Inquiry with Kelly Chase - [The UFO Rabbit Hole] Ep 20: An Interview with Dr. Iya Whiteley feat. Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Today I’m bringing you something really special. A few weeks ago, Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka reached out to connect me with someone she thought I might be interested in interviewing for the podcast. Her name is Dr. Iya Whiteley and she is a space psychologist who is featured in Diana’s upcoming book due out in November entitled, Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences. Given the respect that I have for Diana and her work, her recommendation alone would have been enough for me to say yes. But the more she shared with me about Dr. Whiteley and her work, it became clear to me that this was an interview that I absolutely had to do. This conversation touched me deeply, and I hope it speaks to you the way that it spoke to me.MEET DR. IYA WHITELEYDr. Iya Whiteley is a training developer for Astronauts with a background in Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Engineering. She leverages her skills and expertise, combined with her own insights and experiences as a pilot, skydiver, and scuba diver, to design both equipment and training programmes to improve the performance of highly trained professionals in extreme environments, including military pilots and astronauts.Iya has also worked at the European Astronaut Centre (European Space Agency) in Cologne, Germany and now collaborates with NASA and the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia. Since having her own children, Iya has been using her unique skillset to work on laying the groundwork for a universal “Earth language”. To this end, she has designed high contrast black and white visual books for newborns to tap into their full developmental potential and give them the best possible start on our unique planet Earth.MEET DR. DIANA WALSH PASULKADr. Diana Walsh Pasulka is a professor of religious studies and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She holds a bachelor’s from UC Davis, a master’s from Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. She is the author of Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture and American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, which we will be discussing in this interview. NEW Class from Dr. James MaddenUnidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the WorldFour-week online class via ZoomWednesdays, March 27 – April 24 (skips April 10), 20247 – 9 pm ETLearn More About the ClassSign Up NowGO TO EPISODE BRIEFDR. IYA WHITELEY LINKSContact Dr. Iya Whiteley [Private Practice Website]Get Dr. Whiteley’s Earth Design Books for BabiesFollow Dr. Iya Whiteley on TwitterDR. DIANA PASULKA LINKSAmerican Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, TechnologyPRE-ORDER: Encounters: Explorations with Extraterrestrial and Other Non-Human Intelligence (Out Nov. 7, 2023)Follow Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka on TwitterBECOME A PATRONGET THE BOOKGet a SIGNED COPYGet it on AmazonFOLLOWWebsiteTwitterFacebookMUSICTheme: Cabinet of Curiosities by Shaun FrearsonBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ufo-rabbit-hole-podcast--5746035/support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I took a knife away from a guy once that was intent on killing me. I tooked up on the knife and I tacked to a circle around his heart, lasting circle. And that was a very intimate act. He said, here's a list of all Aaron Brotherhood dropouts. Go through this list, sent a letter to each one of these M-Fing rats, and ask them if you could come and interview them for me. He has created this illusion of who he is. If you believe anything he tells you, you're screwing up.

You want to send me to Michael Thompson, who bucked the whole AB, dropped out, and testified against them, and you think I'm going to go there and convince him to recant? My mom told me, Eric, he's kind of a borderline con person most of your life too, but you got conned by a con man. Blood memory, a new podcast series from love and read wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. Today, I'm bringing you something really special. A few weeks ago, Dr. Diana Walsh Vesalka reached out to connect me with someone she thought I might be interested in interviewing for the podcast. Her name is Dr. Ea Whiteley, and she's a space psychologist who's featured in Diana's upcoming book due out in November, entitled Encounters, Experiences with Non-Human Intelligencees. Given the respect that I have for Diana and her work, her recommendation alone would have been enough for me to say yes. But the more she shared with me about Dr. Whiteley and her work,

it became clear to me that this was an interview that I absolutely had to do. Dr. Iia Whiteley is a training developer for astronauts with a background in clinical psychology and cognitive engineering. She leverages her skills and expertise, combined with her own insights and experiences as a pilot, skydiver, and scuba diver to design both equipment and training programs to improve the performance of highly trained professionals in extreme environments, including military pilots and astronauts. She has also worked at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany, and now collaborates with NASA and the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. Since having her own children, Ea has been using her unique skill set to work on laying the groundwork

for a universal earth language, one that could potentially help humans communicate with non-human and intelligences, including animals and beyond. To this end, she's designed high-contrast, black-and-white visual books for newborns and babies to help tap into their full developmental potential and give them the best possible start on our unique planet Earth. In many ways, Dr. Whiteley's career traces the contours of the themes and topics we've been exploring over the last few months. And yet, the way that she innovates and problem-solves within these realms and how these realities both impact and inform her work, make this an extremely challenging conversation to frame in a meaningful and coherent way. The ideas are simply too big and too new, and frankly,

too important for me to feel comfortable wrestling them down into little bite-sized morsels that would make them easier to digest. Too much would be lost in the process, and so I won't attempt to do so. Instead, I think it's best to just let you listen to what Dr. Whiteley has to say and let her words speak to whatever is most alive for you right now. If there's interest, I might do a short follow-up episode sharing my thoughts next week sometime. And if you're a patron, we'll definitely be discussing this episode in our next Zoom on Saturday, April 22nd at 3 p.m. Eastern. But for now, I think it's best to just let this conversation speak for itself.

But I will say this. After we finished recording, I went into my room and I sat on my bed and I just cried. It's hard to explain why exactly, but although sorrow was, was definitely a part of what I was feeling. These weren't tears of sadness. They were tears of relief. The kind of tears that come when you find yourself unmored and adrift at sea with all hope lost, and then suddenly a ship appears in the distance. For a long time now, it's felt like something essential about our world as we know it as unraveling. It started slowly at first, gained steamed gradually over decades, until reaching a crescendo over the last few years. The reality of the UFO

phenomenon is just one of many existential issues that humanity finds itself confronted with. And many people have the sense that we've already passed some invisible tipping point, and that many of the institutions from which we derive our sense of safety and meaning might be beyond repair. And that can be a terrifying thought, but it's through the work of people like Ia and Diana that I find hope. Yes, things are falling apart, but in their place are emerging astonishing and beautiful new possibilities and ways of being. A catapotaphys, in her cocoon only thinks the world is ending because she can't yet envision the butterfly that she will become. She can't see the secret magic that's always been hers. Humanity seems to be passing

through a similar transformational portal, one that is both an end and a beginning, and that will fundamentally change who we are both as individuals and as a species. It can be hard to understand what that means or to grapple with the full implications. If you find yourself struggling with that, you're not alone. I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you. and I hope this conversation will speak to you in the way that it spoke to me. In a conversation I had once with Diana, she said in reference to the extraordinary people and ideas that she has encountered at her work, that she sometimes feels like she's living in the future.

And that was the exact sense that I had in this conversation, that I was speaking to two people whose combination of deep expertise and carefully honed intuition had given them a rare glimpse of the shape of our future as a species, something that can be difficult, if not outright and possible to see when we're embedded in our ordinary everydayness. I'd like to thank Diana for making this connection, for helping to shape this conversation, and for serving as a co-host for this episode. And a huge thank you to Dr. E. Whiteley for patiently working through my questions and for allowing me to share this beautiful story with the world. It's truly an honor. Here is my interview with Dr. E. Whiteley, featuring

Dr. Diana Walsh, Pesulka. Talk to you a little bit about how you came in contact with Dr. Whiteley and her work and why it's been so important to the work that you've been doing with your next book. Sure. So after American Cosmic was published, Dr. Whiteley contacted me. And she was doing some research in this area. And because of her position as a space psychologist and the specific types of things she was doing, I was really excited to make her acquaintance and immediately saw that this was important,

basically for UFO and UAP research. So I actually used her to the people that I knew my network relayed her information to people like Jacques Belay and Gary Nolan and even people that are in my book. So basically, Dr. Whiteley's work in aviation has spanned 20 years and she was one of a few, researchers who changed the culture of pilot reporting of things like aerial phenomena. And there's a huge overlap between pilots and astronauts. And there are, of course, significant differences between the communities, but they both are in a unique position to see aerial phenomena. Each of them, though, is trained differently. So Dr. Whiteley's research focused on the culture of reporting for pilots. And it was actually a culture of like blame and shame. Pilots were discouraged from reporting

aerial phenomena. So she developed techniques and actually technologies to help with pilots in their reporting. So she'll talk about that. So that's how that's what she's doing. She's moving that type of research into the culture now of UAP reporting, which is huge for both astronauts and pilots. So people that are out there and in this unique position to witness things, she's streamlining that process or helping to streamline that process is an ongoing process. Secondly, part of her research that I found even more fascinating was her development of a contact with other species other than, you know, our species. And this is the work that she does on earth languages. So I think that both of these are very relevant to the ongoing development of UAP and UFO research. That's absolutely fascinating.

