The Observable Unknown

Interlude XXXVI: Human Ethology - The Animal That Knows It Is Seen Jan 08, 2026

In Interlude XXXVI, The Observable Unknown closes its non-verbal arc by turning toward human ethology - the biological study of behavior as it unfolds in natural social environments.

Long before language, gesture, or even conscious intention, human beings were shaped by being watched. Eyes track eyes. Bodies adjust to proximity. Posture shifts in response to power, threat, invitation, or safety. In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores how gaze, territoriality, dominance cues, submission cues, and ritualized movements operate as a silent grammar that continues to shape identity and social order.

Drawing from the foundational work of Konrad Lorenz, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, and Desmond Morris - approached with restraint and critical clarity - this episode examines how inherited behavioral patterns surface in modern life. From eye contact that stabilizes trust to spatial boundaries that regulate belonging, the body constantly negotiates visibility and vulnerability.

Ethological research suggests that selfhood sharpens under observation. We become more defined when we feel seen. This interlude traces how attention from others calibrates behavior, reinforces hierarchy, and anchors the sense of self within a living social field.

Rather than reducing humans to animals, this exploration restores continuity. Culture does not erase biology. It refines it. Ritualized movement, ceremonial posture, and socially sanctioned displays transform instinct into meaning.

The observable unknown is this: consciousness may not emerge in isolation, but in relation. Identity forms not only through thought, but through the awareness of being perceived.

This episode offers a grounded, intellectually rigorous conclusion to the non-verbal series, inviting listeners to reconsider how presence, posture, and perception quietly shape who we become.

The Observable Unknown is a podcast exploring consciousness at the intersection of neuroscience, culture, and lived experience. It is written and hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of drjuancarlosrey.com and crowscupboard.com, an interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges neuroscience, philosophy, and the interior dimensions of human experience.

Mailbag Installment 9: Language, Gender, and the Plural Brain Jan 07, 2026

In this Mailbag installment of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey responds to a listener question that opens one of the most consequential inquiries in cognitive science and lived experience: how language shapes perception, identity, and inner life.

Drawing from neuroscience, linguistics, and psychology, this episode explores what happens in the brain when a person speaks more than one language. Dr. Rey examines bilingual and polyglot cognition through the lens of real research, including studies on inner speech, working memory, emotional processing, and executive control. The discussion addresses whether different languages occupy the same neural systems or recruit distinct networks, and how early language acquisition leaves enduring cognitive traces.

Special attention is given to gendered and genderless languages, including how grammatical structure influences attention, categorization, and emotional framing. Research on linguistic relativity is woven into a broader reflection on self-talk, identity formation, and why certain feelings feel more authentic in one language than another.

This episode also considers the emotional weight of a first language, the neurological effort involved in switching between linguistic systems, and why bilingual minds often demonstrate enhanced cognitive flexibility. Rather than treating language as a neutral tool, Dr. Rey presents it as a formative architecture that conditions thought, memory, and selfhood.

As with all Mailbag installments, the tone is contemplative yet rigorous, designed to support sustained reflection rather than rapid consumption. Listeners interested in neuroscience, psychology, language studies, consciousness research, and the lived experience of multilingual identity will find this episode especially resonant.

The Observable Unknown is a podcast exploring consciousness at the intersection of neuroscience, culture, and lived experience. It is written and hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of drjuancarlosrey.com and crowscupboard.com, an interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges neuroscience, philosophy, and the interior dimensions of human experience.

Interlude XXXV - The Invisible Signal: Smell, Chemistry, and the Social Brain Jan 06, 2026

Before language. Before gesture. Before touch.
There was chemistry.

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey turns toward the most ancient and least acknowledged channel of human communication: olfaction. Long treated as peripheral to cognition, the sense of smell is revealed here as a primary architect of emotion, memory, attraction, and social awareness.

Drawing on neuroscience and human ethology, this episode explores how olfactory signals bypass the thalamus and move directly into the amygdala and hippocampus, shaping feeling and meaning before conscious thought can intervene. Research on human chemosignaling demonstrates that stress, fear, and compatibility can be communicated through scent alone, often without conscious detection. The nervous system reads messages the mind never hears.

This interlude examines how chemical cues influence vigilance, attraction, and interpersonal resonance, and why the loss of smell so often disrupts identity and emotional continuity. It also considers the enduring role of scent in ritual, culture, and collective regulation, from incense and oils to shared atmospheric markers of transition and belonging.

Here, meaning is not spoken. It is inhaled.

The Observable Unknown is an ongoing audio inquiry into the threshold between neuroscience, consciousness, and lived experience. Each interlude is written and recorded to invite contemplative attention while remaining grounded in verifiable research and clinical insight.

The Observable Unknown is written and hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com and drjuancarlosrey.com, exploring consciousness where neuroscience, culture, and lived experience meet.

Interlude XXXIV - The Social Skin: Touch, Safety, and the Nervous System Jan 01, 2026

Touch is the oldest sense, the first language learned, and the last to fade. Long before speech, before gesture, before conscious memory, the skin was already listening.

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores the neuroscience of touch as a regulator of emotion, trust, and social reality. Drawing on research in affective neuroscience, developmental psychology, and human ethology, this episode examines how the body’s largest organ functions as a social interface, translating contact into meaning.

Listeners are guided through the discovery of specialized nerve fibers that respond not to pressure or pain, but to gentle, relational contact. These pathways, closely linked to the vagus nerve and limbic system, shape feelings of safety, belonging, and emotional regulation. Studies on early development reveal how touch organizes the nervous system itself, influencing stress response, attachment patterns, and resilience across the lifespan.

The episode also addresses what happens when touch is absent, distorted, or weaponized. From clinical findings on trauma and sensory deprivation to contemporary research on social isolation, Dr. Rey traces how the nervous system encodes absence as threat. Touch, it turns out, is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.

As the arc on embodiment continues, Interlude XXXIV returns consciousness to the body, not as metaphor, but as mechanism. Emotion is not only felt inwardly. It is transmitted across skin, rhythm, and proximity, shaping how humans attune to one another beneath awareness.

This episode invites listeners to reconsider connection itself, not as an abstract ideal, but as a physiological dialogue written in nerve endings and trust.

Interlude XXXIII - The Geometry of Intimacy: Space, Distance, and the Social Nervous System Dec 31, 2025

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey examines one of the most overlooked dimensions of human consciousness: space itself.

Long before words are exchanged, before faces are read or gestures interpreted, bodies negotiate meaning through distance. How close we stand. How we angle our torsos. How quickly we withdraw or remain. These spatial decisions are not arbitrary. They are governed by deeply embedded neural and cultural systems that shape trust, threat, intimacy, and belonging.
Drawing from the foundational work of anthropologist Edward T. Hall on proxemics, alongside contemporary research in social neuroscience and embodied cognition, this episode explores how personal space functions as a regulatory interface between nervous systems. Listeners are guided through how spatial zones modulate emotional arousal, how proximity influences cortisol and autonomic tone, and why violations of distance can feel intrusive even in the absence of conscious threat.
This interlude also examines cross-cultural variation in spatial norms, the neurological cost of chronic spatial intrusion, and the role of distance in rituals, architecture, and modern political life. From crowded urban environments to church pews, Dr. Rey traces how changes in spatial experience quietly reshape cognition and relational health.
At its core, this episode proposes a sobering insight: intimacy is not only emotional or verbal. It is geometric. The body reads space as meaning long before language intervenes.
The Observable Unknown is created and hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com, and explores the frontier where neuroscience, psychology, culture, and lived experience converge. Each interlude is crafted to invite reflection while remaining grounded in verifiable research.

Interlude XXXII - Faces That Speak: Microexpression and the Preconscious Mind Dec 30, 2025

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com turns our attention to one of the most revealing instruments of human communication: the face.

Long before a sentence is formed, before a belief is articulated, before intention becomes conscious, the face has already spoken. Tiny muscular movements, measured in fractions of a second, carry information the mind has not yet edited. These fleeting signals - known as microexpressions - offer a rare window into preconscious emotional life.

