New Biology Experience Conference Reflections - 6/17/26

In this June 17th webinar, Tom opens by announcing that Cowan’s Community Corner is now live. He shares that this space is where events are announced, where ongoing conversations can continue, and where members can participate in a monthly live Q&A with him.

He then gives a recap of the first New Biology Experience Conference at Polyface Farm, describing it as a “wildly, almost amazingly successful” gathering. Tom thanks the organizing team, Polyface Farm staff, apprentices, interns, New Biology Clinic practitioners, and everyone who attended for helping create a joyful and memorable event.

Highlights from the New Biology Experience include:
-Tom’s opening welcome on the importance of freedom and truth in developing community.
-Joel Salatin’s welcome and history of Polyface Farm, including the story of regenerating the land through rotational grazing.
-The historic return of cows to a pasture that had not been grazed in over 100 years.
-Tom’s talk, “The Day the Science Died.”
-Sessions with New Biology Clinic wellness specialists, including movement, EFT, biofield tuning, cooking, food classes, and practitioner-led talks.
-Chris Brown’s talk on vitality and the difference between healing and fixing.
-Shared meals featuring food raised at Polyface Farm.
-Live music from the Red Pill Friends, including their song “The Day the Science Died.”

He then reflects on several themes and questions that came up during the event.

Some questions discussed include:
-What about this whole DNA story?
-How can I do better, have a better life, feel happier, more joy?
-What is this pain trying to tell me?
-"I don’t know anything about what’s true. I don’t know what’s true anymore"
-and much more

Throughout the webinar, Tom emphasizes that healing begins with asking the right question. Rather than focusing on fixing isolated diagnoses, test results, or symptoms, he encourages listeners to ask what would help them live a better, healthier, more joyful life. He also reflects on the importance of direct experience, sensory observation, clear thinking, experimentation, and shared community as reliable ways of knowing.

Tom closes by sharing that he will be taking the summer off from regular Wednesday webinars to recharge, garden, care for the animals, and think through new ideas. He will continue monthly Cowan’s Community Corner Q&As and weekly New Biology Clinic Q&As, and plans to return to the Wednesday webinars around mid-August.

Sign up for C3 here.
Check out Unbekoming's SubStack to read about the DNA Story here.
Red Pill Friends YouTube & link to "The Day The Science Died" song here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So Wednesday, June 17th, and 2026, and thanks everybody for joining me. And this is another Wednesday webinar. And basically all I said was the community circle, Cowens Community Circle is live, and that's where all the events are announced. And the uh it's where you can um have continued dialogue with your the friends. And I'm also for members of the Cowens Community Circle, I do a live QA every month, which is happening, I think, next week. And so that's a chance to ask me live questions. And uh so I hope everybody signs up. It's where everything is happening uh in the Cowen's Circle, and we'll put the how to sign up in the show notes. Uh so today I just wanted to go over, and I'm not sure how long this is going to go, uh, a recap of our first and wildly uh almost amazingly successful new biology experience last week at Polyface Farm. And I think it's pretty much fair to say that uh the organizers, our team that organized it and put this together, uh did an amazing job, as did the uh Polyface Farm staff and their apprentices and interns and whoever else they call the people there. They were all incredibly friendly and helpful, and the food was really good, amazing. The store was good, the play area for the children. If ever if anybody's thinking of having a great experience for their children in the future, uh that was the place to go. I commented that I was there and there was, I don't know, 20 or more children playing. I never heard anybody crying or anything. I think at some point there was a few episodes, but I didn't hear it, and they just seemed like they were just like this gang of children of all ages playing on swings and teeter-totters and climbing stuff and playing games and baseball and soccer and uh who knows what. And everybody seemed to really get along. Occasionally there was some organization of things, which I think Pat, our movement person, did, and you saw them running over the hills and all that. So that was also really amazing. The smiles and the just the radiating joy uh as we were leaving was really an amazing thing to behold, as well as the connection between our staff and the practitioners at the New Biology Clinic. And that's to say nothing of the actual content. And the way that started was there was a I did a brief welcome about the importance of freedom and truth in developing community, and then Joel Salatin, who I think most of you know, he did a uh short history of the farm and a welcome to all the people and how they ended up getting to the point where they could host events like this, and even that uh structure that we were was the main pavilion, how that came about. And uh one of the interesting things was it turns out that this was the actually the very first day that there was cows uh on a pasture that they hadn't been for, I don't remember the number, over a hundred years or something. And