Near Death Experiences, Telepathy & the Multiverse. An Astrophysicist Explains Infinite Versions of You May Exist | Dr. Charles Liu

Dr. Charles Liu (astrophysics professor and host of The LIUniverse podcast) joins Mayim Bialik's Breakdown to reveal the physics of consciousness, time, & the multiverse! We explore the biggest scientific mysteries humanity is facing today: - How scientists are beginning to take disclosure into their own hands to gather evidence that could actually prove the existence of nonhuman intelligence - Why information about nonhuman intelligence is being released in such a confusing and dramatic way, and whether governments are intentionally communicating this way - Why there's still no scientific proof Earth has been visited by nonhuman intelligence, but why there's nothing irrational about thinking seriously about aliens - Could AI ever become conscious? What would scientists actually need to observe before saying it has consciousness? - What consciousness really is, the different levels of consciousness, whether consciousness creates us or we create consciousness, and why understanding how the brain processes information from our five senses may be the key to solving it - What death actually is, what collective consciousness could imply, and whether nonspeaking autistic individuals may be accessing reality in fundamentally different ways - Similarities between near death experiences and DMT, including the mystery of ego death - Whether there's something beyond memory that connects us to our past - Why time may not be as linear as we experience it, and how our brains shape our perception of time - The Many Worlds theory, why multiple universes may mathematically exist, the new scientific frameworks researchers are developing, how entropy could unlock these ideas, and what time travel between universes would actually require - Why scientists who are absolutely certain they're right may actually be hurting science itself - A scientific and philosophical approach to understanding people who claim they've been abducted by aliens - How we determine what truly has consciousness, and why that question affects how we should treat AI, animals, and potentially other forms of intelligence - Why humans experience romantic attraction and what may actually be happening beneath the surface when we feel drawn to another person - Physiology behind people who appear unusually sensitive to changes in entropy - Evidence, controversies, and scientific questions surrounding biofield therapy and whether intention could influence cancer cells - Why humans vary so dramatically in their physiology, and how that should change the way we approach trauma treatment - Why religion may have been a necessary social technology for human evolution - Why Godzilla reflects humanity's attempt to understand overwhelming forces like nuclear war and other events beyond our control - How much of reality is objectively shared, and how much is filtered through our own unique perceptions If you enjoy conversations that challenge your understanding of reality while staying grounded in science, philosophy, and evidence, this episode is for you! All the Buzz, None of the Booze — get 15% off your first order at http://kavahaven.com/breakerHead to https://Superpower.com https://superpower.comand use code BREAK at checkout for $50 off your membership. Get 150+ biomarkers tested, a personalized health plan and on-demand care team. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpodGo to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive up to 30% off your Helix mattress. Visithttps://drinkag1.com/BREAKDOWN http://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. Go to https://tidd.ly/4uVltMe and use the code MAYIM15 to get 15% off orders of $200 or more. Dr. Charles Liu’s podcast, The LIUniverse: https://theliuniverse.podbean.comPre-Order Dr. Charles Liu's latest book, (Super) Natural Science: The Real Science of Superheroes, Mythic Creatures, and the (Sci-Fi) Universe: https://a.co/d/08pHA0SpOther recent books by Dr. Charles Liu:- The Cosmos Explained: A History of the Universe from its Beginning to Today and Beyond: https://a.co/d/00qyXcOG - The Handy Quantum Physics Answer Book: https://a.co/d/0gu4Fl5z See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The equations of quantum mechanics predict that there can exist a multitude of universes. Whether the Schrödinger's cat is living or not living, produces another universe. Quantum physics predicts nature very well. What else can it predict that we have not yet discovered? Einstein's theory of relativity predicted the existence of black holes. Every single particle in the universe, every time it does a quantum thing, a new universe is spawned.

• 0:31Mayim Bialik?

  Dr. Charles Liu is an astrophysicist whose research tackles the biggest questions in the universe.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  The problem of consciousness is one of the most significant in all of philosophy.

• 0:41Mayim Bialik?

  That's why Bruce Grayson started his research. He said, "I had a patient tell me the tie I was wearing yesterday when she was in a coma."

• 0:48Speaker 00

  Right, and what's wrong with that? We have this thing called quantum entanglement, which does not depend on how close we are or how connected we are to something at any given moment. But see, that's the whole point. These unknowns fill me with wonder and joy.

• 1:10Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Iam Bialik.

• 1:11Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:12Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our breakdown. Today, we've got a very special treat. I would say we are talking to one of the most open-minded astrophysicists we have ever encountered. Dr. Charles Liu is a professor of astrophysics at City University of New York's College of Staten Island. He's also an associate with the Hayden Planetarium and Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. He's the host of the podcast, The Luniverse, with Dr. Charles Liu, a good friend of Neil deGrasse Tyson's, and we have been waiting to speak to Dr. Liu for so long. We're going to start our conversation with asking him to explain what science can't explain. But most of the episode is spent exploring what science has yet to understand.

• 1:57Mayim Bialik?

  We ask him about near-death experiences, universal theories of consciousness, and quantum mechanics. He is so creative, so playful, and also so open to thinking outside of the box.

• 2:08Jonathan Cohen?

  We also touched on the many-worlds theory, energy and the body's energetic system, what memory holds, is there a notion of a soul, and more?

• 2:20Mayim Bialik?

  One of the things I love about this episode is Dr. Liu is open to hearing Jonathan and my perspectives that we have gathered from years interfacing with our community and speaking to a variety of specialists. And he entertains and helps us explain possible theories for everything, from love to post-traumatic stress syndrome to is time not linear? What a pleasure to welcome in person Dr. Charles Liu.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Break it down. Thank you, Dr. Bialik. What a pleasure to be here.

• 2:50Mayim Bialik?

  I promise we will call you, I like calling you Chuck. That feels appropriate.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  I would love that very much.

• 2:56Mayim Bialik?

  We had Neil deGrasse Tyson on. We've had him on twice. And the last time he was here, he was a real killjoy.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 3:03Mayim Bialik?

  Because we were...

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Not Neil.

• 3:06Mayim Bialik?

  We were talking about aliens, and obviously, I get it, right? Physicists are not in the position to say aliens exist. It's not what you go to school for and training for. But I wonder if we could sort of, as a starting place, maybe you can sort of help us, because you are known to be very playful and very creative in the way that you talk about and communicate, you know, some very complicated concepts, especially in the field of astrophysics. Where are you in terms of the current climate, right? Of our political state, our conversations about disclosure? What are we seeing and what might we see?

• 3:44Speaker 00

  From the overall, general scientific point of view, we can say with certainty that there is still no scientifically solid evidence that extraterrestrial life has ever come to Earth while we have been around and sentient. That is 100% still true. Nothing that has been disclosed or has been shown or anything like that constitutes the kind of rigorous scientific proof or even evidence that would either confirm or refute extraterrestrial life coming here onto Earth.

• 4:20Mayim Bialik?

  You're kind of being a killjoy, too?

• 4:21Speaker 00

  No.