So Dr. Whiteley, I'd love to just dive into some questions with you. So first of all, how do you become a space psychologist? My interest in space psychology came from how do people adapt to extreme environments and what kind of abilities arise as we are faced with difficulties. And I'm particularly interested in something that we uncover about ourselves when we are faced with unexpected, even if we train for it. And that kind of is the cornerstone of my research and work. And that's why I went into aviation psychology to start with knowing that that would

lead to space psychology because there wasn't a profession in space psychology that you could follow the path so there is no degree in space psychology and so you just pick a direction that gets you closer and closer to working with people in space and aviation and military pilots and anything to do with safety, extreme environments, abilities to perform better. is the direction that I've been taking and sort of methodically selecting projects and to accommodate my interest on how to support people and what people are capable of and we don't expect that we're able to. And then we're surprised and then we also investigate why that happened, how that happened.

And we don't understand a lot in that domain of why things happen and why we know things. Even professional intuition was a taboo topic when I've been. began and it slowly became something that we now look into deeper. So it's not, intuition is now not a forbidden word in science. We look into it from different directions with different tools. And I think that what makes an expert because they kind of have this knowledge embedded somewhere that they treasure and a lot of the times unable to articulate. And that's what I'm interested, is how to help people express their expertise in the way that it's helpful for other experts to process, but also for that person to understand that what they know is not known to other experts, which is very frequently a failure, I would say, you know, a positive failure of experts that they don't know what their amount of information they know and how important it is to share.

They assume that if they know, everybody else does. And that's not the case. That's so interesting. I feel like I can see that even in my own professional experience, what you're talking about, that people will have an intuition about something that have a hard time articulating it. And then it's hard to get consensus and support within the organization. And I can only imagine how much harder that must be in these extreme environments. I really respect that.

You don't just think about these things theoretically, but that you are a pilot and a scuba. and a skydiver. And so you aren't just thinking about these things. Theoretically, you're engaging with extreme environments while you're also learning about them. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit for people who maybe could don't skydive and that sort of thing. You know, what are the things that you can learn about extreme environments by engaging with them that you can't learn in any other way? This is a very pertinent question, you know, to understand our thought processing. Also, I think understanding our thought process is the key to appreciating what the expertise are. And so there is two aspects to engaging through the experience as an investigator or researcher yourself,

you know, a person who is interested to know more. For one, apprenticeship has been always an amazing way to get into a profession because you're working side by side with someone and you're experiencing and you're learning. Sometimes I would say in more in-depth and you build a better foundation that when you go through theoretical work at the university, for example, because you are watching the process.

So you're engaged and you almost connect with an expert and you are able to pick up, I think, more than what they just do or say. And so for me, to understand why people put themselves into extreme environments was important. So hence going for scuba diving or rescue scuba diving training as well as skydiving. Because I wanted to understand what happens in those milliseconds when you have to make a decision. Do you jump at all? Are you happy with the parachute that you've packed? or do you rely on other people packing your parachute and you're okay with that because we all make

mistakes. Human error is something that we cannot avoid. We get distracted. We miss steps. We process something else and don't notice. And then with all good intention, it's not something that we are free from, you know, errors that we make. So it's important that we learn from it, important that we concentrate and be able to be aware, sort of become observers of our own work.

So they come up less, if you wish. Or at least we can backtrack if we made an arrow and understand what led to it from our kind of lesson perspective. So when I was skydiving, it's the decisions that you make. You can be in the aircraft and not jump, right? No one is pushing you out in principle. Okay, well, there is a situation where you have to jump because if you're on the line, you know, of other people jumping behind you, you will stop everybody else because of the way you exit is your parachute opener is connected to the line.

But in principle, I would sit in very packed and cramped aircraft where we're sitting with each other's on our bottoms, with our knees right up close to us. And a person in front of you, you could see their parachute. And you also inspect it. You make sure that inspecting your equipment, you're expecting someone. forward and you're making sure that everything is intact and correct, nothing is misplaced, and you're kind of going through that process. And the other thing that you should be doing, ideally, that is helpful is you are processing in your mind, you're going through what you will do as it happens and what are the alternatives. And as you process it in your mind, the research

actually shows that you could be playing a piano tune, for example, on a piano. And by doing it mentally, you actually, there's activation in your muscles and your fingers. So this is actually you develop muscle memory by just thinking through it. So this is incredible. And so as I'm sitting in the aircraft, I watch other people and some people sit face to you and some with their back. And I watch this gentleman and not only one. And their teeth shuddering, they're shuddering so much that with an open door, So when you're in a light aircraft, the door is open because there is nowhere to put the door.

Or you can't open the door as the aircraft is flying because there's no way to put it, you know. So you depart with a door open and it's also unsettling, just especially if you sit by the exit and you know that your parachute won't open if you fall out, not in the altitude. So there is no space for us. So you kind of, you hold on for dear life literally. and then you watch others on how they react. And I would wonder, why would they do that? You know, they're terrified. They're absolutely terrified.

Because if they can't physically stop their jaw or shuddering, what would go through a person's mind to do it? And I would ask those questions. And generally, is people trying to pass the fear of some sort that they have anyway? They want to prove something to themselves that they could do it despite it. Sometimes they do it as a bet. Sometimes they do it to find out, to discover something about themselves. And it's interesting why people would go into the situation, being completely frightened.

And being completely frightened has kind of, there is many options, of course, but I would say two extreme options is when you become irrational. So you become in a tunnel vision. so you're unable to make, to take in other information because you're kind of in survival mode and your resources shrink to just to make sure that you don't die. It's what's the most optimal way to reach the target. But on the other hand, many other resources open up and some people have a vision that opens up or they become more aware and their senses are more exposed. And this is a very tricky balance.

And I guess that comes with experience of reaching this chemical high in your body because it is a chemical reaction that starts to throw you around in a way. And then you have to navigate in that space in your kind of physical reaction and mental space. So how do you coordinate the two? So that's why I was doing it,

is to appreciate what does it take for a person to go through all of that and yet to orient and then bypass that. And there is an important threshold is when you bypass this fear, yeah, into performance where you're able to expand your awareness because you've got this adrenaline, because you've got all this chemical cocktail happening.

It's how do you orient in that space and become better at utilizing those resources of sharpened senses? and you see that the experienced skydivers become very homed in, but there is a point where you can become complacent. And that's when errors happens, when you become too confident. And that's also an important factor. So in people who are high performance, we are working in a high performance environment,

is important for them not to become too sure of themselves or too confident that they know everything. And it's a really hard edge, you know, to keep, is to say that I'm, you know, I know everything versus I am, you know, so basically, basically they gain, they narrow their vision instead of widening. And suddenly it catches them. As I was going through your work, I came across a term that I haven't seen before that seems very relevant to a lot of what you're talking about, which is cognitive engineering. Would you mind explaining for the listeners what?

cognitive engineering is and how it applies to your work? Sure. Cognitive engineering is, it's working with how we process information and how we then present it on visual display or through any type of information that we allow people to read or to understand or to hear, so any senses that you have. So it's merging the fields of design of equipment or design of procedures or design of the environment for most optimum performance through representation of cues. And that's the merge of psychology and engineering.

