Danny Jones Podcast - #328 - NASA Space Psychologist: What Astronauts Really See in Upper Orbit | Iya Whiteley

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Dr. Iya Whiteley is a space psychologist, training developer for astronauts and innovative baby book designer and illustrator. Iya's baby books attempt to give newborn babies the best possible start on our unique planet Earth. Iya is also a director of the Centre for Space Medicine at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London. SPONSORS https://harrys.com/danny - Get Harry's Trial Set for only $8 + a free gift. https://trueclassic.com/danny - Upgrade your wardrobe and save on True Classic today. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS https://x.com/iyawhiteley Toolkit for a Space Psychologist: https://a.co/d/1uOkag1 Earth Designs: Cosmic Baby Book: https://a.co/d/ilmOb34 FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Space psychology 09:48 - UFOs & Navy pilots 20:19 - Disabled children with telepathic abilities 35:34 - Cognitive engineering with pilots & firefighters 044:11 - Rapid knowledge transfer for surgeons 054:32 - Why airline crashes spiked in 2000 01:04:12 - Why pilots are the most depressed people 01:13:38 - Training astronauts for mars & moon missions 01:23:55 - Astronauts are learning telepathy for space 01:33:02 - We are born with more than 5 senses 01:50:18 - Psychological evaluations on astronauts 02:00:04 - Synesthesia 02:05:40 - #1 predictor of a child's success in life 02:16:30 - Creating a universal Earth language 02:20:11 - Most effective cure for depression 02:29:53 - Iya's involvement with aerospace contractors 02:40:17 - Astronauts with UFO experiences 02:47:24 - Breath work Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I've been really looking forward to chatting with you. I first learned about you in Diana Posulka's book. I don't know if she talked about you in American Cosmic, but she definitely talked about you in the Encounters book, her second one. And I was just fascinated by this whole idea of space psychology and developing this universal nature language for kids to learn. It's just there's so much interesting things that I want to talk to you about today. But to start it off, can you just explain to people how you got into this stuff and what exactly is a space psychologist? Oh, cool.

Well, thank you for having me. That's delightful. And I try to keep up, but there's so many people that you speak with. And I like it that it's a long form, you know, that I can actually get in and get to feel and almost be the fly on the wall in your shows, which is nice. Because you feel like you could, you know, sitting now that in the new decor looks excellent. It's perfect. Perfect for this conversation. Yeah.

space psychology. Well, I began, I did not know there is a job like that, but I wanted to learn, like when I was early teens, I wanted to understand what is now called non-human intelligence. But I was interested in, I was more thinking of it as consciousness, because my background was more in martial art at the time as a kid, and I wanted to study parapsychology. But again, there was no degrees in either. And so you could study philosophy, Eastern philosophies through martial art or through your practice because you have your teachers who at the time, because it was still Soviet Union when I grew up, and you were not allowed to use other philosophies. So it was underground training. Wow. What country did you grow up in?

Latvia. Oh, okay. Yeah. So my dad with his friend were practicing it underground in a way, so you're not allowed to do that. Well, because it's particular belief systems that are contrary to the philosophy. And my dad left me with this, gifted me, I guess, this teacher that he was really good friends with. And so he kept me under his wing and would take me back every time I would escape to do other sports and he'll bring me back. And really all of it was about being aware, always aware of what you're doing.

So we were learning for hours sometimes how to step, how to, how do you touch with your foot to the ground? And it seemed basic. But really, if you go to space psychology and aviation psychology, it's all about. being completely focused in situational awareness. So it's what they call situational awareness bubble. So it's where you are constantly, what in aviation would say, ahead of the plane, or in any safety critical system, ahead of the system, so ahead of operations. So you know potential scenarios, you are continuously scanning for variables, but you need to know where you are at all times. So you're kind of building up this bubble of information.

And, you know, sometimes it could burst such as that something will happen and you need to regain it. And that concentration in martial art teaches you to be there. And all of the practices like, you know, meditation, it's really that. You don't have to be meditating. You could be doing anything just with complete awareness and focus. And then you respond from the moment rather than from your concepts. And that's a lot of what Eastern philosophy is about. Right.

Just working with that. So that was a great foundation to kind of start to move into working in extreme environments. And I wanted to work with cosmonauts because for me that was not astronauts, but cosmonauts. When they launch in Soviet Union, Russia, they're called cosmonauts. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, interesting. I think that sounds cooler than astronauts.

Well, I think cosmo, you know, an astro, there is a. similarity but I think in Russian is cosmos so it's space so it's Cosmo not and so I wanted to fly I wanted to you know to learn but they wouldn't take women into aviation and so I thought well if I study Parasicology which looked at extreme environments What do you do how do you define parapsychology? So Parasychology so Noetic Science Institute. Have you met Dean Radin? No, I have heard about him, though.

Definitely. Speak with Dean Radin. That would be extraordinary conversation. And Dean Radin, it's Ions Institute. So Institute of Noetic Science. So that was founded by Edgar Mitchell, so Apollo astronaut, who actually done parapsychology experiments in space while they were traveling to, on Apollo missions to the moon.

And so parapsychology is looking at our extra sensory perception, the phenomena, so that was before all more grounded under that term. And peer labs in US or one of the first labs, well, they were specifically actually calling it paraps and they were doing experiments. What does pair stands for? Maybe you can ask Steve. Perra? What does Perra? Peer, peer, like P-E-A-R. Per?

Yeah, like a peer lab. And I actually got the ground to go for summer, but couldn't get the U.S. visa at the time. So how did you learn about this at such a young age? Well, because of, I think, martial art, because I wanted to know, you know, how could you see with the back of your head? Because we were trained with our eyes closed. Right. We would, you know, have to sense, have to predict them. movement have to watch what is happening. So you have to be responding from the moment. And that

allows you, then you start questioning, you know, how is that possible? You know, how did they know that, you know, the movement was coming from there? Like learning Aikido. So have you, are you familiar with Aikido? A little bit, yeah. Yeah. So it's working with the energy that's coming in. So you're never working against it. You're working with it. So you're taking it in and amplifying it. it. So if the person is, let's say, heating or pushing, you just take it in, but you redirect. And usually it's got spinning movements. So you spin. And in a way, you keep spinning, can spinning and it amplifies the angle, like the forces are acting, and they end up in the lock. Right.

And so this allows you to work with the energy rather than against it, which is another philosophy, right, that you can apply in everyday life, you know. I mean, all of that has this many layers. You learn on physical level, but really it's a philosophy or tau or way of life. So that kind of was interesting. And then parapsychology was very prevalent, as well as UFO, so unidentified flying objects in Latvia. It was like an epicenter.

Interesting. Yeah, I know. And so most of the studies, not studies, but the center of that research, was in Latvia when I was growing up as a team. I've heard stories, anecdotal stories about how in Russia and in the Soviet Union, this topic was not as stigmatized as it is in the United States. Yes, I think it's quite funny because I can see both sides, having kind of grown up in that. And I think it is stigmatized exactly the same way.

Okay. It's a perception because what we, I guess, just, like we see some articles, you know, now, like Dr. Kinnos, you know, just recently published their review, right, with many, many authors like Ryan Graves and Kevin, Kevin Knooth. Yeah, Kevin Knooth, yeah. So, oh, Professor Kevin Kinnos. Yeah, he's great. I love him. Yeah, so they've published now in peer review journal, you know, reviews of other UAP or an normal unidentified anomalous phenomena

and so there were some that would get past I guess the screening will be published and somebody will get that article and think it's popular or it's not a taboo but yes it was a taboo there were books published and scientists you know as curious as here you know like Diana Pasulka

like Gary Nolan you know like like Professor Kinos, you know, like they're all. Yeah, it seems like there is this academic social club of elite UFO researchers in the United States. And part of that club is like Jacques Valet, Gary Nolan and these types of folks. Yeah. And how did you get in this group with them? Oh. I know we're, I'm sorry.

I don't mean to jump forward a little bit. No, no, it's fine. I want to go back and I want to learn about like the linear story and how you. you got into this stuff. It's fine. It's good. So for me, UAPs were long, it was familiar. So it wasn't something that is extraordinary.

I personally haven't seen, you know, like I say, metallic-looking UFO myself, despite leaving in the epicenter. But my focus were always more into. more human abilities, you know, human perception. And I wanted to explore this area, you know, more as I got into aviation. But when I speak with pilots about it, they will go hush-hush. So it's a pub conversation or it's a conversation out of the Air Force Base or out of cockpit.

So you don't discuss it. And they will only talk about it, even. if they know you, if you speak their language and they trust you. And so I have, you kind of gauge what you can't and can't talk about, right? In the British culture especially, you know, it's between the lines what you can and can't say you gauge it and then you just don't go in that direction, with that person, for example. So I was surprised when I was in Australia to find out that you can't talk about this. But for me, it was, you know, if pilots see it, you can't deny it.

You know, I wasn't there. But if it's distracting the pilot, that's a big problem. And I've raised this with pilots in Australia, but as nobody is studying it, there was, you couldn't do research on that. So I've started doing research in, I wanted to understand this extrasensory perception of information. So where do they get it? How do they know it? And how to improve that decision-making when they, it's fast, it's tough, and they need to make a quick decision. And my way into it was doing research with US Air Force, not US, Australian Air Force at the time. They had, they were changing Hercules aircraft to a new model.

So they were playing E model. Sorry, they were playing an H model and they were flying, wanted to go into J. So they were just about to receive a delivery of the Lockheed Martin, Cargo for prop aircraft, Hercules. And they wanted to understand what the workload is like and whether they can reduce the crew, which is usually two pilots, an engineer, a navigator, and they're also flight master, who is responsible for releasing the cargo or looking after the cargo. So they're all like one mind when they're flying, they just know when to deliver the information, when to, they...

Like a hive mind. Yeah, absolutely. They're able to know when to pierce the information in literally like needlework, you know, exactly at the right time. And the manufacturers were saying, we're going to now reduce the crew, which means, you know, have to pay less salary, less workload.

But it wasn't felt that way. Of course, people don't want to be eliminated. So the navigator and engineer had nowhere to go in a way. They will have to disappear from the cockpit. And they were saying that the machines will do, automation will do everything for you so it will give you all the information at the right time and of course that did not happen

you know it doesn't because you could have the information but you still have to retrieve it and the automation doesn't read your mind it can only anticipate what you program it with and who is programming

it's usually engineers it's not pilots so pilots have their own information flow of what they rely on they actually don't need to know how the engine works they want to know can the engine get them from a to b or from this point of an emergency to that point you know and will they have enough power to get there they just need that projection because that's what they're

doing in their head because if it's broken they can't fix it in flight they can now have to work with you know anticipate they're working with nature right Right. And they're working. Very high level problem solving. Yeah. And also they're working with how much air, you know, that they can sustain under their wings, you know, with changing the peach, depending on how much, how many engines they've lost or something like that. So, but even on just take off and, or refueling, which is also quite critical, you know, to keep it steady, both being aligned.

In mid air. In mid air, yeah. So all of that. requires that anticipation. And having now dived in into that environment and learning to fly myself because they wouldn't really communicate with you, you feel like you are an outsider, until you speak that language. And you can only speak that language if you went through that experience.

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and please support the podcast by telling them we sent you. Because then you can use the words, because they fly. I mean, one of the sayings they say they fly by the seat of their pants, which is true. So you feel your whole body has many more sensors. So like we have an understanding that we have like five sensors. typically that's what I learned in psychology but no no we've got I can you know go over at least 12 and it's proper reception right you sense the temperature you sense vibration there is a kinesthetic sense there is a gut feeling for some reason you know and you know you get goosebumps

and it you know indications of something you can feel the humidity in the air you know how do you pick that up it's all senses that we acknowledge in animal world but not in the human world for some reason. But yet we scan all of that. We gauge the brightness and the changes. Okay, it's visual field, but it's slightly different in terms of how we could be perceiving it. Totally makes sense. Yeah. And then if you go to parapsychology, so my colleagues that studied with me, psychology, they actually did go into parapsychology. And one of them was teaching children to play computer games not looking at the screen. So they were turned away and they would play computer screen games. Who was doing this? Well, there was a research. They do this

in the US as well. I think it's called Mindsight. Mindsight. So have you come across the Sci games that just recently was, it was like a big conference called Sci Games. They just started organizing. Maybe it's a second year running. I've never heard of this. Yeah, it's extraordinary. There is one lady. Her name is, oh gosh, her daughter is Lido, but her name, I will remember. So she just demonstrated her abilities. I should know. So on Cy Games, she showed people that she could, you know, she had like triple blinds. So she had glued patch, yeah, like glued patches that you would, medical, that you will glue it. Then she wore a blind patch that you can't see through anyway, the ones that are foam patches. Yeah. And also I think she wore one of those flight patches underneath.

So on glued flight patch and then. Like a sleep mask or something. Sleep mask, yeah. And then, you know, she had that. And she could read anything you have. She could. Oh, I think I have seen this. Yeah.

I think I saw this online, like on a YouTube video. Yeah. So that's the side games. And the lady that was, so that's, I think, run. And they also, they do this for children as well. So there were children on there too. And so they were going to run this next year. So I'm just thinking, I can't see the lady that is.

So all these people. That's the lady. So that Dalia. I remember seeing her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw her on a podcast. She was reading something through a screen with all those things on her face. That's right.

I guess Dalia bourgeois. sounds like a French Dalia bourgeois Yes So she has a daughter Who has some Also abilities So it's telepathy tapes

If you come across Dr. Hennessy Powell Who has been Studying Savants So it's children who have autism But they also have These extraordinary abilities That they for example

Have Photographic memory Or they can do math really well or they demonstrate like language capacities that they have never come across. And so her daughter, Lido, she found out at 11 years old. So she has other children as well. But only at 11, she started speaking with her daughter through a spelling board.

So these children are called spellers. and I think there's a new term that they would like to introduce because non-speakers is incorrect because they can speak through spelling in a way they're communicating through spelling through spelling so they have a board because they have a difficulty coordinating their body so they can kind of punch the letters on the board one at time so it takes time there's a lot of controversy in the medical or more science field for a long time time that they're saying that the person who has the spelling board is helping them to spell, but it's unrealistic. You know, there are so many situations and things that these children know

that are just extraordinary. And they can't actually say the words. So Dalia is learning to speak now. So she's now several years into spelling and she, I believe she was able to sing before. some because it's a responsible different part of the brain it's responsible for music and singing so she was able to sing but not to say the words because it takes a lot of coordination it's a different part of the brain that's responsible for it so they are able to

to spell and they say for example there was one and teachers who work with these children with what called spellers, they are unable sometimes to tell their organizations that they're teaching for, or sometimes parents that they're communicating telepathically with these children because it's not accepted. And also parents want children to talk, of course.