• 4:22Jonathan Cohen?

  However.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  No.

• 4:23Mayim Bialik?

  How? He was gonna say however.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  However is the part. The however is the part, right? I am always happy to see evidence. I want people to show that evidence. And I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility that it has happened, but the evidence isn't there, right? Now, that is the main issue. Those of us who believe that extraterrestrial life exists generally are sure that it's out there somewhere. But whether it's here or if it's plentiful or that kind of thing, we need the evidence. That's what makes us want to feel good about that. But the imagination, the way we think, there is nothing wrong with going beyond and to consider.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Everything as mundane as Star Trek or the wild and crazy things that many speculative fiction writers have written about in the future and things like that, the three-body problem. All cultures, every thought tradition has imagined the existence of extraterrestrial life. So I have no problem talking about it and thinking about it and going, "Oh, cool." The main issue is just to know the difference between what is scientific and what is non-scientific and what frankly is pseudoscientific or fake.

• 5:39Mayim Bialik?

  Right, and I think that that's where a lot of people are getting overwhelmed with misinformation, disinformation. And the fact is, we're in an era where information is available in ways that looks very reliable. You know, I encounter this with my mother, who will send me things. And she'll say, "Can you believe this?" You know, the pig jumping on a trampoline. And I'll have to, you know, inform her.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  Say, "No, I can't believe it."

• 6:02Mayim Bialik?

  Right, I don't believe that. But it is enjoyable. But I think that one of the things that is confusing for a lot of people is, you know, we do have this notion of the government is releasing files. And we talked about this with Neil, and I was kind of like, we don't need to be dramatic about it. If you have a body, show it to me. If you have, if there's a chemist who has, you know, analyzed whatever, I don't care if it's silica-based, like whatever is going on, I want to be shown definitive proof that this is not of this world. And this is what I think we kind of, you know, get confused about, or at least, you know, we sometimes have disagreement about. You know, having one person who says, "I've seen it,"

• 6:46Mayim Bialik?

  is not the same as presenting it. Is there drama being inserted for, you know, like political effect or just dramatic effect? Like, what is, like, just show me all of it. Do you think we can't handle it? Because it used to be like, is this a security threat? For us to realize like, "Oh, my God, there's aliens." But I think we're a little bit past that. I feel like there's something going on with the way information's being delivered that I'm curious if it makes you feel one way or the other about what might come.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  That's a great point. And I look back in history. Of all the different kinds of things that were mysterious, whether they're aliens today or whether they were ghosts or demons or witches centuries ago, anytime someone wanted to manipulate the environment or the people for their own personal whatever, what they would do is to say, "Oh, I got something that I know that you don't." And then they make it mysterious and unusual. And you know much better than I do how the human brain works, right? We assess evidence in a way that's very unscientific.

• 7:57Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Right? And the whole point, when Galileo first published this thing, Il Saggio Torre, in 1623, I think it was, explaining, "Look, there is philosophical truth, and then there is empirical truth. And I choose to follow the empirical stuff for now." I'm not saying that there isn't an absolute thing like the beauty of a tree or the ethics of a rock. But instead, I will for now try to study this tree and this rock by its color, its size, its properties, its materials, its composition, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So that's how we, fortunately, in the past four centuries, have become able to assess information

• 8:43Speaker 00

  more than just by taking someone's word for it or seeing it printed and then like interpreting in our head, but actually seeing something. And so what you've just said is right on, right? Show us. Let us see it and let us evaluate it the way that Galileo told his Catholic church oppressors.

• 9:01Mayim Bialik?

  We recently spoke to D.W. Pasulka, and Dr. Pasulka, you know, talks about how, for all of human history, we've reported things that we can't understand. And depending on the kind of cultural epoch that we find ourselves in, you know, we find these explanations for the things that we can't yet explain or that we don't yet understand, right?

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Well said.

• 9:22Mayim Bialik?

  And, you know, you've talked a lot about zombies and monsters. And I was thinking about, you know, Godzilla, right? And what you've talked about. And, you know, it hadn't occurred to me, like, we do, we create science fiction in particular to deal with the fears that we're having as a society.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 9:42Mayim Bialik?

  So can you speak a little bit to Godzilla as an example, right? Of a cultural moment

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:47Mayim Bialik?

  that needed... A villain, a savior. Can you talk a little bit about how aliens might fit into that framework?

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Wow. Great question and super awesome. And it totally does relate back to religious studies. I told you, my eldest daughter, Hannah, did study religious studies in addition to the classics. And what she has told me, and I hope I processed it correctly, is that our definition of religion in the United States or in the Western civilization that we're used to right now is extremely limited. We've always tried to box in other people's religious ideas and spiritual connections in what we thought religion was. But if you look actually beyond on the whole spectrum

• 10:36Speaker 00

  of how people experience or manifest spirituality, it is indeed that sort of something is unknown and we ascribe it to something we don't understand. And how do we do that? Well, let's put it on something else we don't understand. It's just beyond us. But it's not always, say, in our tradition, beyond us forever, right? There is this all-knowing, omniscient set of deities or single deity or whatever, where they know everything and we don't and we never will. But rather, it's like, there is stuff that we don't understand, but it's okay. And there will come a time when we do understand if that is our destiny. But even if we don't understand it, we just ascribe it to, well, you know,

• 11:21Speaker 00

  that's how it goes, you know, and that's where you go. And then what happens is that as time went on, people were thinking, well, maybe I can influence things. Maybe I can hack the universe, right? Maybe I can change the odds in the favor of me if I can try to access that sort of thing that's more awesome than I am. And then concepts of prayer, concepts of sacrifice, concepts of that kind of thing come into play. And then from there, the ideas evolve further when you have a government or when you have an authority and they wish to find some way to exert that authority beyond what we might be able to see on a daily basis, eating, sleeping indoors and things like that.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  And now let's just invoke that and say, you, if you listen to me or these documents as I have interpreted them, I can give you a chance to beat the odds or improve your lot in this life, or if this life sucks, in some future.

• 12:23Mayim Bialik?

  The next.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  And so that's sort of the evolution of how religion has become this sort of social activity. And there are plenty of scientific papers too that have described the possibility of religion as a necessary part of human evolution, that we, being biological creatures, we are natural, but we don't understand everything. And so we need to have something to explain something that we might consider supernatural at the time. And you said it really well. We're past that in many ways now. We don't need you, an authority, to tell us, trust me, we have this special information

• 13:08Speaker 00

  and we're going to dramatize it and exploit you from it or profit off of you or entertain you with it. We can handle it and we are okay. And you know that right now, the American Astronomical Society is meeting as we record here. And I was there at that meeting and I will be there again in a little while. And it has been such a joy to see everybody talking about different kinds of ways that we're studying the universe and just saying, you know, the common theme, we don't know. And that's why we're doing this, you know? We're not waiting for someone to tell us or to inform us what secret information they have. We don't know, so we're going to go find it. And that's what makes us feel much better,

• 13:53Speaker 00

  more, even more able to hack the universe to some extent.

