i’ve been working on a post for some time after this amazing opportunity to share one of my whackadoodle hypotheses on life and the nature of consciousness.
but the post got waaaay out of hand. like, ridiculously out of hand. it’s taking so long to write that it’s holding up a backlog of timely things i want to share with you all. so this may need to be a freaking book. (you have been warned!)
instead of all that, let me repost the replay of this awesome Genius Teatime talk hosted by
, and the raw transcript below. i am overcompensating my overthinking with complete and utter underthinking, so please excuse typose.proceeds from this talk are shared with the Ron Finley Project and the Opulent Mobility accessibility fund. please donate to either.
Your Brain is an Antenna
Transcript
A Laura Brody 00:00
Hi, hello, and welcome to genius Tea Time with Suzanne Yada or yada yada yada. All right. Thank you so much. And in her own words, Suzanne Yada is a multi passionate speaker educator and creative as singer songwriter at little spiral, she writes songs at the intersection of technology and heart, where she runs her indie rock, pop, classical and roots influences with her background in poetry, media and the internet. As a part time agnostic, her sub stack explores issues of faith and doubt for the intellectually honest and spiritually curious, and you can find out more@littlespiral.com and part time agnostic on substack, which is really cool. And to tell you all a little bit about the Ron Finley project, which is the project that we're sponsoring for this particular talk, Ron Finley, as he says, is a grubble with a green thumb. And in 2010 he set out to fix a problem in South Central LA neighborhood, parkways, those neglected dirt patches next to the streets. He planted some vegetables there, and he got in trouble from the city of LA, and that was the beginning of his horticultural revolution, he fought back and won and started a petition with her fellow green activists and demanded the right to garden and grow food in his own neighborhood, because most of the more poverty stricken areas of our country are food deserts, and he is familiar with the area's lack of fresh produce and to have to drive 45 minutes to get a fresh tomato. So his vision is to rejuvenate communities around the world through urban gardening, which I think is terrific. And please tell us about how your brain is an antenna. This is amazing. I'm really excited to hear more about this, because I have thoughts about it too, but I'm willing to bet you've got many, many more.
Suzanne Yada 02:12
Thank you. I have been thinking about this stuff for a while, and thank you for the introduction. I'm really excited to be here and to have an excuse to talk through this. And so having this forum, you know, got got me in gear to get some of the research together. And as I'm building it and creating that, the explanation of what I think is actually going on, it just really, I just really got very excited that I was invited to come and speak today. So thank you so much. Thank you genius D time and everybody involved. Hey, you know what? Let's just go ahead and drive in, start here. And of course, if there's any issues, can't see anything, you can't my sound cuts out. Please let me know. But if you could see the slides, thumbs up and and we're just gonna get started. Awesome. So this is I am presenting, and calling it your brain is an antenna hypothesis, and I am not the first to be thinking about this, and not the last, but I think there's something really interesting in how our minds work, how all of this stuff works, and it really comes as me as a creative I've always really felt like ideas came from somewhere. Maybe, maybe it was me, but maybe it was a subconscious but maybe it actually came from somewhere else. And I know that there's a lot of creatives who feel that way. There's tons of interviews, and I think one perfect example is Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk, who talks about you aren't a genius, you have a genius. And that these ideas visit people who may be more or less ready to receive them. So I see, I kind of envision, like you're building a nest for the ideas to kind of fly in. And if you don't build the nest, and they just fly on to, I don't know, Bob Dylan or somebody, and that is such an interesting phenomenon for me, because it encapsulates what I have been feeling as a songwriter myself, and how ideas kind of percolate and land and it's an interesting idea, but science actually is like no, no, your brain is just so complex and more magical than you realize. You actually don't need to separate the idea from your brain, because it's a it's a subconscious brain, and you receive those ideas from your subconscious, and that's what makes them feel external. And I know that that makes sense, and I can buy it if it's if that's um. Really the conclusion, but I just have this nagging feeling that's not really the full story. And all the science that you know I've read on this, which is a lot, still leaves some doors to be explored on this, and it actually gets to some of the fundamental weirdness and I'm about to talk about today. It comes down to, for me, that science can't even explain what consciousness is in the beginning, because the scientific method doesn't really work. It kind of for this particular thing. So they'll, they'll punt it to the philosophers. They'll say, oh, it's that's the job for the poets and the theologians and whoever. But then the philosophers and poets and theologians are like, Okay, so can you help us out at least a little bit here? We don't know what we're doing.
