Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

Guy 00:07
Beautiful. David, welcome back to the podcast.

David 00:10
It’s my pleasure guy. I’m so excited. Thank thanks for inviting me back.

Guy 00:15
Ah, I’ve been genuinely excited about this, you know, I’m catching up again, our conversations have always been insightful and they tend to organically go in their own direction Anyway, you know, and I’m fascinated because you got a new book out as well. Why will works. And when I saw the title, I just had the biggest smile on my face. You know, because as a Welshman, you’ve in the Scotsman been a Welshman wasn’t in my vocabulary. I was one of those guys that would go What? What, what the hell, you know, that’s too woowoo. For me, I’m not even going on there. Now I’m, I’m having conversations that are as woowoo as they can get, I think half the time, like, you know, but I’m fascinated with yourself, because I believe you’ve been doing a master’s in math in mathematics as well.

David 01:02
Is that correct? Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s a, it’s a full honours degree in mathematics and physics, just something I do on the side.

Guy 01:12
So, so what are you talking about, you know, I’d love to get dig into your background, the SEC is all about you were an organic chemist, you’re doing that. So there’s clearly a thinking, left brain, you know, pieces together, which I just haven’t got, right. And then but on the other side, you’re writing a book called why woo woo works you know, which, in some respects feels like the polar opposite of you always kind of had been in both of these camps from the start or your own one, and then discovered the other

David 01:46
not know very much, both actually, a I’ve always been, I’ve always had an interest in in the woo woo. And you know, why actually see, when I when I was about 11 years old, a, I was in the school library, my mother, my mom, at the time was struggling with postpartum depression. And it wasn’t very well understood in the 1970s. That was after the birth of my youngest sister in 1976. I’ve got three sisters, and, and she didn’t really get the right advice or treatment. So I just had this feeling like I wanted to help my mom. And I remember, I was in the school library, I was 11 years old height was just just started secondary school. And a book fell off the shelf. And I know that sounds weird, but it fell off the shelf. And it was called the magic power of your mind by a man called Walter Germain. And I just knew that’s going to help my mom. And so I just took it, put it in my bag and left, I didn’t know that you’re supposed to join a library just bought it. And you know, it didn’t cure my mom’s depression. But it really helped her, because it taught her things like meditation, and affirmations. And they can helped her to navigate a course through some of the difficulties. So when I was a teenager growing up, my mom and I often had these were conversations about the power of the mind, and it sent me into questioning and figuring things out about your life, the universe, but at the same time, I ended up going through the the mainstream honours degree PhD research and development job. So I had two kind of lives running parallel, if you well, that took a long time before they can knitted themselves together. I feel like

Guy 03:25
Yeah, no, that makes total sense. I can certainly relate to that. So why, why an organic chemists because I’m fascinated. And from listening to you talk and how that actually that has does lean into, like you say, the placebo and and different aspects of the work that you write about now. But what attracted you to that in the first place? And what was the biggest lesson I guess you got from all your time doing it?

David 03:49
You know, what, honestly, what really attracted me to organic chemistry is I want it to contribute to finding a cure for cancer. Because when you do a chemistry PhD, and what my specialism in my final year of my chemistry, so honours degree, my specialism was biological medicinal chemistry. And that’s when you start to realise the applications of chemistry to life and to, you know, discovering cures for diseases. And I know, I realised that, you know, one way to find a cure for cancer is to design an organic molecule that’s like a chain of carbons in hydrogen and nitrogen is what we call drugs, nowadays. And so what drew me into the subject was I just wanted, I just wanted to help to cure cancer. And that was the, the given my expertise. That was the only thing I could think of contributing. And so when an opportunity came up to do a PhD in organic chemistry to actually research the intricacies of how to actually build a molecule that might well play a role in cancer. Research. That’s what drew me into it to be really honest.

Guy 05:03
That’s amazing. So what what’s going on there then is it just all like a process of information exchange and we just trying to create different information to the body responds differently is that what

David 05:16
I say? I mean, organic chemistry is like the Lego is like children who play with Lego blocks, you know, the plastic, or the wooden coloured blocks. And out of those blocks of different shapes and sizes, you can assemble a variety of objects, you know, like a car or a building or something to an organic chemist does exactly the same thing. But instead of a, you know, plastic or wooden blocks, we use building blocks called atoms, it’s the same idea, but I don’t build cars and buildings, but build drugs. But it’s the same idea, you stick a couple of carbons here, then maybe a nitrogen over here, an oxygen there, and you twist it round, bend the geometry of it, and try to shape it in such a way, if you understand the biological process, you could shape it in such a way to fit in there and make something go that way instead of that way, so to speak. And, and so I found it really, really fast. In a sense, what you’re actually trying to do is change the way something happens to make something go in a beneficial direction. So that’s what I was really doing. And for a while before I changed the course of things.

Guy 06:25
Yeah, well, big time, right? You’ve got a completely two different different trajectory. Now, I think, is it this year? 11th. Book, you read 11?

David 06:32
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I never imagined when I was a research and development scientist, that I would write a book one day called why woo woo works. Because we’re doing research and development you’re developing, you know, you’re using all the mainstream tools, and you’re doing all the mainstream thing. Even though I had that interest in that other world that was running in a parallel, I always kept up for my friends, it was always something an interest they had. And I didn’t see how the two worlds could ever come together, which they are now. But so it was just always something on the side. So I just kind of almost parked for a little while.