this field was had been reunited with the polyface farm, and then they uh sort of rehabilitated it till the point where it could uh be a good place for their cows. And this was the first day of the conference was actually the first day they let the cows on that pasture. So it was a kind of a historic reunion for the cows, and you know, we heard about, and I'd heard this before in the other time that I had been at Polyface. You look over the hills and they're completely green, beautiful pasture, wooded area, ponds, uh just really an amazing place for animals to graze. And he recounted the story of how when he and his family uh arrived, these hills were bare and they were basically uh stripped down to the subsoil and the shale, and just with regenerative uh rotational grazing, no soil brought in, no amendments, you know, normal amendments, anyways. I don't know if there was any amendments, but not the usual sort of chemical amendments. You see this amazing regeneration of the of the land, and all you can say is uh obviously and apparently nature like people and animals can heal and plants. Uh, and so that was a living example of that. And I think just the atmosphere there being so much in nature and so uplifting provided the foundation for the experience, which is what a lot of people actually said. So then the next day there was talks, and it started with my talk on the uh day the science died, and then there were other sessions by our enrichment specialists, so Pat did movement, and there was uh EFT, and there was biofield tuning and cooking class, food class, and all the different uh primary wellness specialists in groups or individually gave talks on their own areas of interest and expertise. And you uh we'd often hear things like you know, I went to so-and-so's talk and I was moved to tears, or I didn't realize the importance of uh getting in touch with my emotional life, or I uh found out things about my biofield that I didn't know before. So there was a lot of uh insights and revelations that came just from being part of the uh classes and talks, and there was question and answer sessions, and then there was group sessions where everybody came together. Uh the second morning, Chris Brown, one of our primary wellness specialists, gave a great talk on vitality and the difference between healing and um to-do lists. I'm not sure what he called it, uh, fixing things, um, and how they're not the same. Uh, and unfortunately, we have a culture where everybody's trying to use to-do lists to fix themselves, and we've lost sight of such things like healing and vitality, and what it really means to actually get better. So that was the sort of the structure, and then we had these meals. There was lunch and dinner, and they were served sort of buffet style, and a lot of the meat was grown, maybe I think all of the meat was actually raised at polyphase, so we got to, as Joel said, eat happiness. Uh, which is if somebody asked me what the main uh component of a cow is, uh you know, people would usually say things like omega-3s or whatever, and uh, and I would agree with Joel that the main component is a sense of joy and happiness to be alive, and we all felt that in eating their food, and I could go on and on. But it was really a great experience, and we're all looking forward to returning next year. And I would uh keep in touch, and if there's any chance of joining us, I think you would share in having feeling like it was really a two, three-day conference well worth going to. So I wanted to just spend a minute. Uh it's interesting for me that typically when I go to conferences and I don't go that much anymore, it's pretty difficult for me to leave our homestead and garden and and animals, and it's a lot of work for Linda, and particularly this year because it was very hot, so there was, you know, we do almost two to three hours a day uh when it's dry and hot of watering in the garden with our aqua dea shower head, and then there's feeding the animals and the cats, and just getting all the food arranged and harvesting asparagus and freezing it, and harvesting the strawberries and freezing them. So it's a lot of work for one person. Uh but the what m seems to make it worth it, or whatever, uh, whatever what something that happens is I obviously get to interact with lots of people, and they ask me things and also tell me things and bring up things. And it's really just like what happened in my medical practice, where uh I know people say this, but for me it's like literally the case. Most of the important helpful things I learned, I learned from listening to patients. And it's often interesting how the patients, or in this case, just the participants, tell me things that I didn't know. Like it's not like, oh, I decided I'm going to tell you something you don't know, and here's some new insight. It's almost never like that. It's often in the form of a question or a question for me, a question that I somehow have an insight that I didn't hadn't thought of it like that until just this very minute. Uh now, not everything was like that, but I had a few that I wanted to uh share today that were my insights from the conference. So there's basically there was lots of questions, and I'm sure the other wellness specialists had different questions and would answer this question differently. But the three that I identified, uh the first one, which we've talked about a lot and came up a lot, was uh what about this whole DNA story, or like I like to call it the DNA scam? And in particular, people wanted to know well, then how did 