06:01
You just kind of hypothesize and ask, what if? But it just comes down to like, whose job is it to actually explore what consciousness is, what a thought is, and I will just claim my own position as the occasional poet and a half assed philosopher might as well me. So who is me? That's me. Hi, hello, that's my face. My name is Suzanne yada. I'm a singer songwriter, entrepreneur, former journalist, human, that's probably the more important bullet point there. And I'm also a whole slew of a bunch of different things, identities and experiences and things, and I want to be transparent about all of those filters that I bring to what I'm thinking about, because this is actually exactly what I'm talking about, is we've got all of these filters and identities that might actually shape what kind of nest you're building for these ideas to land. So that's that's transparency. I've got a bunch of different identities that that influence how I think. But here's actually a couple things. I'm straight up not. I'm not an academic, a neuroscientist, scientist of any professional type or any sort of medical expert. I am just a songwriter, poet, philosopher, kind of creative, and I think maybe I'm just going to put this out there, maybe that might be to my benefit, like the naivety of being outside of the scientific realm with a lot of respect for science and also with my former journalist background, could actually be a feature, not a bug. But if you are any of these, do hit me up. I got my email right here, because what I'm doing in this presentation is going to ask a lot of what ifs, and a lot of what like, what about this, and what about this. And I have a lot of research in my background that I ended up not putting in the presentation because I just wanted to speak as a narrative. But if you are one of these folks and can help piece together whether or not I'm totally full of shit, or whether or not I'm on something. Please hit me up. Um, so yeah, I don't pretend I have all the answers, and I also don't pretend I'm the first or the last to be thinking about these things, but I have been kind of low key, obsessed with the question, what if? And I think a lot of creatives and a lot of scientists have that in common. But if you have a background that's really steeped in a particular kind of way of thinking about science and the brain and neuroscience, maybe some of the what if questions will be different from mine. So this is first time I get to talk about this stuff, and I always love your feedback. And something that I also want to acknowledge is I'm kind of allergic to total woo, woo stuff. I can be open to it, and I want to kind of not get too much into spiritual woo, woo. However, I do think there's an overlap here, and I also think that science thinks it, science thinks it knows everything, and it's a scientific fact that it is not. Science is a process. It's a thing of where we're discovering what if and asking the hypothesis and asking and testing and finding out that our previous science was wrong, and this one's the right one, and nothing is more illustrative that than quantum mechanics and multiverse theories and simulations. All of that stuff that's kind of breaking open what we think about science is very interesting to me. So what started as a simple question, like, Where does this song idea come from? Actually starts getting dig deeper and deeper to like, what is consciousness? What is thought itself? So I'm mixing up a bit of what do we know, mixing up this big question, what if
10:26
hang on to your tinfoil hats?
10:28
It's about to get a little weird, but let me start with a couple of concrete examples, some case studies to illustrate the hypothesis that I'm going to explain. All right, so first off, let's take into consideration a child prodigy, somebody who is before they can formulate a sentence. They can play Mozart. These are well documented, well known and science still does not have an explanation. They've got some guesses. They can see that children who are child prodigies do have, uh, musical training in their family background, which is very interesting, um, but it doesn't fully explain what is happening. And I've, I've probably searched the Internet for like, five hours straight just to get the one answer of what science thinks about child prodigies. And the thing is, it's inconclusive, which is surprising. So we're taking child prodigies is one example, another example of transgender people. I have heard from many of my transgender friends, this, this idea that they don't feel their essence, their soul is really connected to the body that they live in. And what if, what just wild conjecture? What if they were actually right and true, and they're speaking their own experience, and it actually is real. Just what if past life memories? This is where it could get into the Woo. But there are, I'll give you a particular name. What's his name? Ryan Hammond is an example of a child who remembers, to a very strange, accurate detail, a former life of his and he remembers the day that he died, the name of his daughter, the his occupation, and it's, it's a documented in a scientific study that basically concludes, we don't know how this happened, but it was fully accurate. They named the guy, they found the daughter, they asked them questions, and the child was 100% accurate with everything that he spoke to. And then when he turned to think eight or nine, all of those memories kind of faded, and now he doesn't remember any of it, super weird, but it is a documented case study. And then another one that definitely gets into the realm of woo would be what would you call a near death experience. If somebody is on the operating table, has a cardiac arrest, sees a bright light at the end of the tunnel, sees deceased family members and things, and then comes back and lives to tell about it, and it's between. For me personally, it's between my transgendered friends and the accounts of some near death experiencers that really make me wonder what the nature of actual consciousness is, because there are many accounts of people who have experienced near death experiences. Now, whether or not you believe that actually happened, there are so many