Guy 07:07
Yeah. So when did those worlds started merging? Because I know you’ve spoken about the placebo effect. And you were some of the testing that that obviously some of the people that weren’t taking the prescribed drugs, were having just as good as results is that does that mean then we have the pharmacy already within us, we just need to signal it. At the

David 07:33
we have we have a lot of incredible pharmacy inside of us that we’re only just beginning to tap into because you’re I started to witness and drugs I was involved in and my main fields were cancer and cardiovascular. And I started to notice even stuff I was working on particular the cardiovascular but it’s more obvious a that people were improving on placebos. And I thought isn’t this absolutely fascinating? You know that something is good. And when I started to research it in my spare time, I mean not because it was never something you would be paid to do in the industry. So I just started fiddling around with things and on payment, understanding that, that when you believe something like if I believe this medicine will help me. Then you start mobilising the pharmacy that’s already there inside your brain and body. And we have a vast pharmacy, we just haven’t even tapped into understanding it. But what then happens is the body as we mobilise that pharmacy and move the body, in the brain and body in the direction that we believe a is supposed to occur. And so that’s pretty much how it works.

Guy 08:47
Yeah, that’s incredible. And yeah, what kind of like over over the years as well, with you seeing that, with the things that you were seeing, you will go in, like, Oh, I never would have never thought that in a million years kind of thing? Or was it just was it subtle things as well, because I guess there’s so much information out there. And it’s like, how power is powerful our beliefs at the end of the day?

David 09:13
Well, it was, it was more for me, it was more of a repetition of seeing the same thing. To the point that the idea was so incredibly compelling. And recognising that I think one of the real break throughs for me was was when I started probing into the the understanding what is it that causes belief to sense fiddle around with your biology, what is it that causes that and realising that there was some research that was that had been done even before even when I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, that was a lightbulb moment for me. It was it was a study when people were were receiving placebo dental injections, you know, like, if you’re getting a tooth extracted or failing and you get the injection. It took to normal Pain where people were getting placebo versions. But yet the brain was producing on a placebo, the brain was producing its own natural version of morphine. And I thought, Wow, that’s amazing. I understand how now belief actually causes these physical effects. It’s not because I remember asking colleagues, and they would say that they’re not really getting better, they just think they’re getting better. And the placebo effect was swept under the table. It’s just, it’s the natural course of elements. And, and you know, I believe that a little bit, because that’s what my senior colleagues were saying, you know, it’s just the natural course. And you look at placebos, medical trials, all these people improved in a placebo. And that was good to happen anyway, so it’s just the conventional wisdom eaters. As a junior scientist at the time, you just sort of accept that, but I started something going on here. And I looked, and I found that research, and thought, Wow, it’s not just all in the mind, they don’t just get better. their brain is producing morphine. It’s the natural version that is called an endogenous opiate, no, morphine is an opiate. So an endogenous opiate means something endogenous to the body, it’s something that’s already here, as part of your own pharmacy, it’s endogenous to your own body, it’s part of your own pharmacy. And that was being activated, because someone believed that this injection, even though it was salt water, that was saline, this injection will numb the pain. And it did numb the pain, but not because that was going to happen anyway, it was a natural course of thing. But because the belief itself, produced out of the pharmacy that was already there, it produced natural morphine, and it was the natural morphine that killed the pin. And that for me was, oh my god, there’s an actual real biological process that really accelerated how much my interest in this became. And to the point that I videos, I probably, I could start to see how these worlds could actually net together. Because what if we understood this, if we really understood and harness this, we could actually learn to, you know, to bring east and west together, if you will, to bring that the mainstream in the world we’re together in a way that maybe maybe this could supplement and amplify, that’s it doesn’t always have to be that or that it can be a fusion of the two, where we can actually learn to use the best that we have to supplement or add to anything else. And it’s just an extra tool. And I thought I became locked up with that. And so that became one of my, I guess that was the first domino that began to fall to catalyse my exit from the pharmaceutical industry.

Guy 12:36
Got it? Yeah. And do you? Do you feel those worlds are emerging? Or do you think it’s still very dogmatic pharmaceutical industry is like not this is the only way forward? You know, forget the rest? Or do you think we are slowly coming together?

