Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - CIA Mind Control, MKUltra & Energy Weapons Are Real: Why A Pentagon Advisor Won’t Rule Out Telepathy

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

What if the next battlefield isn't physical, but your brain?In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Dr. James Giordano (Professor Emeritus of Neurology and Biochemistry, Chair Emeritus of the Neuroethics Studies Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, served as the consulting neuroscientist on research into the original cases of Havana Syndrome) explores the rapidly evolving world of neuroscience, cognitive warfare, biowarfare, electromagnetic technologies, consciousness, and the ethical questions shaping the future of humanity.Dr. Giordano examines why he believes the threat of biowarfare deserves far more public attention, revealing examples of biological technologies that could potentially be used to target individuals and discussing how they may influence brain function, physiology, and perception.He also unpacks the history of covert CIA programs like MKUltra and Operation Artichoke, whose objectives included investigating whether people could be involuntarily controlled, hypnotized, or coerced into acting against their own will - including carrying out assassinations.We dive into the science behind electromagnetic frequencies, explaining how electromagnetic energy interacts with neurological systems, how these technologies have become dramatically smaller, more precise, and more portable, and their potential military applications, from disrupting drones and aircraft to crowd-control technologies.Dr. Giordano also explains how sound waves can disorient the nervous system, why symptoms such as headaches and dizziness may vary so widely between individuals, the controversial discussion surrounding microplastics and electrical conductivity, whether visual stimuli can disrupt neurological function, and how Faraday cages may protect against certain electromagnetic energies.Beyond emerging technologies, the discussion explores one of today's biggest questions: Is cognitive warfare already happening through social media algorithms? Dr. Giordano examines how information environments can shape perception, influence decision-making, and potentially become tools of modern conflict.The conversation expands into the frontiers of neuroscience and consciousness, asking whether some individuals possess neurological architectures that enable extraordinary cognitive abilities, how life experiences, trauma, and brain structure influence perception, why entheogens may facilitate profound spiritual experiences, whether neurophysiology can help explain reports of telepathy or remote viewing, and whether quantum processes could play a role in brain function and what those implications might be if they do.Finally, Dr. Giordano tackles the ethics of modern warfare itself: What is truly permissible in war conducted in the name of defense, freedom, or God? How do societies determine who the real enemies are? And why does he believe that when scientists lose their curiosity, they stop being scientists?Whether you're interested in neuroscience, military technology, psychology, consciousness, philosophy, national security, or the future of humanity, this conversation will challenge your assumptions and leave you questioning far more than you expected!For a limited time, get $250 off Cove Pure water filtration at http://www.covepure.com/breakdownEvery self-made person started somewhere. Yours starts free at https://www.shopify.com/breakdown.Go to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive up to 30% off your Helix mattress.Visit https://drinkag1.com/BREAKDOWN and get a FREE AG1 Flavor Sampler and a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3 + K2 in your Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order.Dr. James Giordano's book, Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense: Practical Considerations, Neuroethical Concerns: https://a.co/d/02ohTd4oFollow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Explain how telepathy, remote viewing could be seen as natural phenomenon. The brain could be a receiver like an antenna. What's it capturing? Is it capturing something fundamental? Is it truly telepathic or individuals picking up on a variety of different information, subtle cues that others may not? Neuroscientist Dr. James Giordano is an expert in covert and neurochemical warfare. How serious is the threat of bio-warfare?

Very drugs, bugs, toxins. The last domain is devices, something as subtle as changing the flicker index of the screen that you're looking at can be used to change neurological functions. This could be literally on an unconscious level. Directed energy devices can be used in ways that people don't even know. I could be walking about, and from 30, 40, or 50 meters away,

someone could be directing electromagnetic frequency into my brain. We already know these types of devices exist. We don't know this exists. You're acting like everybody knows. There have been news reports of crowd control in a number of different European cities that have used various forms of sonic energy to disrupt the crowd. We've seen that before it happened in the Soviet Union. I'm supposed to ever leave this room again?

Something like AI can be targeted utilizing information, social media. In some ways, that's the old school propaganda, cognitive warfare, increases vulnerability, volatility, perhaps even prompts violence. How worried should I be? Miami-Lex Breakdown is supported by Helix. We can't tell you how excited we were to hear that Helix wanted to partner with us. I've had my helix for over five years, Jonathan too,

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Hi, I'm I am Biallick. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. Today we're going to be talking with someone who has a foot in two very different and very important worlds. One is a field close to my heart, neuroscience, neurology, neuroethics even. The other foot that he has in the game is working with the government,

with CIA, with NATO, with DARPA, and with the Pentagon. He's the guy the government goes to to find out what is going on with cognitive and neurochemical warfare. How do we stop it? How do we prevent it? And what does it mean for our safety? Dr. Giorgano is the Professor Emeritus of Neurology and biochemistry and chair emeritus of the neuroethics studies program at Georgetown University Medical Center. He's also the chair emeritus of the Neurotechnology and Ethics Project of the IEEE Brain Initiative, and he served as a senior scientific advisor to the National Academies for Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Dr. Giorgano is going to cover everything from CIA Mind Control Research Project Artichoke, which we had never heard of, to the possibility for electromagnetic frequency

weapons being used, sonic weapons, sonar weapons. In addition, what is the future battlefield? And where does the brain fall into that? We also discuss telepathy, remote viewing, quantum consciousness, and what the brain actually does. And Dr. Giordano is a fantastic person to ask about the feasibility of telepathy, remote viewing, people who see angels, people who say they've been abducted by aliens. Where does this fit into our understanding of reality, how we interface with a consciousness field? It's a very, very candid and really enjoyable conversation that we're so excited to bring to you. Also, right near the end, he answers some very practical questions about Wi-Fi and 5G. Is it impacting us? What should we consider and how do we protect our homes?

It's a pleasure to welcome to the breakdown, Dr. James Giordano. Break it down. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. For people who may not know who you are, explain to us both your work as an academic and then sort of what your current role encompasses. I've spent about the past 35 to 40 years of my life in academia as a researcher. I was trained as a neuroscientist, both a molecular neuroscientist and cognitive neuroscientist. And then when I did postdoctoral training in neuroformicology, neurophysiology, and neurotoxicology. And so the focus of my academic career was as a professor, as a scientist. And that focus was deeply in mechanisms of how the brain operates in terms of cognition,

emotion, behavior with specific emphasis on how the brain processes both pain and pleasure, and then how pain and pleasure could be operative in moral decision-making and action. But as a consequence of doing a lot of my work, I'm also prior military service of the Navy and Marine Corps, became very involved with the use of neuroscience and biosciences and biotechnologies in various ways that could be weaponized, specifically in terms of what we would need to do for biosafety, biosecurity, biodefense. So since 1995, when I was out of the military, I've served as a senior scientific advisor to the Pentagon, NATO, to the World Health Organization, and most recently to the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. My current position is that I serve as the

director of a center at the National Defense University, and that center is focused on strategic deterrence of biow warfare and how biological agents and technologies can be used as weapons of mass destruction and disruption. Even as someone who studied neuroscience, like bio warfare was always like in the periphery of my consciousness. I wasn't one of those people who was actively thinking about biological warfare or the brain as the battlefield. And there are certain countries that we have heard about. We might be one of them. But other, countries that many of us have heard about that during some of the wars that we have fought, that the United States has fought, that there was evidence and cases of this. How serious is the

threat of bio-warfare? Like, how worried should I be? Very, very worried. And to your earlier point, actually, no, the United States has not been engaged in bio-warfare. We were one of the primary signatories of the biological toxins and weapons convention and chemical weapons Convention and also aspects of both decorations of Helsinki and Geneva Convention. The United States is both ratified and adhered to. And so we do not have a biological agents for weapons, both defensive or offensive program. But you're absolutely right. I mean, in terms of those countries that have signed and ratified those treaties, there are plenty of others that haven't. And there are plenty of those who actually have signed the treaties. But the problem with a lot

of this biological and biotechnological research is that it's what we call duly usable. I mean, the same stuff that we can use for neurology, psychiatry, precision medicine can be flipped on its head and can be used to make precision pathologies. And of course, the newer and emerging technologies, synthetic biology, gene editing, particularly a lot of the more nascent gene editing tools like CRISPR methods that are added to the already sort of usable toolkit. Well, this just takes one step further. And if we go into the brain sciences specifically, during the 1980s, I mean, the advances in neuroimaging that then rapidly progressed into the 90s that then allow us to not only assess the brain, but to then access the brain, which is really a fancy way of saying targeting certain things. And those targets range from the cellular and synaptic all the way up to the systemic.

And ultimately, manifestations of that as individuals can interact with other sort of the social level. So what's really happened is this is something we really do need to be not only aware of, but I would argue. Afraid of. Jonathan loves something to be afraid of. Sign me up. I love a thing to be afraid of. But the reason is that I think most people are underestimating how advanced technology can be harnessed.

