Dr. Aldrich Chan is a neuropsychologist, psychotherapist and founder of the Center for Neuropsychology and Consciousness. An adjunct professor at Pepperdine University, Aldrich's research on the default mode network, mindfulness and trauma bridges neuroscience with ancient Taoist philosophy. He is the author of Reassembling Models of Reality (2021) and Seven Principles of Nature: How We Strayed and How We Return (2025).

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In this conversation, we explore Aldrich's synthesis of neuropsychology, Taoism and evolutionary mismatch theory — his SAD theory (separation, alienation, discord), the seven principles of nature (CPR WEST), subcortical midline structures and our original experience of connectedness, and what it means to live in alignment with nature.

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🔗 Links
Aldrich's website: https://www.drchancnc.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/draldrichan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drchancnc
Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@drchancnc
Book: https://geni.us/7principlesofnature

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⏳ Timestamps:
00:00 Intro - Neuropsychology meets Taoism
00:43 Seven Principles of Nature and the CPR WEST acronym
03:58 The SAD theory: separation, alienation and discord
04:53 The default mode network
06:29 The triple network: DMN, salience and central executive
10:05 The boat metaphor
12:58 Separation as a natural phase
15:16 Alienation and evolutionary mismatch theory
17:21 Movement mismatch
19:09 Social connection as the most obvious mismatch
21:07 The agricultural revolution's consequences
27:44 Discord and dualism
31:01 The nature–culture debate
36:23 CPR WEST unpacked
39:14 Creativity and uncertainty
41:18 Certainty is the death of a question
43:55 Vipassana and reframing the stress response
45:07 Two stress pathways
51:06 Chaos and order
52:57 Relationship and neuroecology
54:03 Multi-level selection theory
57:59 Ego boundary dissolution
1:00:58 Subcortical midline structures
1:02:04 Jung and archetypes as brainstem activity
1:05:28 Jung called himself a Taoist
1:06:03 Shadow integration and wholeness
1:08:42 Dynamic equilibrium
1:12:03 Flow states
1:13:52 Spontaneity and play
1:18:26 Transformation
1:19:52 Wrapping up
1:22:05 Where to find Aldrich
1:23:14 Guest recommendations

Dr. Erik Goodwyn is a practising psychiatrist with a background in neurobiology who bridges the worlds of neuroscience, Jungian psychology, and fantasy. Erik is co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Jungian Studies and has written dozens of academic papers along with books on the neurobiology of the gods, dreams, and archetypes. Last year he published his first fantasy novel, King of the Forgotten Darkness, which won the Literary Titan Golden Book Award.

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In this return visit, we dive deep into who actually creates the dream – the Invisible Storyteller that isn't your conscious self. We explore the neuroscience behind this, discussing the Default Mode Network, Salience Network, and Executive Control Network, and what they reveal about dreaming, meaning-making, and the deeply non-egoic nature of consciousness. Erik shares clinical insights into Dissociative Identity Disorder as evidence of an underlying organising principle, we tangle with what it means for consciousness to be "non-egoic," and we work through his groundbreaking definition of archetypes through Cognitive Metaphor Theory. It's a conversation that challenges everything you think you know about who you are.

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🔗 Links
- Erik's website: https://erikgoodwyn.com
- Erik's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theimaginarium

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⏳ Timestamps:
00:00 Intro - The Invisible Storyteller
01:39 Greeting and reflections on James's reading
03:35 What is the Invisible Storyteller?
06:01 Jung's avoidance of reductionism through mythic language
08:16 The Default Mode Network and dreaming
10:27 The three networks: default mode, salience, and executive control
15:27 Memory consolidation, identity formation, emotional regulation, future planning
18:29 Is the Invisible Storyteller the unconscious?
22:18 Deeper processing independent of conscious ego
25:58 Recurrent dreams and the role of conscious engagement
28:40 The Invisible Storyteller as meaning-making
31:07 Dreams versus storytelling: memory Olympics and metaphor
36:58 The role of the right hemisphere and symbolism
41:04 The Invisible Storyteller as process or personality?
44:18 Dissociative Identity Disorder and organising principles
50:33 DID as evidence of an organising intelligence
55:43 The specificity of dissociative amnesia
58:22 Non-egoic consciousness and emergent properties
1:02:14 Consciousness arising from complex systems
1:05:44 AI image generation as analogy for dream creation
1:10:56 The Invisible Storyteller as personality versus ancestry and genome
1:15:32 Jungian vision and updating Jung's theory
1:18:40 Archetypes through Cognitive Metaphor Theory
1:22:37 Spontaneous thoughts and universal challenges
1:25:58 Primary metaphors and innate mappings
1:29:20 Danger and darkness as innate mappings
1:32:17 Definition of archetype and falsifiability
1:34:47 Building on Gary Clark's work and Anthony Stevens
1:36:25 Gratitude and future conversations