David 12:52
We’re definitely coming together. You know, in the UK, we have an institute of doctors of medical doctors called the British society of lifestyle medicine. And it’s something very similar in the US, it started at the Spaulding rehabilitation centre and Harvard Medical School, and educates Doctors, and it’s mostly younger doctors who have this right, you know, really, there’s motivation to heal and, and, like, quick, more idealistic, I suppose. And, and it’s all about training doctors, and to meet the lifestyle interventions, and not necessarily always relying on drugs because you know, they’ll openly say that maybe 60 to 70% of people that come in to a doctor surgery are presenting with meaning that they have symptoms of stuff that is actually preventable or, or reversible, given enough lifestyle change. So what these lifestyle doctors do is rather than right away prescribing medicine, they say How about we try this first, let your High Blood Pressure Okay, rather than just putting you on a tablet, let’s try for a month and I’ll keep track of you more keep keep in touch. Let’s see if we can try this changing. And here, here’s what I would like you to eat one of your one of my friends, a doctor actually takes a patients once a month to the local supermarket. And she teaches them what foods to buy how to read labels, and says you want to avoid that I’ll see if you can read all these ingredients throw up, put it back, don’t want to and teaches them and and you know they get education and what you should be eating to maybe reduce blood pressure or to even reverse diabetes and all that that kind of stuff. And so there’s an increase a vastly increasing number of younger doctors becoming lifestyle medicine professionals, not instead of prescribing medicines for acute and serious things or surgery, but in addition to and what they’re doing some things, it’s more or less and less of that but other things It’s more of that one unless of that. But definitely there’s a happy fusion. So that is growing in popularity. Absolutely. In the UK and also, in the United States. I don’t know what the situation is, as in Australia, but it’s certainly happening here. And so yeah, I was very aware of that. All I did with with the new book was said, well, there’s other things as well, there’s other what we call a talent of practices that also can supplement their lives, the change in diet and the change in exercise levels, because part of the lifestyle medicine doctors, it’s not just diet, they prescribe exercise and they prescribe, you know, working on your stress levels, so that there’s different pillars that they bring into it. But it’s definitely, definitely these walls are absolutely coming together, even if many people haven’t noticed that yet. It is absolutely you know, you can you can Google, if you’re going to see a doctor now you can search in the British society of lifestyle medicine, you can find which doctors prescribe lifestyle medicine, and you can get an appointment with them. You know,

Guy 16:01
brilliant. Yeah. And the wonderful thing is that feeds into everything that you’re talking about is that you’re giving somebody back their power as well. Yeah. And and through that, that power and taking control, it will create a positive attitude, no doubt that will then feed into the overall recovery,

David 16:20
a person starts to believe in themselves guy. And I think that’s really important as well, because when a person starts to feel empowered, I can I can contribute to this year, let’s say I’ve got high blood pressure, I don’t have to just take these tablets. There’s something I can do, the choices that I’m making today, and every day for the next few months. by altering my diet and taking more exercise. I can play a role lesson. How empowering is that? When you when you’re not just giving something to take, but you’re recognising. I’ve done this. And I’ve managed to reduce my blood pressure by choices that I’ve made, and it’s inspiring for people. And then it’s easier to keep up because you know what, you’ve just done what you’ve achieved for yourself.

Guy 17:03
Yeah, no, fantastic. I love it. I love it. So I want to ask you with your new book, right? Whoo, why will works? And I’m curious as well, because I haven’t read the book. But I’ve been skimming through the chapters today, David, and yeah, and I smiled at some of the chapters, I was like, wow, this we’re going woo woo. Yeah. You know, like, when you wrote the book, what did you have in mind? And like, is there been a barometer of woo woo, like, how far down the woo woobarometer Will you say you’re going in the category,

David 17:36
I went to, I went the full spectrum, you know, women is actually defined as in the Oxford Dictionary, is defined as unconventional beliefs, regardless having little or no scientific basis, especially those pertaining to a spirituality mysticism and alternative health. And the name itself, the term woowoo, is believed to have been coined in the 1980s as a derogatory term, a, you know, about, you know, in relation to the the whoo sounds that the wheeling sounds that ghosts would make. And, you know, they’re all black and white movies from the 30s and 40s, and 50s. So it was an imitation of the Wailing stone that somebody somewhere just called spirituality Master says a model talents of health, were at the name just kind of stuck wrote about them. And that’s, that’s the first real mention of it in that context, wrote about the 1980s, as far as I could tell, and so so there’s a full spectrum of it. And the bookcase started with kynar stuff that some people think of as woowoo. Like how belief changes biochemistry, like how the placebo effect works, and even meditation, even though meditation has found a foot in the mainstream, it’s still too many people were invited as loads of people who’ve never tried it, who stole fake made a tissue. What’s that all about? So I’ve got a chapter or not, and even a chapter on how traumatic life experiences particularly in childhood can be correlated with illness in adulthood, and ways that we can actually begin to turn that around, and then move on to more cleaner. You know how nature that’s how exposure to nature itself can be healing an actual of why that impacts as at a genetic level. And then then you go into the kind of biofield timezone healing crystals, even stuff that’s getting into really big Whoo. But then I go into stuff that some people would call it, like the high end of where we elect prayer, and, you know, thinking a compassionate thoughts about people who might be on the other side of the world in an amazing way, those of us compelling statistical evidence from that scientists even studying people separated by a distance one in an MRI scanner, and yet their brain patterns are correlated with the experiences of the other person. If and only if If and only if they share an emotional bond, can I thanks. So I explored all that basis for the full, I guess the full spectrum of what some people might call woowoo. And that was really just because these are subjects that I had an interest in. And also felt a lot of people I talked to have an interest in those subjects. So I take a practice object, one that there was a lot of research available, but most people still think of is woowoo, because they don’t know that the evidence is available. So I thought, well, that’d be interesting to show them that there really is a heck of a lot of evidence, but secondary secondary. Secondly, these are subjects that just by chatting to people, these are the ones that most people wanted to know about how they worked.