• 13:58Mayim Bialik?

  My MBX Breakdown is supported by Rabbit Air. I have to say, we absolutely love our Rabbit Air purifiers. I'm one of those people who didn't know that this could change my life until I got my Rabbit Air. We actually have three of them so we can have allergen-free air wherever we're spending our time and recording. And with fall allergy season on the way, having a high-quality, effective air purifier on hand is absolutely key to tackling those fall allergens and keeping your space clean. Rabbit Air's advanced Bio GS Hapa filtration goes beyond standard filters by trapping over 99.99% of ultrafine particles down to 0.01 microns. It efficiently captures microscopic allergens like pollen, mold, pet dander,

• 14:40Mayim Bialik?

  and more before they can settle in your home and make your life an allergy problem. The minus A2 and A3 models both are certified asthma and allergy friendly by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, meaning they are proven to actually remove allergens rather than just recirculate the air. Visit rabbitair.com or call their 24/7 consultants today. That's R-A-B-B-I-T-A-I-R dot com. My MBX Breakdown is supported by Quince. You know those pieces in your closet that you reach for over and over again? That sweater that somehow works with everything? The jeans you know will always fit just right? The bag you carry everywhere? Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe and that's what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials

• 15:22Mayim Bialik?

  using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, premium stretch denim. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And as the weather gets colder, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe, from warm, responsibly sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves to beautiful 14-karat gold jewelry that adds the perfect finishing touch. I'm personally obsessed with Quince's 100% European linen wide-leg pants. I can wear them year-round because I live in Southern California. They feel like PJs, but it looks like I put a ton of effort in, whether I'm dressing for casual workdays, lazy weekends, or vacation vibes. I'm also obsessed with their sheets, so soft. Everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work with ethical factories and cut out the middle people, so you pay for quality, not brand markup.

• 16:07Mayim Bialik?

  And it's not just apparel. Quince brings that same approach to everything they make, from hotel-quality bedding to kitchen essentials and thoughtfully designed furniture. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was My MBX Breakdown. It's the best way to support our show. My MBX Breakdown is supported by iRestor. You know, I'll be honest, when I got my iRestor Illumina Face Mask, I was a little intimidated. I've heard a lot about LED light therapy, but it honestly seemed like a lot to be fitting into my routine.

• 16:49Mayim Bialik?

  However, I have found it is incredibly comfortable. I can wear it while I answer morning emails. My skin does look brighter and I barely changed anything else about my routine. iRestor makes it easy to bring clinically-backed red light therapy into your routine at home. No appointments, no complicated steps. The Illumina Face Mask is lightweight, it's cordless, it's packed with over two times the LEDs of most popular devices. It also uses triple wavelength light therapy to target fine lines, breakouts, dullness, and the 10-minute treatments make it easy to fit into your routine just a few times a week. And then there's the iRestor Elite, which uses 300 lasers and 200 LEDs to help regrow thicker, healthier hair. And now you can support your hair from the inside too with iRestor's Advanced Hair Growth Formula,

• 17:34Mayim Bialik?

  a daily supplement that helps promote thicker, fuller-looking hair while also supporting healthier-looking skin and stronger nails. Whether you're focused on fuller-looking hair or healthier-looking skin, iRestor makes it simple to upgrade your self-care from the comfort of your own home. iRestor is offering some huge discounts on their red light therapy devices. Right now, you can save on customer favorites like the iRestor Elite Helmet and the Illumina Face Mask. Just head to iRestor.com, use the code BREAKER. That's BREAKER at iRestor.com. Please support our show, tell them we sent you. Give your hair and skin the upgrade they deserve so you can feel confident and refreshed.

• 18:07Mayim Bialik?

  There's a fable in Jewish kind of mythology of a golem, which is a, you know, a creature.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Yes, a great creature.

• 18:13Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, a creature that's crafted from, you know, the clay of the banks of, I think it originated in Prague was where the story originated. But, you know, this notion that there comes a time when we need something, right? To either protect us or to create this. I mean, look, it's the basis of every great Marvel movie and even DC, you know, or not movie, but like the comic books. Talk to us about Godzilla.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Godzilla plays right into all of this because we want to make tangible, something that is, feels beyond our control, that feels not natural, right? And so when nuclear weapons were first being tested and of course, Japan had been the target of nuclear weapons and thousands of people died and there were still, at that time, even many people who were sick and the recovery was still long. The folks who made the original Godzilla in 1954 were thinking, you know what? We are creating something that nature abhors.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  And so Godzilla was the way of saying, if we mess with this unknown stuff, then the unknown stuff is going to mess with us, right? You're familiar, of course, with the oyster cult version of Godzilla, right? History shows again and again, nature points out the folly of man. And Godzilla was that response, saying, you know what? If you guys keep doing this nuclear stuff, then nature will return and try to restore that. The original Godzilla, though, was really also a very personal movie. You see it and you're going, oh, these are humans and they're dealing with stuff. And so it was very subtle.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  As time went on, though, this creature became so iconic that you wound up with more and more of Godzilla being that savior figure, right? There was a famous Godzilla versus the smog monster, where human smog was creating this disaster. And so Godzilla had to defeat that person. And, well, person, that monster, right? We have other, like, slightly smaller versions of Godzilla. The Toxic Avenger, which was a silly movie, but, you know, fun, meaningful movie about that kind of thing. You say the Gollum, again, a, when the earth rises and says, you know, not so fast, you guys, right?

• 20:44Speaker 00

  There's all these different ways of us pulling these super creatures, superheroes and so forth, into solving our problems.

• 20:53Mayim Bialik?

  A lot of these examples, and, you know, I'd say even from, you know, religious traditions like Judeo-Christianity going back thousands and thousands of years, there were, you know, interfaces with other entities or beings. You know, one of the examples that Dr. Pasulka talked to us about, you know, this notion of some of the prophets' visions, right? Ezekiel's vision of this, like, it's like a wheel, but it's like a cherry. It's like, it's got eyeballs, like, what even are we talking about? And, you know, and in the Jewish tradition, you know, those prophecies came from sleep, from dreams, from like, let's go into a state. It wasn't like, oh, I was walking down the street to like, go to the market and I saw this.

• 21:37Mayim Bialik?

  It was, I'm going to put myself in a state to receive this information. But one of the things that I'm so intrigued about when we talk about aliens is how much this notion has entered people's homes and their bodies, right? Like, there are not, I mean, I can think of some X-Men examples, right? Where there's an embodiment, right? Or an absorption of powers. But I'm also so curious, what is it about this time we're living in, right? That is leading to this narrative, right? That they're coming into our homes and they're taking us up. And, I mean, you know, you've heard the reports, it's...

• 22:13Jonathan Cohen?

  And we spoke to someone who had an alien abduction where four people witnessed this. And now he's able to summon lights and he takes thousands of people. So while it hasn't been scientifically studied to the rigor of undeniable evidence, you have firsthand accounts of multiple people with their cellphone footage. You're like, what the hell is this blinking light that he seems to summon? What's going on?

