

00:41:26.400 mushrooms, the activity in this particular area quietens. And so you're kind of thinking beyond

00:41:34.440 just yourself at that point is what they think is happening.

00:41:38.960 Another piece I found so beautiful in the book, you talked about the hormone melatonin, which,

00:41:46.820 you know we might be familiar with is it helping us to go to sleep like helping us to go into dream

00:41:52.380 and you talk about this I think this is what you said but this is the hormone that animals use to

00:41:57.240 find their way home and so I love this sort of idea that like going back into dream is sort of

00:42:02.840 like going home. It's not even just going home it's migration like when birds fly from the north

00:42:10.100 to the south and go back exactly to the same location the melatonin is supposed to be the one

00:42:16.280 that's driving them to back to that particular location and we still don't know completely for

00:42:24.660 us we know that it's using the circadian rhythm like the day night cycle but we don't know the

00:42:30.120 full extent to which melatonin is used in us so it might be kind of really fascinating to see you

00:42:35.880 know if you if it is got something to do with your own internal homing mechanism is something

00:42:40.780 that i'm i'm curious about actually can you talk more about hormones i'm asking this obviously from

00:42:48.020 a very personal perspective i have a very hormone positive cancer so i don't know what that's gonna

00:42:53.860 mean for me you know going forward what does that change in how my brain works what does that change

00:42:58.580 in the type of person that i am or for somebody going through transition where they're also maybe

00:43:04.180 taking hormone suppressors or changing their hormone balance what do we know about how that

00:43:08.680 changes how we think or how we feel or intuit? So the main controller of hormones in us is a

00:43:15.620 region called the hypothalamus. So if I took a pencil and I shoved it up your nose, that's where

00:43:19.780 the pituitary is. Don't do it at home, anyone. That's where the pituitary is. And if you go

00:43:24.780 further up there, it's your hypothalamus. And that's your master hormone regulator. The

00:43:29.860 hypothalamus then is kind of sitting there and then it communicates with the pituitary, which

00:43:33.240 then releases hormones into your bloodstream. So that's where the sex hormones are mainly located

00:43:38.900 and then when you're giving birth and that whole oxytocin is being released to allow the labor

00:43:44.300 contractions or milk production and oxytocin is also called the bonding hormone for paternal and

00:43:51.220 maternal bonding. So all that is being released from the pituitary into the bloodstream in that

00:43:57.440 location. Appetite level of control of hunger and hunger management is also being released

00:44:05.180 from their growth. So pretty much all the hormones that are important for your bodily functions is

00:44:11.300 being controlled by the hypothalamus and the pituitary. So when you see, in terms of tarot

00:44:19.720 interpretation and stuff, so when you're seeing an object and that's evoking some kind of an

00:44:24.300 emotional response in you it's actually also causing a physiological response where your heart

00:44:31.080 might beat extra or your lung capacity might change or you might have a clenching in your stomach

00:44:36.400 and that's actually also being driven by the hypothalamus which is triggering your autonomic

00:44:41.760 nervous system to do all these physiological changes and then that might result in a large

00:44:48.180 scale hormonal reaction of flooding you with adrenaline or excitement or happiness and things

00:44:53.340 like that what they found is even after hormone therapy of different kinds right now you shut

00:45:00.080 down your hormones it takes a little while to recalibrate because it's a very homeostatic thing

00:45:05.820 where the hormone fluctuations actually suppress itself so it produces stuff and then when you have

00:45:12.280 more of it it then goes back and says okay i have enough of this shut it down so that feedback loop

00:45:17.980 It takes a little while to reset itself, a while to kind of fluctuate before your body says, okay,

00:45:25.460 this is the right calibration of hormones I need to respond to situations. So if you find yourself

00:45:33.200 responding either too low or too high to situations, give yourself that, you know, it's okay,

00:45:39.660 you know, I'm just going to take a breather right now and think about, you know, maybe I'm not just

00:45:44.580 settling back at my my thing now so be much more much more gentle with yourself with regards to

00:45:51.020 that i would say because it's almost a process of that recalibration it takes us a while to get to