Guy 20:47
so fascinating. Yeah, and I want to because I’ve even in my notes here, I’ve got crystals and the smiley face right in my notes here. And and I just want to tell you a brief story. And then I’d love to hear your thoughts on this because a good mate of mine has a good mate. So somebody I work with man, his good friend, works in a crystal shop in mullumbimby. Now I don’t know if you’ve been to this part of the world, Byron Bay in mullumbimby. In that, I think mullumbimby as woo woo, in Australia, I think you could live anywhere. And and they have what’s called the crystal chair. Okay, now, the guy, the guy that opened the shop said he built the chair first. Because he always had crystals. And he said, the chair told me to, to then open a shop to put the chair in, so then he could then let people freely come in. And there’s this whole story behind it. So I go in and sit in this chair, and there’s all these crystals at different meridian points in different energy centres and all the rest. And I sat in the chair David, I know nothing about crystals. And after about 10 minutes, oh my god, my whole body was just vibrating part of my face just kind of fully relaxed. It was like one side of my face. just completely let go. And I got off that thing. Just what the hell was that? You know, and, and I remember I went home, I had to sleep for about an hour. And then I got up and I was just like, oh my god, I feel amazing. So I’ve always been curious. Yeah. So from your perspective, why is that in the book? And what have you learned around that over the years? Because I never thought I’d be talking about crystals.

David 22:25
I got that. Neither did I actually, you know, I never imagined that, in a book, when I was trying to, you’re one of my main goals in the book was be really credible, and make sure that the science is absolutely solid. And I thought, you know, a lot of people, lots of people are saying, oh, could you do a chapter on crystals, and I’m gonna but I don’t really know of any results. But then I uncovered an astonishing amount of how they work in medical studies on them because that those haven’t been done but a heck of a lot of research. And how do I mean for example, I mean, I’ve got one here just as as a key because I feel that you might ask me something, why not. So that’s a cookie, that’s a setting crystal, but it’s about like quartz in the sense that it’s really, really clear. Now there’s three distinct ways that that crystals work. The first way is quartz crystal has a physical property called Daya magnetism. Now what Dyna magnetism means is, imagine if it’s pouring down marine and the rains coming down like straight. If I want to protect myself, I put an umbrella up. And what the umbrella will do is it’ll deflect the path of the rain so that the rain then bends around me know, if someone fortunate soul was standing beside me, they’d get twice as much rain, because the rain is going to bounce off my umbrella and dump on them. So it diamagnetic substance does something very similar, but it’s not the rain, it’s bending, it’s the Earth’s magnetic field. So what that means is if the magnetic field is bent around it, and anything to the side is going to get a little bit more of it. So like a crystal, for example, yes, magnetic fields coming down, and it bends around. And so anything here gets a wee bit more of this magnetic field. So n one, and one part of the three parts to the crystals chapter and one part, I explored research that shows that increasing or decreasing the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field accelerates or decelerates, the growth rate of plants, and even the amount of chlorophyll and iron uptake in plants. And there’s at the reception that’s called plant Magneto reception. And there’s a lot of interest in dislike the science of it, because scientists though, because we’re more serious about space exploration than ever before. It’s what are the consequences of transporting seeds, for example, our plants and a spacecraft that isn’t subject to this magnetic field while they still grow. In the absence of the aesthetic field, we’ll even if we can find some nice soil on Mars, what will be the consequences in Mars’s magnetic field is successful. Frequently different from the US. So there’s a lot of research on just tweaking, increasing decreasing Earth magnetic field, and it makes a huge difference to the growth rate, even biomass accumulation and plant future growth. So my first approach in the chapter was to demonstrate that a diamagnetic substance by federally our own with the EFF magnetic field intensity can have and if it does not, the reset does not reset into I did a few experiments myself, but there’s no formal Research Centre, but I just pointed out that it can have an improvement, we can’t just dismiss the the setting on crystal Bay crystal cheers, we can’t just dismiss it, because it’s like pseudoscience is dismissing something based on a belief without investigating the evidence yourself, not the stuff being dismissed as pseudoscience. But synthesise itself is dismissing something based on a belief without taking the time to investigate it yourself. And so I’m taking the time here. And I think that is something that is something in the the physical property of crystals that Federals that omit the magnetic field, perhaps it lots of crystals together at one point different types might generate quite an interesting tweak to the intensity of the magnetic field so that we can actually feel it, you know, desperately because there is this, there’s research at Caltech in America, where they actually put people in an electromagnetic shielded room, they replicated the magnetic field, and then they rotated and this rotated at the magnetic field. So the lines instead of going that way, they were going up the way but nobody can see it. So the rotated the field inside this electromagnetic shield, the kid to every single person’s brainwaves abruptly changed. They couldn’t feel anything, but their brainwaves abruptly changed. In other words, the brain was absolutely insane with the local, the local f magnetic field, not just the intensity, but but whether it was pointed in that direction, or that direction. So there’s a fascinating research that shows we are absolutely sensitive to the magnetic field because of bio biology has evolved within the natural tone a few well of the Earth’s magnetic field, say approach crystals in that way, but also in another way, like the clarity of a crystal and a Buddhist tradition called zoek chain. The clarity of a crystal is used as what’s called the mental representation, where the clarity represents mentally the state of clarity that one wishes to attain through the meditation and the spiritual practice, though and cognitive psychology, any FMA if you have a mental representation of some way, then helps you move towards something. So that’s another link I made with crystals because of what they mean to us. Because of what that represents the the clarity even it comes from the earth itself, it’s a mental representation. And so because I have something a representation to focus my attention on, it makes it easier to get clear in state a few hold us see a crystal because it is clarity points you towards that’s the I would like to attend so there’s all so I covered a section on on mental representations and how and why they actually work there. And then the last section and crystals was a call of psychology like what in terms of using crystals to and jewellery and stuff like that and even just having them visible. The signs of colour psychology shows, and marketers use it all over the world, you know, to sell products, you know, for example, a short window with red in it encourages impulse buying, if you put light blue lighting, it creates a calming effect and stuff so I cited a lot of research and colour psychology and say saying that crystals have a certain colour because of what the colour represents can actually cause behavioural change in people and even neurological change. Like one study I cited volunteers were given a cherry flavoured dried, you know, a cherry flavoured drink that the scientists put a green dye in it. So even though it was cherry flavoured It was called bright green. You know, 37% of people couldn’t taste cherry and they swore that the flavour was lemon or lime. In other words, the brain process the taste based on the colour more than what it actually was itself. And other ones, the colour itself was changing the activity of the brain and flavour processing regions. And so I pointed out that crystals may have an effect on that basis as well because of their colour and what the colour represents to us and the psyche.

