 On this episode of Skepticoke, the power of story. You say to him, well, I got to get me a real geek. He says, I ain't not doing OK. You say, like crap, you're doing OK. You can't draw a real crowd faking a geek you're through. And he walks off. All the while you're talking, he's thinking about sobering up, getting the crawling shakes, screaming, terrors. You give him time to think that over while you're talking. Then you throw him a chick. You geek. And how it may be being used against us. This is exactly what the transhumanists are doing. They're harnessing our informational predilections, shall we say, to try and tell a compelling story to push our species and directions. I do not think we should go. That first clip was from Nightmare Alley. William Defoe still got it. And the second one was from today's guest, Dr. Rob Williams, who you may remember was on a few weeks ago. But he's back to talk about his book, Being's Human, and about a lot of other stuff that you won't relate to this intro until you really think about it. Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Cares. And today, we welcome back Dr. Rob Williams to Skeptico. A few weeks ago, if you recall, Rob was nice enough to invite me on his show, Plan VTV. And I really, really enjoyed the conversation that he and Brandon and I shared. And I think we all felt like we wanted to go further and we will go further. And today is going to be kind of a first step in that. We're going to talk about Rob's new book that he sent me, Being Human, A Most Miraculous Conspiracy. We're also going to talk about his very, very interesting work at the Peak Flow, a wellness company that he co-founded. And if you recall from the first conversation, Rob really makes some amazing connections that I really appreciated. And we're going to get back into between breath and health and spirituality, but also with science and environmentalism and some other things that maybe some connections that you wouldn't normally associate and Dr. Rob does those quite beautifully and quite convincingly, not just kind of fluffy stuff. What else, of course, he has a very distinguished academic career at the University of Vermont, has taught courses in a number of subjects, including environmental history, where he got his PhD a few years back. And what else? Who knows? Who knows what else we'll get into? Rob is one of these people, and you'll see from this show, he's just so full of life, so full of energy and brings forth this light and energy with him. It's just a gift and a joy to talk to someone like this. And I love the perspective he brings to some really, really hard topics during some really, really hard time. So part of my goal here is to get Rob to convince him not to secede and not to pull Vermont and his cohorts out of the Union because we need you, buddy. We need you. Rob, thanks for joining me, man. It's great to have you here. Alex, it's so good to be back with you and thanks for making the time and really looking forward to our conversation. Well, me too. Let's start, you know, it's kind of a natural place to start and a good place to start with the book that you sent me. Tell us about the book. Yeah, I love you. So begin with the title. It's actually beings human, not being human. Yes, yes. Beings human. We are, it's plural. We are human beings. And the subtitle, A Most Miraculous Conspiracy, refers to the past 300,000 years. Of team human homo sapiens. Pulling off this really what I see as, as a, as a miracle, we have become the most successful species on this beautiful planet of ours. And it's taken us a while to pull this off. And of course, there are attendant challenges associated with being, with beings human, being the most successful species on the planet. But the word conspiracy in the sense, I mean it quite literally from the Latin, that we are a species that thrives when we breathe together. And that's the meaning of the word conspiracy to breathe together. And as a guy who spent a number of years studying what's now called breath work and practicing breathing from an early age. You know, church, meditation, fitness, health. It seemed to me the word conspiracy seemed to me appropriate here and miraculous, of course, because, you know, it could have gone, evolution could have taken us in any one of an infinite paths. And here we are, you know, so. We live at this really remarkable moment, Alex as a species. We're listening. And I think we're at a bit of a crossroads as well for the species, which I write about in the book. And so the book really is my. Meditation on how humans came to be here. What we do really well. We find this crossroads that we are at as a species and how we might move forward through it. So that's what I mean by being human, a most miraculous conspiracy. And let me say one more thing. As a breath work guy. I know that, and you know, too, that we humans breathe between 20,000 and 25,000 times a day, which is an astonishing little nugget. And if we see each one of those 20 to 25,000 breaths as an opportunity, which it is, because we are one of the only species that can cultivate a conscious. Strategic awareness of our breathing. Then every one of those breaths, both solo, to your point about secession, both solo and together, every one of those breaths becomes an opportunity to conspire with our fellow humans and indeed the rest of the