They want them to be integrated into the world the same way that parents are, right? So. They want them to be able to adapt and fit into the rigid framework of society. Yes, beautifully said, exactly. So we've got a concept how we should be, and that's what they want, you know,

that's, I guess, not just the parents, it's the society expectation, and we are trying to fit in as best we can. So these children, so for one example, that's in Kay Dickens. So Diana Hennessy Powell is a researcher has been doing this for many, many years. And she worked in Harvard as well.

and she had a very interesting story if you can speak with her that'd be extraordinary as well. And so one of the stories that parents, sorry, the teacher brought biscuits, but brought one biscuit to the classroom to these children, but forgot the others in the car. and so she gave the children these biscuits in this classroom and one boy came up to her and drew the biscuit that she left in the car because it was like a donut shape so how could he possibly know wow and this is just like one you know example but it's just continuously all the time and um kai dickens is She's a producer, and they're just filming a film with these children and parents. And you really hear their stories, what parents had to go through, where the people, the experts that they go to, they say there's nobody there in their child.

Like there's nobody home. Yeah. And, you know, parents feel otherwise. And when they discover that their children actually can talk and they're in there. And more so, they are and have been communicating with them all the time. So they would actually drop things into their mind. And for example, you can't hide any food in the house because they know exactly where the food is and how many pieces are left. So you can't say, I don't have it because the children know everything you think about.

Wow. And when the parents start to pick up on that, they say that this feeling of this communication that is telepathic, it's more whole, more experiential. So for example, one of their mothers says that Thanksgiving, like if I tell you Thanksgiving, you would have your own concept that came through experience. And for me, because I don't have the experience, I'll have, I know what, you know, something that I have read or watched. And but for her, when she hears that concept from her child, she gets the smell, the love, the hugs, the food. You know, she will get the whole embrace, the excitement of being together.

All of that will just flood over her, not just word. Like telepathically? Yes. And then she would, from that, she will put it into a word. And moreover, these children are actually meeting each other what they call the hill. The hill? The hill. So they talk to each other.

They sometimes even meet the specific time. And they know each other. And then sometimes I think there were stories that in Kai Deakin's telepathy tape radio show that she's created on Spotify, you can listen and YouTube, I think now. And they almost like plan to meet through parents, those who starts to spell, they want to go to certain places and then meet those children that they met telepathically in this virtual space called the Hill. It's a virtual space. Yes. So it's telepathic. It's not virtual computer.

Right, right, right. But it's somewhere out there and it's. Yeah, conscious. You know, it's where they meet. And they can meet people they've never met physically before. Yes, yes. And some conundrums that are challenging is that some children that don't have spelling ability yet or their parents can't get to it or they don't know their child can have it, right? Because not all parents have their access to this particular method or maybe they don't know about it. Maybe because it's so taboo, but it's been for many decades existing. But the speech society has rejected it as a valid method. method. And also there is this pressure, you know, for children to be able to speak. But does it matter if they can communicate, you know? Like if you can communicate with a child, of course you'd want to communicate in any way possible. Right? Totally. Sorry. I'm flooding you with information. Yeah, no. It, um. So you asked me this question. You make a good point. But yeah, no, obviously, it is, right? If you're a

mother and you have a child that's say three years old and you're surrounded by other mothers who have kids in the same age you guys typically at least in my experiences like the mothers are always trying to like bounce ideas off each other how is your child doing figure out how my child's doing compared to all these other kids get them together create a little community and like you know usually you just in the society that we live in you would expect your kids or just start learning specific words at a certain age and stringing words together. at another age and then like okay well now uh my kid's about to be four we got to put them in like kindergarten and you know this is just what we do in the society so it's like to step outside of that

is kind of like uncomfortable for a lot of people and if and if kids start to develop in new ways like that's got to be so much more unsettling or uncomfortable for people if it's not because it's it's it sounds just at face value for somebody who's not initiated into any of this stuff. It sounds kooky. Yes, exactly. But these children are extraordinary. So they apparently they teach each other. So once the one child acquires their ability, they can meet on the hill and they can teach each other that skill.

They have their own teachers. We can only hear from them what this teachers are. Some describe them as angel-like. Some describe them as, you know, they come in form. So what is it about these children specifically? Is there something that we can, that we know about them psychologically or developmentally that makes them all unique? So it's, so every child is different, just like we are. You know, we are put into one category in school, like, you know, as we're going through.

But in a way, we learn differently, we communicate differently, we pick up information through our perception differently, we mix it differently, but we are taught that we are the same, that you see the same orange as I do. No, we don't. So these children are so unique. That's why it's so challenging because their physical ability differs, their cognitive ability difference, their emotional regulation difference, they physically on how they work with their body. so there's erratic movements that they have when they perceived as abnormal they're actually trying to feel the edge of their body because they don't feel their body so when they're doing this strange movements that look to us unsocial or inappropriate

or whatever we've learned conceptually to see they're actually trying to literally get into their body to feel the edges so when they're learning to spell if somebody touches them before they start spelling they feel more grounded and in the body so they can then focus better

and they can make that one directive movement which takes a lot of focus and concentration they also now do tablets they do it on tablets once they start advancing from a board but is there

they're all non-verbal right well interestingly so Dalia's daughter Yeah, Lido, she's learning now to pick up. So it's almost like the language working a different pathways. But of course, it takes so much effort to say something to string that together because it's new neural pathways. Of course, we can remap our neurology.

And so she, it's harder. And so some of the children that parents have. have learned to telepathically communicate with them. So could you imagine so many discoveries? Their children are actually there. They're very clever. They learn history from you. So you watch a film.

They can talk to you about that film. You've learned something. So when you put them in the classroom, they're reading everybody's mind. So if they go into a proper school, they would read what the teacher knows. So taking them out of school, just. because of how they behave to us is actually not necessarily good. It's harder for the class

management and of course you can't talk to the child in the same way. But, you know, I'm not an expert in it. I'm just communicating the fascination, the extent of what we don't know about the extrace sensory perception and our capabilities. That's where when that came out,

for me, it starts to explain some of the questions that I have that, you know, we were not allowed to test in our scientific method At True Classic, it's not just about the fit or the fabric. It's about helping guys show up with confidence and purpose every day. Their gear fits right, feels amazing, and it's priced for the everyday dude. And their customers agree. They don't accidentally sell 25 million shirts to 5 million customers. What sets them apart is the message behind it all, from uplifting men in their daily lives to giving back to underserved communities. And it shows in their ads how they understand the average guy. I've been wearing True Classic for. a while now and they still impress me every time I put them on in the morning. And it just feels so comfortable and beautiful, it makes me want to cry in public and not feel bad about it. Forget the overpriced designer nonsense and skip the generic cookie cutter potato sacks. True

Classic delivers premium essentials built for real life. Whether you're out on the town or working up a sweat, level up your style with clothes that fit any scenario. Grab yours at Target or Costco, but for the best deals, head on over to Trueclassic.com. Danny. That's T-R-U-E-C-L-A-S-S-I-C-C-L-A-S-S-I-C-C-D-A-N-N-N-Y to get hooked up today. It's linked down below. Now back to the show. Because part of the method that I was doing, my thesis, my PhD thesis with pilots was reading their mind, literally, reading their thoughts. And I got as close as possible using scientific methodology to be able to pick up what they're thinking at the time. because all the methods beforehand were post-event.

So, for example, if I'll ask you, can you recite to me all the morning from the moment you walk up? And if you are to recite to me, you would possibly filter who am I, where we are, who is listening, what is appropriate to say, what would be interesting for me to share,

what kind of things I wish not to share. There's a lot of context. and the result of it's a lot of filters. And context, concepts, you know, you will see what will I get. You know, you would probably wouldn't even name some pieces of food because I might not be familiar with it. I don't know, like, you know, some cultural peculiarities. Sure. So, and so if I am to do that with pilots, so let's say the challenge that I had, so they'll land,

and I need to make sure to improve their performance in the new cockpit. So I'm designing as a cognitive engineer, that's the name of the profession. I am looking on what they are processing and what should go onto the display. Because now we are switching in year 2000 from clock-like instruments, so just dials, into a screen. So initially what they were putting is those clock instruments onto the screen, which is pointless, right? Because you can fit more of them. But that's the pilot. It's again, it's an ingenious way of thinking.

Well, when the screen breaks, then all your clocks were broken. Yeah, exactly. That's that too. There's a lot of issues. There's a lot of redundancy in the cockpit usually. So in this case, the idea was how can I understand what they're actually thinking, not what they want me to think, you know, as a psychologist for one, which is another, a big taboo? Like if I tell you that I don't remember or I don't know, I couldn't think that moment, I was actually thinking of my, you know, did I tell my wife that the person's going to come fix their washing machine? I forgot to tell her, you know, and they're going to show up in the house. That's, you know, it's a human thing. You know, like that's what we do. So I came across this extraordinary couple, Mary Omidy and Dr. McLennan. They studied decision making of firefighters in Australia.

And as you know, like in California, there are bushfires. And in Australia, they have this. It's a very, very big challenge. And just like in any critical decision making, the people who are good survive. So, but how do you pass on that information of when to get out of the burning house or a burning area to save the crew and to save the people? because you go, you don't want to lose, you know, the crew life as well as you want to save everybody in the area, right? So where is that knowing, how do you know in that split second that you have to get everyone out of the building or out of that area versus staying another second and saving somebody's life? Right.

It's a very intuitive thing. Yeah. You need to be in the moment. Exactly. It's hard to put on paper. So what they've come up with is extraordinary. So they've just done the simplest thing. They put the camera on the firefighters helmet.

Actually, I'm not sure if it's under. But anyway, it's exposed on the eye level. And the firefighters go in. And when they ask them, just like I did ask the pilot, you know, how did your lending go? And they say, fine. How did the touchdown go? Fine. You know, did you have all the information?

Yes. You know, what else was, you know, what you need? Nothing. You know, like how do you improve from that? So I've learned to fly to get their language, you know, to pick up. Right. So I understand what kind of things, how the ground is coming up. You actually not coming down to the earth when you're landing.

You're watching how fast the ground is coming up. And whether it's, you know, how the wind is reacting. And you're literally feeling the extent of your senses in the aircraft. So your body is no longer your body. You are that frame, you know, that you're flying. lying and you are in it and you feel where the gear is and where the tail is, where the nose is, and you are part of that space. It's very extraordinary if you're ever flown, you know, by yourself when you're actually trying to land is my favorite part

because takeoff is easy, but landing, it's just, you know, sometimes they say, you know, kissing the ground or also they call it control collision with the ground. So the firefighter said the same problem. It's just, you know, how did you know to get out at that time? How did you know that because they literally walk out and the building will go down or some crucial infrastructure will go? So when they put the camera on, when they came out, they look at the footage and as soon as possible. And there's nobody there apart from a cognitive engineer or a human computer interaction expert. training expert, you know, somebody's always just sitting like a sitter. And we play the tape

and they watch what has been happening from their point of view. And what happens, several sensors get activated. Not just your memory, because some of us work visually, some us work auditorly, some of us work through, you know, smell as well as has an effect. Some of us we've got this vibration. Also, when we speak, when you speak with me, you nod, you know, or you tilt the head, you know, when you're curious about something. And all of that, that's cues that you don't usually think about, but if you look at the screen, it will all cue you to recall that moment. And you're literally start, you can then, because of all the cues are available, so you're queuing several memory paths through all the perception, perceptual channels.

And now you're able to pick up all of your memory that's been happening. And you have to pause often the recording that is being playback to them, sometimes for several minutes for them to articulate what was actually going through their mind. Oh, wow. So the tape ends up, let's say, if the exercise was half an hour, it could triple easily. Sometimes it's four or five times longer because they articulate what was happening through their mind.

And they will tell you extraordinary detail. So what they've discovered, which this firefighter did not know of what he was doing, so they've got this guards, heat guards on their head, and they're not supposed to remove them.

But they would remove them, like bend them, so they could hear the crackling. Oh, wow. And also they could hear the temperature change. They could hear the temperature change. No,

feel so they can hear the crackling so because the sound or fire it changes they could describe the fire in many words right but also they can feel because it there are gusts of air and it changes it's a living breathing thing for them the fire so they feel it on how it passes by them and they know the intensity and what to do but they cannot you know like they cannot come up to you and say this is how the fire behaves. But through experience, through all of this flooding, they found that they could do this. You know, they could offload all of that information. So when I was defending my PhD, you know, the cognitive engineering literature would say,

you know, we work, our decision making is tree like, so decision making tree. No, nothing like that, nothing at all. Because with this method, you just, they just know what to do. do. And then if I come to explain it to you why I made the decision if you are my I don't know, a safety board of why somebody got injured

and I didn't tell them in time, I'll tell them I follow this, this and that procedure. And of course it was yes, no, yes, no, yes no. But at the time that was not like that at all. And so I later applied this technology with pilots to improve their

decision making by response time by 200,000. 100% which is unheard of in aviation. Wow. And I got US Air Force grant then to come and disseminate knowledge to US. Really? Are you the first person to ever do anything like this? Well, there's breaking research all the time.

Yeah. Right? You know, but so I've used this extraordinary method. I've converted to pilots because they just have no time of the day for you. They're, you know, too busy, too fast, you know, to do anything. So I've just adapted it. to aviation environment, I guess. They were the founders of it.

And so that was literally reading the people's mind. And then I've used that method for surgeons in the UK in Scotland. There is a beautiful surgeons have saw my presentation and they said, can we do this with surgeons? And what the idea was there is rapid expertise. transfer. So what they want to do or what what usually happens and what they didn't realize. So before we started the study, they did not know that. And it took us a long time to get the grant and we couldn't get the grant because it doesn't bypass all the scientific filters

because people who review your applications usually have not done that work and it will be contrary to what they've said before. So it doesn't fall. So to do the really blue sky. research or the one that comes from the field, from observation, from practical experience, it's really hard to fund because you have to make an assumption. And only now in order to write the grant, you know, scientifically to be a proof, you almost have to say what your results would be, what the outcomes, you know, what the benefits, what the impact, you know, all of that. You have to show a return, a return on investment beforehand, right? But science, you know, like you never know, you must be open.

to what will come forth. I mean, maybe, but, you know, the way it said, like you put the hypothesis, it might be proven or disproven, but you not always have a hypothesis in these situations. Right. So what happened is that they were so far thinking, you know, surgeons, because they're also, you know, so quick, right? It's decision, life for death every single time,

you know, many times through their procedure that they're doing or an operation in a theater. and so the idea was is that they were doing so this is some um dr kennies i'll remember what kind of surgeon was he um so um so it's um i'll remember i'll look it up so we worked with ken um we got the grant they found the internal funding which they could do like small grants and they basically put their own time to do that work

so essentially they got the bare minimum covered and they invested their own time on top of their high workload and so and what we've done we've took the cameras and we've done endoscopy endoscopy is when you're going we've got two entry you know here

and the other entry and so endoscopy is you either swallow or you push up. Oh, a camera? Yes, a camera. And so it's investigating. Untethered? Tethered.