And people in this domain come from both, from psychology and engineering. And both perspectives contribute tremendously. Because obviously an engineer is working from perspective how things work and they're able to explicate that quite clearly through procedures or training or design of environment or equipment. And I would come from a point of understanding kind of how the cogs turn in our mind. And what would that be helpful to absorb that information, given our limitations of perception or memory or reaction or decision making or situational awareness overall? So this is how the cognitive engineering term comes together. So looking back at your work with,

improving the shame and blame culture in the aviation industry and the work that you've done there. When we look to the efforts that are being made now to improve the reporting culture around UFOs and other aerial phenomena, what would be your recommendation to people doing that work? How can we better improve reporting and decrease the shame and blame that goes along with reporting of anomalous craft and experiences? So UAP and UFO, the main, is a taboo in a way. And it has been, and I was surprised to come to this field because I grew up with a perspective that unusual things happen and we observe them.

And it was not a topic that was a taboo where I was growing up. So when I came to space psychology, I found that you're not allowed to talk about it. And that is okay if that's what people feel like, but I feel you cannot ignore it. And first, I come to that realization is when I was studying my PhD and there were errors happening and there were even cartoons, drawings going about pilots, thinking that there is a ghost in the machine. Can you say a little bit more about the ghost in the cockpit? What were they referring to? The ghost in the cockpit is referred to a new type of equipment that came in into the cockpit, which was automation. And then there was an introduction of autopilot, and the autopilot would have

different functions. So, for example, it could control the speed or it could control the attitude, such as does it have a nose down or nose up? And it could also have a nose down. And it could also have a navigation pilot, so autopilot that will navigate from point to point. And all of these functions, it's not just, so an autopilot could be in any one of those modes, it's called. So it's a task, a mode is a task. And those modes were different for every manufacturer. So from Airbus, there would be different types of modes, for Lockheed Martin, there would be in other types of modes. but more so between the types of within one manufacturer, for example, A300 and A320, which is Airbus, aircraft, there would have different philosophy on how the autopilot would engage and whether it will control the speed of, for example, climbing or descending,

or will it control their nose attitude? So this is two different things. So if it controls the nose, then the speed is not controlled. If it's climbing, it will decrease speed quite quickly, or if it snows down, then it will increase the speed. And that's a problem. So if the pilot is considering that the autopilot is controlling the ascent, yeah, then the climb, then the problem is that if they're not watching the speed, the aircraft will stall.

So it will decrease and unable to hold itself up in the air. and that's where the problems were happening. So if there is enough altitude, so enough height, the aircraft would be able to recover. But if there isn't, that's where accident happened. Because the pilot would assume that there would be something that they would have done, but the aircraft was not doing that. And that's where it was considered the ghost in the cockpit, because there was a philosophy that was not clear to the pilot,

which was an engineer's perspective of how the aircraft should fly. but the pilot has a different logic. It's sort of like if you can imagine if a child sits in the car and they would have a picture on how it works and then there is some experienced driver who sits in the car and that would have a different perspective on how it works and yet there will be an engineer or a Formula One driver who would drive the car completely differently

because they would know the traction and how it slides and when to break and if it's wet and so on. So all of them were, have a different perspective, and hence they would have different information flow and the need. And this is exactly what was happening with the design of the cockpit. They were not considering pilots view. It was engineer thinking how they've designed aircraft, and hence what the pilot would need it. And that disconnect between what the pilot thought it was doing versus an engineer, what they thought the pilot needs.

So it's so convoluted. But those two logics, which seemed obvious to either, to both of them, to both parties, did not connect in the cockpit when it was operated. And hence it was considered to be a ghost in the machine. And it was also a taboo topic. And that kind of resonated with me in respect to how could you not talk about something that bothers you if it has to do with safety of another person? especially that I was already working with the mentality, for example, in skydiving and also learning to fly, that you cannot leave a thought out if you've got it out, even if it's just a stomach feeling in your stomach or you for some reason get chills. You cannot ignore that because it's to do with safety. So there may be somewhere a clue and it's always good to voice that because if you don't, you'll regret it.

You really regret it because it will affect either you or you or conigs. And sometimes sort of looking into cognitive processing and information flow, sometimes you notice something, but you're not aware of it. So for example, you could be looking, but you're not seeing. And this is exactly the same. So I thought if these pilots are not reporting errors, and it was surprising to me, But then speaking with commercial pilots in my work, I realized that there's an expectation or culture that a pilot, especially a captain, especially a training captain, which is yet another level, they must know everything.

It's an expectation that if they don't know, they're not good enough. And then I would say these are, you know, brave men, the majority of war men at the time, I haven't met a female pilot. Marshall pilot or military pilot at the time. These gentlemen were seriously considering and they were talking among themselves for safety purposes, but they were unable to officially report these problems of not understanding what was happening in the cockpit because there was a fear of losing your job, being suspended. And of course, then it's your life. You know, it's your income, it's your family. it's, you know, everything breaks down from there, especially if the person is the sole provider for the family. It's a massive impact. And there were instances where people were

taken off their jobs, suspended, and they didn't receive money, basically, and they committed suicide. And pilots are very stressful professionals as it is. They're far away from family. They're traveling a lot. They're not connected to their social support system when you're leaving in one, for example, location and your job is nine to five. And then you're with family. You're constantly on the mall. You're constantly changing time zone. So there's a lot of pressures. And then, so that was kind of a key for me, sort of a wake up moment to listen to what these pilots do with a problem, which is very serious. Like if you're flying a plane and the first rule that you must follow is you must stay ahead of the plane. If you are not ahead of the plane, meaning that you don't know what it's

going to do in the next second minute, 10 minutes an hour, as far as you can predict, then you're behind the plane and that's bad. That means that you are unable to predict and consider options for where you're going to land, how are you going to consider the winds, the potential for changing condition of you. You will or have to be constantly on the move knowing where you will be in the next available time. And the further you can predict, the better. So if the pilot is even for a speed second

is not in the state of flow and understanding what's happening, then they're distracted and the whole crew, the whole people in the cabin behind you, we should passengers, people on the ground, air traffic control, other things in the air, it's a mess. It's a picture that is not in the pilot's minds and they're unable to perform their job efficiently. So then I saw that there was like a spurs of groups forming and they started, so the internet was not that advanced in terms of sharing, but there were email lists and

they were local groups and there were rural aeronautical society, which I was. was a member of war, and they were in Australia and, of course, in the UK and other countries. And they started bringing up these issues and saying that we must do something about this. We must speak up. And there shouldn't be a blame culture. If you don't know, there must be a legitimate reason. And if you ask another captain, you know, that you feel safe to us. And they also don't know, that's a problem. That's a big problem. One thing is one person doesn't know. But if your colleagues of the same level don't know, then this is a problem in the system. It's not a problem with that knowledge of that person. And that's when it's, that there was a beginning of

a price, I would say, to say that we must report any problem, any error. Otherwise, it's your life on the line. It's everyone, you know, that you're flying with. It's the company's line. And so once these brave people started to bring up these problems, it started to be framed. And there was a beginning of NTSB, so National Transportation Safety Board in the U.S. and equivalent in Australia, started to form databases where they started to put the lines or what was the pilot reporting, literally a phrase. They would say the speed mode in Airbus 320 was not clear during. this particular phase. And there would be like literally from NTSB reports, there will be phrases

that will be dropped into a specifically safety human factors investigation catalog. And that's what I was sifting through to understand what the problem was. So without that, there was no science can be done. No research could be done, right? But in order for that appear, people lost jobs, right? They lost their pride. For example, they lost ability to speak truthfully about their professional opinion, because they must be able to be good observers, right, and good experts in what they, you know, if they're training captain, how could they not be qualified to report an error, even if it seems an odd one? Yeah. Did you find a difference in the communities? So you have pilot

communities who are reticent to report anomalies, especially aerial anomalies, and you worked for basically your whole career to help change that culture of reporting, although it's not perfect now. It's a lot better, and that directly impacts safety as well as the well-being of pilots. I wonder if you can say something about what you find in UAP culture with respect to astronauts because I know that you have, you're engaged in identifying those astronauts who are going to do well in these extreme environments, the extreme environment of space, for example. Thank you, Dan. I think that's very pertinent, you know, the difference on how the two different communities

are approached and what they're trained and what they're allowed and not allowed to do, also allowed and not allowed to say, because there is association of what would be the consequences. So in a way, with astronauts in the work that I do, and I guess it's maybe worth reiterating that my current work is in designing tools and equipment to help astronauts to perform at the optimum, but also to support their well-being. So when I was working at the European Astronaut Center, there was no training for reporting anomalous phenomena related to UFO or UAP. This was a topic that was not talked about, so I didn't either. And as far as I'm aware, this is still the case. And when I do listen to interviews of astronauts, and they ask that

question because it is on the public's mind. And so the public would generally ask that question. They seem to have a same way to answer it because I think they're told on how to answer that question. And when you are sort of in a close, neat discussion, there may be some disclosure of how they feel about it, but there isn't open culture of discussing it. And the astronauts that I have seen talk about it, they are retired. So I haven't spoken with them personally, but it is in the public domain, those who have spoken about observing unusual when I are in the air or in space and they are mostly report this once they have no

consequential or maybe responsibility or documents they sign. So obviously they take their job seriously in terms of security and what the policy is. And you can't I think force people to talk about it even if they do want to because it's their livelihood. Just the same as we talked before.