And what we're saying here is that the brain has a way of being targeted, accessed, and influenced. And there's a whole host of technology that we're not aware of. Can you start to break that apart for a layperson to be like, What might be in a lab right now that could be used and to target somebody? I think the easiest way to think about it is, is be very simple. Drugs, a variety of pharmacological agents. Bugs, variety of microbes, bacteria, viruses, derivatives, inclusive of things like fungi, which really scare me.

Toxins, and of course we're seeing some of that now in the news, for example, the assassination of Mr. Navalny in Russia. utilizing tree frog toxin that obviously was not literally milked from a tree frog, but that was synthetically biologically engineered in a laboratory to be then used locally. So a variety of organic and inorganic toxins, some of these, again, being found in nature, but many others now that are being able to be made in laboratories. And those laboratories are not necessarily university laboratories, but the ease of those techniques and technologies essentially create do it yourself. So the idea of democratized science into a backyard science doesn't take a lot.

And then, of course, the last domain is devices. So now we're talking about things like directed energy devices, for example, that can be used in a variety of different ways, locally, regionally, some of them being used in ways that people don't even know because they can be very covert. And then we'll go one step further and we take a look at something like AI. So the ability to understand how brains work, what areas of the brain are involved, an individual or collective thought, feelings, decisions, and actions can then be targeted utilizing information, social media, various memes, tropes, narratives. And yeah, I mean, in some ways, that's the old school propaganda or psychological operation. But it goes beyond that because now we really understand what brain areas are in

and how we can manipulate not only psychology, but perhaps even environments, information, the way things are presented that changes how people perceive certain things, increases their vulnerability, their volatility, and perhaps even prompts them to violence or submission. And that whole area now is being referred to as cognitive warfare. So the idea of being able to engage the biological, the psychological, the social, as part of this larger neurocognitive domain, that's real. That's not science fiction. at science fact.

It sounds like you're describing like an episode of Scooby-Doo is the best way I can explain it where there's like some like, pew, pew, pew, you know, there's some like force field ghost kind of thing. Like it just, it sounds made up. I know that it's not.

But if we just want to like, you know, kind of zoom in on these categories you've described, with all due respect, you've referred to every single thing that exists, meaning viruses, bacteria. Like, there's not a way that you have indicated that you can't try hijack the brain. You're absolutely right. I mean, if you think of it, the brain is your master

organ. It's the controller. It's the conduit between what happens outside of you, what happens inside of you. So if I can change any one of those processes, anywhere along that neurological axis from your fingertip all the way up to your cortex, well, then I can essentially change the way you're processing reality, what you feel, how you react. And I can get more and more sharp shot versus buckshot given the sophistication and precision of the tools that we have. And these are the tools of medicine. I mean, these are not inherently weaponizing tools. So we just take the same tools that we're able to use for precision medicine and just flip

them to now make more precise weapons that can target you and or me, but not necessarily anyone else, because we also have the availability and access to a whole host, to myriad data of individuals' medical records, their social media records. I've given it all away. Everybody knows. It's on every portal. Mind Balax Breakdown is supported by Incogni.

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off your first order. That's forkfulmeals.com slash breaker. Use the promo code breaker for 50% off. Thank you Forkful for sponsoring this episode. I think a lot of us didn't think about this, at least I didn't think about this, really until COVID. When I thought about a virus in some lab somewhere, right, which I always was convinced it was from a lab. And I worked in a lab where we had diseases that we plated. I literally worked in a genetics lab. I was scraping bacteria and incubating them all day.

That's what we did. Right? I never thought. And I guess, again, you know, that's naivete. I never thought, gosh, someone could really harness these. But we also never thought people would use an airplane as a weapon. right until that happened. When COVID happened, I started thinking like there's a thing in a lab and then like hashtag the government, you know, started making me think, oh, was this planned? Was it harvested?

That's, it's the stuff of movies. It's outbreak. Like we lived a version of outbreak. It's outbreak. It's an endromeda strain. Take any one of the books that Michael Crichton is written and just sort of reground that to the factuality. You know, the great part about the, Mike Reiton's books is you take a look at the back and he says, look, scientists, this is based upon science, but I'm a big in literary liberty. I mean, it's what the ancient Greeks used to call idola. In other words, you take the essence of fact, and you spin a tail from that so it was to be able to get your audience response, get them thinking about it. He was a master at it. But any one of those books, the books about nanotechnology and nanoscientists, about

genetic engineering, certainly about viruses, whether those viruses were manufactured, in ways that are truly malign, or they just got out of the lab. And that's, of course, what happened with COVID. So you're absolutely right. I mean, the tools we have at our capability that are leverageable for good, the next question you have to ask is, really?

Well, who's good? I mean, my definition may be one thing. But if you're my opponent, my definition of good might be to sort of bend you to my will, which is the impetus for warfare and conflict since time immemorial. It's also the impetus and motivation. for psychological manipulation. And some of the things that Jonathan and I are interested in

is sort of this fine line, right, between what the government is controlling in terms of information and what is actually going on for people. We have this very famous case of a gentleman, a Vietnam vet, I believe. And he showed up at the VA, and he said, they implanted things in my brain, and it's making me act violent and crazy. And they said, well, you're schizophrenic.

That's what we call it. And we're going to lock you up and we're going to sedate you because that was the tools at the time. it turned out he was actually operated on by the government with one of these like deep brain stimulation things to try and see what it would be like to manipulate his personality and make him aggressive and violent, right? And obviously that is not the case for every person

who says the government's experimenting on me, but the fact that we have this ability to manipulate the human brain gets really, really complicated also. We do look back at our own history. We can take a look at a variety of projects. The one that's probably best known is M.K. Ultra, Operation Bluebird, Operation Artichoke, you know, all of these were essentially projects that were generated because we had incipient knowledge and they sort of got into what might

be called dark programs. Now, the lesson learned from that is that you need to be incredibly ethically stringent and again, very often hindsight's 2020. But I think the takeaway from those studies is twofold. Number one, what can be done, and that pallet of what can be done is expanding as a consequence of the scientific methodologic and technological capability. And number two, who could do it? And this is where it gets really sticky because, again, not all countries, not only have been signatory to these weapons conventions and treaties, but they practice different philosophies based upon different cultures, and from them come different ethics and in some cases those are more permissive, and those are cultural differences.

So I think appreciating what's happening on the global stage as a consequence of these technologies being so potent and so capable really prompts the need to dial up the level of scrutiny, oversight, governance, and control. I want to get to who's doing what to make sure that we're aware of the adversaries and the potential tactics that are being. deployed because there is active cognitive warfare happening and we need to unpack that a little bit in this episode. But before that, you mentioned Bluebird and Project Artichoke. I think a lot of people are familiar with MK Ultra, but can you walk us through Bluebird and Artichoke?

Yeah. So generally, those are precursor studies. The idea there was what do we know about physiology and what do we know about the brain and what kind of things might be targetable. Artichoke had originally begun as a U.S. military project. That was a very, Department of Defense Project, and then those were taken over by the intelligence community. So those were primarily done by CIA. The issue there was that there was some handoff early on. And we're talking about late 1940s, 1950s into the 60s. And then, of course, as you get through MK Ultra, that gets even further along. So, you know, many of these experimental protocols were actually developed and designed from certain concepts. And in some cases, really incipient studies and

interventions that happened during Hitler's Germany time, the idea of being able to access the brain and therefore affect the mind through a variety of drugs, through environmental deprivation, and so forth. Well, a lot of those were taken from that. So even the idea of something like MK Ultra, it was a play on words, or the MK was mind control, and then the ultra was, let's go one step beyond some of those early ideas that were pioneered during the 40s, during the Hitler's Germany time and then ultimately into the early 1950s. But let's back out of that for a moment because the other thing that's really important to appreciate it is that the impetus for those studies was that there had been some intelligence that our Cold War peer competitors and

adversaries were deeply involved with projects that were even further along than those. Like what? If we look at some of the former work that was done in the Soviet Union utilizing things like environmental or circumstantial isolation, the ability to develop certain drugs, the ability to utilize electromagnetic frequencies or sound, to be able to corrupt neural node network activity. And then, of course, certainly some of the work that had gone on at least tentatively in North Korea, the whole idea of the quote Manchurian candidate, was it real or was it not, was it suspected, was there real evidence of that? And of course, this was primarily holding prisoners in

isolation, sensory deprivation, housing them under really deprived conditions to be able to not only break their will, but to change their cognition and make them more vulnerable to a whole host of different influences. So the idea that these things could be done, for example, the prisoners of war then became part of the mindset, the same, what do we need to do to counter that? And if we need to understand how to counter that, well, how do these things work? So they sort of went in that kind of lateral direction as to what works, what doesn't. But the other issue that kept coming up over and over again is that our international peer competitors, as we're moving through the 70s, 80s, beyond the Cold War, the wall has come down, now we have access to what was formerly Soviet science,