• 22:42Speaker 00

  That's actually very complicated and multiple steps, right? I'll address one point first, and that is, this person was abducted by aliens, okay? In that person's reality, within his mind, it is philosophically completely possible that he was abducted by aliens. I've been wanting to ask you, as a brain specialist, right?

• 23:10Mayim Bialik?

  It's been a minute, but yes.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Yes, like, how much of our realities are really shared objectively? And how much of our realities are actually within us? Is there a percentage that neuroscientists have had?

• 23:22Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, they may, I don't have that stat. But I think that, you know, one of the things that, he's talking about Chris Bloodsoe here. You know, one of the things is, what is happening when other people are videotaping and witnessing? Like, what are we actually talking about? And we know that there's a lot of ways that leaders can be very persuasive.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:46Mayim Bialik?

  And there's a lot about kind of mentalism in here. Like, I don't, I don't know.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Right, right. See, Yuri Geller, if you remember this name, right? In this, became very famous as a mentalist. Johnny Carson, who had him on, he was a stage magician himself at one point. And so there's a famous episode where Johnny Carson brings Yuri Geller on and they were going to talk about stuff, but then Johnny specifically arranged tests and things that he knew he could easily do using stage illusions and asked to see if Yuri was doing anything beyond that. And Yuri could not do any of his mentalist activities, anything, anything, including the stuff that was supposedly testimonially confirmed by investigators.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  But, to your point about charismatic leaders and so forth, that did not change his popularity. In fact, it increased it. Because the people who wanted to believe wanted to know that he was one of them, a human who was fallible. And so their belief structure simply changed to accommodate the fact that the evidence was refuted. So these are the kinds of things that can happen. When you have the cellphones, okay, and you see lights coming on, someone like Johnny Carson would have told you, I could do that. You know, especially these days with remote controls, with anything like that. You can, I could, I can, you know, launch a spacecraft over there by tapping something on my phone, right? And is that magic?

• 25:18Speaker 00

  Arthur C. Clarke famously said, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And so it's not a natural thing at all. And so if we humans are believing or thinking or seeing something, it might be as real, shall we say, as the so-called objective reality, which may or may not exist philosophically, even from the physicist's point of view. From the early philosophers, right? Where they believed that the only important things were ideas, right? The actual, this is the anti-Galileo thing, where empirical was important for him.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  They would say, no, these things crumble into dust, but what matters are ideas, you know? Philosophical things that matter. Immanuel Kant called them the things in themselves. And so if ideas are filtered through our senses, being heard or being read from somebody into our own brains and we process them separately, my sense of reality is going to be a little different from yours. It's going to be a little different from yours. And if we don't know, unfortunately scientifically, what percentage of it is different, we could wind up with that kind of thing. He really could have, in his reality, have been abducted or probed or just brought on for a cup of coffee or something.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  You know, we will never know because that's not our reality. But then when he shares that reality with the rest of us, then we absorb what portions there are. And then all these other, when thousands of people are seeing lights and so forth, if those things are not in their heads, but in some sort of shared reality, then what is the process that created those lights?

• 27:09Mayim Bialik?

  We sort of have an agreement, you know, about the things that are true and the things that are possible. And I think, you know, one of the things that we're interested in, you know, is how blurry can you make that line? And what does that mean to say that someone had an experience that is so fleshed out and so real to them, so concrete? You know, what could it be that we just don't see that way, right? I mean, that's, that's the other possibility. Like, when you meet people who are deeply spiritually connected and you're like, gosh, I don't know, it's not really me, but like, I get that it's for them. You know, what does that mean to have a sort of shared reality?

• 27:45Jonathan Cohen?

  Yes, and with all reverence to science, who we want to explain everything, there's a history of science saying things are absolutely true or impossible that then they slowly start...

• 27:59Speaker 00

  100%.

• 28:00Jonathan Cohen?

  So there's this, not skepticism of science, but an apprehension, I think, to not have mystery, wonder or an explanation.

• 28:09Mayim Bialik?

  Radio waves, right? I mean, any of those things. Who was it, Lucille Ball, who had a filling in her tooth and she started hearing voices? And people were like, you're losing your mind. And no, she was picking up frequencies.

• 28:19Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, I have lots of other examples.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Many examples. And what I would say is that, as a scientist, I want the skepticism.

• 28:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  When my colleagues state with some sort of unequivocal certainty, this proves X.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  It is my impulse as a scientist to say, "No, it proves that X might be true. Show me more, and I want to understand more." It is, in fact, in my opinion, based on my reading of history, the people who are using science as that same kind of edict, saying, "This is, it is so," with absolute knowledge and confidence, that they're the ones that are abusing science just as much as, say, despotic people are abusing religion or dogma or anything like that. So I don't like that either. And so I actually like to draw that distinction. I think you said it really well, that there's this boundary,

• 29:24Speaker 00

  and there might be some fuzz between something that's scientific and that's not scientific, right? But I feel that there is something clear between scientific and non-scientific. And the problem is that people will abuse it in both sides.

• 29:38Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  You remember, of course, that in the heyday of communism, as it was practiced in Europe in the late 20th century, shall we say, atheism was the point, right? The Albanian government-

• 29:54Mayim Bialik?

  Well, it was a fanatical atheism.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Destroyed all the churches because they didn't want that. Of course, Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses, which has some grain of truth to it, but is not absolute also.

• 30:05Mayim Bialik?

  It doesn't have to be a bad thing.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  It doesn't have to be a bad thing. If religion leads you to live a wholesome life that helps others, that you care about communicating and being nice to people, that's great. But religion is like that. Science is like that, where people will abuse them one way or another. So if indeed, I would exhort everyone, that if indeed someone says, "It is scientifically confirmed and sure," that's actually a sign, that's a warning sign, that it's not science, and this guy is trying to pull something on you.

• 30:38Mayim Bialik?

  Correct. You can have an old hypothesis, but then you have to prove-

• 30:41Speaker 00

  That's right. It's 100% true.

• 30:43Jonathan Cohen?

  This is maybe a great place to suggest an approach, meaning that a lot of time on the podcast, we're speaking to people from different areas, some in meditation practices, some who have had near-death experiences and have had visions of things that they couldn't possibly explain any other way. Some people who are just super into science fiction and science fiction ideas, or ideas about how the future will go. Maybe you can help us say, "Based on the scientific understanding right now, how probable are some of these things? Are there explanations? Or where might we just need more information?"

• 31:23Speaker 00

  I would be happy to try to address some of those points.

• 31:26Jonathan Cohen?

  Amazing. This is how we're going to enter it, is non-human intelligence, right? So when we talk about, for example, aliens, or we talk about UAPs or UFOs, what we may be talking about is some other entity, intelligence, force that we may not be able to perceive.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  Ah, if that's so, how do we prove it? See, it is very easy to imagine that such a thing is true, right? We humans are great at imagination. And I hope we stay great at imagination, because we're about to get with technological revolution, right? The ability to get the answer to anything with a swipe of the finger.