Drawing on decades of research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral science, this episode explores how facial expressions arise from deeply conserved neural pathways linking emotion, perception, and social judgment. Studies in affective neuroscience show that the amygdala and related subcortical systems initiate expressive responses before cortical reasoning can intervene. What we “show” often precedes what we know.

This interlude examines how microexpressions influence trust, threat detection, moral intuition, and interpersonal resonance. It also considers how these facial signals differ from culturally learned gestures, and why attempts to suppress them often intensify their visibility. The face, it seems, resists deception - not because it is honest, but because it is fast.

Dr. Rey also reflects on the ethical dimension of perception. To see another clearly is not the same as judging them. Microexpressions do not reveal character; they reveal momentary states. Wisdom lies not in exposure, but in restraint.

The observable unknown explored here is subtle yet profound: we are read by others before we speak, before we decide, and sometimes before we understand ourselves. Consciousness does not begin with explanation. It begins with expression.

This episode continues the non-verbal arc of The Observable Unknown, following Interlude XXXI’s exploration of gesture and embodiment, and preparing the way for deeper inquiries into proximity, touch, and the social nervous system.

Interlude XXXI - The Speaking Body: Gesture Before Language Dec 25, 2025

Before words shaped meaning, the human body was already speaking.

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey examines the deep neurological and evolutionary roots of non-verbal communication, revealing how gesture, posture, and movement function as primary instruments of thought rather than mere accompaniments to language.

Drawing on cognitive psychology research by Susan Goldin-Meadow at the University of Chicago, the episode explores how hand gestures often carry knowledge that has not yet reached conscious articulation. Children, it turns out, frequently understand concepts with their bodies before they can explain them in words. Gesture is not decoration. It is cognition in motion.

Neuroscientific work from Giacomo Rizzolatti’s laboratory in Parma and later human studies by Marco Iacoboni at the University of California, Los Angeles demonstrate that observing another person’s movement activates corresponding motor regions in the observer’s own brain. Meaning is not inferred at a distance. It is embodied through resonance.

The episode then moves into human ethology, examining how Desmond Morris and Ray Birdwhistell approached gesture, posture, and spacing as biologically grounded systems shaped by culture but constrained by evolution. Language did not replace gesture. It layered itself onto a far older communicative infrastructure.

Contemporary research on posture, nervous system regulation, and interpersonal synchrony further reveals how bodily alignment influences emotion, trust, and social cohesion. From shared movement to ritualized stillness, bodies that move together often begin to feel together.

This interlude invites listeners to reconsider intelligence itself. Thought may not reside solely in words or even in the brain. It may be distributed across muscle, motion, and space.

The Observable Unknown is written and hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com and drjuancarlosrey.com, exploring consciousness where neuroscience, culture, and lived experience meet.

Brownell Landrum Dec 24, 2025

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey is joined by author and contemplative thinker Brownell Landrum, whose work explores the subtle intersection between intention, imagination, neuroscience, and the mechanics of desire.

At a time when “manifestation” is often reduced to slogans or stripped of rigor, Landrum offers a refreshingly disciplined approach. Drawing on psychology, behavioral science, and lived experience, she examines wishing not as fantasy, but as a structured cognitive and emotional process that shapes attention, expectation, and outcome. This conversation reframes desire as a neurological and philosophical act: a way the mind rehearses possibility before the body ever moves.

Together, Rey and Landrum explore how intention operates beneath conscious awareness, how narrative self-talk influences probability, and how disciplined imagination differs from escapism. The discussion moves fluidly between empirical research and interior experience, asking how hope, longing, and future-oriented thought alter perception, motivation, and decision-making. What emerges is a model of wishing that is neither mystical nor mechanical, but deeply human.

Listeners will hear a careful examination of how belief systems are constructed, how aspiration can either clarify or distort reality, and how unexamined desire quietly governs much of modern life. Landrum’s work invites a return to agency without illusion, offering tools for engaging possibility while remaining anchored in responsibility and discernment.

As always, The Observable Unknown resists easy conclusions. This episode is not a promise of outcomes, but an inquiry into how meaning, attention, and intention co-author the future we move toward. It is a conversation for those who want to think clearly about hope, without surrendering either skepticism or wonder.

Hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com.

For questions, reflections, or correspondence:
TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
336-675-5836

Interlude XXX – Neural Semantics: How Language Rewrites the Brain Dec 23, 2025

In this concluding interlude of the Language Arc, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey examines how language reshapes the brain itself. Drawing on contemporary neuroscience rather than abstract philosophy, this episode explores how repeated linguistic patterns sculpt neural circuits, alter perceptual thresholds, and reorganize attention, memory, and emotion.

The episode traces research on experience-dependent plasticity in language networks, including work on phonemic tuning, semantic framing, and predictive processing. Studies of bilingualism, late language acquisition, and narrative reframing reveal that words are not passive labels but active forces that recalibrate cortical maps across the lifespan. Language trains expectation, filters sensory input, and conditions which possibilities are noticed or ignored.

Listeners are guided through findings from cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistics, and affective science, showing how inner narration influences stress physiology, emotional regulation, and decision-making. Speech is revealed not only as communication, but as a biological intervention, capable of reinforcing fear, widening cognitive flexibility, or stabilizing identity under uncertainty.

This interlude closes the Language Arc by grounding meaning in neural consequence. Grammar becomes circuitry. Repetition becomes architecture. And consciousness appears less as a static trait than as a pattern continually revised by what we say, hear, and silently rehearse.

Language does not merely describe reality. It trains the brain that perceives it.

Interlude XXIX - The Social Tongue: Language as Alignment and Power Dec 18, 2025

In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey continues the Language Arc by examining one of the most consequential ideas in cognitive science, philosophy, and anthropology: language does not merely describe reality. It actively participates in shaping it.

Drawing from research in linguistics, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, this episode explores how grammatical structure, metaphor, and symbolic framing influence perception, memory, emotion, and moral judgment. From the way tense alters our experience of time, to how metaphor organizes political and personal belief, language emerges as an invisible architecture through which consciousness moves.

Listeners are guided through key ideas from cognitive linguistics, including how conceptual metaphors scaffold abstract thought, how linguistic categories influence attention and recall, and how habitual speech patterns quietly constrain or expand what we recognize as possible. The episode also touches on clinical and contemplative implications, including how reframing inner language can alter emotional regulation, identity formation, and decision-making.

Rather than treating language as a neutral tool, this interlude invites a deeper recognition of speech as an active force that shapes inner life and collective reality alike. Words do not simply name the world. They help build it.

Interlude XXIX is part of a larger philosophical sequence investigating how language modifies consciousness, following earlier explorations of perception, inner speech, and narrative selfhood.

To share reflections or questions, email TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com or text 3366755836.
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Interlude XXVIII - Metaphor as Neural Bridge: How Meaning Crosses from Body to Mind Dec 17, 2025

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey continues the Language Arc by examining how language does not merely describe reality, but actively organizes perception, emotion, and possibility.

Drawing from linguistics, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind, this episode explores how metaphor, grammar, and semantic framing shape the way consciousness encounters the world. Research in psycholinguistics and neuroscience suggests that the words we habitually use quietly guide attention, memory, and emotional interpretation long before deliberate reasoning begins.

Listeners are guided through how linguistic structures influence moral judgment, time perception, identity formation, and even bodily experience. From studies on metaphor processing in the brain to cross-cultural research on how different languages encode agency, causality, and responsibility, this interlude shows that language functions as a perceptual instrument rather than a neutral label-maker.

Dr. Rey reflects on how symbolic systems become internal architectures. Language becomes the scaffolding upon which thought stabilizes, fragments, or evolves. When language changes, the self subtly reorganizes. This has implications for therapy, education, spiritual practice, and cultural dialogue, particularly in moments of crisis or transformation.

Interlude XXVIII invites the listener to notice how words move through the body and mind, how phrases rehearse reality before action occurs, and how silence itself becomes meaningful once language loosens its grip.

This episode is part of an ongoing inquiry into consciousness, meaning, and the biological foundations of inner life, offered with scholarly care and contemplative pacing.

For reflections or questions, write to TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com or text 3366755836.
If this work resonates, please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you listen.