Okay. Yeah, with the gut. And actually, that was quite interesting that one of them, one of the surgeons, endoscopist was, I think he was, so he was flying planes as well, as a hobby. And so for him, when he was doing endoscopy, he felt like he was flying. through the passages on how he would navigate because the equipment that they have, if you look at it, is very intricate. So they've got one hand to operate. It's like a cockpit control, you know, with all the many buttons.

And they have to invert that into the movement of the endoscope where it turns because they have to not only pass, but they have to scan and watch, you know, everything that's happening. So they're working in this modeling. And so they're working with several fingers. and watching it and watching it on the screen. So it's not in front of you. So it's almost like they're astronauts, you know, like navigating robotic arm in space. And so we use that method to transfer expertise because it's really hard to learn that skill

on how do you navigate, but also keep watching for all the peculiarities, discoloration, the changes in texture of the tissue and there's a lot to consider. So as they were doing it, they found out that they work side by side. So literally the rooms in the hospital are side by side. And two surgeons who were general surgeons who were doing general operation, which are very tough operations where they remove the majority of the affected area by cancer. and I've watched one of those 12-hour operations. So, you know, like it's a...

And they, you know, can you imagine to be focused on all of that time? And so, and what they found is that because Ken was now, they were able to watch each other and hear their thoughts. So they're looking through their eyes and they're hearing their thoughts. So they're literally immersed in another person. point of view and they're in their mind. How do they hear their thoughts? Because they just taped them over, right?

We sat down and we taped over. Oh, right, right, right. And so what that allows then, they were working side by side and they exchanged after surgery world, how did it go? It says, you know, it was a tough one. You're exhausted. How do you go back and articulate every single feeling in every single moment? But they would say, yeah, I had one of those too.

But they never articulate what they actually done. So they never exchanged their expertise and they assume that you as a surgeon would be doing the same as I would. Because we trained the same way or similar paths we had. But in actual theater and actual momentary decisions, they go against rules, against procedures. Right. And they have the intuitive way of doing it. But when they have to justify to a medical board or teach somebody, they will do it differently.

So this most precious, professional intuition is not passed on unless you work really closely with a surgeon for a long time. Because in a teaching environment, you're not allowed to teach certain things. Surgeons? Sorry. Yeah.

Yeah. I was going to say, surgeons have a very special personality type. Yes. Yeah. Well, I found the most humbling people. You know, so is astronauts. So, you know, people who work in it. They're very, very confident.

And they have a specific type of demeanor I've noticed. That's pretty stereotypical for all surgeons I've met. Well, I was humbled. They're not easygoing people. Well, like astronauts, I found that a lot of them, you know, play instrument professionally, which is like, where do they get the time? You know, they've got amazing family. And they, you know, some of them have also belief systems that they support, you know,

through their study or reading, they constantly have to, you know, either teach or to, you know, support the younger generation. Right. They have to constantly write, you know, paper conferences and, you know, to be on top, to be qualified all the time. They expect it to perform on top of their profession, you know, share their expertise. So when you're sort of reliving these experiences that these high-level surgeons are going through or these surgical procedures that they're going through,

or like a high level Navy pilot landing, you know, doing some sort of flight operation. You're trying to like download everything that they experience and understand exactly what they experienced. What is the goal of that? Like what are you trying to, are you trying to take like maybe a shortcut to sort of teach people this skill without going through the, going through the experience of it? Yes, exactly. Okay.

So there's two goals that I've worked with. I'm sure, you know, another person who would read, you know, my thesis or something or some of the papers, they will pick up what they can do with this methodology. You can also improve interfaces, you know, our phones. I mean, another word for this profession is human computer interaction or user design, you know, interface design. That's all one of the same. So I'm used to teach that as well as part of my, you know, student ship and being at, you know, teaching human computer interaction. So two things. One, originally I was to

wanted to design displays because I was interested in design spacecrafts. So I wanted to do the most modern look in how to, it's almost like being one with it with a craft. I wanted that feeling when you are connected with a craft. Spacecrafts. Well, aircraft. Aircrafts. spacecraft, helicopter, any kind of craft. Like the cockpit specifically? Yeah, cockpit specifically. Yeah, well, to be integrated into that. So my idea was more sci-fi related.

And I actually, and well, what I read, I'll answer your question first. I'm diving into so many directions. So two ideas. One is to understand what is actually happening in our mind. So cognition, how we process. and I found out that we pick up through many more sensors than what we are traditionally taught in my, you know, clinical psychology training, which is the widest, the broadest training you get. And then how do you transport that to accommodate what's your next decision making would be what information points you wanted to be making decision from? be anticipatory

because what I saw in the cockpits that were there, they were not supporting the decision-making. There were just slams of information that were either engineers thought on how the aircraft works or what they thought they need to know. Hey guys, if you're not already subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below and hit the like button on the video.

Back to the show. So in year 2000, we have aircraft crashes every week. major airlines crash every week. In the year 2000? Yeah, yeah. So it's that period because that's when the cockpits got introduced is 1999, 2000, 2001. So this is when what got introduced? New cockpits.

New cockpits. Yeah, we went from analog to glass. So from dials to screens. All the major commercial airlines did that? Yeah. So Airbus introduced the A320. so I've learned to fly that, but in the training simulator,

not an actual. I just sat with the pilots with one of the Australian Airlines that no longer exist, Anset. There was an Anset Australia. And also I was working for Emirates Airlines, so I sat in the cockpits

when we were flying different cities. And I worked as a psychologist for crew selection. And so and so we want to I wanted to transport what the pilot needed rather than what engineer wanted them to know. So I wanted to merge the two. I wanted to get them to communicate.

And later on, I actually, once I finished my PhD, somehow I got to, I met with a Marshall Airspace team, which is in Cambridge. It's a privately owned aviation company. And I actually did get to apply all of it. And I trained and I got electronics, avionics. wire management, avionics, you know, all the departments

that usually make a cockpit and what they were doing, they will take an aircraft from the desert and from US the, let's say, so we were doing aircraft for the Dutch Air Force

and they will bring it to Cambridge airfield. We even had a scorpion on the cockpit not in the cockpit. Oh, really? Like a real scorpion? Yes, yes, from the US.

Oh, wow. And then they strip it completely, like to the thin metal. That gets completely x-rayed. So there are no cracks that get replenished. And then we redesigned the entirety. So I was responsible for what goes for what will be seen or worked with by pilots in the aircraft. So we would then order from different manufacturers, displays and I had to integrate them so it's all one system because from different

manufacturers you would have different color philosophy different information presentation philosophy there's a lot of things so I had to work that up and what we found in the process because nobody was familiar with new cockpits but everybody was you know trying to catch up and trying to sell you know new equipment we had to we actually they were so receptive you know considering during I was very young, you know, as a scientist and also, although I worked with pilots, I was not really, you know, like, still a youngster. Right, right.

You didn't have tons of experience. No, but this was new technology as well. So they're very wise men, I would say. And so they listened and we built a mock up. They took an old Hercules, cut the face off, put it in the hangar because it was all in the airport. And the art department that would usually do manuals for pilots. You know, like for, well, not pilots, but engineers as well. They're like maintenance when they release the aircraft.

And also for the aviation authority to do the checkups. They've actually built entire mock-up cardboard cockpit. They built three model instruments because what you see in the cockpit has a big instrument at the back, which with all the sensors and electronics. And so the Hercules has a small nose. Like it's quite a modest nose versus other aircrafts. They say it's only mother can love the face of the hook. That's what the pilots say.

So when's, and so what was happening is that, so we had this perfect layout, you know, like all the instruments perfect. And then I would go to speak to one department. They say, no, no, no, it has to be here. And then I would say, well, let's, you know, let's do design A and put it up. And so we will put the instruments. but then the electronics engineers would come and they would say well actually we need to put the two inch connector at the back so now we can't fit it into the cockpit anymore so we have to we can't move the

we can't move the entirety of the display closer or pull the instrument out of the dashboard so we have to rework an entire system so I got them to actually learn and speak and I taught all of them human factors and cognitive engineering course on how to do human computer interaction design and they including managers and sales team because then they could upsell what they're doing to companies because they knew what they were talking about wow and anybody can learn because it's all in a way what it's also called common sense which is not common sense is it's like when you go into a cockpit or you know when you use your device yeah it's perfect right it's easy but it wasn't common sense

when you start the design. So when you walk into the, you know, technology space or let's say, you know, any machine interface. Yeah. And it's intuitive. A lot of work went to it. But it looks like you've done nothing because it's all easy. When you buy LG, you get so much more than just an appliance. You get more done.

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So we had like four or five iterations every time we'll sit at, something will not work out, either for engineers or for pilots. So it's like you're an interface between all of this engineering teams. So this is to answer your first question. So that was to understand what the pilot was doing in order for it to be presented. it in such a way that in that one instance when they have to save the plane from crushing, they would have access to that instrument. Well, everything else would go out.

Yeah, perfect. So this is the Hercules. Yeah. So this is an old cockpit. That's overwhelming. Yes. But this is not it. There's all the switches above the head as well.

Oh, my gosh. Yes. Oh, yeah. Go to the next one, Steve. Well, this is the analog. Yeah, exactly. And then I found a digital update. So this is a simulator, that one.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So this is, and so I'm just trying to think which model it is. But so what you can see, you see with big rings. So this is a navigation display or it's your, they call it situational awareness. So you can get your traffic, the weather, the maps. And then on the outer sides where you see the blue and yellow.

So this is your primary flight display where you get what the aircraft is actually doing. And you will also, in addition to that, we'll have secondary instruments in case the system fails. You will have usually a manual also, but I don't see it here. So sometimes they use, so then the navigator display, which the two concentric rings, will become a primary. So like there's a failure plugged in, you know, like one of the instruments go out. they can all go out as well and you can then have to fly just by the feeling right yeah I was in a I was flying with this guy a couple years ago on this really tiny little plane um from the Bahamas back to here Tampa and uh this plane could only fit two passengers and two people in the front cockpit and then

two people in the back super tiny plane and there was lots of storms around us and I was just you know it was like a really small slow plane so it was like three hours and I was talking to him like I'm like what happens if you run into a flock of birds or lightning strikes us and you lose both engines he goes and he knew immediately he's like if I lose one engine I know exactly where I can land I can look like I'm already I already know every single place around me where that I can land I know I can turn around and hit that highway that we just passed about 20 minutes ago yeah if I lose both engines I know I can land there, I can land there. Worst care scenario, I can land in that lake.

He was like, his situational awareness was off the charts. And he made me feel comfortable. I was like, wow, we can lose both engines and we're going to be fine. Yeah. And so that is also interesting. So because this is a way of thinking, so you can't switch that off when you get to the ground. Right. It's like hypervigilance.

Yeah. So these professions, surgeons, as well as, you know, pilots. War fighters too. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Any profession. So that becomes your train or how you think in your life. Right. And but in a way you think of worst cases scenarios. And you plan for them. So that kind of thinking, if people don't look after themselves, that could become difficult because you're always in your life also look for the worst case scenario and plan for it. And also, due to the profession in aviation, they work, you know, in remote places.

They, you know, had to maintain your circle because you've got odd hours. It's not your working hours. So, and you end up going to the pub because there is nothing else to do, for example. And there are a lot of depression. There's a lot of alcoholism for PTSD. Yeah, post-traumatic stress disorder. That's more if people have had a stressful, you know, something that couldn't recover from experience post-traumatic stress disorder.

So that would be from the wartime or surgeons could have that, you know, emergency personnel who are doing emergency. You know, so that is very big problem, PTSD, and it's not necessarily related to pilots because it's unless they had an accident that they had to then fly from or a personal traumatic situation.

Well, there's so many stories, you know, famous stories of pilots, commercial airline pilots, falling into drug abuse and alcoholism and things like this. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's because they don't have, well, not always, but they may not have, let's say, if they're not actively doing this, because, you know, if we're in our life, if we're balanced in our, you know, social, personal, physical, you know, emotional, intellectual belief system and values, if we're not touching all of that from time to time, holistic. then something will get out of balance. Right.

It's sort of like you have to come. It's like a riding, you know, a wave. You need to be, once you've got a calm moment, you need to, you know, go dive under the water, enjoy the scenery. Go up, you know, enjoy the sun. When it's stormy, you know, keep it steady. Right. Yeah. How could you have that?

How could you have that balance when your job is to fly all over the country or all over the world every single day and be so detached from, you know, if you do have a significant other or children or anything like this? that's going to be a huge strain on you. Well, it's the case in few professions, including, you know, people who work 24-7, you know, their schedule. Sometimes they have night shifts or extraordinary type of environment that seems normal to them. I mean, we choose it, but we don't know what that means later in life. Like we could choose to be a surgeon, we could choose to be a pilot, we could choose to be an emergency, I don't know, nurse or something like that.

but you don't know what comes with the job. It only then when you're already in the job. The crazy thing is people will pick these occupate or decide which one of these dreams to follow early on in life. Strictly on looking at it through the lens of money. Yeah. And you're right. Like what career is going to earn me the most money or the most success or the most fame? And they don't consider any of these other things that could send you down a psychological black hole spiral.

Yes. Well, I think in the outright, the humanity is optimistic, you know, in their outlook. So we see only what we can imagine right now or what the picture is being painted and we're very trustful. So touching these two points about the, you know, depression that you mentioned and also, you know, choosing the professions or what we are expected to do, what we need to do. So depression is actually an epidemic. It's a big problem, not just for pilots or, you know, other professions. But the World Health Organization has very, very sad numbers, if we'll look it up. And it's something like a quarter of a million diagnosed every year.

