The Observable Unknown

Interlude VIII — Chronicles, Legends, and the Architecture of Belief

"What is history but a fable agreed upon?” Napoleon once asked. From collective recollection to sacred ritual, from covert interpersonal dramas to the unconscious resonance of color, from emotional imprints to memetic replication - this interlude explores the hidden architectures shaping what we call freedom.
Join Dr. Juan Carlos Rey as he traces Halbwachs, Eliade, Campbell, Berne, Damasio, Lüscher, and Blackmore, revealing how conviction is never solitary but always cultural, emotional, and inherited.
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Interlude VII — Invisible Structures: Social Norms, Sacred Order, and the Power of Patterns

In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey steps into the hidden architectures shaping what we call “personal choice.” Drawing on Durkheim, Halbwachs, Berger, Bourdieu, Foucault, Elias, Geertz, Butler, Gramsci, and Meloni, he unpacks how collective memory, power, ritual, and even biology create the stage on which our decisions are performed.
Listeners are invited to explore the observable unknown of their own choices - what is inherited, what is suggested, and what may still be truly free.
Join the conversation on WhatsApp TheObservableUnknown, email TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com, or text 336-675-5836. Share: – How you first found out about the show – Your favorite part or episode so far – One thing we could do to make the show better – One thing you’re struggling with right now
Because freedom itself begins with seeing the pattern.

Davin Stronk

Davin Stronk is an erotic performance artist working within the adult entertainment industry and the intimacy trade, serving as a professional purveyor of desire in both its artistic and economic expressions. In this episode of The Observable Unknown, we explore with him how intimacy, performance, and cultural imagination converge - revealing how desire itself becomes art, commerce, and a mirror of our deepest longings.

Interlude VI - Inherited Shadows: Memory, Time, and Biology

Can memory be inherited? Can trauma echo across generations? And do our most private choices carry the weight of ancestral shadows?
In this interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores the mysteries of phylogenetic inertia, epigenetic conditioning, and genetic memory - tracing how our biology remembers more than we realize. From Darwin to Jung, Holocaust studies to modern neuroscience, we uncover how memory may stretch not only backward into the lives of our ancestors, but forward into precognition and the sense of future time.
What begins in science moves into philosophy, psychology, and the paranormal: retrocognition, metacognition, and precognition. Together, these open a startling possibility - that the mind itself is an heirloom, shaped by unseen inheritances and predictive forces.
The Observable Unknown is where knowledge and wonder meet. Step into this space… and consider what within you is truly your own.

Interlude V — Suggestion, Signal, and the Construction of Choice

In this solo interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey traces how culture, persuasion, ritual, and engineered messaging shape what we take to be “our” decisions. From classic lab findings on conformity and obedience to modern persuasion tactics and the neuroscience of suggestion, this episode maps how choice is constructed long before it reaches consciousness. If you’ve ever wondered why you clicked, said yes, or changed your mind without knowing why, this is the episode for you. Listen, reflect, and learn simple practices to notice the nudges that shape your life.

Interlude IV — The Observable Unknown in Agency and Free Will

Tonight’s Interlude IV of The Observable Unknown traces the living tension between free will, agency, and the brain’s hidden predictive machinery. Drawing on Libet’s timing experiments, Wegner’s critique, Friston’s predictive-processing, the comparator model, and mirror-neuron research, this episode shows how agency is constructed across layered neural processes: pre-reflective feeling, reflective judgment, and social resonance. We explore the veto as a final sanctuary for conscious intervention, attention’s role as a spotlight, and perception as controlled prediction. Poetic yet practical, the piece invites listeners to reimagine freedom as a skillful, trainable practice rather than absolute sovereignty - urging conversation, curiosity, and compassionate self-reconstruction. 

Dr. Daniel Jorgensen

The guest for this episode is Dr. Daniel Jorgensen, a distinguished scholar of Religious Studies whose work has illuminated the esoteric scene, the cultic milieu, and the occult Tarot. His research has expanded the sociology of religion beyond institutional boundaries, into the rich and often misunderstood margins where seekers continually redefine meaning and identity.
Our conversation will explore not only the frameworks he’s developed, but also the questions they raise for the future of religious studies: What does it mean to live at the edge of tradition? How do symbols shape social life? And why does the study of esotericism matter - not only for scholars, but for all who are searching for meaning in a fractured age?
 
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- WhatsApp: TheObservableUnknown
- Email: TheObservableUnknown@gmail.com 
- Text: 336-675-5836
 
 
 

Interlude III: The Observable Unknown in Words, Instincts, & Myths

In this Interlude, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey traces how three great thinkers sought the Observable Unknown in their own fields. Max Müller uncovered forgotten meanings buried in language, Konrad Lorenz revealed the instinctual patterns beneath human behavior, and Claude Lévi-Strauss exposed the hidden structures shaping myth. Together, their work shows that mystery is not distant - it lives in the words we speak, the instincts we carry, and the stories we inherit.

Interlude II: The Observable Unknown in Mind & Society

In this interlude, host Dr. Juan Carlos Rey explores how the observable unknown reveals itself in the hidden life of the mind and the shared structures of society. Drawing on the insights of Freud, Jung, Julian Jaynes, Adler, and Peter Berger, this interlude traces how unconscious drives, archetypes, inner voices, human striving, and cultural meaning-shields shape our lives.
What emerges is a portrait of mystery not as something to be feared, but as the ground of our humanity—seen in dreams, myths, relationships, and the sacred canopies we build to endure existence.
Join the journey into psychology and sociology’s deepest questions: How do we live with what can be seen but never fully known?

Interlude I: The Observable Unknown — Ontology & Teleology

In this special Interlude of The Observable Unknown, host Dr. Juan Carlos Rey steps away from dialogue to offer a sustained philosophical reflection on the very title of the show.
Through the lenses of Kant’s tension between phenomena and noumena, Heidegger’s play of truth as both revealing and concealing, Aristotle’s vision of wonder as the root of philosophy, and the profound wisdom of Taoist, Vedantic, and Buddhist traditions, this interlude explores how the observable unknown is not merely a poetic phrase but a condition of Being itself.
This lecture invites listeners to slow down and reflect - not only on what is seen, but on what forever withdraws, calling us deeper into the mystery.
It is an offering of thought, crafted to sit alongside the conversations you already know and love on this show.
The Observable Unknown is not only about voices in dialogue - it is also about pausing, listening, and letting mystery speak.