• 32:10Mayim Bialik?

  Is he the one? Sorry.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. And you'll get an answer, right? The whatever program you ask, "Is he the one?" is going to say, "Yes," or "No," or "Maybe," or "Outlook hazy, try again," you know? But you'll get an answer. And it will be up to us not just to evaluate whether that answer is correct or incorrect, but to ask the right question, so that when we get an answer, it means something, right? So this is one of those things that, if we talk about, say, extraterrestrial or non-human intelligence, okay? Here's how you go. Right now, there is no evidence that there is other kinds of intelligence that are influencing us, except in the ways that we would like to imagine that we're influenced.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Many of us think that, for example, we're not the only species that has consciousness, right? There's clear evidence. Elephants, dolphins, dingoes in the Australian outback, they all express or show traits outwardly that clearly seem like conscious thought or reasoning to us.

• 33:19Mayim Bialik?

  Awareness with choice, right?

• 33:20Speaker 00

  Awareness with choice. And the problem is, we can't actually go in and ask them, "Hey, are you actually aware and are you choosing to do this?" Because all we can see, all we can perceive from either our eyes or our scientific instruments is what they present outward into our shared existence. And so we are ascribing that information to them. The problem of consciousness is, of course, one of the most significant in all of philosophy, never mind neuroscience or science in general, right? When I am talking into this microphone, is this microphone conscious? Does it know? Or what are the gradations? Is this microphone more or less conscious than this table?

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Or the pair of my glasses, right? What is more or less conscious? And then can we handle it?

• 34:12Mayim Bialik?

  Mayim Beal's Breakdown is supported by Incogni. As someone whose name is a little bit everywhere online, I know how difficult it can be to keep track of what personal information is out there. Your name can show up in places you never expected, and removing it manually can feel basically impossible. Thankfully, that's where Incogni comes in. Incogni acts as a personal privacy advocate. It finds the data brokers exposing your private info and handles the entire removal process for you across over 420 harmful broker sites. It's the first service of its kind independently verified by Deloitte, so you know it's legit. And Incogni automates the legal requests and repeatedly checks back to keep your info private as brokers attempt to relist it. You can even track your progress right from their iOS or Android app.

• 34:57Mayim Bialik?

  For complete control, Incogni's unlimited plan leads with custom removals. If your personal details pop up anywhere across the wider web, like old news portals, blogs, public forums, or obscure directories, you don't have to fight corporate legal departments yourself. Incogni's team of human privacy experts steps in to manually handle those corporate takedown requests for you. Plus, they have a new feature, their Exposure Scanner, which surfaces all those exposed links directly into your dashboard, letting you simply select which custom removals you want executed. They can't harm you if they can't find you. Take back control of your personal data today. Go to incogni.com/miam. Use the code Miam for 60% off an annual plan. That's I-N-C-O-G-N-I.com/miam, promo code Miam.

• 35:41Mayim Bialik?

  It's completely risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Check the link in today's episode description to get started.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  There are many people who, for example, make choices on their lives, what they'll use in their daily lives, what they'll eat and things like that, based on how much consciousness they think is in the things that they are using or eating, or whatever, right? Are we daily making, whether we're conscious of it or not,

• 36:09Speaker 00

  decisions about how much consciousness we're willing to eat and how much we're not, right? In Native American tribes, there was a tradition amongst some tribes that hunted the buffalo, the American bison. They revered the buffalo, because in this grassland, this was the thing that gave them all kinds of things: sustenance, life, materials, fuel, everything. So they were loath to kill them, and knew that the buffalo's spirit was powerful, but at the same time, they needed to. And so what I was told by a colleague of mine many years ago who studied this, said that the tradition was that they would offer a prayer to the buffalo spirit, a request. Say, "Hey, guys, hello, buffalo spirit."

• 36:54Speaker 00

  And they'd have this whole crowd of buffalo, you know, thousands and thousands of, and say, "Hey, we kind of need some stuff. Are you willing to let us do this?" And then they would wait. And if a buffalo, a single one or a couple, strayed away from the main herd, then they would say, "Oh, you are offering these creatures to us. Thank you." And then they would go hunt and kill those buffalo and use them. And then they would say, "Hey, we promise, you know, we're not going to take this gift for granted." So they would eat the meat, and then they would hand the hides, and they would use the sinews for this and that. And then the buffalo chips, of course, after they all left, this was the fuel they left.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  So that was the way that that culture dealt with the consciousness problem. It just seems that, like, our current consciousness problem is on whether or not there is a higher consciousness or an extraterrestrial consciousness leading us back and forth. So this is how I would approach it from the scientific point of view in trying to understand the currently unscientific feelings of it.

• 37:59Mayim Bialik?

  One of the notions of consciousness that, you know, we're most intrigued by, and look, there's a lot of, there's a lot of anecdotal reports, which I know is not, you know, it's not data.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 38:11Mayim Bialik?

  You know, it's like an N of one. And even then, you know, it's, you know. But I think that there is this notion of, you know, and I think in the plainest terms, you know, is consciousness fundamental? Or is it something that exists and essentially gives birth to us, right? And so if consciousness is something that is fundamental as sort of a building block, then in theory, you could see why some people would say, "My consciousness was no longer in my physical body, and I was able to observe things that were next door to where my body was laying on a gurney."

• 38:44Speaker 00

  Well said.

• 38:45Mayim Bialik?

  So, and this is, you know, Dr. Bruce Grayson, psychiatrist, you know, from UVA's Department of Perceptual Studies, you know, this is what they've studied there for decades and decades, right? How do we explain, right, situations where consciousness seems to not be bound to this vessel? And, you know, every spiritual tradition says, you know, "You're here for Earth School. This is the meat suit you're wearing." But, you know, and the example I give is when, you know, when my father passed away, it was so clear to me, that wasn't him. You know, like, I was looking at the vessel. But when we speak to people who, you know, die and come back, and we're talking like, "Chung chung," you know, people who are dead, flatlined.

• 39:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Do the thing again?

• 39:30Mayim Bialik?

  Chung chung. They often come back with very elaborate and specific descriptions of what many physicists would say sounds like a plane of consciousness, right? It's all just zeros and ones and we're like, it's this beautiful plane and if you do DMT, you'll see it, right? It's the matrix code. It's all these apparently Japanese characters. I don't know. So can you frame consciousness for us in this way in terms of your understanding?

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Let me try.

• 39:58Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  As far as consciousness being this universal thing from which we arise, I do not know of any scientific way that that has been confirmed or otherwise effectively tested.

• 40:12Jonathan Cohen?

  There are theories, though, that suggest versus confirmed. I think there's like a nice distinction there.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  That's a great point. When scientists refer to a scientific theory, it means one that is refutable, something that you said that can be tested, but when you test it, instead of being refuted, it is confirmed repeatedly, over and over again, right? That's a scientific theory. A non-scientific theory is one that you cannot test, that you cannot prove. I often like to say, my favorite non-scientific theory is true love conquers all. I can never prove that, but I still choose to live by it and I think it's true, right?