Does that answer the question, Diana? It does. Can you talk a little bit about your, I know that you just have started to work with the UAP Human Factors Task Force. Can you talk about how that is and what you see could be your contribution? So this is a group that I am contributing as an expert, but of course I do not represent the views of the group. and we are brought together on the basis that we have something to contribute, and it's a collective effort. In the same way as accident investigation, this is again coming from experience that I had, is that initially everything was human error, right? So when aircrafts would crash, it was a pilot error.

It was definitely the person to blame. And more so, it would be the captain. because they are in charge of the plane. And even if it was something else, it was often not even investigated in depth. And there was a point when the investigation, it was again a National Transportation Safety Board in the US that was saying that there was about,

I think it was 56% of all the aircraft accidents were human error. And then there was two leading researchers they were consulting for a National Transportation Safety Board. And they started to look more deeply as a scientist, you know, into the data that was now in the reports. And they also did the interviews because it was part of increasing safety because the aircrafts were falling down every week. So commercial flights were crushing that often. So it was time to look at it that it's maybe not the pilots and maybe the safety, needs to be talked about and that maybe this ghost in the machine is not something to be ignored

and people shouldn't be blamed or fired for that. So at that point there was an investigation and they brought in experts from management, from air traffic control, from observers from the ground, from people who designed procedures, from people who work at the airport. So there was a much bigger community. And there were also external experts. who were independent reviewing it. And until all the facts were pulled together, and the cockpit, of course, was the voice, the black box in the cockpit was analyzed,

they were able to see that there were other factors that were contributing. And one good example is that there was a policy in the company that they could not make one more circuit around the airport because they will waste fuel. and if they waste fuel, they were punished in some way through, I don't know, not getting a good flight or there are many ways that you could have effect an individual in the company or there were even salary related, payments related consequences for you taking an extra circuit because you thought you needed to check something or you were unsure whether you should land. for example, the aircraft in this condition or this weather condition or something else. So as you can imagine, it's nothing to do with a consequence of a pilot error.

So they've made a decision because there was a pressure. And otherwise, they would have taken another circuit, you know, and they would have double-checked. And they wouldn't have pushed down the aircraft in those, for example, flying conditions where they could have changed or they maybe would have went to another airport because it was such a close call. they were uncomfortable with their skill set to land under this conditions or in the state of their aircraft. And hence, where does the blame, you know, where did the error happen? And that's when this model of Swiss cheese came about in a way where all the holes aligned together. So there was a bad weather, that's one hole.

Then there was a bad, for example, disability, placed them too early in the queue to land or like the pressure them to land. could have had a better approach or the timing was not right or, you know, there could be all sorts of conditions that contributed to that. And also maybe the pilot was tired or rushed or they had problems at home that they were pressured. And on top of that, the management said, if you don't lend now, your salary gets decreased. So they make a decision and they make it confidently because obviously they're making it on the basis that, okay, I can do this. And then it is an error on the the pilot in the end, but the pressure came in way before that moment where they made a mistake. So then they've reattributed the errors in all of those accidents, and it was less than

30% was the actual pilot error when they actually made a mistake. So here, just coming back to the committee who are looking at how to assist in this UAP reporting, in the same way, there are experts like myself who have a background, in accident looking into how accidents were reported and how the improvement was made to attributing where the problems were, not just in one area, but there was need to be an improvement in several areas as not to have that error to happen. And that means policy changing, management changing, culture changing, and individuals' well-being is important. So all of those aspects are important to consider. So hence on this committee, there are experts from lawyers to people who are able

to attract funding, people who are experts, engineers, people who are expert in terms of good observers, people have years in designing specific systems and understand the behavior. And so I'm like a small droplet in that ocean of expertise. And it's important to have all of those to make a puzzle make sense because otherwise we are unable to see the picture and the analysis needs to come in once all of that data points or as many as we can gather. So that's what we are working on at the moment is for one is making sure what kind of details need to come in into the report because they've been a lot of headway already done in the US specifically on opening up the databases for people to start to report. But it's a lot of headway.

is how do you make this fluid so that data can be passed on early enough? Because we don't want 20-year-old data. If things have, the frequency of this phenomena has increased in the recent years, especially so what has changed, why has it changed? So all of those aspects are important to consider. And that's my kind of contribution, and seeing what I can do based on my experience. Amazing.

Well, I'd love to shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the work that you do specifically with astronauts. So we've discussed a few times on the podcast, and Diana has discussed an American Cosmic, her book, The Overview Effect that people can experience while looking back at the Earth from space. What insights do you think we can draw from the shift in consciousness that people report? The overview effect exists for a while as a concept. and I feel that I'm better to speak in slightly different direction. I would say it's a helpful concept to consider as a metaphor of gaining a new perspective because an overview effect is when astronauts or space tourists gain a perspective of the Earth as kind of as a jewel.

And they're seeing it how small and precious we are in this massive space blackness of it. the back behind the earth and also the famous photograph that was taken from the moon and the earth's rise that is giving individual and understanding on how precious we are and how we are all in the same boat or a spaceship and I think it is important to have that an understanding that there needs to be for a global perspective and going into space is not the only way to gain that perspective. And I think to consider that we are all one organism. And you can look at that from many fields of work.

So you can look at the engineering, for example, and understand yourself that you're one small cog in a big wheel. You can look at it from biology and see the earth as a tiny cell that has a lot of elements and we're all affecting each other. And once there is a little bit of chemical balance out of work, the whole cell is unable to perform and it's destroyed. And I think it's depending on what that individual is able to conceptualize. So somebody needs to go out and see the earth if they can afford it from space.

But equally, you can communicate this through other means and understanding that we are a single culture is important. And I think we're getting closer to that from time to time and then as a human kind of nation, we lose it for a bit and then there is another surge. And I think we will have that spiral change in perception as we continue and hopefully we'll get closer to understand that we are a single speech.

that we're all connected and the air we breathe is produced by trees that we're cutting. It's the simplest way. If an astronaut is in space and you cut their oxygen flow, there's very little time. There's no time. And we had those incidences, including skydiving. Well, skydiving is sort of when you suddenly hit with this air flow and you are unable to take a breath in because it's just shocking. But the point is that I think once we understand that there is no more oxygen flow, and if we can conceptualize, this is equally good to change perspective. So this realization that the Earth is kind of its own single organism, how has that realization impacted your work, especially with regards to the Earth language that you're working on developing?

That's very helpful actually to frame it in the way. that we are all on one earth, on one spaceship or on one single cell organism. And what I find that is vital, because I've also worked on projects on how culture speaking the same language miscommunicate and completely misunderstand each other. And this is kind of ironic, right, that we presume that we understand what the other person saying and yet then when they execute what we agreed on, it's completely different to what I assume that we'll be doing, although we use the same language and the same kind of words, but the concept behind the word is very different. But equally, when we meet somebody who is not

speaking our own language, we are much more careful. So in that particular project, which was interesting that nations that were speaking English, right, that was not their first language, they were actually much better in understanding each other and they had less miscommunications about what they're going to do or how they're going to go ahead. And that really was interesting that on the one end when you're speaking the same language, there is an instant connection. So like, for example, if I meet someone who was born in the same place where I was or I find out. Often people ask you, where are you from? And sometimes it's a question that kind of, you know, you don't want to answer depending on where you are, what you're doing, or you're just tired of it.