living planet. We find ourselves on becomes an opportunity to conspire to breathe together with the rest of the planet. And when you begin to see the world in this way, Alex, it suddenly really opens up possibility. It opens up mystery. It opens up potential. And that is incredibly exciting. Okay. You've listened to a little bit of skeptic. So you know that this is all kind of a lead into going skeptical on you and that's. Let's go skeptical because because that's because that's really the not only the fun part of this for me, but it's the real part of it. It's the way that I really connected with you guys and like one thing that is kind of interesting is the beings human versus being human. I was a little bit dyslexic. So I just do this all the time where we just, I just process words differently. I don't see what's there. You know, it's not like a strength. It's just the way that things go. But it is, it's a bit of an awkward title too, but kind of by design. Yeah, exactly by design. So you do that all the time and I do that all the time. Yeah, we're constantly poking. We're constantly prodding and we're trying to put these things together differently. So what I hear you saying in the book, there's some natural kind of, if not contradictions, juxtapositions that I don't think you always play out all the way because I think even the way the book is constructed. It's you going through this process like you're going to have to tell people in a minute about you as a yak farmer because in so many ways that embodies so many of these contradictions in you, you know, you're a yak farmer, which you're about is to say these are amazing creatures and look how they are connected to our environment and look at what their environmental connection is telling us about us and our, and then you're, you're going to tell people you're you're going to Tibet and you're going to let me meet with people who've been with these animals forever and let me think and contemplate about what that means evolutionarily, you know, but you don't go too far with that because I don't know what evolution means and people who study evolution don't know what the fuck evolution means and I just completed an interview with Bruce Benton and he has a much better idea of what happened 300,000 years ago and what our genetic decoding is really telling us about quote unquote evolution and it doesn't look Darwinian, not that there isn't a Darwinian element of truth to it, but neo Darwinism doesn't get you there, so there's a big question mark, but back to the yaks, the zen of that experience that you're talking about embodies all that and then what I love and I thought was so beautiful and is Rob like I feel like I know you man is like here's a guy and he's not only a yak farmer, but he's got a frickin yak push cart where you can get a yak burger not because he needs the money from the yak burger, but he's like this is cool and this is actually environmentally if you think it through like so many few people are willing to do and just want to be triggered if you think it through we have to deal with that and I'm going to put it right in your face to think it through and then finally the COVID thing hits and what does Rob do? Jump in the car and do a two week cross country tour, you hit all these things on all these yak farmers in the United States and you're an incredible writer, you write this travel journal that's just a page turner and that's like one small part of this book, so I'm just trying to pull you in here buddy, but tell me about your yak experience and how that fits into being human. Yeah, sure. So let me just say the book being human most miraculous conspiracy is divided into six chapters and three parts and chapter two the yak chapter is simultaneously Alex the most developed and least developed element in the book because that chapter is based on field notes from my 15 years of experience with yaks in very rough form. So it reads as you said and I meant it to read in its current draft as a travel journal someday it will be its own book I'm in no rush I enjoy the acts of traveling so why rush it but yes the yaks have taught me so much about what it means to be human. When you're in the presence of another species and you begin to humble yourselves let's say humble yourself before that species and the way that yaks carry themselves in the world and you can do this with any species I just happened to find myself in the company of yaks you begin to realize again how little we know and how little we understand about the world and there's a beautiful phrase I use it in the book life by the horns is the working title of the of the Yak book life by the horns are hairy, humpy, horny human future and what we might learn from the yak is the subtitle and there's this beautiful phrase used by to your point about Darwinism and early early cybernetics there was a German born biologist by the name of the Yakuban Wexaltis I think how you say his name who coined this term called the Umvelt and the Umvelt means seeing the world through the eyes of another species or not through the eyes of through the experience of another species so I tried to bring a little Umveltian perspective to this book I'm working on about yaks and then I realized wait a minute there are an infinite number work with me here of species on the planet and every one of them is moving through