Interlude XXVII - Language as World-Maker: How Words Shape Reality Dec 16, 2025

Language does not merely describe reality - it actively constructs it.

In Interlude XXVII of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com examines how language functions as a cognitive and perceptual architecture, shaping not only communication, but memory, attention, identity, and moral reasoning itself. Drawing from linguistics, neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophy, this episode explores how the words we inherit silently sculpt the world we believe we inhabit.

This interlude investigates the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, modern research in linguistic relativity, and neurocognitive studies showing that language alters perceptual discrimination, emotional regulation, and even pain processing. Listeners are guided through how grammatical tense shapes temporal awareness, how metaphor governs moral judgment, and how naming stabilizes experience - sometimes at the cost of flexibility and insight.

Dr. Rey traces how language organizes perception into categories that feel natural, inevitable, and true - while revealing that these structures are learned, contingent, and culturally encoded. The episode also explores what happens when language breaks down, loosens, or is deliberately reshaped through poetry, ritual, and contemplative practice.

At its core, this interlude asks a deceptively simple question:
If language builds the world we experience, who are we when language pauses?

The Observable Unknown is a long-form contemplative science podcast hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com, exploring consciousness, neuroscience, myth, and the inner architecture of human experience with intellectual rigor and poetic clarity.

For reflections or questions, email DrRey@TheObservableUnknown.com or text 3366755836.
And wherever you listen, please consider leaving a review and rating - your words help this work reach those searching for depth without distortion.

Interlude XXVI - The Echoing Mind: When Thought Speaks Dec 13, 2025

When you hear yourself think, who do you believe is speaking?

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores inner speech as a neurological, psychological, and philosophical phenomenon. Drawing on the work of Lev Vygotsky, contemporary neuroimaging research on Broca’s region, Wernicke’s area, the supplementary motor area, and auditory cortex, and the provocative hypothesis of Julian Jaynes, this episode examines how language becomes internalized, how thought acquires a voice, and how the sense of self may emerge from dialogue rather than silence.

Listeners are guided through research on subvocalization, working memory, and the phonological loop, alongside clinical studies on auditory verbal hallucinations and contemplative practices that soften or reshape inner narration. The episode contrasts pathology with practice, showing how the same neural machinery that produces distressing voices can, under other conditions, be trained toward clarity, restraint, and presence.

Rather than treating the inner voice as a flaw or illusion, this interlude frames it as a living inheritance of social speech, cultural memory, and biological function. Thought may not be a solitary act, but a chorus negotiated within the brain.

The Observable Unknown is an intellectual and contemplative series hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com, exploring consciousness at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, myth, and lived experience.

For reflections or questions, write to TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com or text 3366755836.
If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review and rating wherever you listen.

Interlude XXV – Grammars of Perception Dec 10, 2025

Interlude XXV of The Observable Unknown opens a new arc at the crossroads of linguistics, neuroscience, and consciousness studies. In this episode, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com examines how language does far more than label experience. It organizes perception itself. Drawing from the work of linguists such as Leonard Talmy, George Lakoff, Lera Boroditsky, and contemporary neurolinguistic research, this interlude investigates the ways grammar, metaphor, and syntactic structure silently shape the architecture of awareness.

Listeners are invited to explore how linguistic categories channel cognition, how verbs can redirect attention, and how metaphor functions as a cognitive operating system rather than a decorative feature of speech. Dr. Rey examines studies that demonstrate how speakers of different languages track space, time, agency, and emotion through distinct neural pathways, and how these grammatical habits modulate everything from moral judgment to sensory processing.

The interlude also addresses the deeper question beneath the science: If language influences perception, does each language offer a different window on reality? And if so, what happens to consciousness when a language evolves, fades, or is culturally suppressed? This exploration includes a discussion of endangered languages, ritual speech forms, and the neurological flexibility that allows bilingual speakers to shift perceptual modes.

As with every interlude in the neuroscience arc, Grammars of Perception blends empirical research with reflective inquiry. The goal is not to promote linguistic determinism but to illuminate the subtle reciprocity between words and worlds, mapping how the brain’s linguistic circuitry becomes the scaffolding for meaning.

Listeners seeking a richer understanding of consciousness, cognition, language, and human possibility will find this episode a contemplative and intellectually rigorous guide into the subtle mechanics of mind.

Dr. Robert Atkinson Dec 06, 2025

Dr. Robert Atkinson stands at the confluence of myth, developmental psychology, and the perennial human hunger for wholeness. An award-winning author, educator, and architect of what he calls unitive consciousness, Dr. Atkinson writes with the calm authority of one who has spent a lifetime apprenticed to depth, meaning, and the evolutionary arc of the human story.

His newest work, The Way of Unity: Essential Principles and Preconditions for Peace, is a sweeping synthesis of sacred cosmologies, cross-cultural wisdom traditions, and the evolutionary sciences. This text proposes that unity is not merely an ethical aspiration but a structural principle woven into the fabric of reality itself. Through nine unitive principles and a global tapestry of community models already living these truths, Atkinson offers a roadmap for moving from fracture to coherence, from division to planetary flourishing.

His oeuvre spans eleven other books, including The Story of Our Time, A New Story of Wholeness, and the Nautilus Award–winning Our Moment of Choice. With a doctorate in cross-cultural human development from the University of Pennsylvania and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago, Dr. Atkinson has been a pioneering voice in storytelling research, personal myth-making, and the evolution of consciousness. He is the founder of the One Planet Peace Forum and a member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle.

It is my honor to welcome to The Observable Unknown a thinker who writes at the scale of civilizations while keeping his hand gently on the human heart.

Interlude XXIV – The Photonic Mind: Light as Language Dec 04, 2025

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com invites you into an exploration of consciousness not only as electrical patterns but as radiance itself. We trace the emergence of biophotons -ultra-weak light emissions from living cells -through the pioneering work of biophysicist Fritz-Albert Popp, whose research at the University of Marburg in the 1970s uncovered coherent photon emissions in DNA and cellular tissue. Next, we consider Roeland van Wijk and his photonic studies of stress, health, and light-based cellular signalling in the early 2000s. Finally, we bring in quantum theorist Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford, who links quantum coherence to living systems and suggests that cognitive processes may be photon-mediated.

Here we ask: what if neurons communicate not only with spikes but with flashes of light? What if meaning literally shimmers, and the aura and halo of tradition reflect actual photonic fields of the body? The observable unknown becomes radiant: a living network of photonic resonance where consciousness may arise from the interplay of electrons, DNA helices, and photons.

Write to TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com or text 336-675-5836 to share reflections, queries, or insights. Please leave a rating or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts - your support helps carry these explorations into broader fields of inquiry.

Keywords: biophotons, quantum biology, Fritz-Albert Popp, Roeland van Wijk, Vlatko Vedral, consciousness science, photonic mind, neuroscience podcast, Dr Juan Carlos Rey, The Observable Unknown, crowscupboard.

Interlude XXIII - The Harmonics of the Heart: Electromagnetic Emotion Dec 03, 2025

In this grounded and intimate episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com explores the silent symphony within the chest - the electromagnetic rhythm that links body, brain, and emotion.

Neurophysiologist J. Andrew Armour of McGill University first described the heart’s intrinsic nervous system - tens of thousands of neurons that sense, process, and send information independently of the brain. Psychophysiologist Rollin McCraty at the HeartMath Institute revealed that the heart’s electromagnetic field extends several feet beyond the body and changes with emotional state. And neuroscientist Karl Pribram of Stanford and Georgetown suggested that perception operates holographically through waves of energy and interference.

Together, their work illuminates a profound insight: emotion is not merely felt - it radiates. Heart-brain coherence, measured through heart-rate variability and vagal signaling, aligns cognition and compassion. In moments of love, prayer, or shared song, human fields literally synchronize.

The heart is a resonant organ, a transmitter of empathy. Its rhythm communicates safety, trust, and presence faster than words. To “listen to your heart” is not merely metaphor - it is biology tuned to meaning.

The Observable Unknown continues its exploration of mind, matter, and mystery - returning from the quantum to the corporeal, from the photon to the pulse.