and we understand that there was scientific and technological exchange, for example, between the former Soviet Union and China. Well, these countries not only had great access to science and technology based upon their desire to become technologically capable in the global market, but they too recognize that these could be governmentalized and as a consequence could be used from military intelligence purposes. So this is where you're really seeing that dual usability come to the fore. It's a little bit complicated when we talk about, you know, you mentioned different philosophies, different cultures. Like, it's very hard, especially for those of us in like the Western world, right,

to imagine that there might be governments who spend a tremendous amount of time devising ways to control their own people. You know, how do we have a democratic conversation about what's acceptable in terms of warfare? Because there's plenty of horrible and disgusting things that every government does, right? in the name of defense, in the name of protection, and the name of freedom even, right, in the name of God. And yet we have this entire class of warfare that, you know, in many cases, can feel a little bit arbitrary

as to who gets to decide who the real enemy is. If you take a look at what I would consider the commonly accepted guardrails on warfare, I mean, on one hand, you've got things that are longstanding. So, for example, the idea of just war principles, Augustinian just war principles. What represents valid representation or justification to engage in war, what then represents validity of conduct during the scope of war. And then you also have some derivative principles. One of the ones that's very often overlooked is what is justifiable so as to avoid warfare, the idea of what's called use contrabellum. Then, of course, you actually have rules of

engagement within the conduct of warfare by international signatory conventions and treaties. what is allowable within the scope of warfare? Well, you know, if that's sort of the framework, if those are the cornerstones, then, you know, what you have to realize is those provide relative duties and rules, but very often in the heat of the engagement, in the heat of conduct, you also have to take a look at individuals' moral compass and what happens under, if you will, the strain of fire,

or whatever that may entail and obtain. And then you've got to go one step further, and you say what would then represent things that would be defensible in defense of one's kin and kith. So here too, I think what one needs to do is to have a really granular lens to be able to say, all right, what are the moral precepts that these group of individuals are using? And then how are their ethical systems that instantiate that and put that into practical use? and then how governed, how stringent are those ethics being maintained in those circumstances and situations that are the real world, so to speak?

One of the things that you mentioned was, I think, about electromagnetic frequency. Now, this is something that obviously is spoken about in certain realms of science. And then there's this huge gap. And then people talk about it in terms of like, I can't concentrate. There's too many EMFs in this city. Can you explain to us what electromagnetic frequency is? And, you know, there's certain things that we can't talk to you about, but I think it's worth mentioning that when people talk about Havana syndrome,

this is one of the things people talk about. Is it possible that there's some sort of frequency that's being like, again, like, pew, pew, pew, you know, zapped into people's brains and nervous systems. You know, I'm asking you, because I really, like, I'm not asking for a friend. Like, what is going on with electromagnetic frequency and, how do you literally harness that and how is it even administered? In general, I mean, as a neuroscientist, what you realize is the brain is an electrochemical organ. And, you know, when I went to school a gazillion years ago, we used to think that one nerve cell produces one and only one neurotransmitter that are released from its terminal branch.

Well, that's old. That was called Dale's principal. And we learned that as sacrosanct. advances in the technologies that allow us to assess the brain and intervene in the brain have done away with that concept. And the brain, as you know, works far more like Wi-Fi than it does sort of like a single toe bone, footbone, leg-borne set of connections. So you're getting multidirectional connectivities within even a single group of neurons that then aggregate together and form clicks. And the way these neurons work is through graded electrochemical gradients or chemical sort of currents. But we also know that the electrochemical capability of the brain also has weak magnetic fields that are sensitive to weak magnetic fields. And now there's budding information that has grown off for some older theories that has now been justified by virtue of some very sophisticated technological work.

to even suggest that there may be what appear to be quantum processes, at least at a very small level, that are some way translated into more mechanical physical properties within the actual structures and functions of a brain. So that's a lot of energy existing in that communicative system. It's also, as you know, as a brain scientist, delicately sensitive. I mean, what I would tell my students is if you actually take a look at even a single nerve cell, What you're looking at is an elephant riding a unicycle balancing on the head of a pin. So that delicate nature of that can leave it very, very vulnerable. Now, the way brains basically work is they shut out a lot of noise.

Neurological systems are really noisy, a lot of stuff going on all the time. So the elegance of a neurological system is to sort of filter things out, kind of the way a stereo system would. I mean, when you dial in your favorite channel, you're not dialing the channel in. what you're really doing is you're bandpassing everything else out. That's exactly what neurological systems do. So if you were to hit a neurological system with electromagnetic current frequencies across a various range of intensities, you might be able to get some resonance within the network and disrupt that network. And we've known that for a long time. We know exposure to various electrical currents. I mean, clearly, the idea that you can electrocute someone and

short-circuit their nervous system. Getting struck by lightning. I mean, there are also, I mean, far greater sensitivities. And those sensitivities existed very, very small levels of different types of electromagnetic energy. And as you know, we're tuned. As individuals, we're tuned. You know, we have this whole phrase in the brain science, a C-1 brain, C-1 brain. And for some individuals, the architecture of that brain and the physiology of their nervous system, coupled with a variety of whole host of other things, developmental things, environmental things, render them far more sensitive to electromagnetic frequencies and amplitudes than others. And that can have pretty profound health effects. Health effects on the way the energy production occurs, not only in nerve

cells, but in almost any conducting cells, including, for example, cardiac muscle. They can affect the autonomic system. And as a consequence, exposure to a variety of frequencies to which somebody may be sensitive could really make them rather ill. Now, let's take that one step further. Now, just pump up the volume. So now if we're able to say that we know that there are particular frequencies that appear to be very, very sensitive and therefore to which people might be very, very susceptible to, or if I go back to what we were talking about earlier, where I can actually get some information about you that I can fine-tune that, well, it's not really a ray gun, per se, or is it?

Because that we're really doing is we're generating electromagnetic frequencies that we can then direct perhaps as far as 30, 40, 50 meters with relative precision. How am I not picturing

like I don't know, name a science fiction, I'm picturing, you know, Battlestar Galactica or something. You know, like, how am I, did you say 30, 40, 50 meters?

I did. I could be walking about and from 30, 40 or 50 meters away, someone could be directing electromagnetic frequency into my brain to disrupt my nervous system? I'm supposed to ever leave this room again? Well, tinfoil. Did you just say tinfoil? The truth of the issue is that, you know, for a long time to be able to do that sort of thing, you need a whoppingly large device that absolutely no one is going to miss. They're not going to go, oh, I thought that was an amusement park right? No. However, the scalability of these things has now

gotten to the point where, in fact, they can be used more clandestinely or convertively. So now we're talking about something that could easily fit in a car or a van. And so, you know, the field of vulnerability and volatility changes is the consequence of the sophistication of the technology. Is it possible that when we, are sending our soldiers out into the world, that they are susceptible to this kind of attack? Not just our soldiers. The idea of utilizing electromagnetic or directable energies to knock down things like drones or disrupt aircraft or machine systems. Well, certainly. Let's back up just a little bit, the ability to target individuals who have some relatively high value for whatever reason.

I mean, they may be high profile, or it may just be sort of social disruption of targeting this person or that person. Well, this brings, if you will, the battlefront of the brain to the backyard. My and B. Alex breakdown is supported by AG1. September is the moment when you feel real life coming back. Schedules are filling in. The mental load is returning. Everyone's quietly shifting back into structure.

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made better for a limited time only. Our listeners get 10% off plus free shipping at tumbleliving.com slash break. That's T-U-M-B-L-E-Living.com forward slash break. After your purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. How much targeting can there be so that there's not collateral damage? If you're talking about 30, 50 meters away, you know, you could be a lot of people in between the directed target and the device?

Please understand. I mean, first of all, everything that I'm telling you here represents my views and my views only and not represent the views of the United States government, the Department of Defense or the National Defense University. That said, I mean, that's an important caveat because I'm talking to you as an individual, and I'm specifically talking to you as professor of neurology. He's been working in this area for the past 30 years. It really depends on the device.

So you want to think of these devices being able to do one of two things. Dispers the wave. So, for example, something like crowd disruption, crowd control. And we already know these types of devices exist. Sonic devices, devices that are able to create an electromagnetic field, that's able to disrupt a broad range of not only electronic devices, sensors, arrays. We don't know this exists. You're acting like everybody knows.

Like, no, I've seen it in the movies. I've never seen this in real life. Yeah, the wave goes across the city, all the gas, glass breaks, and then no one is the same again. So we can do two things with the waveform. We can open it up this way, and we can close it in, this way. So here what you're getting is more of a generalized effect to be able to, let's say, affect a collective of things. Machines, drones, sensor systems, communication systems, it's a relatively broad array. but we could bring it in far more this way to be able to have much more of a specific or precise effect.