If you are living in a foreign to you country and because of your accent, people constantly ask you this question. I'm just thinking, you know, I've been here before. And yet then you meet somebody who doesn't need to ask that question and say, oh my God, do you remember that? Or have you been there? Well, this is amazing. How about that food or how about that smell? Or do you remember that? And suddenly, you are total strangers and yet you're totally connected just because of your origin or because of your language that you're speaking. So there is many barriers that are broken instantaneously if you have the same roots or concepts. So although we shouldn't take it for granted, the language that we could misunderstand the concept, but

equally, it allows us to connect in such a way that a lot of barriers in communication and interactions are taken away. And if I meet someone from my own culture, my own hometown, or even studying the same degree, for example, right, cognitive engineer, we're suddenly halfway into conversation already and we don't need to make a lot of backtalk because we have a lot of concepts similar to each other. So my thought, that came about regarding Earth's language is to think what can be, what can connect us at the core and completely change our connections

where we don't approach with hostility to each other or rather not hostility, but caution and fear that something would happen because we are taught as children strange danger and it's so ingrained for the right reasons, right, because we are protecting children because the world is not as safe as we would like to be. But then you are constantly on guard,

and to make that connection is very difficult. But if we could create this acceptance and connectedness to not just the language, the human, you know, human spoken language, but if we could make a connection to the language as we are speaking to our surrounding and hear our surrounding, because very frequently, if I am in the city, I actually can't hear the earth at all. And I could be sitting in my house and if the windows are not open, I can't hear the birds. And I feel as if I have blinkers on and I'm suddenly immersed and forgetting that, for example,

that I am very much alone. But as soon as I open the window, I hear the birds and I understand, okay, I'm actually much bigger and much more connected and much more supported. And if I just go out and get some fresh air, new information would flow in because I would feel much more refreshed. And the same thing with the children, if we could make them more connected to nature, then I was hoping that through that connection, we would be able to give them an opportunity to be more connected to each other.

because if there is a common language of hearing nature and understanding nature, then everywhere they are on us, as soon as they hear anything, you know, in insect, a frog or a bird, which is a kind of a constant resonance, that it's always in the background. I mean, unless you are in a very cold country, there is always this overtone or undertone or background of creatures. and if you can be connected into that field and literally vibrate with that field, I feel no matter where you'd go, you'd be able to connect with that.

That's a beautiful idea. It also seems like it would be very daunting to try to figure out how to create something like that. That's sort of a language. So how have you even begun to tackle this problem? How do you think about it? When my children were born, I was very, interested to tell them about where they've just arrived to

because they literally land and so women who support birth at home, their other sort of name of their profession is doula, they say they meet the baby earth side. So sort of like when it lands on

in our dimension and it is literally a landing on a completely different plane or on a spaceship earth and we need to introduce them and we do this in many different cultures to this in different way. And in our Western culture, there is a lot of ways which is right or wrong, right? But it does not trust it to a mother's intuition, which is quite interesting, I think,

that we are coming back to it. There's a big movement to trust a woman herself of what is the right thing for their baby instead of being pushed with what should be done or when the baby should be fed. And I was bombarded with all of that because I'm very intellectual, if you wish, and I trust the science and I was trained in science. But equally, I had this in and knowing that I want to introduce my baby not to wait until they're 11 or until they're 15 to tell them about how I see this world. and I want to show that in some way.

And so I thought, how can I communicate? What is the way to settle anything to my baby apart from hugging and changing them and feeding them and cuddling them, you know, attempting to sing to them? And so I started to look for black and white books because I thought there's information there and there's something that I could communicate through the pictures. And because I am a cognitive engineer,

I know that pictures can tell a lot. You know, we can change people's skills. ignition and perception and decision-making and awareness. And I started to look and I found the best book, you know, the best book I could possibly afford as a mother. Amazon reviews were really high. And I bought the book and I looked at the book and I was crying. You know, you get very emotional when you just keep birth and you're still breastfeeding.

And I was trying to figure out why is this that we've built a large hydrogen collider. We have robots that look like humans and that we have been to the moon and so all this grand projects. And yet we're showing to the baby who has an absolute capacity of making billion connections in such a short space of time in their brain being networked. It's like a foundation being built and we are not using that. The only thing that we, the babies are lucky that we are talking with them. they would be ever so lucky if they live in a busy household because they will hear more conversations. And yet that even that is kind of lost. And so at best they'll hear a radio and a YouTube and a TV program and they wouldn't hear maybe even a grandmother tongue,

which is often an intonation that is filled with frequencies of love and connection and empathy. And so I looked on thinking, why are we showing? to the baby a shadow of a mouse that doesn't even look like a mouse or why are we showing a butterfly not in the right shape and why are we choosing these images and nothing else

and of course these are artists and these are publishers and they know what's selling and this is a notion that's been there for a while but I thought I'm not showing this to my baby because this is not true. I don't want my baby's brain to be wired to think that that's how the world is looking

And I thought, look, I design cockpit. I design information space. Why can't I design a cockpit or an information space for the baby about what I want to communicate, what I want to show. I want to show how beautiful it is, how unusual and how reach this environment is. And who is to say that the baby can't perceive it, you know? And then I started reading into what we know scientifically about what babies know or what able they can perceive physiologically.

And we do know a lot about what baby can perceive. And I then started to form designed principles, just as I would, for a cockpit or aircraft display or space type of equipment to understand what we can absorb, what the physiology can take, and what our cognitive processing is able to take in. And then based on that, you design a principle and then look for information. to match that. How do you represent that to much those parameters or requirements, if you wish? And things started to emerge and they were so easy to find once those designs principles were

available and they started popping and I just started to draw them and I start showing to my baby what I thought they might like and they would just stare at it and they would just not take their eyes away and I was amazed. Who were to say that babies have no concentration. They had an extraordinary concentration and they wanted more. So my friends were asking, what is it that you're showing to your baby? Is it okay for them to see it? And I said, well, look, they're happy. They're not crying. In fact, they stop crying if I start showing it to them. So if I need an extra minute to change them or to wash them or to get some food ready or to get myself ready or to get myself a hot cup of tea while I sit down to breastfeed them

and I could give them something useful that they could study, why not? So that's what I did. And then someone said, why don't you publish this? And so I thought, okay, I'll publish this. And then when I started to publish this and start giving like a sample, a template to what it would be, and people started asking

about what is this? Why are you showing this? Why are you thinking people want to buy it? And so then I had to write a descript of what these images were. and the fathers were and grandparents especially was so fascinated by it because suddenly they could show and share with the baby something very intellectual so a father could just show the book and say well I've read with the book today with one month's old baby and they could share it with other young fathers or new fathers and say not only that they've done that but actually they would

share facts about what they were looking. And the idea was to take every profession that I could connect to and transcribe that into visual images that a parent can then share what they're passionate about, about their field of work or what they're fascinated, their hobby to the baby at this age. And what happens is that the father or even a mother who doesn't know how to interact. with the baby beyond those things, nurturing things. Then suddenly they feel that they're transported into a different world. The mother relaxed, the father relaxed, the uncle is able to take the baby off the mother, give the mother a break.

And they are both sharing this other world or earthly world about what Earth is like. And they're both learning and they're both fascinated. And both are uplifted after experience because otherwise the uncle or grandkids, parent or a new father doesn't know what to do with the baby. And here, they're both coming out on the other part of this journey fulfilled because the baby was happy, the father was happy, and more so they tell the stories about it, like a friend who doesn't have children that they held the baby for half an hour and the baby didn't cry. And the mother got a break or a father got a break. And it's kind of, I think it's amazing what we don't know and what we should find out and

more things we can uncover. Can you describe for listeners who might be having trouble picturing this? What does this book look like? Can you describe what you're showing the baby? So the images are in black and white because when we're born, we don't have the physiology to see colors. It's just those color cones are not developed. But we're able to perceive contrast. So we perceive the colors, but we don't see them sort of in this fullness, but we just see them as grays and blacks and whites. So it's shaded.

