Sott Radio Network

If you haven't heard about the coronavirus currently locking down China, you've likely been hiding under a rock. The explanations for the origin of the virus have been all over the place: it came from Chinese people eating weird animals (bat soup anyone?); it came from space hitchhiking on a meteorite; it escaped a biotech lab; it's a bioweapon launched by the US to cripple China's economy. There's tons of speculation, but little in the way of actual verifiable evidence. Join us on this...

In this discussion of G.I. Gurdjieff's central ideas we delve further into the key insights he had on the human individual's state of sleep and the implications that such a condition has for the state of humanity as a whole. 'Self-remembering', 'identification', and 'considering' are just some of the key concepts and terms Gurdjieff used to describe the goals and pitfalls of the individual on the path to self-knowledge. We also discuss what may be Gurdjieff's most lasting legacy: the...

Diet dogma. Everyone wants to avoid it and generally we all think that we are. But it seems no dietary regimen comes without adherents that get a little too fundamentalist and authoritarian. While it's so common as to become a trope within the vegan community, Keto, Paleo and Carnivore diet communities seem to have their fair share of fundies, too. Apparently no one is entirely free of this tendency of the human condition toward tribalism and in-group bias. It's an uglier side of human...

Healer, philosopher, psychologist, adventurer, composer, mystic - all describe a facet of who George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was, and what he did. And yet, he may also be called one of the leading figures in 'spiritual' growth that most people have simply never heard of. Gurdjieff's teachings, body of writing and the schools he started and taught were, and are, a profound testament to his insight and vision for a healthy and well functioning human being. On a personal level, he worked with...

Would you like a side of gambling addiction with your Parkinson's medication? How about bouts of road rage and violence with your cholesterol meds? Or a pill that reduces your sense of empathy along with your headache? A recent article on the BBC called "The Medications That Change Who We Are" exposes the little-mentioned serious personality-shifting side effects of many of the most popular medications in the world. While the negative side-effects of psychotropic meds are relatively well...

A recent article on Mercola.com decries the sad fact that much of the stevia on the market at this point is genetically modified. Anyone who cares a modicum about their health (and presumably stevia users would fall in this category) is likely outraged that this natural sweetener has been degraded in such a way. This highlighted the subject of alternative sweeteners for us here at Objective:Health, causing us to look a little deeper. Are alternative sweeteners really all they're cracked up...

What good is philosophy? For the Stoics, among other schools, philosophy is dead if it is not fully lived. That's why the Stoics presented not just a system of logic and cosmology, but also a way of living - to put into practice the principles on which the system is built. But while the Stoic schools that taught this way of life died out many years ago, that doesn't mean that Stoicism is no longer an option for people today. Stoicism has experienced a revival in recent years. Today on...

The human body, when looked at in enough detail, is truly miraculous. A study in 2009 found that human breast milk actually varies its composition throughout the day, sending circadian signals to the infant to help regulate its biology appropriately. Among many different nutritional factors, the milk varied in composition by providing more cortisol in the daytime and more melatonin at night. Another study has found that, when the baby is ill, the mother's breast milk provides more immune...

While the ancient philosophy of Stoicism is experiencing a comeback, many are still unfamiliar with some of its more esoteric concepts, like the role of pneuma or spirit in cosmology. The primal stuff of the cosmos - informing matter and mind at different levels of tension - for the Stoics, pneuma is the alpha and omega, the beginning and end of the cosmos. Today on MindMatters, we take a look at some of the basics of Stoic cosmology, how it informs their ethics, and the role it had on early...

Correct breathing should come as natural to us as, well, breathing. But it doesn't. In fact, most of us so take the simple act of respiration for granted that we have learned to breathe shallowly and, indeed, incorrectly - allowing for a host of all sorts of detrimental knock-on effects. But what does that have to do with the world of ideas and the 'life of the mind' anyway? Well, quite a lot actually as we're coming to learn. This week on MindMatters join us as we delve into Dennis Lewis'...

We're back for the New Year with an analysis of the current health headlines. Happy New Year - 2020 is gonna be a doozy! This week we talk about the Ebola vaccine that the FDA has just approved which has all the signs of, like the polio vaccine before it, causing more Ebola cases than it prevents. We also discuss the outbreak of whooping cough in a Texas school that had a 100% vaccination rate. Can we say vaccine failure? Then we move on to the latest research that found women who take oral...

A judge walks out of his chambers laughing his head off. A colleague approaches him and asks why he is laughing. "I just heard the funniest joke in the world!" "Well, go ahead, tell me!" says the other judge. "I can't. I just gave someone ten years for it." With the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the world lost one of humanity's greatest cultural productions: the communist joke. Crossing cultures and borders, the jokes were unique, ubiquitous, and jam-packed with...

