Today on MindMatters, Dr. Karen Mitchell, founder and CEO of the Kalmor Institute, shares insights from her pioneering PhD research on the "persistent predatory personality." Unlike previous studies that relied primarily on incarcerated populations or graduate students, Dr. Mitchell's work draws from the extensive experiences of practitioners who have dedicated their careers to working with individuals exhibiting dark triad traits and psychopathic tendencies. Her research includes data from professionals with an average of 22 years' experience in fields such as child sex abuse, domestic violen ..read more

Self-talk. Visualizations. Bodily awareness. Unconscious thought processes. In our day-to-day course of existence our minds assimilate, respond and react to any number of stimuli from within – and without. But how often do we stop to consider just how we do this and what faculties of apprehension are actually put to use? And do we even have a framework, vocabulary and level of awareness from which to do it? Inner speech (inner monologue), inner vision, sensory awareness, emotions and unsymbolized thinking are all categories that, according to psychologist and researcher Russell T. Hurlburt, ca ..read more

So you’ve been ‘red pilled’. You're well versed in false flags, deep states, secret governments, and state-sponsored assassinations. You’ve watched documentaries about stolen elections, the New World Order, child trafficking, and mind control. And then when you were through with those, you read extensively on the criminal acts of intelligence agencies, psychopathy among the elite, exotic weapons, and more.    And now you simply know, in your bones, that the reality presented to you on CNN (and most other places) is total B.S. - and have the hours and days of sleepless nights, shocke ..read more

Neo-gnosticism without gnosis. Gnosis without neo-gnosticism. These are just a couple of the frameworks, dichotomies, and strains of gnosticism making their way into the religious, social, and political consciousness and conversation of today’s world through literature, film, and other media. In this follow-up discussion with author and scholar Arthur Versluis, we continue our discussion on his Oxford University Press-published book 'American Gnosis: Political Religion And Transcendence.' We further delve into the profound influence and divergences of an ancient set of spiritual beliefs - made ..read more

Astrophilosophy. Exotheology. Whitehead. Andrew Davis is the program director for the Center for Process Studies. A philosopher and theologian, his latest work is on the metaphysics of exo-life. Today on MindMatters we discuss his work on science, religion, and what the impact of the discovery of ET life would mean for philosophy, and a general philosophical framework that would make sense of it.  We also discuss the opening up of public and academic interest in the topic of UFOs and non-human intelligences, David Ray Griffin's work and parapsychology, humans as an exemplification of wh ..read more

David Abramowitz joins us once again, this time to discuss Michael Shellenberger and Peter Boghossian's Taxonomy of Woke Psychopathology. With Andrew Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology as inspiration, the taxonomy summarizes how certain Woke topics and causes express Cluster B personality disorder dynamics. While the topics themselves may not be pathological, the manner in which they're presented is, expressing such features as attention-seeking, grandiosity, emotional dysregulation, excess and lack of empathy, victimhood ideology, impaired reality testing, and splitting.  Join us as we ..read more

Let's face it. Bigfoot is real. The only question is, what is it? With now thousands of credible encounters that would be difficult to ignore or dismiss, we know many individuals have also observed a host of seemingly paranormal phenomena that quite often accompany these large strange creatures. Orbs, ball lightening, strange smells, space-time anomalies, electromagnetic fluctuations; not to mention witnessing these cryptids moving at super-fast speeds, and morphing into different forms; making our conceptions of what Bigfoot are very likely obsolete. But what if some of the experiences of the ..read more

The ancient idea of spiritual gnosis has evolved and branched to reflect the time and place in which we live. Nowhere is this development more evident than in the writings and scholarship of author Arthur Versluis . In his groundbreaking new book American Gnosis: Political Religion and Transcendence, Versluis takes an in-depth look at the varieties of modern 'neo-gnosticism.' These include cosmological gnosticism - the worldly effort to escape from archons of darkness or hostile beings that would seek to subjugate the world through politics and other power structures. Another is metaphysical g ..read more

What do altered states tell us about the nature of consciousness? And what can philosophy tell us about altered states? John Buchanan has spent his life trying to find the answers. His book, Processing Reality: Finding Meaning in Death, Psychedelics, and Sobriety, details the story of his history of experimentation and addiction, his path to sobriety, and the insights he has gained into the nature of human experience and consciousness. A synthesis of Whitehead's process philosophy and Grof's transpersonal psychology, Buchanan's ideas provide a framework for understanding not only the nature o ..read more

Are all psychopaths serial killers? Is authoritarianism only found on the political right? Are we all equally capable of evil? Does power really corrupt absolutely? And is evil really "banal"?  Join us today as we discuss the biggest myths about evil with David Abramowitz, the nature of psychopaths and ponerology, and how McGilchrist’s brain-hemisphere research fits into the picture.  David Abramowitz has a background in finance and accounting, but an experience with a psychopath set him on a path to research the topic for the next decade. He has read nearly everything there is to ..read more