And the rest is faced on what the baby is attracted to. So, for example, I would take a picture of Lodge Hydron Collider and just match the intensity and frequency. So the thickness of the lines is what the baby can see, because we know how thin the line they can perceive. And in fact, the point that the babies have blurred vision is not quite correct because the baby can actually see your eyelashes, how they are separated. Is they at the right distance?

And the right distance is you holding the baby breastfeeding or just cuddling them to sleep. It's that distance that they need to be looking into your eyes. So you look into theirs. So it's about them making a connection. and that's the distance that they're able to see very clearly. So the book is with large images the size of our face because that's what they're born intuitively to see. And then it's matching how thick and thin the lines should be

so they're able to see it. So just looked for those type of pictures and change them to the pattern that they're able to perceive. And so it is meaningful so that, When they grow, they're able to recognize that in the world. And what's interesting, that things that we're attracted to, or the babies are attracted to, is what we consider as adults beautiful. And these are principles of golden section.

So it's where the nature is showing us how to design properly, how to design the most successful designs of what we're attracted to, matches the golden section proportions or there's an element of matchy sequence. So all of those elements that are embedded in nature. And a lot of scientists have noticed this for hundreds of years, for thousands if you go into ancient cultures, that they would show this actually to babies just in a different way. So this is what the books are about, is transporting the baby to the world and bringing them a microscope type of perception so they could see it at the distance that they're able to see

and the intensity of color and granularity that they're able to perceive. So it's just a conversion of those things I want to show them or any parent want to show them. It's like translating into their own visual perception. So for babies who are being exposed to these kinds of images in this kind of communication, How do you expect that to change the way that they communicate and view the world moving forward? How do you see this developing in the long term? So there is another part to this images. There is a sound as well.

So I've done kind of small experiments. It's making small steps as I am progressing. And what I saw that the sound that is surrounding us has also patterns And again, I'm not the person to first talk about this or identify. It's just I'm interested in the relevance of how can we communicate this to a new generation and make it their language. So what I've noticed, what I've read in science is that babies are able to do statistical analysis, like proper difficult mathematical probability analysis, of predicting the type of language structure that they've been exposed to.

And so they're able to comprehend of what comes before or after. So this is what JTPI now OpenAI kind of first talking about, is that you can understand the language by understanding its structure, what comes before and after. And this is yet one more leap that we haven't done investigating in babies because we need to be invented, right? Or how can we study baby's perception of, you know, language, which is yet another barrier of how could you understand what they're grasping and what they're not?

And there's some clever scientists who've designed experiments to show that at about between six and nine months, the window from birth, so six at nine months, so they're in the first, within the first year, the baby adapts a particular model of what the language, And beyond that, it becomes a basement, you know, like in the building, there's a basement that the whole structure is built. I mean, I prefer to talk about it's like a map of the city. So they've networked how you would navigate the city. If you take a language as a city, then how do you navigate all those rules of switching, getting from one end of the town to another? And what transport you would use, or do you go by train or by bus?

or do you walk or do you take shortcuts? And once that map light down, then if you come in with a different language or a different way of communicating, you have to do, you have to break houses, you have to reconstruct the roads, you have to reconstruct the transportation system,

or you even have to do a circular right around the city to get to the other side quicker. And that's what happens in the baby's brain. So by nine months, we've in a way lost it. I mean, of course, we can learn a language later. Nobody denies that. But it's just what effort and how fundamental it is.

And what we do find out is that babies can learn any language. So for example, a Japanese baby is born in England. Yeah. And they are exposed to both English and Japanese. And they would be able to perceive, or in terms of audio, a language to the letter L. and they'll be able to hear it and also speak about it. And the same is actually for Chinese language.

But if they're born in China or in Japan and they have never been exposed to these sounds elsewhere, they're actually unable not only to hear them, because they can't hear them, they actually can't pronounce them, which is interesting. And this is one example of how this would reflect. So you're just,

you're losing the sensitivity to particular, sounds and you are unable to hear them. And also as babies develop or as babies, we can hear different frequency as we become adults. So our ability to absorb the types of frequency decreases as we get older. But my view, my perception is that if language restricts us, so this is my kind of questions that I want to investigate further, that if we're able to leave it open or wide this perception of frequencies and continuously stimulate this pathways, just like it was in native or cultures that are live among nature. And we do know they have a better hearing and perception and differentiation of species than we do in the city. And in fact,

some was not even here when somebody says, did you hear that if we go to a particular location in nature and we're just unable to hear some insects or some frogs or some frequencies, but native cultures are able to. They can tell a lot what that means. And it is another language. So this is where I thought that if we could, and I have very good concepts, I think, that I'm grasping at the moment and trying to make them physical on how can we introduce this type of language through sound and image to the babies. And that becomes a language of its own. And then if we tie this back into what we were talking about, that people connect easily when they have the same language or culture. It's that if you can imagine the person from Australia, for example,

and Canada, or they have similar language, but we take Portuguese and someone from Vietnam, right? In principle, they're in such different places and they're on different side of equator. And yet, when they would come to the forest and do you know that frogs are all over the planet and crickets are all over the planet? There are so many species of those. And if you're able to hear that. And so I personally, when I hear cricket, it associates with me with a particular good feeling because I had really good experience with listening to crickets as I was living in Cyprus. And it just, you suddenly get immersed into this. It's sort of like a cradle, you know, music, that everything is all right and everything is stable because crickets actually stop.

They're moist if there is something inconvenient to them or something that's bad for them. and that's what native cultures tune in. It's just like one species stop speaking. There's a disturbance in the field. And it's an information, it's a language. But I'm talking deeper than that. I'm talking about literally understanding because a cold cricket sounds differently

to a warm cricket, apparently. And even if you've never heard a cricket before and you would hear those two different recordings, you will understand that that's a cold cricket. And this is a cricket that is, quite warm. And that's interesting. And I think why should we desensitize children or not exposed to this early when through ancient cultures and native cultures we have been exposed? And I think that's a new way of connecting us as a single organism on Earth is to hear those

other species that have been connecting us for generations. And only recently we stopped hearing that as a modern society. Wow. Something that I'm so struck by listening to you talk is that it seems like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like it would be very easy for, and perhaps this is exactly what's happened to us, it'd be very easy to lose large swads of meaning and potentially even capabilities, like human capabilities in just a couple of generations simply by cutting ourselves off from our environment. Am I understanding that correctly? Is that how you view it? Yes. So another research that I come across that is important for us to be aware. There's a condition called

synesthesia. And synesthesia is when we experience inputs to one sense, for example, through hearing, but in the brain, there is an image being formed in the visual field. So some musicians see music and color. So that would be one form of synesthesia. And if you'll take as many perceptual senses as we have. And there is cross-connections in different individuals. It is science at the moment reports that about 4% of population, this comes through, if you wish. But also what's interesting is that as babies, we are all synesthetes. So we all have the ability to wire one sense to another. So for example, if the person is born blind, congenitably blind, they're able to utilize other senses that otherwise the visual cortex would map to.