And so there are millions of people who are that. But they are also parents. These people, so can imagine their children are suffering from what state is the parents. is right but in the uk and in the u.s. similar numbers the women and fathers and mothers of a newborn children suffer from postnatal depression both yeah 40 45 to 50 percent i've never heard of the father suffering from that yes so there's both because the life changes so much and it's uh it's uh it's an expectation sometimes people feel oh well that's what's what motherhood or fatherhood is.

Right. So, and especially in men, it would be hard to admit because it's not admitted otherwise, so it's not known in public, right? So you meant to be coping well. You know, like you're a father, you're a man, you know, you're a holder of the family. I don't know. Like whatever we have put on onto ourselves, the expectations that we meant to be a certain way.

Right. Well, yeah. It's like if you're raising a kid and you're stressed and you're sleep deprived and you're going crazy. Like, what are you going to do? Are you going to quit on your kid? Or are you just going to fight through it? Like, it's the same thing.

Like, the kid learning to walk. Well, my kid's taking too long. He's crawling, but he's not walking. Are we just going to give up and decide, oh, he's never going to walk? You know, it's like one of those things where you just like, it's a weird thing where you have no choice but to figure it out, I feel like, if you're a parent. Yeah. But that's interesting, isn't it?

That almost like a different type of schooling. that comes to you with children. Yeah. Finding out who you are, what you're capable of. And what your partnership, you know, what you are as a team. And what is this? Yeah. In the United States, approximately 21 million adults experience at least one major depressive episode per year.

Could you imagine 20 million? Well, I feel like, again, you know. 280 million. And this is diagnosed. I would imagine, oh, this is diagnosed. Yeah. So 21 million, I mean, I experience depressive episodes all the time, not all the time, but per year. But it's like life is a roller coaster.

You know what I mean? And the chemicals in your body, the hormones in your body, you're constantly fluctuating all the time depending on your diet, your sleep, your work. If you're traveling or not, there's so many factors that go into this. Yeah, the use is terrifying because the bigger problem is. in youth is that it's one of the major causes of suicide. I had this thing that happens to me almost every year where when the winter starts, I have this unexplainable sadness for like a day or two.

I'll tell my wife, I'm like, I don't know what it is, I feel sad today. But it's good that you're aware. There's no reason. I can't come up with any external influences that could be contributing to that. But it happens to me every once in a while. And yeah, I don't know what to do about it,

but it eventually subsistensual. sides and I or I'll do something and I'll figure out a way to like either go for some crazy long run or work out and stress my body until I can't think about it anymore and eventually it goes away. Well, that's good. So the biggest part is to recognize it and articulate it. And often we're told that it's not appropriate, you know, to think that you have that ability. You have that feeling or you have that sensation to articulate because it's not.

accept it in the circles like depending on where you work so you know let's say surgeons or pilots you know they have to just show up to work and as a parent you just have to show up you know every morning right or every night you know wherever hour you know of the 24 hours you'll get to be

pulled on the sport you have to show up right so and I find that this having the tools to cope with it so in space psychology coming to the topic of the very beginning is the most important part is prevention because if we are packing for Mars we cannot take all the medications with us right we cannot have you know pack the aircraft with all possible medical aid so you have to work for absolute prevention ahead of time so and usually

you'd find that people like pilots like surgeons like astronauts cosmonauts they They are very highly motivated people. They will always be ahead of the game, you know, ahead of their, you know, what is happening with them, just like what you're describing. I just realize, okay, what I'm going to do about it. So you have a tool set. So you said, you know, I'll go for a run or, you know, I don't take it easy for the day or maybe find what has motivated me before.

You know, look what it is about and I can't find it okay. So I feel it. Okay, I got it. I've registered. It's okay. you know I know I have passed this before what I have done that helped me for example to overcome but also until you went through that symptom you can't recognize it in other people right you can't articulate it to other people and often those people cannot articulate it to themselves as well they see something odd but they feel out of place but they don't know how to work with that or what language to use and that's what telepathy helps right so for when you you're packing for Mars, what we did. So we've done a study for psychological support tools for Mars and Moon missions. So that was the first study commissioned in the UK. So Margaret Tetcher.

When? So this was 2005, six. That was this year? 2005, not 25, 2005, 2005. Oh, 2005. Yes, 20 years ago. Right, right, right. So Margaret Tatcher in the UK canceled, all human spaceflight programs. So we were not to waste the budget to do human spaceflight. So when I came into the scene with aviation psychology, wanting to do space, there was nothing done in human spaceflight.

There was a couple of people who were amazing. So there was an, you know, like enthusiast, I would say, who were trying to do or going to NASA, you know, to look for possibilities of working in the area of space psychology or medicine, space medicine. Space medicine. Yeah, well, space medicine is like, you know, surgeons, right, who would work, you know, support the team, the physiologists who make sure that we maintain our natural physical health, you know, so like workouts in space. and, you know, that they work out for two, three hours a day physically in order to keep their bone density and also muscles, but also the heart is the main component.

I'd be worried about the mitochondria. Why? Because I feel like we've evolved to live on this earth, which has a specific atmosphere, specific distance from the sun. And if we go there with a completely different atmosphere, different distance from the sun, it's going to really screw us up. So, you know, one way to find out, I guess.

Yeah, there's one way to find out. That's for sure. I don't want to be the one to do it. Ideally, it's a return way, not one way. Right. In addition to one way to find out. I do not want to die on Mars. I'd really go to the rainforest. It's a beautiful place. Well, some people, so that's, you know, another amazing topic to touch. So why would people go to Mars? Right. And why would people go one way to Mars?

I find it fascinating. I find it fascinating. But like who would be the person to sign up for something like that? Yeah. So there was a Dutch company that done. They wanted to do. So, you know, there are old people that I consulted for, you know, organizations. So the idea was, is that they will have like, is it called Big Brother?

Do you have this program in the U.S.? Big Brother? Oh, yeah. It's like an eye, you know, watching everything that happens. and it's like a TV show. Maybe you've got something called the island. I don't know what people go survival. The idea of like surveillance, are you talking about?

Yeah, yeah. So it's when. Big brother, right, right. Yeah, yeah. Like a police state. Well, no. In the UK, there's a show. It's just like, well, I get all into one house and they have to leave in one house.

Ah. Or they go on the island and they do survival on the island. And they're being watched on how they're doing it. Okay. I think I know you're talking about it. Yeah. So in the UK, there was like a big. program the big brother and they had like they would they would be like maybe it's called house I don't know

but it's basically where you get people in one place and you watch how they get along and of course they will select for characters that are you know very extravagant I don't know so it becomes a show it's like there's like the survivor survivor these types of reality shows where they all live in a house they do things they party they have relationships yeah I mean they now have you know, emergency doctors, you know, surgical theater, all sorts of life events that are happening.

So what they wanted to do, the idea for that Dutch company was to send people to Mars and do a live show about it. So it'll be a live TV show on what's happening with these people. And and

that's how we fund it. We get cable networks, TV networks to fund a reality show on Mars. Exactly that. So what are the ethics of that? Right. So they meant to be funding and getting the funding for people to be paid as they pay as you go, if you wish. Right.

Like a mobile phone. Like pay as you go. So what if public loses interest? Who is paying for their return flight? So I've raised all those questions because we've put into Science Museum, I think it was. a debate, not a debate, because they wanted to do like a marketing, I guess, to start talking about it. So we were doing like a talk and I was put on a spot. I did not know that that's what they're doing. They just were starting. So I've read about it. And they were selecting people. They were

already selected individuals who are going to young people who are going to go one way, not knowing if they're going to return. And this is like, you know, all very serious, all very, I would think, you know like I had to raise the question you know to say like what will happen if if people stop if they lose interest on what's happening they're not invested anymore you know how are you going to bring them back if you you know only have funding for part of the way right so that's why it's so difficult you know to consider and fund all of that you know venture but you know I read the CVs of those individuals who chose to go. And I didn't speak with them individually, you know, because it was not the point, but, you know, the point was to discuss at the time.

And I think they were partly funded, you know, to start and doing it. I don't know what happened in the end. But, you know, this idea is rise. And so what we had is that in 2005, yeah. So there are all sorts of, you know. What is there, Steve? This is kind of habitat design. It's a, this is a 2003 show called Stars on Mars.

Oh, Stars on Mars. Oh, I love it. Can we send Snooki to Mars? You know Snooki? No. Of course not. So this is a cultural reference. It's a good thing that you don't know who she is.

Okay. Anyway. Anyways. Yeah, so that's that. That's kind of, you know, the idea. So in 2005, the year, European Space Agency is, you know, we have, we had many roadmaps to Mars that I get re-evaluated because of funding, of course, you know, it gets rebalanced and re-evaluated.

Why not the Moon? Both. It seems like it would be much more manageable. Yeah, both. It's called Moon and Mars Mission Map. Oh, okay. Both. Yeah.

How long would it take to get to Mars? Wouldn't it take, like, months to get to Mars? So it depends on which trajectory we take. So there is a, there's a more, you know, shortcut trajectory, but then you have to stay shorter on the moon or on the or two two longer period on the Mars and the way they plan the trajectory so that it is because you have to plan the resources in terms of you know your fuel what what you can take it's it's all have to be balanced out how long you can support them and then when would you recover yeah or get the crew back and so that is about 500 days and that's

why there was a study in last hundred well 500 days there was a study so It was called Mars 500. So this is one of the first long-haul study in Moscow. They put the containers inside the big building because it's very cold in winter. So you want them to be regulated in temperature. And they were sitting in this container. So it was an international crew. There was a French.

There was a Chinese. There was a Chinese, Italian or Spanish. And a three Russian crew. So they had a 520 days. And they had a simulation of communication delay, which is what will happen. So as soon as you start departing from Earth, you will start going into communication delay of increasing incrementally. And by the time you get to Mars, it will be about 20 minutes, considering you're not obstructed. You know, the signal is not obstructed by something.

By like a celestial body or something. Or maybe on the other side of Mars, I don't know, because everything is rotating and moving, right? So it would take 20 minutes for the message to go. So it would be like Houston, I have a problem. 20 minutes one way. What problem? Oh, God. 40 minutes later.

You know, so you have to learn how to structure the communication. And there's a beautiful company that we had also a work called braided communication. They're working now. So they've got this clever design, which I will not divulge because it's an IP. but they're working on that. And so we worked at the University College London when I was a director for Center for Space Medicine. So we were doing that, evaluating that system on how that works.

Would you be able to solve that problem, do you think? Well, not really, but it's all about the ideas is making sure that you, like, you know, for example, I don't know, you spoke to your friend and you have a context for it and they might be doing something, you give them enough information, and just like Steve right now,

you know, we're talking, and he's on the background, peeking up the information, and then although it's five minutes later, but it feels like no time has passed. And it's sort of, as long as you give enough information, that the person can problem solve.

So if you say, Houston, we have a problem, you describe it of what you want the outcome to be. So the packet that you're communicating, it's not, unless you're up, absolutely lost in space. Well, I wonder if telepathy would work. If we could figure that out. That's interesting.

People that are in outer space and people that are on the ground and on the earth. Yes. So that would be amazing to speak with Dean Rudin and the team at ions. So because... Didn't one of the astronauts do the... We talked about this in the beginning. Yeah, at Gimitchell. Edgar Mitchell.

Yeah, so they was also talking about telepathic experiments. So, but what is interesting is that Dean Radin was looked at something called presentiment. So what that means is that so they were doing experiments with so run. Wasn't this like a CIA paper or something that you talked about? Yes, that's right. So sole conference. Exactly. Yeah.

So rapid number generator. So it's usually on atomic decay based on atomic decay. So it's very random. So you don't know. And it's meant to produce zeros or ones. And so the experiment setup is such is that you go in. and you sit there and you think up, up, up, up, up, and you're told what to think, yeah? You're told what to think?

Yeah, you're told. Like, you've got like zeros or, sorry, zeros or ones projected. And you're thinking up, up, up or zeros down, down, down, down. Who's telling you what to think? The experiment is set up in such a way. Okay. And in the background, there is a random number generator which shouldn't be influenced, right? It's just...

Sure. It's an atomic decay, you know, it meant to produce random, the most... random generation. You cannot predict what it does. So that's the concept. But once you run so many trials, you affect the random number generator. It produces more ones when you think up, up, up,

and more zeros when you think down, which should not happen. One. So how do we do that? It's almost like telekinesis. I mean, it's a different, but we are affecting something physical.

So up produced more ones and down produced more zeros. Well, you can think, you could think one, one, one, or you could think up, up, up, or you know, you're correlating two things. You're correlating one with up or zero with down or you can correlate them with whatever. Just but you're thinking, like to remember,

we talk about telepathy and thinking about that Thanksgiving is that. So when you're thinking of one, what does that mean for you? It doesn't, one is a concept. Right. So concept or number one could be a different thing for different people. Right.

So like you could think of a pencil being one or something, a pen. And, you know, zero being a donut. Right. But it doesn't matter what you're thinking. But the point is that you're affecting that system. So consciousness could have an effect on physical machines. Yeah. So your conscious attention, which is an amazing topic that I really love to do.

have been too. But more so, so you're talking about time delay right to Mars, that's what we're working towards. So if we think about, so the other experiments that they've done, so what if you run the experiment in the random generator right now with you, but we'll get people like Steve, you know, actually do the thinking about zeros and ones this afternoon. So I do the recording of random generator, which will Steve affect in the afternoon. So when they match the data, it matched the effect. So I... Across time.

Across time. Then another experiment they run is that they have done, they've run the person first. They said, you know, I'm going to think of zeros and ones, but we're going to do a recording tomorrow at 10 a.m. Okay. And they affected that too. Wow. Wow. In the future. Yeah. That's crazy. So another, so this is Dean Rudin, you know, like, and this is just like a not even the tip of the iceberg. It's not, not even a snowflake. If you start speaking to Dean Ruddn. And not just him, but he's just published. He made this, this is this is part of the, this is part of the. You mentioned something about the World Trade Center, the 9-11 thing with the number generators.