Write to TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com or text 336-675-5836 to share your reflections. Please rate and review The Observable Unknown on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify to help expand the field of inquiry.

Keywords: heart-brain coherence, neurocardiology, J Andrew Armour, Rollin McCraty, Karl Pribram, electromagnetic field, emotion science, vagus nerve, heart rhythm variability, The Observable Unknown, Dr Juan Carlos Rey, crowscupboard.

Pen Densham Nov 25, 2025

There are artists who photograph the world, and then there are rare souls who seem to listen to it. Pen Densham is the latter.

He has lived at the intersection of myth, cinema, and the ineffable since childhood - when, at the age of four, he rode a live alligator for one of his parents’ 35mm theatrical shorts. It was perhaps the earliest sign that he would spend a lifetime courting the miraculous. Cameras, he says, “seemed like magician’s instruments,” and his entire artistic journey has been shaped by that early enchantment.

His filmmaking career spans Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Moll Flanders, the revival of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, collaborations with Costner, Freeman, Jodie Foster, Ron Howard, and nearly 300 hours of television - all anchored in a deep humanism, a love of mythic structure, and a reverence for the emotional life of images.

But today, we turn our attention to the visual world he has cultivated in silence - a body of fine art photography that dissolves the boundaries between the real and the remembered. Work that is neither documentary nor digital sorcery but entirely in-camera, executed with the spontaneity of Pollock and the lyricism of Monet.

He calls some of his pieces “Organic Mandalas.” They are photographs, yes - but they are also meditations, reflections, and portals into the subconscious rhythms of nature.

Pen Densham is, in truth, a minister of vision - a man who shows us not what the world looks like, but how it feels.

Today, on The Observable Unknown, we journey with him through intuition, image, loss, nature, and the subtle revelations that only an artist of his staggering magnitude can offer.

Interlude XXII - The Cosmic Self: Consciousness Beyond the Brain Nov 23, 2025

Interlude XXII - The Cosmic Self: Consciousness Beyond the Brain

In this enlightening interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com traces the frontier where neuroscience meets metaphysics – where consciousness ceases to be a human trait and becomes a cosmic condition.

Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin introduced Integrated Information Theory (IIT), proposing that consciousness emerges from the degree of informational integration within any system. His collaborator Christof Koch of the Allen Institute for Brain Science extended this work, measuring the brain’s coherence during wakefulness, dreaming, and anesthesia. Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup of the University of Amsterdam re-envisions their data through analytic idealism - a universe not made of matter that thinks, but of mind that materializes.

From neurons to galaxies, from quantum entanglement to human empathy, Interlude XXII explores the ancient question of whether awareness is fundamental. What if the cosmos itself computes its own experience? What if every atom hums with interiority?

Blending rigorous science with philosophical depth, Dr. Rey revisits the lineage from panpsychism and Vedanta to modern physics and information theory. The result is a breathtaking meditation on participation: to know is to belong to a thinking universe.

Write to TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com or text 336-675-5836 to share your reflections. Rate and review The Observable Unknown on Podbean, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify to help the dialogue expand.

Keywords: panpsychism, integrated information theory, Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch, Bernardo Kastrup, analytic idealism, consciousness studies, quantum mind, cosmic self, philosophy of mind, The Observable Unknown, Dr Juan Carlos Rey, crowscupboard.

Jordan Feldman Nov 16, 2025

Today I’m joined by someone whose work has moved fluidly between stage, screen, and self-examination - actor and producer Jordan Feldman.

Jordan’s career has unfolded at the intersection of visibility and vulnerability. He has brought humor and humanity to complex stories, while also speaking candidly about his journey through anxiety, recovery, and rediscovery.

In this conversation, we look beneath the spotlight - into the quieter backstage of the mind where creativity, discipline, and mental health intersect. What happens when a performer learns to listen to his own nervous system as carefully as he listens to a script?

This is a dialogue about art as medicine, and the human spirit as both stage and sanctuary.

Mary Madeiras Nov 10, 2025

Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of Crowscupboard.com sits with three-time Emmy Award winning director and Akashic Records practitioner Mary Madeiras to explore how the soul communicates, remembers, and unfolds through lived experience. This conversation moves through identity, intuition, trauma as material for transformation, and the quiet inner voice that guides the shape of a life.

This is not a discussion of belief.
It is a listening for recognition.

Jack R. Bialik Nov 02, 2025

In this illuminating conversation, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com explores the paradox of human knowledge: how civilizations accumulate, then discard, their greatest insights. Author Jack R. Bialik examines the patterns of erasure in his new book, "Lost In Time" - from ancient cataract surgery to the fragility of our digital archives - and posits that forgetting may be as essential as remembering. With over 30 years in technology and biblical studies, Bialik bridges the empirical and the esoteric, asking whether the next frontier of wisdom lies not in new discovery but in re-remembering what we once lost.
Join us as we traverse the margins of memory and ask: If knowledge disappears fast enough, does it still matter? This interview invites you to reconsider what it means to remember - individually, collectively, and globally.

Keywords: collective memory, civilizational forgetting, digital impermanence, knowledge vs wisdom, Jack R. Bialik interview, human archives, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey, The Observable Unknown, science & spirituality, historiography of science.

Mailbag Installment 8 - The Fasting Instinct: The Ancient Science of Stillness Nov 01, 2025

In this Mailbag installment of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com responds to listener Priya A. of Seattle, who asks whether ancient fasting rituals were early, intuitive ways of shaping the gut–brain connection.

Drawing from modern neurogastroenterology, nutritional neuroscience, and microbiome research, Dr. Rey traces fasting through time - from Upanishadic austerity and monastic silence to the cellular ecologies within us. He revisits the verified work of Mark Mattson (National Institute on Aging), Valter Longo (University of Southern California), and Satchidananda Panda (Salk Institute), alongside cross-cultural rites that discovered metabolic renewal long before molecular biology.

Listeners learn how temporary abstinence activates brain-derived neurotrophic factor, regenerates immune function, recalibrates circadian genes, and modulates the microbiome’s chemical symphony of serotonin, dopamine, and GABA. Ancient seekers may have lacked microscopes - but they possessed an embodied intuition that consciousness and digestion are one continuum of rhythm and light.

Fasting emerges here not as deprivation but as dialogue - a physiological prayer aligning metabolism, mood, and meaning. Dr. Rey invites the audience to consider hunger as a form of listening: an emptiness through which the body remembers its original harmony.

Email reflections or questions to TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com, or text 336-675-5836. Reviews and ratings on Podbean or Apple Podcasts help sustain this global conversation between science, soul, and the unseen.

Keywords: fasting, gut-brain axis, microbiome, neuroplasticity, BDNF, circadian rhythm, Valter Longo, Mark Mattson, Satchidananda Panda, psychobiotics, neuroscience, spirituality, The Observable Unknown, Dr Juan Carlos Rey, crowscupboard.

Interlude XXI – The Quantum Synapse: Consciousness at the Edge of Physics Oct 30, 2025

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com steps into the shimmer between matter and meaning – the quantum frontier of consciousness. Could awareness itself arise from sub-atomic events inside the brain?

Mathematician Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff proposed the Orch-OR Theory, suggesting that quantum coherence within neuronal microtubules gives birth to conscious experience. Though Max Tegmark argued that such coherence would vanish in trillionths of a second, new findings challenge that dismissal.

At Oxford, quantum effects in photosynthesis and avian navigation imply that biology itself sustains quantum order. At the University of Tokyo, Anirban Bandyopadhyay demonstrated microtubule vibrations that behave like coherent quantum systems, while Matthew Fisher at UC Santa Barbara proposed that phosphorus atoms might store quantum information within the brain’s chemistry.

Dr. Rey explores how these discoveries reshape our understanding of decision, memory, and perception - each thought a potential collapse of probability. If so, consciousness may not emerge from the universe; the universe may awaken through us.

This interlude traverses the philosophical and empirical: quantum tunneling in enzymes, coherence in bird migration, and the mystery of awareness as cosmic feedback. The observable unknown is this - that every act of perception might be the universe observing itself.

Connect with Dr. Rey directly at TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com or (336) 675-5836.