Adriana Forte is a Brazilian-born writer, facilitator, and developmental thinker currently based in a rural intentional community in Bellingen, New South Wales, Australia. Originally trained as a journalist, Adriana has spent years investigating the intersection of women's cyclical biology, embodied knowing, and the structures of modern life. She runs retreats and workshops through her Substack platform C-Lab (A Lab for a Cyclically Informed Society), and is currently completing a book on the spell of modernity and the role of the matriarch as a force for cultural repair.________________

In this conversation, James sits down with Adriana to explore one of the most under-examined questions in contemporary culture: what happens when society is built around a linear, continuous model of productivity — and half the population runs on a fundamentally cyclical one? Drawing on her own journey from Brazil through Hong Kong and India to off-grid life in rural Australia, Adriana maps the hormonal landscape of the female cycle and argues that the oscillation between estrogen and progesterone doesn't just produce moods — it produces a distinct mode of subjectivity, perception, and thought. We explore the cultural erasure of rites of passage, the psychological costs of the contraceptive pill, the wisdom encoded in perimenopause and menopause, and why Adriana believes the matriarch — the post-menopausal woman — may be the missing counter-energy to the relentless forward drive of modernity. The conversation moves through evolutionary biology, embodied philosophy, grassroots community-building, and genuine hope for a more rhythmically intelligent future.________________

You can find Adriana's work at:

Substack (C-Lab): https://theclab.substack.com/

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⏳ Timestamps:
0:00 Intro - Our Bellingen Connection
5:41 How Adriana ended up on this journey
12:56 Critique of Modernity and Birth Interventions
15:23 Rhythms and female psychology
24:38 A map of the menstrual cycle
39:11 The Influence of Modernity on Women’s Psyche
45:59 Transgender and phenomenology of hormones
52:01 The oscillating nature of female psychology
59:25 The spell of the System on modern psychology
1:09:15 The challenge of organising around cyclical society
1:15:03 Adriana’s Matriarch Book
1:18:43 Where to get more from Adriana
1:19:39 Adriana’s Guest Recommendation

Dr. Michael R. Montgomery (PhD, MA, MSc, MSW, LCSW) is an existential psychoanalyst who represents a radical wing of contemporary depth psychology—one deeply influenced by R.D. Laing's anti-psychiatry tradition, phenomenology, and a fierce commitment to humanising extreme mental states. Based between Boston, Massachusetts and having deep roots in post-conflict Belfast, Montgomery positions himself as both clinician and activist, bridging psychoanalytic practice with community healing, peace work, and cultural critique.
His signature concept—"psychophobia" (society's fear of the mind and extreme mental states)—anchors a body of work challenging psychiatric medicalisation, advocating for phenomenological approaches that honour lived experience, and reclaiming psychosis, mania, and other "extreme states" as potentially transformative rather than purely pathological.
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In this conversation, Michael Montgomery shares his journey through various philosophical and spiritual traditions, emphasising the importance of bridging Eastern and Western thought in psychotherapy. He discusses the role of silence, community, and personal experience in healing, while also addressing the complexities of faith and human nature. The dialogue explores the concept of psychophobia and the transformative power of music and community in fostering connection and understanding.
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🔗 Links
- Michael's podcast: https://psychophobia.com/
- Michael's website: https://drmontgomery.com/
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⏳Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:34 How Michael knows Jon Mills
03:04 The art of speaking across ideological lines
04:36 Michael's relationship with Buddhism
08:00 Existential psychoanalysis
09:33 The R.D. Laing lineage
12:06 The importance of existential psychotherapy
13:02 Michael's experience growing up in the Troubles in Belfast
13:43 Michael's quest for answers
16:26 Michael's World Record attempt in the silent room
21:23 The endurance of spiritual lineages
22:38 Why no peace on Earth?
26:19 What Buddhism offers
27:26 The revival of relationship with Christianity
31:43 Does God exist?
37:02 What is psychophobia?
46:47 The McDonaldisation of healthcare
52:12 Michael's disillusion with the mental health system
57:21 Plurality: do we have many selves?
01:06:41 Michael's experience with dreams and consciousness
01:08:53 Elevated states and mental health
01:14:35 How dreams can change your perception of reality
01:17:08 Voices, language patterns and the nature of psyche
01:21:06 Michael's guest recommendation: Ken Wilber
01:22:11 Where to get more from Michael