00:45:56.720 that are you saying that if for example in my case i have estrogen and progesterone turned off in my

00:46:04.980 body they're going to try to keep it off for the rest of my life my body will calibrate other

00:46:10.680 hormones to try to help me have that emotional balance if I can't use those ones it'll use

00:46:18.020 something else I don't think you specifically need I think basically you'll still have like

00:46:24.520 GNRH and the luteinizing hormone which will still be being produced so I think

00:46:30.800 over time you'll just learn to use those for your own emotional needs but it's just going to take a

00:46:40.020 little while for it to understand what's going on in terms of responding from your body as to how to

00:46:46.480 use them is what I would say yeah and also we shouldn't forget that the brain itself locally

00:46:53.640 produces hormones so it's not just your body is producing estrogen there's local production of

00:46:59.320 estrogen and progesterone also in your brain so that itself might be recalibrated if it's not

00:47:06.800 getting enough stuff from the body. One of my sort of favorite things about this very fucked 0.98

00:47:13.380 up experience that cancer is, is being reminded how adaptive the body is, you know, how adaptive 0.97

00:47:20.860 the brain is. You must see it all the time in your work, but to be really forced to encounter

00:47:26.240 how you can heal, how you can adapt to things, especially given all the sort of terror of the

00:47:32.380 news these days to know like we're going to redact we're going to be okay is is pretty reassuring

00:47:37.360 I wonder what you think the next couple of years looks like from your position as a scientist in

00:47:43.600 the states working on brain work looking at how things are going down do you want to you could

00:47:48.940 pull a card if you think it'll help or you can just tell me what you think it looks like

00:47:52.980 I don't know I'm feeling like immediate impact like I teach a bunch of undergraduates and already

00:47:59.940 you know internships are being cancelled there a lot of them had lined up work and that's all

00:48:05.300 been cancelled and you can kind of see that it's going to by the time everything settles back

00:48:11.920 it's going to be a while there's going to be a whole new generation of people who are just

00:48:17.680 graduating who are going to be kind of wondering what they're going to do I think and whether

00:48:23.600 they're going to pursue science or not is going to be a question it's going to be that uncertain

00:48:29.180 and maybe they won't even go into it yeah just as we just spoke about the body being a homeostatic

00:48:34.380 mechanism the hope is you know the country as a whole if you think of it as an organism will

00:48:39.280 maybe the pendulum has just swung too much and it's gonna hopefully kind of swing back

00:48:45.380 i'm already an immigrant who moved to this country almost 25 years ago

00:48:51.980 in some ways i do have other places i could go but at the same time i'm also gay and not that

00:48:58.880 many places i can go so being brown and queer has another layer of thing associated with it

00:49:05.600 so been thinking about how many places are welcoming enough for something like that

00:49:11.280 and i have a four-year-old daughter and when we think about women's rights in the u.s it's like

00:49:18.300 it's scary to think about it and how fragile everything is like you just need one person 1.00

00:49:26.100 or a couple of people to just destroy

00:49:27.800 everything

00:49:28.700 come teach in Canada

00:49:31.420 someone says come teach in Canada

00:49:32.940 yeah I would say the same

00:49:35.780 it's not the answer right

00:49:37.740 like not everyone who is

00:49:39.460 unsafe right now can come to Canada

00:49:41.820 I wish you all could

00:49:42.880 you could come stay at my house

00:49:44.700 but it's not the answer

00:49:46.440 for what's gonna

00:49:47.700 fix

00:49:50.020 the rise of fascism in America

00:49:53.000 I mean we're gonna need to see

00:49:54.360 resistance

00:49:55.960 I'm sorry to bring that up, and I'm sorry that it's scary.

00:49:59.700 I wish that I could fix that for everyone.

00:50:04.420 Will you interpret this card for me?

00:50:07.560 I loved your interpretation of the magician, but I need you to explain.

00:50:14.660 The magician follows the fool and has all the agency to take action and move things forward.