Interlude XX – The Whispering Cells: Astrocytes and the Secret Mind Oct 30, 2025

In this quietly radical interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com invites you into the hidden orchestra of the brain - the immense realm of glial cells: astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia. We have long worshipped the bright-firing neurons, but these non-neuronal cells may in fact hold the deeper language of consciousness.
Pioneering work by Dr. R. Douglas Fields at the National Institutes of Health revealed that experience-driven myelination - the wrapping and reshaping of axons by oligodendrocytes - is guided by neural activity rather than passive development.
Meanwhile, Dr. Maiken Nedergaard at the University of Rochester and the University of Copenhagen uncovered the glymphatic system - a glia-driven clearing network that operates primarily during sleep, suggesting that astrocytes oversee brain detoxification and restoration.
This episode explores how these whispering cells sculpt learning, mood, intuition, and memory via calcium-wave signalling rather than rapid electrical spikes. We traverse from deep sleep to white matter, from silent structural rearrangement to the possible biological roots of insight.
The observable unknown here is profound: perhaps the true architecture of mind is not in the fire of neurons, but in the hush of glia - the vast cellular grid that conducts all thought, emotion, and awareness without a single visible spark.
Join Dr. Rey and discover what your brain keeps whispering beneath your everyday consciousness.

Interlude XIX - Neural Mirroring: The Science of Shared Feeling Oct 28, 2025

In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com examines the hidden choreography of empathy - the mirror mechanism that allows one human brain to echo another’s joy, sorrow, and intent.
First identified in the early 1990s by Giacomo Rizzolatti and Vittorio Gallese at the University of Parma, mirror neurons revealed a startling truth: our brains rehearse the actions and emotions we witness in others. To see is to enact; to feel is to participate.

Drawing upon research from Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute on compassion fatigue, Marco Iacoboni at UCLA on social context and empathy, and Jean Decety at the University of Chicago on psychopathy and volitional empathy, Dr. Rey explores how imitation becomes the architecture of morality itself. Empathy, he suggests, is not a moral ornament - it is a neurological duet.

Listeners will journey from the original macaque experiments to contemporary insights in social neuroscience, learning how oxytocin, dopamine, and neural oscillations create the subtle harmonics of connection. The episode also addresses how virtual life and digital mediation fracture our natural resonance, and how ritual, music, and collective rhythm can restore it.

In the end, Neural Mirroring invites reflection on the deep biochemistry of belonging.

Meaning, it turns out, is not imagined - it is synchronized.

We do not think each other into being; we fire together into awareness.

Mailbag Installment 7 – “The Science of Spirit and the Mechanics of Mediumship” Oct 27, 2025

In this special Mailbag installment, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com answers a letter from Clara W of Asheville, North Carolina, who asks about the ancient practice of spirit communication. Drawing on his thirty-year body of research and teaching, Dr. Rey explains how conditioning Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area - the brain’s language centers - can strengthen intuitive speech and symbolic translation, while regulation of the limbic system allows practitioners to access altered states of consciousness safely and consistently.

The episode bridges anthropology, neurolinguistics, and transpersonal psychology to show how mediumship arises from measurable biological processes rather than mystical abstraction. Listeners will learn how respiratory entrainment, micro-movement, and hemispheric synchronization transform intuition into reliable perception - and how emotion, chemistry, and attention converge to form the neural architecture of faith itself.

Across cultures and centuries, every form of trance, prophecy, and divination has relied on the same physiological symphony: breath, rhythm, and meaning. This conversation reveals why mediumship is not supernatural - it is super-biological.

Key topics: mediumship science, Broca’s Area training, Wernicke’s Area integration, limbic resonance, neuro-somatic conditioning, intuitive cognition, spiritual neuroscience, transpersonal psychology, anthropology of ritual, scientific mediumship.

To learn more or to enroll in Mediumship Coursework, visit crowscupboard.com.
Connect with Dr. Rey on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter), and please rate and review The Observable Unknown - your reflections help others discover the bridge between science and soul.

Richard M. Anderson Oct 26, 2025

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of Crowscupboard.com sits down with molecular biologist and award-winning author Richard M. Anderson - a visionary whose work unites hard science, humanism, and speculative imagination.

A former clinical laboratory director and bioanalyst, Anderson built a distinguished scientific career before turning to writing. His nonfiction landmark The Evolution of Life: Big Bang to Space Colonies traces existence from cosmic birth to post-terrestrial civilization, arguing that empathy and reason are our most essential survival traits. His acclaimed Outbound series - beginning with Islands in the Void and continuing with Meta Mars - extends this inquiry into the 23rd century, when humankind and sentient machines must decide whether coexistence or conflict defines evolution.

In conversation, Anderson reflects on how curiosity became his compass - from laboratory benches to literary worlds. He discusses the ethics of AI, the fragility of ecosystems, and why emotional intelligence may be the only true technology capable of saving us. With clarity and compassion, he paints a future where scientific realism meets moral responsibility, where “the Pandora’s Box of artificial intelligence” forces us to re-evaluate what it means to be alive.

Listeners will come away with a deeper understanding of how data, imagination, and conscience converge to form our collective destiny.

Join us for a far-reaching dialogue about the origins of life, the future of consciousness, and the hope that still lies between the molecules and the stars.

Mailbag Installment 6 - “The Digital Altar: Social Media as Ritual Space” Oct 25, 2025

In this edition of The Observable Unknown: Mailbag, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of Crowscupboard.com explores how social media operates not merely as communication, but as ritual space. When acts of attention shift online, every repost, “like,” and scroll becomes a litany of belonging, performance, and belief. Drawing on innovative scholarship in digital religion and media anthropology, this episode asks how our feeds mirror ancient altars - and whether attention given or withheld today is the most sacred offering we still possess. Join us as we ask: if the altar is now algorithmic, what does ritual become? Rate and review the show wherever you listen - and step into the inquiry.

Mailbag Installment 5: The Memory Machine Oct 24, 2025

In this episode, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of Crowscupboard.com invites listeners into a meditation on memory - no longer a candle passed from mind to mind, but a circuitry of data and desire. Drawing on the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945), Dr. Rey examines how collective memory has migrated from the oral to the algorithmic, shaping what humanity remembers - and what it forgets.

From the neural encoding of emotion to the digital contagion of belief, this conversation explores why misinformation feels so persuasive: because the brain itself prizes coherence over accuracy. Memory is not a library - it is a living organism seeking equilibrium. Online, that organism meets the algorithm, and together they compose the myths of the present.

Blending neuroscience, cultural theory, and reflective poetics, The Memory Machine asks: what happens when remembering becomes automated? And can we reclaim attention - the last uncommodified act of consciousness - as a form of moral resistance?

Interlude XVIII - Circadian Consciousness: How the Body Tells Time Oct 23, 2025

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of CrowsCupboard.com uncovers the hidden clockwork of the living body - the molecular rhythms that measure dawn, dusk, and everything between. Drawing on the Nobel-winning research of Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young, whose fruit-fly experiments at Brandeis University and Rockefeller University revealed the PER gene and its feedback loop, Dr. Rey shows how each of us carries an internal timepiece.
From the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain to the clocks in our livers and immune cells, our biology lives in sync - or out of sync - with the cycles of Earth. Misalignment doesn’t just bring tiredness - it rewires mood, metabolism, and meaning.
Whether you rise with the sun or scroll into the night, this show reveals that time is not simply measured - it is embodied.
Please rate, review, and share your reflections wherever you’re listening.
Visit CrowsCupboard.com to learn more about upcoming classes and connect with Dr. Rey directly by writing to TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com

Interlude XVII - Endogenous Opioids & The Biochemistry of Meaning Oct 23, 2025

Before temples were built of stone, the body already knew how to worship.
In this episode, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of CrowsCupboard.com explores how the brain’s own narcotic chemistry - endorphins, enkephalins, and dynorphins - shapes the experience of love, faith, music, and transcendence.

