Have you ever wondered what’s going on up there in that old brain of yours while you’re busy experiencing life in the world? Well you’ve come to the right place! Your Brain Explained is a new kind of show that’s a cross between TED Radio Hour and psychedelic Bill Nye, hosted by acclaimed psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and psychedelic researcher, Dr. Dave Rabin MD, PhD. This show looks under the hood of Dr. Dave's personal journey to understand consciousness and how our brains and bodies do what they do to help us live the good life. Dr. Dave hosts conversations with leading minds across all fields to explore the intersection of technology, consciousness, spirituality, and medicine. Each episode will focus on a specific topic ranging from sleep, mental health, meditation, and wearables to psychedelics, AI, extreme human performance and everything in between. We’ll get jiggy with the discoverable nature of life itself and leave you and your brain with the delightful tingle of knowing just a little bit more about yourself with each show. Dive in with us. It’s comfortable inside!
The DNA of Consciousness: Visionary Plants, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Mind
Where does consciousness come from? Can information be received through visions? And is it possible that ancient plants unlock biological knowledge we haven’t even begun to fully understand?
In this episode of Your Brain Explained, Dr. Dave Rabin MD, PhD is joined by Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Jamie Wheal (Stealing Fire & Recapture the Rapture) as guest interviewer for a special conversation with anthropologist and author Jeremy Narby (The Cosmic Serpent) to explore one of the most provocative frontiers of neuroscience and consciousness research. Together, they delve into Jeremy’s early fieldwork with Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, whose shamanic traditions claim to receive verifiable botanical knowledge directly from experiences with the sacred jungle plants—including ayahuasca.
What begins as an exploration of cultural perspectives on plant medicine soon evolves into a larger conversation about the mysterious role of DNA in consciousness, the science of epigenetics, and the limitations of materialist thinking in modern neuroscience. Could DNA act as a receiver for information in altered states? How do we distinguish between personal projection and true insight? And what does it mean to “know thyself” in the age of brain scans and psychedelic therapy?
This is a monumental episode, and one of my favorites of all time, for seekers, skeptics, and scientists alike—an invitation to sit with the unknown, rethink what we believe about consciousness, and explore how visionary states might help us heal trauma across generations.—
Explore more from this episode:
📘 The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby
(https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Serpent-DNA-Origins-Knowledge/dp/0874779642) 📘 Recapture the Rapture by Jamie Wheal (https://www.recapturetherapture.com/)
🌐 www.drdave.io
(https://www.drdave.io/) 📸 Instagram: @drdavidrabin
(https://www.instagram.com/drdavidrabin) 🐦 Twitter: @DrDavidRabin (https://twitter.com/DrDavidRabin)
Outro music from Notanairplane: https://on.soundcloud.com/qf1bwHUi3A9l86BHpi (https://on.soundcloud.com/qf1bwHUi3A9l86BHpi)
31 Mar 2025
Will AI Products Save Humanity or Destroy It? with Dr. Ken Ford
Artificial Intelligence or AI, as it’s so commonly known, feels like a tool of the future. As it stands today, models like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, and hundreds of others are quickly becoming widely used tools for writing, researching, painting, and music creation, all at the push of a button. But now, every industry is asking what else can be done with AI. Should we make better deep fakes? Could AI products improve our physical and mental health, and even enhance our human potential? Most importantly, with constant news of AI products fabricating people and conversations, how do we know that what is being served up to us is real and true?
In this conversation, Dr. Dave Rabin brings you an unusual conversation with one of the world’s leading AI experts, Dr. Ken Ford PhD, founder & CEO Emeritus of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC). Dr. Ford explains what AI really is, how it differs from human intelligence, why AI products might be lying to us more than we think, and how it’s already being used to solve some of humanity’s biggest problems and enhance our understanding of the mind. You won’t want to miss this opportunity to hear the voice of a great mind who rarely appears in interviews.
Web: https://www.ihmc.us/groups/kford/ (https://www.ihmc.us/groups/kford/)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheIHMC (https://twitter.com/TheIHMC)
STEM-Talk: https://www.ihmc.us/stemtalks/ (https://www.ihmc.us/stemtalks/)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrDavidRabin (https://twitter.com/DrDavidRabin)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdavidrabin (https://www.instagram.com/drdavidrabin)
Web: https://www.drdave.io/ (https://www.drdave.io/)
31 Oct 2023
Breaking Down Trauma w/ Dr. Gabor Maté & Dr. Rachel Yehuda
Most of us think of trauma and what happens in the brain and body as a life sentence. Once you’ve been “traumatized” or you’ve been told you have PTSD, that's it, and you'll deal with it for the rest of your life. But the latest neuroscience and mental health research is giving us a very different lens through which we can see quite a bit of hope. In conversations with Dr. Gabor Maté MD , a leading trauma physician, and Dr. Rachel Yehuda PhD, a leading researcher on the science of trauma — we learn what trauma truly is, what it does to our bodies and minds, and how to heal from it.
Web:https://drgabormate.com/ (https://drgabormate.com/)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RachelYehuda (https://twitter.com/RachelYehuda)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrDavidRabin (https://twitter.com/DrDavidRabin)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdavidrabin (https://www.instagram.com/drdavidrabin)
Web: https://www.drdave.io/ (https://www.drdave.io/)
21 Jun 2023
Could We Cure Mental Illness? The MDMA Story
Could a cure be on the way for mental illness? In today’s episode we’re talking with two leading minds in the psychedelic therapy space, Dr. Rick Doblin PhD and Dr. Ben Sessa MD, working on MDMA-assisted therapy, the most promising breakthrough treatment on the horizon for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD). We kick off today’s show with a special introduction from Rachel Nuwer, the award-winning freelance science journalist who regularly contributes to National Geographic, Scientific American, and who has been tracking the progress of the MDMA research trials closely in the New York Times. You’ll learn what MDMA-assisted therapy is, how it works, who it’s good for, and what the new research is saying about its potential to jump-start self-healing.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.8 / 5
21 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 22 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
23
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
51
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