Yeah. So what happened there is that, so that's again. So they had random number generators, so already running in several. So they wanted to do bigger experiments. They wanted to see if the world events have an effect on the random generator. But what is more interesting if the random generator could indicate or have a difference before it happens. And this is another experiment in Ions Institute, I will come back to. So when these big events, they were more looking at games, world cups and the random generator is affected so when there is a big wave of feeling you know or people kind of get elated emotion yeah so people have a particular

investment in how they're you know reacting or thinking and and so random number generators are affected and I believe I can't be certain but you can also look it up, whether the random number generated produced different pattern before the World Trade Center event. Interesting. Can you find that, Steve? Yeah, so if looking, I'm sure there was a recorded effect. So this is going to the meditation, you know, this effect of 1% of the population. if people are thinking a particular way,

they can affect the situation. They were doing it in war zones, and I believe it was repeated in several war areas. And so they meditated. They got 1% of that population in that country or CTM, not sure, if it was the experiment. It was a transmeditation. trans...

They got the people in these war zones to meditate on certain things. The volunteers that meditated and the number of events and fires and deaths that they measured was less. Wow. Yeah. So 9-11. Several of the random number generators reportedly showed unusual spikes and deviations from randomness. Yes. Some deviations allegedly began hours before the first plane hit.

which was why people sometimes say that random number generators predicted 9-11. The project's own researchers were cautious. They didn't claim prediction, only that there appeared to be statistical anomalies correlated with the event. Wow. So, I mean, how do you use that data? What does that mean? So nobody knew that it's going to be towers, for example.

There was also many, many reports of people having pre-cognitive dreams predicting that happening. But you don't know what to do with them because some people have more of them and they don't know necessarily the peculiarities. But some people do. Some people can be that precise. Yeah. But nobody would listen. You know, like they're a lot of... Of course not.

I know. It's wacky. It's too wacky for people to take seriously. Yeah. And what do you do? You know, how do you... Right. Well, I don't know.

But yes, so I think we should be more open, I guess, with our concept on what could happen. Yeah, totally. So talking about the telepathy, you know, does it work across time? possibly you know these children might be able to help us for that you know they might be and some of them want to so for example this girl Lido she's actually volunteered so no and behold nobody knows that she's been doing this all along so when when she was telling her mom that there was a certain hour of the day she'll come and pace in one part of the house so she go back and back and forth. And apparently she was talking to those children on the hill and those

teachers at the time. That's when they would connect and do things together. Or one of the boys would run after he'd go to school, you know, their specialized place where they would go, he'll come back from school and run up to his bedroom and go under the pillow, under the duvet, cover with the pillows and just stay there for a long time. And parents were thinking that, you know, he's overstimulated in school and he just wants quiet time. but he was actually running to get on the hill so that he could cut out all other noise and just focus to be there that's wild you know i've always had this i mean i don't think it's unique i don't think it's my theory but i've always thought that kids before they get like i said before they get molded into

society when they're young they probably have more more more they're more in touch or more in tune with more senses right like like you've been into like we all know the stories of like you go into a house and if the energy's off right or like something doesn't feel right about this house you can't really there's no it's not smell it's not sight it's not it's not sound but it's something that you it's a feeling and I always wonder, is that something that has been inside of humans for millions of years that has just atrophied with the rise of technology? So really pertinent question.

This is exactly what we are working on right now. Part of that, you know, the baby books that I was looking into designing when our children were born, is that I found that the child is so. much more alert, is what I was told, like in martial art, that they perceive things and often we don't notice as adults. And we say, don't worry about that, you know, don't pay attention to that. It's nonsense. How could you know? It's almost like we have a ready answer before they've given us their experience or what they're experiencing. Because we are busy, you know, like it's nothing wrong. It's just we are a culture that you can't hear this, you can't feel that,

You can't sense that. This is, you know, must be a coincidence. I don't know, all sorts of things. But the child, if you are not paying attention and you are the authority, you are the Superman, you know, you can do things that the child can walk, you can run, you can lift, you know, you know, you know, drive this car. I don't know, you do super things as a dad, right? And they are like, you know, I want to be like my dad, you know, like he does this extraordinary

things. And so is a mother, you know, they're just capable. and that's why they come and repeat after us all the time. But they are, so the child, when they are born, their mind in the first year develops much more than it will ever develop in the lifetime of an adult. In the first year. In the first year.

So then the child with two or three years old has more a neural connection than an adult. So what happens, there is a pruning period where the neural connections get pruned because they're not used so they're made the connections are made but because these highways are not used they overgrow if you wish so nothing goes to waste right in the system because it needs to be all nourished right processed and you know we need to run this body and if it's redundant get through the day Yeah, if it's redundant and you don't need that sensor.

So like children or adults grown up in urban cities, they can't see as far, they can't hear as well. We can't mix certain sensors. And, you know, like there is research on like children have auditory processing issues and, you know, the 2.5% of children. It seems small, but it's a big percentage. And children who have some learning difficulties and we know that children have, you know, learning disorders left and right now being diagnosed, you know, all over anyway, in Europe and the UK. It's, you know, now become so recognized that like one third of the school would have

these issues. And 43% of these children have auditory, you know, processing issues. Interesting. But more than that, the sensory processing is, you know, affecting how we pay attention to the world, how we process. information and if we can't process information we shut down so that means we are unable to develop those processes or they are too overstimulated or we are not it's almost like we're said it's not normal you know do you think it's possible to get it back later in life if you want to yes yes so there

are studies that look into it's just like plasticity like brain plasticity type yeah yeah so we can our neurons can regenerate and can build new pathways, new experiences, you know, like you would learn new skill, and it would just take you longer than versus to a child. And so, for example, just I'm having a look at, so what we have is that because we can't integrate the sensory integration, so there's Dr. John Ayers, who is looking at the sensory integration, and it's a foundation for learning. So if we can't integrate information that's coming through our different perception, we're unable to put information together in an efficient way that I can do something about it. So then I either get distracted, you know, that I'm not looking at it. And so, and what

happens is because we've got screens all the time. And we know this problem, like this is like a pandemic, right? There's a term called technopherence. So like technology interfering with our life. Right. So infants before year one, the data, this is US data, 1.6 to 1.6 hours children spend on the technology. The toddlers between... 1.6 hours per day. Yeah, so 1 hour.6 per day.

From 0 to 1? Yeah, under 1. Yeah, under 1. So toddlers, 2.5 to 3 hours before they hit 2 years old. adolescents, they spend a working day on technology, 7 to 8 plus hours. And this is a direct link. So, of course, if you're on the screen, you have fewer life-adult interaction. That includes us because we also go on devices, right?

Because of work and whatever we need to do, we need to search up. I mean, I find myself all the time, think they'll ask me a question, where do I go? you know so and so that that is like we don't look up encyclopedia anymore we go how to it's way less work now yeah it's so much easier to find information and to yeah and when you're when you're living that much of your life and spending that much of your time with your brain in that state in that kind of like dormant lizard brain state i can't imagine it would be good for us yeah so what has So like you and I on the screen. It's like it's turning us from it feels like we're going from wolves to chihuahuas.

Like we're being domesticated into this cute little animal that can't help this helpless and can't defend itself because technology is compensating for everything. I think we're developing other skills too. But yes, we are we are reducing like, you know, ability to see far, to perceive nature in being like a surround sound. sound, we're losing this spherical or 3D perception of sound. Because we get earphones as well, it degrades our navigation. But it's also a sense, our ear and has inner ear processing, you know, of our proper reception in space. And when we are zoomed in, like we have shores, you know, like the horse is running.

So we're cutting out part of the world. Yeah. And if you and I on the device is our. we're talking to children? Right. And if we're not talking to children, they are losing out on communication. If we are not problem solving together, we're problem solving through the screen. They're not acquiring it, how to do it themselves.

You're not looking for options. They're not looking, scanning for the environment on how they can problem solve. And even schools now. My kids are in public school and they're being put in front of screens to do their work. It's making me, like, I want to pull my kids out of school. and like homeschool them because it's just it's sad to see that this is the way it's going it's making it more it's making it i don't know what i don't know why they do it i don't know why like do they do they think it's it's going to make it more efficient is it going to

send be able to centralize all the learning and all the testing for the kids is it i don't know but i don't think they're really thinking it through well it depends how we use technology always you know everything with everything um and so i think what is important important is that we find how to benefit from what we have because we can't go backwards, you know, unless a major disaster happen. Right. And the idea that it looks like, you know, we can improve our attention. We can train our, you know, situational awareness.

We can learn cross-sensory experience. But what is happening because we, you know, we've got this, you know, portal that we're looking at, we forgot how to scan for information. And that scanning for information is what allows us to be better problem solvers because although we can get a lot from, you know, become very intelligent in terms of information grabbing, but because we don't have the experience, but it's the experience that changing us, not the information that we just learn. Right.

Our belief systems are changed through experience. Yes. And if we, you know, experience something, then we have this capacity for one to sense in others, but also to do something about it and help others. Right. And so what is an interesting component is that when I am picking up your emotions, my body does micro-expressions. So I am mimicking your expression in order for my brain to recognize what you're feeling. So I'm not just watching you.

Interests. My body is copying what I'm seeing. And also before I'm thinking something, my body might do this micro-expression. There was a beautiful TV show done in the US that is called Lie to Me. Light to me. And it was done by the, there was a British actor in the lead, which was very nice to watch. And so it was based on a micro-expression

system and they were teaching because that's exactly what he did. So he taught military, police and special forces and interrogation or whether people are lying to him. So what happens that we have this micro-expression. It's a quarter of a second

expression that something like our nose will go up or we that, you know, different things like surprise or something like that. And it will just flash. If you're not looking for it, your brain will pick it up, but not know what to do with it. But if you're conscious about it and it will happen before something is sad, the person could be, you know, not comfortable with that information, not angry, surprised. You know, like, and if you are clever, meaning in terms of you are gauging and asking multitude of questions, you can see how people are answering. So are they answering it the same way or differently every time to the same question and what their micro-expression reaction is.

But it doesn't mean that the person is lying. They might be believing they're saying the truth. Yeah, it's same like, well, like a galvanic skin response. Right. You know, you might be sweating because you are worried. Right. Not because you are. Also, even just in.

like the syntax and the emotion and the depth and the richness of how somebody expresses something. Yeah. You can tell. I can tell very easily. I think most people can. Whether somebody got that, they articulated that idea through reading something or through hearing something or if they got that idea through experiencing something.

Because when you're explaining something you experienced versus something you read about, it's way richer and it's way deeper. And it's just, it's so much easier to pick up. And it's like, it's almost like you don't even, they're not even thinking. It's just like they're, they're, they're just shuttling this information. They're, I don't know even the word to use, but they're, they're basically transmitting this information to you in this way that is far richer and deeper than they could if it was just, reciting something that they read and memorized, you know.

Yeah, experiential learning. It's beautiful. The way you explained it, it's exactly that. So it's pre-verbal knowing. And part of the work that I did, including this with pilots and surgeons, so what happened is that they could not articulate their expertise. So we had one anesthesiologist. So he was in the Scottish hospital, Richmore.

It was called, and the professor I worked with called Kenneth Walker. And so he would do something crazy in terms of success of epidural. So it's epidural is when they're blocking the signals and they do this sometimes in birth or lower part of abdominal surgery. And what they do is that they take the needle and they go into the, you know, spinal area and they are going through different types of tissues as they're inserting the needle and they are navigating through the pressure and knowing in their head where they are so how could you teach that skill yeah how do you put that in the words yeah so they are doing it and and because every part of the body no matter where you put the needle and you can't you know sense it unless you are doing it so can't

how extraordinary this work is. And that will determine, you know, how successful, you know, this person would feel successful. I mean how non-sensitive, I guess, the area would be for the person. And also how well they could do the surgery as well, how comfortable the person is. And so he was doing it the way that it was no longer allowed to do, not considered safe. So he would create air pockets, which was no longer allowed to do air pockets. Because usually now they put, if I recall correctly, because I'm not medically educated, but this is from working with them.

This is what I remember. And so everybody was thinking of this surgeon who was about to retire. And I think he was even over retirement, already over the age of the retirement. But he would not share. He would not teach. And people were thinking that he's snobby. you know that he's you know like you know all this cool you know person who just doesn't want other people to succeed but on actual way he did not know how to articulate that some people are just good teachers and some

people are good experts right and to merge the two it's another skill it is yes so just like you they said you know you could be really good once you've done it you are much better you should be much better articulating certainly but it doesn't mean that, you know, astronauts are not always taught by astronauts. They're taught by trainers. You know, not to everybody who went to space, teaches that skill. So once we got them through this methodology, I view expert of using the camera and helping them articulate all their, you know, perception, sensation, what's happening through their mind.

So as soon he's got his cues that he can put all this memory paths together. It's called pre-verbal knowledge. So it's this professional intuition He was starting to able to put words To the experience that he had And it flooded I couldn't stop him Wow

And all his colleagues were like Wow, you know We had no idea that he wasn't just not willing He just couldn't put it into words And this is, you know, different capacity You know, to be able to do that That's incredible So yeah

I want to switch lanes a little bit and talk about how, talk about your interviews and the psychological evaluations you were doing on astronauts. Okay. And there's a worldview shift that happens when these people go to outer space, or not outer space, but like even just into orbit, right? Into like low Earth orbit, where they experience it. And I think you described this word, like, psych. Overview effect.

The overview effect, yeah, but there was another word where basically, and it was like a Hindu word of having the feeling of being attached and being a part of everything on that on that world on the planet they're looking at the planet and they had this feeling of being a part of it oh yeah being one yeah okay um yes Steve said something did you say I thought I thought you were talking about Tao way of life okay way of life um so the um so overview effect. So that's interesting. So we are, we are not changed by knowledge. We are changed by experience from your words as well, you know, like you were saying, that you really know what you're doing. So, and that's when we become really good storytellers, and that's when we can

communicate something. And that's why going with children out and doing things with them, you know, builds that language communication richness of describing things. And also our inability to assign words until we were able to process the experience something. So it takes us time. We cannot, not all of us are rich in words and not all of us are storytellers. And not all of us, you know, some people, artists able to do it through a different medium, express their feelings, but they can't put it into words. But we can gauge that somehow, that notions or that feeling for that experience.

So experience affects our life. It will change our life path. It will change how we will behave. And that's what happens with astronauts, with people who come back from war with post-traumatic stress disorder, with surgeons after they save their first life. You know, when they lose a patient as well, when they lose the person.

And, you know, they have to deal with it. Nobody teaches them how to deal. It's not part of training. So when astronauts go, their focus is like to get it all right. When they walk onto the, you know, when they walk to the spacecraft, they say we feel superheroes, you know, we're like to feel better than superheroes. So Chris Hartfield talks about that beautifully because, you know, instructors throw to them every possible scenario that could go wrong.