23 and me and me work? And how did I find my long-lost cousin and brother or whoever it is? How does that all work? Um, so the first thing I want to say is uh I'm not sure how he got on this, but the guy who has written about a lot of these subjects that we're talking about, the lies are unbecoming, I think is his substack. Uh hopefully we can put that in the show notes. And he did a very concise and I would say accurate reflection of the history of the DNA story. So if you're really interested in a the DNA story and how it came about and what they may or may not be doing at these 23andme and other sites, ancestry.com, etc., uh, I would highly, strongly encourage you to read his latest post on the history of DNA. So I've been over this, but um you what you find is that this started with a guy named Meisner, and I'm not sure exactly when, but 1800s, and he he started examining some pus on some gauze, and he mixed it with a whole bunch of chemicals, and then he found a high concentration of phosphorus in this in the chemical mixture, and some of the chemicals that he used either contained phosphorus or would somehow uh be responsible for liberating phosphorus into the mixture, and so because it was a high phosphorus um uh solution instead of a high sulfur solution, sulfur would suggest there was uh proteins, but there wasn't uh sulfur, there was um it was either sulfur or nitrogen, I think it was sulfur. Um that was uh high phosphorus instead of either the sulfur or the nitrogen, I think it was sulfur. Um then uh this must be something different, and he called it nucleine, uh, which was allegedly a newly discovered protein, which was found in this POS that was put through these chemical processes, and uh that became the start of the DNA story. So obviously he didn't find anything, and because he didn't do any controls, he didn't know whether the high phosphorus content of the final mixture was simply due to this pro the way that he processed it. In fact, every indication is that it was. Uh so this was the first layer of the of the scam, you might say. The next layer was in a similar vein, the finding of the nucleotides, the A, T, G, and C. And again, they didn't find anything but literally conjured it up with different sets of chemicals, end up analyzing the chemicals and getting uh certain things. Uh so something that came from uh bat shit, which is called guano, became guanadine, uh, which gives new meaning to the word batshit crazy, because that's essentially what they were doing. This was had nothing to do with science. They never found any nucleotides. They just alleged them. Uh so that was the second level. The third level became Shagoff's rule, which was that he allegedly found that the A's were exactly the same number as the T's and the G's were the same number as the C's, and that gave rise to the whole sort of zipper thing and how that DNA reproduces copies of itself, that A always lines up with T, and then it unzips in the middle, and you have an A here, and so you're always going to have a T here. And that was a result of him finding that there's always the same amount of A as there is T. And he was the first one that uh allegedly found that, and that became Shagoff's rule, because I guess his name was Shagoff. And as is pointed out in this uh review, it turns out that's not what he found, that they weren't in exactly equal rate uh proportions, and so that becomes the third level of the scam, uh, that they didn't actually find the ratios were the same. And so that's again the third level. The fourth level was the made-up double helix, the fifth level was the paper that I read all the time, that they never actually proved that the genes, the segments of the DNA code for proteins. They just assume that. So we have five layers of assumption that constitute where we are today with the unproven uh pseudoscientific claim that this chemical called DNA, which has never actually been found and never been shown to be what they say it is, or be the code for anything, is the code of life. And so then he went into this question, which uh I got asked a lot at this at the experience. So, how do these things work? And he pointed out, number one, as I have many times, that first of all, what they're testing is proprietary information, so we don't actually know what they're testing. Uh second of all, you can get a lot of information from just the name and the uh history that you write to go with it. Third of all, even though sometimes it's right, and sometimes you make what seem to be phenomenal findings, on the other hand, sometimes you send in uh your a saliva from your dog, and it says that your dog, you know, is a Croatian somebody, and his brother is uh Haitian or whatever. Uh so obviously they don't get it right all the time. And he then pointed out there are many different ways of drawing correlations even between families. Uh there are certain proteins that you can do this with, you can do it with irises, you can do it with fingerprints. There's many different markers that living beings, including humans, have, that might account for the ability sometimes, not with great accuracy, to actually make certain predictions. Uh and so again, until we know actually what they're doing, which they're not telling us, so we don't know the methods section, so we don't know really anything about what's happening. Uh, we can't say for sure what it is, but just because we don't know what they're doing does not mean uh you have to fall back on their claim, which is their testing DNA. So hopefully uh that puts that to