00:50:20.060 every action we take every breath each thought is a product of signals that cascade through neurons 0.77

00:50:28.540 called action potentials these are essential for every function in us and our fundamental energy

00:50:37.320 i need you to unpack many of the phrases in there

00:50:41.420 you have electricity flowing in your neurons right the neurons are almost like a charged

00:50:47.600 battery waiting for some kind of signal to act when they get the signal they're going to send

00:50:55.780 this cascade of electricity down them you can't stop it once it starts it just goes this is called

00:51:04.240 the action potential where once the neuron decides to fire you can't stop it it's like a flood of

00:51:13.080 positive ions that come into your neuron and flood the positivity goes in and then zooms thin

00:51:20.940 down the whole the whole cell and I kind of think of the magician as that that point of you having

00:51:28.320 that agency and once you get that right trigger you just like act and just move forward with your

00:51:33.480 action yeah can you say more about how their fundamental energy and why this is the magician

00:51:41.820 i think of it as a fundamental energy because nothing in you can function without this this

00:51:48.460 this this movement of this electrical energy basically it's any thought process any anything

00:51:58.060 like movement it's it's all because of this and it's because of the neuron is charged if i

00:52:04.760 uncharge the neuron by injecting like like random you know salts into into us we will just become

00:52:11.480 this dead battery almost so it's that life force that's existing in order for every single thought

00:52:17.960 and movement that's in us which is why I think it's a fundamental thing that's there and I also

00:52:22.820 think that it almost gives that sense of agency of having that ability to move forward with things

00:52:30.660 and then almost this single-mindedness of moving forward I also think of it as magic in a way

00:52:37.440 and that's kind of why i associate it with the magician that sends up both the agency and the

00:52:43.520 sense of wonder like wow this thing can just go and do so many different things it's kind of why

00:52:49.480 i also associate that with the magician yeah yeah that idea that like agency are well being able to

00:52:57.980 do something to shape the world is really what we're talking about when we talk about magic

00:53:02.820 a lot of the time i need to open it up to questions before i do that do you want to

00:53:08.920 tell people how they can follow you find you support your work yeah so my website is brain

00:53:15.380 mystic.com that's brain mystic.com and you can also find me on instagram at sidbits s-i-d-d-b-i-t-s

00:53:24.740 i do have a youtube channel again brain mystic or you can email me at neurotarot at gmail.com

00:53:31.060 i'm happy to respond to emails as well i have a second book contract on wired for magic so i'm

00:53:38.860 kind of writing about how your brain is wired for rituals and what happens when you say words

00:53:45.600 the power of words the power of rituals the power of faith and all that i would love to pick brains

00:53:51.580 about what you do in your magical rituals and stuff like that and think about how our brains

00:53:57.040 processes all of that oh i have to have you back you can come brainstorm inside the cavern with us

00:54:02.160 oh that'd be great yeah we'd love that that'd be dope all right here let's do this

00:54:07.120 um i'll start with april's question april i will read it out unless you

00:54:13.700 want to but i assume because you wrote it in that you want me to do it you can read it i'm like at

00:54:21.200 the beach so it's kind of windy so i don't know you do you want to go ahead and ask i like the

00:54:27.360 sound of you at the beach okay so like this it's like it's kind of like dark humor but also not

00:54:35.940 you mentioned kind of in the beginning that you were studying plastics yeah that's correct okay

00:54:42.560 thank you so i wanted to go back to that because i have been chronically ill for like 15 years

00:54:51.000 and like I recently got a test done to see what toxins are in my body and supposedly this test

00:55:01.240 actually could detect that there were like microplastics in my body and I've heard a lot

00:55:09.540 of people talk about their finding microplastics in every organ of the body including the brain

00:55:16.480 so my question was just how many years of critical thinking do we have left before our brains

00:55:23.480 are full of microplastics and I was thinking of what you would call this like a barbie brain

00:55:31.320 syndrome or something like that I love the way you're thinking yeah I mean they found a whole

00:55:37.080 spoonful of microplastics in somebody's brain it's really scary because so I work with a kind

00:55:43.460 plastic called bisphenol A. It's used in a lot of polycarbonated bottles, hard plastics. It used to

00:55:51.680 be used a lot in baby bottles, but thankfully there's been a ban on that of using a BPA there

