The Observable Unknown

Pen Densham

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

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

 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

 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

 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 Episode 8 - The Fasting Instinct: The Ancient Science of Stillness

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

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

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

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 Episode 7 – “The Science of Spirit and the Mechanics of Mediumship”

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.