But equally, if the baby is, for example, exposed to cross-sensory modality and it remains through their life, so for example, maybe the, which is my theoretical. So this is not to say that the science already knows this, right? But what we do know is that synestids who have disability, they're much better in linguistic ability. They are much better problem solvers. They have better memory. And they connect information in the way that people who do not have synesthesia, they problem solve in a novel way, in a very creative way. Because in, so it's like they're using different type of resources that are available to them. So it's always like using one tool or you have six to choose from. How do you

connect information? And synestites because of this cross-model connection between senses, they're able to visualize information differently. They have many more cues. So I'm just writing a chapter about this aspect of synesthesia and how it could be helpful if there's a way to retain it, if we all have it. God, emotional listening just now is like, wow, that's really, I mean, seriously, I think what you're doing, Ia is seriously helping humans survive what's going on now. into the future. I think this work is so necessary. I completely agree. I think the ideas are so important. Yeah. I feel like part of my job is so I meet people like I and Tyler, right? And he was so innovative and so on the cutting edge that most people couldn't even understand what he was doing,

you know? And I feel like I is one of these people. She's so, she's so in this doing what nobody's doing, nobody's done. And so it's our job to kind of translate her what she's doing because it's so necessary for us too. And I think that's like Edgar Mitchell, you know, those people on the very cutting edge of our science oftentimes are not even understood in their time. And we can't afford that right now. Yes.

So Diana, you're absolutely right. And equally so, we are. unable to do this on our own. Yes, the thing. So it's about forging the connections. And because justice in accident investigation, right, in creating or reporting culture, it's all expertise are necessary.

There isn't one single person who can achieve something substantial or impactful. I am building my work on the research that has been done, right? And I absolutely need people. who are good at what they do and how they can contribute in the same way. I am unable to do this on my own. I can only initiate. I can only bring concepts together. I can communicate about that and see what resonates, what have I missed, because there must be holes in what I'm doing. And it's about other people who are able to meet that specific path. Then it becomes something meaningful and useful because just as an engineer designing a cockpit for a pilot, they cannot fly

unless they speak to the pilot and understand what they need. So that's the same concept. So I'm very aware that this is one perspective, that I share one perspective. And there needs to be many perspectives. This overview effect again. Coming back to what we talked before is that all perspectives are valid. And there's many things I'm not seeing. So we need to look at this innocent from many directions. Otherwise, I'm unable to see the full picture. So I am on the lookout and also welcome the input of other individuals on what they might contribute and how can this be taken forward. I bought the book, I bought your book for my friend who has a new baby. And before I gave it to him, I was flipping through it.

And my daughter, who's 14, came into the room and asked me what I was looking at. And so I said, oh, here, you can look at this. And then I was doing something else. And then when I looked at her, she read the whole thing. She read it for hours. Yeah, this is it. So the idea is that the book is shared in the family. And I think that sharing is so vital because if a sibling can pick up and read the book

with a younger child. And I think the information and the tools should be accessible at all ages. It's just that it's the level that we're able to absorb it. It's the same thing. So with the language of nature or the earth language, there's many levels. So for example, I could be standing with a native person who leaves in that particular floor and fauna. And I would hear one thing, but that they hear something else.

and I could learn from them of what they're hearing. And yet when we come both to a city, I could tell them a lot about the sounds that they would not be able to anticipate or aware will be overwhelming for them. They wouldn't be able even to hold it. Some people can't sleep with other noises because it actually has physiological chemical reactions in the body

that they're unable to control. It's the response to sound. And we now know, so there is a scientist, Professor Karen Becker that is written, released a book. I think it's called The Sound of Life or Life of Sound. And she talks about research in the cities that how sound affects and disrupts our health. And there are now not just speed cameras or like cameras that watch, but there is also sound cameras that are there detecting the,

sound that could be harmful to us and then just as we are fined for us speeding this would be also implications of what sound we make and then that what effect it has on us and you could also get fines that's equally disturbing just as their car speeding and could hit somebody the sound has an impact on our well-being a strong one so am i understanding this correctly in saying that as opposed to creating this language, you're sort of discovering it. Is that a correct way to represent what you're doing? I feel that it's already available there. And I think it's how do we, how much of it do we transcribe, you know, how many dictionaries do we make? Because I feel it's always been available. It's just, are we able to articulate it? So this is coming back to

what I was talking about professional intuition. So if you go to a native person who lives in nature, for them, you don't need a dictionary, right? They just understand it, but they can't articulate it, why they suddenly feel very wary. They may be able to articulate that, and often they can, but sometimes they get this feeling, and only then they could speak retrospectively about what that was.

And this is exactly what surgeons do, right, when they are articulating something, when they are watching the footage. And when they're telling somebody else what they were doing, they will tell it through a different lens. So once they're explaining what they're doing to a student or to another medical, younger professional, they will talk about and also do different actions. you know, so the consequences of their actions would be different when they're expligating and teaching to somebody else versus when they're themselves in the process and doing something. They will actually act and do things differently. And they would not be able to explain it. But if this was done in silence, for example, and the student was there, so this is the third scenario, and they will stop the surgery and the student would ask

them, why did you do that? This is not by the book. They will actually give you the answer that was not necessarily why they make that decision in that way because they will put on the filter to tell you what would they be not punished for or what they think would make sense

given the knowledge that they think the student would know. So in all of those aspects, we were influenced in our interpretation of the environment and inputs, so like a language. So in the same way, if you are in the native environment, you know, this, you may understand or not understand or act or not act in a certain way, depending on who is around you.

So we all affect each other, and it's important to understand as much as we can, I guess, or we can filter through our perceptual senses. And I just want to expand that palate because our brain is able to perceive more with every generation because we are evolving species and look at how much informational can process now versus just half a generation away.

You know, that generation is just unable to take in as much as, you know, generation born five years later. It's that big elite. So why not use that capacity for the benefit? you know, why not use that capacity to make a better connection newly and culturally and humanely with more humility? I question, Ia, that I never got to ask you,

where I think I did, but I wanted to ask you further about it. And it's this idea that you intuitively decided to use traditional songs as well as sounds from insects and forests and things like that, and whales even. Can you explain why you chose traditional songs? So this is all still in the play and still in development. And as I said, you know, I can't forge this all alone.

I really want collaboration and people with the skills that I don't have. But the nature of songs, native songs, is because sometimes we underestimate the meaning of So I forgot the word for it in English. So it's the songs that, you know, we sing to children in the night. Lullaby. Lullaby, yeah, okay. So the reason I was looking into lullaby specifically from different cultures is because there is an element that they evolved over time.

And I think there is a much closer connection to nature because actually a lot of lullabies actually do have. animals and do have seasons and do have vocabulary about nature or our environment. And if you would listen to traditional lullabies, you will see that they're associating and kind of relaxing us in this particular pattern. There is a pattern to singing, to the voice and rhythm and rhyme, but also they're connecting to slowing down, to closing down, to sun going down, and to being in enveloped and protected. So there is a, there is this aura, some sort of love and protection and ability to relax our nervous system as well. And we naturally do that if we hear a lullaby

from another culture. It's almost doesn't matter to us. We know it is a lullaby. And I think it's important to hear other languages as well. So this is another aspect of that. being exposed to other rhymes, to other structures, to it's a linguistic pattern. And rhymes have a particularly unique structure that also, it's a way of problem solving, right? It's how do you rhyme these words for them to be beautifully connected but also meaningful? And your poets who are able to write poems, very highly intellectual. It's a problem-solving ability. And I think why do they survive these lullabies. This is also another interesting question to investigate. So what is so helpful and why don't we study lullabies that if it is a relaxing, especially in our stressful

environment, maybe all we need is to listen to some lullabies and to capture our grandparents or parents sing. And if it can come us down instantaneously because our body would respond to it so fast because it's ingrained in us, it's wired in us. Why not use that? So there are many aspects of why I've chose that. So it's again about connecting cultures. So if we're talking about discovering this earth language, is this something that we could potentially in the future used to have some kind of communication with nature, whether it be animals or a tree or something else? Is that something that you feel like it could be possible with this sort of modality? Yes. So for example, when you learn a language, you go from not knowing at all and then suddenly

concepts make sense. One word carries a concept or one phrase or a turn of phrase or an intonation makes a difference. So there is a lot of information carried in just me speaking with you right now. and you are hearing much more than the word I say. And the same way, I believe that we would, by listening and seeing, so by forming, so there's components of the language, of the visual component and also audio component, and anything that comes with audio, from rhyme to intonation to various types of connection to what we make when we linguistically study the language and what connect. it to an actual voice component of the language.

