Climate catastrophism displays all the core features of a cultural entity, says Andy West, author of The Grip of Culture. Other cultural entities are religions, ideologies, sometimes cults and even strong philosophies. The underlying behavior is identical. You can measure it, and that is what Andy has done. “This comes from a deep behavioral legacy from our evolutionary past. We are very susceptible to groupthink.” Andy’s most groundbreaking finding is that there is a close connection between religiosity and climate catastrophism. The correlation is almost perfect. But it is perhaps not intuitive: When unconstrained questions are asked about climate change, a large majority of people in religious countries will answer that it is dangerous, whereas a large majority of people in secular countries will be less worried. When constrained questions are asked, i.e. questions about the need to take action in different ways, the situation is exactly the opposite. A culture is always based on stories. If it were based on facts and truths, it would not be a culture. “If you want to glue millions of people together, it’s not good to use rationality, it is actually better to bypass it and use emotion. If you base it on rational arguments, people will have different opinions or different angles on it.” The further distanced from truth, the better cultures work. Especially if authorities are on their side. If someone questions the culture, “it’s bonkers”. End of argument. “Climate catastrophism detached from science a long time ago”, Andy says. Al Gore’s climate film An Inconvenient Truth from 2006 was a turning point. “It was completely full of classic cultural memes. I started to research what was behind. I quickly realized it had left science already then.” Are there elitist agendas? “Yes, but they’re not the prime cause. The prime cause is the culture, and the agendas have effectively taken advantage of the culture.” Andy points out that cultures are not bad per se. They are inevitable, and they can be either detrimental or beneficial. Civilizations are based on cultures. Without cultures, no team spirit. Isn’t the climate disaster narrative a useful crisis for leaders who want to exert control? “It’s not wrong, but it’s not exactly right either. Leaders have taken advantage of it as it has grown.” Andy has found that the US is a special case. It isn’t possible to just test two cultures, religion and climate catastrophism, in America as in most other countries. What complicates things is the Democrat/Liberal and Republican/Conservative tribalism “So the US effectively has four cultures. It ends up being a worst case scenario. Everybody is behaving culturally.” Will this new culture, climate catastrophism, come to an end, and if so, when and how? “It’s in all our institutions and all our policies. It’s in the heads of millions of people. It’s not going to go away easily or quickly. I think it will evolve and change over time, like it has already.” Andy's book Andy's X account Climate Etc blog

The word prodigy comes to mind when you learn about the young Polish independent researcher and writer Aleksander Czeszkiewicz. Already as a child, he read heaps of books about our distant past and scrolled through ancient texts, and increasingly he also delved into spiritual traditions. “I was interested holistically in the universe, the earth, and history. At school everything was uninteresting to me. There was no place for imagination. At home I could speculate about the existence of Atlantis. I was free. At school, I was not free”, says Aleksander. At 17 he wrote the first book of his own, which he entitled Deja Vu – Has Everything Already Been? He had to wait until the age of 18 to publish it because of legal requirements. The year after, he translated it to English himself. The idea of constant progress, that we are at the peak of civilization, is fairly new. Centuries ago, the point of view was rather that we had fallen from an earlier golden age. “There was also the more neutral idea that human development is cyclical. This was prominent in ancient Greece and ancient India”, Aleksander explains. The Vedic cycles are called yugas. “With all the scientism, materialism and atheism, I think our time resembles the description of the Kali yuga, the dark age of materialism, in the ancient hindu tradition.” The Mahabharata pinpoints a date for the start of the latest Kali yuga: the 18 February 3102 BCE, which happens to coincide with the beginning of the civilizations whose legacy we are still in. But there are yogis who believe we may be in the intermediate Dvapara yuga. Before the archaeological discoveries in the 1800s, we knew nothing about ancient Egypt, Sumer or other early civilizations. The texts about them were considered fairy tales. “What if we are in a similar situation now, when we make so many more discoveries? Maybe we will find evidence for Atlantis?” Homo sapiens has been around for at least 200,000 years. It is not likely that we remained cavemen for 95 percent of that time and then suddenly decided to build civilizations, Aleksander thinks. “There are so many known historic texts from Greece, Egypt and the Arab world that tell us straight out that there were mighty kings and civilizations tens of thousands of years ago.” Most flood myths – and there are many all over the world – can be correlated to the geologically dramatic end of the last ice age. Will you be able to dig up even more conclusive evidence of lost civilizations than the many independent pioneers you are leaning on today? “I think what has been uncovered is the tip of the iceberg. To think we know it all is arrogant. I personally love diving into old texts. They show such a holistic picture of everything. But of course I also want to explore the physical remains.” Aleksander’s book is only the beginning of his research, he says. “My next project will be of a more metaphysical and philosophical nature. A spiritual exploration.” Aleksander thinks many of our current problems relate to the fact that we never yield, stop and let ourselves relax, feel in and listen inwards. “We should not only chase results. We need to be here now. The grinding mindset is toxic.” He foresees a huge paradigm shift as a result of an expanded human consciousness. In his view, society is tarnished by a kind of modern ”satanism”: Some want to exert control and keep others down. Aleksander is planning on publishing his second book later this year. Aleksander's book His website (int) His Youtube channel