Guy 29:45
Wow, that’s not expected to say that like

David 29:50
doesn’t mean Yeah, I didn’t expect to uncover all that kind of stuff. One. When I started diving into it, I wasn’t going to put a chapter on crystals but then the more logical stuff like that I found that absolutely compelling. It’s really, really fascinating. And it just seemed to fit in with the context of the book. And because the answer the question, that many people when I was writing this, it asked me when people knew I was writing it, loads of people, it’s probably the most popular a request for what could you cover in the book? And if it isn’t this interesting chapter and crystals and I kept it up? Well, you know, I don’t know of any research. And it was only when I just started curiosity. I didn’t Google Science of crystals. But I knew a little bit about some things. You know, what, because I’m doing a towards the end of a degree in mathematics and physics. I knew about diamagnetism, and para magnetism, which is a sort of an umbrella, it’s a funnel. But so I knew about what that is. And I knew about physical property. I knew about substances which have diamagnetic paramagnetic activities. I knew about that. So I started out there, just out of curiosity, really?

Guy 31:03
Well, you’ve definitely got me wanting to look into it more, that’s for sure. You know, just from listening to you, then, you know, funnily enough, I only spoke to a lady at a workshop I think was a few months ago, before we were put in another lockdown. Anyway, and she’s here and she was telling me about a friend that decided when lockdown hit was to start an online business, and she thought she’d sell a few crystals. And I think within 12 months, she hadn’t been able to get enough stock. They struggling with staff, you know, it’s just been unbelievable. What’s been. Wow. And they definitely a real thing. Yeah, yeah, sure. I’m, I’m curious as well, when writing a book like this. they’ve missed it. Was there anything that even took you by surprise? Were you gone? Wow, really? Like, is that possible? Or do you think you were, you’ve been so submersed in this work for quite some time. Now you kind of knew what you were getting.

David 32:00
IT guy, I would say probably a bit of both. I have. I have had a background interest in all of us for a long time anyway. But I think one of the statistics, I think that really, really landed firmly with me is that a number of studies and scientific studies in the field of say urusei is a collective umbrella term for things like pata psychology, ESP, you know, prayer, the evidence for prayer, distant healing, pre sentiment, your idea that the human nervous system can sense the future, before it occurs, that that type of thing, intuition all comes under the umbrella of say that many of these studies and say this statistical data exceeds a threshold called Six Sigma, though that means six standard deviations from the mean, to put that into context, when the Higgs boson, the many people listening, remember back in 2012, the Fourth of July, there was a discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN and the big particle accelerator in Geneva in Switzerland, and it was called the God Particle that was the last particle that would confirm the standard model of physics. Now, it was widely accepted, celebrated all over the world. And what underlined it discovery was that it exceeded a statistical threshold called Five sigma, which is five standard deviations from the norm. And that means it’s a one in three 3.4 million likelihood of it being anything other than the Higgs boson. So it was widely accepted. salby Peter Higgs, who first predicted it won the Nobel Prize from that, but yet the data for many psystudies, prayer, distant healing, ESP etc, exceeds the Six Sigma ratio of one standard deviation, even better than like a billion to one evidence. And that realise that fact was that my God, why do people not know about this, and then I found, I was reading a great book by one at one of the leaders in this field guy called Dean Raiden. And he cites some research in his book called real magic. And Dean is one of the premier saying the leading researchers in the world very crazily credible guy, Chief Scientist at the Institute of noetic, scientists, sciences in the US, and he cited some stuff about it. The chairman of the American Statistical Association, three years, just five years ago, was getting her presidential address to 6000 statisticians in the US, and statisticians who actually tell you statistically if something is true or not, and then her presidential address, she cited work that she had done for the US government during the Cold War, and to say, and it’s reality, and she said, It’s true, it’s real. And she stood by it to this day. And she said that in her presidential address, that even the data is Very strong. And if it was, if it related to something more mundane, it would be widely accepted. And so given the data, we would if it wasn’t say this woo woo thing, given the strength of the statistical data, it would be widely accepted as as fact. But because it say and that’s considered woowoo. Most people dismiss it as woowoo or pseudoscience without ever looking at the data. And I would say dismissing something as pseudoscience without looking at the data yourself is pseudoscience itself, not the stuff that you’re dismissing as pseudoscience and some feting irony, funnily enough, so when I realised that, can I stop that the, even though I always believed in the phenomenex have had, like many people have had some experiences myself that I couldn’t explain in any logical manner. But that statistical data that had just landed more firmly in my psyche than it ever had before, you know, and so, it wasn’t that I didn’t know about it, it was just so surprising that to realise the strength of the data.