Layman Pascal is a Canadian "feral philosopher" and host of The Integral Stage podcast who has become a central connector and theorist in the overlapping worlds of metamodernism, integral theory, and Game B. His signature contributions—the Metaphysics of Adjacency, the Integration Surplus Model of spirituality, and Metashamanics—offer a sophisticated yet playful bridge between abstract philosophy and embodied transformation. Known for his capacity to hold complexity with humour, Pascal brings both philosophical rigour and playful irreverence to questions of meaning-making in an age of metacrisis.

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In this conversation, we talk Nietzsche, metashamanism, and the ontology and epistemology of entities.We delve into the role of personal experience in shaping philosophical thought, and the implications of neurodiversity in understanding shamanic practices. The dialogue also touches on the nature of imagination, creativity, and the unpredictability of inspiration, exploring our different approaches to life from the moist pragmatism to dry scholarism.

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🔗 More from Layman

Layman's website: https://www.laymanpascal.com/

Layman's Substack: https://laymanpascal.substack.com/

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⏳ Timestamps:

00:00 Intro - the Feral Philosopher

03:19 Blaise Pascal's spiritual note

05:18 Nietzsche and the irrationality of philosophers

08:55 The power of irrationality in humanity's story

10:41 Layman's book on Nietzsche

12:00 The Integral Nietzsche

14:13 What if Nietzsche hadn't gone mad?

16:06 The enlightened Nietzsche

19:33 The shamanic Nietzsche

22:04 What is metashamanics?

23:07 Shamanic neurodivergence

26:26 Attributes of the well-adjusted shaman

28:33 Liminality and the epochal emergence of the shamanic

31:31 The shamanoid Elvis

33:17 The reality of entities

37:05 Layman Pascal: pragmatist?

47:12 The power of trance

51:50 The muse as entity

56:34 Layman's guest recommendation

57:59 More from Layman

Dr Stefano Carpani is an Italian Jungian psychoanalyst, lecturer at the C.G. Jung Institute Zürich, and scientific consultant at Pacifica Graduate Institute. At 46, he has emerged as a leading voice amongst a new generation of Jungian thinkers, bridging depth psychology with sociology, critical theory, and contemporary political questions.

In this conversation, Stefano and I explore the landscape of contemporary Jungian thought, beginning with his distinction between Jungian, post-Jungian, and neo-Jungian approaches—where neo-Jungians like himself aim to make analytical psychology relevant to 21st-century crises beyond the consulting room. We discuss his I+I theory, which synthesises Jung's individuation with sociologist Ulrich Beck's individualization, arguing that contemporary identity formation requires both psychological and sociological lenses to understand. Stefano shares insights from his award-winning work on the fall of the Berlin Wall, explaining how the numinous—an autonomous psychic force Jung described—operates in collective historical transformation, suggesting that major shifts require not just political will but adequate psychic conditions and "the attraction of the symbol." We explore the concept of enantiodromia, Jung's idea that psychological and cultural movements tend to revert to their opposites when pushed too far, applying this to contemporary political polarisation and populism. Throughout, Stefano makes a compelling case for why Jungian analysts must engage courageously with war, democracy, and social transformation, bringing depth psychology out of the clinic and into public discourse.

🔗 Links

- For Jungian monthly talks organised by Stefano: https://www.instagram.com/jungianeum_/ and https://www.youtube.com/@psychosocialwednesdays1944/videos

- Stefano's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHpWRYvgyhifcVkNGk9Tq-A

⏳ Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:08 Stefano, the international Jungian

02:21 Jungians vs. Post-Jungians vs. Neo-Jungians

07:27 The Post-Jungians

10:15 The Neo-Jungians

12:50 Classical Jungians vs. Developmental vs. Archetypal

15:40 James's case for a Jungian textbook

20:01 The Jungian language barrier

23:20 The hindrance of jargon

27:11 Stefano's sociological Jungian work

31:49 Bringing the unconscious into everyday life

34:52 Covid through the lens of Jung

35:49 The fallacy of the end of history

38:05 The fall of the Berlin Wall as a numinous event

43:33 Moments of memetic infection

47:16 History makers as artists

49:42 Jungian lens on contemporary politics

50:53 Returning to memetic infection

58:24 What is enantiodromia?

