The Observable Unknown

Interlude XXXVII - The Settled Brain: Safety as a Cognitive Prerequisite

Before curiosity, before reflection, before imagination itself, the nervous system asks a quieter and more urgent question: Am I safe?
In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey examines the neurological foundations of safety and why a regulated nervous system is a prerequisite for clear perception, learning, and truth-seeking. Drawing from contemporary neuroscience and clinical research, this episode explores how the autonomic nervous system shapes cognition long before conscious thought appears.
Listeners are guided through the architecture of autonomic balance, including sympathetic activation, parasympathetic regulation, and the role of ventral vagal tone in social engagement and cognitive flexibility. Referencing the work of Stephen Porges, Deb Dana, and Bruce McEwen, this interlude clarifies how chronic stress and allostatic load narrow perception, collapse curiosity, and bias the brain toward threat detection rather than understanding.
Rather than framing safety as comfort or avoidance, this episode reframes it as the capacity to remain present in the face of uncertainty. When the nervous system is settled, the mind regains access to nuance, patience, and exploratory thought. When it is threatened, perception contracts, certainty hardens, and complexity becomes intolerable.
This episode is particularly relevant for listeners interested in neuroscience, trauma-informed psychology, emotional regulation, learning theory, and the hidden physiological conditions that shape belief, disagreement, and insight. As with all interludes in The Observable Unknown, the tone remains contemplative, evidence-based, and carefully restrained.
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.

Paul Samuel Dolman

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey sits with author, speaker, and global wisdom traveler Paul Samuel Dolman for a conversation that explores the quiet intersections of spirituality, ecological awareness, and lived ethical inquiry.
Paul Samuel Dolman has spent decades engaging with Indigenous elders, spiritual leaders, artists, scientists, and cultural stewards across the world. His work does not seek transcendence apart from daily life, but clarity within it. Through encounters with figures such as Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Ndaba Mandela, Marianne Williamson, climate scientists, artists, and cultural historians, Paul has cultivated a perspective shaped by listening rather than instruction.
This conversation examines how wisdom is transmitted not only through teachings, but through presence, place, and sustained attention. Together, Dr. Rey and Paul explore questions of inner guidance, responsibility, spiritual grounding, and the challenge of remaining awake within modern life without retreating from it. They speak about devotion without dogma, meaning without spectacle, and the tension between inward depth and outward engagement.
Rather than offering answers, this episode invites reflection on how a sense of the sacred can be lived without abstraction, how ethical orientation forms through relationship, and how the human search for meaning remains inseparable from care for the Earth and one another.
This episode will resonate with listeners interested in consciousness studies, spiritual inquiry, ecology, psychology, and the lived dimensions of wisdom that resist easy categorization.
Written and hosted by Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of drjuancarlosrey.com and crowscupboard.com, The Observable Unknown explores the meeting point of neuroscience, culture, and interior experience with intellectual rigor and contemplative depth.

Interlude XXXVI: Human Ethology - The Animal That Knows It Is Seen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.com336-675-5836