00:55:56.540 now. You might be interested because it was invented as a birth control pill. So it's an

00:56:01.780 estrogen, but then they decided to make plastics with it and it leaches out at room temperature

00:56:07.420 from plastics so I've been looking at how it affects reproduction and the neurons that control

00:56:14.580 reproduction but mainly using fish and snail model systems but I use like a very low amount

00:56:21.360 not even microplastics I even use lower than that like a really low levels of it but chronically

00:56:27.100 exposed on my animals to it and I've been finding a lot of transgenerational effects so even

00:56:33.060 creatures that have not been exposed but their parents or grandparents have been exposed like

00:56:37.060 how it affects them wow it's like intergenerational plastic exposure trauma yeah it's there i would

00:56:44.620 just say don't heat up stuff in plastics try and use glass when you're heating up food try and use

00:56:51.580 stainless steel water bottles when you're drinking water you know as much as possible especially

00:56:56.420 with your kids or grandkids try and use non-plastics when you're heating up stuff or

00:57:02.200 drinking water is kind of what i would say we are exposed i mean there's there's no avoiding it

00:57:07.760 it's just our sad state of affairs right now i'd love to hear the follow-up question about like

00:57:12.500 and i guess maybe tell us how it's affecting snail generations like how do you think it is

00:57:18.060 affecting our brains or our patterns our lives how we live and act so in the fish i used to study

00:57:26.700 they accelerated development so the fish used to hatch faster mature enter puberty faster

00:57:33.680 everything about them their whole life was almost compressed in some levels and then even progeny of

00:57:41.340 fish that were exposed were never the new babies were never exposed to plastics themselves also

00:57:46.440 showed the same changes in neural patterns and accelerated development some of them induce

00:57:53.200 anxiety like behaviors like more of those moving about without any so that's kind of how you you

00:58:00.000 look at animals and the way you assess anxiety is if they are doing movements or they're not moving

00:58:05.440 to look for food and things like that so they induce a lot of anxiety like behaviors in a lot

00:58:11.220 of the animals in snails what we are looking at are these in embryos they rotate in the embryo

00:58:18.160 they kind of spin around to get maximum oxygen and nutrients and the plastic exposure slows down

00:58:25.020 that entire process and then because of that a lot of these snails don't hatch. In other animals

00:58:31.180 they've been shown to induce early onset puberty affecting a lot of the reproductive hormones

00:58:36.340 and things like that. Does it affect their lifespans? Yeah and the fish they died younger

00:58:42.620 they it's almost like the entire lifespan just got constricted in some levels. Yeah I was wondering

00:58:47.340 like are we trying to reproduce faster because we're not going to live as long do you know what

00:58:51.240 i mean like on a instinct level it's much more difficult to separate out that the plastic is the

00:58:56.380 only right criteria in humans but it's there in japanese women it's been directly there's a lot

00:59:02.800 of fat deposits with plastics in them and it's been directly linked with miscarriages and genetic

00:59:09.380 malformations that's led to the miscarriages basically yeah and cancers too i think right

00:59:16.140 yes so that was good and uplifting i know i'm glad we're talking about it thanks april

00:59:23.280 thank you all for being here in the unknown with us and in the scary parts and the grieving

00:59:31.880 all of us united by the little bits of plastic in our head or by the collective consciousness

00:59:40.420 that we can tap into i know that when my times were the darkest i certainly felt you all there 0.88

00:59:49.240 so that concept is not abstract to me in any way anymore and blessed fucking be dr ramakrishnan

01:00:00.340 we will certainly reach out to have a conversation about ritual and the way that we think about

01:00:08.680 ritual within our coven you are welcome to be the question asker and we will do our best to

01:00:15.780 be oracles if you like or we could just play with those ideas together thank you thank you so much

01:00:20.620 thank you so much and thanks for your wonderful book i really have enjoyed learning with it and

01:00:26.860 i really appreciate that you took the time to write it thanks everybody be safe out there

01:00:33.040 you must be a witch 1.00

Missing Witches - March 13, 2025

WF Dr Siddharth Ramakrishnan - The Neuroscience of Tarot

Episode Stats

Transcript