• 40:51Mayim Bialik?

  You're a silly man.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  I am, aren't I? I am, but, but my wife is such a sweetheart and my kids are awesome and I feel very fortunate. So from the point of view of a scientific theory, no such scientific theory has ever been developed. All right. Now, what we do know about the theory of consciousness, you probably know better. Please, if you have information, inform me, because I've been hoping to learn about neuroscience from you in this conversation. Okay. Consciousness, right, has numerous levels, even within our brains, right? One aspect of consciousness is very, to my understanding, very holistic, in that even though I am just looking with my eyes here, I know what it looks like from that corner. I do.

• 41:37Mayim Bialik?

  But until you turn your head.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Until I turn my head, I don't know for sure.

• 41:40Mayim Bialik?

  The simulation doesn't produce that.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Right. Precisely. So let's say I am on a gurney, okay? My heart has stopped, but there's still neural activity going on.

• 41:50Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  My brain.

• 41:52Mayim Bialik?

  How about an hour later, though?

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. I don't know.

• 41:55Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Because.

• 41:57Mayim Bialik?

  We've got a guy who was zipped up in a bag and he was out, he was gone for two hours.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:00Mayim Bialik?

  And on a fluke, they revived him.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  That's fantastic.

• 42:03Mayim Bialik?

  It's crazy.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  Good for this person. I love that. Can you imagine in those two hours, what went on inside that brain?

• 42:09Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I can't imagine. I know what he came back with.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 42:13Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  And let's talk about that.

• 42:15Mayim Bialik?

  Guess what? Loves the answer.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  Really?

• 42:18Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  Light of the world shine on me.

• 42:20Mayim Bialik?

  That's right. Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Here's the story. With that, right, when he came back and saw ones and zeros and matrices and so forth, what about, had he seen the matrix?

• 42:34Jonathan Cohen?

  That's a good question. We didn't know. What year was this?

• 42:37Speaker 00

  What about, was he a computer scientist?

• 42:38Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 42:39Jonathan Cohen?

  No.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  What about?

• 42:41Mayim Bialik?

  And all the people on DMT are not either.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 42:43Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  What are they seeing, right?

• 42:45Mayim Bialik?

  Not to be a neuroscientist about it, it's not just what are they seeing, what are they telling us?

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Right. When we scientists are trying to study the universe, we are looking for those other levels. We're not trying to say, this is the level, this is it, everything else is unknown, right? I really feel that we really no longer need to use the word supernatural. All we should use is the word unknown, right? Not yet understood. Even in the comic books, when you reference, one of my favorite characters, as you might imagine, is Mr. Fantastic, you know, widely considered as probably the most intelligent person in Marvel Comics, although Shuri, the queen of Wakanda, might also be there and Tony Stark and whatever, right? Never mind.

• 43:29Mayim Bialik?

  Well, he's, you know.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know he's young. But, but Mr. Fantastic is well-known for quoting in his books, that magic is a science I do not yet understand. Superman has, as one of his weaknesses, other than kryptonite, magic. Again, he is very susceptible to that, more susceptible than most, because of his, I don't know, what, right? But our heroes always have to have an Achilles' heel, otherwise they're not heroes, they're, you know, not interesting.

• 44:00Mayim Bialik?

  Gods.

• 44:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so we have this environment where we are looking beyond, but how much of it was already entered into our brains? I won't be able to tell you what I had for dinner last Monday, unless I think really hard, but it's in there somewhere, right? In two hours of lack of oxygen, what could have been moving around in that brain to have, was it something that this person had seen a long time ago?

• 44:33Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, it's usually like dead relatives and your whole life flashing before your eyes.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  When somebody has a near-death experience, why do they only see their own relative? Why don't they see other people's? If it were a shared afterlife consciousness?

• 44:47Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, it's not entirely fair, though, because, you know, let's say, people who believe in Jesus as their god.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:57Mayim Bialik?

  Often will see Jesus in a near-death experience. That's not proof to me that Jesus is real.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Right point.

• 45:03Mayim Bialik?

  It's proof that we produce, right?

• 45:05Speaker 00

  In our brains.

• 45:06Mayim Bialik?

  Right. In our, in our brains, in our minds, like however you want to sort of frame it.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 45:11Mayim Bialik?

  We're producing a filtered experience, right?

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 45:14Mayim Bialik?

  It's going to be filtered through whatever we encountered, and then the meaning that we make of it will also be filtered through. What I think is interesting is similarities across cultures with people who are not speaking and across oceans, and for thousands of years, there's been this notion that, you know, we're given some knowledge before we're born and then we forget it, and then we're placed here and we have all these experiences, but, you know, any religious tradition that discusses reincarnation, rebirth, right? A lot of these kind of things come, I mean, you know, Plato, the allegory of the cat, like everything you see, like this is, you know, there's a They Might Be Giants song to completely nerd out, called Where Your Eyes Don't Go, and it's about whatever's behind you, that the reality is you actually don't know what is happening until you turn your

• 45:59Mayim Bialik?

  head and the, you know, the video game gets filled with that screen.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  No, that's a hundred percent true and I, and I'm not trying to be unfair, I'm just, what I'm trying to say is not at all attacking the folks who had these experiences. I am completely willing to acknowledge that those experiences were real, but within their own minds. How much of our shared experiences in our lives, right, is reality and how much of it is internal? My kids are unhappy with me when I quote this, because I didn't read the entire Harry Potter series, okay? I only read, the only book I read in its entirety was the last book. So when I quote it, they're like, how, how, you know, you don't have the authority.

• 46:42Mayim Bialik?

  You're a poser.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  That's right. But actually, there is one line in that last book that I always quote, because I think it is so relevant to these kinds of conversations. At the, toward the end of the book, the protagonist asks a ghost, basically, right? Is this real or is this all happening inside my head? To which the ghost replies, of course it is all happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real? So if I were to be as scientifically honest and, and open as possible about it, I am willing to say that that was a real experience, it's just the reality that we did not experience.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  So if you think about the, all the people who have had common experiences, right, they are, I'll bet you all of them were told that there was something, that, that they have a common experience that they haven't experienced yet, right? From a medical point of view, I have understood that people with near-death experiences also have common things that happen to their biologies. Their brains run out of oxygen and, for example, or their, their neural activity starts to decline or things part, things start firing in different parts of the brains that ordinarily don't.

• 48:05Mayim Bialik?

  But if you're declared dead.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:07Mayim Bialik?

  I wouldn't expect for you to come back with weeks of information.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:11Mayim Bialik?

  And downloaded information also about the nature of time, religion.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:15Mayim Bialik?

  Spiritual existence.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  We wouldn't expect it, but it could be in there.

• 48:20Mayim Bialik?

  But we have to also then allow for, you know, what many people call a download of information.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  We can.

• 48:27Mayim Bialik?

  Because Elizabeth Krone was dead on the pavement after being struck by lightning, you know, literally down for a couple of minutes, and came back with enough information to fill hours of reporting about the things that she experienced, the things she saw, right? So that, obviously, time's not linear.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:44Mayim Bialik?