Fragile things hate chaos, volatility and randomness. The slightest jolt can break them. But what is the opposite of fragility? Not resilience or robustness. Resilient things are neutral to stressors. They take a beating, but remain unchanged. So what likes from disorder? Our languages don't have a word for such a property, or at least they didn't, until Nassim Taleb came around. Antifragile is the property of things that gain from disorder: like muscle, economies, creativity, and character....

Are killers born or made? Depending on who you ask, you'll get a variety of responses: all humans are good - it's only the 'environment' or 'society' that makes them do bad things; anyone who engages in murder must be a cold-blooded psychopath, born to kill. But simple explanations come from simple minds. It's not a matter of either/or. Some people are born that way, like psychopaths. Some have the strength of character to resist the impulse to conform. But most people are somewhere in...

Everywhere we look we see signs that the medical system, that's supposed to be healing and preventing disease, is diseased itself. It was recently announced that Americans are dying young at alarming rates. And is it any wonder? We have the opioid epidemic, vaccine injuries, the obesity epidemic, the cholesterol obsessed doctors who know nothing about nutrition, the most basic foundation of health. Polio vaccines now cause more polio outbreaks than the wild virus, the idea of curing disease...

Why have many ancient - and even contemporary stories - just stuck with us and seem etched into the psyche of civilization? What is it about particular narratives that appear to hold something so essential to our existence, and that have become reference points for our own narratives? And how can a story, or a mythology, serve us as we navigate life's many day to day travails, and unexpected twists and turns? Jordan Peterson writes: "A good theory lets you use things — things that once...

While materialist scientists and academics dismiss the possibility out of hand, there is not only an extensive amount of research suggesting the validity of reincarnation, near-death out-of-body experiences, and the like - but also much more to the reality of an afterlife than many people assume. Through automatic writing and the use of mediumship there exists a whole body of literature that presents such a world to us. While perhaps impossible to prove the validity of this material, it is...

Any regular readers of Sott.net, Mercola.com, GreenMedInfo and a number of other alternative health news websites are no-doubt familiar with the fact that alternative health information is being censored, deranked or flatly banned by a number of Big Tech platforms. Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Pinterest, even MailChimp have all been exposed recently for taking a firm stand against their user's freedom to have access to the health information they may wish to see. Today we're joined again by...

It's time again for another of our 'In the News' (ITN) shows, where the Objective:Health hosts weigh in on some of the headlines showing up in our feeds in the world of health. We cover a lot this week: A new study showing children who live closer to fast food joints are more likely to be obese (duh); genetic testing shows many vaccines contain aborted fetal cells; Tylenol taken by pregnant women may cause autism, ADHD or other developmental issues; chemicals in consumer products lead to...

Dr. Jordan Peterson's 1999 classic Maps of Meaning contains much the raw material for his more recent lectures and writing. While a dense read at times, it's worth the effort. On this episode of MindMatters we take a look at the first sections in Chapter 2, which explore the universals of human experience: the unbearable present, the encounter with chaos, and its transformation into the ideal future. With examples from everyday life and neuropsychology, Peterson shows how we are hardwired to...

The consequences of the ongoing misguided "war on drugs" have been devastating on multiple fronts not the least of which is the lack of research into actual benefits. On the last episode of Objective:Health we looked at the new research being done on psychedelic drugs to help with a whole range of mental issues. This week, we shift our focus to cannabinoids, better known as CBD, a powerful medicinal from the marijuana plant. Joining us today are our regular O:H host Erica and her husband...

The Roman elite were the original 1%. Status, wealth, power: the good life. Unless they happened to find themselves on a conscription list, in which case they were soon parted from their property, and their lives. The elites of the Chinese dynasties were in a similar position. Constant infighting and jockeying for influence and power allowed for a lot of turnover in the elite class. Families may have reigned for generations only to be wiped out or made paupers. But as long as peace reigned,...

It's that time of year again: when All Saints's Day, the Day of the Dead, and Halloween come around and our propensity to view or read some horror becomes that much more likely. But why do we indulge in horrific stories year around? Or better put - why do we seem to enjoy horror? What is it about horror, which can be so unpleasant - yet makes people crave a dose of the willies from time to time? Is the viewing or reading of it cathartic? A reminder of something intrinsic to the human...

In the 1960s in the US, the psychedelic drug subculture exploded out into the mainstream, bringing with it promises of peace and love, ushering in the 'Age of Aquarius' (whatever that means). Unfortunately, all they really accomplished was scaring the crap out of 'the authorities', who subsequently made all psychedelics illegal. Thus all the therapeutic potential of the drugs, which had already been studied for over a decade previously, ground to a screeching halt. Scientists could no longer...

Amidst much controversy and warning from the 'woke' media, 'concerned citizens' - and even the US military - the movie Joker landed in theaters just a few weeks ago. We were told that the film would empower incels, inspire shootings and have a deleterious effect on the general public - "so don't go!!" In an effort to get to the bottom of all the rancor (and take a break from our computers) we went to go see it for ourselves. And what we realized about the film is that it was not only being...