the world each in its own way and again what a beautiful and kind of humbling epiphany to have it's like wow and you know we think humans are a fairly diverse bunch and you know if we want to get into evolution and talk about sapiens and denisovins and the andretol and all the other homo hominids that kind of you know kind of slept and fought and collaborated their way across the pages of the planet over the past however many years again back to this miraculous conspiracy here we are as humans there are reasons that are still I think you're right a bit mysterious like the evolutionary book think they have it all figured out but it's like no no we don't at all actually so that's what I'm trying to do with the yaks is just sort of bow down before these magnificent creatures and have them help me and my readers understand a bit about what it means to be human seeing the world through their experience and when I hear you I'm going to places that connects your work in ways that I think you are connecting it but I don't always hear you connecting explicitly like you have this whole you're like a guy with a million projects here's another one are geoengineering age no I mean you you laugh but I mean this is like you are uniquely qualified to talk about those in in Vermont that you see an experience and then you're qualified scientifically to say no there's a real realness to geoengineering and actually anyone who's even just read the scientific literature I mean these guys haven't hidden it they've published that were doing geoengineering and you are not totally making the connection that I am explicitly between that and this idea to jab you in the arm and make you a part of this DNA gene therapy gene reprogramming experiment and what that means for the yak and what that means for Darwinian evolution and Alex I should say to the book I just put the book up like a couple of weeks ago and I so appreciate you taking the time to read it in this conversation because I haven't really shared it publicly much and I sent it to you because I respect you and I really appreciated our first conversation so let's if you want to pull up the book cover again let's just unpack the sub subtitle for a moment because I think that directly deals with your question the sub subtitle of the book is transcending human racism with curiosity compassion conviction courage so you just connected some dots here and let's back up there because that's important you connected what's happening in our skies overhead in a systematic way with what's happening to the cells of our bodies to those who have let it be so and I think to get a little bit dark for a minute I think that there is for team human for homo sapiens there is an assault being waged on the species right now and not just on our species Alex but on this beautiful planet that we live in and live on and that assault is happening at the cellular level it's happening at the stratospheric level and it's happening everywhere in between and the message we are being told Alex is that humans as a species are a virus we are a scourge on the earth we are a plague I mean I've heard these words come out of the mouth of dear friends of mine at cocktail parties right over the past couple of years it is a form of species side like suicide but at a species wide level and I just find it so strange Alex that we the most successful species on the planet and we have work to do of course our species are letting ourselves particularly in the west if you will where we have I think for the past several hundred years celebrated liberties freedoms we've tried to optimize the species as best we can to balance as we say in Vermont our Vermont state motto human freedom with human unity a motto here in the state of Vermont is freedom and unity with the covid-topian situation not a whole lot of freedom so this is what we're up against I'm afraid is this kind of what I call human racism we hear a lot about racism right which I think is interesting but there is this narrative assault on the species and the other thing that's happening there Alex is and I know you'll appreciate this there are sort of multiple psychological operations happening all at one time I'm sure you're familiar with the work of James Corbett from the sunny climes of western Japan James and I spoke a few months ago for the first time and he coined a phrase called fifth generation warfare which is what I'm talking about here this kind of multiple psyops that constitute sort of an unprecedented narrative assault on the species right and again we see this in the so-called climate change conversation we see this in the so-called covid conversation we see this in the so-called you know racism or capitalism conversations right okay so Rob I'm with you for example to connect climate to transhumanism and globalism is not an easy step for people to make sure as an environmental historian by training Alex I'm very interested in where environmental narratives and explanations come from and there's a whole history of the emergence of the official climate change narrative that can be traced back to the creation of the United Nations in the 1940s and then the so-called intergovernmental panel on climate change in the 1980s and 90s it should also be noted that there are on record thousands and thousands and thousands of scientists climatologists etc etc etc who