case studies that have strangely similar details to them that I don't think it's worth I don't think it should be ignored or dismissed, like everybody who's ever had a near death experience is lying about it. I don't think that's that's the case here, but when they come back, they do actually say it feels like I was the most real that I have been, and that my consciousness was a pure entity that did not require my body. So that's freaky, and there's plenty of documentation of people who reported exactly this. So what? What is all this like? Basically on all four. Of those examples, science is inconclusive. There's people who say, Oh, this is all pseudoscientists. All of this is, this is all pseudoscience. And there's someone's like, well, we should at least explore what these what all these people who experience these things are and and there. There are just these, these documented cases that are unexplained. For example, a woman who had a near death experience, um, came back and reported that there was, gosh, I'll have to drag up the the actual case study, but reported that there was a red shoe on the on the roof of the hospital. And there is absolutely zero way that she could have known that there was a red shoe on the hospital she was inside the entire time wild. So it's all it's all inconclusive, and I can also be totally real, and that maybe a lot of them are hallucinations. Who knows, many people see ghosts all the time, doesn't necessarily mean ghosts are real. But you know, what's really interesting is that so many people see ghosts all the time, and still, science is like, Yeah, whatever, whatever. So I just, I just if, if you say, Okay, well, this is 0.0001% of case study, and it's a total anomaly, and nobody can explain why Ryan Hammond knew the name of the this guy or his daughter, but that's just like, that's 0.001% of all the kids the world. Fine, but can we explain that? Like if you had a rare disease that only affects 0.001% of the world, you'd want to know what the hell it is. You want to know what's happening, right? So I'm putting on my What if hat and throwing it out there that my transgender friends, my friends who've had near death experiences, my, you know, my Elizabeth Gilbert and all them, what if they were actually, literally right, were more correct than people thought, oh, I actually did have some slides in here. So that's from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. There's a report about the children who report memories of past lives. And then Missouri medicine, Missouri State Medical Association, has an interesting article about evidence for near death experiences. I forgot to have those slides in there, but there you go. So what if, instead of thinking about the brain as the generator of these ideas, you know, we do have these brain scans, and different places of the brains light up when certain things happen, when certain things you know this part of the brain is in control of your balance, and this part of your brain is in control of your executive functioning. What if, instead of looking at it as the brain generating these thoughts and lighting up where those thoughts are generating. What if these places are receiving signal rather than giving signal? So what if your brain, instead of having the thought that generates and then creates some reality? What if it was receiving something from somewhere else? And of course, that leads to give me a few slides I'll examine that that might actually be but I kind of see it like your brain is an antenna. And if you think about radio stations, the the metaphor becomes even more apt than I realized. What if we are receiving all of this signal? This particular part of the brain is just tuned into one oh, 5.9 the frontal lobe, and this particular part of the brain is listening to 93.3, the cerebellum all balance all the time. You know, different parts are tuned into different signals that then coordinate with the body and receiving the signal and organizing them into like basically receiving static and organizing it into signal. So what that could actually imply is that if the brain isn't there, the signal could still be there, and that lines up and. That that gets into some Woo. I get it, but it does line up with a couple other things that it could explain science is just like, wow, because science is coming from that materialistic. I don't want to say materialistic, but there's like a little materialism is nothing exists outside of physical matter. And I'm saying that there might be some things that exist outside of what science can currently measure. And let me just check my notes, just to make sure I'm on the Okay, so the closest term I've been able to find in any sort of scientific research is called non local consciousness, and it's been adopted by a group of scientists who are very interested in studying these kinds of fields, these kind of unexplained things, and attempting to explain them. I from my journalism background, I do like to explain things in a little more populist way. And I get why people are kind of turned off by the phrase non local consciousness, because it's a little bizarre out there, but these keystones are a little bizarre and out there, so I personally I'm just going to call it the your brain is an antenna hypothesis. I was originally going to call it like Radiohead theory, but a Radiohead is already taken and B, it's not a theory, it's a hypothesis. That's, that's what that Okay, so what do I actually mean by this? And like, what? What are the implications and where, if my brain is an antenna for a signal that's worth being received,
21:49
where the hell is that signal coming from? And what is it? What are we talking about here? So I definitely, I'll reiterate, I don't like to get into sudo sciency woo stuff. I totally if you're into that, fine, if you want to believe that this is all, you know, Jesus speaking to you, or it's the, what's it called, the Akashic records. I don't remember what it's called, but there's, there's a lot of different, you know, there's religious beliefs and some spiritual beliefs and philosophical conspiracy theorists who might, you know, just say, like, not saying it was Aliens, but totally aliens.