And, you know, we're very ingenious and creative. So it's probably never likely to have. happen, but in order to keep the training hours and making sure that all eventualities have been dealt with, they do this problem solving all the time. But then, so they're so focused to getting out into space and achieving their mission, but what they're not trained to is to articulate their experience. But yet when they come back, we're expecting them to articulate what they went through. Because they come back changed.

they come back to their family and they changed they changed their behavior apollo astronauts there's only one person if you wish considered to be you know haven't lost their family haven't you know had crisis and depressions and alcohol and you know all the challenges that they had to come back because they came back it was crazy their lives fell apart they divorced their wives they got addicted to alcohol or abusing alcohol all sorts of things but there's part of also becoming you know dealing with all the attention, but also we don't know really what they've experienced, you know, they couldn't articulate that experience, or maybe they were not taught. And you get this small expressions. There's a beautiful book, I think, called Home Planet. It's like A3 format and it's very limited edition.

And you see the photographs from space, and all of astronauts and cosmos from all nations have an expression, you know, to what they feel, put in a sentence. And this is most beautiful book you know about human experience what is it called in space home planet home planet home planet that's the book yeah yeah and even the um the the press conference after the first moonwalk yes they looked like a hostage video yeah oh I'd have a look at it again those guys like just their demeanor and and the way they were talking they they looked so uncomfortable and not excited not happy it was just very odd, you know, like what were, what was going through their minds.

I don't know how long after the mission that was. Maybe it might have been a, it might have been like a week or so after. But I wonder how is it, is it this one? Yeah, that I think that's it. Yeah. What, what, what Apollo? That was the first Apollo mission, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, uh, it's not how I would imagine I would be after. walking on the moon, you know. I wonder, I wonder how that psychological overview effect or that feeling of

oneness or, you know, maybe when they get back. And like, I've had this experience too, like going to another country, like a third world country for a week and being disconnected from technology, being disconnected from Western society, coming back to the same old, the same old routine. again can kind of be depressing. You know, I wonder maybe that, if that is what they were experiencing there, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's very powerful look, isn't it?

Yeah, what you're saying is very pertinent because, so there is a study by a Chinese, originally Chinese, but he's a Canadian professor. And he studies newborns, how they recognize faces capacity of how we're processing facial expressions

and that came from his personal experience so when he was he moved maybe he do his I don't think it was bachelor's maybe master's degree to Canada and he said that when he was traveling in public transport everybody looked the same and for

I don't know, I guess I grew up in Latvia I mean we had typical features and faces and then when I worked for an airline was Air Baltic at the time and there was a flight it was originally set up by a two Indian man whom I worked at

it was 16 years old only and it was that's when my English initially had Indian accent as well Oh really? Because I was learning from them for while it was working. That's so funny.

But we were doing everything. We were selling tickets. We were doing bookings online and we were getting them at the airport. And so they were transporting from India people to Germany. And so we were operating Frankfurt and another city. So anyway, it was just a new company. So they're all coming through and they, I haven't traveled abroad yet. that time and they were all coming and they all looked the same I would look at the

passports so we were doing everything passport control and everything so I'm looking at the photograph and I'm looking at the face and I'm thinking I can't tell apart you know come next person I can't tell apart they were all wearing headwear they all had beard and for me I couldn't tell apart the features so I could absolutely understand with this Canadian scientists, you know, born in China, had experience when he came. But in time, he was able to differentiate faces. But it was so fascinating for him that he then, so I later lived in Dubai, I could tell a from which part of India people came from, you know, eventually.

But to start with, I couldn't because we didn't have this registration. So what happens between ages of six months to nine months, we become specialized. Our brains start to specialize in communication. So we're starting to ignore and pick up certain things. So children before six months, they can differentiate a monkey family, so family of monkeys. You know, Peter, I don't know, Esther, you know, they can differentiate the names, you know, who is who. Right. But past nine months, they just look types of monkeys.

They can't tell apart monkeys in that species. they all look the same. Interesting. So once we don't need to scan for those features, those peculiarities merge. And the same thing happens with other processing signals. So like you were saying, you know, that children narrow,

there's a narrowing of their perception abilities. So all, to date, the science considers that we are all born with synesthesia. Synesthesia, did you come across? I'm familiar with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should explain it. Yeah, yeah. So it's when we have different, we can process different sensors at the same time. And for example, we can hear a sound, but have a color associated with that. So we have a mixture of sensors and overlap. Yeah. So we have a friend who can see music, for example. They could see shapes and colors. And they're a beautiful composer. So it does like an entire orchestra composition. And he would see that. But we don't.

You know, like we only hear that piece that he produces beautifully. So, and the music comes to him through these visual perception as well as sound. And so if we don't expose children to these sounds and escapes, we eventually lose them. And what happens, people who are synesteads, who are able to retain this cross, which in kind of in ordinary, I don't know, as we, we grow up we shouldn't be seeing you know hearing color for example they would kids would be taught with I mean some children described that there were um outcast in the school if they talk about being um you know talking about like this because they shouldn't be able

to sure it's not normal you're imagining it you're imagining it that's the word you use but what happens the children who retains anesthesia which is 4% and considered to be genetic but we know that epigenetic is different, so we get activate. We can activate some of, through experience, we can activate some of our genes and perception. Then we are better at executive cognitive functions. So we're better problem solvers.

We see unusual connections. We have better memory retention. We have stronger, well, more capacity for working memory, which is responsible for our decision making and why we blank out when we can't take any more information. So and yet we're not stimulating or ignoring that completely. So hence when our children were born, you know, and I saw, I actually cried when I, when I, but I thought I'm going to go, the best books, the best techniques, technology, what I could develop children for birth.

And as a, you know, a working mom to start with and, you know, a scientist and, you know, being at the kind of at the top of the field in terms of extra sensory perception, decision making. I thought like, you know, want to give the best to my children. And I found black and white books and they were like, at the time, it's like 470 reviews. And there were like 4.8, you know, out of five. And so like, this is it, you know, getting my kids this book. And I got the book. And I opened it and I started to cry possibly because, you know, still pregnant and full of hormones. And well, not pregnant, but like still in that period when you're very sensitive to everything.

but when I looked it and I said like you know the the fish doesn't even look like this you know the mouse doesn't look like this the sun doesn't look like this you know why are we showing this to children when we have this most beautiful you know artwork nature human design you know and that's when I you know started to design a book I thought like well if we can take people to the moon you know we build Large Hydron Collider under three countries you know underground, we're colliding particles and we're not doing anything for younger generation. You know, we don't, we don't know anything, like we don't know about the ocean, you know, like Tim Galadette, you know, the Admiral. Oh, yeah, oh yeah. We'll tell you how much we don't know about the ocean. We know more about space than our ocean. We haven't mapped the floors in volumes.

It's like 5% that we know. Right. So I thought, you know, I've designed cockpits. I can design an information display for kids, you know, I'm just. going to design it so i started um looking to understand you know what is their cognitive you know what are they what do we know scientifically about them and i started to pick up that information and started too much of what they would be attracted to and what do they attracted to what kids are looking at when they're born you've got a three months year old what are they attracted to

yeah what do they look at uh my newborn likes looking at ceiling fans yeah they're like looking at 3d objects yes yeah yeah um faces of the parents exactly yes this is the most fascinating thing if they can look into your face they don't look away and it looks odd it looks socially inappropriate like the children look at people yeah and like and parents get uncomfortable you know and adults get uncomfortable but they just look yeah studying wow you know like fascinating what is that what are you looking at kid yeah yeah she was like did they have to get Did I get something stuck? But they are really studying you.

And what it is is that child under three months old is able to pick up the intensity of emotion, of your smile, sort of gauging of where you are at. And they're studying your face. And as we know by six months, they stop being differentiating certain features because they don't exist on our face. So I thought if we know this, we need to be exposing. them to patterns. Because do you know what, which was fascinating to me, you know, retrospectively, starting to look at it. What is the predictor of the success of the future on how successful the people will be in

there, for example, engineering or economy or, you know, like top professions? What is the skill that is required? No idea. Problem solving. Okay. Pattern recognition. Right. Pattern.

And we don't teach kids pattern. at all. It has to be intuitively learned. We don't teach them problem solving. You know, we teach them what is already how people solved problems before, but they're not always learning, creatively solving through problems. Right. So with a colleague, you know, we worked on the designing toolkit for psychological support for long-duration missions. They learned how to help nature problems solves. And the nature solves problems differently than we do. We use resources, but nature uses whatever resources it have. And so we were designing a problem solving toolkit for space missions, only using resources that they have, you know, in that capacity, because you can't take

so many parts. And so we had three astronauts from European Space Agency, and all of them, luckily, because that's the only three we could get together. And they were in the US and NASA, not in Europe. Because they were training or training others. You know, it's always rotation. And so they were, one was learning on Mir station. So this very old station that obviously got decommissioned. Actually, it was decommission about the same time.

2000 when I was in Australia, we could see it deorbiting. And then one of them was trained on shuttle And the other one was trained on the US Well, there was only one transporter before Soyuz spacecraft And so all of them, when we were giving them a problem-solving task They all problem-solved differently because of their background Interesting Yeah, which was fascinating

So how did you come up with these designs? Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the idea was, is that I did not want to come up with something artificial because all those books I found were artificial. So I was, yes. So this is actually a creature that leaves near Japan. And it's used by architects to how to design buildings to sustain earthquakes. I know. I mean, it's like, wouldn't it be cool if you were dad and reading that underneath the book and then sharing it with other dads that you know this amazing facts? So in the beginning, it tells you how to use the book to benefit. And then you have this. This is the design you have on your shirt. That's right. Yes. This is the astroblastus stalatus. There you go. Isn't it both space and underwater? It looks kind of like a starfish mixed with a sand daller.

Yes. So this talks about actually it is a very ancient design. And what you see is how it transports food via this little elevators or escalators to its mouth in the center. So what is the idea of you show these images, these black and white, white geometric images to newborns or to kids that are within zero to one. And what does that do to their brain? So they are recognizing more patterns. So our face, which is beautiful, is actually like a window, like a key to our reality here. Because it encodes all like golden section proportions. Yeah.

Fibonacci. Fractals. Yes. All of that coded in your face. So you are the key on how the world is structured. Nature, I mean. Right. Yeah?

Because we are nature. And that's what they're studying. So if they're exposed to more of these patterns, they would be amazing designers. They would know how nature problem solves. And they can pick up the patterns. unusual connections. It's what we teach in engineering school. We teach architects. We teach artists. We teach all the designers. So everything that you intuitively like or I intuitively like or we are attracted to actually follows those laws. Right. Interesting. So even Large Hydron Collider,

if you look at it, all of that falls the proportions. So the most amazing designs that we have come up in genuity, our ingenuity, and most things, famous art pieces follow those, but we do this intuitively. And it's those people because they studied that. And they're usually amazing creators. That's why we advance in technology. So that pattern recognition, but pattern recognition comes from problem solving.

So you're seeing the most, so the universities for last, I don't know, 15, 20 years, the idea is to cross-disciplinary work. Because they've noticed that there is innovation. So it's when you're bringing your novel idea into another field. And that's where innovation happens in matching. Because just like the surgeons that worked side by side and never exchange how they do the work, but they assume that the other person does it. So sometimes we solve the problem in one domain, but we haven't solved it in another. So the innovations from like one of the benefits of doing human spaceflight, because we always have to justify the budget.

right of how we're doing it to the public. So the surgeon was talking to, I believe, shuttle designer or rocket designer and how the piping works, because our heart has piping too. And there was a cross feed on how they learned to each other. So it was innovation on both parts. Oh, wow. So this allows, so what I wanted to do is to expose them what they already attracted. And what happened is that it seems to be cross sections of a lot of creatures, you know, on earth, have these beautiful symmetries that follow because nature does it intuitively, right? Nature just does it.

Yeah. So if you look at the pattern of the tree, do you know, if you look at any tree that is, is it called judicious, it's like leaf trees. If you look at the shape of the tree, if it's not artificially cut, you will have the tree. the same shape as the leaf. If you look from far away, it would look, it will have the same shape. Oh, wow. Interesting. Is that real? Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

So if you take leaves with your children in the, in the summer or autumn anytime, and you would just put them together, you know, just as if they're trees on a piece of paper and walk away, it would look like it's a forest. Like you've painted the most beautiful forest. That's so cool. And if you look at any of those trees and you are, let's say,

a surgeon or a physician, you would see the intricate pattern of how vessels, like pathways in our body works, because some would look more like the heart, some would look like a lung, you know, in winter when you look when the leaves lost their structure. And it happens everywhere, but if you can see, so like if there is a, the systems even pick up now, like, it looks like the tree spreads its, now that we have computers, we can actually see that there is a logic, there is a pattern. It just was harder to see and the human eye can tell, but it cannot calculate it. So, and that's why we are good at pattern recognition, but not necessarily in calculational

detail, but we don't need that. We only need to know and then intuitively act on it. So this allows, so this trains children for attention. And also, but the bigger part, which is what we're doing in classes with parents, I am teaching via this medium to communicate with the child. Because there is assumption that the child can't communicate. But the child communicates with us all the time and we communicate to the child. So they're much better at picking our communication that we are theirs.

They're talking to us all the time. time. And so the parents will get like, I had no idea. You know, they get like, so exposing the kids to these patterns can help the communication? It's a medium. Yes, it helps the child, but also it helps the parent because what we're doing is I'm teaching the adult while they're watching the child, watching the images. Yeah. To pick up on clues on what's happening with a baby. Because once the baby doesn't want to look, they will look away. And usually what we do with the baby, we assume, we don't even think about it. But if I need to go somewhere, I'll take the baby and go.

But the baby might have been doing something, even if the baby is two years old. We're just like time to go until they start to refuse. And then you have to learn how to slowly get them out or give them enough time. but the idea that we are actually teaching children to have a shorter attention span because we have a short attention span. We never walk into someone's office or are even our partner if they're busy and just bust in, right? We will watch, we will not be articulating to ourselves,

but we would say, what are they doing? Can we intervene? Is it the right time? Shall I wait a moment? You know, like you're doing all of that, but we don't do that with children. And then we're teaching them manners instead of doing this right from the beginning, respecting their attention space, awareness and their learning experience in the same way as we expect from adults. And you think that by utilizing these things with kids at a young age and figuring out this communication, you seem to be optimistic that we can come up with some sort of like nature. Is this like natural universal language for humanity?