are calling out the nonsense of this official narrative that carbon is causing anthropogenic carbon is the prime driver of the warming of the planet right in the same way Alex let's connect a few dots here there are thousands and thousands and thousands of scientists and epidemiologists and barologists and doctors who are calling out the nonsense of the official covid narrative and not coincidentally Alex the folks that brought to you the official climate change narrative are more or less the same folks who brought to you the covid-topian narrative and the connection there is that you should surrender your rights in order to globalize in order to be controlled more easily readily by some higher power on earth here and you know the other point that I always want to make because it's been so fogged in people's mind to use a climate term but like you immediately went to the carbon issue I am still amazed at how many people have lost sight of that have you walked that path with your friends and your colleagues in academia I mean that's a tough road to hoe right there it really is and there is a whole industry globally of research and funding and this is part of the game Alex as I know you know around supporting buttressing if you will this official narrative and once you're in that game and you depend on that game for your bread and butter Alex it's very hard to extricate yourself from that game and let me say one more thing about carbon we talked about this I think last time just a little bit but we are all we are carbon based life forms and carbon dioxide believe it or not and I say this as with my breath work coach and professor had on carbon dioxide is actually one of in many ways it's an expiratory gas in our bodies it's not oxygen it's not the absence of oxygen that forces us to breathe it's the presence in our bodies of carbon dioxide that triggers our bodies desire to breathe 20,000 to 25,000 times a day so these people who are waging this kind of human racist war if you will on the species our hell bent on demonizing carbon and carbon dioxide which is in many ways one of the very foundations of our lives and our breathing it's very strange well it's it's part of the method right part of the method is to kind of create simplistic understandings of complicated nuance topics so you're not saying that a dramatic increase in carbon in our environment wouldn't have effects you know of course it would that's never been the issue the issue is what is our relationship to carbon in this more holistic sense but the leap that they're making is this transhumanist globalist agenda which is now laid bare by the pandemic where it's just clear it's like we're not fighting anymore it's like we want to control more and more aspects of your life to the point where one world government is not even like discussed or debated it's just a natural falling out of this and I'm probably touching on issues that should be so basic to anyone but whenever a problem quote unquote is put forth for which the only solution is some kind of global response the alarm bell should go off so that's what connects climate with virus it also connects it with ET and the phenomenon that is now public right yeah they're trotting out the alien invasion scenario to continue this quest to unify at a global level if you will right if the virus doesn't work and climate change doesn't work and you know woke woke topianism doesn't work and we always have the aliens to fall back on yeah and this is why I'm a secessionist I'm a decentralized Alex because really the most powerful antidote I think to this kind of attempted centralized control is to decentralize and that begins with each of us as individuals optimizing our minds our bodies our spirits our desires and our desires and our desires and our desires we're just firing with our fellow humans and the rest of the species we find ourselves living with to try and optimize the places where we live locally right and that's not to say that we don't of course carry on this global conversation that is so important right now I think as we stare this into transhumans and we should talk more about the implications well let's talk about it right now but I think it's more than the implications because and this is where I think we get hung up and the discussion I think falls flat sometimes or turns in a way that it shouldn't you know I recently had an interview with Dr. Dean Raiden I keep referencing this interview because I was so blown away he's so phenomenal and what he's done and the work that he's done in parapsychology and particularly the work that he's done in dispelling this idea that we aren't really even here anyway so what does it matter which is a key part of the transhumanism agenda that is the you are a biological robot in a meaningless universe and if you think about it philosophically in a lot of ways that's the cornerstone to transhumanism you're not real if you are more if you are this spiritual being however you understand that to be then you're much less likely to kind of just fall for all this stuff you just don't do it you're right Alex central to an understanding of this current historical civilizational some might say evolutionary moment is this question of transhumanism and I write about this in the book beings human a most miraculous conspiracy the American poet Wendell Berry has this beautiful