  I don't need to tell you that.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:46Mayim Bialik?

  But just the notion that you can have an experience where you are watching your body doing things from some persineum that I don't understand, you are hearing conversations that are not in the room that you're in, that's why Bruce Grayson started his research. He said, I had a patient tell me the tie I was wearing yesterday when she was in a coma. And he said, I could not explain that as a young psychiatry intern.

• 49:10Jonathan Cohen?

  He also said that she told me I had a stain on my tie that I got from lunch, but the tie was underneath the coat.

• 49:17Mayim Bialik?

  And she saw it.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Isn't that something?

• 49:19Mayim Bialik?

  No, it's not.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 49:21Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, but that's not, that's a download of information.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  Right. How does our brain work, I think, is the key question to this. If we can understand how our brain filters information from our senses, that would be the scientific information I want to know.

• 49:33Mayim Bialik?

  My brain clearly doesn't need me to be in it, is the only thing I can, like.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  That is an explanation, that's not the only explanation.

• 49:41Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Okay, I really, I really think that there is a way to process that. Now, obviously, there has not yet been, say, funding from some science institution to do it.

• 49:51Mayim Bialik?

  Your other options aren't so good. It's that my brain has tentacles that reach through the walls.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Right. And what's wrong with that?

• 49:55Mayim Bialik?

  Nothing.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Right. We have this thing called quantum entanglement.

• 49:58Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Which does not depend on how close we are or how connected we are to something at any given moment, but we don't understand it. That's a very, very.

• 50:05Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  You know, spooky action.

• 50:07Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  That's a whole nother story.

• 50:09Mayim Bialik?

  It's all strings.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I don't know about that either. The, the string theory has, has issues as well.

• 50:14Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  But see, that's the whole point, right? These unknowns fill me with wonder and joy.

• 50:19Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's go back to the octopus tentacles for a second. I feel like we glazed over that.

• 50:25Mayim Bialik?

  That's another option.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  That is just, yes, that is a hypothesis, that somehow, right, we are connected.

• 50:31Mayim Bialik?

  Say it. Say the whole sentence. Somehow. I'm in a room and I have a perception of something that's happening through a wall while I'm dead.

• 50:42Jonathan Cohen?

  Because he said we're all connected in some way.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then what you have to confirm scientifically is whether or not that connection exists.

• 50:50Mayim Bialik?

  Correct. Well, something's existing.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  I am more willing to say that something appears to exist and that our brains might be doing. There are coincidences that do happen, right? Our current, the President of the United States changes hands in 2025 and six months later tariffs are very high. Right? Now, that is something that you can probably have some kind of-

• 51:18Mayim Bialik?

  Is this a causation correlation conversation?

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Yes, it is, right? Now, our current President, a President showed up in 2025 and the Dodgers win the World Series a second time. Are they connected, right? Some people would say so, but other people say that's just a coincidence and the odds are it's just a coincidence. There are so many coincidences in this world. Have you ever heard of pareidolia?

• 51:38Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Okay, it's a fancy word for saying you see faces in spaghetti.

• 51:43Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, yeah, because we're, we're pattern, we're pattern recognizers and it's, it's in our human nature to see- I see faces in the clouds, like, yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Right, right. If you see 20,000 patterns, I, I saw this number once, I have to find the reference, but if you see 20,000 patterns, on average, one of them is actually causation. It's something like 20,000 to one. And, and I, again, I wish I could find that. I only read it once. I only read it once. So I have to find the paper to confirm it and things like that. But it's, it's a matter of neuroscience and our ability to see patterns and things like that. And how many of them are actually causal is a very, very small percentage. So with that in mind, we need to confirm that that one in 20,000 or one in whatever thousand it is, is actually causal, right?

• 52:35Speaker 00

  And even, let, let me bring, if we're talking about a near-death experience or a true death experience, what is death? When are we dead? When are we dead? If I'm, if I-

• 52:47Mayim Bialik?

  Two hours zipped up in a body bag, that's dead. Vinnie Tatt-Solman, that feels-

• 52:52Speaker 00

  Probably.

• 52:53Mayim Bialik?

  Well, but, but also, some people might say, oh, there was a faint pulse and his body could be in a state such that they couldn't find a pulse and blah, blah, I mean, there's-

• 53:03Jonathan Cohen?

  Which raises the question, how many people are being declared dead who are not actually dead?

• 53:08Mayim Bialik?

  She said they put people in the ground.

• 53:10Jonathan Cohen?

  There could be a lot of people that we're losing.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  Well, we have these things in our medical system called do not resuscitate orders.

• 53:17Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  And that's because we feel that there is some level of life that is not worth preserving. I could be on a ventilator and breathing forever. I could be, have a, some sort of a heart machine and have my heart beat forever. Am I still alive, right? So now our definitions become a little clogged.

• 53:42Mayim Bialik?

  Well, okay, go ahead, sir.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  And, and, no, no, don't, don't apologize. This is a very controversial thing and I'd like to say that, right? When, when people are put on ventilators because their lungs are failing and so forth, right? What, what they're hoping is that when your human body is relieved of the burden of having to breathe, then the rest of your body can then heal, right? Can slowly regenerate over time. Sometimes it's weeks, sometimes it's months, but many times also it doesn't work, right? And so unfortunately, that happens. But during that time, it's not that, oh, we put somebody on a machine and then we walk away and have a vacation. They're being monitored many times a day and things have to be kept clean so that there's no infection. Things have to be this, things have to be that.

• 54:29Mayim Bialik?

  It's not easy to keep someone in that state, right?

• 54:31Speaker 00

  So during that time, when you're not breathing for yourself, are you still alive? I think so, but how, at what point you say, you know what? It's time to let go. And that, I think, is that definition. So, so please tell me what you think about that.

• 54:47Mayim Bialik?

  Well, this leads to, you know, a satellite conversation about, I guess it's about, it's about consciousness, it's about agency. You know, the Telepathy Tapes podcast kind of took the world by storm.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  I haven't heard them, I'm sorry.

• 55:04Mayim Bialik?

  I can do my best to sum it up. You know, one aspect of the Telepathy Tapes is if you take non-speaking autistic individuals, there are certain individuals who seem to have, you know, a much more elaborate consciousness system and communication ability that in many cases was left ignored or untapped, largely because culturally, we, we have not known what to do historically with people who don't fit, you know, a certain, you know. So, you know, the example I give, there's someone in my family, you know, two generations ago who, you know, he was placed in a facility because that's what was done in the 40s and 50s.

• 55:45Mayim Bialik?

  And what we're now learning is that there, there are people who can communicate and who have elaborate intelligence and, you know, consciousness inside of a body that may not be communicating, let's say verbally.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  That feels really good, yeah.

• 56:01Mayim Bialik?