Think of this as buckshot. Think of this as sharpshot. Well, what's happened over the past 10 years, 15 years, is the ability to really create relative precision in those types of devices and the way those types of devices could be fielded, scaled, and used operationally. And to your earlier point, I mean, there has. have been news reports of crowd control, for example, in a number of different European cities that have used various forms of sonic energy to disrupt the crowd. We've seen that before.

It happened in the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union was still Soviet Union. It happened subsequently in Russia. And to be honest, I mean, if you were to look online and just Google sonic disruptors for house protection, you could buy this, though. What happens when it's used in a crowd? What is the impact on the crowd? Do people get headaches? Do their ears hurt?

Do they just feel nauseous? Do they have lasting impact or does it pass? And I know it depends on how intense the wave is, but in the times where it has been used for crowd control, as you described, do we know what the effects on the people have been? All of the above. I mean, it really depends on four factors. Number one, the dose.

In other words, how much of this? what is the intensity by which it's being delivered. Number two is the dose by virtue of proximity. How close to you up is this thing? So if you're, let's say, the front row of a crowd, it's going to affect you far more than if you're way in the back. Distance, absorption, diffusion, fraction. Number three, it depends on individual variation.

So individuals are differentially susceptible, and they also express different signs and symptoms based upon how this is affecting them and then how they also respond to that effect. And last but not least is, well, what else is, what else is going on. So again, two people may be standing side by side. One may be relatively healthy and robust, the other not so. And it may very will be that they're going to have differential effects on those two people. And the predictability may be different.

It may very well be that the person who was more robust and healthy is going to at least subjectively experience what may be a decrement in their capability and function. I used to feel really good all the time. Nothing ever bothered me. I don't feel so good. Was the other person may have felt, well, you know, I feel crappy all the time. Now I feel a little crappier. So again, one of the issues that comes up is the individuality and the specificity of these effects based upon a host of variables, which is really why when weaponized, these can be used clandestinely and covertly, and it can be very, very difficult to detect and to attribute. What you're describing is true of the human brain and nervous system in particular, right,

which can also generalize because I was just thinking, I was like, maybe they're trying to take out all the women over 45 because that's sure what it feels like, whatever that F is happening with thyroid autoimmune function and hormones. But I was like, we used to be very useful. We were loved for our wisdom. Now I got no wisdom to give. I can't remember my name, you know.

But I was thinking that kind of variability, right? This is sort of what gets blown wide open. but some of the symptoms that, you know, you're talking about, if we have longer term damage to the nervous system, right? You're going to see stuff that's hard to pin down. It's going to be like chronic. It might feel a little progressive and like, oh, if I'm stressed, it's worse, right? How many times do we notice that an immune system that is already activated, right, is less able to navigate other changes? Or, again, how many women over 45 or 50s, you know, who are like, I used to be able to have a whole day.

got a nap if something good happened because like my nervous system. But what I was thinking about is even in the short term, you know, we see all these horrible images of war, right, around the world, which, you know, we have the internet and social media to show us those images as many times as you'd like, you know, in a day. But the notion that even sound can be used as a weapon, that when things get really loud, it actually disrupts your ability to think. And if anyone's ever had a migraine, right? You've experienced how pain can make it hard to think. I'm a person who gets migraines with aura and it's like a whole dance. It's hard to explain to someone that the pain is so great, the throbbing is so intense, I'm not able to form words. So when you think about even how

sound is used that way, you get disoriented. When speakers are blaring at sonic levels, right? even loud sounds, people become disoriented, right? Like, that's the system that we're hacking, is a system that already is designed to be taking in information. You're absolutely right. So, I mean, and the auditory portal is just one. And, you know, you sort of taken that to the extreme, loud noises that are noxious for most people.

Well, it doesn't have to be something loud. It has to just be tuned to particular resonant frequency. high, low, humans are very exquisitely sensitive to what's called infrasound. We've talked about this. There's a lot of overlap, well, obviously, because you're a neurologist, there's a lot of overlap with neurodivergent populations, that hypersensitivity, right? We talked about there are some people who literally can hear airplane sound that other people would not. And it's not just like, oh, you have ADHD or whatever.

Every nervous system is tuned differently and just, you know, for kicks, throw in the genetically modified meals we've been eating, throw in all the chemicals that we eat. All of I always point out, like our nails and our hair, right? Like all the things that we're taking in, those change the ability of a system to tune. Micro and nanoplastics. I mean, all of those things are conduits and conductors.

Brains are plastic throughout the lifespan to greater or lesser extent. And the plasticity is mediated by three factors. Number one, what is the genetic sort of blueprint, if you will? Number two, what types of things have been happening during development to turn that genetic blueprint on and off. And then more than that, what is the effects of those things that are then structured or function? So in other words, you sort of have this kind of rolling iterative effect. And let's face it, I mean, we're all born sort of but sometimes you refer to as paracinithetic. In other words, our senses kind of overlap a little bit.

In some individuals, as you know, they're truly synesthetes. They can hear colors and sort of taste sounds and so forth. There's like 60 different kinds, 75 kinds of synesthesia, yeah. There's at least five dozen types of what's called ambient synesthesia. So what it really illustrates is two of the points you very well made. Number one is that every brain is different, a variety of different reasons. And number two, that difference in brain and neurological structure and function tune us differently to things, change our susceptibility, our biases, and even our dispositions for how we function. So something like sound, as you say, on the subsonic level can be very disruptive for some people,

other people find it comforting. Same is true at the high end and a whole bunch of things in between. Also with visual stimuli, something as apparently cryptic, as subtle as changing the pixelation index, the flicker index of the screen that you're looking at, and we're all married to screens on some level or another, can be used to change neurological functions that are viable for, cognition, concentration, vigilance, awareness, and even capability and function. Could they be weaponized? Sure. But take a look at the screen. You're looking at me right now. I apologize because I have a great face for radio, but you've forced it to look at me. So one of the things that we know can be done is to actually

change the flicker fusion ratio or the flicker ratio of the various pixels that make up the image on this screen. Okay. And we've known this for a while, the idea of subliminal imaging, Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, they flash popcorn. Everybody wants popcorn. Now, if you really, really back that up, because now what we can do is work at a much more precise and much more granular level of time frame, you can then begin to impregnate literally the pixels on the screen with disruptive visual cues that are going to change the way in individuals, both retina, the receptive area of the eye, and then the way the optic nerve processes all the way from the eyeball through those intermediate nuclei of the thalamus up into the cortex. So you're changing not only the way the

information is being delivered, but the way it's being sensed and the way the perception is based upon those sensations. And this could be literally on an unconscious level. It's wholly subliminal. That that's the elegance of it. Right. Like I wouldn't notice anything is up. I always want popcorn, so that wouldn't work for me. Yeah, me too. So, you know, the thing I think that's becomes really important to understand is that when we're talking about this kind of stuff and we're talking about weaponizing this, we're really not talking about weapons of mass destruction per se. I mean, that's not to say that, you know, some rogue group or some nation state couldn't produce a pandemic virus in a laboratory and let it loose on the world or bacteria or fungus or create some drug that

could be aerosolized and delivered by drones. Sure, they could. But the real nuance of these types of things lies in the very same nuance that makes them so useful in precision medicine, is that they have individual effects on very specific targets. And so the way these things are being developed and used is not as weapons of mass destruction, per se, that we would use like a nuke or an explosive, but rather weapons of maximum disruption, whether disruption can occur within an individual's syndromes or disrupt the way individuals interact, relate, engage, and function. It's like invasion of the body snatchers is basically what we're talking about.

Yeah, kind of on a neurological level. People who are listening may just have practical questions like, is 5G impacting me negatively? Should I move my Wi-Fi router away from being next to my head while I'm sleeping? How bad is it that I'm carrying my cell phone around with me all the time? Is it changing my function in some way? So just, you know, we went from high impact weapons, but just to give people something that's very specific, you know, what's your perspective on those questions? We live in a very electromagnetically rich environment. I mean, we're essentially living in a noise floor. It's a very noisy electromagnetic environment.

And our new technologies are contributing to that a lot. And we're surrounding ourselves with it, in our cars, in our homes. So the idea of being prudent, I mean, that's the best way I can sort of, you know, the idea for attempts using the speaker on your phone rather than putting the phone right up next to your head. The idea, as you say, of not necessarily sleeping on top of your 5G router or your Wi-Fi system and putting a little bit of distance between you, the idea of not being sort of screen-wetted all day, married to your screen all day, recognizing that even something is benign as the spectral frequency of light can disrupt your light dark cycles and disrupt the way your body produces a neurohormone that's very useful for sleep, which is called melatonin. So understanding that we are very,

very sensitive and susceptible to these forms of electromagnetic energies that we're surrounding ourselves with, I think just would command a little bit of prudence in terms of how often we use these things, how close we are to when we use these things, and just how cautious we are in the way we use them. So the rule of thumb, literally the rule of thumb, is about a handwith away from an active plug. Because characteristically, if you're working with household current, I mean, you're not like sleeping in a generator station. But about a hand width away is enough to sort of diffuse that type of thing from a socket or an active plug. But what if I'm tuned special? I'm a special brain. You don't know what kid you've got. I got one kid who sees dead people

and the other one doesn't. They slept the same distance from a plug. I'll give you a very personalized example. I mean, so you've been very overt about some of your experiences with peptides, like GLP, right? He read the article. He read the article. Yeah. So for some people, they work really well.