The podcast delves into the concept of labor mobility as a key solution to poverty, emphasizing the importance of moving individuals to high-productivity areas. It challenges traditional development models and advocates for well-regulated temporary labor mobility. The discussion also touches on migration policies, brain drain, and the ethical dimensions of human mobility.

Mary Reed was a staunchly agnostic healthcare executive in Washington DC when she began venturing uncontrollably into mystical realms in the company of divine masters. ”I went into the body and the being of Jesus on the cross at the moment of crucifixion. As an agnostic, that was wildly out of the blue. But in that experience, which went on for three and a half hours, I got all of this information about humanity and what is happening in our world”, Mary says. Deeply confused by events like this, she moved to the Himalayas and spent seven years coming to terms with her unexpected abilities. The first ”voice in her head” (not really a voice) appeared in 2000. Since 2020 Mary also channels lessons from a collective of divine beings called Consensus, which presented itself to her. Today Mary considers herself a mystic wisdom guide. Despite certain transformative events, arriving at that place has been a gradual process. ”It just keeps coming.” It takes many years to integrate a spiritually transformative experience, which every NDEer can attest to. Mary is the author of the award-winning memoir Unwitting Mystic, and the sweeping newest release, Humanity’s Epic Awakening. In the latter, Mary explains that the awakening we are about to experience (and are already beginning to experience) will entail the end of many deeply rooted human ideas, such as hell. ”What we are waking up to is already here. We are just not aware of it yet. But we will be soon.” The most central part of her message, she says, is that nothing should be rejected. The old paradigm of good and bad inherently always puts us in conflict. ”We label certain things bad and want them to go away. It’s like wanting one part of us to go away. No bad you see in the world today just happened. It’s being recycled.” Mary saw this extremely clearly when she had a vision of a block sitting in her stomach. It was the collectively rejected block of pain of all of humanity. ”This pain does not want to be rejected, it wants to be embraced”, Mary says. ”Awakening isn’t intended to be a polite experience, it’s intended to be an honest experience.” Mary’s website Mary’s book Humanity’s Epic Awakening Mary’s book Unwitting Mystic

This is part two of my conversation with Michael Le Flem about Atlantis. For basics about Michael and his book Visions of Atlantis, see show notes for part one (episode 114): In this episode, we dive deeper into the details of what has been told and written about Atlantean science, technology and worldview, not least by the two unconventional sources Frederick Oliver and Edgar Cayce. Experts have tried to debunk their methods – Cayces in particular – but it has proved to be impossible to explain how they know certain things. We also talk about the often hollow arguments from skeptics. Why do people find evidence for the lost civilization almost everywhere? Because Atlantis was said to have been an empire, not unlike the British empire. Why hasn't any evidence of advanced technology been found? Because nothing advanced would survive the test of time – except stone structures, and those abound. The evidence is actually staring us in the face. There are also fascinating similarities between languages on either side of the Atlantic. Michael’s website Michael’s book Visions of Atlantis The Edgar Cayce organization AER Frederick Oliver’s book A Dweller on Two Planets