It's the book you've heard about for years, but probably never read - especially if you have an aversion to shallow self-help books promising success, influence, power and money. But Stephen R. Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is no shallow self-help book. It's actually a book about virtue - the development of character, and the timeless principles governing true success in life for as long as there has been history. Today on MindMatters we discuss some of the overall themes of...

de·​gen·​er·​ate - to sink into a low intellectual or moral state. Witnessing the current state of society and comparing it to even a decade ago, one can't help but notice a clear degenerative path, seemingly toward disintegration. Things that would seem deplorable in the past now seem to be becoming more and more acceptable, even normal. Aborted fetuses sold off organ by organ like car parts, sick and twisted sexual fetishes being collectively celebrated, cannibalism suggested as a solution...

The United States is a big country, but its population is anything but homogenous. For its entire history the people of its various regions have clashed over everything from politics and economics, to religion and cultural norms. But why? Today on MindMatters we discuss Colin Woodard's book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, inspired by the earlier work of David Hackett Fischer. The current cultural landscape of North America traces back to...

Welcome to another installment of 'In the News' (ITN), where your humble hosts at Objective:Health take a look at the headlines in health that are getting traction. On this show we talk about a UK teen who ate nothing but processed food until he went deaf and blind! Also in the UK, students at a posh school are coming home hungry as the school enforces a vegetarian diet for all. We also talk about an Armenian woman who cries solid crystals, Canadian teens swearing off having babies until the...

According to Walter Scheidel in The Great Leveler, the only ways to equalize the distribution of wealth effectively have involved violence on a massive scale: famine, war, state collapse, revolution. But how did things get so inequal in the first place? Today on MindMatters we discuss the first chapter of Scheidel's book, which provides an overview of the history of inequality. From chimps and hunter-gatherers to the first farmers and the emergence of classes of elites, there has always been...

After being taken into police custody, interviewed and studied, FBI profilers called him the most terrifying subject they had ever encountered. With an 'efficiency' and preternatural cunning that was unusual among even the most well known serial killers, Israel Keyes brought this monstrous modus operandi to a whole new level of planning and malevolence. What did Keyes have in common with the well documented cases of psychopaths who murdered people for their own gratification and who came...

Across the US, hundreds of people have come down with a severe and mysterious respiratory illness that seems to be linked to vaping the act of inhaling vapor produced by a vaporizer or electronic cigarette which has surged in popularity in recent years. The FDA announced a criminal probe into vaping as the number of reported cases of lung illnesses linked to the practice rose to 530. Some states and cities have already banned flavoured vape products, with Trump talking about a nation wide...

Around 12,800 years ago, North America suffered a massive cataclysm of cometary bombardment, alternately burning and freezing much of the continent. Not much survived. But what of what came before? In his latest book, Before America, Graham Hancock provides a journalistic account of the latest research into the pre-Columbian history of the Americas - North and South. Hancock catalogues the academic back-and-forths, the controversies and intellectual battles, and the widening acceptance that...

In our previous show on Witzel's book Origins of the World's Mythologies, we learned that the vast majority of world mythologies share the same narrative structure or overall storyline. But what does it mean, and why has it endured for so long, among so many peoples? Today we look at the final chapter of Witzel's book, where he ties it all together, along with our own expansions on his ideas. With reference to psychology (including Jordan Peterson and Kazimierz Dabrowski), generational...

Welcome to GMO 2.0, a new generation of genetic modification that promises even more than the previous GM technologies. Scientists using the "second generation" of genetic manipulation technology have used gene-editing to alter the DNA of breed of cattle so that they supposedly do not grow horns. At around the same time another group of scientists claim to have injected human cells into monkeys to create chimeras, who they say have increased intelligence. Earlier this year a group of Chinese...

Do we have access to a 'superconscious' part of our minds - that can become, under certain conditions, and with much observation, more or less conscious, or at the very least, made use of? Are there technologies which can, like a psi-powered geiger counter, help us to find things in our environments - and perhaps even assist us to navigate life - from other levels of awareness? Not content to retire as honorary Keeper of Anglo-Saxon Antiquities at the Cambridge University Museum of...

Starting last week, pictures of the burning Amazon rain forest flooded social media as people were lead to believe the 'lungs of the planet' were in jeopardy. News headlines were quick to point the finger at you, as usual, because you eat too much meat. But it was rather quickly discovered that everything being reported on the nature of the Amazon fires was wrong: they aren't at a record-setting levels, they aren't caused by people eating too much meat and the Amazon isn't even 'the lungs of...