  It feels great, but the, the notion that is discussed in the Telepathy Tapes is that, you know, there's some, and this is just what, you know, people talk about, that there is some plane of consciousness where non-verbal autistic individuals can go and that communication can be shared there in ways that seems to not be explainable by other rules that we have about communication, how information exists. It's very interesting and it's not, you know, season one, it's, it's, we had Dr. Diane Hennessy on and some of her research is in season one and Julia Mossbridge is the, the cognitive science head for season two.

• 56:45Mayim Bialik?

  But I think the question, you know, that, that what you're talking about brings up is, you know, if I don't know what someone else's, let's say, experience is of their consciousness versus what, you know, is being reported, you know, are there ways to test, right? These kinds of things and that's sort of what Julia Moss, what Dr. Mossbridge is trying to do. You know, are there ways to examine, how do people know things that are happening? You know, how do people, because if you look at, let's say you give people, you know, a choice of five numbers, you know, you're holding up one of them behind a screen that, you know, if you're holding up five numbers, they've got a 20% chance, right, by chance of being right.

• 57:27Mayim Bialik?

  Why should they be statistically significantly accurate 40 to 50% of the time, right?

• 57:33Jonathan Cohen?

  This is the Stargate remote viewing.

• 57:35Mayim Bialik?

  This is the Stargate remote viewing, which, you know, Russia had been working on for decades. Like, I don't, Russia very early on was like, we will train people to remote view. I'm very skeptical about remote viewing.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  Didn't work real well, considering what happened to Russia, yeah, or that Russian government.

• 57:49Mayim Bialik?

  But it is a technique that is not only utilized like by our military and our government, but, you know, we spoke to Angela Ford who worked as a seer, you know, or a remote viewer for, for almost a decade in her time, you know, in the Army or in the, in the government for almost 20 years. You know, what, what could possibly be going on when we talk about, again, these are similar. It's consciousness that exists in some other place, which the Akashic records and many ancient traditions say. Information's just out there, right? We just need to tune in and some people are better tuned than others, right? I'm not good at a lot of things and I'm very good at other things. Maybe there are people who are good at tuning into something that is very hard to measure.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  What an interesting idea. I'm thinking right now, actually, as you talk, of, of brain-computer interfaces.

• 58:38Mayim Bialik?

  Great.

• 58:39Speaker 00

  Which currently exist right now.

• 58:40Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  And it is amazing to have, I've seen some footage of this, which, you know, just obviously there must have been cherry picked or, or cut or something, where someone with something like ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, who cannot move anything anymore. They put a brain-computer interface on Find a Way and then they're able on a screen to just think and say, you know, and say something, actually, you know, something that is meaningful to a family member and, and they just, you know, it, it's so emotional. They break down, it's just like, it's amazing. They felt and knew all along that there was something going on in there, but they just couldn't get it out. This is known, well, well-known science that now people have, people use brain-computer,

• 59:24Speaker 00

  your brain, you know, human-computer interfaces, whatever you want to call them, and they do, and they work. And now the goal is to make them so that they're portable or that they're useful, that they don't need invasive surgery or anything like that to be implanted, blah, blah, blah. There's lots of cool stuff going on there. So is there some other level, you're hoping, that there is that extra step? Unfortunately- Or maybe fortunately, on the electromagnetic spectrum

• 59:51Mayim Bialik?

  Yep.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  that we understand, there seems to be nothing that allows that to happen.

• 59:55Mayim Bialik?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  We would have found that by now. We have very good, very, very, very good detectors.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Could it be gravitational waves, for example? Also not. We now have gravitational wave detectors that can measure the change in length or width or height by a fraction of a proton's width, right? And we've never seen anything like that amongst all of us. So that it's not that either.

• 1:00:22Mayim Bialik?

  It's also important for us to keep in mind, if we're trying to use a data set that complies to all of the things we needed to comply for, we actually may be looking at something that we don't yet understand.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  We must acknowledge this.

• 1:00:37Mayim Bialik?

  Right. So like, what I would suggest is, you know, if the basis of some sort of telepathy or intuition, you know, or, you know, someone's caregiver, you know, being able to communicate with someone on a level that we don't understand, you know, my kind of working amateur hypothesis is that there's something going on with a relationship that is very, very hard to replicate. It's very hard to replicate in a laboratory setting, and it's extremely hard to replicate if it's not something that's consistent or reliable or predictable. If it fluctuates by, does someone need to go to the bathroom? If it fluctuates by the way the weather made them feel.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:01:16Mayim Bialik?

  You know, like, this is a population, and I'm not just talking about autism, but I'm talking about people who seem to be tapped into something else. It's a population that doesn't obey, you know, the rules that you and I would devise for an IRB-approved study.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Well said. My wife, or my kids, can tell what I'm thinking, like, word for word, if I raise my eyebrow a particular way compared to another way.

• 1:01:44Mayim Bialik?

  What do you mean?

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  And that's if they've been watching me.

• 1:01:48Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  They know me for a long, long time. The IRB is not going to approve me being put in a locked room for 30 years and having people watch me. But if somebody, like my daughter,

• 1:02:00Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  or my wife, were to, you know, see my facial expression or a finger twitch,

• 1:02:07Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  or one little thing,

• 1:02:08Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  they know what I meant.

• 1:02:09Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  You know, in the context of the moment, right?

• 1:02:12Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  It might not be completely empty.

• 1:02:13Mayim Bialik?

  That's entanglement, right? I mean, it's a special kind of...

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  On a non-quantum way,

• 1:02:17Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  it is definitely an entangled situation. We have so many connections.

• 1:02:21Mayim Bialik?

  Great. So magnify that, right?

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:23Mayim Bialik?

  Magnify it and make it, you know, as big as you want.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  How big can we make it?

• 1:02:29Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  Can the physics, right, of making things big limits our mathematical or physical ability to think how big that is? Can it be as big, based on our current physics, as the world, or the solar system, or the galaxy? I am so sorry, that that, unfortunately, based on what we know, is not there. But you and me, you know, eventually, you know, if I come back every day for the next 30 years, I'll raise an eyebrow.

• 1:03:02Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, I'm locking you in the back room.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  And you'll be like, yeah, that's right. I'll be like, let me out!

• 1:03:05Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:03:06Speaker 00

  That's kind of what I think. I believe that the data can't yet capture all the complexities of the inputs that we have received under those circumstances.

• 1:03:18Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, well said. Well said.

• 1:03:19Speaker 00

  And then when we get to those 1 in 20,000 or zillion, you know, coincidences, and then we say, oh, we ascribe that meaning, we have to be very careful.

• 1:03:32Mayim Bialik?

  We're gonna hit pause here. There is so much more in part two of our conversation with Dr. Liu that we hope you will stay tuned for. Does artificial intelligence possess consciousness? What does it mean when we're drawn towards someone else romantically? Is it chemical? Is it spiritual? Also, the many-worlds theory. Could a multitude of universes actually exist? In addition, we'll talk about psychedelics, the overlap between DMT and near-death experiences, and human variability in physiology that might inform ways to treat trauma. All of that and more in part two of our conversation with Dr. Liu. Check us out on Substack, biologicbreakdown.substack.com. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.