22:46
I'd like to pose that whatever we call these thoughts, these memories, cognition, qualia, like, what, whatever we call it, if it doesn't originate from brain, what? What if? What? What if we're just calling this for now, radiation from the Big Bang. Let's just call it that for now. You got whatever you'd like. But for this presentation, everything is is in existence because some big bang happened, right? So let's just put that as a placeholder radiation from the Big Bang. So I think that there are ways that we attune to this radiation for the big brain, for the big brain, well, the Big Brain actually, whoa.
23:40
All right, that's a whole presentation.
But um, what translates this radiation into thoughts, into concepts, into whatever it is, and my my hypothesis There's four main main things, and I'd love to hear if you have any others, but one would be our physical, natural world. One would be our previous thought signals we have, you know, received over time, so memories and other things like, I haven't even gotten into epigenetics, which is a new field of study that has found that trauma is carried in the cells, in the genes, so a family trauma in your past still is aligned today. I do believe that kind of stuff helps us tune into what signal we're actually receiving. So memories our actual physical bodies, like our DNA and our collective culture, the zeitgeist the country we live in, the era we live in, the moral codes that. All share all of those help to tune our radio into translate into thoughts, cognition and things like that. None of these. Again, I'll reemphasize that our physical bodies are just one way of tuning in to these thoughts. And if we didn't have the physical bodies, there still would be signal. And that's that's kind of my where I kind of cross the the woo bridge. But I don't think it's that far off, because we know what radio signals are. We know what Wi Fi is. We know what cellular signal is. We know what all of these things do, because we can replicate it over and over and over again. When I suggest, our brains and our thoughts work in similar ways. All of a sudden, it's like anti science. I don't see it that way, but anyway, so I do think though I am in my notes, okay. Yes, okay, so I also think that these four elements, they also have their own signal. So I don't, I don't think it's pure every single word in my brain. Actually, I'm undecided, but there is a difference between believing your thoughts are absolutely 100% not your own, or 100% your own. And there's like a there's a gradient between between the two. There may be some generated signal, or make it, it may be all 100% received from radiation from the Big Bang. I don't know this is my What if throwing spaghetti against the wall, but I do think that there are certain signals that these four elements can bounce off that we receive a whole lot more and a whole lot stronger than others. Just like if you're driving in a car and you're tuning into a radio station, sometimes one radio station is really, really loud and clear, and sometimes a radio station is not very, super loud and clear. And it also depends on where you're driving to if you're driving between signals, sometimes signals get mixed up and etc, etc. But I do think that we also work in a similar way. For example, perhaps this is the what if, perhaps, if I were born with, male assigned at birth, and I have a particular set of brain waves and DNA and thoughts and experiences that as actually channeling a female personality.
28:17
That's where we could possibly explain transgender folks how, and I believe, I believe transgender people, when they say I do not, it feels like I'm channeling somebody else that is just not my body. I feel like there's there's there. It can also explain something like the child prodigy. Perhaps there is somebody in the collective conscious, or somebody in my family's background that new Mozart knew the piano, that had the muscle memory of the piano playing, and I am channeling that in that signal in particular is super, super strong with this. I also, maybe this is a side point, but I want to explain if I was born with the ability to play piano at age two, but I was born in a family that didn't have a piano, or culture that didn't really care about pianos, or a country that just did not have pianos. I might still have the ability to receive that signal, but that signal is just not strong enough from all of the surrounding the four different elements to actually tune into that. So I do think there are plenty of people who have those genius traits, but were not born into the circumstances where those signals could be reached clearly. Uh oh, in fact, that is exactly what I'm talking about. So sometimes the signal just does not come in strong. And I do think, for example, I'll, for example, perhaps this one particular child, Ryan Hammond, remembers this one person so clearly, or perhaps it wasn't, you know, a past life, but just a signal that is hanging out and is still a very strong signal that this child is picking up. It could also be that other children who kind of have, there's actually quite a few reports of children who report either past lives or different ideas that they couldn't have possibly picked up. In fact, a lot of parents, a lot of parents might experience this at a very smaller at a smaller range where, you know, a child is three, and they say something completely left field that, like, where did you get that? Because I've been with you 100% of your life, and there is no point you were exposed to that phrase.