moment in perhaps his most important single book a book entitled life is beautiful where he's writing about the problems of giving our lives over to reductionist science and the book he writes Wendell Berry is a direct critique of Harvard entomologist EO Wilson's conciliants theory that science Wilson at Harvard argued should be the unifying matrix for understanding everything which of course is terrifying and and Berry warned about this the great Christian theologian CS Lewis famously warned about this for decades I could go on but the Wendell Berry writes in life is beautiful in the middle of critiquing EO Wilson's conciliants theory he he says I can imagine in the not too distant future humans having to choose between living as creatures and living as machines and this to me is the fundamental moment Alex will we as team human choose to live as creatures think about what that word means creatures with a creator whatever that means to you and obligations perhaps to the other creatures on our planet we find ourselves in the midst of or will we as the trans humanists wish will we choose to live as machines creatures or machines Alex and will there come a point when we're not given the choice so this is a very serious I think crossroads for and most people don't think quite get it but but let me just say that if there's one person to watch in this matrix it's the public intellectual you've all know a Harari who wrote don't go there Rob don't go there well let me just say something about Harari and then we can we can we can go yeah you know Harari wrote a best-selling book called sapiens I'm sure your listeners your viewers are familiar and the thesis of that book is that humans became the most successful species on the planet because we cultivated the ability to collaborate flexibly in large groups around shared stories and I happen to think he's on to something with that thesis but of course then Harari wrote two more books homo deus humans as gods and his most recent book twenty four twenty one lessons for the twenty first century and it emerged Alex that our friend you've all know a Harari is a trans humanist and a dataist disguised as a historian let me play a clip Rob this is from my interview with doctor Gregory Shushan any answer in the Bible what to do when humans are no longer useful to the economy you need completely new ideologies completely new religions and they are likely to emerge from Silicon Valley everything that the old religions promised happiness and justice and even a life but here on earth with the help of technology and not after death with the help of some supernatural being what are humans for as far as we know for nothing I mean there is there is no great cosmic drama some great cosmic plan that we have a role to play in it this has been the story of all religions and ideologies and so forth but as a scientist the best I can say this is not true so you've all know a Harari is officially a historian what's so curious about him Alex and I've watched him very closely now since the emergence of this covid-topian situation it is clear for reasons I don't understand that either he has been recruited or has volunteered to serve as the chief global public intellectual at the tip of this covid-topian transhumanist technocratic spear and so when you well know a Harari parachutes into Davos to talk with you know all the billionaires who've flown in on their private planes to you know plan the future of the species or gets invited on any one of you know hundreds hundreds of prominent talk shows lectures what have you it's very clear now Alex that he is using his position as a prominent historian speaking on behalf of the history of the species to essentially throw us under the bus that's what he's doing and he's doing it in the name of this new ism he calls data ism and this ideology of transhumanism that we can use through merging the species Alex through merging humans with our machines we can optimize the species and solve the world's pressing problems like I don't know viruses epidemics climate change racism the excesses of capitalism patriarchy blah blah blah I think it's deeper than that and I think it's subtler than that and I think that you know what I want to connect this to as well is you know I wasn't aware that you were a Christian and I read that in your book and I want to explore that further I don't want to do it in a way that you know is too offensive because I would naturally that would be my way of talking about it I just do not respect religious beliefs any more than I respect other intellectual beliefs I should Christians get a pass over atheism I think atheism is an absolutely absurd proposition it's been falsified not only philosophically but experimentally so anyone who approaches me from a Christian perspective and they're into a Christ consciousness spiritually transformative experience that is and I don't know what that means but I take that to mean that they've had an experience in an extended consciousness realm which my research tells me it's real the guy we just saw on camera Dr. Gregory Shushan says when we look across culture across time it definitely seems real in all the ways that we'd measure it so I'm open to Christians in that way I am not open to Christians in their goofy Christian apologetics who that is a soft spot for them but I feel like Christians don't