Guy 36:08
Incredible, right? And then it comes upon, well, why aren’t more people looking at this? Why don’t we know more about if it’s that powerful?

David 36:15
You know, what I don’t know, it’s because it’s, it’s because it sounds woowoo. We don’t look at it, we don’t accept it, because it it sounds too woowoo. And so one of my reasons for including that kind of stuff in the book is to say, well, that isn’t really woowoo. And so I had to then investigate consciousness as consciousness inside our heads. Because if it was inside our heads, then all of that say stuff is false. Right? So a true consciousness can’t be inside our heads. And there is some strong philosophical grounding. For the idea that consciousness is something fundamental to nature, it just feels like insensate ahead. And that ties in with, you know, some of the the eastern philosophies, or what we might call non duality, that there’s an infinite unbounded consciousness, and that we all enjoy. individuation is of it like colours in a rainbow. And, you know, there’s red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, individual colours in a rainbow. They’re so little people that would think of themselves as separate from each other, but they’re all part of the same Waitwait. And so the end, the East has a strong philosophical grounding in the West, we call that philosophy, idealism. But it’s really the same as the eastern non duality. So I said, S, all the cyber search is true. And the statistical evidence has shown that consciousness cannot be unsaved our heads that must be something fundamental to nature. And so I was nervous about writing that, because as a scientist, most scientists accept the mainstream position that it’s inside your head, even though there’s no proof that that’s the case. And if you ask more scientists, they’ll just say, it seems to be what people what’s accepted, but there’s no actual real proof of that idea. So I decided, even though I felt nervous about writing it, I thought, well, what you’re What can I scientists? Would I be if I wasn’t willing to say, Well, okay, the model that we use doesn’t affect the data. So we have to change the model. So I decide uncivil. This is what I think is the case I didn’t see it’s a fact that just said, given the data, this is probably this is probably true, or that or something like it has to be true. If all that psyresearch is actually true. So I explored all that idea of consciousness. Where does it come from and say in the book as well?

Guy 38:34
Yeah, it’s a big topic and it’s a question I’ve asked many people on the show actually and I’ve had many great people I’ve had a NASA physicist on you’re talking about this saying he was wrong. The conclusions he’s come to. I’ve had Amit Goswami? Yeah, he will. I literally had him on a few weeks ago. Speaking about him and Valentina also wrote beautiful people, you know, and I, maybe I’m just too dialled into my little podcast world these days, David, you know, because it’s like, to me I’m fully kind of engaged in that, that kind of concept these days from, I guess, looking at this work a long time. But

David 39:14
do I actually say to that piece of Amit Goswami, his work in the book, actually, because he did some work looking at exploring the connectedness between people once connected to an eg helmet, and the other one is in another room. And yet the brainwaves of this person, were reacting to the experiences of the other, and they tested people and sat together in meditation, and tried to feel each other’s presence. And only when they did that, was there a correlation in the brainwaves, but if they didn’t try to feel each other’s presence, and meditation, try to feel create an emotional bond, that wasn’t a correlation. And so some of Amit Goswami research that that first brought that into the physics community with It okay I’m a physicist let’s is this some relative of quantum entanglement between brains because this is incredible any they call it there’s no way this leaves no room for doubt about the existence of an unusual phenomena. And that’s sort of Amit Goswami work that I cited actually, in one chapter.

Guy 40:21
Yeah. Yeah. I gotta ask you one other question before I change gears on the podcast, because I heard you quote it today. And I was like, Wow, I’ve not heard that before. And that was the many worlds theory. And, and I was wrapping my head round up, because I guess as you lean into this work more, you you start to ponder on things and how things work. But if the if there’s a veil and and what’s actually happening, moment to moment. So I’d love you just to touch on that a little bit, if you don’t mind.

David 40:53
Yeah, so the many the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. And quantum and quantum physics there’s, there’s different interpretations of phenomena. And the idea that a particle that something could be a wave and a particle at the same time, or it can be in two places, seemingly at the same time, it can be a field and a particle, kind of thing. A, and there’s different interpretations, the mainstream ones called the Copenhagen interpretation, and it’s, most people are familiar with the idea that something collapses the wavefunction. But another interpretation is very strong, and really growing in popularity among professional physicists. It’s called the many worlds interpretation. And every moment there are multiple copies of something. So a wave and a particle, there’s one reality, a world, a universe, where it’s a wave, and there’s another reality another universe, where it’s a particle, that the famous Schrodinger cat, the cat is both alive and dead. In one world, the cat’s alive, and another world that is dead. And now what we’re actually doing in life as we make choices is we’re flicking between worlds, like you might take a book, and you might, you know, flip through the pages and go, and you can see all the pages flicking. It’s like those different, what each page is a different world, a different universe. So it’s why it’s called the many worlds and show the choices that have been made. We’re literally flicking through the pages. So the world that the reality that you experienced is consistent with your thinking, if you move it into philosophical concept range, the world that you experienced, is that consistent with your thinking and what you believe it’s not that you’re actually physically changing things, you’re literally flicking to a world that’s entirely consistent with what you’ve just thought, it kind of thing. So the right now there’s an infinite number of, of Guy Lawrences and an infinite number of me right now. And definitely dimensions of reality. And so you can never experienced another copy of you. But when you you know, make choices in your life or visualise or to say, I want this to happen or that to happen, what we’re really doing is we’re flicking through one slip, rifling through pages of a book and it’s as we flip the pages and that’s what the menu will mean and physics they don’t take it to its philosophical aid, ain’t they just talk about in terms of mathematics, mathematical This is what’s going on. But if you take it if you blend it with the philosophy philosophical ideas of idealism or non duality, then what we would then see is you’re you’re not just mathematically creating different worlds that were physically moving on in our consciousness moving between worlds as well I think

