The Observable Unknown

Richard M. Anderson

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of Crowscupboard.com sits down with molecular biologist and award-winning author Richard M. Anderson - a visionary whose work unites hard science, humanism, and speculative imagination.
A former clinical laboratory director and bioanalyst, Anderson built a distinguished scientific career before turning to writing. His nonfiction landmark The Evolution of Life: Big Bang to Space Colonies traces existence from cosmic birth to post-terrestrial civilization, arguing that empathy and reason are our most essential survival traits. His acclaimed Outbound series - beginning with Islands in the Void and continuing with Meta Mars - extends this inquiry into the 23rd century, when humankind and sentient machines must decide whether coexistence or conflict defines evolution.
In conversation, Anderson reflects on how curiosity became his compass - from laboratory benches to literary worlds. He discusses the ethics of AI, the fragility of ecosystems, and why emotional intelligence may be the only true technology capable of saving us. With clarity and compassion, he paints a future where scientific realism meets moral responsibility, where “the Pandora’s Box of artificial intelligence” forces us to re-evaluate what it means to be alive.
Listeners will come away with a deeper understanding of how data, imagination, and conscience converge to form our collective destiny.
Join us for a far-reaching dialogue about the origins of life, the future of consciousness, and the hope that still lies between the molecules and the stars.

Mailbag Episode 6 - “The Digital Altar: Social Media as Ritual Space”

 In this edition of The Observable Unknown: Mailbag, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of Crowscupboard.com explores how social media operates not merely as communication, but as ritual space. When acts of attention shift online, every repost, “like,” and scroll becomes a litany of belonging, performance, and belief. Drawing on innovative scholarship in digital religion and media anthropology, this episode asks how our feeds mirror ancient altars - and whether attention given or withheld today is the most sacred offering we still possess. Join us as we ask: if the altar is now algorithmic, what does ritual become? Rate and review the show wherever you listen - and step into the inquiry.

Mailbag Episode 5: The Memory Machine

In this episode, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of Crowscupboard.com invites listeners into a meditation on memory - no longer a candle passed from mind to mind, but a circuitry of data and desire. Drawing on the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945), Dr. Rey examines how collective memory has migrated from the oral to the algorithmic, shaping what humanity remembers - and what it forgets.
From the neural encoding of emotion to the digital contagion of belief, this conversation explores why misinformation feels so persuasive: because the brain itself prizes coherence over accuracy. Memory is not a library - it is a living organism seeking equilibrium. Online, that organism meets the algorithm, and together they compose the myths of the present.
Blending neuroscience, cultural theory, and reflective poetics, The Memory Machine asks: what happens when remembering becomes automated? And can we reclaim attention - the last uncommodified act of consciousness - as a form of moral resistance?

Interlude XVIII - Circadian Consciousness: How the Body Tells Time

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of CrowsCupboard.com uncovers the hidden clockwork of the living body - the molecular rhythms that measure dawn, dusk, and everything between. Drawing on the Nobel-winning research of Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young, whose fruit-fly experiments at Brandeis University and Rockefeller University revealed the PER gene and its feedback loop, Dr. Rey shows how each of us carries an internal timepiece.From the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain to the clocks in our livers and immune cells, our biology lives in sync - or out of sync - with the cycles of Earth. Misalignment doesn’t just bring tiredness - it rewires mood, metabolism, and meaning.Whether you rise with the sun or scroll into the night, this show reveals that time is not simply measured - it is embodied.Please rate, review, and share your reflections wherever you’re listening.Visit CrowsCupboard.com to learn more about upcoming classes and connect with Dr. Rey directly by writing to TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com

Interlude XVII - Endogenous Opioids & The Biochemistry of Meaning

Before temples were built of stone, the body already knew how to worship.In this episode, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of CrowsCupboard.com explores how the brain’s own narcotic chemistry - endorphins, enkephalins, and dynorphins - shapes the experience of love, faith, music, and transcendence.
Drawing on the work of Candace Pert (1973), who first identified the brain’s opiate receptors, Jaak Panksepp (1998), who revealed the primal circuits of care and play, and Björn Lindström (2015), whose studies of synchronized movement uncovered the opioid basis of social bonding, Dr. Rey guides listeners through a physiological theology of awe.Every drumbeat, every chant, every shared breath becomes evidence that the sacred is written in chemistry.
From early laboratory discoveries to modern neuroimaging of musical ecstasy, The Observable Unknown traces how meaning itself may be the body’s oldest high - how ritual, rhythm, and relationship activate an interior pharmacy of connection. The conversation extends into psychiatry and philosophy: what happens when trauma dulls these receptors, when faith becomes analgesic, or when hope itself behaves like a biochemical placebo?
Listeners will leave understanding that spirituality is not opposed to science - it is embodied by it. The neurons that ache, the hormones that heal, the molecules that bind us together are the same forces that generate compassion and purpose.
Listen to The Observable Unknown wherever you find your podcasts.Rate, review, and share your reflections; each voice adds resonance to this dialogue between measurable matter and mystery.To learn more about upcoming classes, such as Intuition Decoded, or to contact Dr. Rey directly, visit CrowsCupboard.com or connect on LinkedIn and X (Twitter): @DrJuanCarlosRey