rest, and maybe someday we actually will know what they're doing, and it will make a lot more sense, and this DNA scam will be revealed for what it is as nothing more than yet another way to bamboozle and control people and get them to think that the quote bad guys are way more powerful and know way more about science than they actually do, and are able to do things like genetically modify people and inject them with things which magically insert into your genome and make you into some sort of monster or give you diseases, none of which turn out to actually be true. Okay, so that was the first line of questions. The second came from a very innocent and appropriate, I think, question. And hopefully uh the person who asked me this, if they hear this, won't mind me sharing it. I obviously won't say the name, and I don't even know the name, and I don't know this person. Uh but they asked me what seemed like on first blush to be a very reasonable question, which was something to the effect of uh just in a coming up to me in a conversation, do I know how she can fix her mitral valve prolapse? That was basically the question. Um, and so I didn't know anything about this person, I had never met her. Uh and so I just said, Well, how are you doing other you know, in general? And shh, I don't know her age, probably sixties or so. And she said, you know, I'm doing fine, I have no shortness of breath, I have no cough, not in heart failure, I don't feel any pain, no mur, I don't feel anything different, everything seems to be good. I th you know I do a lot of the things you recommend, and all is good. But I was told I have this uh mitral valve prolapse, and I'm just wondering what you think I should do to try to uh fix it. Okay, so I thought for a minute, and what came to me was surprising, and I think was one of my main insights of going to this concert, uh, this experience was I said uh well, I think you should have them stick their uh catheter in, their tube, and they can show the mitral uh they can sew the mitral valve shut. And I think as you can imagine, she was surprised to hear that coming out of me, because I'm like Mr. Holistic who doesn't like surgery and that sort of stuff. And she had a confused look and said, Well, how would I do after that? Like, how long, you know, what would happen after that? I'd say, I said, I don't know, I don't know anybody's ever done that, but I think you'd probably be dead in maybe half an hour to an hour. And she said, Well, why would I want to do that? And I said, Well, you wouldn't. But what hit me at that moment was the The question that she had was in her mind, I guess you could use that word, was how do you fix a mitral valve prolapse? And what I suggested was in fact a way to fix a mitral valve prolapse so that it doesn't prolapse anymore. If you sewed it shut, it wouldn't prolapse. The problem is uh obviously you would have a horrible outcome, and nobody in their right mind would either do that or suggest anybody else doing it. Uh but if that's your question, then that's the answer. So what that means is the question was wrong. So then you say, so what is the question? The question, and it's the same question that everybody has, uh, which is do you know a way that I can have a better life? Better mean healthier, more fit, maybe more stamina, more joy, uh, sleep better, eat better, all the things that we do that give our life meaning and quality. Is there any way to uh that you know that I can do have those things happen in my life? So I said, What do you think of that question? And she said, Yeah, that's the question. I said, Well, don't do anything about your mitral valve prolapse because it's you're already you're already basically fine and living a wonderful life. And my guess is your mitral valve prolapse has no impact on the quality, or probably will have no impact on the length of or the quality ongoing of your life. And I think the point of the insight that I got from that is it's hugely important the actual question that we're trying to address. And I would contend, uh, and this probably seems obvious, the question is how can I do better, have a better life, feel happier, more joy, you know, all that, not have less pain. If the question is having less pain, then you take opiates. If the question is how do you get your mitral valve prolapse to not prolapse, you sew it shut. But obviously, those are those questions don't lead you, or those answers don't lead you to a better life. Therefore, they're the wrong question. So you would ask, what is this pain trying to tell me? Well, it's trying to tell me that I need to move more, I need to sleep in a different position, or whatever it is. And so then you can make that change, you could actually do something different with your life, uh, eat differently, move differently, think differently, whatever, and then the pain, if if it's a correct response, will actually get better. And you didn't even address the pain, because the pain is not the disease. The mitral valve prolapse is not the disease. Now, is it possible that there are certain situations where you have to remediate something that's happening, like you have a tumor that's compressing your common bile duct, and you then if it compresses it all the way, then you basically can't live. Yes, that does happen. But most of the time, the people who have things that need to be fixed have certain symptoms and also an intuition that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. It's almost never the case that these things that actually may need to be fixed, and I think