”In the good old days, those of us with solid scientific training understood what we didn't know and we were excited about the knowledge frontiers", says professor Judith Curry. ”Now, ecologists, economists, social scientists and other people who don't really understand climate dynamics are busy reciting alarming talking points rather than showing any understanding of what's really going on.” Curry is one of the world’s top climate scientists. However, she fell from grace with the mainstream scientific and political community after having dared to openly criticize the biased and manipulative research methods revealed in ”climategate” in 2009. She was ostracized. Some years later, she left her tenured position at Georgia Tech to become a full-time consultant in the private sector. ”I saw the writing on the wall”, she says. She had made attempts to find another academic position, but she was told there was no point. Headhunters said: ”You're a great candidate, but no one’s going to hire you, because if you google Judith Curry, what you get are things like ’climate denier’ and ’serious disinformer’”. ”The whole field has become highly politicized. Everybody thinks they are a climate expert. It has become quasi religious”, she says. Sadly, even the scientific journals have become politicized. ”If you have something skeptical to say about climate change, don't bother to submit it to Science or Nature.” Going into the technical details of the climate debate, Curry assesses that the weakest part of the alarmist argument is that warming is dangerous. ”Extreme events have little or nothing to do with the slow, incremental warming that’s going on.” The 1.5 and 2.0 degree targets are purely political, she says. ”The policy cart has been out there in front of the scientific horse since 1992.” ”When and if we meet the 2 degrees target will largely be determined by natural variability factors.” Besides, she adds, the baseline for these targets is the 1800s, which was at the tail end of the little ice age. ”Why people think of the pre-industrial climate as some kind of nirvana, I don't know.” This year, 2023, has seen some spectacular records that the mainstream immediately connects to human emissions. But the fascinating thing is that the suddenness of the temperature spike as well as the slowing of ice growth in the Antarctic are basically evidence that the incremental CO2 levels can’t be to blame for the 2023 events. Interestingly, Judith Curry more or less coincides in this with one of the alarmists’ most revered scientists, James Hansen. Many factors are likely at play, such as reduced cloudiness and less aerosols, volcanic activity and ocean current oscillations. Many point at a looming El Niño, but as a matter of fact, this warming phenomenon hadn’t really begun when the temperature spike started.  ”The CO2 increase is lost in the noise here”, says Curry. Are the oceans, and also the Antarctic ice sheet, perhaps being warmed from below? ”I pay more attention to this possibility than most people do. There is a lot of volcanic activity. To think that atmospheric CO2 is the driver of what’s happening with the west Antarctic ice sheet is rather a joke.” Why aren’t more people looking into these things? ”Well, because people really like this narrow framework, that everything is CO2. Every career, money and policy depend on this.” But she thinks we may have reached ”peak craziness”: ”I wouldn't be surprised if we twenty years from now have a different view of what exactly is going on.”

Atlantis is the ultimate myth of humankind – and it has to be pointed out that ”myth” does not equate to ”made up”. Many truths have been conveyed in mythical form. Troy was considered a mythological place created in Homer’s mind until Heinrich Schliemann actually dug up the ancient city in western Turkey in 1870. Historian and independent researcher Michael Le Flem has dug deeper than most into the myth of Atlantis. It is a stretch to say he has managed to dig up the lost world, but the evidence and the indications in his impressive book Visions of Atlantis are both comprehensive and compelling. Le Flem makes reference to basically every known source (including Plato, of course) and many not so known sources. Two of them would be controversial to the mainstream. Frederick Oliver and Edgar Cayce, who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, respectively, were able to psychically channel enormous amounts of information about Atlantis. As strange as this sounds, Oliver and Cayce made technical, scientific and geological references they could not possibly have known about in their ordinary state of awareness. Much of it has since been corroborated by hard evidence, for instance the extinction of megafauna, the cultivation of the Amazon and mastodons roaming on the continental shelves (which were plains 12,000 years ago). ”These things are beyond coincidence”, says Michael. ”The information given by Oliver and Cayce fills in missing pieces from pre-Platonic records.” Some of what they conveyed about the Atlantean civilization is mind-boggling. They described craft that would be called UAPs today. They talked about devices eerily similar to modern-day smartphones. Michael is rigorous in his research, but he is also driven by curiosity and open-mindedness, hallmarks of true science. ”Don’t be afraid of the Michael Shermers of this world. They are just annoyed that their little world is being upset”, he says, with reference to one of the leading materialist skeptics. ‼️ Please note that Michael and I plan a part two of this conversation. Due later in the fall. Stay tuned. Michael’s website Michael’s book Visions of Atlantis The Edgar Cayce organization (AER) Frederick Oliver’s book A Dweller on Two Planets