Or that thing or that, you know, at a smaller scale, I think, I think it's actually more every day than we think. But there are other reports of children who remember different things and say kind of odd things. But there is no like correlation between, Okay, this one human being who had a life that began, it began and ended here was fully channel. I do think in those cases it makes sense, or it's a what if, what if that static was just fuzzy and they could only pick out one or two things from here, or what if it was blended? I remember going on big road trips, turning on the radio, and then all of a sudden, like I might be listening to some alternative rock station, and all of a sudden, like the Christian station just starts, like getting mixed in, in with the signal to be something that I couldn't hear or couldn't interpret and I had to switch the channel. So I do think that these signals can be stronger than others, weaker than others, blended, mixed. It might also explain why some psychics might be really, really accurate in one particular way, but complete fraud in another way, or, you know, like it could. It could possibly explain that too, and we do this all the time. Then it also can be that our own brain antennas are bent or a little out of shape, or are tuning into a something that we think is music, but ends up being like torturous to somebody else that our physical bodies, you know, if we have a brain injury, for example, like Oliver Sacks writes about all sorts of different wild examples of how our brain, you know, there's the Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, for example, and our physical bodies, our DNA, our brain, being that antenna when it's bent or changed or shifted or has an illness or anything like that, can also change what we're channeling and What we're what kind of things we're picking up. So, okay, so like I said, there may be somewhere in between. Our brains are 100% the creator of all of our thoughts, versus our brains are 0% the creator of all of all of our thoughts are 100% receiving, but there is a laundry list of things that I think that that seeing our consciousness as something external opens up some interesting answers and some interesting questions, obviously, but I think for A lot of things that science can currently not explain wholly, did fully, for example, like the child prodigies and things in the reincarnation but I do think that this can also explain things like even like ghost sightings. You know, perhaps it is a signal of somebody who's left the world, and that particular signal happens to be strong and intact, and people can sense it. Maybe, dunno, and I don't think this, you know, it doesn't require any sort of belief in divine deities or anything. It could be literally, like the natural world, natural scientific, like physical world that we just can't measure quite yet. It could also explain normal, everyday stuff for the majority of people, like, where that idea came from, or what, like, I really resonated with this idea. I wonder why? Well, maybe that signal is very strong, and maybe because you're in a particular culture with particular filters that certain signals hit you and resonate, like the word resonate has that vibration kind of sound or that, that feeling, that all of these filters are coming into play, which helps you, which helps your own body receive the signal that it it's receiving. So that's ultimately, ultimately that that's kind of the gist of what I'm thinking about. And I'm just speaking this out loud. I have more research piled up and studies to properly cite. Much rather than in a presentation like this. But essentially, that's the explanation that I could get in, you know, in under, in under an hour. So I'm very interested in dialog, because I know I'll emphasize again, this is all a big what if this is all like, I'm open to being wrong, I'm also open to being right, and I'm open to people's feedback and questions and ideas. So this is about the time where I am opening up to questions, comments, discussion from all of this, all this stuff,
A Laura Brody
that is terrific. Um, also I should say that I am also not a scientist, and not a somebody who professionally studies any of these things, but I have been a long time devotee of mythology and a long time creative and artist. And I do not know of a single artist out there who, being honest, won't say that some of their ideas came from outside of themselves. I don't know a single one. Have you had that experience your own self with some of your songwriting without some of the rest of the work with you absolutely.
