Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Hidden Variables

Energy healing is a controversial topic. Many dismiss the idea that one person can help another person get better through channeling some unseen force into a patient. But, Reiki, a Japanese energy healing tradition, is actually used in some 15% hospitals across the US, with peer reviewed research showing that it can be an effective complementary medicine for conditions like pain, infection and inflammation.

Today's guest, Dr Ann Baldwin, has a PHD in physiology from Imperial College London, and spent decades in vascular research, before a chance encounter led her to discover Reiki, and the seemingly positive effect it was having on lab rats she was studying.

Today she’s the research advisor at the Reiki Healthcare Research Trust, which aims to support clinical research into Reiki, and better integrate it into modern healthcare settings. She’s also the author of Reiki in Clinical Practice, which unpacks peer reviewed research into the technique, laying out how it’s been found to have positive effects on pain, infection and inflammation in the body.

In this episode, Tim and Dr Baldwin discuss the evidence that suggests Reiki works, the very physiological conditions it can treat, and theories for how it might act in the body.

Artwork: Justine Hyde-Mobbs

Reincarnation is a concept that appears in spiritual traditions from Buddishm and Hinduism, through to Kabbalah Judaism and early Christian teachings. And, while for many it's simply a matter of faith, for Dr Philip Cozzolino, the possibility of humans having lived past lives is a matter for serious research.

With a PHD in psychology and more than 20 years of work in mainstream academia under his belt, in 2024 he joined the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, where he studies past life memories in children.

Dr Cozzolino's research spans thousands of cases of kids, generally under the age of four, who claim to remember past lives, and can recount details of their supposed previous existences with remarkable detail and accuracy.

On this episode of Hidden Variables, Dr Cozzolino and Tim discuss some of the most impressive cases of past life memories, and the stigma that families face when speaking about these experiences. While Dr Cozzolino doesn’t claim his research proves the existence of past lives, he does argue that it raises major questions for our current models for understanding reality, consciousness and the human condition.

Artwork by Justine Hyde-Mobbs.

People have believed in the ability to sense future events for millennia, from the oracles of Ancient Greece through to the Biblical prophets and pagan belief systems. But the human ability to predict future events is actually an ability that has been tested in the lab, with results showing that our bodies and minds can sense things that haven't happened yet, beyond statistical chance.

Hidden Variables' first guest is Dr Julia Mossbridge, a neuroscientist and one of the world's leading researchers into precognition. She's the co-author of The Premonition Code, one of the most comprehensive explorations of precognition, which she wrote with Theresa Cheung, and has published a significant body of peer-reviewed research into the topic.

On this episode, Dr Mossbridge unpacks some of her research into this extraordinary human ability, the theoretical frameworks for how it might be possible, and what it says about the nature of being human.

Artwork by Justine Hyde-Mobbs.