Drawing on the work of Candace Pert (1973), who first identified the brain’s opiate receptors, Jaak Panksepp (1998), who revealed the primal circuits of care and play, and Björn Lindström (2015), whose studies of synchronized movement uncovered the opioid basis of social bonding, Dr. Rey guides listeners through a physiological theology of awe.
Every drumbeat, every chant, every shared breath becomes evidence that the sacred is written in chemistry.

From early laboratory discoveries to modern neuroimaging of musical ecstasy, The Observable Unknown traces how meaning itself may be the body’s oldest high - how ritual, rhythm, and relationship activate an interior pharmacy of connection. The conversation extends into psychiatry and philosophy: what happens when trauma dulls these receptors, when faith becomes analgesic, or when hope itself behaves like a biochemical placebo?

Listeners will leave understanding that spirituality is not opposed to science - it is embodied by it. The neurons that ache, the hormones that heal, the molecules that bind us together are the same forces that generate compassion and purpose.

Listen to The Observable Unknown wherever you find your podcasts.
Rate, review, and share your reflections; each voice adds resonance to this dialogue between measurable matter and mystery.
To learn more about upcoming classes, such as Intuition Decoded, or to contact Dr. Rey directly, visit CrowsCupboard.com or connect on LinkedIn and X (Twitter): @DrJuanCarlosRey

Interlude XVI – Neural Oscillations and the Biochemistry of Rhythm Oct 21, 2025

Before language, before heartbeat, there was rhythm - the pulse that shaped both cosmos and consciousness. In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com explores the hidden architecture of the mind’s music: the neural oscillations and neurochemical cadences that give rise to awareness itself.

Drawing on research by György Buzsáki (New York University), Earl Miller (MIT), Christof Koch (Allen Institute for Brain Science), Laura Colgin (University of Texas at Austin), and Patricia Locke (UCLA), Dr. Rey examines how gamma, theta, alpha, and delta waves synchronize the brain’s electrical ensembles with the biochemistry of gamma-aminobutyric acid, glutamate, and acetylcholine.

Through this rhythmic interplay, thought becomes chord, perception becomes phrase, and emotion becomes harmony. From Miller’s discovery that working memory depends on oscillatory phase-locking, to Colgin’s finding that hippocampal rhythms toggle between recalling the past and composing the future, we begin to see cognition as a living composition - part science, part symphony.

Listeners are invited to consider a provocative question: what if consciousness is not computation but composition? When neurons resonate in phase, awareness coheres; when coherence breaks, selfhood dissolves into silence. Neural Oscillations and the Biochemistry of Rhythm reveals the mind not as machinery but as music - an improvisation between ions and intention.

Follow Dr. Juan Carlos Rey on LinkedIn and X (@DrJuanCarlorRey), or share reflections at TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com.
If the rhythm speaks to you, please leave a review or rating wherever you listen - it helps this inquiry into the measurable and the mystical reach new ears.

Mailbag Installment 4 - “Sharpening the Sixth Sense: The Science and Soul of Intuition” Oct 20, 2025

A listener writes from Toronto:

“I’ve always felt intuitive - but I don’t know how to trust or strengthen it. Is intuition a gift or a skill?”

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, I respond with both rigour and heart. Drawing on over two decades of research and training - from neuroscience to somatic practice to symbolic language - I share the system I’ve developed to help intuition become usable intelligence. We explore how the body-brain interface holds predictive power, how the nervous system speaks metaphorically, and how intuition can be taught, measured, and integrated into daily life. The sacred becomes trainable. The incipient awareness becomes architecture.

If you’ve ever felt a signal you couldn’t translate, or a hunch you couldn’t trust, this episode invites you to step into the practice of knowing what you already feel. Visit crowscupboard.com for more information.

Sam Reynolds, Part 2 Oct 19, 2025

Astrologer Sam Reynolds returns to discuss not only numerous aspects of astrology with Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com that were not discussed previously, but also his forthcoming class on a Basic Introduction to Astrology.

Mailbag Installment 3: Eros and the Sacred Body Oct 18, 2025

In this profound installment of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com explores the ancient and often misunderstood intersection of erotic performance and spirituality. Responding to a listener’s question from San Antonio, Dr. Rey traces how the language of desire has always mirrored the language of the divine.

From Plato’s Symposium to modern neuroscience, Eros emerges not as indulgence but as a way of knowing. Drawing on the work of Jaak Panksepp, Helen Fisher, and Andrew Newberg, Dr. Rey reveals that the same neural circuits governing erotic arousal - dopamine, oxytocin, and the reward pathways of the limbic system - also ignite during prayer, meditation, and states of awe. Pleasure and transcendence, he suggests, are biologically intertwined.

This episode also examines performance as ritual: how the body, in conscious movement, becomes both subject and sacrament. We visit the anthropology of Dionysian rites, the psychological insights of Carl Jung, and the somatic therapies of Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine, each pointing toward a single truth - that awareness within desire transforms instinct into revelation.

Listeners will discover that sacred sensuality is neither paradox nor provocation, but a form of embodied theology. In Dr. Rey’s words, “To feel is to know, and to know through feeling is to remember what the soul once forgot.”

Tune in to The Observable Unknown for this meditation on the chemistry of longing, the neurobiology of transcendence, and the oldest sacrament of all - the consciousness that trembles when it recognizes itself.

Mailbag Installment 2 – “The Comparator and the Calling” Oct 17, 2025

What if faith were simply the nervous system daring to trust its own prediction?

In this Mailbag installment, Dr. Rey of crowscupboard.com responds to listener DeShawn Carter of Atlanta, Georgia, whose question probes the hidden alliance between free will, intuition, and the brain’s comparator model – that quiet circuit which measures intention against outcome, authorship against experience.

From Chris Frith’s neuroscience of agency to the ancient mystic’s surrender, this episode explores how faith and intuition emerge not in opposition to science but as its most mysterious expressions.

Can belief be mapped onto synapses? Can intuition be a biological form of grace?
Listen as Dr. Rey unravels these questions, reminding us that to know and to trust are not separate verbs but different tenses of the same awakening.

Submit your question: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
Text line: 336-675-5836

Please rate, share, and review this episode wherever you're listening.

Interlude XV – Inheritance in Motion: Phylogenetic Inertia, Epigenetic Writing, and the Future of Human Becoming Oct 16, 2025

What if evolution is not a finished act, but an ongoing collaboration between ancestry and awareness?

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com explores the profound intersection between phylogenetic inertia - the evolutionary gravity that preserves our biological past - and epigenetic rewriting, the molecular poetry of adaptation that lets life edit its own script.

Through studies by Dr. Samuel Almeida, Dr. Michael Kertes, Dr. Jessica Loke, Dr. Steve Horvath, and Dr. Helena Verdile, this episode reveals how inheritance moves beyond genes: into chemistry, emotion, opportunity, and choice.

From prenatal stress shaping neural architecture to trauma accelerating biological age, Interlude XV examines how the genome is less a fixed code and more a living text - revised through experience, reflection, and resilience.

The question at its center is timeless:
If life remembers itself through us, what might we, in turn, choose to remember for it?

Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
Text line: 336-675-5836

Please rate this episode and leave a review wherever you listen.

Interlude XIV - Epigenetic Neuroplasticity: Life Writing the Brain Oct 15, 2025

What if memory is not only electrical - but molecular?

In this new interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores how experience, stress, and nurture inscribe themselves directly into the genome of the brain. Through the pioneering studies of Michael Meaney and Moshe Szyf, we learn that the nervous system is not a fixed circuit but a living manuscript - continuously edited by love, fear, and time.

From the first experiments at McGill University in the early 2000s that revealed maternal care could alter gene methylation in the hippocampus, to the recent findings that environmental enrichment can rewrite those very marks, this episode unveils a profound idea:
that the brain is not only remembering life - it is being written by it.

Join Dr. Rey in exploring how trauma leaves biochemical footprints, how healing may be an act of epigenetic revision, and how consciousness itself may be a story the genome keeps telling anew.

Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
Text line: 336-675-5836
Listen now on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Podbean

Please rate this episode and leave a review wherever you're listening.

Interlude XIII — Neuroimmunology: When the Brain Meets Immunity Oct 14, 2025

What if emotion were an immune response?
What if the dialogue between inflammation and thought shaped not only how we heal—but how we hope?