Suzanne Yada
And I think that is another signal that amplifies this particular idea I have. You know, I've written about 300 songs. I've written a lot of songs, and some of them are, some of it feels a little like muscle memory or templates. So I just like, knock him out and don't think about him. And then some of them, I know that I'm sitting down and I'm piecing something together, and all of a sudden, some absolute genius idea I cannot take credit for comes into play and glues everything together. So I 100% and I've also talked about this the other thing, occasionally, a song will show up in a dream, and I will just literally wake up and go, I don't know where it came from. I'm not going to even bother trying to craft it or shape it. It is what it is, and that's what it is. So yeah, how about you? Do you feel like, oh,
A Laura Brody
there's been no question. I mean, one thing about what I do, I've been a curator for opulent mobility, which is a show that reimagines disability is opulent and powerful, but I've been creating my own pieces based on wheelchairs, walkers and mobility scooters. But when I started doing the Kali Walker, based on Goddess Kali, there is no question in my mind that it was called that he demanded, she demanded that I build it, and I'm not going to argue with Kali. Yeah, no, don't do that. Don't do that. It's like, that's a powerful goddess. Don't mess with that. That. That was something that just sprang to mind. I was starting to I'd always research, but it was the drawing came out of it, the idea of it. I knew what materials I needed to use, what I didn't know is all the techniques I needed to use. And so that was a process, and took two years, but it was very clearly a you will. And I like to call it two years of fury turned into something, yeah, right, right around the run up to the 2016 elections. Shocking and also some really serious issues with my doctors telling me essentially that my experience of my own body wasn't real, and that I really just needed an antidepressant, when what I really had was fibroids and thyroidism Hashimotos. So that also being said, sometimes the scientific method isn't all that useful. In practice. We don't always have all and relatively speaking, the scientific method is not that it's more recent, yeah, you know, this isn't, this hasn't been the answer, and it's been used to dump out years of cultural practice. Sometimes it was just as valid, if not more. So yeah,
Suzanne Yada
yeah. I think the the ideas that pop up in this bigger, meta idea, they've been around for ages, and since the dawn of civilization, well, since not humanity, but has been called different things or experienced different ways, again, because that culture, that time period, that is what they were tuned into, and could actually. Speak to like this, this higher power, this, this download of knowledge, this, you know, and I'm using, I'm using very modern tech, like the word download, and brain is antenna. I'm also doing that same practice, but in 2024 using these, terminology. So I really think, and I agree, that there's just a limit to what science can do, and every scientist should be able to 100% say exactly that. Once we start talking about the nature of consciousness, they're like, Well, science is limited. Well, what if? What if? What if? And yeah, absolutely, and
A Laura Brody
certainly, we've only been starting to really recognize the nature of plant consciousness. Oh, yeah, so I think maybe it's being from an artistic background, but I don't think there's a real I think it's pretty clear that the network of brain cells and neurons looks like the neck. The network of mycorrhizae looks like a root system. There's clearly something going on there, but if plants are communicating with each other and with other species over millions of miles. There's no question to me that your brain can't also do similar things we were talking before all this started about, how can this one idea pop up in for example, everyone's putting out a zombie movie, right? It's not that they're all just ripping each other off. The idea was out there. Somehow it might be kind of cultural consciousness. We don't know, but
Suzanne Yada
I could keep all over like it's ping ponging with all these different elements that that amplify that signal. You know, one idea might land, and it has a weak signal. But one idea, like a zombie movie, all of a sudden, like with a mix of radiation from the Big Bang and collective consciousness and things like that, all of a sudden, the signal is super strong and is visiting all these directors and people like like that absolutely does happen. I think even the invention of television itself, I believe, was an idea that simultaneously happened to people and the Phineas guy, or whatever his name is, Farnsworth, I think was, was the guy that registered the copyright first, so or the patent first?
A Laura Brody
Yes, that's, that's why the pose who register the patent when first, when? Because it's, I think almost any inventor will also tell you, once that idea is out there, once you speak it, figure out a way to patent it, because it simply comes into the ether. It's the zeitgeist, right?
Suzanne Yada
I can also speak exactly to that with songs like, look, there's only 12 notes in a western scale. You've got 12 notes, that's it, right? And when I'm like channeling something, I really do feel like it is from this kind of cloud. I'm catching some rain from a particular kind of cloud, but this cloud is raining on everybody. It's the same water, the same same cloud, but I'm getting this strand in. And I also wanted to go back to the idea of plant consciousness, because I think in in this particular metaphor, the radio, kind of metaphor, this feels like we're only tuned into FM, and the plants are tuned into am, like there is a different shape or different speed at which they're conscious and actually activated. That's too slow for the human brain. Like, if the human brain is this, the plants are this, and it's still a very efficient form of communication that I can like, come on, science, like, kind of get getting up to speed,
A Laura Brody
get with a program, yeah.