the reality is it's actually pretty rare that something needs to be remediated apart from the whole. And people ask me all the time, well, how do I I have cancer and I'm not worried about the cancer, I'm just worried about can you help me with the pain? Uh in other words, how do I get rid of the pain? And there's no answer in the new biology way of thinking for that question. It's always how do I help this person have a better life, more joy, more movement, more flexibility, better sleep, better digestion, all that. And then all these things which come about actually get better because, as far as I can tell, that's the way it worked works, and this person's question actually directed me to even clearer thinking in that regard. So the take-home lesson is we should all be very cautious and careful and think deeply about what it is that we're trying to do when we embark on healing. Like, what do we want to see better? And I would contend that in most cases it's I want my life to be better. And that may mean fixing your relationships or dealing with your relationships or your food or your movement or whatever it is, but it's not getting rid of either an alleged anatomic something that you were told on some x-ray or scan is your problem because it often most often isn't. Uh, and it's not getting rid of the body's signals uh because they're not the problem, they're the solution. Okay, that was the second. And the third one came at uh one of the group question and answers. So I was up there answering questions. I think some of the time the other uh wellness specialists were with me. Um they were, and this came up a lot, especially after uh my talk on the day the science died, uh where I basically went through a list as long as your arm about all the things that we have come to believe in science and physics, etc., that simply turn out not to be true. And I talked about, as I have talked about many times, um how the way to knowledge, or at least one of the ways, or at least maybe my current way, is not to worry so much about what is true, but to find the claim, find out what that uh what is claimed to be true, and see if it's valid, see if it holds up to uh very clear scrutiny. Uh once you do that, you're left in this open place where you don't really have an answer, you don't know what's true, and you're just in this open place. And I've been contending for years now that that's the place where you really start to learn and open and grow. But that place can be kind of disconcerting. So, one of the questions, uh, and I had never really thought of it like this, that I kept getting, and that came up uh many times from many different people, and the questions were posed in many different ways. But is something like, you know, Tom, I heard you debunk DNA and viruses and a whole lot of other things, and I totally get it. It all makes sense, it seems logical, your evidence seems clear, I get how you're thinking, but I'm in this place now, and it feels like I don't know any I don't know anything anymore. I don't know anything about what's true. I don't know what's true anymore. And they were obviously that's a little bit disconcerting place. Uh they were struggling with how to stay in that place and be okay with it. And usually up until uh that weekend, I would say, well, don't worry about it. You'll you'll get insights and you'll learn. Uh you'll fit you'll learn, you'll know what you need to know. But somehow it hit me, and this I think was new, when somebody said it, and I responded, Well, let's see if it's true that you don't know anything. So I said, and I asked everybody in the group, the couple hundred people who were there, how many people think they have a head and everybody raise their hand? How many people think you have five fingers on each hand and everybody raise their hand? And I went down, how many of you think even that you uh you love a family member or love your cat or your dog or your beloved pet? And basically everybody raised their hand. And I went through, you know, 10 or 20 of these, and everybody raised their hand to every single one. How many people think that m the the my shirt is blue? Everybody raised their hand. So it turns out we know a lot. Uh that was the insight. In fact, what we know are the things we've actually experienced in our lives, some of them through simple sensory observation, like this is blue, or I have five fingers. Some of them uh that we absolutely know, nobody could talk you out of this no matter what, is you love your husband. Now you could make a whole thing about what is love and how do you know that, but it turns out nobody could talk any of anybody out of acknowledging the truth of that experience. So that is a very complex thing, and we have no doubt that we know it. Now, there's even other things that we know. Uh, you know, I've given this example many times about the the three dots on the piece of paper. Maybe I even have it here. Here it is. How do you know if those are in a straight line? Well, you could see it, but you could also do an experiment, meaning you find out what would prove this claim or not, and that means you get a ruler and you put it on the on here, and so these are not in three in a straight line. And you have no doubt that that's true because you did a simple experiment and you know all the parameters, and you identified the independent variable, which is the straightness of the line, and you verified a way to measure to verify that, which is a ruler, and there's nobody who could talk you out of that and convince you those dots are on a