Guy 43:41
credible a So does that mean does that mean then that for all of us, there’s there’s this potential if we if we choose to think it and move towards it, there’s a potential already existing out there, we just need to work towards it. But ultimately, it’s our conditioning and beliefs and our traumas and experiences that are getting in the way of allowing us to actually reach

David 44:06
absolutely I totally agree with you guy. I think so traumas and beliefs and the weight of a past experiences that make it seem like we have less power than we do, and makes us seem like we can’t change things because there’s the psychological weight of experience of past experience, that for many people make it very difficult to flick too far from where you actually have always been. But what it does suggest is there are infinite possibilities I cover you know, I the last chapter of the book, I covered the law of attraction or what we call the law of attraction and in that context, I suggest that that is vast potential for each of us. But just like you, you you summed up so well there, the way of traumas and past experiences. A condition is to believe that x y Zed isn’t possible for me And so what but what if it was what if we could get around that past conditioning? Then what I suggested is I think there’s far more potential for us to live our greatest hopes and dreams than we previously would even admit to ourselves. And it’s really just the heaviness of past traumas and the heaviness of life experiences always been this way. And this is always what’s happened for me. And it’s, it’s real, but it’s heaviness, psychological heaviness, that conditioned us to think that I’m probably just going to keep going in the same direction. But definitely we have potential to go over there and flip to a different part of the book.

Guy 45:43
Made I couldn’t agree more and you know, just as a general thought, and humanise it a bit as well, because it’s interesting I find because I get to meet a lot of people or listen to my podcast when I finally run workshops again and stuff like that, right? And and, and they go guy you’re so normal for me, I’m so used to listen to you every week and all the rest of it. I right. Yeah, I’m just a guy from Wales that gets in front of a microphone is there’s no different, right. But, but but there’s an element of thinking, Oh, it’s okay, we got it in the bag. Right. But talking to your face, you actually spoke about going in a new trajectory where you wanted to write books and actually follow the heart. And to me, it sounds like that’s the work that you’re implementing it?

David 46:25
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Because I guess the

Guy 46:29
question is, how did you do it? You know, like, what, what were the key elements to allow you to transition? Because I know so many people that are in that place right now. You know, David?

David 46:40
Yeah. So for me, I had been, my understanding of the placebo effect had been growing, but I never really thought I would do anything. But I’d always had this dream. Even during my PhD, I remember in the middle of my PhD, thinking, I don’t want to be a professional scientist, or a professional chemist. I mean, I don’t want to be an organic chemist in a lab all my life, I want to educate, I want to inspire, because I always had this kinnor not for coaching. You know, if people in the lab were struggling, I would always coach them to believe in themselves. And something I love doing is just helping people to feel good about themselves to recognise how great they were. And even when I was a scientist, I became an athletics coach. And I coached you know, a, I managed a junior team, like an under under 20 men’s team and one of the UK’s largest athletics club, and we got to the final of three success of championships, the young team won the British championships. And, and I just loved you know, doing that kind of stuff. And some, even while I worked as a, as a professional chemist, I, I thought I want to teach I want to educate and inspire and at the same time as I was doing the the athletics coaching, ideas of the placebo effect were coming in, and I started to formulate in my mind it was a dream that I didn’t ever honestly think I would do anything about on a be really honest, it was just like a dream that we all have. And you know, you don’t think you’ll ever do it. But I always feel so great. And I knew in my heart I thought, I want to be write books and educate and inspire I want to be a teacher why stand at conferences and, you know, do any of us and, and help people to believe in themselves that they’re capable of great things much more than you think you are. And I just there was just like a background dream. And then one day, I was attending our personal development seminar run by Tony Robbins, a big, tall American, and it was called unleash the power within and it was in Wales guy, it was in Cardiff. It was in Cardiff 1999 July, in 1999. And Tony that I was so enamoured with, I thought he was an amazing, I loved what he was doing. I thought that’s what I want to do. What Tony Robbins is doing is making people feel so good, people are feeling so let up and they can they believe that they can achieve anything I want to do, he’s gonna do but I’ve got signs too, but I want to blame seine centre, and I blame the science of compassion and kindness and the roots of love and, and the understanding of all the stuff that I didn’t even make sense in my own head, I just sort of knew that there was something that I could that I would do that was my own unique contribution to that way that type of education, inspiration brain, my own stuff, and it took me a while to to find out to do that. But during that seminar, he did this big meditation. And he said, think of a time in your life when something happened that if it hadn’t happened, your life might have gone in a different direction. But the fact that it did happen, it changed the course of your life. And I could think of something and he said no, make a decision that will change the course of your life. And I just say that’s it. Leaving my job and leaving and leaving the pharmaceutical industry, I’m going to do what Robbins is doing, but with my own science fusion, enter and find my direction. If I do that, and I literally resigned the next day. And so it’s almost like I needed something, someone to give me a little left to say, you know, you really can’t do that. And for me, I needed to be on that. If I hadn’t been on that Tony Robbins, unleash the poet of the thing have been in Cardiff 1999, I don’t think I would have had the courage, or the faith I use, sometimes you just need to be, you know, motivated up to be able to do something, and I don’t think I would have had, maybe it would have happened another time in my life, but I don’t I definitely wouldn’t have done it, then. It was just a background dream that I didn’t think I would ever do anything with.