They're profoundly into inflammatory. They help not only bring down weight cravings and food noise. They can cure you of every autoimmune disease you've ever had was the promise I was given, yes. For some people, that's true. and for other people, it's a disaster, case in point. So the issue there is, you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, it's sort of Monty Python-esque. Every brain is special.

And what we mean by that is every nervous system is differentially tuned. So part of it is if, you know, you kind of find yourself feeling a little off and like, well, what happened here? And you realize, well, I got this new bed. And oh, by the way, my head is like three inches away from the plug. Yeah. You might want to begin to think about this. And like anything else, you know, as you could tell from my speech impediment,

although it's probably gone away, I grew up in New York City. When I was a kid, there was a store. I think it's still there, which is called Sims. It was a clothing store. Oh, yeah. Right. And they used to have a commercial where the guy who owned at Cy Sims had his daughter, whose name was Marcy, and they would come on and they would say,

at Sims, an educated consumer is our best customer. That's the maximum I really want to give to your audience. in this very, very rich, electronically enhanced, engaged, magnetic environment that we have created for ourselves, an educated consumer is probably the safest public health advocate for your own health and well-being. So, again, I mean, you know, thanks to broadcast like this, we're talking about this, increasing awareness helps people just to perhaps read the labels a little bit better. And if nothing else, be a little bit more aware that not everything that's supposed to be out there to help you and make your life easy is going to be a panacea and things affect people differently.

Traditional, very, very mainstream people will say there's no evidence to suggest there should be any impact. And yet that takes away the variability of sensitivity amongst the population set. So the people who are like, wait a second, I just feel totally overwhelmed all the time. Well, the reality is it may not be causing cancer, but it may be a stress, an underlying stress to you that you're around all of this electromagnetic these fields. And like you go out into the nature and things feel quieter, slower, like you can feel the difference. For sure. And, you know, I mean, let's face it. I'm talking to two scientifically minded people. And I know that your audience is also engaged with people who are intellectually curious.

And you know as well as I do that we were taught in science that measures of central tendency mean median mode. Well, that's essentially what we're using for our experimental data and ultimately we're getting our results from. Are these things statistically significant? What you're doing is you're measuring things. that are experimentally valuable and valid. This goes to everything we've spoken about. Statistics are super important. They're very, very important, and they're critically significant

for the kind of things we're talking about. And also, one person's experience is still their experience. And we talk about this also when we talk to people, you know, about UAPs and we talk about aliens. Like, I don't know how to tell someone, yes, your experience is real or not. But for each individual, that is their experience. You know what I mean?

Like for me, my EMF situation, yeah, most doctors you go to are not going to go to that. But every hippie practitioner I've been to is like, how many towers are in your neighborhood? Maybe go somewhere where there's less towers, you know? And they're like, yeah, that's the wisdom, right? There's a phrase or a term that I think has gotten horribly beat up and abused in sort of the mainstream verbiage, which is holistic approaches. But I think that's really important because you can't extricate the individual from their environment. And you have to recognize that we've grown up in an environment and that the effects are sort of reciprocal and complementary. My environment affects me.

I mean, literally from the time I was conceived in the womb until the time I hit the grave. And I'm affecting that environment. So like anything else, it becomes really important to have that level of awareness. What am I surrounded with? Is my environment a healthy environment? are the things in my environment that may be, as you say, stressful, that may be even more than stressful, that may be harmful, risky. And then what can they even mitigate that?

I always joke. The smells of my childhood were mothballs and roach spray. Like that's how I grew up. See, this guy gets it. That was like the smells of my childhood. Like, that feels like home to me. And like this guy's from Toronto and he's like, what is going on? Like, I was raised with mothballs and roach spray.

Who knows what else happened to my nervous system? No, I mean, I remember when I was a kid, it was it was raid, right? If I went to my, went to my great aunts, it was mothballs in her closet. Cigarette smoke and lysol. Like, ah, childhood. So you're absolutely right. Is there any evidence that the people who are building their silver towers, you know, like they have their protective electrofields to sleep under that like are canopy above your bed or

ways of grounding your house actually provide any defense or quieting of this stuff? Simple answer, yeah. I mean, we recognize the benefit of Faraday-like cages and Faraday structures against certain spectral frequencies with electromagnetic energies. One of the things that becomes incumbent on our own responsibility is that as we sort of surge forward with these scientific and technological developments, to recognize that there's no free lunch, that these things may impose really important effects that add to our flourishing or our survivability, but the knife has two sides. And it may be dosymmetry, dose dependency, how an individual is exposed, their susceptibilities. So to be able to understand that, yeah, one side of that blade

may be very useful, but the other side of that blade could be very risky at least and perhaps even threatening and harmful. I think that's just responsibility for what science and technology is doing in the public sphere. I think about also psychiatry, neuropsychiatry. Like, how do we understand also how to treat an individual, right? There's so many of these other factors that are going into an entire system. And obviously, I mean, I just spoke to someone who was on, I won't name the drug, on a, I'd say an atypical medication that's given largely to women at my stage of life for psychiatric issues.

And all of a sudden, her estrogen dipped and it stopped working. But she didn't know that. The medication that she had been on for over a decade, all of a sudden she was feeling violent, aggressive, and it turned out it was an estrogen dip, and that medication is no longer the medication, right? But in isolation, that could have landed her in a mental health facility. Oh, for sure.

I'll harping you back to your own dissertation work. So looking at the fact that the neuroendocrine system, the hypothalamic pituitary and then gonadal axis, that controls estrogenic release, is intimately sensitive to variations in neurotransmitter and neuromodulation capabilities, functions, and effects. So even just taking a look at like the hypothalamus as the master structure above the pituitary, that sucker is innervated like crazy with a variety of different neurological inputs that are neurochemically diverse.

And then it's also outside of the blood brain barrier. So it's also being exposed to a variety of things that the brain ordinarily would not necessarily be susceptible to because parts of the hypothalamus are more sort of diffusable to those things, microplastics, environmental stuff that enters the bloodstream. So you're absolutely right. If you have something that is a drug, a neuropsychoactive drug, well, that's a neuropharmacological agent. And it's changing this individual's neurochemical control of their hypothalamets, which is then coupled to the fact that there's also doses of this circulating in the bloodstic. stream that may not have reached the neurological compartment that can also affect hyperfluonic nuclei. And downrange of this, well, that's pituitary, downrange of that, are ovarian, as well as adrenal estrogenic mechanisms. So you bet, I mean, again, the susceptibility is these systems

don't exist in isolation and to develop that more holistic systems approach, I think is the key to precision individualized medicine. And you're right, for a long time, as we said earlier, to reiterate our point, we tend to base findings and evidence off measures of central tendency, means, medians, and modes. And in so doing, it diffuses out the individual effect, which has to be appreciated in real-world clinical contexts. A lot of people who listen to our podcast, a lot of people who share particular episodes, tend to focus on exceptional abilities that people have. And whether that person has exceptional abilities from birth, and they just seem to, to be that way or whether they've had a near-death experience or some other, you know, significant,

you know, medical issue. And in some cases, people have experimented with psychedelics in ways that expand consciousness and, right, can you talk a little bit about what your understanding is of this tuning system in that we're finally having science kind of catching up to conversations about, you know, people who otherwise might be put, you know, for lack of a better you know, phrase into an institution, right? We had Lorna Byrne is who I'm thinking of. We had a woman on from Ireland and she said, you know, as a little girl, she was very dreamy and always like head in the clouds, but it got to a point where people were concerned about her cognitive development, like what's going on in there. And as she got older, she was able to articulate

that she was having what she describes as like spiritual experiences all the time with what she believed were entities that communicated. Now, you would normally say, okay, by Western psychiatric standards, these are delusions, this is hallucinations, right? There are many people, though, who are not fitting criteria for these things, and it turned out, it's not that she was developmentally challenged. She was, she functions in another plane of tuned frequency, right? And she ended up getting married and, you know, kind of having an understanding of the world. But, you know, she wrote a book that, you know, millions of people have read to understand what is it to have tuning that is that different. What do you feel might be the evolutionary advantage of that? Is this a window into a spiritual