straight line because you know that it doesn't. So it turns out, even though it feels like you don't know anything, that you know a lot. But then you get to the question of so what is it that you don't know? It turns out what you don't know are the things that aren't true, and the things that are models of reality that some people came up with who you don't even know how they came up with it. People swear by viruses or something, and they have no idea how anybody even proves that they exist or not. They don't know the method section. So it turns out all those things, all those things that are models that came after the science died, those are the things that you don't know. Uh, but it turns out now you do know. You know they're not true. And the things that you do know are true are things you have direct personal experience with, either through your senses or through the human beings' innate ability to think and do experiments and actually do science. Uh or sometimes things come from shared experience, like you can talk to 10 people in Australia, and so maybe you've never been there, but you can uh end up trusting their personal experience so that you do know there is a place called Australia. And what I'm suggesting is that we actually work with that which we can know and the method that we can use, which is sensory observation, experimentation, and communication with like-minded people. And that is the process of knowing more and more and being absolutely sure in what you do know. And every time you get to something that's an abstract model, you basically uh find out what the method section is, what was the basis of the claim. And basically, you're what you're gonna find is almost every claim uh turns out not to be true because since the day the science died, that the uh what we've done is substitute models for reality, and essentially we live in a world of make-believe models, which is what is essentially poisoning and killing us and making us sick, and that's the world we don't want anymore. So, with that, I'm gonna also finish with uh a couple things. Uh, but one is uh one of the highlights for everybody was there we had three musicians who actually live in the Hudson Bay in uh in my area, um whatever you call this place. Um, and so there are three friends of mine from around here, they're called the Red Pill Friends, and I asked them to put uh the Day the Science Died to music, and they came up with what I think is an amazing song, and I want to just play this for you, and I think it was one of the highlights for a lot of people, and you can also see a little bit of the environment and the uh situation we were in during this new biology experience. So let me see if I can get this. I need to share the sound. And by the way, uh this was their first time doing it, so the fact that they had to look at their computer to get the words and everything, that's on me. Uh they by the second time they did it, they didn't have to do that. And I know that's not the way they would have liked to do it, but this is the only video that I have of them doing it, and it was a sort of a rush job, and as I said, the probably the world's hardest song to write. So I think they did a great job given the situation. So here we go.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

I can still remember how that Einstein used to make me smile. He had this crazy head of hair, won his high school science fair, and truly he seemed brilliant for a while. What if he was born and captured? Most of us by speech and rapture never saw it coming the language they were telling. It's not to say that someone never pulled a switch if it delivered, but life became a bit too clever today that's gonna be with you guys. But you can see with your eyes. Truth is for the experts to scratch, take it from the goofy disguise. I met a man who sought the truth when looking for a little proof, he refused to look away. He went down a rabbit hole, he reached out to his buddy Joe, saying this malarkey doesn't play. Can't they see the waters level? Have we been tricked by the devil? Gas needs a container. This is a no brainer The day has come when we awaken. Paradigms have all been shaken. We all know they were mistaken the day the science died and they were singing I track and we buy if the nation is the nation is a legal in the house.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

And the amazing camaraderie, and uh just it was just a wonderful experience. So uh just to finish, um, like in the previous years, I have taken the summer off. Uh it helps me to recharge, think about things, think of new things, get some new ideas. Uh, and this year I'm going to be meeting uh in this Cowens Community Circle with the members once a week, uh, sorry, once a month, and continuing the new biology clinic question and answer once a week. So you'll still get enough of me in the coming uh couple months, but this summer and a lot of gardening and animal care. So I'm gonna take a few months off with the webinars, and I will be back probably somewhere around mid-August, or could be if there's something that comes up, I'll do a uh special webinar before that. And I'm so grateful for everybody who came to the New Biology Experience and joining our circle community, uh, Collins Community Circle. And um, so I hope everybody has a wonderful summer and gets to spend time outside with friends and family, and I will uh be back in touch soon, and I will you'll hear lots of me on the question and answers, interviews, and all that. So everybody take care, and I will see you soon.