In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores the emerging science of neuroimmunology, where the immune and nervous systems reveal themselves as co-authors of consciousness.
Through the work of Ronald Duman (Yale University), Harry Male (University of Illinois), and Jonathan Kipnis (Washington University in St. Louis), we trace how cytokines, microglia, and lymphatic pathways sculpt mood, memory, and meaning.

From autoimmune melancholy to the “sickness behavior” that demands rest, this episode unveils the silent director behind cognition itself—
showing that inflammation and illumination may be closer kin than we ever imagined.

Continue the conversation

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Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
Text: 336-675-5836

And wherever you listen, please leave a review and rating - your words help the dialogue evolve.

Mailbag Installment 1: Moral Witness & Collective Obedience Oct 13, 2025

In this first listener-driven episode, I turn the conversation inward - answering a question from Tanya W (Portland, OR) about what it means to be a moral witness in a world that often rewards unseeing obedience. We invoke Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil”, explore the tension between witnessing and complicity, and ask: how do we interrupt history’s momentum?

Join me as we reflect on conscience, attention, and the subtle art of refusing sleep in the face of cruelty.

How to engage & support the show:
• Send your questions for future mailbag episodes - TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
• Text thoughts or reflections directly to 336-675-5836
• Wherever you listen - please leave a rating + written review. Each voice helps this constellation grow.

Dr. Juan Carlos Rey, Part 2 Oct 12, 2025

In this episode, Dr. Rey takes a second opportunity to answer more listener-submitted questions regarding himself and his role as host of "The Observable Unknown" Podcast.

Interlude XII - The Gut-Brain Axis: Microbiome as Mind Oct 09, 2025

What if intuition… digestion… and belief were all part of the same conversation?

In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores the growing science of the gut-brain axis - where trillions of microbes whisper through the vagus nerve to shape emotion, cognition, and even moral intuition.

Drawing on research from Emeran Mayer, Sarkis Mazmanian, John Cryan, and Ted Dinan, this journey reveals a hidden ecology of consciousness - where neurotransmitters, bacteria, and the human nervous system collaborate to compose what we call self.

Here, the Observable Unknown is not distant or abstract - it’s inside you.
Alive, responsive, and evolving.

Continue the conversation:

WhatsApp channel: TheObservableUnknown
Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
Text: 336-675-5836

Wherever you listen, please leave a review and rating - your voice helps others discover the mystery that connects mind, body, and meaning.

When you write, tell us:

How did you first find out about the show?
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And what’s one thing you’re struggling with right now?

Interlude XI - The Neurochemical Chorus: Drive, Desire, and the Irrational Animal Oct 08, 2025

What if every thought, memory, and feeling were a chemical symphony? In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey guides listeners through the molecular foundations of consciousness—how neurotransmitters like acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and cortisol shape our choices, memories, and moods.

Drawing on Michael Hasselmo’s groundbreaking work on acetylcholine and memory, Hans Krebs’ discovery of the metabolic “Krebs cycle” powering every thought, and the research of scholars such as Wolfram Schultz, Kent Berridge, Robert Sapolsky, Paul Zak, Bruce McEwen, Robin Carhart-Harris, Roland Griffiths, and Gregory Bateson, this episode uncovers the hidden chemistry of our inner life.

It’s a journey into the observable unknown where molecules meet mystery—where the self is revealed as a living metabolism of wonder.

Continue the conversation:

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Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
Text: 336-675-5836

And when you do, please tell us:

How did you first find out about the show?
What’s your favorite part or episode so far?
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And what’s one thing you’re struggling with right now?

And please rate and review The Observable Unknown wherever you listen—your reviews help other curious minds discover this journey.

Interlude X: Hormones, Hierarchy, and the Architecture of Desire Oct 07, 2025

What if your most “rational” decisions were already scripted by your bloodstream?

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey traces the hidden hormonal currents shaping risk, loyalty, ambition, and status. Drawing on the fieldwork of Robert Sapolsky among Kenyan baboons, Anna Dreber’s research on traders’ testosterone surges, Carsten de Dreu’s discoveries about oxytocin’s double edge, Wolfram Schultz’s dopamine experiments, and anthropological studies from Kristen Hawkes to David Hazlerigg, this episode reveals how biology and culture braid into one force.

Testosterone asserts, cortisol constrains, oxytocin binds, dopamine drives - together forming the unseen scaffolding of our choices. By the end, you’ll never look at “free will” the same way again.

💡 Join the conversation:
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Wherever you’re listening, please leave a review and a rating - your support helps other seekers find us.

Dr. Shireen Fatemi Oct 05, 2025

In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Shireen Fatemi, a distinguished endocrinologist whose vision of medicine extends far beyond lab values and prescriptions. Raised in a family that blended science with intuition, Dr. Fatemi brings a rare voice to the conversation about the body’s most mysterious messengers: our hormones.

Together, we explore how endocrinology illuminates not just physical health, but also mood, memory, and identity. From the impact of cortisol and circadian rhythm, to the cultural overreliance on medication, to the uncharted mysteries of the pineal gland, Dr. Fatemi challenges us to see the human being as both rational and hormonal - balanced, interwoven, and profoundly alive.

This is not just a medical conversation. It is a meditation on how hidden systems guide our choices, shape our stages of life, and even open questions of spirit and selfhood.

Interlude IX — The Unconscious Collective: Crowd Mind, Contagion, and Hidden Governance Oct 02, 2025

What happens when individuality dissolves into the crowd? From Durkheim’s collective effervescence to Tarde’s contagion of imitation, from Canetti’s swarm psychology to Girard’s scapegoat mechanism, and from Zimbardo’s situational power to Arendt’s banality of evil, this interlude explores the hidden dynamics of group mind.

The observable unknown here is the collective itself: a force that shapes choice, obedience, and even violence, while remaining invisible to those within it.

Join the dialogue:

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Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
Text: 336-675-5836

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Interlude VIII — Chronicles, Legends, and the Architecture of Belief Oct 01, 2025

"What is history but a fable agreed upon?” Napoleon once asked. From collective recollection to sacred ritual, from covert interpersonal dramas to the unconscious resonance of color, from emotional imprints to memetic replication - this interlude explores the hidden architectures shaping what we call freedom.

Join Dr. Juan Carlos Rey as he traces Halbwachs, Eliade, Campbell, Berne, Damasio, Lüscher, and Blackmore, revealing how conviction is never solitary but always cultural, emotional, and inherited.

Continue the conversation:

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Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com
Text: 336-675-5836

And share with us:

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Please don’t forget: please leave a rating or review wherever you discovered this podcast. Every word helps.

Interlude VII — Invisible Structures: Social Norms, Sacred Order, and the Power of Patterns Sep 30, 2025

In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey steps into the hidden architectures shaping what we call “personal choice.” Drawing on Durkheim, Halbwachs, Berger, Bourdieu, Foucault, Elias, Geertz, Butler, Gramsci, and Meloni, he unpacks how collective memory, power, ritual, and even biology create the stage on which our decisions are performed.

Listeners are invited to explore the observable unknown of their own choices - what is inherited, what is suggested, and what may still be truly free.

Join the conversation on WhatsApp TheObservableUnknown, email TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com, or text 336-675-5836. Share:
– How you first found out about the show
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Because freedom itself begins with seeing the pattern.

Davin Stronk Sep 28, 2025

Davin Stronk is an erotic performance artist working within the adult entertainment industry and the intimacy trade, serving as a professional purveyor of desire in both its artistic and economic expressions. In this episode of The Observable Unknown, we explore with him how intimacy, performance, and cultural imagination converge - revealing how desire itself becomes art, commerce, and a mirror of our deepest longings.

Interlude VI - Inherited Shadows: Memory, Time, and Biology Sep 24, 2025

Can memory be inherited? Can trauma echo across generations? And do our most private choices carry the weight of ancestral shadows?

In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores the mysteries of phylogenetic inertia, epigenetic conditioning, and genetic memory - tracing how our biology remembers more than we realize. From Darwin to Jung, Holocaust studies to modern neuroscience, we uncover how memory may stretch not only backward into the lives of our ancestors, but forward into precognition and the sense of future time.