Suzanne Yada
Like, if a flower, I think if a flower turns to the sun, and they did, yeah, it to me that's enough. Like, that's consciousness.
A Laura Brody
I can see that and the succulent in my back porch, where they have moved over to one side of the pot, because that section is not getting enough sun. Like, first off, it tells me maybe I should move my plants. But Second off, it's telling you something. It's going in a direction it wants to live. So yeah,
Suzanne Yada
and I didn't even get in into that as far as but I personally do believe that there is. Consciousness inside of physical cells, and that they are also receiving the same Big Bang radiation that all of us are, which is also why that physical the the natural surroundings. When I'm in a city, my brain does something when I'm in at a lake, my brain is something else. When I'm actually able to like, relax into a more natural setting, you can feel it. You can feel how differently, like you're you're just all of your physical body just opens up and that it also the food that we eat and the things that like all of that related to our charity as well, because I'm here in South LA and I like somebody being able to bring in the actual food to these food deserts, is something that's really necessary for us.
A Laura Brody
It's for our ecosystem, really. And I think recognizing that that is part of what also makes us thrive. And I just was hearing that about dance, that when you dance with a group of people. You're more likely to trust them, you're more likely to like them, you're more likely to do things for one another, and that's how communities get built. Similar with music, similar with any communal activity. I do it with mending all the time, and I've been bringing that more recently to the Hollywood food coalition. So unhoused people like you communicate better when you do things together. And there's, I think, that that opens up receptors in your brain to make things not just better, but possibly smarter. Probably more creative, definitely more willing to make things together. It works with variety of different animals. You know, there's certain plant animal connections that we don't always understand right and and mutually beneficial and mutually combative of relationships, that, of course, something else is open, some other part of us.
Suzanne Yada
Yeah,
A Laura Brody
I feel it would have to be what that is. Well, we don't, we don't know. We know there's a lot of dark matter out there. We don't know what it is. We don't know how to define it. It's most of the universe, and we know nothing about it. It's like 90% of the universe that we know zero about.
Suzanne Yada
Yes, and I really do think the reason, the biggest reason that science is so limited and can't explain that, it's because we're so human centric still, because that's all, that's all the filter we know how to look through, that I only know how to look through human eyes and communicating in human language, and because there is still this layer of, you know, we all have our biases, but I do think science is very biased towards a materialistic explanation of everything, because that's all we know how to that. That's all we know how to measure. But I don't think, and that's what science does really good. They really do the measuring stuff really well. When they find something they can't measure, they're like, that's for the book.
A Laura Brody
Yeah, that marketing, what are the metrics like? You know? What? Maybe you don't have a metric that works. I mean, I've seen that certainly with social media. The metrics between what works and what translates into somebody actually selling something, not the same, not at all your fans versus the people who actually show up for you and help you move. Not the same,
Suzanne Yada
yeah, not the same, exactly, exactly. Um, right? So that's, that's kind of my hypothesis, and I'm just like throwing out into the universe and seeing, seeing what sticks. And I think there are plenty of ways where, again, it's like this, this balance between, do I literally have zero thoughts in this meat brain, or is it all this? Well. Um, I don't, I don't know if I'm looking at a case study for, like, a near death experience, or who did not have a physical body, but was as as clear as ever. In fact, more clear if I take them at their word. And I don't believe that every single person who's experienced an NDA is lying about it, but I sure there's. There might be people who are but like, if I take them at their word, and then it makes more sense with everything else. Like, you know, these, these other, I guess edge cases that sinus is like, well, I don't know, inconclusive. Well, it could be explained actually. So anyway, that's,
A Laura Brody
I mean, they've already proven that ancestral trauma is a real thing, that it's not nearly that it can also be linked to disabilities. Can be linked to chronic illness. It can be linked to a whole variety of other things that, even if you don't personally in this lifetime, remember it if you're some of that might even be maybe that is closed in ourselves. But if you your great, great grandparents escape pogroms, you might also have some trouble in never finding a safe place. Yeah, there are things that get built into the way that you were trained and what you would grow up with, and also our basic lizard brains, right?