01:00:12 Populism and energetic release

01:04:33 Stefano's guest recommendations

01:05:18 Where to find out more about Stefano

Get Jon's book "End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate": https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/end-of-the-world-9781538189016/

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Dr Jon Mills is a philosopher-psychoanalyst and Honorary Professor at the University of Essex, whose work bridges Hegelian philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and contemporary existential threats facing civilisation. With over 35 books to his name—including five Gradiva Award winners—Jon has spent decades developing what he calls “dialectical psychoanalysis,” a rigorous philosophical framework for understanding the unconscious mind. His latest work, which we’re discussing in this episode, confronts an uncomfortable question: does humanity possess a collective death drive that propels us towards self-destruction?

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You can find Jon’s work at:

• Website: https://www.philosophypsychoanalysis.com

• Publications: https://www.philosophypsychoanalysis.com/academics-psychoanalysis-philosophy

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In this conversation, I sit down with Jon to explore the darkest questions about our species’ future. We examine whether humanity harbours a death wish, diving into the multiple existential crises threatening civilisation—climate change, nuclear weapons, AI risks, geopolitical conflict, and overpopulation/demographic collapse. Jon brings his formidable philosophical toolkit to bear on these challenges, drawing from Hegel, Freud, and his own dialectical framework to understand how good and evil operate simultaneously in human affairs. We debate techno-optimism versus existential pessimism, explore the psychology behind apocalyptic thinking, and we talk about my previous episode on secular eschatology and we discuss what that reveals about our relationship with mortality. We’re left with the question of whether our species can transcend its self-destructive patterns or whether we’re inexorably drawn towards catastrophe.

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⏳Timestamps

00:00 James’s Intro
01:21 Claude AI’s intro to Jon
02:16 Jon’s prolific output
02:59 Does humanity have a death wish?
04:13 The collective forces at play
05:57 Collective and the collective unconscious
09:03 What we mean by humanity - metaphor or reality?
11:03 The crises facing humanity today
12:25 What Jon wanted to achieve with the book
15:45 Universal pessimism?
19:41 James on demographic collapse
23:29 Poverty decline globally
25:21 Optimism on climate
26:09 China and the Thucydides Trap
27:45 James on AI concerns
28:16 Negative trends in prejudice and freedom
31:03 The psychology of the Thucydides Trap
34:35 Good and evil are operative at once
36:43 James’s secular eschatology thesis
41:45 Why are most apocalypse predictions Western?
43:26 Apocalypse as death-cope
44:39 Apocalypse as unmet need gone rotten?
45:35 Jon’s relationship with death
48:18 Jon’s guest recommendation: Michael Montgomery

PF Jung is a YouTube content creator renowned for making the meme of "Enlightened Centrism" great again. He's a self-styled "memetic feudal lord" and "applied sociologist" who has gotten himself in trouble for his attempts to bridge the polarities in society and seeking to bring the far right and far left together. He creates philosophical and political commentary content exploring nuanced positions that resist tribal categorisation, though this approach has led to significant challenges navigating the online political space.

You can find Paul's work at:

YouTube: youtube.com/@PFJung

In this conversation, I sit down with Paul to explore the crisis facing political nuance in online spaces. We discuss his co-opting of the Enlightened Centrism meme, why holding mixed political views has become increasingly difficult to sustain online, and the exhausting work of maintaining charitable interpretation when everyone wants the fight. Paul shares his experience growing a channel whilst managing contradictions, navigating the Peterson-adjacent space, and what it means to be at the "edge of the inside" of multiple political communities. We also explore why the online political warzone demands tribal allegiance and whether there's still room for complexity in an era of constant gotchas and worst-case interpretations.

⏳ Timestamps

00:00 James's Intro
01:15 What is Enlightened Centrism? Paul's co-opted meme
02:49 Defining the position: right-wing and left-wing on different issues
04:00 Contradictions of Centrism
05:08 Crisis of National Identity
13:15 Horseshoe Theory vs Fishhook Theory
16:56 The Political Divide
20:29 PF Jung's most right-wing belief
22:40 Economic shifts and onshoring
23:43 Critique of the US economy
26:42 Economic decadence and hyper-novelty
30:52 Radical Centrism in action
36:50 Constitution treated as religion
42:28 Type I vs Type II errors in governance
43:46 Radical solution for digital culture
45:15 PF Jung's axiom of faith
48:06 Populist movements and preference cascades
1:00:33 Identity crisis of the channel
1:17:47 Edge of the Inside archetype
1:25:58 Guest recommendation