mind that, you know, science is just starting to articulate? Did this happen all the time in biblical times? And now that we have technology and computers, these people are fewer and farther between. What's your understanding of people with these kinds of experiences who otherwise don't fit, you know, diagnostic criteria for psychiatric or psychotic disorders? That's an incredibly good question. I mean, I think that the first way to begin to approach the question is to understand what's called the normal distribution or the normal, the bell curve. The whole thing is normal. I mean, realistically, that represents some numerical frequency or distribution within a particular population. We're the ones who define where we're going to make

the thresholds for what is acceptably normal, given a set of functions, per seattle, and parameters, engagements, et cetera. So we're the ones who are defining those thresholds and tolerances. That's number one. So it really represents how well is this individual functioning in X? Can they function? Number one, is it viable for them? And number two, is it also viable for whatever is going to be the context in which their engagement occurs, right? And in some levels, that represents one of the base psychiatric criteria. Is the individual, quote, suffering? Are they functionally capable? And or is the individual capable of interacting in those ways that allow them to be socially engaged, productive, whether it's vocationally, allocation, and whatever. Sure. Let's put that up on a shelf because the reality of it is, is that in truth, we all change, perceive what is our reality? I mean, the idea of what's, quote, out there, and what we see to be real is a function

of a whole host of things, inclusive of our sensory organs and their structure, the nervous system processes that information, what's happening physiologically, and even cognitive processes that sort of bias our observations to dictate what we orient to and how we define what those observations mean. So the idea of a purely objective reality with the Germans is deingan zich, the thing that is really out there, well, that's really not accessible to us because our bodies are filters and our subjective and phenomenological reality is a consequence of that filtration. That's number one. Number two, the tuning of that, the neurological tuning of that is based upon, I'll not say myriad factors, but many, many, many factors that influence how that

brain is developed, its architecture and its function, how function then affects architecture, from the point that the brain forms a primordial nervous system in the womb throughout the lifespan. Injury, engagement, pleasure, pain, experience, all of those things can not just functionally change what nodes and networks of the brain are differentially interactive, but can change the structure or architecture on a brain of a variety of levels from simple proteins that exist in the connecting spaces between nerve cells and glial synapses, as you know, the very large-scale arrangement of the way that whole groups of nerve cells and glial cells will aggregate to form communities of function called clicks, which then defines nodes and networks. Well, if what we've said, the simple premise is that each one of us engages the world differently as a consequence of our structure and our function, well, there's no reason to believe

that each and every individual's precept cognitive, cognitive milieu, experience is going to be identical. And the other issue is, of course, that given that tuning, that neurological tuning, there are some individuals who can process things cognitively differently, sensorally differently, and may be far more perceptive to a variety of internal cues from their own body, as well as external cues from the environment that give them what appear to be exceptional cognitive capabilities. I mean, also emotional and spiritual. spiritual capabilities. When I was an undergrad and, you know, studying Demasio and studying all these, like, high-level conversations, right, about consciousness, about soul, about God in the brain,

you know, this was kind of on the fringes of what we were allowed to talk about as mainstream science, but I think that's such an important change that's occurred. These are people who are not only having cognitive, you know, abilities. I hate to bring God into the equation, but they're having spiritual experiences, right, which are tangible. I've been very fortunate to work at some great people in the area. I mean, Andy Newberg, as you know, was sort of a prototypic figure, one of his earlier books, why God won't go away, talking about what neurological and cognitive processes might be involved, not just in religious experiences, but in spiritual experiences, even those

that may be, for example, secular, right? And then I've worked with some other wonderful colleagues, Dr. John Enga Bretzen and my longstanding colleague Dr. Nico Colson, Germany, and really looking at what those mechanisms are, and how they may be able to be entrained, induced to various practices, rituals, or simply engagements with various forms of environments. And are they inducible? Now we start getting into the idea of not only what might be a psychedelic, but what might be an entheogen. In other words, what types of things may induce this level of cognitive processing, awareness, perception, that the individual perceives and engages, appreciates as deeply spiritual as connecting with something greater than themselves.

What was the word you used? Entheogen. New word today. If something is entheogenic, it induces what is some type of a theological experience, literally, where they're having a rational accounting of being engaged with some type of deity, whether that deity is a naturalistic deity or not. I mean, whether one is sort of praying to Spinoza's God or praying to a more Abrahamic figure, the idea is they're connected. And that gets into a lot of the work that, again, I'm doing with my colleague and longstanding buddy Nico Colson, Germany, which is, it's not so much a question of approaching Chalmers' proverbial

hard question of consciousness and what consciousness is. I mean, I think we're pretty limited in our capability to understand that by virtue of the toolkit we have. So we're coming at it from a slightly different angle. We're saying, what is the brain? What is the brain do? What is it doing? I mean, obviously, the whole greater than the sum of its parts, but what is that whole? This is part of what our interest is in the paranormal and in these exceptional experiences because obviously, you know, if you hear hoof prints, it's usually horses, not zebras, right? And I think the same is true, not just in clinical diagnosis, but in understanding other people's experience. But I think that's something that we're so interested in, right,

is that there are people who have a completely different framework from which they're operating, which in many cases, you know, echoes thousands of years of wisdom, right? But yet here we are. This is important because it also, I think, speaks very strongly about culture with a little C. In other words, where is one in culture? Let's face it, if I grew up in sub-Saharan Africa and I hear footprints, I'm probably not thinking horse because my experience and my reality is zebra, gazelle, antelope, which is far different than somebody who grew up in Montana, who here is hoofprints and isn't thinking of himself that's a zebra. So part of it is that embeddedness, you know, what we'd like to talk about is that brain,

certainly exist in a body. We like to talk about the brain, but the brain isn't just out there. We have embrained individuals. That brain is embodied, and that body is deeply embedded within its environment, its ecology, and that creates particular cultural, environmental susceptibilities and sensitivities. So yeah, for somebody who's living in sub-Saharan Africa, those footprints, what's going to be sort of cognitively resonant is zebra. Somebody who's living in Montana, it's a complete cognitive dissonance that it would be a zebra. But I think your earlier point hits it right on the head. We're talking about things that may be paranormal,

where they all exist as some form of the normality of what the system can do, but they exist on the edges of that normality, either by virtue of their statistical occurrence in the number of people or their statistical occurrence in a person or group of people, or literally the rarity of the phenomenon due to the uniquity and individuality of that person's brain and its architecture and functions. So I love the word paranormal versus something like supernatural, because I think what paranormal does is it grounds us to the fact that we as humans can only appreciate, know the natural world. We only have the tools to be able to do that. Anything that goes beyond that is a belief system, and that's fine. But the things that we can approach with our tools, our tools

of observation, our tools of manipulation, experimentation, empiricism, that's a natural world. All these things you're talking about, the possibility of remote viewing, exceptional cognition, the idea of perhaps telepathy, deep intuition. Well, these things are natural, And the question really is, how is that happening? What's the mechanism? I'm into it, right? Like, you're our new best friend. Explain how telepathy, remote viewing, explain how those things could be seen as natural phenomenon from like a neurophysiological perspective. Okay. So let's let's think on a big level for a second. And I have to get you back to some of the stuff that I'm doing with my, with my colleague, Nico Coles, my buddy Nico.

I'm going to ask you a question. You're a neuroscientist. What's the brain? I mean, really, if I say to you, Dr. Biolik, this is Dr. Gerdana, we're having a Socratic discussion. What's the brain? You and I were probably taught through our neuroscientific education that the brain is a generator of those mechanisms of cognition, emotion, and ultimately behavior. It's a transmitter. It's a transducer. It's, you know. It's still generative, though. Jonathan says no. The non-neuroscientist in the room says no. All right, Jonathan, what is the brain?

What do you think? It's a receiver processor. Oh, see, perfect. Brilliant. So in one, we'll say that the brain could be a receiver, like an antenna. Like any antenna, I just can't stick my finger up in the air and pop in Wi-Fi and be able to watch my favorite television show. I have to say this. Big Bang Theory.

I had to. I had to do it. I'm sorry I had to do it. So I was going to say, I was going to say Pumpkinhead, but I thought maybe not. Oh, that's a deep cut. No, no, I loved it. So I have to still build the antenna. It has to have a specific structure, right?

I mean, it just can't be something you stick up in the air. Despite the fact that when I was a kid, you know, my parents used to put antenna to be able to get the TV. Fine. It's called a coat hanger. Yeah, it was a co hanger and you had to hook it up the right way and train the rabbit he is. I know. But even then, it had to have the right orientation. So you're absolutely right.

It could be an antenna. But what is being antennized into it? What's it capturing? Is it capturing something universal? Is it capturing something fundamental? Is it taking it to my name's earlier point where it's transducing? It's taking one kind of energy and making it into something else, perhaps. Or maybe it's a box.