Suzanne Yada
Yeah, exactly, exactly like a lot of the like I see in the animal world, a whole lot more clearly about instinct when I'm living in this body and like, well, it's just like, I don't understand unless I can look at it from a bigger picture, that some of the things that I do are both like a natural instinct and a learned instinct from my ancestors, ancestors, ancestors, like, like going all the way back to, You know, our very first origins of the human like that lineage just is alive in me. And that is one of those, those really strong signals. They think it is a both a mix of like my physical body, my physical DNA that I've inherited from my ancestors and that the cultural zeitgeist,
A Laura Brody
yeah, and it's separating. That may not be entirely possible. I've you know, how can you tell I've had that sometimes with some members of my family just having me these circumstances, realizing, okay, this person is actually related to me, but didn't grow up with me, found out about him later in life, finding out that this person's daughter drove pictures exactly the way I used to growing up so it's the interesting, what is learned, what is nurtured, what is and we don't always know, but there's some things that might just be part of your genetics and speak in that way, and some things that absolutely are Not,
Suzanne Yada
yeah, that nature nurtured balance that also is very embedded in all the things that I've been talking about is like, is it? Is, am I inherently a great songwriter because of my genetics? But if I was a child project, like, like, literally, like, we don't know. But is it even worth trying to separate out, because humans are such a social animal that there is, to me, there is no separation of nature and nurture, really, because I, if I'm, you know, if I'm an infant, I don't have The nurture. I die. I I die, and so much of what has like, at least right here. What's keeping me alive is somebody decided about, somebody decided to open up a grocery store so I could buy food like, you know, that wasn't me, but it's, it's that it's that combination of what we can do together with what I can naturally do that. And again, goes back to this idea of the child prodigy, who they might have the nature to the all of the all of the cells aligned for. This child to be able to play piano, but they're born in a country with no pianos, then there, there is no expression of that gene. There's no expression of it. And not to, you know, not to diss on countries that don't have pianos, but that's the only you know, it's the metaphor that I just think
A Laura Brody
of. But in in the notion, if we're talking seeds right, you need the soil conditions to be right. You need the water to be right. You need to not be being bombed. There are so many things that you need that are outside of your possible control, and that the Muse won't necessarily be able they might visit you, but she you may not be in, yeah, yeah, not
Suzanne Yada
be able to build that nest to catch the ideas.
A Laura Brody
So how can people find you in other places you mentioned this at the beginning, but little spiral is both your music and you do songwriting workshops. What is this? Workshops
Suzanne Yada
and classes? So the next one I'm looking at launching in the new year, which is coming up faster than I realized, but there are eight week classes, and they're a whole lot of fun. If you've never written a song before, you're welcome. If you've written a bazillion songs before, you're also welcome. It's a space where people can learn by doing, learn by doing, and you can bring your ideas, and we have a whole lot of fun exercises and people who are super supportive wherever lovely work. So the best way to hear about those is to get on my little spiral email list, which is at little spiral com. And then the other thing I wanted to give a shout out to is, I have a an accountability community for creative who want to finally get their big dream project off of the back burner and into reality. Who, you know, they hear a signal and they're like, yay. They finally want to build the nest to catch it and actually make it a tangible thing. If you've got, like, a novel in you, an album in you, and whatever it is, it's at the creative spirals com, don't forget
A Laura Brody
the creative spirals. Yeah.
Suzanne Yada
And currently we've got some accountability buddy we're developing an accountability buddy matchmaking service, as well as,
A Laura Brody
how fun, yeah,
Suzanne Yada
just just, we're doing lots of fun things as well as, right now we've got body doubling, if you're familiar with the perm, but co working body doubling so we can put on our calendars from this hour to this hour. I am working on my big fat creative project, and we meet up on video, and we it's, it's a lot of fun. I
A Laura Brody
know people who are who are little, neuro spicy, benefit very heavily from body doubling. And this, if you're not familiar with it, is the idea that somebody is being there, helping, making sure you do it.
Suzanne Yada
Yeah, exactly,
A Laura Brody
whatever the thing is. Thank you so much for doing this. This was really fun.
Suzanne Yada
Thank you so much for having me and hosting this kind of forum for weirdos like me. I just really it's the best place ever.
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