Yes, so there's a second part to that. Okay. So this allows this pattern recognition, but also we're learning not to distract children. We are increasing attention span. So Microsoft study showed that our attention span decreased by 30% with introduction of computer. It decreased by 30%. Yeah. Which is really bad, you know, in terms of it should be, you know,

helping us, but all with that attention, that means we are not able to focus and learn, right? That's kind of consequences of that. So we're unable, you know, to dive deeper. But the innovation happens when we're diving deeper. And so the next phase from that came is that I saw that the sound actually also produces similar things, which you would call, could call mandalas, you know, so shapes that are. projected yeah so it's sound yeah yeah sound resonates and yeah frequencies of sound yeah and yeah and um so i can so part of one of the projects we did is voice analysis to detect fatigue

so when you are with your family you probably over the phone can tell how person is changed and whether they're tired or not so we do pick up you know sound information but we just don't realize. It could be delay in speech. It might be slower. They're actually the muscles change. They get tired and we sound differently as well, not just cognitive delay in processing information. And so what happens is if we start, so the idea is to keep the synesthesia not stopped, the ones that we're born with, not just to give it to 4% of the population that naturally currently happening,

but to keep those neural pathways open. Right. So if we can perceive the sound, not just through hearing, but visually, and see how this, you know, like how any of this patterns, you know, sound. Because this would sound somehow. This is actually...

Yes, associated with a... You could have a visual... input associated with the sound. Yes, that's right. So then when you see pattern, you'll hear the sound as well. Yeah. And can you imagine that Earth has been communicating all the time, all the creatures? And I've done this one experiment, which we are now working with two producers in New York, for something extraordinary.

I'm too excited about it. I'm keeping it underbell. but the idea is that we will allow this synesthesia to experience cross-generationally so that you can go with your kids, your parents can go with your kids, or all of you can go together and have this joint experience of nature through sound and to allow the senses to awaken. So when you walk out from that space, what we are doing, you will just start perceiving things differently

because the curiosity will awaken in you. Actually, talking about the depression earlier, do you know what's on the opposite spectrum of depression? Do you know what can cue depression? What can cue it? Yeah, cure it, cure it. Oh, what can cure it? Yeah.

Or what can we? Remedy it? Prevent it. That's probably better. What do you think? Drugs. Yes. I mean, that's what we've been, you know, the society.

It's usually, you know, like, Even when I wake up in the morning and I feel groggy, for example. Yeah. I don't want to go and do breathwork exercise, which will actually have a much better effect if going for a, you know, cup of coffee or going for a run, right? Breathwork? Well, breathwork is one. But what's on the opposite side of depression is curiosity. Oh, is it that's the opposite of depression?

Yes. What? Yes. Well, think about this. Think about this. So people who are, what happens when we are starting to get the symptoms? What happens to us? When we're starting to get the depressive symptoms or the curiosity?

No, no, when we're starting to get the symptoms of depression, you know, how do we feel? It's cascading. It affects everything. It affects your thoughts. It affects your physiology. Yeah. It affects the way you communicate. Yeah.

And you just. The way you eat. Sometimes people stop eating. Yes. but you are generally become disinterest. You lose your habits. You stop asking questions in a way. You kind of start to hide and almost like close in all of your perceptions slowly.

And you are becoming kind of covered like almost under a cloth of this. Everything becomes gray if you wish through all of the sensors. So suddenly everything loses color. and you lose interest. You lose interest in food. You know, even if you're given, you don't perceive that food, right? You lose interest in conversation. Everything seems to be not interested and so on.

So, and what I have, you know, when I was looking at it, I was shocked because I was interested in, you know, what happens to this postnatal depression. Yeah. You know, what happened, you know, you've got this most precious, extraordinary gift, you know, that you possibly actually really wanted. Right. Now you don't know what to do because you can't go back. Yeah. How does that, how does nature make it so to where your mother can be depressed after something like that? This is not the case in, it's not as prevalent in non-urban, let's say, you know, in traditional societies.

Oh, really? Of course. In like native cultures or like indigenous cultures? Because you're not told you can't go sleep. You're not told you have to work and go earn money. Right. You've got your bigger family to support you. You've got your sisters.

You've got your, you know, aunties. You've got your parents, grandparents. You don't have the stress of society. Yeah. Your task is, you know, what you have in your hands. You know, you still have to earn food and, you know, you have to look after the house. But the child is not disassociated from your life. Right.

You sleep together. You eat together. You cook together. you go on the field together. It doesn't mean it's, you know, like everybody has a perception, what is better, right? It's probably not natural to carry a child for nine months and then to all of a sudden have to go do something else. Yeah. And have something else somebody else raise your kid 90% of the time, you know, that's probably, I can see how that could be really.

But also, we are taught that we should be a certain way when we are mothers or fathers. Right. The family should be that way. You feel anxiety. Yeah. Children should sleep, you know, that they should be like by, they should sleep apart and, you know, they should behave, they shouldn't shout, you know, like, I don't know. Like, and they shouldn't be affecting the vibes. And when something goes wrong, you're on Google.

Why is my kid doing this? Oh my God, your kid has this disorder. This laundry list of things wrong. Go see a psychiatrist, give him this drug, medicate your kid with these drugs. Yeah. So, and when I started looking, I thought, oh my God, you know, the questions in the depression scale, is basically how curious you are still about life. That's fascinating.

And how, so how would one go about becoming or fixing their depression with curiosity? Like how do you, how do you hack that? Is there a way? Well, I like to go, like, we'll also come back to this question about adults, right? It's basically nurturing what they're most interested in and going back to that. And this would be our first port of call. to see that they stopped doing hobbies. You know, this is when it's starting to become daunting.

When you stop doing hobbies. Yeah, when you stop doing, you know, like that balance that we talked about earlier, of, you know, roundedness of our life. Yes. But with children, we're constantly telling them what they should be interested in. And we are, in a sense, slowly, slowly killing their curiosity. But telling them what they should be paying attention to. We're telling them what they should be studying.

that's what school does. They're not teaching them through experience and discovery through their senses. They're teaching them the curriculum. And it's not bad teachers. Yeah? It's not. No, it's a system. It's just because we have to level up, right?

And we know there are some teachers that, you know, paid so little. They're doing extraordinary work. And they ignite children. But there's less and less space and time to do that because they have to do all this. electronic tick marks. Before they have to do, you know, marking papers by hand, but now, you know, there are other pressures on them. So it's not for the lack of teachers, but it's how they're taken out and what the expectations

is. So, like, you know, what I've experienced with my children is that the school was training children to do the exam that they didn't need to do the exam for. It was to show how well the teachers and the school performs in the entirety of the country. So they spent entire year training them to do well in the exam, not teaching them something valuable and engaging curiosity, but so they could perform to the exam that they didn't even need to do, that they were not marked, you know, to go further. Oh, my God, that's terrible. But they have to also, like in a way, if you can imagine it's KPI, right, in terms of performance measurements of how do you gauge on how well, you know, they need to measure. it somehow that's the best so far the system has to do it right because we don't know how to

measure how curious is the child you know we can only measure it when they're depressed right right so this part part of this work for the new generation what I am interested in is that how do we keep the synesthesia progressing homeschool yes homeschool and a lot of people choose to do that another part is that how do we ourselves stop falling into our own concepts. How do we, how we keep questioning, should we do this? You know, is it something, what is this concept? Why do we have to do this? Why do we have to do it this way? You know, why do we, like the children, I don't want to do it. Why do I have to do it? Do we ever stop and ask like, why? Right. This is typical toddler questions that I get from my toddler all the

time. Like, Daddy, why do you have to drive a car? Yeah. Like things, like basic things that I'm like, Good question. Huh. Yeah. Let me get back to you on that. I don't know. Well, this is it. They allow us, you know, this, so once their parents, you know, went through these six months, I do the six weeks course with the methodology for the newborns.

I then they ask me, you know, what else can I learn? I don't want to, you know, now fall into the trap of society. All my own concepts, you know, I want to be refreshing because they feel, they feel the engagement, they feel communication, they feel. will reawaken, you know, that they're with a child. And so I've now progressed into the next kind of level. It's looking in what children are reawakening in us. Because we were children. Yeah. Yeah? So we can actually remap those curiosity. Because if I met you probably, I don't know, in the playground when you were, I don't know, six or nine, I don't know, 12, we would have been different people. We possibly wouldn't even recognize each other right now, you know, with how much

excitement or how much you know what we wanted to do how free we were to choose it and not to consider you know everybody else around us what we want to not want to do and how much more innovative we were in our you know

I don't know picking up and problem solving was very different yeah so this kind of next level is looking how can we engage the the child and adult together not through the device. Devices are helpful, right? At some point, we cannot wipe them out. It's just

how can we make this into something that is helpful? Right. I'm thinking, can we take a break? Yeah, we can take a quick break. I was going to take a quick restroom break and we'll be right back. I want to get back to what we were talking about in the beginning of the conversation and how you started working with all of these organizations like, um, NASA, Boeing. What is the big famous Air Force Base? Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. That's right.

And getting involved with all these aerospace companies. I know. It's fascinating. You know, life has its coincidences, which are not coincidences as I come to believe. So I was interesting. I wanted to go to space. you know but I haven't had a chance to do so and I slowly was just doing research and really following curiosity, following my own interest on how can we do this with science, you know,

I wanted to discover more. But I found that it narrows the vision continuously. So I was in Australia doing my PhD and one of my supervisors had to leave and I had to find another place to do it. end up in I found an ad, a coincidence. And I looked at that ad. And I was lost because I thought I could never finish my PhD. Because, you know, you're so dependent on your supervisor. And he didn't leave me. He just had to go.

And he helped me right through my as Gavin Linton, extraordinary cognitive engineer, you know, at the top of the field and also, you know, breaking kind of research, new research. And so I found, and then we didn't have, we had to be on forums. And so I was on forum and found that there's a PhD in the UK. And I looked at the requirements, you know, what they want for you to do. And it was all that I know and everything that was additional, I also knew. Oh, interesting. You know, like the entirety.

And I was like, oh, I wish. I wish I could go. And so I called this professor, Peter Johnson, in the University of Bath, and I spread all of my literature on the floor and on the phone, just thinking, I must, you know, I was so worried that I wouldn't answer, you know, some scientific question that he'd query me. And we chatted and literally an hour late in saying, oh, so when you're coming? And I was like, really? You know, I get to continue my, because it's very rare to find a source.

supervisor that will take your line of work because not everybody agrees. I couldn't find that in Australia. So I went and so I continued doing aviation. Then I went to work with Marshall Airspace Aviation. Then I found this. So like I mentioned about Marshall, Margaret Tachia canceling human space flight. And there was no spaceflight program in the UK, no in Australia. So it was not likely that I would ever work in space. And, you know, not likely to work in Russia. either because it's difficult. It is? Of course. Yeah, it's a very different culture. And I'm now. They have a pretty robust space.

Oh, absolutely. And I've got colleagues, you know, space psychologist that I've actually found out later after I became a space psychologist. So I work with Russian space agency. Well, like all European and NASA and Japanese and Indian and Chinese, they all work together. Oh, do they really? Yeah, of course. works with Russia's space agency.

Of course. Well, who was flying, you know, all the European and NASA and Canada and Japan to space before. There used to be shuttle, which got decommissioned. And then in parallel, there was always Soyuz. So that was the only, if you wish, way to go up and back was through. But I imagine there's a very, like the reason I'm kind of shocked by that is because there's a very blurry line between space exploration and like weapons and like defense, you know.

So that's why I'd be, that's why I was kind of stunned by that. Yeah, but they will do their own things, right? I mean, that's why the, you know, shuttle program was there. But I'm sure there are mutual agreements and things you talk and don't talk about and systems you launch that you don't communicate. And a lot of them are military in addition. So they were not selected from public. They were usually progressed from military rank in Russia.

There was only two selections from civil as well, so mixed, I guess. So I end up in UK and suddenly there is a grant, and I am asked to write this grant for psychological supports to the moon and Mars. So this is the book that I wrote based on... Toolkit for a space psychologist. Yeah, so this is based on that work. With permission from European Space Agency, I've used this as a textbook for university course.

Because it's literally our reports that we did for European Space Agency. This is the first study to how to support people, you know, traveling to Moon and Mars and back, ideally. And so we are beating for the study. it's the first study after Tetshire administration cancels all the human spaceflight. We're doing the first human spaceflight program. After that, the UK space agency is established, and we have first budget,

because you have to contribute to a European Space Agency budget, depending on the program you want. So we were never contributing to human spaceflight. So this is the first time after this grant, we as a country putting it was actually very tricky so they selected Tim Peek who is a second British astronaut

because there was not government funded but there was Helen Sherman Dr. Helen Sherman who was the British astronaut but she was funded by public and she flew with Russian space agency and so Tim is selected and then

UK is kind of pushed into contribute into human space light as a budget. So we now have human space light program. And so then we established Center for Space Medicine. You know, like it's all kind of growing. And now I, my husband actually offers me to read the book by Diana Basolka and says like. The American Cosmic? Yeah, he says, you must get in touch.

You know, she's talking about things you think about and, you know, you mentioned to me. Yeah. And I said, well, this is, you know, a taboo. You can't talk about this in. science. It's a career killer. Yes, absolutely and literally so. Yes, absolutely.

So you have to be very gauging, you know, what you do and can't do. But what I saw is that, you know, later seeing Brian Graves as well, speaking up about it. And these are the people I know, you know, work with. And I absolutely trust if they say what they see, that means something is happening and we need to investigate. We cannot ignore it because it distracts from their time, you know, if they're focusing on this, what are they thinking?

If they can't talk about this at home, how does that affect them psychologically? Right. And people who are having this phenomena experience, they then almost like become secluded and their life changes because they go down the rabbit holes. Yeah. And the rabbit holes are, you know, far, go far. Yeah. And you can't discern, you know, the information.

And so Diana, Jacques Valet has been, you know, Gary Nolan now. for many years, you know, just we see it in public now. But they've been scanning that, what is nonsense, you know, and what is actually can be founded. But there is another layer, experiential layer, that we mustn't ignore. We say it's anecdotes, but when it's in thousands and millions, which is what was with Whitley Streber. Yeah.

I saw the cover of the book in your room. Yeah, he's been on the show. Okay, yeah. So what about what about him? Well, he he wrote a book about his experience. Yeah. Right. And then that so that was his first book about because he was writing fiction.

Yeah. He was writing lots of crazy fiction. Yeah. Yeah. And so better heard from Wheatley, I'm sure. Yeah. And then so he writes this experience and some people don't believe him, right? That he's that it's actually real.