In The News: A new study out of Canada that finds pregnant women consuming fluoridated water leads to children with lower IQ; Big Tech makes changes that censor alternative health websites; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fights back against pro-vaxxer smears and the corrupt EPA steps in to stop California from labelling RoundUp as carcinogenic. Join us on this episode of Objective:Health, as we take a closer look at the latest stories making headlines in the world of health. And have you ever...

For as long as cultures have had contact with each other, attentive observers have noticed the similarities between their respective myths. Today, scholars hypothesize that these similarities are either the result of accident, cultural sharing or diffusion, or a shared collective unconscious of symbols. But in his revolutionary book, The Origins of the World's Mythologies, E.J. Michael Witzel argues that there's a better reason for many shared features: common origin. Like linguistics or...

One would never think that the topic of parasitic worms could be thought to require nuance. Worms are bad, anything that kills them is a good thing, end of story. But surprisingly, there has been a significant amount of research in recent years that is hinting at the idea that, in some situations, parasitic worms are actually a good thing. In fact, some attribute the loss of these worms from our digestive tracts as leading to an increase in various conditions in the west, including...

Your MindMatters hosts can't be hitting the books and reading non-fiction ALL the time! So on this week's show we'll be sharing some of the novels, movies and shows that, in our estimation, are insightful of the human condition, artful enough to be called something like literature - and entertaining enough to add a little joy to our days - and which are certainly worth discussing. And don't worry, we'll be mentioning some of the non-fiction books we've been looking at that satisfy those...

The term 'mindfulness' is everywhere. With celebrity endorsements from the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Goldie Hawn, headlines featuring the latest studies with bold claims to Google employees and Davos World Economic Forum attendees, everyone is getting in on the biggest craze in consciousness since The Secret. It's taking the world by storm, reportedly now a $4.2 trillion industry. More than 100,000 books on Amazon have a variant of "mindfulness" in the title. Besides books, there are...

"Just one of those things." Sometimes you just can't find your keys. Sometimes you lose your TV remote. But sometimes, an object might fall from your grasp, never to be seen again. Sometimes objects might disappear from their usual home, only to reappear in the same place days, weeks, or months later - sometimes in a completely unexpected and implausible location. Sometimes a missing object will even be replaced with a poor facsimile. Psychical researcher Mary Rose Barrington calls these...

In his dystopian classic 1984, George Orwell introduced the concept of newspeak. Better known today as doublespeak or doubletalk, even those who haven't read the book will probably recognize the phrases "war is peace" or "freedom is slavery". Orwell was inspired by the Soviets' abuse of language in their propaganda, something that leaders and PR firms everywhere engage in, but which was particularly pervasive in USSR and the nations who later adopted the Soviets' socialist model. But there's...

In the centuries we humans have been studying anatomy, the fascia was never given much consideration. During dissections and autopsies, it was a nuisance to be cut away and removed to get to the important tissues beneath. But modern scientific study has brought a new appreciation of the fascia, as we continue to discover amazing functions of this misunderstood and underappreciated organ. Considering how prevalent it is in the body, it's surprising how little we know about fascia. As well as...

Today we return to Chapter 5 of Andrew Łobaczewski's groundbreaking work Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes to discern the impact of various ideologies on everyday life, and how dangerous delusions and deviant individuals can warp them into something barely recognizable, culminating in the social system Lobaczewski calls 'pathocracy'. We discuss Lobaczewski's prescient insights concerning how to discern the original contents of the ideology...

Anyone reading headlines regularly can't help but notice a number or strange disease outbreaks popping up in various regions, seemingly out of nowhere. Flesh-eating disease on the East coast of the US, typhus and tuberculosis in Los Angeles, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea making a comeback in Europe, treatment-resistant fungal infections, chronic Lyme disease around the world... it makes one wonder - what the heck is going on here? Join us on this episode of Objective:Health as we profile...

It seems everyone these days is experiencing some level of stress, with most of us having what we'd probably classify as too much stress. But despite the common goal of a stress-free existence, a certain level of periodic stress is actually necessary for the organism to function properly. Anything can be a stress on the body, whether it's work, relationships, toxic exposure, injury or even poor eating habits or lack of sleep. But much of the negative effects of stress have more to do with...

How has it come to be that our universities, societal norms and cultural values have taken a sharp turn down the road of instilling stupidity - instead of intelligence? When we see that the most tried and true (and ancient) approaches to the use of mind and emotions are being relegated to the dung heap, when we notice that many of the most advanced ideas put forth from cognitive behavioral therapy are being ignored - and indeed, inverted - what are we to make of this? On this week's...

Groucho Marx defined politics as "The art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." One could hardly come up with a better definition of postmodern politics. On today's show we discuss the psychological roots of this postmodern mayhem, which is manifesting in radical racial/gender politics in classrooms and universities, Antifa mobs on the streets, and mass censorship in Silicon Valley. Running Time: 01:06:46 Download: MP3 —...