have a way of really standing up against this silliness that Harari is pitching and as you mentioned yes he is on 60 minutes yes he is endorsed by Barack Obama but other former presidents and yes he's he's a wonder child of Zuckerman and Gates and all the rest of these people and he sold 30 million books not many people can stand up to that Christians are fundamentally coming from a less wrong position than Harari Harari to use the cute phrase is not even not even wrong he's not even in the ball game because he isn't willing to acknowledge consciousness that is that you are you that that voice inside your head is real that you are making choices that you have free will he is not willing to go there and he's using your religion as a and the soft spots that it has as a way of pulling the wagon he goes come on you don't ever believe that Christian nonsense do you the smart team over here the scientists I can't tell you your life has meaning so there's no meaning to your life this is the this is the game that's being played and it's not like he changed uniforms in the middle of the game he's had that uniform on the whole the whole frickin time yeah I would agree and you know to your point about religion I religion from the Latin relegare which means to bind together I see the role of religion in the human experience as providing protocols if you will or providing I'll use the word stories to help humans optimize mind body and spirit and let me connect a few dots here in in my study of breath work and my work in the environmental history space I've run across a beautiful book you may be familiar with James Nestor's book breath the subtitle which is the new science of a lost art and in this book breath Nestor has a number of really beautiful revelations about the human experience and and breathing one of the most profound is his discovery that at the center of every major religious tradition around the world eastern western indigenous you will find at its core a chant or a prayer or a mantra or a song that runs about 10 seconds in length which as it turns out science reveals now is the optimal length of time for an inhale and an exhale of the breath it's what we call coherence breathing in the breath work world so let me give you an example so I'm chasing yaks up in the Himalayas and I wander into these Buddhist monasteries in the middle of nowhere and the monks are all sitting around chanting and you know I'm a white guy from Vermont what do I know but I sit down and I just sort of close my eyes and sort of try and absorb what it is they're up to and it's incredibly powerful and compelling and mesmerizing over time and as it turns out the central chant in Buddhism goes like this and I'll put up my fingers to indicate the seconds that go by ready oh money pod me oh money pod me 10 seconds and you can find a prayer or a chant or a mantra just like that in every major religious tradition so what this suggests to me Alex is that religion actually part of the development of the religious traditions that undergird so much of our human experience was to remind humans to optimize themselves beginning with the most fundamental thing that we do which is breathe I love all that but and a big but the other purpose of religion is exactly what we've been talking about this whole show it's about social engineering it's about a control mechanism it's about a more effective means to get what I want out of my population than sticks and swords and unless we're willing to dive into that and we're willing to separate that now 2,000 years later then we're going to be we're going to be susceptible to the game that Harari is playing in those clips that I said which is lead you in let me lead you in with all these things that are true and let me get you this is persuasion this is sales this is what I used to do in business I get you to say yes yes and then I hit you with and Jesus died on the cross for your sins and resurrected 2,000 years change history son of god do what the fuck I say and you're like yes, yes, yes Christian apologetics is part of this issue that we need to deconstruct if we are going to have this spiritual freedom independence that we're seeking then we can't just sit side by side with the Buddhist monks and say hey that's great and like we all like to do then pat them on the back and say well you go your way and I'll go mine but what I really think is my way is best we're going to have to get to some core understandings of what it means to be a spiritual being independent of these traditions that are are just nonsensical from a logic and a reason standpoint what do you think I know I'm punching the yard here I really appreciate I really appreciate your critique and and for me and I wrote this in the last chapter of the yak book so far called so each chapter of the yak book suggests a yak like quality that we humans would do well to imitate and the last chapter of the book so far chapter 11 is called stay spirited and at the root of the word spirited and at the root of the word spiritual is the Latin spirit which means to breathe so I am much more comfortable as I think you are Alex not talking so much about religion but about matters spiritual so we respire we breathe again and again we in we conspire right a most miraculous conspiracy we breathe together as humans in conjunction with the rest of the living planet