That it's like it's another fiction. But he's going through this experience and he's sharing it because he's a writer. He's a good story. storyteller. He can actually articulate that all of this experience, he's got this beautiful skill. And so, and usually he gets letters after his stories are released, you know, some after his books. But now he's getting a quarter of a million letters. They're flooded by letters. And his wife, Anne, is opening this letters and she read every single letter and selected some of the letters they've transcribed

and put it into his book called Communion. And that book is like a scientific research, you know, or it's something that can be done using scientific research methods applied because they're categories of people. So why so many people, and all of the letters begin with, I am a surgeon, you know, I am a barrister, you know, I am, I don't know, policeman, you know, like they're trying to put that I'm not crazy, you know, but I have no one else to share it to, but in your book, I read that other people have this experience.

And just writing, that has a big opening for a person to share, even to share, to put it down on paper, to validate, you know, something that everyone else saying, you're crazy, and you have to leave with it. You know, how are you supposed to proceed when everybody else who you respect and love, they deny you that experience? And it's so visceral. Were there any astronauts that experienced anything like this? So whether it be like UFOs or?

So I can't, you know, divulge some of the things. But you hear more and more something that I have not personally heard, that it is in the public. You know, so we need to go by what is available, you know, what we can scan and talk about. about. So that's the problem, right? Declassifying certain things and allowing people to articulate what they have. Well, astronauts, according to Diana's book, she said astronauts have to sign like really robust non-disclosure agreements. Yes. And I think there was a part in there where you, I think she quoted you saying that pilots are far easier to read than astronauts are. So, I mean, you can imagine that, you know, if they go, if something is not right.

So their career in space is about 3 to 5% of their entirety of the professional life. So they're called astronauts or cosmonauts. But in space, they're 2%, or I don't know if they're lucky, much more in space. So the rest of the time, they're on Earth either supporting us. other crew training, you know, designing other equipment or advising, you know, or becoming, you know, members of boards and retiring and sharing their experience. So they, in order to get assigned onto us, you know, lucky to be assigned, there are astronauts who never flown for some reason, you know, they would be trained, but then will never fly

because something medical would come up. Or they, I don't know, they turn run out or I don't know, like lots of reasons. you know, life happens, right, to all of us. So I think it was the book, is packing for Mars or something like that? One of the astronauts is like a biography. And he's saying that he's hidden his neck injury. So when he was, he transported his medical history

from one office to another and pulled out part of the history when he was going for medical. So he would be pulled out of the program. So he would not be pulled out of the program. So if you can imagine if they speak, to a psychologist to someone like me who is labeled something mythical, you know,

something you say and from your mimicry, I would say, well actually, you know, they would be very cautious. It could sabotage their livelihood. Yeah, that makes sense. So, of course, they learn, you know, they don't do this on purpose, you know, to sabotage anything, but they have to

be aware. You know, they have to be cautious on how they communicate, what they do, how they behave, because all of that has an impact, you know, on their family, including, you know, if they get, you know, lose their job, then what? Pilots too. You know, can you imagine the pilots being, you know, lost their job in a moment just because

they shared it? And this happened. So, so anyway, so I thought, you know, one person I could write to is Diana. So I wrote Diana a short email and I think she recites this and encounters. She actually kept a copy. But I wanted to her to pay attention, you know, because I thought she's. getting a lot of flooded, you know, emails as well. So we connected eventually and we got to talk a lot through her series,

the encounters. And that's how I got in touch with Rucci Metal and Zach, whom we are now collaborating this on the new project for, you know, connecting our multisensory experience through nature and so I reached out to Diana Day and I made introduction to other people and I met Ryan Graves and I part of the time I worked as a volunteer for American Institute of Aeronauting and Astronautics as a because Ryan set up an organization for you AP and pulling experts volunteer experts from various fields together is done extraordinary and doing extraordinary job in addition to ASA, so American for Safe Airspace.

And so we publishing a white paper, which took us several years now to put it through all the checks and confirmations because it's like over 30,000 aviation professionals and aerospace professionals part of that organization, so want to be you know, presenting it in the language, you know, coherently speaking from the community. And so we are talking about putting forward human factors point of view. And yeah, so slowly, I guess there are not many people want to put forward their expertise because you do get side eyes and conversations in the background behind you about, you know, what you believe and what you feel is legitimate and not legitimate because we were

shores. So like if we have the same phenomena, phenomenon experience, and this is reported by not just extrasensory, not just UAP, but people could have the same experience and someone would remember and some would rewrite the experience through telling themselves or telling others, or trying to fit in our conceptual framework. And this is where this nonverbal knowledge and something that we cannot articulate and then we justify it to ourselves as well

to fit into our framework or framework that's around us. So that's why something I'm new I'm proposing. It's not new methodology, but it's a new way of looking, is to allowing to people to release they need to speak about the experience before they're ready. And also to go into the experience and process it what it actually means for us. Because if I will be explaining to you something extraordinary that I went through,

I will be putting all those filters that we discussed earlier with you. You know, like what you would know, what I'm willing to say so that people... You wouldn't be 100% open about it. Not even on purpose. Right. I would be just trying to communicate as best as I can. what I you know feel I can right but also we are sometimes forced to communicate too early before we've processed it and layered it in such a way that we're comfortable

talking about it because then we're not perceived as strange or having you know being not fitting into society or speaking out of framework in a way so and the way so And the way to go is, I feel, is breathwork. Because we go into the states where we, something that is prominent to us, come back forth to us. So we could have a concept or experience. And by flooding our system chemically through intensive breathwork, we go into a state where we actually free our mind from concepts and also from we actually could go through a lot of fears and breath work as well and actually that's a good question you know where do fears come from what do you think i mean there are many types of fears

but where do fears come from yeah that's a good question i don't know yeah yeah it's not very simple question isn't it like and we ask it so you know why are you afraid right you know or like um and often we tell them you know don't be afraid and they're not even and afraid. Yeah. It's our fear. It's us projecting, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I often wonder if this stuff is like baked into the brain. Yeah. Or if it's like something that's just like, like our brain is just like an antenna for these things, you know. That's the stuff that Diana talks about in her book, but it's, it's trippy. Yeah. It's trippy stuff. So the fears, they come from concepts. Hmm.

Concepts. Yeah. Sometimes we haven't experienced it yet and we are afraid. Right. Or somebody tells us something. Yeah. And if we didn't listen to them, we would be fine. Right.

Well, yeah, it's like when kids don't want to try new foods, they decide they don't like it before they ever try it. Yeah, but they're not afraid of it. Right. Well, they're kind of afraid of it. You think? But kind of like they're afraid to try it. Yeah, well, that's what I mean.

It's just like we can also use words, you know, afraid versus fear. It could be fear that could be shaking in your boots, right? We're disabling fear. And it could be fair of, I don't know, something else. It could also be, to us, to me, for example, you know, what you could do would be completely disabling to me. I wouldn't be able to move and you're able to do it. Right. So things like that.

Yeah. So the fear perception is like pain perception. different people have different tolerance and that barrier the pain barrier is very different for everybody that's why we scale it we ask you know when like i do acupuncture so you would go you know tell me from you know zero to 10 you know where is your pain yeah because to me you know 10 could be something and for you seven would be exactly the same you know so that's why you were gauging it and that's why the medication when it's given physiologically it would be different for different people. So it's not necessarily that it will work because we also psychologically can anesthetize to us

and also become very pain sensitive despite the medication. Right. Even physiologic physiology based. Yeah, that's true stuff. Yeah. So this is amazing, you know, like that we put things that we don't realize. that we have concepts, that we have so many preconceptions

that it stops us in our track and stops us innovating, stops us being curious, stops us exploring because somebody said, don't go there. Right. And it stops the experience

and that stops that branch, you know, of us actually getting up, going and doing. Yeah. We'll never, ever, our life could change forever. Well, there's lots of factors. There's preconceptions.

There's also, repercussions and there's also but repercussion is a concept i mean clearly you know you're not gonna you know like you like there's expression you could do everything once in your life yes like you like you can jump off the hill you know very very high you can do this once but probably never again anything else right right sure yeah so but like i'm talking about like you know things that are outside of the law like psychedelic drugs or things like that or um yeah it's just repercussions yeah it's it's not preconception it's it's like rules that we learn to leave by which there's there's there's palpable consequences to some things um but do we have

to be afraid of it or just know it like they make us they say it's you know they make us fear it yeah not make we i guess are taking a concept that we should be fearful but fear in the moment of when we're acting is actually very different quality of what our mind makes of it. So let's put it this way. So when? So skydiving. Yes. So.

Okay. I see what you're saying. Right. You're the preconception of what actually is going to happen is way worse than what it actually is like. Oh, underestimated both. It could be both. Like you say, if you don't know the law, you know, you cannot estimate the consequences either.

So it's both. But in both cases, we imagine nothing will happen or we imagine, you know, the world will end. You know, both of this are consequences. Right. So absolutely we leave in a certain structure. We need to be, you know, rational, logical, you know, law obeying citizens, you know, good dad, good mom, you know, good, you know, good, you know, work that we are doing there is a lot of preconceptions but it we don't have to be so the fear that stops curiosity including including that in the moment of when we're actually doing it

it's only it's only when our mind picks up on the thought what could happen if and we're already not doing anything in the moment we're already in our thoughts right paralysis by analysis kind of yeah so in martial art you have have no time when you are fighting or when you don't have to be fighting could be learning, training, blocking, you know, you are working in that moment. There is no fear that you're going to get hit. If you are fearful it paralyzing and then you're starting to retract. Yes. And that's when the person doesn't even, they somehow read the cues that it's the way in. But if you're in the moment and you're just working with it, you're fine. Just like with your

child, right, when they're on the playground. Yeah, yeah, exactly. When you're just thinking, but if you are there with them, you're both exploring. Like, no, I don't want to go down the slide. Push. Oh, it's not that bad. So, but when you're doing it together, like, you know, my children really enjoy something like a rope climbing. Now, they're just very popular. They hook it around the trees, webbing. Oh, oh, like, like, what is called in the US. The gliding through the trees.

Yeah, yeah, there's different names for it. It started in, it's actually in Australia, and they then brought it into Europe. I don't know if in U.S. Yeah, yeah, they have it all over Costa Rica too. Yeah, exactly. So it's when you can go in a canopy of trees or under canopy of trees and various level of difficulties. Yeah, yeah, those extraordinary stuff. No, not that, Steve.

Yeah, yeah, but that, I mean, it had that webbing too. Yeah, yeah. But it's, I know you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. It's when it's called, I think it's called ape, maybe in the UK. I forgot the name. But anyway, it's, but when you are doing it, you know, like I did not want to go up, but once you go up, considering, you know, I did skydiving and, you know, flying.

But I'm very cautious about height. Yeah. You know, I'm just, you know, and we need to be. Yeah. Yeah, well. It's okay, Steve. Don't worry about it. Yeah, they do have that webbing too, you know, for kids to explore.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but fears are good too. Like, it's good to have fears. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a survival, you know, it's a, but it's what we do with it, right? And how we work with it.

And so fear, and again, it's different. like it's like a different color we perceive different color. It's important for us to keep that in mind, but keep acting in the process. So otherwise we wouldn't be able. Training yourself to do that. Yeah. Yeah, but children, they develop those concepts, a lot of them because of us, because of the stories that we tell, rather than discovering that.

themselves and of course you know you don't want them to you know to break a bone you know or something it's horrific you know we wish you've done it yourself then having your children to go through that so you um but uh also that fear could become paralyzing to to us in our discovery and when we become too fearful again we fall into that gap of losing curiosity because it's all too to be everywhere else. So it's having that healthy level, but also understanding that it's concepts and always asking about this,

you know, where does this come from? You know, because as a psychologist, we work with phobia, right? And there is some, some of it, rational, some of it, you know, based on experience and some of it, we don't know where it's based. You know, like we need to find.

And there are many ways of, you know, addressing that. You know, you can go into long sessions or you can do cognitive behavioral therapy. And there's many, many flooding therapy. And yeah. That's fascinating. Well, Ia, thank you.

This has been an amazing conversation. I learned a lot today. Well, thank you. I enjoyed the conversation and much appreciate being here. And hopefully there will be interesting for listeners as well. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Tell where can people find these books,

like these kids, these cosmic baby books, as well as the toolkit. Do you sell that? Yeah, yeah. That's on Amazon. So it's on Amazon. You can buy it. Just put my name. Hold it up to the cameras.

People can see it. This is the cosmic baby book. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you just put my name into Amazon. So you think we're able to teach kids how to have a universal language in two, three generations from now? Absolutely. I hope sooner than that because our brains are so malleable.

And so the new project that we're doing is, focusing on that is yeah yeah there you go so just type my name and you'll find and you think this will like unite mankind well unisco considers that um sound and music is cross-cultural so it's a way it it crosses borders and uh we underestimate how much we pick up through sound how much we can tell what you know nature is doing uh and if we live in the urban city Sometimes people can't even sleep at home when they move on holidays somewhere in a nature spot because it's so noisy. But also it's frightening some people because of all this noise continuously all the time. But when people are taken from nature into urban city, they feel unsafe because they don't have the sound nature.

Because that soundscape tells that everything is okay. But once something changes in that rhythm... It's completely unnatural to be in a city. Yeah. So we lose those perceptual senses. So children can hear sounds that adults can't because we don't need the capacity for that. And then so that's why if children are not exposed to music or to some sensory perceptions or some accents that then are unable to reproduce them. And so but having this reversed, so seeing sound, for example, is one of the cymatics.

Yes. options. But by keeping one synesthesia, there is more likely for you to have other types of synesthesia, like 150 types already counted. And, you know, these people would not, would not choose not to have it. Right. Well, I know it can be really beneficial for memory. There's like, I know people use like spatial memory to associate certain memories with certain things like as far as like when you can correlate specific ideas and like attach different things to them like attach different sensory inputs to those things and like run that you can it's easier to run it back in your mind and to recall that there's different tools people use for that's really really

interesting just watch the space i'm very excited um you know earth design language is coming live yes it's amazing it's fascinating stuff um and do you have a website or anything or yes i do have a small website for that but if you just follow me on social media you will come up I will. What's your tag or your handle on social media? Dr. E. Whiteley. So on Instagram mostly, I am not as good on Twitter. It's, or X.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. We'll link it all below so people can find it. Yeah, yeah, sure. And thanks again. I really enjoy this.

Yeah, pleasure. All right. Good night, everybody.