Maybe it's even far more simple than an intent. It's just a receptacle that has to have a particular form. Obviously, a box has to have sides and a bottom and maybe even a top to hold stuff. And then once it's in the box, what's ever in the box takes the form of the box, and then there's that interaction between what's in the box and the box itself. Could be. Or it could be an antenna that captures something and then brings it into the box. Or could it be that there's an antenna that captures it holds it in the box,

and then once it's in the box, it's a substrate for the generator. It could be all of the above. I like the last two. At the end of the day, I've got to tell you, I've been a neuroscientist since 1982. If somebody held a gun to my head and said, tell me exactly what the brain is doing across all those constructs of cognition, emotions, and behavior that brains do, be like, pull the trigger, I don't know. It's not, it's not Chalmers' hard question of consciousness.

It's a far more fundamental question of what is the whole doing as a function of its myriad parts. Fancy talk, where we tend to devolve to something called the meriological fallacy. Bennett and hackers' approaches and philosophy of brain science, which is we like to take a look at things in parts and then describe the entire function by virtue of what the parts do. No, no, we really need to be far more holistic in appreciating that the brain is a system of systems that tends to function as a whole network of component networks. Now, let's just pause here for a second, vector and adjust.

Then you have to say, well, what is the environment in which that brain is functioning? and it's functioning in the natural universe, which means there could be a lot of things in that universe that a particular brain may be even able to capture as an antenna, sequester as a box, and generate. So now we have to go into what forces in the universe might be able to be perceived, and then you have to get into things like neuronal processing speed.

And there may be some people who can process things exceedingly quickly, versus others, perhaps more quickly. And they may be attuned to that level. They may be far more attuned, for example, to somatic sensations, that we sometimes call gut feelings. And only now we've come to recognize that the gut brain sort of interlinkage relationality is very neural, is very biochemical, is certainly due to other, quote, humors in that they have gaseous neurotransmitters that are capable of diffusing very, very fast across the relatively great distances of the nervous system from gut to brain and back and forth. And that these things are codable.

They're codable through environments. How is it not viable, possible? And that's also, that's claircensions, right? The knowing through, and I didn't even know that was a thing. Like, I've heard the word clairvoyant, but there's claircensions. And Jonathan will describe this. He'll say, like, I feel, it's like something drops into my body and I feel it. I don't have this sense, so I don't know what it's like.

But that sounds insane, but it's a thing. Oh, it is a thing. It's absolutely a thing. And I think each and all of us possess it to a greater or lesser extent. It's simply a question of a, are we attuned to it? In other words, are we perceptive of our own states of being in those situations or in those situations where it's going to be meaningful, valid, and valuable? So I'll give you an example from both my prior life, my girl. I used to fly airplanes. Now I ride motorcycles. No one's shocked. The fact that you just said, I used to fly planes, now I ride motorcycles. No one was. was like, really? Yeah, I do. I mean, so, you know, in both of those situations, you're attuned to very different nuances of, number one, the machine and number two, the environment in the machine, right?

So you used to fly some aerobatic stuff. And you understand, well, I know when the plane is going to sort of aerodynamically stall and start to tumble. Same as you on a motorcycle. So you understand not only, well, how much lean, can I put into this, how much break, but you also get very, very aware to the censorium around you. And in some ways, that's almost intuitive. It's almost clairvoyant that you know, you know something is going to happen because it just

doesn't, quote, feel right. Part of it is experience. Part of it is training. Part of it is repetition. And it's very somatic. It's very, I feel that. I'm not special. I mean, I'm not more special than anyone else.

People do this all the time. But I think what tends to happen is in the colloquialism of our daily lives, we disattune to some of those things that are far more fundamental and, if I may, primal that may have had at one point in our evolution or even at one point in our development and our lifespan, significant value for our survival, for our flourishing, for our happiness, for our discomfort or its avoidance. And we've tended to filter that out by superseding it with other things that take. take on far more pedestrian value to us. So again, some of these techniques where individuals become sensory deprived, to deep focus, they use various forms of mindfulness and meditation, various devices, for example, that can change vagal nerve stimulation and viability or transcranes, electrical and magnetic stimulation, individuals who had brain injuries that may change no network architectures and functions

of their brain. And of course, we mentioned earlier, individuals, who are taking a variety of pharmacologic substances, not just psychedelics, but perhaps other types that are able to change that in some way, tweak it, and as a consequence, make them, if not more capable, perhaps more aware of their extant capabilities. We speak to a handful of materialists here who are like, this is all poppycock, meaning the stuff that we talk about, right? There's no such thing as the spiritual.

This is just something you're generating. like we're not in a virtual reality world. It's not a simulation, you know. And I appreciate the things that we can, you know, touch and measure. It's extremely important and it's the foundation of science. But you also can't ignore that for thousands of years across a variety, you know, of traditions and modalities and histories, people have experienced things that are outside of this realm of the conscious experience.

And in many cases, it's very important. There are three interactive variables. Number one is, did they have the vocabulary to describe it? And the answer may be no. I mean, like so many other things, we tend to be limited by the tools we have of observation and also of description. But there's also full empiricism. In other words, these things didn't go away. It wasn't as if these phenomena and these experiences went away as a consequence of iterative technologic sophistication across the millennia.

They're preservative. And number three, they're preservative, even given the fact that we have very sophisticated techniques and technologies now, that now allow us to do something different. Not just name it and frame it, but identify what may be the operative mechanisms and as a consequence make particular claims about what it involves.

And it doesn't in any way dispel or diminish the phenomenological value of this for individuals. It's not a question of, well, am I generating this on my own and there's nothing out there. The question is still, what am I generating? even if someone says, well, no, no, no, these things are just aspects of our, of our cognition. They exist at the pre or subcognitive level that they may bubble up through these level of cognition because they represent sort of these deeper levels of second or third order consciousness.

Fine, let's take it down one step further. What is cognition? How is the brain doing that? What is the brain tuning to? Is there some capability of this thing as a brain as an electrochemical organ and perhaps of electromagnetic and maybe even on some level, basically quantum, although probably not fully quantum, are quantum operations sustainable, for example, in triptophan tubules? And what does that then mean when we translate things at a very, very small scale, sub-nanoscale, to things that are

scalar and more mechanical? There has to be a transfer of whatever that process is into something that is then translatable into the mechanical operations of an electrochemical physiological system. So I think what tends to happen and we're seeing is that, yeah, the language, the verbiage was absent. The tools were absent. And now as the tools are coming more into play and getting ever more granular, sophisticated, capable, we need to develop a language that corresponds to that. And in some cases, I think where it comes to be problematic, is that some of these older terms, what is considered be spiritual versus religious, what is consciousness and what is not, what do these things represent in terms of the arc of. paranormality and what represents, if we talk about things that are telepathic, is it truly telepathic or individuals picking up on a variety of different information, perhaps about

subtle cues that others may not have access to? There's an experimental and investigative prompt that needs to go there. And I think anyone, and I'll go out on a limb again. I'm a 70-year-old guy. I might figure, okay, I can say this. I've had a pretty rich career. And I've been pretty ballsy about it. I think anyone who dispels certain things that have persistent empirical evidence that have stood the test of time in terms of their reports and their viability in literature, either whether folk literature or scientific literature, if they dispel it out of hand, if they lose that curiosity, they're not a scientist anymore. Now you're a dogmatist. People who are so fanatical about the possibility of even engaging in a conversation about

what does telepathic communication look like. I say to Jonathan, and they seem more religious than I am, that it doesn't exist than I am that it does. I had a very interesting off-camera interaction with a non-speaking autistic young man, and there was a lot of things that as a scientist I cannot explain, you know, about what I was experiencing in active real time, and I know he's not the only one. There's something, you know, kind of going on, and I think especially, and, you know, maybe we could kind of transition into a conversation, about consciousness, right?

The notion that I've kind of been able to wrap my head around. And a lot of the telepathy tapes, you know, especially the first season that really excited a lot of people, it was missing, you know, a certain level of scientific inquiry and analysis, which they're trying

to sort of, you know, remedy with season two. But, you know, how many different fields, whether it's physics, quantum mechanics, philosophy, religious studies, and now certain individuals, who do not speak with their words, right? How many fields do I get to look at that are telling the same story,

which is that information exists? And there is a way for us to tap into that. And some people may do it in ways that are, you know, not able to be understood. Some people can be taught to have access to that. You know, I have a little bit of a problem saying, like, consciousness exists in an information field and you just reach into it and pull out information.

And if I want to think about Jonathan, right, like I can't, if I want to think about Jonathan, I'm actually impacting the spin of an electron that's paired to his electron. Like, that's a little hard for me. But the notion that information exists, possibly on a non kind of quantitative level, that's fascinating to me.

And I'd like to believe there are ways that we can look at this. I get the impression that you, like me, would define yourself as a non-reductive thing. In other words, you're not going to deny the fact that there's a physical structure and architecture to a nervous. Sure. Okay. You know, you can touch it. It's there.