and we inspire what does it mean to inspire someone else it means to energetically in their presence breathe in such a way that they want to take you in right someone who inspires if you think think of your own experience whoever you find inspirational Alex is somebody whose breath you want to draw in sort of the meaning of that word inspire which I love and humans again we're at our best I think when we are in the business of helping each other optimize to become the best humans we can be not just body not just mind but spirit as well which as the quantum physicists and the mystics have said forever and the scientists are catching up cannot be separated ultimately mind and body and spirit so again this is a grand mystery with a capital M and to pretend that we can understand it number one and reduce it in a reductionist way to language or mathematical equations or a single virus in our bodies or a single greenhouse gas in the sky it is incredibly dangerous we're tampering with we're tampering with the mystery and again we'll have to push Rob in a minute to tell you how you're going to be able to get this book and have a chance to read it and it's again beings human miraculous conspiracy but one thing I love about the book and you can tell from Rob he is so well versed and such an agile thinker on just all these diverse topics that he weaves together in a very meaningful way and I say that as a segue to talk about another part of the book that I thought was just really really interesting and incredible and inspiring and it's about page 50 you say clear our brains do not process retrieve or store memories our brains are not computers in fact storytelling is an embodied energetic phenomenon as ancient mystics and cutting edge neuroscientists both tell us so I want you to talk you again are with just a few words and in a kind of provocative way challenging how we understand storytelling so let's talk about that for a minute what's your spin on that yeah so we know from studying the way that the body communicates with the brain that that information travels in our bodies electrochemically number one we're all beings of frequency we are bioelectric creatures of resonance and not just humans but all living things are connected via the power of what some would call back in the day electromagnetism or electromagnetic frequency which by the way is a much forgotten phenomenon in our age of materialistic science where we're lumbering robots to quote Richard Dawkins or we're just clumps of cells and you know back to your question about stories and how we process them again if we begin with the breath 20 to 25,000 times a day and our breath is a powerful way of influencing our not just our body but our mind and our spirit as well and we think about the role of information a word we kind of throw around you know I need more information about COVID I need more information about climate change what we mean when we say that Alex quite literally is the stuff that the stories that we breathe into our bodies that literally form form our bodies our minds and our spirits because we're learning from our understanding how the body communicates with the brain that most of this communication actually occurs from body up to brain not from brain down to body so literally the stories that inform us Alex are not they don't happen up here in this the most complex living thing in the known universe the human brain they actually happen as part of a much more holistic moment by moment experience and we all know this when we're in the presence of other people who are inspiring storytellers charismatic storytellers they can inspire in us hope or fear this is why the COVID topian narrative the leveraging of this story of this virus has been weaponized it's taken what we humans do best to collaborate flexibly in large groups around shared stories it's provided a very powerful very scary narrative this COVID narrative and weaponized that story against us because we humans respond informationally we respond to the stories that were constantly being presented with and what I thought was particularly insightful and again you do this in a few words so I really want to pull this out of you I don't know if we can do it today but you connect that word stories which we've all heard kind of a million times and how we relate to stories to epigenetics to energy work to and then I connected to like Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz UCLA OCD expert who did this extensive work with mindfulness meditation as a cure for or to relieve the symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder and he was successful at it but the way that he was successful at it was to show that that mindfulness meditation remapped physically the structure of the brain which now creates this chicken and the egg problem which we all know if we have this kind of expanded understanding of consciousness is I think therefore I am or I am therefore I think is becomes a real kind of question so dive deeper into what the story is doing well I yeah I'm not sure that I can prove that I do think however though that what we're learning certainly from our study of breath work and its impact on various bodily systems the autonomic nervous system the circulatory system the respiratory system right up into our brains and sort of our entire sort of nervous system all the way