So, for example, some people ask a question in one language and they would rise in intonation and another, they will decrease. And you could use the same grammatically, the same sentence, but depending how you use intonation, it will either be a question or it would be a statement. And in the same way, I believe that by letting a new generation hear a different type of sounds and associated images with that, they would make the connection that we are unable to make it as adults. So the brain, the baby genius, will make that connection. Or they might not.

It's either way. But the point is that there will be a leap of appreciation that these sounds are meaningful. Then the meaning is found. We find meaning just in sticks. The letters are just sticks, put together. And suddenly that makes sense after a while, after you've been looking at it intently. It makes sense.

And this is what investigators and researchers and native cultures, you don't have to be a scientist. You could be just a curious person to make a meaning out of something that was not there before. It's a very difficult concept to describe how does the meaning arise or how does believe arise. I mean, that's Dei Annas. What sticks do you have to put?

together to have a belief in a way. So, you know, stick could be anything. It's just representation of a piece of information that you are taking in through one or another receptor. So, yes, I believe so that they would have a meaning. And computers now discovering a meaning in certain sounds, because they're able to differentiate better granularity because our perceptors are unable to read those frequencies, either because we lost them or we never had them. But nonetheless, there is a meaning assigned. So I think if our brain can be wired to a new language or to any language, why not to this? Why could this be not a language? That makes sense. Is there, I know there's no way for you to know, but do you suspect that this earth language is so specific to earth?

that it would maybe not be intelligible to a non-human intelligence from another planet who was working within the same framework? Or do you think that there's a potential that this is something that could be universal? This question is so loaded. I think if we ground it a little bit into what we know,

because obviously I haven't been to another planet and even to the moon, what would be nice to think about in this way is that we know cultures are able to tell what happens to their family, when we don't have to go even to native cultures, to sort of indigenous cultures, that we're able to tell that something is happening with another family member. So then how do we know this?

You know, there are many ways of looking at it. There is research on coincidences. And Rupert Chaldrake, so the British scientist and biologist who was doing research into us knowing who will call you, for example. He wrote a book about seven experiments that would change the world, which is quite interesting. It's our ability to perceive information or meaning from something that is not linguistic, right? It is also a way of communicating. I've visited cultures that are able to tell just by looking at you where you might have a medical condition or by the way you sound, they will be able to tell what your state is and it actually didn't have to go to

indigenous cultures. You know, if you're no person really well, you would be able to tell from the sound of their voice if they are feeling well or not well, right, if it is your close friend or family member. So it's about finding these clues. I'm talking about breadcrans, taking little steps and seeing where they lead. And I feel that this is kind of kind of somewhat scientific beginnings, or it's a concept that's emerging. And maybe native cultures are able to interpret nature's sounds and they're meaningful to them, but they can't explain it to us. But maybe by introducing this in a slightly different way from kind of modern society,

we're able to tap into it from a different direction. And hence, then being able to perceive the meaning of sounds. that are not familiar to us, you know, like to me as a mother, but maybe my children would be able to have meaning to that. So what is not to say that they will perceive what the wind is saying? Because native cultures can. And that's nature speaking, tree speaking. I don't know, you know, who is that speaking?

So it's another being. How intelligent, this is a big debate, right, of what is intelligent or not. I've read a work of, I will just remember the name. So it's Stefan Wagner who wrote a book called Plant Intelligence. He's a biochemist. And he has a family of generations, actually physicians in early 1900s. And they are able to look at the person and the plant, the right plant, would come to them of what will help with their condition. So this is a person living in the US right now who is successfully peaking botanical medicine to suit the individual and can explain it really well.

Using scientific language, she studied biochemistry as well. Another person is a scientist, Monica Gagliano. She wrote a book, Thus Spoke the Plant. So she designed experiment where she played a sound of running. water and created tunnels for the plant to push its roots through, right, to the source of water. And apparently the plants can hear, who would have known? And there are many experiments on plants that they're able to communicate each other. And it seems like they're able to hear a munching insect.

There is an insect that could destroy them and the insect that will not harm them, but they're both munching. and that will differentiate between the two and react appropriately. So why can't we speak to the plant if we understand how? If they can hear water, well, we can hear water. It's all about time perception, isn't it? If we put the tap on and want the plant to react, it's just going to take, they don't have an instantaneous reaction that would need time to grow their roots to communicate.

So it's which time scale I were perceiving. So time is a big factor in language. rich and meaning. So if you're in the conversation and you lost the beginning, you kind of lost the threat altogether. You may never retain it back. Justin is in our podcast. If I missed your question at the very beginning, I can't actually make sense of it and want to make sure I understood. So we're discovering things all the time. I very much see that we should make steps to understand other leaving things. So let's take another example. For example, bacteria, is it intelligent or is it not?

Well, actually, bacteria passes information across generations and to other species of bacteria. Is it intelligent or not? And they're helping each other to survive. And in fact, they will pass information to the bacteria who considered their enemy. So this is talking cross species, right? Cross variety of bacteria. And a bigger revelation was for me that we are thinking that fungus, right? Well, I don't know if many people are aware, but fungus is considered to be the biggest living organism

because it's connected to underground and overground. And often it's just one single organism for several miles could be extending under the floor, one forest land. And they're all communicating. So this is like an internet. But bacteria, if they're all communicating. which they do, they extend below the ground and several miles up. So can you think that we're living in the world of bacteria, but not only that there's a big part of our weight that is pure

bacteria. So we're breathing it in, eating it in, touching it, and we can't even see it's coming in or going out. But yet it makes us do things. Bacteria influences our human behavior. And we're thinking we're intelligent. So I think humility is the way and empathy is the way and to be a little bit more respectful of where we leave and what we're affected by is helpful for us as species to navigate the world of other species and see where the intelligence, you know, what is intelligence? Why do we define who is intelligent? Wow. I'm so overwhelmed by all of this. Well, I know that we've taken up. I've already taken up a ton of your time. So I have just one final question. I am so blown away by just the novelty of the way that you approach your work. You aren't retreading old pads. You're forging new ones. And as someone who thinks of themselves as a pretty independent thinker, I'm humbled at the way that you approach problem solving. And I would love to know if you really want to be,

an innovator and really change things in your field. What do you think it takes to do that? Thank you, Kelly. I think it's important to ground yourself because I think once it gets into our head, we, you know, like when I was talking about experts who think they know everything. So I think it's important to remain in that space where what else I don't know or what else could go wrong. And how can I better this space or better myself is a good space to work from? Or what did I miss or what did I not understood is the questions that I'm interested. So part of this endeavor of arts language and for extending new generation to be more connected.

I've also developed a training program for training. It's probably more awareness and curiosity program for new parents. they don't have to be that new or that young. It's just anybody who has a new born baby around. It could be grandparents. It could be very young or professionals who finally decided to have babies or aunties who don't have babies and have access to one. And I feel that it is important to ask, to remain curious.

And this is what the program is about. So I use all these tools that I've developed and keep developing of making parents to be more able to listen to themselves and to their baby and to really learn to communicate with the baby and learn through their curiosity to see the world through their eyes. Because it's a stage in our life when we become different. We really do become different when we become parents. suddenly the world is upside down and we can't, well, I don't know, some people probably natural at it, but I'm not. So this was all very new and did throw everything upside down. So I had to reorient and differently become a different person, change my way. But more importantly, I was so lucky to recognize that the children's have a lot to teach us.

And suddenly, once I recognized that the world became a different place because there were so many concepts, that I distilled in myself and thinking the world works like this. And once I take my perspective through, just like I do professionally, look through other people's cognition and thinking process, once I started doing that through babies, I saw the world as a completely different place. And I think that's important to change that perspective and to let the children remain curious.

So I teach parents. anybody who's willing to listen and have a new baby to observe, to just grow through being around the baby and help the baby to teach us on how to navigate the world without disrupting it. Because that's what babies usually do, that they're just so curious that they follow their instinct and intuition and discover and look at things, not as we would. And that's what we need. Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate both of you so much for being here. This has been a really inspiring and challenging conversation that I'm sure I will be returning to again and again. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much, Diana, for an introduction, both to Kenny and also to this program. I much appreciate. Thank you so much. Thanks, Kelly.