What begins in science moves into philosophy, psychology, and the paranormal: retrocognition, metacognition, and precognition. Together, these open a startling possibility - that the mind itself is an heirloom, shaped by unseen inheritances and predictive forces.

The Observable Unknown is where knowledge and wonder meet. Step into this space… and consider what within you is truly your own.

Interlude V — Suggestion, Signal, and the Construction of Choice Sep 24, 2025

In this solo interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey traces how culture, persuasion, ritual, and engineered messaging shape what we take to be “our” decisions. From classic lab findings on conformity and obedience to modern persuasion tactics and the neuroscience of suggestion, this episode maps how choice is constructed long before it reaches consciousness. If you’ve ever wondered why you clicked, said yes, or changed your mind without knowing why, this is the episode for you. Listen, reflect, and learn simple practices to notice the nudges that shape your life.

Interlude IV — The Observable Unknown in Agency and Free Will Sep 23, 2025

Tonight’s Interlude IV of The Observable Unknown traces the living tension between free will, agency, and the brain’s hidden predictive machinery. Drawing on Libet’s timing experiments, Wegner’s critique, Friston’s predictive-processing, the comparator model, and mirror-neuron research, this episode shows how agency is constructed across layered neural processes: pre-reflective feeling, reflective judgment, and social resonance. We explore the veto as a final sanctuary for conscious intervention, attention’s role as a spotlight, and perception as controlled prediction. Poetic yet practical, the piece invites listeners to reimagine freedom as a skillful, trainable practice rather than absolute sovereignty - urging conversation, curiosity, and compassionate self-reconstruction.

Dr. Daniel Jorgensen Sep 21, 2025

The guest for this episode is Dr. Daniel Jorgensen, a distinguished scholar of Religious Studies whose work has illuminated the esoteric scene, the cultic milieu, and the occult Tarot. His research has expanded the sociology of religion beyond institutional boundaries, into the rich and often misunderstood margins where seekers continually redefine meaning and identity.

Our conversation will explore not only the frameworks he’s developed, but also the questions they raise for the future of religious studies: What does it mean to live at the edge of tradition? How do symbols shape social life? And why does the study of esotericism matter - not only for scholars, but for all who are searching for meaning in a fractured age?

Join the conversation!

- WhatsApp: TheObservableUnknown

- Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com

- Text: 336-675-5836

Interlude III: The Observable Unknown in Words, Instincts, & Myths Sep 19, 2025

In this Interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey traces how three great thinkers sought the Observable Unknown in their own fields. Max Müller uncovered forgotten meanings buried in language, Konrad Lorenz revealed the instinctual patterns beneath human behavior, and Claude Lévi-Strauss exposed the hidden structures shaping myth. Together, their work shows that mystery is not distant - it lives in the words we speak, the instincts we carry, and the stories we inherit.

Interlude II: The Observable Unknown in Mind & Society Sep 18, 2025

In this interlude, host Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores how the observable unknown reveals itself in the hidden life of the mind and the shared structures of society. Drawing on the insights of Freud, Jung, Julian Jaynes, Adler, and Peter Berger, this interlude traces how unconscious drives, archetypes, inner voices, human striving, and cultural meaning-shields shape our lives.

What emerges is a portrait of mystery not as something to be feared, but as the ground of our humanity—seen in dreams, myths, relationships, and the sacred canopies we build to endure existence.

Join the journey into psychology and sociology’s deepest questions: How do we live with what can be seen but never fully known?

Interlude I: The Observable Unknown — Ontology & Teleology Sep 17, 2025

In this special Interlude of The Observable Unknown, host Dr. Juan Carlos Rey steps away from dialogue to offer a sustained philosophical reflection on the very title of the show.

Through the lenses of Kant’s tension between phenomena and noumena, Heidegger’s play of truth as both revealing and concealing, Aristotle’s vision of wonder as the root of philosophy, and the profound wisdom of Taoist, Vedantic, and Buddhist traditions, this interlude explores how the observable unknown is not merely a poetic phrase but a condition of Being itself.

This lecture invites listeners to slow down and reflect - not only on what is seen, but on what forever withdraws, calling us deeper into the mystery.

It is an offering of thought, crafted to sit alongside the conversations you already know and love on this show.

The Observable Unknown is not only about voices in dialogue - it is also about pausing, listening, and letting mystery speak.

Dr. Robin Hager Sep 14, 2025

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Robin Hager - a clinician whose path began in the labs and lecture halls of the University of Arizona, and was forever changed when she stepped into her first healing-touch class.

Her journey is a story of integration: from writing medical protocols that saved lives, to guiding patients and families through plant medicine ceremonies with shamans in Peru. From the halls of hospital administration to the sacred breath of vibrational sound therapy, Robin’s life is a testament to what happens when intellect bows to intuition - and when science and spirit agree to walk hand-in-hand.

This is a conversation about courage, about healing beyond the prescription pad, and about rediscovering medicine as service - not just business.

Dr. Carla Garapedian Sep 07, 2025

In this episode, we welcome a woman whose life’s work has bridged journalism, cinema, and memory. From the anchor desk at BBC World News to the frontlines of conflict, from digitizing the testimonies of Armenian genocide survivors to directing films that confront the darkest truths of our history - Dr. Carla Garapedian has carried voices the world tried to silence back into the light.

Her new project, Nemesis 1921, revisits a Weimar-era trial that shaped how we think about law, justice, and accountability - offering not just history retold, but a mirror to our present moment. She is also the filmmaker behind Screamers, a landmark documentary interweaving the testimonies of survivors with the urgent voice of System of a Down, and she continues to lead the search for Auction of Souls (1919), the first cinematic rendering of the Armenian genocide, long thought lost.

Carla is not only a filmmaker and journalist - she is a guardian of memory, a steward of stories that demand to be heard. It is an honor to welcome her today.

Fereshteh Forough Aug 31, 2025

Fereshteh Forough, founder of CTI (Code To Inspire), discusses her journey, obstacles, and vision for the future.

Dr. Juan Carlos Rey Aug 24, 2025

In this episode, I'll be answering personal questions submitted by listeners and clients through our website, crowscupboard.com

Samuel F. Reynolds Aug 17, 2025

On this episode, we meet Samuel F. Reynolds, president of the International Coalition of Astrology Educators, whose contributions have been honored with the International Society for Astrological Research’s 2022 Community Service Award.

Margie Dillenburg, Ph.D. Aug 10, 2025

There are people who do not simply work in the world… they bend it, ever so gently, toward growth.
They design experiences that don’t just inform but awaken. They educate, they mold, they transform whatever they hold.
They leave behind no statue, no symphony, no temple of stone—
and yet they build invisible cathedrals in the lives of those they touch.

My guest today is one of those people.

For nearly two decades, Margie Dillenburg has walked alongside leaders who imagine new futures,
from the heart of social impact to the restless edge of for-profit innovation.
She knows what it means to help something small become something world-changing—
and to carry a full heart into spaces that can sometimes forget they have one.

Today, we look past the résumé and into the mystery.
Who is the designer behind the experience?
What moments of doubt, wonder, heartbreak, and transformation made her the guide she is today?
And what is the hidden current—her own private dialogue—that flows beneath all she does?

Todd Bloom Aug 03, 2025

A person who discovers himself through the process of transformation, not the goal, Todd Bloom broadens our view of what life can be and contrasts that with what it should be.

William Love Jul 27, 2025

William Love discusses his role as a Motivational Speaker, Coach, and Education Specialist. His own past as an adoptee plays a significant part in how he connects with people, how he encourages them, and the wounds he heals in himself through service to others.

Dr. Wesley W. Detwiler Jul 20, 2025

Dr. Wesley W. Detwiler. Based in Palm Springs, California, Dr. Detwiler is a licensed psychologist and counselor who has dedicated his practice to supporting individuals navigating the labyrinth of addiction, identity, and mental health.

Alexandra Gersten Vassilaros Jul 13, 2025

In our Pilot Episode, Alexandra Gersten Vassilaros discusses her Make Meaning Workshop and how she was inspired to create it.

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