For almost half a century, professor Bruce Greyson has researched the interface between life and death. He was a materialistically trained doctor when he first came across near death experiences. He was intrigued, began researching them and thought he would soon come up with a simple physical explanation. The more cases he studied, the farther away from that he came. The research material has increased since the 1960s because of our enhanced capability to resuscitate people with cardiac arrest. ”On the other hand, we have accounts of NDEs from ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt that sound exactly like the ones we hear today”, says Bruce Greyson. It is estimated that one in every 20 people in the US and Europe (areas that have been surveyed) have had an NDE or NDE-like experience. Some common features are: • Thinking faster and clearer • An intense feeling of peace and wellbeing • Being in the presence of a loving, living light • Paranormal phenomena: leaving the body, ESP, etc • Reaching another type of existence • Meeting dead loved ones or deities A few NDE’ers have unpleasant experiences. ”That is often people who have a strong need to be in control of their life. It can be terrifying to be out of control. When they surrender, it becomes a pleasant experience”, Greyson says. He thinks it is important to document corroborating evidence, such as NDE’ers’ account for things they have seen or heard in the hospital or outside it while being clinically dead, things they could not possibly have known about if they had not in some way left their physical body. One mindblowing case is a clinically dead man in a hospital in South Africa who experienced that he visited another realm and met the soul of a recently deceased hospital nurse – before any of the nurse’s loved ones knew she had died. The fact which most challenges the notion that the brain produces consciousness is that the brains of NDE’ers are flatlined. There doesn’t seem to be any activity going on. Standard explanations don’t hold, like lack of oxygen or influence by drugs: NDE’ers have better oxygen supply than those who haven’t had the experience, and drugs seem to inhibit the possibility of having an NDE rather than induce it. It is as if the brain has to ”get out of the way” in order to have these experiences. ”People use the metaphor of looking up at the sky during the day. You don’t see any stars, but it’s not that the stars aren’t there, it’s just that they’re blocked by the sun. And that’s the way the brain filters out thoughts for us”, Greyson says. Bruce Greyson has mostly studied NDEs, but lately he has also done research on what he and a colleague have labeled terminal lucidity, when people with dementia or Alzheimer's suddenly become lucid a few hours or days before they pass away. Will the world one day accept that there is more to life and death than what is physically measurable? ”I have spent my career lookin at scientific evidence, and that’s ultimately not what convinces people”, says Bruce Greyson. ”What convinces people is personal experience, usually. So the more we can do to help people having these experiences, by meditation or other spiritual practices, the better.” University of Virginia – Division of Perceptual StudiesProf Bruce Greyson’s websiteAfter (book) Irreducible Mind (book) IANDSNDERF