Guy 50:50
Wow, that’s brilliant. David, and now 11 books later, luckier.

Guy 50:54
11 amazing, yeah, yeah. What’s, what’s your intention or hope for this book? Why woo woo works?

David 51:04
Really, there’s a vast community of people who not only are practitioners of alternative practices, but who also really think that we believe that we, and I think often the minimised you know, and I would like, I want you to provide evidence for them, one, that it would give them more faith in themselves. And secondly, that it would help people who are sceptical to understand what they do, and why they do what they do. And when I say people sceptical and people that they know their friend, family, friends, because many, many people that I’ve known over the years a, for example, I’ll give you a, you know, a frequent example. So the husband and wife, and the wife’s a practitioner of Reiki, or she works with crystals. Her husband is quite sceptical, but they’re still together and you know, the cause a rift, but she would always love if her husband could understand a bit more of what she did. So my hope and this as well, is for the partners of people who work in the alternative fields can be can read this and begin to understand, I understand why my partner does this, I understand No, I can see that it works and why it works. And so that was a big part of my motivation. It really was to help people who are in that field and help other people to understand why they do what they’re doing realise that it’s really something and we’re that it doesn’t have to be a different world, we can find a way of fusing these two seemingly separate worlds and walking together as friends, rather than as enemies in two different camps.

Guy 52:55
I love it. I love it, then. All your listeners, you can go and buy this for your partners right now. Make the perfect gift. Yeah, 100%. Right. Fantastic. Yeah, I never thought that. Wow. Did you know there’s so many people I see that are like, I wish my part I would get me in this area. This field. Yeah, you know, for sure. Maybe I can ask you one more question to wrap up the podcast that asked everyone on the show, David. And that is, with everything we’ve covered today. What would you like to leave our listeners to ponder on? Oh,

David 53:29
good question. Okay, for me, I would say one of one of the things that I’ve put most effort into teaching and writing about over the last, you know, five to 10 years has been kindness and the importance of kindness. And even kindness is contagious. You know, kindness has one of the highest R numbers of anything much higher than, you know, the Coronavirus. Kindness has an R number between four and five. It’s highly contagious. In other words, when you be kind to someone, that person will likely became to five other people over the course of the rest of the day because of how you made them feel. So it’s highly contagious. And so I would really like people to ponder if I made it, my goal to help as many people as I can as I go through my day, what might the impact of that be? I don’t mean like big things like you’re literally changing someone’s life. I mean, just smiling at someone and let in a way that says I see you, you know, or, or just paying someone a compliment or just if someone asked for your help, just finding it, finding the time to offer them a helping hand. So I’m not meaning life changing kindnesses, but just the everyday ordinary opportunities that are present to almost every single person every day if I just truly engaged and helping and made that effort. To actually lift people up at moments during the day, given how contagious that kindness says might that change the world if we all did that about more.

Guy 55:14
Amen to that. Amen to that. I think we needed more than ever right now that’s

David 55:18
for sure. Definitely. I

Guy 55:20
really appreciate it. Australia can a show you books gonna be available Amazon?

David 55:27
Yeah, yes. And all the all the other online retailers as well. It will be in some physical shops as well. I don’t know which which ones but certainly, it’s only the online retailers. It’s available.

Guy 55:41
And are you on Audible?

David 55:43
Yes, it’s on Audible as well. And it’s me, and my Scottish accent

Guy 55:47
are good man. Perfect. The audible book is the best experience when the author reads it. truly grateful.

David 55:55
If you I recorded it in a studio, a quite close to where I live in the studio is called good vibrations.

Guy 56:04
Yeah, perfect. Perfect. Yeah. They and where can I send them if they just want to learn more about your work, I’ll make sure that in the show notes as

David 56:13
well. You want my website, Dr. David hamilton.com that you know that you can from there you can pretty much find most most things and I will probably once your link is live or I’ll have a link on my website to this podcast as well.

Guy 56:30
Amazing. David, thank you so much for coming on the show today. That was an amazing conversation. I love your enthusiasm for this work. It always gets me I always learn something as well every time I speak to me and it’s brilliant. I’m there’s a few areas I really want to dive deeper in with and so I appreciate your time. Thank

David 56:47
you. Thank you. It’s been my absolute pleasure. Always love our conversations. And, you know, it seems quite easy and free flowing as I feel that we’ve been we’re sitting right beside each other having, you know, a chat over a coffee or a beer or something. It feels really been really easy. So thanks for making it easy for me to communicate today.

Guy 57:08
You’re welcome and hopefully the listeners feel that as well. Appreciate it. Thank you.

David 57:12
Thank you. There we go.