Interlude XVI – Neural Oscillations and the Biochemistry of Rhythm

Before language, before heartbeat, there was rhythm - the pulse that shaped both cosmos and consciousness. In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com explores the hidden architecture of the mind’s music: the neural oscillations and neurochemical cadences that give rise to awareness itself.
Drawing on research by György Buzsáki (New York University), Earl Miller (MIT), Christof Koch (Allen Institute for Brain Science), Laura Colgin (University of Texas at Austin), and Patricia Locke (UCLA), Dr. Rey examines how gamma, theta, alpha, and delta waves synchronize the brain’s electrical ensembles with the biochemistry of gamma-aminobutyric acid, glutamate, and acetylcholine.
Through this rhythmic interplay, thought becomes chord, perception becomes phrase, and emotion becomes harmony. From Miller’s discovery that working memory depends on oscillatory phase-locking, to Colgin’s finding that hippocampal rhythms toggle between recalling the past and composing the future, we begin to see cognition as a living composition - part science, part symphony.
Listeners are invited to consider a provocative question: what if consciousness is not computation but composition? When neurons resonate in phase, awareness coheres; when coherence breaks, selfhood dissolves into silence. Neural Oscillations and the Biochemistry of Rhythm reveals the mind not as machinery but as music - an improvisation between ions and intention.
Follow Dr. Juan Carlos Rey on LinkedIn and X (@DrJuanCarlorRey), or share reflections at TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com.If the rhythm speaks to you, please leave a review or rating wherever you listen - it helps this inquiry into the measurable and the mystical reach new ears.

Mailbag Episode - “Sharpening the Sixth Sense: The Science and Soul of Intuition”

A listener writes from Toronto:
“I’ve always felt intuitive - but I don’t know how to trust or strengthen it. Is intuition a gift or a skill?”
In this episode of The Observable Unknown, I respond with both rigour and heart. Drawing on over two decades of research and training - from neuroscience to somatic practice to symbolic language - I share the system I’ve developed to help intuition become usable intelligence. We explore how the body-brain interface holds predictive power, how the nervous system speaks metaphorically, and how intuition can be taught, measured, and integrated into daily life. The sacred becomes trainable. The incipient awareness becomes architecture.
If you’ve ever felt a signal you couldn’t translate, or a hunch you couldn’t trust, this episode invites you to step into the practice of knowing what you already feel. Visit crowscupboard.com for more information.

Sam Reynolds, Part 2

Astrologer Sam Reynolds returns to discuss not only numerous aspects of astrology with Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com that were not discussed previously, but also his forthcoming class on a Basic Introduction to Astrology. 

Mailbag Episode 3: Eros and the Sacred Body

In this profound installment of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscupboard.com explores the ancient and often misunderstood intersection of erotic performance and spirituality. Responding to a listener’s question from San Antonio, Dr. Rey traces how the language of desire has always mirrored the language of the divine.
From Plato’s Symposium to modern neuroscience, Eros emerges not as indulgence but as a way of knowing. Drawing on the work of Jaak Panksepp, Helen Fisher, and Andrew Newberg, Dr. Rey reveals that the same neural circuits governing erotic arousal - dopamine, oxytocin, and the reward pathways of the limbic system - also ignite during prayer, meditation, and states of awe. Pleasure and transcendence, he suggests, are biologically intertwined.
This episode also examines performance as ritual: how the body, in conscious movement, becomes both subject and sacrament. We visit the anthropology of Dionysian rites, the psychological insights of Carl Jung, and the somatic therapies of Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine, each pointing toward a single truth - that awareness within desire transforms instinct into revelation.
Listeners will discover that sacred sensuality is neither paradox nor provocation, but a form of embodied theology. In Dr. Rey’s words, “To feel is to know, and to know through feeling is to remember what the soul once forgot.”
Tune in to The Observable Unknown for this meditation on the chemistry of longing, the neurobiology of transcendence, and the oldest sacrament of all - the consciousness that trembles when it recognizes itself.

Mailbag Episode 2 – “The Comparator and the Calling”

What if faith were simply the nervous system daring to trust its own prediction?
In this Mailbag installment, Dr. Rey of crowscupboard.com responds to listener DeShawn Carter of Atlanta, Georgia, whose question probes the hidden alliance between free will, intuition, and the brain’s comparator model – that quiet circuit which measures intention against outcome, authorship against experience.
From Chris Frith’s neuroscience of agency to the ancient mystic’s surrender, this episode explores how faith and intuition emerge not in opposition to science but as its most mysterious expressions.
Can belief be mapped onto synapses? Can intuition be a biological form of grace?Listen as Dr. Rey unravels these questions, reminding us that to know and to trust are not separate verbs but different tenses of the same awakening.
Submit your question: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.comText line: 336-675-5836
Please rate, share, and review this episode wherever you're listening.