I mean, it is the extensible thing that you can do. But you also have to understand that, and I'm not going to devolve to the whole idea of emergence because that's sort of like Santaeat trying to explain the Easter Bunny. No, no. But as a function of properties and as a function of capabilities, the intersection between what the structure, structure is doing, and what the properties that that structure evoke, again, it's not like magic. It's a question of do we understand all the steps that exist between alpha and Z. And very often, we don't. We think we do. We may engage in fancy what's called ex-ubantibus reasoning. In other words, I know how one thing works. I know how this other thing works, and therefore I understand how they

work together. Maybe not. Maybe not. And that very often is the hubris of the capability we have at hand. I think that the tools I have are great until they're not anymore. And I either get some eureka moment where I discover something where the tools are like, where the hell did this come from? Or I recognize the limit of the tools,

and as I develop some new tool, I then have to develop some new theoretical importance or some new theoretical sort of insights. And I think this happens repeatedly. I mean, this sort of goes into these larger discussions of sort of, you know, Cunian versus Paparian science, is science stepwise or is it quantum? Yes, it's both. And I think that there are certain things that occur in science and technology that are evolutionary. And then I also certain things are certain

that we become revolutionary. We just can't go back to the way you used to think about certain things. When it comes to some of this brain stuff, I think that one of the things we have to appreciate, and I'll even just take the example that you raised, there you are talking to Jonathan, And you're saying, well, do I really think for a moment that my atoms are entangled with his and their sort of quantum process? Wait a minute, stop. The reality of it is that you interact with each other often in a variety of different contexts and circumstances. So there's going to be a relative neurocognitive and neuromotor entrainment that occurs

where parts of his nervous system are literally tuning to parts of yours. I'm going to wear a tinfoil hat. I don't want him getting him in there anymore. But it happens. It happens. And what tends to happen is we sense those patterns of similarity, whereby the biases that we engage through repetition, through circumstance, through proximity, through even various likenesses of the way we will react in a circumstance of situation, then we'll dispose the way we observe things, the way we orient, the way we decide and act. So that would be a loop, right? Is that entanglement in the question? quantum sense? No. Is that some form of engaged interaction based upon similarities or equivalences in the way nervous systems have been entrained? Yes. You bet you. Could we even take a look at certain structural and architectural changes that have occurred as a consequence of you're getting this relationship going? Maybe. I mean, I'd like to think that as a consequence of us getting together

here on this podcast that I've changed some of the synaptic activities in both of your brain. Oh, I'll be visiting you telepathically this evening. Is there cognitive warfare being deployed on normal people now? How much of the algorithms do you view as a form of cognitive warfare? And how should we be aware of that if we're going back to the educated consumer? There's still a bit of discourse. I would like to think it's delectical. I mean, where it's sort of different viewpoints coming together and they're all aggregating in the middle, you've got to break some of it down to build it together. But if someone were to back me up against the wall and say, is there such a thing as cognitive warfare? Yeah, I mean, I think in some cases it represents sophisticated forms of

psychological operations. But I think that the granularity of contemporary cognitive warfare or engagements is really a consequence, a function of the neurosciences, number one, and what we know about brains, both individual and group brains. Number two, what we can do with them, utilizing drugs, utilizing information, utilizing various forms of stimulation, some of them a little more aggressive than others, for example, information, computational programs, noise, electromagnetics. But then I think also the idea that AI plays a very, very strong role in this, because what we can use AI for is not only to develop algorithms that are able to interpret individual and collective patterns of cognition that can then be targeted for influence,

but can actually then develop the means to do that through various computational programs whereby now individuals may be doubting what is real and what is not. And as a consequence, there may be that even momentary gap, is this veritable or is this not? And then how do those things affect individuals' attitudes, values, emotions, decisions, and actions? So the long answer to your question is, yeah, I think cognitive, quote, war for at least cognitive engagement in the biopsychosocial dimensionalities is a real thing. It's real enough that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its constituent nations and certainly now the United States government, as well as other governments that are pure competitive governments and militaries,

are deeply engaged in understanding that and articulating into operational means. So it's a thing as to what can be done, I think like anything else, awareness is a really important start point. Number two, not just awareness on the part of individuals in the public, but also public programs to be able to make people more aware of the fact that these technologies that are information technologies can be hijacked and can be used or misused in those ways that could be problematic. Have you had any experiences that have been special, unusual, unique that make you more open to thinking about these things? I think anyone who hasn't had one of those experiences is either insensate to it or they're denying it. I mean, I think we've all had certain experiences where we go, what was that?

And they can be exceedingly benign, but their profundity is there. I mean, I can tell you, I've had, I mean, I don't want to sound expansive. But, you know, I've had certain experiences, for example, in an airplane. I mean, and just what I call profound experiences where you look out and it's a sunset or a sunrise. And you look out over the wing of this airplane, you think, yeah, I understand all the physics of flight. I know how the engine works. I know lift and all the aerodynamic stuff. This is just amazing.

This is incredibly beautiful, right? being out in nature, I mean, I don't mean to sound like a tree hugger. Not that there's anything wrong with a tree hugger, but I grew up in New York City. My idea of a tree hugger was like the one tree that was available on the street corner, right? But I mean, being in nature, I think can be exceedingly grounding because what it does is it literally brings us back to the natural, to those things that are very fundamental in our sort of primal and primal and primal environments. And we tend to detach from that quite a bit. we realized that. The idea that being involved with the brain sciences for almost five decades and seeing the way that that particular science is evolving, the level of specifics,

the level of granularity of what we know and what that then means. And at the same time, still scratching our head and going, you know, we really, we're getting this great understanding of the minutia of the parts. Man, we just can't put the whole thing together. I mean, for me, that's very humbling in a spiritual way. Because I think that there is a grandeur to that that goes along with sort of the fabric of the universe writ large. And if you look at certain things, whether it's mathematically or physically, I think that there's a reproducibility and a consistency in certain patterns that we need to appreciate that, again,

like Carl Sagan has said, we were the stuff of the stars. I buy that. I mean, on some level, from the exceedingly small to the magnanimously. large. And I find that amazing. Thank you, Dr. Georgano. What a pleasure to speak to. We really appreciate your time. Thank you. I mean, I'm really, it was a privilege and a real honor. One thing I didn't want to correct him on because he's so very charming. I find this kind of neuroscientist very charming. A lot of times people will ask me, how did you go from being a

neuroscientist to being a TV star? It's a great narrative that people tell you. tell, but what's missing is that I was on a TV show already. I actually went from a normal human to an actor, to a neuroscientist, to back to acting. But that you're trying to go back to a normal person and it's not working. I will never be a normal person. From the time I don't think you were ever really a normal person. I was. I mean, I was inhaling mothballs and roach spray. About as normal as you can be. Do you even know what mothball smell like? Of course I do. What are you talking about? Delicious. I think it was really interesting. The idea, of variability and that, you know, a lot of the, this doesn't bother anyone, conclusions that

get presented don't take into account that variability. And it could be very much that someone who is more sensitive is going to have more of an issue. And I also think there's a frog and boiling water where we get to have a new normal and therefore we just assume nothing is bothering us. Well, I really love this notion. And I'm actually very eager to hear what people think about this, especially in our, you know, our breaker community and the community over on substack, because, you know, he's basically, he said, nothing new is happening in the last several thousand years. It's not like, oh, all of a sudden. I mean, yes, some people would argue aliens are coming. But as Dr. Pasolka talked about, as Jeffrey Krippel also talks about,

it may not be that there's anything new under the sun. It's just we keep trying to explain it different and we keep trying to have a narrative that makes sense. But what if it's all the same thing? And I love this idea that he opened up the possibility of like, yeah, once you give people grace to be able to say, what if you're different? And that's not as unusual as we used to think it is. Because of course people are ashamed to say this. That's the age of disclosure we're living in. People are no longer afraid to say, I experienced something that I don't know how to explain. And it used to just be like, take a drink, go to bed.

And then 50 years later, someone would be like, can you believe? And you're that old person being like, oh yeah, I saw a ghost. I was abducted by aliens. They took my brain out through my nostrils. And I had a baby. It's an alien. I was just listening to an anecdote, a little story the other day. Goldie Hawn is talking about, oh, yeah, she saw a ghost in her house.

And it's happened multiple times. And that's just fact now. One of the things I was thinking about is like, how did this guy? And you know, I always want to know how people got where they are. How did this guy? podcast. How did you get to be who you are? There's nothing more interesting to me. And I'm just thinking like, who's this guy that, you know, ended up working for the government? Like, he's the one you ask about

Havana syndrome. How did he become that? And then some people might say, how did you become who you are? The place to kind of go into more of this is absolutely over on substack. So please join us over there. If you don't know what substack is, find out. Go to biolicbracdown.substack.com. There's content there that is only available there. That is sort of the place that our lives live, these deeper discussions about episodes, bonus content.

So please head over there and from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my and Bealick's Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down.

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