out to every living cell in our bodies that how we breathe Alex moment to moment and we should tie this into consciousness too and I need your help with this but how we breathe moment to moment and the habits that we cultivate around how we breathe our way through the world that influence not just our bodies but our mind and our spirit as well these habits of breath inform us and the stories that we breathe in also inform us and when these stories that we breathe in become when there is let me put on my propaganda professor hat on for a minute when these stories that we breathe in these sort of one-sided narratives let's say these forms of propaganda when they continually inform us over and over and over again our mind and our body and our spirit begins to take on the characteristics the reactions to that particular story and this is back to religion I think what the ancients understood is if you can present a civilization with powerful stories of human optimization right and I agree with you about this is a form of engineering we have to be careful here but if we can figure out ways individually and collectively to encourage each of our fellow humans to optimize themselves through the sharing of these stories through conspiring together that's what our friends are doing with the great reset you don't realize it Rob but this is for your betterment you will be better you will be happier and better so no I'm not on the wagon here I think that there is that New England toughness of we must follow we must seek the truth at all costs and we already know from epigenetics that those stories are passed on whether we want to or not yeah and to your point about you know this is exactly right what the transhumanists are doing they're they're harnessing our informational predilections shall we say Alex to try and tell a compelling story to push our species in directions I do not think and I believe you do not think we should go and so what do we have to tell a better story I guess Alex and I know you're familiar with the work of Rupert Sheldrake because the introduction to your last book you know his theory of morphic resonance which I bring up in my book a little bit is one perhaps explanation for this phenomenon that you're trying to tease out of our conversation here how do we how do we pass on information generation to generation that is going to continue to help humans to optimize and not fall prey to whatever social engineering whether it's organized religion whether it's the transhumanists which I would argue is a form of organized religion right this is the challenge before us and I think the first thing we must do or a first do is learn how to breathe here now I like to say right to use our innate capacities for human self optimization to really toughen you just said it toughen ourselves up body mind and spirit right so we can cultivate curiosity we can cultivate compassion we can cultivate conviction and we can cultivate the hardest of all when we go public we can cultivate courage literally that rage of the heart that we are a member we are all members of a species that must be defended in this moment rather than subject ourselves to this kind of human as I like well that might be an awesome way to wrap it up but there's one other thing we're going to bring to that is Rob is coming out to San Diego and we're going to wrap him up and the cold the cold as he likes to say and the cold ice is nice we're going to have that exchange we're going to have that exchange of information so stay tuned everybody there's more to come and we're probably going to do another show with Brandon bring him back into this mix as well again I hope you've enjoyed you know this great guy such an interesting guy the book tell us about how people are going to be to get this book beings human a most miraculous conspiracy you got me a pre-release copy how are people going to get the official thing yes for now the book is available for free read at my website it's doctor rob Williams dot com thanks for putting the link up there just go to the blog you can read it there on issue which is a magazine and book publishing platform I've published a number of books Alex and I'm at a point in my life just interested in being as useful to team human as I can be so share it spread around most importantly I hope we'll listen to one another and share information and really hold space for each other right now Alex because it is a very strange moment for team human and we need all of our best all of our best breathing together all of our best conspiring to gird our loins as I like to say for this strange moment my friend awesome awesome well terrific Rob thanks again so much we'll be in touch I look forward so much to meeting you in person so take care same Alex I look forward to meeting you in sunny San Diego and thanks for having me today and we'll continue the conversation on the best coast thanks again to Rob Williams for joining me today on skeptical the one question I to you up from this interview do you think the transhumanist agenda is as it was framed up in the show or is that just a head trash story that we're creating let me know your thoughts love it when really really smart people join me in the skeptical form for real conversations I'm waiting for you over there so that's going to do it for this one until next time take care and bye for now