What if AI is an expression of what could be described, with a Gnostic term, as archontic intelligence? Is it the latest innovation by a force that has been manipulating humanity for millennia? Per Shapiro used to work for Swedish public service as an investigative radio reporter. He grew increasingly frustrated with the constraints of the mainstream narratives. When his boss demanded that he redo a documentary about the pandemic that challenged the official view on vaccines and other restrictions, because it ”sounded like conspiracy theories”, Per decided to quit. He started his own independent channel. Per speaks passionately about some of the most toxic and manipulative terms in journalism (and elsewhere): conspiracy theories, false balance and guilt by association. Shortly after leaving mainstream media, Per felt compelled to write a book about the way he sees what is happening with society and humankind. The title would translate to The War Against Life. At the very beginning Per quotes captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick: All my means are perfectly rational, it is my goal that is insane. This quote sums up much of our overarching societal structures, in Per’s view. ”Intelligence is something other than wisdom. Intelligence is the ability to solve complex problems, to achieve complex goals. To be wise takes experiencing the world, experiencing yourself as a part of the world”, Per says. He makes an analogy with cancer cells. ”You might say that a cancer cell is more intelligent than a healthy cell, because it achieves its goal more efficiently. But it lacks the experience that it is actually a cell in a body, on which it depends for its life.” ”This is a metaphor for how we live our lives on this planet.” Many say that capitalism is the root of our problems. No, says Per: ”Capitalism is the symptom of a culture which is disconnected from the earth, from nature.” The Swiss mystic, scientist and psychedelics pioneer Albert Hofmann – cited in Per’s book – said that the Western psyche has been struck by a schizoid catastrophe – a mindset of being separate from nature, from life itself. Per’s book is first and foremost inspired by the Gnostic message and worldview. He has had several conversations with mythologist John Lamb Lash (also interviewed on this podcast), who has devoted his life to interpreting the Gnostic message. In Gnostic mythology, the wisdom goddess Sophia is Earth itself. ”It’s important to know that this is not an abstract deity somewhere far away, this is a first hand experience of the only source of power you will ever have”, Per says. ”When we have lost this connection to our true source of power, we can more easily be manipulated to believe in illusions of power from other sources.” One of the most difficult parts to understand in the Gnostic mythology is the archontic influence. Per agrees with John Lamb Lash that it can be described as a mind virus. It can hijack your thoughts and ideas. One sneaky archontic modus operandi is counter mimicry: to artificially simulate real experiences. ”It piggybacks on our god-given faculty of imagination. But it turns it around so it becomes a simulation”, Per says. Transhumanism and AI come to mind. ”We have come to view ourselves with an archontic perspective, as if we are machines that need upgrading.” Per shares a deep concern about AI with his brother, MIT physicist Max Tegmark. Max has talked about this in several podcasts and radio shows. Bizarrely enough, the MIT professor has been fiercely attacked from the mainstream, not only for his AI worries, but also for lauding the work of his own brother, ”a known conspiracy theorist”. Per’s channel ”Folkets Radio” On Youtube Per’s book

Anoop Kumar has started a health revolution. Through an enterprise that bears precisely that name, he and his associates want us to understand that healing is possible. In Western culture, we have no idea what health is. Modern medicine is the true complementary medicine. What should be defined as conventional medicine are the methods of healing that have been around for millennia. Anoop Kumar talks about four engines of health: nutrition, movement, connection and rest. And they work in our physical as well as our mental bodies. ”What does the placebo effect suggest? It suggests that the line between the mind and the body is not concrete”, he says. Anoop got in touch with the Hindu spiritual school of advaita vedanta already as a child. It is similar to what is often referred to as non-duality. He had a hard time combining those insights with western materialism. But he realized that they are both valid. After his medical training – he is an ER doctor – Anoop decided to dedicate himself to bridging the perceived gap between east and west, body and mind, spirituality and science. He does not want to label his philosophy as idealism, advaita, non-dualism or anything else. He has developed an explanatory model he calls the three minds framework. ”Everything is consciousness, and consciousness is everything”, Anoop says. ”That doesn’t mean there's no bodies, no minds, no personalities. It doesn't mean that this is all just a dream and it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that we can’t work with the body or that modern medicine is useless.” ”None of this is true. There are so many misconceptions associated with this.” One oft-used metaphor to understand how consciousness is fundamental is that consciousness is the ocean, and we and everything else we perceive as separate are the waves, or even the ripples. Different expressions of the ocean, but all water. ”At deeper levels of reality, as we go deeper into that ocean, there is a radiant non-duality. The best word we have for that is consciousness.” There is a real shift happening in health care right now, according to Anoop. And not just in health care. The bigger picture is that amazing things are happening, but at the same time, darker things also have to surface. ”It's almost like an abscess. We’re getting to that eruption phase.” Anoop Kumar has published two books; Michelangelo’s Medicine and Is This a Dream? Health revolution Online course (at a DISCOUNT) Anoop’s website Anoop’s books